by Fox, Logan
I had my share of hair-raising scares when I was on Ayahuasca. The brute got me through them all with his calm presence and—
The humming.
That repetitive, wordless tune.
I put my mouth to Clover’s ear and start to hum. I try to ignore how my body is responding to hers. The urge I have to be inside her.
To fill her.
To claim her as my own.
But I don’t deserve her. I tricked her, and that alone entitles me to no more than a slap in the face.
Instead of pushing me away, she drags me closer. So I squeeze her tight, and hum harder, until she relaxes against me with a sigh I feel through her entire body.
For the first time today, I’m convinced she’ll live through this.
Hell, she might even come out of this cured of her addiction.
But right now, I’d just be happy if she makes it alive.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Clover
I never thought of my mind as something separate to me. I was my mind, my mind contained me. But now I know different. My mind is a separate entity. It controls me. Regulates me. Defines me.
Like a good parent, it never wants to expose me to the bad, and it will always encourage the good.
I was never afraid of the dark. But there was no other way for my mind to communicate caution to me.
It would go dark before he came into my room.
Because he would turn off the power.
It didn’t matter that my lights were on. My night light made no difference. If he ever found candles in my room, he’d take them away.
He liked the dark.
Darkness hides sin. Shadows breed evil.
My mind simply figured that, if I stayed away from the dark, if I avoided all the shadows then I would never be exposed to sin or evil ever again.
But evil doesn’t wait till night. It breeds during the day, overflows at twilight, and takes control at dark.
To fight it means twenty-four hours of vigilance.
My mind’s also been keeping things from me, just like any good parent would. The bad, the ugly, the downright evil. Better not to ruin a child’s innocence than have it exposed to the real world.
For six years, I’ve been terrified of the dark when, in fact, I should have been terrified of my uncle.
But he’s dead now, so what’s there to be scared of? Of course, he isn’t the only evil man in the entire world. There are others. Some far, some near.
A life lived in fear is not a life. It’s survival.
I can’t go around thinking my safety is at stake every second of every midnight hour.
No one can live like that.
Which is why I haven’t been living. I’ve been surviving.
That has to change.
Uncle is dead.
My life began when I was born, and I should never have stopped living it.
In the swarming darkness behind my eyes, this is all so clear I feel like laughing.
I am laughing.
Crying.
It all makes sense now.
The drugs. The meaningless sex.
I was stuck in survival mode, even after the monster had been slain.
The nightmare I was trapped in ended at seventeen, but I’ve been trapped in that shadow world for the past six years.
If it hadn’t been for this moment of enlightenment. The brew Hunter commanded me to drink.
Hunter.
If it hadn’t been for him, I’d still be trapped.
A powerless child.
An abused teen.
A good-for-nothing slut.
Chapter Sixty
Hunter
Eight Years Ago
I have no recollection of falling asleep but when I wake, it’s to an invasive beam of sunlight scoring my eyelids. I lie there for a few moments, desperately attempting to gather my thoughts.
There are too many.
Too tangled.
Obscure.
To say the left side of my brain got me this far is an understatement. None of my finger paintings are stored in Hill Manor’s attic…because I never made any.
Words, numbers, and the physics of the world were the only things that mattered to me early in life. Art was for people that couldn’t cope with reality. Not only could I cope, I planned to strip it bare.
Back then, computers had only just become a thing. But in Mallhaven, everything arrives ten years later than the rest of the world. I never had a chance to join the programming revolution.
I could have owned Silicon Valley.
Instead, I’m its slave.
What happened last night was inexplicable, in the sense that no one can explain a Rembrandt to someone blind from birth. There would be no shared vocabulary.
We rely on memory to explain the present. If there are no memories, then we are children to the new.
I felt born again that morning. Not in any religious sense, but as if I’d never thought about color and now had a rainbow to consider. My world, my life, my existence no longer made sense.
The brute fed me rabbit for breakfast. It was stringy, dry, but so extraordinary that I asked for more.
I left just before noon. It was a long walk home, and I only managed to find it by keeping the tallest peak of the Devil’s Backbone in my sights as I moved through the forest.
I arrived at Hill Manor at a quarter to ten at night. The Hill Manor slept, but Cervil let me in the back like he always did, with a respectful nod and a quiet, “Can I get you anything, Sah?”
The answer was always no. But that night, I asked him to bring me something to eat, some hot tea, and anything sweet the kitchen had to offer.
I spent every hour until dawn chronicling my experiences in a leather-bound journal as I shoved food down my gullet with the relish of a man stranded the past ten years on a remote island.
Father was gone the next day, and I’d evaded him.
I should have been ecstatic about that. Instead, I was furious.
I had plans to confront him that Monday morning, but instead he’d taken ill on Saturday night. His GP admitted him to Fool’s Gold Hospital, an hour’s drive from Mallhaven proper.
On the Wednesday of that same week, I visited him.
Strangely, he didn’t seem surprised by my presence.
He tapped the side of his bed as if expecting me to take a seat beside him.
I stood instead.
I watched.
I began to laugh. “Do you think you’ve broken me?”
I will never forget the expression on his face. The confusion. The shock.
Then came the shame.
“You just made me stronger, Father.”
I said nothing more to him that day, but I returned once a week to visit him. Every time, I would bring him a soda. He, just like the nurses and the doctors and the hospital staff, assumed it came from the vending machine downstairs.
It didn’t.
No one, not even my cantankerous father, noticed the tiny hole in the bottle cap.
All he said was, “It’s flat.”
“My apologies, Father.” Was my simple response.
From then on, I cultivated his madness from the evil spores infesting his mind. They invaded his brain and leeched every trace of sanity that remained.
Just before dementia claimed him, he signed the entirety of his wealth over to me.
The shareholdings of his companies.
I became his power of attorney.
When his psyche finally cracked like thin glass, I became the Hill legacy.
Not Mother.
Not Holly.
Me.
I’m damn sure I’ll do good with it. I used every red cent of his fortune to build the Hill Institute, knowing I would mentor patients that had to suffer trauma in their pasts.
Abuse at the hands of their fathers. Their mothers. Their relatives. People in authority, and people that had once sworn to love them.
The Hill Institute became a sa
nctuary.
I, their guardian.
I didn’t—I will never—take that responsibility lightly.
* * *
She’s not shaking anymore.
Her skin is warm against mine.
We sweat against each other in this tiny cabin. The air is warm, stifling even. At the same time, comforting.
Because, when it’s this cold outside, warmth equates survival. Comfort.
I smoked too much.
Which means I’m not thinking.
An intellectual draws conjectures and sifts through data.
Instead, I can’t stop smelling her. She smells of the forest.
She is the forest. A wayward nymph. A lost soul.
But she’s stopped shaking. I was supposed to remain neutral. I’m her doctor, she my patient.
Yet I feel compelled to speak to her, and I can only blame the THC flooding my veins.
I stroke her shoulder, thrilling in the touch of her skin.
“Tell me you’re okay.” My voice sounds strange; leaden yet echoing.
“I’m okay,” comes her weak response. “I think.”
“Are you warming up?”
“Yes.” A pause. “I think.”
“Stop thinking!” I hear the harsh cadence of my words and try to soften my tone. “Feel. Do you feel warm?”
She takes minutes, hours, decades to respond. “Yes. But only because you’re warm.”
I didn’t expect that caveat. What am I to make of it? I understand my body heat might be singularly responsible for keeping her alive but I also sense her words are deeper than what they appear on surface value.
I’m holding her as tight as I can, but I hold her tighter. She’s not petite—in fact, she meets me eye to eye in a pair of heels—but in that moment she’s a baby bird and I’m a fox.
And this fox wants to crush her bones if only so no other fox could ever experience this moment.
Sweat trickles down her back, sliding between our bodies as if it has some right to be there.
Maybe it does.
It’s hot in here.
My thoughts are plagued with the sounds she made the other night. But they had to be fake. She’s a seductress. A prostitute—her fee? Safety, comfort, a bed for the night. She’d sell herself to anyone in the right income bracket, which makes me a prime target, and I don’t care.
She didn’t even know I existed before two nights ago, but I’ve known her for months. She fascinates me.
Intrigues me.
I want to know everything about her. I want her to know everything about me. The good, the bad, the downright evil.
Don’t judge. We all have evil inside us.
It’s whether we act on it that will be the deciding factor. Don’t think for a moment I believe in heaven and hell. I don’t. But I believe in comfort and discomfort. Moral, immoral.
We are no longer animals, but that differentiation insists on us ensuring that, unlike animals, we know when something is right or wrong. Admittedly, those values may never be tested in our lives.
But we will.
Repeatedly.
The small things. The life-changing things.
It will always be our choice. Even if our minds are diseased…those choices were bred of a diseased mind.
Like mine.
But no more.
Like Clover’s.
But soon, no more.
My lips are pressed to the damp skin of her shoulder, and I have no recollection of putting them there. The fire cracks and pops less than two yards away. Its heat strokes me with a physical touch.
She’s sweating against me, but still I feel her pressing into me. Against me.
I tighten my grip even more.
“Don’t let me go.” The words burst out of her mouth like I pushed them out.
“I won’t.” My promise is ferocious.
“Don’t.” As if she doesn’t believe me.
Can she ever trust again?
“You remember, don’t you?”
She remains silent. Did I overstep?
I’m glad I smoked that joint. If I hadn’t, I’d have been the insensitive, narcissistic Hunter Hill I’ve forced myself to be all this time, instead of this person. A person who’s been through this exact same thing—in more ways than one.
Sympatico.
“Let it go.”
She resists, not only in the harsh string of words she spits at me, but in her body language. There’s suddenly an inch of hot, damp air between us, and she shrugs her shoulders so hard that I’m no longer touching her.
“Never. Why? Fucking asshole. Motherfucker!”
“Then let it out.”
She quivers hard. Draws into a ball.
And then she shoves back her head and yells, “Who gave you the right?”
Her voice is raw, her body shaking as she yells out that curse.
I squeeze my eyes shut if only so I won’t break down in tears. “No one gave them the right, Clover.”
I don’t know if she’s heard me. If she can hear me.
“You are not God!” Another violent accusation. Her body jerks as if she’s stabbing out her arm. “I didn’t deserve that!”
“No one does. No one ever.”
My mind sweeps back to the only gospel song I’ve ever seen performed. It wasn’t live, but on YouTube. The male singer up front, a harem of modestly clad, African American women as his choir. He would wave a hand as he sang, and they would echo his every word in a sonorous chorus that made my hair stand on end.
“You never owned me!” Clover yells.
Hallelujah! I chant in my mind, eyes shut and my forehead pressed to the skin between her shoulder blades.
“You can’t control me anymore.”
Praise the Lord!
“And I’m done being scared of you.”
A-fucking-men.
She shakes as she sobs.
“I didn’t deserve this,” comes her mumbled words.
The choir goes silent, but I feel compelled to grip her tight again, making sure there’s not a molecule of space between us.
For the longest time, the only movement in our little cabin is the crackle and pop of the fire on the hearth.
The rise and fall of our chests.
In.
Out.
Breath matched in some furious symphony.
Slower.
Slower.
I’m dipping in and out of consciousness. It’s been a long day and weed’s always had a sedatory effect on me.
Not yet.
We’ve still a few miles to go.
It takes longer than I’d thought possible before I bring myself to ask the question. Strangely, I don’t want to move forward. I’m content to remain right here.
In this cabin.
During this storm.
Tonight.
But what good would a guide be if I didn’t lead Clover out of the forest?
“Are you ready?” I ask.
“Yes.”
But she doesn’t sound it. Not even a little.
“Are you ready, Clover?”
She opens her eyes, and twists to face me a little. I can read the answer from the light dancing in her eyes.
I grab Clover’s jaw and wrench her face toward mine. Our lips find each other and latch on; desperate, eager, forlorn.
There’s a moment’s resistance, but it’s fleeting.
Her resistance to me has always been fleeting.
Chapter Sixty-One
Clover
Fury explodes inside me like a nuclear bomb. It flattens everything—my mind, my emotions…me. I’m yelling, but I don’t understand the words. They’re in some foreign language I’ve never been taught.
Now there’s nothing left but a wasteland and the flickering, uncertain silhouette of a single man.
Hunter.
He walks this wasteland with me. No, since before I even arrived. He knows the way. He can guide me.
A heat haze warps the world, bu
t when he’s in front of me I’ve never been as sure as I am right now.
He beckons me, hands reaching for mine.
“Are you ready?”
The world pitches and yaws around us. Nothing feels substantial enough to support us, but it does. The world is cotton candy, and I’m a dandelion. No matter where I drift, I will never fall through.
Not if I have Hunter by my side.
“Yes.” It’s a lie, of course. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. But I know I don’t want to live a lie anymore. If he can show me the way, if he can guide me toward a life that doesn’t consist of an eternal struggle against an unknown enemy…then I would lay down my shield for him. I’d surrender and throw myself on his mercy.
“Are you ready, Clover?”
I don’t need to answer him this time. Instead, I close the distance between us, grab his head, and pull him in for a kiss.
An invisible force rips away the wasteland like torn newspaper. I struggle to the surface of my mind and open my eyes.
Hunter.
A warm glow bathes his face. His eyes reflect shards of fire, his lips flickering from a straight line to a faint smile as firelight plays over his face.
I gasp, having just woken from a nightmare six years in the making.
Stagnant memories flood my brain like a burst dam.
I grip Hunter’s body as I reel from the weight of those emotions I’ve kept bottled up.
But, despite his strength, I’m crumbling. My body can’t hold this weight—my fragile mind doesn’t stand a chance.
“The past is in the past,” a disembodied voice informs me.
Fuck you.
“You’re here, now. The present is all that matters.”
You fucking asshole.
“Clover. Clover, look at me.”
A shake rattles my teeth together. I force open my eyelids, and my view is filled with Hunter’s intense forest-bark stare. “Can you see me?”
I laugh.
Of course I can. What, is he on drugs?
No. I am.
Fuck.
“Bring yourself here. Every shred, every molecule. Here. Now.” His eyes dart between mine, his gaze so intense that I want to close my eyes to stop his pervasive intrusion into my soul.