“She was kept down here,” Lance said. He looked back to the IV stand, wishing he had a smartphone to Google what oxytocin was used for. “Why?” he asked the room.
His vision went black and his head buzzed and his stomach churned, and he fell forward onto the futon, his sneakers slipping on the mess of stained blankets on the floor. He managed to choke out a muffled gasp, felt his lungs constrict as he sucked in a deep breath of air as his vision cleared as quick as it had darkened and his stomach settled.
Lance pushed himself off the futon and stood, blinking to clear his eyes, which had started to water. When he could see clearly again, he saw that Ethan had stepped inside the room, crossing the floor halfway to the futon.
He was pointing again.
Lance stepped back around the futon and followed the boy’s outstretched hand, and his gaze landed on a stack of paperback books piled behind the nightstand.
“She wants you to read it,” Ethan said.
Lance, despite his love of literature, was in no mood to curl up with a good book. But he remembered the last time Ethan had pointed at something—the paint can—and did not argue.
The nightstand cast a long and dark shadow along the floor, bathing the stack of books in black. Lance retrieved the flashlight and switched it on, then kneeled down in front of the stack and examined the titles, hoping one of them would be called What Really Happened, or maybe Read Me First.
No such luck. The titles were all old Westerns and a couple early Stephen King novels. Their spines were all deeply creased and worn, cracked with heavy usage, and Lance imagined they’d come from a dime store or library sale many years ago. None of the books looked like they’d be any help.
Lance was about to ask Ethan if he could maybe coax a few more details from his silent partner, but when the beam of his flashlight did another pass over the stack of paperbacks, something new caught his eye.
The fifth book down had a solid black spine that Lance had dismissed on his first scan of the titles, assuming it’d been part of another book. But as his flashlight had slid along the titles a second time, he’d more clearly seen the small slit of space between it and the book above and realized it was a book of its own. There was no printed title or author on the spine. Lance carefully lifted the four books atop it, one by one, and set them to the side. He shined the flashlight beam onto the front cover of the black book, and a gold-embossed word jumped out to him.
Journal.
Ethan’s words—She wants you to read it—gained greater clarity.
Lance reached out and grabbed the journal. The leather was soft and—
He sucked in a sudden rush of air. His eyes widened and the hair along his arms and back of his neck stood on end. A second later, he expelled his breath in a great whoosh and fell back onto his butt, dropping the flashlight onto the floor next to him.
Like the key he’d found atop the bathroom mirror, the journal had electrified his mind with information. He hadn’t had to read the pages—had known he likely didn’t have the time. The pages had given themselves to Lance, and what he’d learned was both relieving (because the pieces had finally fallen into place), and devastatingly heartbreaking.
Lance looked at Ethan and felt great sadness for the boy.
Ethan was not Jacob Morgan’s nephew.
Lance pushed himself from the floor, his mind spinning to decide what he should do next, when there was a thunderous noise from upstairs as the front door crashed open.
“Ethan!” Jacob Morgan’s voice was full of rage.
Ethan’s eyes shot open wide, and he ran to Lance’s side. Lance bent down and wrapped one of his arms around the boy, enveloping him. His eyes scanned the wall where it opened back into the regular basement. Found what he was looking for; a small lever that presumably opened the door from the inside. Ethan would be able to get out on his own if things went poorly for Lance.
Lance used one hand to tuck the journal into the rear waistband of his shorts, covering it with his t-shirt, and used the other to lift Ethan’s face to meet his own. Footsteps were pounding on the floorboards above—Jacob Morgan moving swiftly and angrily down the hallway toward the kitchen.
“Ethan, listen, I want you to stay here. Stay quiet, and don’t come out unless I tell you, okay? There’s a lever on the door you can pull to get out if you really think you need to, but I want you to wait, okay? I want you to wait for me. Your uncle’s very mad, and I want to try and help him, okay? Do you understand?”
Ethan’s eyes were full of fear and worry. They glistened with tears, but to the boy’s credit, none fell down his cheek. He nodded.
Lance, only because it simply felt right, kissed the boy atop his head and then stood, making his way quickly across the floor and out into the basement. He gripped one of the metal shelves and pulled, slamming the hidden door closed.
“Ethan!”
Lance stood still by the bare workbench in the corner and watched with a certain level of dread as Jacob Morgan called out again and stomped down the stairs, his boots coming into view first, followed by his legs, and then his upper body.
Jacob Morgan reached the last stair and then stepped down onto the hard-packed dirt, eyes burning and locking onto Lance.
He was carrying a hunting rifle.
I’ve really got the worst luck in basements, Lance thought.
36
Jacob Morgan was dripping wet, water falling from the brim of the ball cap he wore and splashing into the dirt at his feet. He’d tossed a jacket on over his shirt, but it was unzipped, and the fabric of the shirt beneath clung to him, accenting a muscled physique.
He gripped the hunting rifle with hands so tight the knuckles were white.
He spoke through gritted teeth, hissing the words at Lance. “Where is he?”
Lance cleared his throat. “Who?”
Jacob’s hands twisted the rifle from across his body, inching its aim closer to Lance’s direction. A subtle threat. “Ethan. Where is Ethan?”
Lance’s heart hammered in his chest. He took slow, deliberate breaths, trying to calm it, keep his poise. His knack for casual conversation had saved him on more than one occasion. “Why would he be here? There’s no more pizza.”
“His shirt is on the banister upstairs. There’s nowhere else close he could have gone to, and I’m going to take out your kneecap with a bullet if you don’t tell me where he is in three seconds or less.”
“Who?”
Jacob shook his head and raised the rifle, taking aim at Lance’s legs. “Stop playing dumb. It’s not going to work. Where. Is. Ethan? Three … two…”
Lance swallowed and said, “You mean your son? You want to know where your son is?”
Lance saw the jolt of shock ripple through Jacob Morgan’s body. It wasn’t much, but perceivable all the same. The man’s eyes narrowed further, met Lance’s. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Ethan’s my nephew.”
“Stop playing dumb,” Lance said. “It’s not going to work.”
He reached slowly behind him, praying to any god that might exist and be tuned in to the correct frequency that Jacob Morgan wouldn’t view the motion as a threat and shoot him through the heart before Lance had had a chance to make his big reveal. He reached beneath his shirt and pulled the leather journal free from the waistband of his shorts, then held it up in front of him.
“I know who he is,” Lance said. “And I think you’ve been looking for this for a long time.”
Jacob Morgan’s eyes lit up like Christmas lights and his jaw dropped open at the sight of the journal, doing nothing but confirming to Lance that he’d been correct in the theory he’d managed to piece together since Mary Benchley’s journal had shown itself to him.
“You knew she kept this, didn’t you?” Lance asked. “You’d probably even seen it before. Maybe up in her room one day, after the two of you … well, you know. Hey, what is Virginia’s law on statutory rape, anyway?”
“I never raped her!”
/> Lance shrugged. “Court might have said differently. And I’m positive Mark Benchley would have had a different opinion than you. Am I right? What was the age difference again? She was, what, fifteen or sixteen? You were somewhere in your twenties, deflowering Daddy’s little angel?”
Lance was intentionally trying to rile Jacob Morgan up, trying to set him off his game. It was Lance’s experience that while angry people tended to be more violent, they also tended to be less attentive to their surroundings and the entire situation at hand. Their anger threw up blinders.
But Lance was also aware that the only reason Jacob Morgan hadn’t shot him dead yet was because Lance knew where Ethan was.
Lance took two slow steps closer to the man, keeping the journal in front of him at all times. It seemed to be Jacob Morgan’s focal point.
Jacob shook his head again. “You don’t know,” he said. “I loved her. And she loved me.”
Lance took another step, waved the journal out in front of him, back and forth like a matador distracting a bull.
“Maybe,” he said. “But love can make people do stupid things, right? Is that why you killed them all? Because you loved her?”
Jacob Morgan kept shaking his head back and forth. “You don’t know,” he said again.
Lance stopped, now maybe six or seven feet from the man. He held the journal out and tapped it with a finger on his free hand. “I know everything,” he said. “Let me tell you, and you can tell me where I’ve gotten it wrong. Maybe you can tell me the side of the story where you come out not looking like a murderer. If you can do that, maybe I’ll tell you where your son is.”
Jacob Morgan’s eyes narrowed again, not liking being told what to do. “Maybe I go ahead and shoot you now. How about that?”
Lance made a show of pretending to think about the offer. Shook his head. “I don’t think so. Finding your son is more important to you than killing me.”
“I could kill you after.”
Lance nodded confidently, but inside he was very much aware that if he didn’t get out of this basement, Jacob Morgan’s threat would likely come true.
“You could,” he said. “I guess we’ll both just have to wait and see.”
Jacob Morgan said nothing to this, so Lance took a deep breath and started to talk.
“It all makes a weird bit of sense, to be honest,” Lance said. “Ever since I got to town, there’s really only been two main names that have come up as suspects in the Benchley murders: Mark Benchley, and you. As it turns out, both of you killed them.”
This drew a confused expression from Jacob Morgan.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, now. You’re the one who pulled the trigger, but”—Lance held the journal up again—“it would appear that the accusations of Mark Benchley’s fanatical religious beliefs were exactly spot-on.”
Jacob Morgan didn’t move, but Lance could see he was focused, listening to the story Lance was beginning to tell. After all these years, Lance imagined it was probably somewhat cathartic for the man to finally revisit that night with another human being, to have the truth laid bare.
“Mary told her mother that she was pregnant,” Lance continued. “The two of you had kept your relationship a secret for a few months—you sneaking over when Mark and Natalie were in town, Mary stopping by your house on her way home from school or running errands. You both did a swell job of keeping things hidden. But then Mary got pregnant—what happened, anyway? Did the condom break, or did you just decide to risk it one time? I mean, with all due respect, you were already having sex with a minor, I would think the least you could do was use some protection. But you know what they say … hindsight. Twenty-twenty.” Lance shrugged. “Sorry, I digress.
“Mary got pregnant, and she got scared and she told her mom. The two of them kept it a secret from Mark for a while—and from you—but eventually Natalie decided that the right thing to do was to tell him the truth. She told Mary that Mark loved her more than anything and he might be upset at first, but they would get through it together as a family. Turns out, Natalie Benchley didn’t know her husband as well as she thought she did.”
Lance paused, gauged Jacob Morgan’s reaction. The man stood, stone-faced and attentive.
He’s never heard any of this, Lance thought. In his mind, he fast-forwarded through the rest of the journal’s pages, the rest of the heartbreaking story, and realized he was right. From what he could tell, Jacob Morgan had only come into the story at the very end—the night he’d killed them.
“Something snapped in Mark Benchley when he found out Mary was pregnant,” Lance said. “Mary wrote, and I’m quoting here, Dad looks at me like I’m no longer his daughter, but a disgusting sinner damned to hell. But he doesn’t realize it’s he who’s playing the role of the devil. She was quite the writer,” Lance said. “She painted a horrible picture, but she did it with striking detail.”
Jacob Morgan shifted from one leg to another, the hunting rifle still gripped tight.
“That’s when they pulled her out of school under the ruse of shipping her off to a boarding school. Mark was too humiliated to have his teenaged daughter start showing up to class with a baby bump and maternity pants. She was unclean in his eyes. She’d become the very type of person he’d preached was destroying the world that God had intended. And he was so selfish, so ironically vain, he hid her under a rock. Or, in this case, under a house.”
Jacob Morgan’s mouth opened to speak, but he stopped himself. Coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “She was … she was here the whole time? The entire pregnancy?”
Lance nodded and then pushed on. This next part was even more disturbing.
“With Natalie being a nurse, Mark figured she could give Mary all the medical attention she needed. And that might have worked—but then Natalie made a mistake.”
Jacob Morgan waited, clearly hanging on Lance’s every word.
“She convinced Mary that an abortion would be the best thing for everyone.”
“Oh, God,” Jacob said, almost without realizing it, it seemed. And Lance imagined what a terrible idea it must be to realize how close a living, breathing child you’d fallen completely in love with had come to not existing at all. To being murdered before they’d ever even been given a chance.
“Mark Benchley, ironically, didn’t like this,” Lance said. “Despite Natalie only trying to help ease the problem, Mark called her a would-be murderer, said she was just as unworthy of the Holy Kingdom as Mary. He said he could no longer trust her. And that’s when he made her quit her job. He kept her home, only letting her go out to town if he accompanied her. With Ray Kruger as the sheriff, Mark knew he couldn’t completely sequester Natalie to the basement like he had Mary, but—and again, I’m telling you exactly what Mary’s got written here”—Lance held up the journal, reestablishing it in Jacob Morgan’s view—“Natalie told Mary that Mark said he’d kill them both if they tried to run from him, or tried to get help to get away. And he told Natalie that if she tried to go behind his back, he’d sacrifice Mary. He said he was only doing what was right in God’s eyes, and that if they disobeyed him, it was the same as disobeying the Lord and they would have to be punished.”
What a terrible position to be put in, Lance thought. Natalie’s love for her daughter was what kept Mary alive, but it’s also what killed them both.
Lance paused, then added, “It’s funny. I’ve always been told that God is all about forgiveness. Isn’t that why they send a priest to visit death-row inmates before they’re executed? To wipe the slate clean before they take their last ride?”
Jacob Morgan did not answer. He didn’t appear to be focused on anything at all, his gaze staring straight through Lance, and probably down a deep dark hole that led back to that awful night.
“They managed to survive,” Lance continued. “Mark kept his watchful eye on them, but the two of them survived together down here. He’d bring them meals, sometimes allowing Natalie to come up and cook—sometimes he’d
get takeout. He escorted them upstairs to the shower and never let them close the door. Mary said he always looked like he’d been crying. His eyes always bloodshot and his nose red from wiping it. He asked Natalie what they needed—from a medical standpoint—and he’d drive two towns over to buy it all.” Then, with a sinking feeling of sympathy for a dead girl he’d never met, Lance added, “He never let them go to a doctor.”
Jacob Morgan’s eyes glistened with tears, and he removed one hand from the rifle just long enough to quickly wipe at them. He sniffled loudly but still said nothing.
“She was nearly a month early,” Lance said. “She started having contractions, and Natalie told Mark it was going to happen at any moment. And it did.”
Lance coughed, choking back emotions that began to surface as he recited from the journal pages that had uploaded themselves into his mind and saw the scenes playing out. A terrified young girl, trapped in a basement by her psychotic father, giving birth to a baby boy she’d never get to know.
“But they weren’t prepared,” Lance said. “Things didn’t go well for Mary.”
Lance remembered the large dark stain on the floor by the futon, the twisted and bloody towels.
“Obviously, the baby survived,” Lance said. “But the last thing Mary wrote in her journal”—he could see the page in his mind, the handwriting faint and scrawling, palm-smears of blood in the margins and above and below the words—“was this.” Lance opened the journal now, flipped to the back and found the page that perfectly matched the image he’d just conjured. Swallowed back threatening tears and read, “Baby is beautiful. Baby is perfect. Mama says I’ll be okay, but I know she’s lying. I feel like I’m fading. Lots of blood. But I don’t feel the pain.” Lance stopped here and looked up. “Then, a few inches down the page from this she added, Jacob is here. How? He’s yelling at Daddy. I’m going to show him his son. I love them both so much.”
Lance closed the journal with a sound that seemed very loud in a basement that had fallen very silent. Above them, a clap of thunder went almost unnoticed. The rain continued to fall.
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