Page 21 of Follow Her Down
I glance around, scanning the tree line, the driveway, the shadows under my car and along the street.Nothing moves, but someone is watching.I’m certain of it.
“I know you’re still there,” I call into the morning, squeezing my gun tightly.
The wind picks up, rustling the dead leaves on the porch, but the breeze carries no response.
I bend and pick up the box.It’s lighter than I expected, though I’m not sure what I was expecting.Something shifts inside, a solid weight sliding from one end to the other.For a moment, I think about leaving it, about closing the door and pretending I never saw it.
But that’s not who I am anymore.I don’t run from dark things.I embrace them.
I bring the box inside and lock the door.
In the kitchen, I place the gun and the box on the counter and stare at it.The velvet is so black it seems to absorb the sunlight streaming through the window.The ribbon is the exact color of blood.
I know I should be cautious.It could be anything—a bomb, a snake, anthrax.But my fingers itch to untie that perfect bow, to lift the lid and see what’s been delivered to me so early in the morning.
I pull one end of the ribbon, and it unravels smoothly, falling away from the box like a crimson waterfall.The lid lifts easily, revealing tissue paper inside, black and rustling as I peel it back.
What’s beneath steals my breath.
A hand.
A man’s hand, severed cleanly at the wrist.It’s pale but not waxy, posed with a strange elegance, fingers slightly curled as if holding something precious.And indeed, nestled in the palm is a small, folded photograph.
With trembling fingers, I pluck the photo from the hand’s grasp.I unfold it, and the room tilts around me.
I know this face.I’ve memorized it, hated it, dreamed of erasing it from existence.
David Farley.Hisfriend.Hisalibi.The man who testified that I was “confused about what happened” and that Vincent was “a gentleman who would never hurt a woman.”
The hand in the box must’ve surely belonged to him.The fingers that once pointed at me in court, dismissing my truth, are now permanently curled, holding the evidence of his betrayal.
There’s no note.There doesn’t need to be one.
The message is clear: someone knows what Vincent did to me.Someone believes me.And that someone has decided to do something about it.
Does this mean that David is dead?Or just minus one hand?
I sink to the kitchen floor, the box cradled in my lap.My thoughts flicker and shift.
Was this an act of justice…or an attempt to get my attention?
Then a deeper thought surfaces:Does it matter?
Someone saw me—the real me, not the mask I wear now, not the fake identity I’ve constructed.Someone saw Penny beneath Sera’s skin and decided she deserved vengeance.
“You saw me,” I whisper to the hand, to the empty kitchen, to whoever delivered this perverse gift.“You finally saw me.”
I carefully wrap the tissue paper back around the hand, around the photograph.I place the lid back on the box and retie the ribbon, making sure the bow is as perfect as it was when I found it.
There’s a faint scratch from the direction of the basement, like a finger being dragged across a vent.A question, maybe.
I press my palm to the velvet lid and smile.The scratching grows louder, more insistent.
“Yes, I know who it was,” I tell my shadow daddy.“That Scottish guy at the gas station who knows my username.He must know everything.”
It isn’t fear curling in my chest as I sit there with a man’s hand in a box on my lap.It’s something worse…or something much, much better.
I like being chosen like this.
