Page 60 of Together We Rot

The floor beneath me is freezing, packed dirt; it’s jarring against the flash of white-hot fear in my gut. Very little is visible, illuminated faintly by a few candles swinging overhead. They drip hot wax precariously; one splotch nearly grazes my knee. I jolt back and make the mistake of looking around me.

A skeleton lies in a useless heap to my left. The skull is ruptured, fractured in two as though bludgeoned by something heavy. I scuttle back as far as I can, only to bump into yet another corpse. The tunnel is filled with them.

“What is this?”

My father grins a nasty sort of smile, bringing himself so close, I taste his breath. He grips my chin, forcing me to look at him. I see more than I care to. Deranged bloodshot eyes, age lines torn across his skin, the grimy crescents of his gums.

“You’re smarter than that.” His words carry across my skin, slithering their way into my ears. The earthen ceiling drips, condensation rolling down the walls. It lands in a growing puddle beneath me. “These tunnels stretch beneath this entire forest. We own these trees and we always have.”

The thought chills me like a vat of ice, spreading from the tips of my toes to the edges of my scalp. Suddenly, the smell makes sense. The cloying, rotten stench carrying in the air, mingled in with wet soil. He’ll bury me in the bellows of the earth, beyond the roots and the trees, a place where the sun cannot reach.

He’s brought me to my grave.

“Why?” I beg, and my fear brings a wide, knifelike grin to his face. The scales of power were momentarily tipped earlier in the church, and he’s thrilled now to have it righted. “I’m your son. How could you—? How could you look me in the eyes, knowing this is how it would end?”

He’s silent, soaking in my words before roaring with laughter. He doubles over, tears springing in the corners of his eyes. He wipes himself free of them, struggling to collect his breath. “You always wondered what your purpose was in life. I told you everyone had one. Now, boy, this is it. Your final purpose, Alderwood. You and all the others.” The laughter cuts abruptly, his features dripping with rage. “If only you’d been worthy enough. A better son. A better believer. Maybe your mother would’ve been chosen for a second son, but no, it’s Vrees’s time now. The new Right Hand of God. Eighteen years in power gone like that.”

He slams me into the wall and knocks the air out of my lungs. All these years I was convinced we looked exactly alike, but the differences between us seem starker now than ever. We have the same green eyes, but his are clouded over, no cracks for the light to shine through. I’ve done everything I can to keep the darkness at bay; he’s embraced his.

“Do you know how hard I tried to make you love me?”

His face skews in the shadows as he secures my chains, traps me here in ironclad bars. It’s not hurt, but it’s an imitation of it. A softer sort of rage. “You remember the story of Job—I am the Lord’s servant above all else.” He says it like it means everything. Like I’ll understand somehow. “Unlike Job, though, I knew your purpose from the day your mother conceived you. Love was never an option.”

I could laugh.

“Even if you were allowed,” I say, preparing myself for the fire, “I don’t think you would know how to.”

He doesn’t answer me, but his face does. It stretches back in an indignant burst, lips curling to show a flash of teeth.

“Did I not feed you? Clothe you? Indulge your ridiculous little hobbies?” My father paces in the shadows, his fury building. “I couldn’t love you, but I cared for you and that should have been enough.”

For once in my life, I stare at him head-on. I want him to see the light he hasn’t managed to snuff out. “Mercy isn’t the idle moments between rage. It isn’t just the absence of pain.”

“Oh, you must think a lot of yourself,” he retorts, sneering at me. He looks away, his gaze falling on my shackles. Maybe he’s seen them on me my entire life. “Is this your own display of mercy, then? Dying to keep that girl safe?”

“I love her.”

He spits his next words out like they’re sour. “How sweet of you.”

“And your brother?” I ask, egging him on. “The one who came before me. Did you love him?”

His stony expression breaks and I see an old pain slither through. It takes him too long to rein it in. “Don’t speak about him. You know nothing, Elwood. Nothing.”

“No one in this world matters to you, do they?”

He snarls and I hear the shifting of his robes as he pulls back the cloth to expose the marred crisscross of slashes on his skin. Each one is grislier than the last. Permanent welts that have only paled with time but never healed.

“This is the price of love, Elwood,” he tells me, his tone grated and resentful. “I loved my brother and tried to delay his fate, and this is what it got me. He died anyway, and I was the one punished. The Lord gave you to me as a second chance. One final blessing and curse wrapped into one disappointing child.”

I grind my teeth. “Don’t talk to me about scars.”

He lets his robes fall back into place. “I was teaching you the same lesson they taught me.”

“No, you weren’t.” My exasperation is enough to break a chuckle out of me. It’s humorless and dry. “You were taking it out on me. I’m not your son; I’m your punishment, remember? That’s all I’ve ever been.”

My accusation leaves him speechless. I wait for him to strike me down. I expect the harsh rattle of my jaw and the spit of blood onto the floor. But nothing happens. He shivers with unspent fury, his hands trembling on either side.

“That girl changed you,” he says once he’s found his voice.

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