She glares up at my wife with an uncalled for level of disbelief. “You’re not staying with her, are you?”
“Yes.” I don’t hesitate with the answer. “I’m staying with her.” There’s a softness in my voice this time. “I love her. She’s my family. I can never leave.”
Hailey takes in a breath and shakes her head in disbelief.
Allison grunts as she begins to close the door. “Goodnight. It will be a good one in this house between my husband and me.” The door shuts with a marked finality, officially sealing Hailey out of our lives at least for a few short hours.
“Thank you.” I press a soft kiss over her lips, first time I’ve kissed them since the day Reagan went missing. I haven’t been with my wife in so very long. “Unfortunately, we may never get to close the door on that chapter of our lives.”
Allison shakes her head. “If we can survive this”—she scoops Reagan up into her arms and plants a kiss on her forehead—“we can survive anything.”
Ota pokes her head from behind my leg and her features darken. “Is that a bad lady?” Her demeanor is curt and angry, and a part of me wants to give a jovial, dad-like laugh as if I hadn’t bound her up in duct tape just this evening.
“Yes and no.”
Allison swats me. “She’s an immature lady who did some bad things.”
I wince a moment. “You are far too generous.”
The girls get back to running around the room, and I can tell by the dozens of yawns Reagan is giving off that she doesn’t have the stamina to last too much longer.
Dad slaps me over the shoulder, and it’s all I can do to keep from shoving him out the window. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
“I do need you.” I nod for him to follow me as I lead him out of the kitchen and onto the back patio. No sooner do we hit the frigid night air than I land my first punch, square over that beak in the center of his face.
“You broke it!” He doubles over and I knee him hard in the face until he springs back up. My adrenaline has hit its zenith for the night. It had crested when I held Reagan for the first time in weeks, but I was saving my powerhouse enthusiasm just for him.
I land punch after punch in his ears, his chest, his stomach, his big fat fucking mouth, those horrific judgmental eyes until he flattens out on the concrete like a ragdoll, and then I gift him a swift kick in the dick until he rolls over with a horrific groan.
“Get up,” I howl, but he’s too busy rolling around in pain, trying to crawl away like the coward he is. I reach down and pull him to a sitting position. “What the hell were you thinking?” I riot in his face. “All of your life you pretended that you were perfect! Above everybody else!” I give his limp frame a sturdy shake. “You murdered your family in cold blood.” The words grit through my clenched teeth. “You put people away for a living, for doing far less greater infractions! Tell me to my face why you killed them. Was Wilson really that irredeemable?”
“Wilson.” He leans forward and moans, his back bucks as he begins to whimper. “God, Wilson. My Wilson.”
“You poisoned him.” I fall down next to my father, physically exhausted, emotionally spent.
“He was so good.” He bemoans Wilson with an agonizing cry. “But the sin. The devil ate your brother. I put him to peace.”
I bang the back of my head silently against the wall of the house. For shit’s sake, death does not equal peace. “And what about Rachel?”
“Rachel.” He pants with his eyes skyward, a shard of blood trickling from his lip. “My angel. My sweet baby girl.” A teardrop falls, then another. Finally. He is christening my dead siblings with his remorse, and it feels like the letting of a wound—so necessary, so long in the making.
“What the hell did she do?” I growl against the wind. Tonight is a night for answers, and I’m sopping them up like bread with wine.
“It was that damn boyfriend of hers. Thought they could have a baby out of wedlock. She was so young, for God’s sake. Her future was ruined. She was ruined…” His voice trails off. “She did it to herself.”
“Shit.” I give my eyes a quick squeeze, daring myself to go on. “And Mom? She wanted to leave you and you weren’t having it. Did it look better to have your family die off?”
“It felt better.” His eyes close as he struggles to keep from falling over.
“And then there was me. The bullet. You left it in the chamber, didn’t you?”
He raises an eyelid, looking almost amused that I had pieced it together. “You fucked that up, too, didn’t you?” He moans as his chest bucks once again, but this time with a laugh. “Aston. My beautiful baby boy.” He snorts out a cry. “He would have set the world on fire. What a fine young man.”
“And here you are, burning it to the ground for every other Price. For God’s sake, you’re sick!” My voice hikes into the night. “My baby.” I weep into my hands a moment. “You hurt my baby.”
“Reagan is my baby.” He sniffs hard as if annunciating the fact. “Maybe had you visited more often your mother and I would’ve had something real to live for.”
“My mother.” I marvel at the fact he could mention her with a straight face. I swallow down the pain of losing her. “How could you hurt the mother of your children? How could you wake up and look in the mirror knowing what you had done?”
“You’re one to talk.” A harrowing moan expels from him and somewhere in the night a coyote howls in return. He doubles over and clutches at his stomach, retches as if he may vomit. “You sent that woman away in the cold tonight. You looked at her as if she were a common street whore!” His voice inches up an octave, and it takes a moment for me to realize he’s talking about Hailey. “Believe me when I say this—you will be sitting in this exact spot in thirty years with broken ribs and a collapsed lung because your son just beat the living shit out of you.” He dips his chin and begins to retch.
Hailey and that baby. I shake my head at the thought of my father being right. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. If that child is mine, I don’t plan on disrespecting Hailey no matter how tempting it might be. I’ll be civil about it. It will be hell, but one of my own making.
“But that’s one thing I can’t fault you for.” He starts in on an uncontrollable shiver. “We succumbed to the lust of the flesh.”
The moment stills. A cricket makes its presence known as I try to wrap my brain around what my father might be implying.
“Who was she?” There. Why not just cut to the chase? He’s half-dead anyway.
“Don’t you know?” He hikes a shoulder at me, struggling to sit on his side. “I gave you a damn hint the other night. I thought for sure anyone with half a brain would have pieced it together.”
What the hell is he talking about? I rack my brain, searching for the so-called hint. “I give. Uncle. Who was she?”
“That little bitch you started to bring around. Soon as you left for school, she was all over me—wanting to pet your pillow like some damn pervert. Before I knew it, she was on me, all over me like lice—and it happened.” Sucker punch. Can’t breathe. “Had a kid. Baby Angel. Nothing I could give her was enough to keep them out of my hair. Always wanting more, always sniffing around for another dollar. She kept whining about that kid costing so damn much so I took care of it for her.”
My blood runs cold. Monica didn’t have my baby. She had my father’s. My head spins with the idea. “You killed her. You killed your child.” Hell, he had already killed two others—Aston, too. I officially absolve myself of my brother’s demise. Every move in our lives was orchestrated by this monster by my side.
“Damn house wasn’t enough. It’s still in my name. You’ll get it one day.” He tips his head toward me.
“The Ghost Ship?” I wrack my brain, I’d swear Monica said an ex-husband gave it to her but then she’s been deceiving me for years. “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything to do with you.” Either of them. “Is that why she had all of our memories stowed in her
attic?”
“When your mother died, I didn’t want them. I let her take them. She loved to sit and look at you. I’ve never seen a woman worship anyone so thoroughly.” He gives a quivering sigh. “In the beginning, she took Reagan for a couple of nights, but the risk was too high. She gave her back.”
My eyes widen in the dark, wide as saucers. No wonder she didn’t want me lurking around that big house. She was too afraid there was evidence left behind, like a ball, like dark hair on the pillow. Monica Phillips is going to pay right alongside my father for what she’s done—for the hell she’s put me through.
“What about Ota? Who the hell is she and how do we get her home?” My heart thumps unnaturally because so much about Ota doesn’t make sense.
“Ota?” He looks mildly confused. “I recognized her from the missing posters. Reagan’s friend. Darn if I know what happened to that little girl. But I’m glad she’s back.”
“You didn’t take her?”
“No. Heaven’s no. When I found Reagan, she was walking alone, talking to herself. It surprised me as much as it did you to see the other little girl turn up missing.”
My stomach sours. Something is still out of place. Reagan was with Ota the night she disappeared. My father is a loon and nothing he says can be trusted. His insanity runs deep and wide as the web of roots holding this mountain community together. His mind is the twisted forest, the black lake of nothingness.
“But your mother”—he shakes his head wistfully—“I couldn’t allow her to go missing. No siree Bob.”
“My mother was leaving you because she didn’t like the pig you had become.” A sorrowful huff of laughter dies in my chest. “Little did she know what an asshole you had been all along.”
“She knew.”
Something about the way he says it saws along my nerves.
“She knew everything.” He looks over, a sly smile curling on his lips. A line of blood filling in the crack. “Want to know what she said the night Aston died?” A darkness enters him as he starts to chuckle, blood trickling from his nose and ear, his teeth yellowed with the sanguine liquid. “She said she knew you couldn’t get it right.”
“That’s it.” My foot itches to kick the living shit out of him, but instead I head into the house and lock the door behind me.
The forecast calls for snow before morning. He can’t crawl three inches to save himself. For a moment, I consider going back out—round two. But I’m not up for it. In truth, at this point none of it really matters. We have Reagan back. I’ll gladly turn Ota over to the authorities come morning. Life will stabilize. It will have to.
I place my hand over the door. Rest in peace, Dad. It will be your very last cold night, and you will wish for snow where you are going.
My toes screw into the floor, preventing me from my very next step. I unlock the door before heading upstairs.
I never did want to be like my father.
Allison
Reagan slept solid in the bed between James and me, a lamb between two shepherds. Ota settled somewhere near the bottom of our feet like flotsam. It was the first night’s sleep I’ve had in weeks, months, the best of my life, a heavenly rest that one can only attain in eternity.
James and I wake early and head downstairs to make the girls pancakes, a tower of cakes dripping with butter and syrup. Today will be the first day of the rest of our new lives. This was the after to a horrible before—the fissure that divides the two will always be Reagan’s disappearance.
Rich will be here in a few hours, as will McCafferty. We will have some explaining to do, but we’ve already settled on the fact we’ll maintain they walk straight to the door in the early hours of the morning. No one will fault us for wanting some time with our daughter. Our nightmare is over, and all of the disbelieving trolls can finally go to hell. Social services will most likely pick up Ota and cart her off to God knows where. And I’m not sure I care to know. She’s been the mystery, the constant element of surprise, and I long for a nice boring life without another single surprise for as long as I live.
James wraps his arms around me from behind and I let him. It feels right, honest, and most of all, like he belongs there.
“Who do you think the girl is?” he whispers warm into my ear and my body tingles. “You still think she’s Heather’s?”
“I don’t know.” My head hurts just thinking about it. “I honestly don’t know if Heather was well enough to pull that off. Maybe she’s from the shelter? He could have paid off some crackhead to borrow her kid. Nothing would shock me anymore. Where is your dad, anyway? He usually doesn’t sleep in this long.” I glance past his shoulder, but his body tenses behind me so I drop it. In truth, I don’t feel like going there either.
My phone buzzes. “It’s McCafferty.”
Hear the news?
I show the phone to James. “You think she knows?”
“Doubt it.” We turn on the television and Concordia lights up the screen, a forest quartered off with caution tape, and I turn up the volume.
“They must have found a body.” James leans in, studying the screen intently. “That’s on the border of town about fifteen minutes away.”
A woman takes over the screen, Gretchen MacAfee, and both James and I share a dissatisfied growl. A redhead stands next to her bundled in a navy wool coat. Frost lies over the ground, washing the earth in a patina of innocence.
“Three murders, three days, all of them involving the very same type of weapon.” She holds up a hatchet and I catch my breath. “Heather Evans was a recently widowed mother of two who had turned her kids into foster care over a year ago because of the crushing weight of her loss.” The woman standing next to her nods.
“Oh my God.” Heather was a widow. Her children abandoned to some crappy state run system.
The redhead nods in agreement. “Authorities claim she had given them up to pursue a relationship with a woman. She was off to pursue love. It’s just so twisted. As a mother, I really can’t wrap my head around that one.”
A woman. Was I that woman? Oh my God, I was that woman.
Gretchen smirks. “And the librarian. Nora Stewart. How is that connected? Nora was a Black Stone Indian. Only a very small remnant is left from that tribe.”
My blood runs cold. Nora, the librarian. “She wanted to speak with me.” The words come from me numb.
“Who did?” James rattles my hand as if trying to pull me from my trance. “Heather or the librarian?”
“Both.”
The redhead tsks into her mic. “Such a senseless tragedy unfolding here. They are such a small remnant. Of course, rumors have persisted for years regarding the curse of the tribe.”
A single tear rolls down my face without my permission. “That’s Reagan’s tribe,” I whisper.
“What?” James looks straight ahead at the screen in disbelief.
The camera pans back to the woods, to the caution tape glowing like the surface of the sun, citrine in an ashen world, and it’s jarring.
Gretchen steps into the scene. “And young Hailey Oden.”
James grips my hand. The room grows icy.
“My God.” Can’t breathe.
Gretchen shakes her head at the scene. “To have the child ripped from your womb and left to die in the woods, naked and alone. I’m sorry to say this, but it’s obvious we have a very disturbed psychopath on the loose.” She looks directly into the camera. “I’m telling you right now, citizens of Concordia, of Saginaw County, of all of Idaho, be vigilant. Watch yourselves. Walk in pairs. Lock your doors and windows because there is a brutal serial killer out there, roaming freely, unafraid, undeterred to take human life whenever they deem.” She raises the hatchet in her hand and the ax head gleams like a nuclear flash. “And this is their weapon of choice.” The camera pans down to a bloodied hatchet on the ground, but it’s not the blood still covering the blade that takes the breath right out of me. It’s the picture of an eye carved into the handle.
“You see t
hat?” James rumbles over my shoulder.
“Yes.” But I wish I didn’t.
My fingers fumble with my phone as I head to the Internet to do hasty research on the Black Stone Indians. I have looked only a handful of times to my detriment. Too afraid James would catch me, and here I am doing it with his supervision.
“Right there.” He points to an article, fifth one down in the search engine.
“The Curse of the Black Stone People.” My body thumps with fear.
We click over and start reading at a breakneck pace.
I scroll to the bottom until I hit pay dirt. “Legend has it the Chachnoaw Indians, a weak and paltry band nearly destroyed by yellow fever, looked to the Black Stone for mercy and tribe integration to sustain their people and stave off starvation. But legend insists that the chief of the Black Stones turned them away. Before the small weak tribe could leave Black Stone land, the chief took the only surviving daughter of Chachnoaw royalty, a little girl of six, and slit her throat for all to see. The Chachnoaw were greatly distressed as they had promised her late parents, their chief and priestess, they would raise their daughter and plant a son in her one day to carry on the royal lineage.” I swallow hard, trying to understand how anyone can be so cruel.
“The curse.” James runs his finger lower over the screen. “The self-appointed leaders of the Chachnoaw decided to fight to the death for the honor that was lost of their warrior princess. Every single Chachnoaw died that afternoon. Before the last one perished, while he struggled with the breath in his lungs, he swore that the Chachnoaw spirit warriors would forever avenge the blood of their people. Anyone with Black Stone lineage would die a horrible death—the curse initiating on their sixth birthday.” He looks up at me. Reagan is six. “They would allow the tribe to thrive in order to bring sorrow to each and every generation forever more. In an attempt to seal their honor, each death is to come purely from their vengeance, unadulterated by worldly disorder. They believe in a fair fight. A good one.” His finger floats down farther. “The spirit warriors would come back in the form of the little girl who was brutally slaughtered.” James and I go rigid as I land my finger on the final sentence.
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 55