Page 77 of The Whisper Place
“You buried her. You buried her alive.”
“An eye for an eye.” He spun the shovel like a showman at some deranged circus, while still holding the knife wet with my blood. “She did the same thing to him.”
“She—what?”
I could barely hear him, could hardly focus on his sick, gleeful energy. The stab wound throbbed with white hot electricity,keeping me firmly within my own body the one time I wanted to be anywhere else. I felt his intention the second before he brought the shovel crashing down, and rolled away from the brunt of the blow, catching the edge of the metal with my leg.
Kicking, I caught him in the knee and he buckled. I went for the knife first—this little felon wasn’t stabbing me a second time—and got him by the wrist. He swiped with the knife and punched the butt end of the shovel at me. I dove at him, sending us both to the ground hard. He grunted and wheezed. Stars exploded in front of my eyes. Sweat poured off me, but I knew one thing: I’d landed on top.
I bashed his wrist into the ground until I was ready to vomit. Finally, he let go of the knife and I shoved it away. Every movement felt like I was going to pass out, but it also kept me in my own head, reminded me who I was and what I needed to do.
He tried to hit me, his pathetic fist driving into my shoulder with all his hundred and thirty pounds. I wrenched the shovel out of his other hand and brought the handle down on his neck. He sputtered and turned red, then purple, grabbing wildly for air.
“Do you like it? Do you like suffocating? Should I put you in the goddamn ground?”
It wasn’t until he stopped fighting that I threw the shovel aside. It hit the base of a tree with a crack and he heaved, turning to his side and choking on the oxygen he was desperately trying to inhale.
I pulled his arm behind him, trying to hold him still as he fought for breath. Every jerk of his body sent pain ricocheting out from the stab wound in my side.
“How long has she been underground?”
He didn’t answer. I wrenched his arm higher up his back.
“Not long,” he bit out, coughing into a pile of dead leaves. “We were still shoveling when we heard you.”
We.
The image rushed in, seeping into the corners around the pain. His father. His mentor. The man who’d sculpted him in his own image, down to every last sadistic detail.
“He came to you. You nursed him back to health. The two of you planned this for months.” The memories leached out of him and into me, polluting my head. The father’s rage. The son’s subservience and quiet greed. They’d stalked mother and daughter, watching them from the shadows, memorizing their habits and schedules, deciding when they would be most vulnerable. I saw Kate jogging alone through the countryside, Valerie sleeping through her bedroom window. The curl of anticipation, the rush of adrenaline. Throwing Kate into the back of her own car, driving next to a state trooper while she sobbed and beat against the trunk. He got off on it, all of it—the power, the control. Bile rose in my throat.
“Take me to her.”
The knife wavered in and out of focus on the ground. I reached for it and grabbed dirt and leaves, tried again. Max. I needed Max. Where the hell was he? I tried to reach past the rancid pile of emotion to sense anyone else in the woods, but the more I opened up, the more of Theo that oozed in.
“Get up.” I didn’t know who I was talking to anymore. I staggered to my feet, pointing the knife covered in my own blood. The boy’s eyes were black holes, sucking me in. The pain in my side seized, my gut twisted, and I fell back to the ground, vomiting.
By the time I looked up again, Theo was gone.
Kate
I couldn’t see anyone but I could hear them.
Muffled sounds: branches breaking, men grunting, the swish of leaves and shouts. I couldn’t tell where or how far away. But it wasn’t here.
Dragging myself up, I rolled out of the dirt-filled box and onto the ground. My hands and feet were still tied. I couldn’t run like this and the panic felt almost worse now that I’d gotten out, now that there was a chance I might live to see tomorrow, to see my mom and Blake and Charlie again. Trying to slow my breath, I checked every direction. The giant gnarled tree where Ted had forced me to kneel was the closest one, and it was too big to see if anyone hid behind it. Other trees surrounded the clearing, their trunks obscured by scrub and bushes. Nothing moved. No color or shape caught my attention, but it felt like someone was here, watching me, waiting for the right moment. I didn’t know if it was Ted playing another one of his games.
“Come out,” I muttered. “I dare you to come out and try it.”
I rose to my knees and fell back at the shock of pain. They were covered in red and brown, scraped raw and oozing. Didn’t matter.Couldn’t matter. I looked behind me, terrified that someone had crept up while I was distracted. There was nothing. The distant crunches and groans I’d thought I’d heard had fallen silent now.
Someone was coming. Someone was here.
I frantically scanned the ground for a weapon, a tool, anything I could use. Two shovels lay next to a hollowed mound of dirt and an open backpack sat at the base of the gnarled tree.
Wobbling, I pushed off my butt to balance in a squat on my feet and stood up. My legs throbbed and shook. The deadened nerves around my zip-tied ankles sent bolts of electricity cramping through my feet. I hopped once and whimpered on impact, but stayed up. The backpack was only a few yards away. I hopped again, moving around the uneven hole in the ground as the forest floor tilted and faded in and out of focus. The dirt-filled box looked like an open mouth waiting to swallow. It wasn’t going to eat me. It wasn’t.
I made it to the tree and dropped to my knees, crying out at the jolt of pain. The bag was open. I knocked it over with my shoulder and picked up the bottom of it by the teeth, shaking until I heard its contents hitting the ground. I tossed the bag aside. On the dirt lay a smaller red bag, zip ties scattered like snakes, a pill bottle, a phone, and a utility knife.
