Page 41 of Together We Rot

I used to think if I were a perfect son, my father would care for me more. But now I know better. He has always destroyed the things dearest to him. He loved the trees and yet he never flinched when his axe cut through them.

He might not love me, but maybe he’ll praise my bones after he’s burned them, too.

“She isn’t a concern,” my father chimes in. “We’ve always eliminated threats.”

Those four words echo back in my head, entirely unreal. This isn’t possible. It plays before me like a horrific, lucid dream, forcing me to watch and see this through to the bitter end.

He continues with horrifying clarity. “That pesky Greene woman has been disposed of. We can get rid of her daughter too. A troublemaking, headstrong girl? Who in this town would so much as bat an eye if she disappeared? Like mother, like daughter.”

Wil gasps as the horrible truth is out at long last. They killed her mom. My family killed her. My father disposed of her body, smiled as he hung her face all across town, and lied to me. How could a mother abandon her own daughter like that? My father had tutted with blood fresh on his hands. Easily, if she’s six feet under.

All this time I waved Wil away and she was right. Wil got too close to me and it burned her and now there’s no body for her to bury and—

And it’s my fault.

Goddamnit. It’s my fault.

Her expression is a chisel carving away at my own face. True horror is something I’ve never experienced. So many days spent cowering from my parents, not knowing what I had to be afraid of.

I learn real fear in the seconds that follow.

Murder is fresh on my mind when the silence breaks. Wil’s phone rattles to life, and the ring is a banshee call in the night.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WIL

Oh shit.

Shit.

My own father’s face flashes on my phone. I hardly recognize his smile on my screen. I only ever see it in old photographs and his contact info is a leftover relic from another era. Right now, his dopey smile is going to get me killed. Shouldn’t he be drunk at this hour? What am I doing getting a call from him?

“Shut it off!” all four of them whisper behind me, and God knows I’m trying to do that, but it’s not as easy as it looks, so I tell them to kindly get off my back. I play a frantic game of hot potato with myself trying to turn it off, but it’s so ungodly loud and the church has gone deathly quiet and, God, am I in trouble.

It shuts off naturally by the time I’ve muted my phone. The whole church is staring into the shadows, and if I’m not hallucinating, Vrees’s hand twitches toward something in his belt.

Lucas was right. We should’ve gotten out of Dodge while we still could.

“Someone’s here,” Ezekiel whispers, and the emotion draining from his voice is as terrifying as any narrowed eyes or gnashing teeth. It’s a hollow sort of evil. Rage isn’t what’s made a devil out of him; it’s the sheer nothingness that has. How long has it been since he stripped away his soul? Was it before or after he killed my mother?

Oh God. My stomach clenches at the very thought.

She’s dead, my mind supplies cruelly. She’s dead and there’s no bringing her home again.

The worst part is that it doesn’t surprise me. It should be this staggering, earth-shattering revelation, and yet...

Somehow... somehow I knew. The hunch I never wanted to consider. The dark voice I kept at bay in the back corner of my mind. It’s been whispering this whole time, telling me the truth. And now it’s here in full bloom, begging me to look it in the face.

They killed her, and now they’re going to kill you, too.

I’m only aware I’m death-gripping Elwood’s hand when I hear him gasp at the pressure. I loosen my clutch but only barely. I turn around and face down the worst Scooby-Doo gang of all time, and I hope they’re paying attention when I mouth one single word:

“Run.”

Lucas doesn’t need to be told twice. The back door swings open to the storm and he’s yanking at Ronnie’s hand, desperate to keep her by his side. She flies behind him like a rag doll, Kevin barreling in tow. It’s the two of us, Elwood and me, that are left in the aftermath. Elwood’s gone deer in the headlights.

I grip his arm with one hand and grab the crowbar with the other—because I’ll be damned if I don’t have some sort of blunt-force weapon. And thank God for that violent impulse, because we’re no longer alone. Ezekiel pushes through, and it’s like staring down an executioner.

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