Page 68 of Together We Rot

I’m used to seeing her with slicked-back hair and a PTO-mom-Barbie ensemble, but not today. I only recognize it’s her after she sheds the skull from her face like a second skin. Her eyes hold no warmth; they’re as uninviting as the blizzard around me.

“Veronica,” she says, and her voice is soft and sharp all at once. A delicate rage. “Get away from them.” Ronnie holds her ground and I’m proud to see the slight lift of her chin, defiance outweighing her fear.

She’s grown so much in this last year, no longer skittish or easily cowed. Her eyes dart to Lucas. More specifically to the weapon in his hand. Strangely, she doesn’t tell him to lower it. Not yet. “Where is he, Mom?”

Patricia’s eyes flicker from her daughter’s to the rest of us. They linger first on me before rolling over to my father. “Ben,” she addresses him, and it’s bizarre to hear his name come from her lips. “You lost a wife already; now you’re willing to risk a daughter? Foolish. Now is the time to leave while you can.”

Dad’s eyes are bloodshot and wet, but his lips are pulled back to expose clenched teeth. His fists waver at his sides. “Are you threatening me?”

She swallows at his anger but holds her resolve. “I’m telling you to leave. The ceremony can’t be interrupted. There are police forces all around the forest. This has to happen.”

“Tough luck,” I snap, and, God, now I’m almost crying, too. I take a step forward and I might have actually decked the woman in the face if Ronnie’s arm hadn’t come up.

Tears are already streaming down her wind-whipped cheeks. “How could you? After all this time, how could you do any of this? Teach me love and repentance and all that shit and then be so unbelievably evil in the next breath. You monster!” Her voice has gotten higher with every word.

“Veronica.” Mrs.Clearwater hiccups, and I can see that there’s some ounce of humanity in her because she’s looking at her daughter with such broken hope. It would be heartbreaking on anyone else’s face. “You don’t understand. I didn’t want to involve you in this. I used to think it would’ve been such an honor to be chosen, but then when I wasn’t chosen... when your father died years after... I was relieved I wasn’t deemed worthy enough for the Calling. I would be able to watch you grow and get old. And when I thought about you having kids of your own one day, I knew I couldn’t involve you. I’d let you rebel and leave and never know the heartbreak of your child’s name being chosen.

“But that boy—he’s not what any of you think. He was chosen for this and there’s no going back on it now. You haven’t seen what he can become.” She turns toward me, frantic as we close in. “He’s dangerous. Something like that needs to be contained. He’d raise hell on this town if we freed him. He’d kill us all.”

“And you’d deserve it,” I snarl, meaning every word. I’d free him, even if it spelled out my own death. “You forget he’s still a boy. Who cares what happens to this wretched town? If this whole forest disappears, so be it. Find another town, another job. Do anything but this. You’d kill a boy to save the Morguewood?”

“We don’t have a choice. We have to. Eden commands it.” Her face is torn between pity and hatred and some strange combination of the two. “If it isn’t done soon, it will all be too late, Wil. You and your mother failed to understand that. You have no idea what’s about to come. Are you prepared to love a monster?”

Am I?

“There’s five of us and one of you, Mom. You can’t stop us.” Ronnie nods to Lucas as she says it, and we split like the Red Sea around Mrs.Clearwater. “Now move aside.”

Patricia’s expression holds for a second longer before her resolve splinters apart. She falls to her knees at Veronica’s feet and her hands cling desperately to her ankles.

“Please don’t go.” She hiccups. “That girl will get you killed. I’m begging you not to go. As your mother, please.”

Ronnie freezes for a moment and I worry this is it. Her mom’s pleading eyes and digging fingers will undo it all. Her chest rises and falls in rapid succession and she sucks in her lips for a moment of painful deliberation. “You’re no one to me now,” she says finally, and with each word she shakes her mother off.

Mrs.Clearwater doesn’t rise from the snow. We may find out after all how long it would take the snow to bury someone alive in this storm. It’s hard to do much of anything with your heart wrenched out of your chest like that.

I hate her; I truly do. I despise her and the rest of this cult for what they did to my mother. What they’re planning for Elwood and would’ve gladly done to me. Still, a strange pity burns in my chest.

But not enough to pull her to her feet. Her question lingers in my head as we continue forward.

Are you prepared to love a monster? I think I am.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ELWOOD

The world above is as dark as the one below. The moon has yet to break from the clouds. She hides in a thick, foggy veil of white. I know it won’t be long before she makes her appearance.

The tree they’ve brought me to is the tallest in the whole forest. The trunk alone is massive, nearly as wide as four or five others combined. Among the swaying pine, it stands like a forgotten god. But it is not forgotten. It is still worshiped. This is where they brought me as a screaming child, and this is where I’ll die now.

“You’re changing too fast,” my father admonishes between clenched teeth. “This human vessel of yours won’t last much longer before you sprout.”

Prudence is splayed out on the ground on a heavy fur pelt. She’s alone in her agony, her husband not bothering with any amount of coddling. Like me, we are both means to an end. Her eyes lock on mine when the water breaks, her breath exploding into a frozen plume of white. “The baby is coming. Quick!”

He throws my back against the rippled bark. Then come the ropes, the sensation of hands all over, the noisy fastening of a knot. They bite hard into my ribs, trapping me here.

Winter drags its teeth along my flesh and robs the air from my lungs.

The cold is making me delirious. I squirm against the bark, waiting for my father’s face to change. For him to laugh—a noise like the fall of a tree, deep and booming from his chest. Never disrespect me again, he’d tell me, digging his nails into my shoulder. I’d nod and he’d finally relax and release me. His gnarled fingers would reach around and untie my knots. He’d rip open my constraints and bring me home. He’d bring me home and not leave me here to die, freezing and bound to the forest. This was all a lesson.

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