Page 40 of Together We Rot

“Don’t speak his name if you wish to keep your tongue,” my father seethes. I believe him. At this moment, I know that he’d take the switchblade from his belt and lop it right off if given the chance.

“No one here fears you, not anymore.” Vrees shifts to stand beside his wife and her face is visibly strained as she cradles her swollen stomach. “You cling to power as if it’s yours to keep. Prudence is due now at any point. We cannot keep delaying the inevitable. She will give birth to the new Seed, and you will step down, willingly or not.”

“I’m still the Right Hand.”

“You’re our damnation.” The sheriff addresses the crowd. The whites of his eyes are full-moon bright beneath his mask. “You all remember what happened last time with Ezekiel’s brother. How close we were to our destruction by delaying the ceremony. The last Alderwood started changing. Becoming erratic. Hard to control. If we hadn’t gotten ahold of him, who knows what he would’ve become?”

“Eden was vicious,” a masked woman cries. I know her, too. Beneath her monstrous false skin, I remember her sitting, smiling in the school office. She helped me with my class schedule four years ago. “Half of my siding was tangled in roots. I had thorns ripping through the floorboards.”

“The woods were hungry.”

“The forest must be fed.”

“Where is he?”

My father dodges the church’s onslaught from every direction. His fists stay firm at his sides, but I can tell from the stiffening of his spine that his frustration is consuming. “I do not have him.”

I return my attention to the church members. All their pacing conjures a breeze much like the one slipping through the trees outside.

Branches titter in the wind. The woods have watched and listened, but they’ll never reveal my father’s secrets.

“Your brother was caught before it was too late. If you don’t dispose of Elwood soon, the forest will grow in him, and we’ll all be dead. We’ve seen it before. That boy is dangerous.”

Dangerous?

I turn my hands back and forth and marvel at the softness of my palms. No curling talons or monstrous tremor beneath the skin. These are the same hands that save bugs from windowsills and carry them to the garden. Dangerous has never been a word remotely close to me. Cowardly, wimpy, weak.

My father grapples for control of the church once more. “Believe me, I know. That is why we’re here. He must be accounted for. Mark, where are your men?”

“I’ve got all my guys stationed around every major exit.” All eyes are on Vrees as he stands in the church with his hands on his hips. “No one gets in or out without us knowing. He hasn’t left Pine Point. I’m sure of it.”

Veronica smothers a gasp beside me, but it isn’t my father she’s staring at. Within the crowd, her own mother stands. I recognize her from the blond curls spilling out the sides of her mask. I’ve seen her bright and beaming at the morning service and power-posing at the school bake sale, but I’ve never seen her like this. “He’s probably with that snake. The same one infecting my daughter. She’s a scourge on this town. She will rot us from the inside out like her mother did.”

They think Wil is some demonized caricature, not the girl whose face dimples when she laughs.

She continues. “Maybe he’ll do us a favor and get rid of her for us.”

I exchange an uneasy glance with Wil and the careful mask she wears shows its first crack. A furrow works in between her brows and her lips are overtaken by a deep scowl. “That would be a true favor indeed,” my father mutters.

All my life, my father’s been God. The ultimate example of wisdom and holiness, a stark reminder that God’s love is in limited supply, that only a few of us will ever bask in it, and the rotten rest will endure the full weight of His wrath.

I don’t see God in him now.

In fact, I don’t see God anywhere.

“Guys,” Lucas whispers, and his voice has become serrated and scared. No room for laughter, forced or otherwise. “We need to get the hell out of dodge.” When no one immediately pounces on the idea, he rests a wary palm on my shoulder. “Elwood, we can’t stay like this. We need to leave.”

He isn’t wrong, but I can’t move.

Then I hear Wil say, “I want to see if they mention my mother.”

I don’t know if I’m ready for any other damning reveals, but I feel like a hare caught in a predator’s sight, going perfectly, completely still.

“We’ll plant something on the Greene property tomorrow,” Vrees follows. He’s taken to pacing around the room, and my heart stammers the closer he gets. “We will get in there; you can bet on it.”

That’s greeted with a scoff in the crowd. It’s Veronica’s mother who speaks. “And the girl, what about her? She’s feisty like her mother. You think she’ll allow you to easily take him?”

My palms have already grown slick with nerves. The truth stares me down. Not yet complete, but a haunting picture no less. If my family catches me, everything ends. All the Alderwoods that came before were slaughtered and perhaps all the Alderwoods that come after will be too. I’ve never been a son. I’ve only ever been a seed. And now my father has come to harvest me.

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