by Stella Hart
Somewhere on Avalon.
Somewhere no one would ever look.
The words swirled around in my head, needling at me over and over, but the answer to my question remained out of my reach. Then, like a blinding flash of light, an idea dawned on me. I set my jaw, leapt off the couch, and grabbed my keys.
I knew exactly where my uncle had gone.
6
Alexis
My eyelids fluttered open.
This time there was no limbic phase between sleep and consciousness where I didn’t understand what was happening. The throbbing between my legs brought the dark memories rushing back to me immediately, along with the stinging pain from the cuts that ran over my belly and legs.
I let out a groan and rolled over in an attempt to take some of the pressure off the worst cut on my right leg. My eyes fell on the X-shaped crack on the concrete floor as I moved. Like last time, there was a brief flash of recognition in my mind as I looked at it, but it passed before I could sink my teeth into it and figure out what it meant.
“Awake again, huh?” Greg’s voice boomed from the other side of the room. He stood up, walked over, and loomed over me with a twisted smile. “You passed out while I was cutting you earlier, so I thought I’d give you a break.”
He tilted his head and gave me an expectant look, as if he expected credit for his ‘kindness’.
Suddenly it occurred to me that the gag had been removed from my mouth, and my clothes were back on. I raised my fingers to my lips to rub the spots where the rope had chafed the skin. Then I opened my mouth and sucked in a deep breath, preparing to scream.
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you.” Greg’s hand clamped down over my lips. “It’s late now, so there’s no one at the park next door. No one will hear you.”
He pulled his hand away and smirked. “Seriously. Try if you want,” he said, motioning at the air around us. “Scream your little head off. It won’t do anything.”
I stared up at him in wide-eyed silence, as if I’d seen a ghost. Something about what he’d just said was pricking at my guts like a million little needles, but I couldn’t figure out why. All I knew was that it was important.
The words kept churning around inside me, combining with memories and recent sightings. Then, with a rush of adrenaline, the answer finally came to me.
I understood now what people meant when they talked about feeling a rush of blood to the head. There was a pressure inside my skull that made me worry it would split right open, and my heart raced faster and faster with every second that passed, leaving me breathless and dizzy.
“I know where I am,” I whispered.
Greg raised an eyebrow. “Finally figured it out, huh?”
My eyes fell upon the crack on the floor again as my heart hammered like mad. I couldn’t believe Greg had brought me here. Brought me home.
The dusty old room we were currently in was the garden shed on my family’s Thunder Bay property. My dad used to work on all sorts of hobby projects in this space when he had spare time, and he always let Sascha and me watch and help, as long as we were careful to avoid touching any tools that could hurt us. Last time we were in here—over ten years ago now—we helped him make a birdfeeder for my mother’s birthday.
A few years before that, when I was six, Dad accidentally let something heavy slip off his workbench, leaving the X-shaped crack on the concrete. Sascha and I saw it afterwards and deemed it our ‘treasure spot’. For months afterwards, we made up stories about pirates sailing to Thunder Bay and burying their loot right under the garden shed.
There was a public park with a playground right next to the house, too. During the day, there were always kids playing there as their parents sat on benches and watched. They’d start to drift away at three or four in the afternoon, and by dinnertime the place was deserted, leaving the street quiet and peaceful.
There were no other homes within a half-mile, because our house was right at the end of the street, and the park beside it left a huge gap between it and the other houses further down. Across the road was a thick patch of woods, frequented by walkers during the day but empty at night.
That meant Greg was right earlier. During the day, people might hear me scream, but when it was dark I had no chance.
“Why did you bring me here?” I choked out. My heart wanted to burst right through my ribcage.
“I told you already,” Greg replied. “No one would ever think to look for you here.”
“You think no one would choose to look for me where I used to live?” I said, eyes incredulously wide. But even as I questioned it, I knew he was right.
The people of Thunder Bay avoided this end of the road like it was contagious, only venturing as far as the park next door so they could use the playground. The only time anyone ever came close to our property was when kids tried to scare each other on Halloween by making each other run past the gate and up to the front door.
To those kids, it was Thunder Bay’s very own haunted house, supposedly filled with the spirits of the Butcher and his victims. To the adults of the town, it was a stark reminder of past horrors.
No one ever wanted to step inside. No one even wanted to think about it.
“My sister told me your family couldn’t sell the place after what happened,” Greg said with another nasty smile. “No one wants anything to do with it, so it just sits here, all abandoned. It’s the perfect hiding spot.”
A surge of adrenaline made me dizzy. “Let me go inside,” I said, desperate to see it all again. “Please. I… I just want to be in there one last time.”
I expected him to deny my request immediately. Instead he frowned and tapped his chin with one finger as he considered it. Then he nodded. “All right. I need to stretch my legs, so we might as well take a walk,” he said. “Don’t try to run or do anything stupid. I’ll have this on me the whole time, and you know I won’t hesitate to use it.”
He picked up a large knife and waved it in the air. I gulped and nodded.
After he’d untied me, he led me out of the shed and pushed me into the backyard. It was dark and windy outside, and a fine drizzle hung in the air, leaving a cold spray on my skin as I walked through it.
As I cast my gaze around the yard, I spied my old treehouse in an old oak by the fence. When I thought about playing in there with my sister when we were kids, all the sounds and aromas I associated with those days came flooding into my brain. Damp cedar and old books. High-pitched giggles and ridiculous accents as we gave our dolls and teddy bears their own distinct voices and personalities.
A lump appeared in my throat. I wished I could return to those days. Wished I could have it all back—the freedom, the happiness, the love.
“Hurry up.” Greg pushed me, dragging my mind back to the present.
He directed me to the back door. The glass above the handle had been broken, presumably by him in order to gain access earlier.
He opened the door and shoved me inside. Then he pulled out a small flashlight and used it to guide us through the dark house.
It smelled of dust and faint traces of mold, but it looked a lot better than I expected. The walls seemed clean and the floors looked polished, and the old furniture we’d left behind was all in one piece. Each room seemed ready to spring to life as soon as someone brought in some fresh-cut flowers and a broom to displace the spiderwebs hanging in the corners.
Tears welled up in my eyes as memory after memory flooded back, making my mind whirl like it was stuck on a carousel. On my left was the exact spot in the living room where Sascha and I used to help our mom wrap Christmas presents, and further up the hall was the doorway to our old playroom where we kept our dress-ups, teddy bears, and books. In the opposite direction lay the kitchen, which always used to smell like fresh bread and spiced cookies.
The memories turned into whispers and laughter, filling my head and drowning out the sound of the wind whistling through the trees outside. It made me feel warm and cozy for a while, like I wa
s truly at home, but somewhere along the way the nice recollections began to turn dark, and I started remembering the last few days I spent in this house. My mother cried constantly then, and there was always a faint clicking sound from outside as journalists stood in the yard and snapped photos of the ‘House of Horrors’.
I was jittering by the time we reached the doorway to my dad’s old study, with anger, sadness and fear twisting and turning inside me. I wished I’d never begged Greg to let me come in here. I thought it would make me feel better for a while, bring me a little peace, but it had done the complete opposite in the end. I felt fucking awful.
“There’s no electricity in here, but the water is still connected,” Greg said in a matter-of-fact tone as he led me past a dusty accent table. “So if you need to use the bathroom, tell me now. I don’t want to deal with you pissing yourself on the table later.”
As soon as he mentioned it, I felt a pressure in my bladder. “I need to go.”
“Okay. Be quick.”
He led me to the downstairs bathroom and waited outside for me to relieve myself. I looked up at the narrow highlight window on the right wall as I washed my hands a moment later, wondering if I could quietly open it up and fit myself through.
Before I could check, Greg whipped the door open and glared at me. “I told you to be quick,” he said, dragging me out before I could even dry my sopping hands on the musty old towel that lay on the vanity.
He yanked me down the hall, leading me toward the foot of the stairs. “I found something you might like,” he said, dipping his chin at the wall on our left.
Another lump appeared in my throat as I glanced over and saw what he was talking about. Hanging on the wall was an old family photo my mother had left behind when we moved away. In it, we were all grinning madly with Santa hats atop our heads. Our old dog was sitting by Sascha’s feet in the center, pink tongue lolling out of his mouth and one paw resting on top of a flat giftwrapped box.
“Cute, isn’t it?” Greg said in a mocking tone. “Brings back some nice memories, I bet.”
“No,” I muttered, turning away. I didn’t want to be reminded of anything anymore. I just wanted to curl up and cry.
Greg grabbed me and pulled me back around, gripping my arm like a vise. His eyes had narrowed to slits. “I want you to look,” he hissed, pushing his face close to mine. “I want you to see.”
“See what?” I asked, voice quavering.
He held up the knife. For a second I thought he was going to stab me, but he lifted the blade to the photo instead and etched a cross on the glass that covered it, right over my dad’s face. Then he scratched out another one on my face.
“You’re next,” he said, turning to me with a thin smile.
I took a faltering step backward. “You killed my father,” I said. It wasn’t a question. Just a statement.
Greg let out a dark chuckle. “Of course I fucking did,” he said. “Christ, did you really think that story I told Nate was actually true? That we rescued your daddy from jail and faked his death?”
I didn’t respond. I simply lowered my gaze and stared into space, wishing a sinkhole would open beneath my feet and suck me down into the darkness.
“Sorry, sweetheart, but we needed someone to pin the murders on,” Greg said. “And he wasn’t going to take it lying down, was he? The only way to make it work was to—” He stopped and pretended to drag the blade across his own throat.
“We?” I murmured, brows rising. “There was more than one of you?”
His lips tightened. “Never mind that. You don’t need to know every single detail.”
I felt a surge of rage inside me. “I have a right to know what happened and why,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Did your sister help you?”
Greg let out an amused snort. “You really want to know what happened, huh?”
“Yes.”
He tapped the tip of the blade on the family photo again. “You want to know what I did to your dear old dad?”
“Yes,” I repeated impatiently, eyes narrowing. “Tell me what happened to him and where he is.”
“He’s right where the cops always said he was,” Greg said, smiling that same old wicked smile. “In that national park up north.”
“Where’s his body? Did you bury him?”
He shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t have a fucking clue where he ended up.”
“How is that possible?”
“Well, I took him up there after we broke him out of jail, and I did him like this.” He waved the knife at the side of my neck, making me flinch. “Opened the carotid. Quick and easy. Watched him bleed out for a minute, but then I needed to piss, so I left him there.”
My stomach lurched. “You left him there to die alone?”
Somehow, that vile act seemed worse than the act of sticking the knife in my father’s neck. It was so cold; so beyond anything even remotely human.
“He had no chance of survival, so I didn’t need to stand guard and watch him die,” Greg said. “He asked me to, though. Practically fucking begged. Told me he didn’t want to die alone. But like I said, I really needed to piss.”
Bile rose in my throat as I pictured my father lying in the snow in that rugged park, bleeding to death by himself. I couldn’t even imagine the terror and loneliness he experienced in those moments, or how weak and pitiful he must have felt when he begged his killer to stay with him just so he could have another human by his side as he took his last breaths.
“What happened to his body?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
“I told you, I don’t fucking know,” Greg said, rolling his eyes upward. “After I left him there, the wildlife must’ve scavenged everything.” He paused and bared his teeth in another twisted smile. “I bet if you went for a walk up there and looked around, you’d find some of his bones up in old bird’s nests. The cops never searched properly. They found all that blood and a few teeth after he went missing, and that was enough for them to decide he was dead.”
My blood pressure was rising quickly; my rage ready to ignite. “So you never buried him. You just left him there for fucking animals to chew on.”
“Why does it matter?” Greg asked, cocking his head. “He wasn’t alive when those animals showed up, so he didn’t feel anything. He was just a piece of meat.”
“No, he was my father!” I said, hands balling at my sides. “My family deserved something to bury, at the very least. But you…” I trailed off and shook my head, lips stretching into a snarl. “You couldn’t even let us have that. You took fucking everything from us!”
Greg rolled his eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. You asked to hear what happened, and I told you.”
I took a deep breath, trying my best to get myself under control. He hadn’t told me the whole story yet, and I needed to get it out of him before I lost my shit entirely. “Who helped you?” I asked in a hollow voice. “And why were you locked away in the bunker for ten years?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” I said, setting my jaw. “I came back to this island for answers, so you might as well give them to me before you kill me. What do you have to lose?”
Before he could respond, a short thumping sound echoed through the hall. It died away before I could discern its exact origin or nature, but I thought it sounded like a person bumping up against a wall somewhere.
Greg grabbed me and pulled me to his side, fingertips digging into my arm again. “What the fuck was that?”
“A branch probably hit a window,” I said. “It’s windy outside.”
“It wasn’t that.” He pulled me forward, pointing to the living room. “It sounded like it came from somewhere in there, and there’s no trees outside that front window. I know because I checked the whole place out earlier to make sure it was safe.”
He took another step forward, eyes narrowing with suspicion as he cast his gaze over the dim space. Everything was still and silent.
“Maybe it was a mo
use,” I said. “No one’s been here for years, so pests are probably running all over the place.”
“It wasn’t a fucking mouse,” he hissed. “Someone’s gotten in here.”
He pulled me over to the center of the living room, next to the coffee table that sat near the large sectional sofa. Using the end of the knife, he lifted the floral cloth that lay over the table, revealing an empty space beneath. Then he stepped over to the window and slowly pulled the curtains aside.
There was no one there.
Greg let the curtain drop back into place. “Maybe you were right,” he muttered, turning back to face me. “Just a branch somewhere outside.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and started pushing me back across the room. A flash of movement on the floor caught my eye as we walked, and I turned my head just in time to see a dark figure slide out from beneath the sectional.
A glinting scalpel slashed through the air just above the floorboards, slicing at Greg’s left Achilles tendon. A feral howl escaped his mouth as his face contorted in a mixture of confusion and pain, and his hand reflexively dropped from my shoulder, freeing me from his grasp. At the same time, the knife in his other hand fell to the floor with a loud clatter.
The dark figure slid all the way out from under the sectional, and my heart leapt as I registered the face staring up at me. It was Nate.
For a moment, I couldn’t believe it. I simply stared at him in a daze as he got up and tackled Greg, knocking him onto his side. “Help me!” he shouted over his uncle’s agonized cries. “I’ll hold him. You tie him up.”
His voice snapped me back to reality. “Tie him up with what?” I asked, panic rising in my chest as my eyes flitted around the dim room.
“Look under there.” Nate tipped his head toward the couch. A vein was popping out on his forehead from the effort of keeping his psychotic uncle restrained. “I brought a rope.”
I dropped to my hands and knees and retrieved the length of rope from the dusty floor beneath the sectional. Then I crawled over to Greg and wrapped it around his wrists, which were pinned behind his back by Nate’s powerful arms. I tied the knot as tightly as I could, wishing I could just rip his fucking hands right off.