Page 7 of Freak Camp
In a hush, breathing into the space between the canvas mat and her chin, he whispered, “The real boy told me to call him Jake.He asked me what I can read, and I told him about our library, but he said he wouldn’t take our books away.”
Becca laid a finger over his lips, then asked in her very serious voice, “Did you make him upset?What did he tell you to do?”
“He didn’t ask me to do anything.We just sat down and he asked me my name and what kind of monster I was.He said it was okay that I didn’t know.And he said he would come back!”
“Shh, shh.”Becca touched his mouth again.“Did he say why he was here?How old was he?”
“He was a kid.Maybe Nala’s age.How old’s she?”
“Nala?”
Tobias tried to remember what name the guards used.“Ragdoll?”
“Jake was just a child?Did you hear a last name, Toby?Did anyone mention his last name, like reals have?”
Tobias started to shake his head, then remembered.“After Jake’s dad called—oh, Jake has adad—one of the guards said, ‘That Hawthorne squirt’s got balls like his dad.’”
Becca’s hand tensed on his shoulder.She didn’t say anything for several moments, then she said quietly, “He won’t come back, Toby.Try not to think about it.Don’t talk about it.Okay?”
“But he said he would!”
“Tobias.Do what I say.”
He shut his mouth and rested his head next to hers.
He knew Becca wasn’t his mom.She had told him so.She was a witch, and that was why she only had one hand.But she told him when to stay quiet and when not to look, and he always did what she said.Bad things happened when he didn’t listen to her, but he didn’t think he could stop thinking about Jake.
***
Rebecca Marlow hadonce wanted a child of her own more than anything in the world.
That dream had died with the impact of her boyfriend’s fists.She’d been young and naive, believing that she could trust who a man was when he was sober instead of when he was drunk.Her sister held her as Rebecca bled and shook with sobs so hard she thought she would die on the bathroom floor before morning.But she survived.She got to her feet a different woman, one who would not need to be taught the same lesson twice.
That wasn’t all she learned.She returned to her job in the Oklahoma City library, ready to open books that had long caught her eye.She would never again be so helpless, and her former lover would know exactly what her pain felt like.
She soon lost her appetite for vengeance, but she learned she had a knack for witchcraft.In her teens, she had dabbled with the incantations and rituals—just long enough to be frightened and intrigued by what a few words and herbs could offer a person willing to go the distance.
With more knowledge came contacts, and she learned there was a living to be made if you were willing and able to cast basic hexes.She discovered an endless demand from the bitter and desperate looking to inflict their own pain on whoever they thought deserved it.People were willing to pay—and pay well—to make others hurt.Rebecca dealt in jealousy and vengeance, and she cared less and less what she was casting.She was just a well-paid medium for other people’s malice.
She quit after the Liberty Wolf Massacre and burned all her illicit materials, but it wasn’t so easy to give up for good.She’d gotten used to the extra income, and so had her family.She had the steadiest job among them, and they’d made a habit of going to her with money problems.It was hard for her to say no when it came to her nieces and nephews, whom she loved more than anything in the world, each a precious glimpse of the child she’d never had.
Months after Liberty Wolf the first hysteria over werewolves and vampires died down, and people seemed less inclined to turn on their neighbors because of a funny smell in their backyard.Rebecca built her business back up cautiously, using false names and PO boxes out of town.She only worked spells in motel rooms, never at home.
The ASC still caught her.She’d just begun calling on the usual names, reaching for the knife with one hand and the flame with the other, when the motel door had burst in.She’d found herself lying on her stomach, handcuffs snapped over her wrists, men shouting about exactly how few rights she had.
Later, replaying all the jobs to see what she had done wrong, she realized that there had been no warning signs, no details that were off.She had just taken one too many jobs, and someone had put the pieces together.
The judicial process went with the usual speed for an accused witch: a closed hearing to consider the evidence, no jury.That same night she found herself trundled into a van headed to Freak Camp.
Most of the blind terror that had suffocated her since her arrest—and through the long, sleepless hours of trial and transportation—bled out after they sawed off her right hand.
Two months later, a new shipment of monsters arrived, including a little boy, maybe five years old—one of the youngest she had seen behind these walls.His look of wide-eyed innocence and tousled sandy hair jarred horribly with the new leather collar bound around his neck.He was still crying and tugging at it when she found him curled in a bunk, face pressed into a torn, stained blanket.He already sported a blackened eye, though whether it was from the trip or the unloading process, she didn’t know.
Tobias was a gift, though a bittersweet one.A child his age should have been anywhere but Freak Camp, and she felt sick when she thought of the cruelty in store for him.At least she had knowingly broken the law, taken the risks; Tobias and the other children who were born with strange abilities or had been victims of attacks hadn’t done anything to deserve this nightmare of a life sentence.
But now she had a focus, a reason to be thankful she had been stupid and gotten caught.This was what she had wanted so badly, and though Tobias had not been born to her, she had paid for him in pain and blood, and in turn she was the only one looking out for him now.He would never see his real, human family again.And if he were going to live to see his next birthday, he needed her.
Everything she had once dreamed of doing for a child of her own was impossible here.No shopping for clothes as he grew, no enrolling him in swimming lessons and soccer leagues.She couldn’t even plan on helping him through adolescence.Monsters—especially one-handed witches, weaker than even the average human on the outside—didn’t last long in Freak Camp, and she couldn’t count on being there long for Tobias, to do everything she could to ensure he lasted longer than she would.
