by R. J. Lewis
Sometimes you just know when not to ask.
The toy beneath me was a car with one wheel missing. Not far from it was a headless action figure. I swallowed hard and told myself to breathe. I directed the light from one corner to the next, praying I wouldn’t find him hurt.
“Locke,” I repeated, my voice steadier now. “I’m here.”
I took a few more steps in, trying not to linger on the small details: like the colouring books torn to pieces, or the kid’s chair on its side, or the claw marks on the cement walls, or the…bloody handprints.
I could see the anguish as I waded further in. I blinked and images flared through my mind. Of a child alone in here. A child tormented. Abused.
I didn’t know why I was searching for him. I knew where I would find him. It was where I found him every time. I was sure I was doing what I could not to confront him so fast. It was always the hardest part, initially seeing him in his despair. Harder than that, it was asking him what he had done.
Finally, I shined the light in the last corner furthest from me. I found him straightaway. On the ground, with his back against the wall, his knees pressed to his chest, his arms lazily wrapped around them. He was staring down into his lap as I approached.
“Max,” I said worriedly.
He wouldn’t look at me.
I didn’t have to ask why. The suit he was in was filthy. He was covered in…blood.
Oh, no. I shut my eyes tightly before I dropped to my knees beside him.
“You came,” he whispered, voice empty.
“Of course I came. You needed me.” I took him by the arm and squeezed. “What have you done, Max?”
“What I had to do,” he simply responded.
I felt heavy with fear. This shit never got easy. “Is there a body?”
“Yes.”
I shut my eyes tightly. “What did he do?”
“What they always do.”
I sucked in air, desperate for strength. He needed that from me. He needed me to be strong for him.
Feeling dizzy, I straightened my spine and opened my eyes. Emotion choked me as I forced out, “Are you hurt?”
When he didn’t answer, I frantically pulled his arms away from his knees and ran my hand down his front. I heard him hiss when I touched his abdomen. My hand came away feeling wet. I shone the light to his stomach and sucked in a sharp breath. There was a lot of blood on him.
“What is that, Max?” I asked him.
“Just a graze,” he answered, still emotionless.
“A blade?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t wait to ask more questions. I set the phone down and unbuttoned his shirt. Even in the dark, I could feel his eyes on me.
“I thought you wouldn’t come, Charlotte.”
I swallowed, ignoring his gaze. “I was angry when I said I wouldn’t.”
“But you think I abandoned Conor.”
“Right now, this isn’t about that, Max.”
He went silent.
I finished unbuttoning his shirt and grabbed the phone. I splayed his shirt open and shone the light on the bloody wound. I had to lift his undershirt to get a good look at it. I sucked in a sharp breath. It was as long as my finger and deep. The blood wasn’t pouring out of him or anything, but it looked raw and in need of tending to.
“We gotta call that doctor,” I told him. “I have to take you home first, Max. We have to get you in the tub again, get you washed up –”
“You asked me why I turned to you,” he cut in, not paying any mind to my urgent words. He just looked at me, his broken expression meeting mine. “But you know why, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer as I met his gaze.
He gave me a sad smile. “We’re both broken in the same kind of way. Violated, forced in a place we can’t leave. It’s never gone away. You see Billy, and I see…all the faces that haunt me. After today, I’ve got a new face to add to my collection.”
Tears fell from my eyes. I choked out, “I’m sorry for what they did to you, Max.”
He watched my tears fall and shook his head solemnly. “I’m sorry for that little boy trapped in this room. I’m sorry his innocence was stripped from him. I’m sorry he went through so much pain and no one heard him. I’m always sorry for that little boy, Charlotte. But I’m never sorry for me. I’m not that boy anymore. I feel his brokenness and I use it as fuel to hurt and punish and destroy. I destroy others so I don’t destroy myself.”
I gripped his arm again, desperately squeezing. “There’s still time to change, Max. We can change. Together. All of us. You, me, Conor. We’re all fighting our demons. We can do things differently.”
“It’s not like that. I…did something stupid tonight.”
“What did you do?”
At this, he didn’t respond. He didn’t meet my eye, in fact. His expression was empty, the torment hidden by a façade of steel.
These Blackwater boys. They killed me.
I let him wrap his arms around me and cradle me to him. My ear pressed against his chest, and it took a lot for me to keep it together. On the outside, he was so still, so emotionless, but inside his heart was battering in his chest. He was so good at hiding himself from everyone, even from me, but not like this, not with my ear pressed to his chest where all the hurt was.
I told him it was okay. Everything was going to be fine. I was there and he was going to be alright. He breathed hard in my hair, tightening his grip around me as I soothingly talked him through it.
You’re not bad, I told him. You’re not. You’re not.
Every time he did something bad, he hid in here where it hurt his soul the most. I knew it was his way of punishing himself. He came apart in the dark when he knew nobody could see. He trusted me enough to see him in all his pain. I regretted telling him I’d never be there for him again. He must have felt so alone in here, wondering if I was going to come or not.
Finally, he began to calm down. His heart slowed and his grip loosened. I sensed he was still withdrawn, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary for him. I pulled away to get a better look at him. When his empty eyes met mine, I knew it was time to go. He needed to go to his apartment. I needed to put him in a tub of hot water and call the doctor.
Pocketing the phone, I tugged on his arm. “Get up,” I told him. “Get up, Max.”
When he didn’t move, I took his face in both hands and pressed my forehead to his. His forehead felt cold and damp. His breaths were slow and shallow.
“Max,” I repeated sternly, “get up.”
I wrapped my arms around him and tried to pull him up. This time his legs worked, albeit slowly. He was super heavy, and I felt dizzy with the weight of him.
“Come on,” I urged him breathlessly. “Let’s get you out of this place.”
I helped him across the room and up the steps. The second my head poked above ground I felt the weight in my chest ease. I hated being in that room. The vibes were all wrong. I could feel its despair and it was haunting.
Locke was silent all the way to his car. I watched him from the corner of my eye as he looked up at the sky and stared at the moon with a faraway look.
“You should have hidden under the slide,” I murmured, trying to break the tension between us.
Despite the hand pressed against his wound and the obvious pain he was in, Locke’s lips flickered up. “I should have.”
It was such a fucked up joke, but he appreciated it every time.
As we approached his car, he suddenly grabbed at my wrist and tugged me behind him. He stopped us, his gaze locked ahead at something on the road.
“What is it?” I asked nervously.
When he didn’t answer straight away, I stepped away from him quickly and risked a glance at his car. I immediately noticed that, unlike before, its trunk was wide open. My breaths slowed as Locke took cautious steps closer, forcing me along with him.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered.
About ten feet from the car w
as a man’s suited body lying on the road, stomach down, face pressed into the pavement, arm outstretched. There was a trail of blood from the car to where he lay.
“I guess he didn’t bleed out entirely,” murmured Locke.
I bristled. “At least act a little upset.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “He stabbed me first. If you’re looking for my sympathy, I have none.”
I was speechless. I absorbed the scene in front of me, even peered into the trunk and at the blood saturating the interior.
Oh, my God.
This was bad. So, so bad.
“Please tell me there were no witnesses,” I whispered. “Please tell me this won’t get back to you.”
“Have they ever?”
My frustration levels rose. “You couldn’t wait, Locke? You couldn’t have him arrested for something stupid? You had to kill him?”
“No, no,” he admonished, like I wasn’t getting it. “This needed to be done by me, Charlotte. He was one of them. One of the first in that hole.”
I stilled, understanding. My heart took a nosedive in my chest. “Who is he?” I asked weakly.
“Does it matter?”
“No, but…is he part of town? Like…”
Like Henry Tiller.
Glancing at me briefly, he vacantly answered, “No. He came a long way to molest me.”
I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. “Oh.”
Yeah, oh. Because what else could I say?
Despite his exhaustion, he moved to the body and dragged the fat man by his leg all the way back to the boot of the car. He did it so effortlessly. I often forgot how big this man was under his suit. Next to Conor, you couldn’t tell their stature apart.
I stood, feeling weak as I watched him pick the dead man up and throw him in the back of the trunk. He slammed the trunk down hard before attempting to open it again, making sure it was locked. My guess was he didn’t make sure the first time around, hence the man attempting to crawl away as he bled out.
I shuddered.
Didn’t he realize what a close call that was? The scene was so grizzly, I could feel the passion of the kill. He had lost his calm. He had cut him horribly, thrown him in the trunk and impulsively drove off to the Hole. This was bad. It was so bad. Because it meant he was losing his cool. He wasn’t taking care of these men like business. No, Locke’s emotions were bleeding out of him and he getting worse.
One of these days his luck was going to run out.
One of Locke’s hands was covered in blood, he’d transferred some on the trunk of the car, but he didn’t seem to mind as he stuck that hand into his pocket and retrieved his car key.
“Quit looking at me like that,” he demanded.
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” I argued weakly.
Now his eyes met mine. “What is it then?”
I shrugged. “I was too late.”
“No,” he disagreed. “I sent you that text long after I’d done this. Like I said, he was one of them. It was never going to end any other way. I just needed you to lure me out of that hole. I…I wasn’t sure I could do it on my own.”
Poor Max.
I glanced at the closed trunk, wishing I felt more disturbed than I was. Frankly, this was not the first time I’d seen something like this. But it was the first time the crime scene was so grizzly.
“You’ve never made a mess like this,” I expressed confusedly, voicing my concern. “You’re a lot cleaner than this, Locke. I’m worried you’re losing yourself more and more.”
Now he looked away, swallowing hard before he uttered, “It didn’t go to plan, that’s all. It…got complicated. Like I said, I did something stupid.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant, but he turned away from me and began walking to the driver’s side door. “Get in, Charlotte.”
I took a step forward. “Toss me the key.”
Just before he slid in, he said, “I’m driving.”
He was calm now. Back to being Locke. His jaw clenched shut as he drove, his eyes taking on that emptiness I knew so well. For a while, we didn’t speak. Was it strange it didn’t feel awkward? That our silence was normal and, dare I say, comfortable?
“Why didn’t you message me sooner?” I asked, breaking the silence.
“Because it got complicated, Char,” he answered.
“Are you going to tell me what that means or are you going to keep being vague about it?” I prodded.
He pursed his lips, pondering. “I…I don’t know just yet. I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“Is it bad?”
Now his mouth flattened, and he nodded once. “Yeah, it’s bad.”
My heart picked up pace. “You’re going to get caught kind of bad?”
When he didn’t answer straight away, I felt queasy. But then he shook his head, “I don’t think so, but…it wouldn’t be so bad getting caught, would it? I belong behind bars.”
“Not for killing the people that hurt you,” I retorted in disapproval. “Not for that, Locke, but maybe for the other stuff. You don’t really have a conscience these days. Or, at least, you pretend not to.”
He glanced briefly at me, and then he looked again, looking me over. “You look presentable tonight.”
Presentable. I suppressed rolling my eyes as I uttered, “Thanks.”
“What were you doing when you got my text?”
“Ember visited with Lily.”
“Ah, she graced Conor with her presence.”
“She was sweet to him.”
“Must mean she wants something.”
I let out a dry laugh. “Probably.”
Locke looked amused. “Not going to defend her for once, Charlotte?”
Thinking about what she said at the bar, I bitterly replied, “Not tonight. I uh…I saw her doing something strange.”
“Like what?”
“I saw her chasing after…” I paused.
Locke’s lips flitted up. “Reid?”
My eyes bulged. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
He shrugged.
“Is she with him?”
“They’ve been spending time together,” he said. “I suspect an affair.”
“How long?”
“Years.”
“They’re cousins.”
He nodded slowly. “I could be wrong. Reid’s not shy with his floozies, and she’s the clingy type, so it looked that way. It’s starting to get obvious around town. She’s been seen at his house parties. Drama follows her around like the plague. She doesn’t care who talks shit.”
Poor Rebecca.
This was hard to digest.
“You should have told me about it, Locke. I would have liked to have known that tidbit.”
“It was a recent discovery, Charlotte. When I spoke to Conor the first day he was out, we lightly brushed up on the topic of the house fire.”
“We already know Reid had something to do with it.”
“But how’d he get in? Who was always frequenting that place and had a copy of the key?”
I slowly realized his point. “Ember?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, she’d gained entry plenty of times while Thames had gone away.”
She’d has his house cleaned.
Had his bedroom put together.
Like Locke said, she’d had a copy of his key.
Fucking Ember.
“How did we miss that?” I wondered, shocked.
“Because sometimes we don’t want to confront the obvious. Sometimes we expect things to be more complicated. Sometimes…the truth is staring right back at us.”
“I don’t want to hate her, but…I feel so bitter.”
I felt angry and betrayed. No wonder she’d avoided him when he got out. Maybe she felt guilty, but then again, she went back to her usual asshole self at the bar.
My heart hurt for Lily. She deserved a better mother.
“Are you going to do something about thi
s?” I wondered.
“What’s done is done,” he replied. “I’ve got ties with Reid I’m not going to end anytime soon, and I have a feeling Conor would argue against punishing Ember, too.”
He was right.
Conor loved her too much.
But this…this was unforgivable in my books.
But that wasn’t the craziest part.
I scoffed at myself, aware of how fucked up this was. I was all distressed about Ember, like it was this big giant reveal. I was shaking with anger and sick to my stomach from the betrayal and yet…and yet Locke dragged a dead man to his car and threw him in the backseat like he was a trash bag. There was a dead body feet from where I sat. The smell of blood was still lingering in the air. It maddened me how desensitized I was to death.
God, I loathed this town, but there was no escaping it. Along the way I’d become part of it, entrenched in all its wickedness.
With a small voice, I said, “I saw Billy. I was happy, too. There was no reason for it, Locke.”
“You need to confront him.”
With a soft sigh, I wondered, “Did you really never finding anything out about him?”
He frowned, looking almost pitifully at me. “Like I said before, he sent himself to you that day, Charlotte. It was all him.” When he saw the pain in my face, his voice turned gentle. “You, too, have to understand that he wasn’t the boy you grew up with, either.”
I fought the tears brimming in my eyes. Chewing on my thumbnail, I pressed my forehead against the passenger side window and watched the dark streets with a faraway look.
“It gets lonely in that house all day,” he said, eyes bright as they stared into mine.
“I know what you mean,” I told him. “I get lonely too.”
“But you’re not lonely with me, right?”
“No, Billy.”
“Am I taking you home?” Locke then asked, stirring me out of my thoughts.
I shook my head, eyeing him strangely. “We’re going to your place. We have to get you cleaned up. I have to call the doctor over –”
“Not this time,” he cut in steadfastly.
I stared at him in surprise, my gaze loaded with questions. “Since when?”