Page 67 of Together We Rot

It’s a weird thing, being so deep below the earth. The top of the tunnel grazes against my head. If I were any taller, I’d have to duck. It’s a shallow fit for the two of us, especially walking side by side. Father tramples over the dead like they’re pebbles in a path. I do my best to weave around them out of respect.

And not all of them are strangers. I lock eyes with a corpse and my father’s candlelight illuminates the familiar hollows of her face. Even with my father’s support, I fall to my knees.

“Wil’s mother.”

I feel the cold in my blood as my father stills beside me. His laughter is hideous. “You recognize her?” Preserved in the frigid earth, her mother has yet to skeletonize, but time has taken much from her.

Once-full hair has grown sparse and soft, pink flesh withered to a tight gray. She looks so heartbreakingly close to Wil that every piece in me shatters at once.

Her world was much too full to end. Because of me, her corpse is imprisoned below the soil, hidden in a cavern so deep, Wil will never find her. It’s selfish, but I hope she never does. I don’t want Wil down here. I don’t want her to see what’s become of the woman she loved so dearly.

The woman who died because of me.

“She meddled too much,” my father tuts. “Like mother, like daughter.”

A stone slices through my jeans, and the blood trickling from the cut reminds me I’m alive. In a place occupied by the dead, my heart continues to beat. But not for long.

My father hoists me back to my feet, and his grip is the only thing keeping me tethered to the ground.

Without him, I think I might float.

Dad’s cold, too. I feel the goose bumps along his arm as he holds me. We walk farther. Seconds turn to minutes; discomfort turns to pain. My body is frozen over, my skin so freezing, I almost feel warm. We walk and walk, and then my father comes to an abrupt halt.

We stand before a crudely constructed ladder. It’s held by thinning bundles of twine. Without my hands, it’s nearly impossible to keep steady on my own. My dad keeps one arm pressed in the small of my back.

In a cave full of horrors, I brace myself for what awaits me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

WIL

Marking our path with a Sharpie feels very Hansel and Gretel.

Kevin says as much.

Ronnie squints at him. “Didn’t those two almost get eaten alive? I think that’s the last thing I want to hear right now.”

The flashlight clicks on in my hand, but it’s only a soft glow in comparison to the car’s headlights. It illuminates the steps before me, but beyond that the world is lost. Winter transformed the Morguewood into a labyrinth of white, and night has taken care of the rest. This is the type of forest you don’t come out of. It lures you in and takes its time with you. Animal carcasses lie buried in the snow, rib cages partially exposed through the ice. It’s sickening how much they look like human bones.

Kevin pops the cap off the marker and brands another tree with a large X. We’ve made dozens of them at this point.

“The witch is the one that died in the end, anyway,” Kevin mumbles to himself, but Ronnie is far past listening. “They put her in an oven.”

A particularly nasty chill has me replying, “An oven sounds lovely at the moment, actually.”

Dad is silent beside me, save for the crunch of his soles against the snow. They leave a trail behind him that will be obscured in minutes. Footprints and bread crumbs don’t work out here, not in a town that’s got to put visibility markers on their fire hydrants. I wonder absently how long it would take for me to sit out here before the snow would eclipse me fully.

Dad’s prints are disappearing already, but the Xs have yet to fade.

It’s hard to say how long we spend drifting through the trees. The hazy plan we set was to drive midway through the woods and trek the remaining mile on foot so as to not draw suspicion. In theory, it seemed like a good, well-thought-out plan. Now it seems like a horrible mistake. The forest stretches out forever in the distance. Ronnie rubs her arms across her chest like it’s kindling for a fire.

We continue along the path, a nervous energy brewing between us. It burns in my chest and spreads through my veins, chasing away some of the cold still.

The silence breaks at the sound of snow crunching in the distance and the rustle of gloves brushing across bark. We freeze collectively at the noise, holding our breath. Lucas twitches with the crossbow and I click the flashlight off.

He raises his other arm and gestures for us to keep behind him. I don’t move just yet, but I hope he knows if someone comes out to attack, I’ll leap on them like I’m feral.

Another leaf crunches and a silhouette breaks from the shadows. Patricia Clearwater.

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