Page 59 of Together We Rot

“Wil!”

I turn one last time. “What is it now? More death omens?”

My eyes catch on the doorknob, and I envision Elwood’s fingers curling around it, swinging it open and racing out into the frozen pine. It’s so easy to fool myself into thinking I still see traces of him soaked into the shadows of the room, hanging heavy in the air.

“You think you’ll save him by running out on your own? There’s only one of you, but a town’s worth of them. You’d be doing Elwood no favors by trying to shoulder this alone. Don’t do this!” She lurches out to grab my arm, but I yank myself free of her.

Cherry’s right, but I don’t want to listen. Nothing good comes from other people.

“Mom’s case dragging on is proof enough. If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.”

She shouts something after me, but I’m no longer listening. The door slamming behind me is answer enough.

I’ll do this my own way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ELWOOD

I would pray, but I think the cord between me and heaven is severed. My roots now dig to hell. And hell is a foot away from my father.

His back stiffens at the sound of my arrival. The church doors sing a forgotten hymn, every loose board a broken harmony. Days ago I might’ve sung along, worshiped the very ground, but no longer. It’s as rotten and vile as the man in front of me. His fox-light eyes gleam with dark surprise as he turns. All this time trying to make it into the chicken coop, only for his prey to find him instead.

Except I don’t feel like prey. Whatever is growing inside me is powerful enough to bring a forest to its knees, to raise roots from the ground and resurrect plants from the dead. I could summon spruces across the forest floor, make them bow toward me like servants to a king, believers to their God. But it’s precisely because of this power that I need to do this.

“I’m ready to give myself up,” I say, willing my voice to be steady.

My father stalks forward with both arms held behind his back. His surprise has sapped away; he approaches me instead with a cool calculation. The world feels darker in his wake and the air is putrid with the stench of the woods.

He assesses all the wicked new ways I’ve grown. He’s got a way of looking at someone without seeing them, his gaze slicing only skin-deep. “I knew you’d come back.”

Of course he’d think that. His meek son returning at long last with his tail between his legs, ready for another beating. There was a time when I admired his confidence. I wanted to try it on, wear it like a too-big coat. Now I want to smash it beneath the heel of my shoe.

My rage calls up thorns through the floorboards. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

“Don’t I?” His eyes snag on the brambles. “I know you’re too curious for your own good. Too easily swayed by a viper’s pretty words... Tell me, where is that little snake of yours?”

My face must give it all away—the resolve burning in my eyes, the slight gape of my mouth at the sound of her name. Keep her safe. Keep her safe at all costs.

“You’ve got me now. You don’t need her.”

His smile is slicker than an oil spill. “Her mother didn’t go down easily. Gnashing and wild like an untamed beast. I bet her daughter is the same. They’re fighters. I’ll give them that.”

Each word is a tremor in the soil, a crack splintered across the foundation. “Don’t you dare touch her!”

That wipes the smile clean from his lips. I savor the lock of his jaw and the bulge of his eyes. I soak in every ounce of his fear.

He reins it in after a careful moment, his voice tense and to the point. “We only need you. Come willingly, and we’ll spare her and her pathetic father. Once that motel is demolished, they’ll have nowhere else to turn. They’ll leave and we won’t have to harm a single hair on her pretty little head. You, on the other hand... you’d kill her if you stayed.”

I don’t know if I can trust him, but I also don’t know if I have a choice. All the what-ifs torment me, and I’m haunted by the visual of ivy coiling across Wil’s throat. This was the right decision in the end. The only one.

It’s the reason I now surrender my wrists and bow my head. “Kill me, then. Get it over with.” I don’t know what death they’ve got in store for me. A noose around my throat, a guillotine blade slicing through my skin, a million boulders pressing down on my chest. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if this church will prosper off my death. I’d do anything to keep Wil safe.

But my father doesn’t strike. “Not yet. Follow me.”

He gestures for me to follow him with an incline of his head. We both know I’ll go willingly, a prisoner walking to the executioner’s chair of their own volition. It’s not a long path to the altar. There’s hardly enough space for the town’s members and their children in this room, let alone God. My father jerks the podium out of place. It’s always felt so sacred, too holy to be kicked aside with the muddy imprint of a heel. All this time, every sermon I’ve sat through, my father’s stood with a secret chamber just beneath him.

He yanks open the trapdoor and I’m guided step-by-step into the bowels of the earth.

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