The last thing they did was flog him with the whip. He screamed again each time the whip’s multiple braids lashed his bare, shit-smeared skin. This was the worst physical pain they inflicted on him. It was also the shortest phase of the long ordeal, ending when Lloyd expressed concern about the marks the braids were leaving on Elliot’s flesh. So far most of what they had done to him could be scrubbed away and denied, but this was possibly crossing a line into a place where they might wind up in real trouble. As much fun as it was to hear the geek scream and beg for mercy, they couldn’t flay him alive.

  Elliot never forgot Ricky Bennet’s sinister chuckle that followed this pronouncement. “Nobody ever has to know. We could just kill him.”

  The startled silence that followed this suggestion struck Elliot as hypocritical even as it filled him with a bone-deep level of knee-shaking terror that made him piss his pants a second time. But no one laughed this time. For a long stretch of moments, Elliot was sure the rest of the boys would start nodding their heads and making increasingly enthusiastic noises of agreement.

  But then Lloyd piped up and shot the idea down. “We’re not gonna kill him. No fucking way. Maybe we wouldn’t get caught, but we might. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

  Ricky Bennet snorted. “You wouldn’t. You’re too young. You’d just be sent to juvie until you turn eighteen. No big deal.”

  “Bullshit it’s no big deal,” Lloyd said, his tone sterner and more emphatic now. “Don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t want to spend the next five years getting my asshole plowed by a bunch of fags. No way. We’re done.”

  Another awkward silence followed this declaration. No one seemed much inclined to argue with it, including Ricky Bennet. Chuck Everly was the first to express a desire to be done with the whole thing, even venturing the idea that they’d gone too far already. “Seriously, guys. I think we shouldn’t have done this. Jesus, look at him. We need to clean him up and get him some different clothes. He can’t go home looking like that. His parents will lose their shit.”

  This earned barks of derisive laughter from Lloyd and Ricky.

  Lloyd said, “And where are we supposed to get him new clothes? You see a fucking TJ Maxx around anywhere?”

  No response.

  Lloyd grunted. “No, you don’t, because we’re in the middle of the fucking woods, you idiot. Anyway, his parents won’t freak. They’re losers, just like him. Fuck it. I’m tired of messing with him anyway. I need to get back over to Jimmy’s house so I can call my mom to come pick me up. Let’s get out of here.”

  The other boys hesitated as Lloyd turned to walk away.

  Jimmy Martin said, “But what if his parents do freak? What if they call the cops?”

  Ricky Bennet chuckled. “Chill. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Lloyd turned back toward his friend, eyeing him curiously. “Why do you sound so sure?”

  Another chuckle. “Because I’m gonna take care of it. The rest of you head on back. I’m gonna have a little talk with shit-stain here and make him understand why he should never tell anyone about this.”

  There was yet another brief silence.

  Then Chuck Everly nervously cleared his throat and said, “But you’re not gonna kill him, right? We agreed not to do that.”

  Ricky Bennet shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t kill him. Just gonna have a little talk, like I said. Now hurry on out of here. It’s getting late.”

  It was indeed getting late, well past time for all the boys to be home for supper with their families. There was a bit more hemming and hawing, particularly from Chuck Everly, but in the end they all walked on out of the woods, leaving a still sobbing Elliot alone with Ricky Bennet.

  Ricky stepped up close to Elliot and stood there breathing heavily for several silent minutes. Elliot saw him only as a blurry blob at first. His eyes were still running from the numerous spritzes they’d taken from the vinegar solution. When his vision at last began to clear, he frowned, peering through the jack-o’-lantern’s slanted eyeholes at Ricky’s odd, slack-jawed expression. The boy’s shoulder was moving up and down in a rapid motion. It took Elliot a few more moments to realize the other boy was beating off. Contempt cut through Elliot’s otherwise all-consuming terror. Ricky had obviously had more than one reason for wanting to get rid of his friends.

  When he finished, he zipped himself up and put his sweaty face even closer to the jack-o’-lantern. “You ain’t ever gonna tell anyone about me and my friends doing this. If you do, I’m gonna sneak into your house some night and slit your throat while you sleep. And then I’m gonna do the same to your sick little feeb of a brother. Your parents, too, but I’ll leave your mother for last. I’ll play with her titties some before I cut her up. Your mom has nice titties. Even better than Susan Rochon’s titties, because she’s all grown up.” Ricky thumped a fist against Elliot’s scrawny chest, making him gasp. Then he did it two more times, each blow harder than the last. “Don’t you agree, faggot? Doesn’t your mom have nice titties?”

  Elliot wanted nothing more in that moment than to kill Ricky Bennet, but he was powerless and could take no more abuse.

  So he told Ricky he agreed about his mother’s titties.

  Ricky dispensed with the sick jokes at that point and warned him one more time. He told Elliot that even if they were arrested, he and his friends would get out on bail. And then they would come after him and finish the job. Whether this was true or not, Elliot had no idea. For reasons of his own, though, he’d already resolved to never tell a soul about this incident, at least not until he was older and could exact a proper revenge.

  Satisfied at last that Elliot had gotten the message, Ricky packed up what remained of his torture kit and walked out of the woods, leaving Elliot alone in the clearing.

  All the things they did to him through those long hours were bad. Really, really bad. He would be a long time getting over them, if he ever did. But the very worst thing they did was leaving him tied to that tree, where he remained for many more hours to come, deep into the night. During that time, he felt a deepening despair that alternated with fresh bursts of terror at the slithering and rustling sounds of various forest creatures stirring after nightfall. At one point, he felt a snake slide over his feet and nearly bit through his tongue as he tried very hard to remain still until it slithered away.

  He fell in and out of consciousness. No one ever came looking for him. His alcoholic parents probably hadn’t even noticed when he’d failed to return home from school. With their nightly habit of drinking to the point of passing out, this didn’t surprise him. They didn’t give a shit about him. Nobody gave a shit about him, except for his brother and Mr. Spurlock. He began to fear he would die out here in the woods, his body slowly turning into a rotten husk as it sagged within the tightly knotted ropes. His despair seeped into his dreams, torturing him with visions of all his worst fears.

  The worst dream of all was the one about Robert joining him in the clearing. It was different from the others in how vivid and real it seemed. His brother was wearing the threadbare blue pajamas he’d had on for days. Their parents often neglected to change Robert into fresh clothes. Part of this was sheer laziness, of course, but the bigger reason was the pain the physical effort of changing caused him. The boy couldn’t do it on his own anymore and usually required a significant level of assistance from one or both of his parents. This frequently elicited shrill squeals of agony, increasingly so of late. Elliot would sit in his room and cry as he listened to the sounds of his brother’s suffering. Those sounds told him all he needed to know regarding the relentless, inevitable course of Robert’s illness. He always felt at his most powerless in those moments.

  But when Robert entered the clearing in the dream, he walked with a renewed vigor, standing straight and proud rather than stooped over. He had a smile on his face. For the first time in seemingly forever, it didn’t seem false, lacking the usual telltale signs of strain at the corners of the mouth and eyes. In the bright glow of the moonlight, even his pallor looked better. But Robert’s smile faded as he came closer and absorbed the details of his younger brother's humiliation. There was a flicker of something that might have been anger in his eyes, but it quickly faded, giving way to sadness.

  “I wish I could help you, Elliot.”

  His voice sounded distorted and faraway, as if it were a faint, crackly signal emerging from the speaker of a shortwave radio.

  Elliot didn’t understand. His brother was standing mere inches away, looking stronger and healthier than ever. “Untie me. Please.” He twisted his wrists against the uncomfortably tight length of rope that bound them, his sweaty face contorting in pain beneath the pumpkin. “It hurts. Please.”

  Robert shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Elliot squealed in frustration. “Why not?”

  “You’re going to be sad for a while,” Robert told him in that same crackly, faraway voice, ignoring the question. “I’m sorry for that, too. But you’re strong. The people who did this to you will pay someday. You’ll--”

  But the strangely invigorated dream version of Robert disappeared before he could finish saying whatever it was he’d meant to tell Elliot. This infuriated and frustrated Elliot as his eyes fluttered open and he emerged from the dream world back into the real one. Only the strange thing was he wasn’t sure he’d been asleep at all. The vision of Robert had felt too real for that. He’d remained aware of the chill night air on his bare skin and the rustlings of the forest creatures the whole time. And there’d been that awful sensation of the rope burning his skin when he twisted his wrists. No other dream in his experience had ever felt like such a perfect approximation of actual, waking life, which made him wonder if it hadn’t really been a dream.

  But that made no sense.

  How could Robert have found him out here in the woods? Why did he seem like he was no longer sick? And, most importantly, why wouldn’t he help his brother out of this awful situation?

  Before he could spend any significant time pondering these questions, Elliot became aware of another presence in the clearing. At first this new presence was just a slender form cloaked in shadows and standing at the far opposite edge of the open space. Elliot sensed a hesitation and skittishness in this new arrival. He had the feeling whoever it was might turn away and bolt from the scene at any moment, perhaps too terrified by the scene of degradation and horror he or she had chanced across to do anything else.

  But then he heard a deep exhalation of breath and the figure stepped away from the far tree line and came striding across the clearing toward him. When the moonlight fell across the person’s face, Elliot’s heart started pounding with renewed fear.

  The person coming rapidly toward him was Chuck Everly.

  Elliot’s burst of instinctive terror was diluted in the next instant when he took note of the things Chuck had with him. Clutched in his hands were some clothes, some old-looking wash rags, and a plastic gallon jug of water. He set these things on the ground and took a folding knife out of a pocket of his jeans. Elliot experienced another little flutter of fear at the sight of the blade as Chuck opened it, but his fear again faded as the boy stepped behind the tree and began sawing away at the ropes. The knife was sharp and the rope yielded to it with surprising ease. Despite his righteous hatred of this boy who’d tormented him for so long, Elliot felt an instinctive, shameful gratitude. That didn’t stop him from fantasizing about taking the knife away from Chuck and shoving it through one of his eyes.

  Once Chuck had finished cutting away the ropes, Elliot removed the pumpkin from his head and tossed it aside.

  The two boys stood there eyeing each other warily for a few moments.

  Then Chuck coughed and nervously cleared his throat. “Those clothes should fit. You should probably throw away what you’re wearing. I know that’s what I’d want to do.”

  Another silence descended.

  Elliot stared at Chuck. He made no move to remove his clothes or avail himself of the things Chuck had brought him.

  Finally, Chuck made another of those nervous throat-clearing sounds and said, “The water and rags are so you can clean yourself off, but you probably could have figured that out.”

  Elliot let out a breath. “Why are you helping me?”

  Chuck grimaced. “Because I felt bad about what we did, okay? And I heard from Lloyd that Ricky left you tied up out here. I couldn’t get to sleep thinking about it. So I woke up my older brother and told him what happened. He drove me out here.” Chuck threw a glance over his shoulder and started backing away across the clearing. “I have to go. He’s driving by again to pick me up in a few minutes. Listen, man. I’m sorry for what we did. I really am. I’m not really as bad as them. I just get carried away when I’m with those guys sometimes. But I’m not gonna hang out with them ever again, I swear.” He heaved a shuddery breath as he reached the other side of the clearing. “Please don’t tell anyone about this, Elliot.”

  Elliot said nothing, just stared at him.

  Chuck disappeared through the tree line.

  Once he was gone, Elliot took off his shoes and removed his soiled jeans and underwear. He pulled off the rest of the earthworms still clinging to his genitals and flung them away. After that, he used the jug of water and the wash rags to clean the shit from his torso. When he was finished and had dried off, he put on the new clothes and put his shoes back on. Chuck had been right about the fit, though the garments were slightly looser than what he usually wore.

  He hurried through the woods and emerged onto the sidewalk at a spot near where he’d been abducted earlier in the day. A scan of the dark street revealed no sign of the backpack, not that he’d really expected to see it after all this time. After resigning himself to its loss, he took off running in the direction of home, a new fear gripping him all the way back.

  That “dream” really hadn’t seemed like a dream at all.

  He had tears in his eyes as he turned down the street to his house, where he saw the lights of an ambulance parked at curbside flashing from blocks away.

  11.

  Six days until Halloween

  Willow Springs, TN

  After getting his family checked in at the Embassy Suites hotel in downtown Willow Springs, Chuck left them there, saying he had to run back to the house to fetch a few more necessities. This was a lie. He had another agenda he couldn’t tell them about. On his way out, he ran into Bob Lee. The sheriff gave Chuck a good fright just as he was getting into the Honda Odyssey. He had the door open and was about to step inside when he felt a hand land on his shoulder. Yelping in surprise, he shrugged the hand away and spun around, pressing his back against the frame of the open door. When he saw it was only the rotund lawman, he shuddered in relief and put a hand to his chest to feel the pounding of his heart.

  The sheriff apologized for his abrupt departure from the scene earlier and said he wanted to follow up with him on some things. Chuck slid on in behind the wheel of the Odyssey while Lee continued to talk, rattling off several questions in rapid-fire fashion. Though Chuck did his best to maintain a calm exterior, some of the questions made him nervous and set his heart to racing again. The stuff about Lloyd McAfee and their childhood friendship was troublesome. His replies were non-illuminating. There were things from the past he needed to do some serious thinking about before sharing the information with the law.

  But what really got to him was when the sheriff started talking about Fawn Hightower. This was so unexpected that it immediately shattered Chuck’s outwardly calm exterior. His face flushed and a sweat rose on his brow. He stuttered an evasive reply, saying he didn’t actually know Fawn very well and didn’t see how his neighbor could possibly be relevant to the investigation. The appraising look Lee gave him as he said this stirred a defensive indignation, causing him to snap at the sheriff for wasting his time with pointless bullshit. That there might be some cause to suspect Fawn’s involvement in the break-in didn’t matter. The law didn’t need to know about his relationship with Fawn yet. Hopefully that would remain the case.

  He wound up extricating himself from the uncomfortable situation with yet another made up story, this time about needing to fetch some prescription medicine from the pharmacy for one of his kids, who was ill and in dire need of relief. Sheriff Lee’s expression was dubious, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. The man had been at his house earlier and had seen his kids, who had been the picture of health at the time. Chuck began to regret his lie almost immediately. Lee’s disbelieving expression made his gut twist with worry.

  There was nothing he could do about it, though. The lie was already out there. After insisting one more time that he needed to get to the pharmacy and fetch that medicine as soon as possible, he closed the door on the sheriff, started the Odyssey and backed hurriedly out of the parking space. There was a squeal of tires on pavement as another motorist slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the minivan. Not for the first time that day, Chuck cursed his stupidity, this time for forgetting to check for oncoming traffic. But the damage was done. The look on the sheriff’s face as he continued to watch Chuck told him all he needed to know. The lawman couldn’t know exactly what was going on with him, but he did know that something wasn’t quite right.

  Chuck tried to put it out of his mind as he finished backing out of the parking spot, changed gears, and sped away. Once he was on the road and the hotel was just a receding speck in his rearview mirror, he dug his phone out of his pocket and turned it on.

  It rang immediately.

  He glanced at the screen and saw the picture of Fawn in her lingerie. He answered the call and put the phone to his ear. “We need to talk.”