“What’re we gonna do?”

  I’d seen a lot of movies where this exact thing happened to the hero, I’m sure—though nothing specific came to mind. Therefore, with Hollywood being my only possible resource, I came up empty.

  “I got nothin’,” I said, reaching deep to pull the slightest trace of humor from my stressed, coiled, knotted core. “But I’m scared, I can tell you that.”

  “Me, too.”

  I wanted desperately for her to keep talking. If nothing else, I needed her voice. But she went silent, her mouth and nose digging into my neck, wetting my skin with her breath. What was there to say? Tens of thousands of words must’ve been stored somewhere in my subconscious, but I couldn’t put together the slightest phrase to give either one of us comfort.

  We rode on, the hum of the engine and thrum of the road beneath the wheels seeming to taunt us, as at any other time such sounds would’ve soothed me to sleep.

  “David!” Andrea whisper-shouted some few minutes later. “David!”

  “What?” I replied quickly. “What, what, what?”

  She moved out of my arms and leaned up on one elbow—the silhouette of her shadow leered over me a bit in the tight space. “This is a trunk. Which means it probably has a spare tire right under us, under the carpet. Where there’s a spare tire, there’s a crowbar.”

  A crowbar. The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying. I seemed a long way from having the guts to swing a crowbar at anyone, much less a bunch of lunatic murderers. Maybe Andrea could go berserk like she had at the Honeyhole.

  “Okay,” I said rather dumbly.

  “Then move.”

  The next minute and a half was an exercise in body contortion and flexibility. First we had to pick a corner from which to pry up the carpet, pull it back as we scooted as far away as possible, slip the material under our knees, then search the cool metal surfaces beneath us with our hands. All while crawling over top of each other, blind to the other’s movements, with a good bump on the road now and then to keep us honest. I felt wetness in my hair after one particularly bad knock, touched it with a finger, winced at the sting and slick of blood.

  “Feel the tire?” she asked.

  My fingers had just brushed across the hard rubber. “Yeah. What if they can hear us?”

  “They can’t.” She said it with such conviction that I decided to believe her.

  Our skulls smacked together at least three times as we felt around the tire, slipping fingers into any crevice possible, trying to find a damn crowbar. The only thing I got for my trouble was a scrape across my thumb that made it bleed, too. This stupid trunk was proving to be a worst enemy than the man who’d locked us inside, although I knew that’d change very soon.

  “Holy shit. I found it!” Andrea yelled way too loudly. Her sentence had barely ended when the driver slammed on the brakes, hard. Both of us catapulted forward, slamming into each other and the front side of the trunk at the same time, aches and pains erupting in places I’d forgotten existed. I heard the clank of the weapon she’d found as it flew from her hands and banged against the roof then back down on the metal we’d exposed.

  Andrea groaned. I groaned. The driver of the car turned off the ignition, the resulting silence so deep that I heard a tinny ringing in my ears. Mostly on top of Andrea, I rolled off of her and onto my back, my whole body cramped and achy.

  “We need to put the carpet back where it was,” I said as quietly as I possibly could. She grunted agreement and we once again went through the body contortions necessary to get it laid out flat, covering the spare tire, like it had been before. I relaxed, my back on the carpet, face-up again.

  “Switch with me,” she whispered. At the moment I was closest to the rear of the car, where the trunk would open.

  I tried my best to see her, but the darkness was complete. “Why?”

  “Whoever opens that door, I’m going to bash their head in.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “Why?”

  “They might kill us!”

  We whispered so lightly I couldn’t imagine anyone inside or outside the car could hear us. But then one of the car doors opened, followed by the ding-ding-ding of the vehicle’s warning system—either the lights were on or the keys were still in the ignition—and the door didn’t close. Footsteps on gravel told us someone was walking to the back of the car; the direction seemed to indicate it had been the driver. Whoever it was, he or she stopped just on the other side of the metal from where I lay prone and vulnerable.

  “Hand me the crowbar,” I said in a panic.

  “Switch with me!” she repeated.

  “No time! Just hand it to me.”

  “Pop it,” a voice right above us said, muffled by the metal. Something clunked and the lid of the trunk rose a few inches, faint light pouring in. It was just enough that I saw a long, thin object hovering right in foot of my eyes.

  The crowbar.

  I grabbed it from her and slipped it under my leg.

  Just in time. A man lifted the trunk door as high as it would go, then stared down at us. His features were hidden in shadow but I could at least tell that he wore no bag on his head.

  “This is our stop,” he said. I didn’t recognize the voice. Not Pee Wee. “Get out, we’ve got a short little walk.”

  “Okay,” I said stupidly. With a groan I swung my legs over the lip of the trunk, then pushed off the carpet to get my butt on the lip. I kept one hand hidden behind me, firmly gripping one end of the crowbar. I knew I had less than three seconds to decide whether or not I had the balls to use it as a weapon, and thoughts flashed through my mind like frames of a film. My life was in danger. Andrea’s life was in danger. My parents, too—they could even be dead already for all I knew. And there might not be another chance that night to have a hard rod of metal at my disposal, unbeknownst to a stranger who stood two feet from me.

  “Hop down, you little shit,” the man said. “You’re just as stupid as your mama by the looks of it.”

  He took the decision out of my hands. Bracing my legs against the bumper for leverage, flexing my body in all the right places, I swung the crowbar from the trunk and arced it through the air; its clawed end whacked into the man’s shoulder. He gave a yelp of pain, stepping back a couple steps as he rubbed the spot where I’d hit him. I leaped onto the ground and came after him, raising my weapon again, but he sucker-punched me right in the stomach; I collapsed to the ground in a fit of coughing, trying to suck in air as quickly as it heaved out of me. Nausea swept through my guts. The crowbar lay on the gravel, right in front of my eyes.

  The man lightly kicked me in the ribs. “Like I said. As stupid as your mama. Time to pay the consequences.”

  I braced myself for another kick or something worse. Instead he turned on his heels, the tiny rocks crunching under his shoes, and stepped back over to the car. I looked up from where I was curled into a ball, clutching my stomach, just as he reached inside the open trunk and yanked fiercely on something with both arms.

  Andrea.

  Pulling her by the hair, he heaved her out of the vast, dark space, then threw her on the ground, about 10 feet from me. She landed in a heap as she let out a scream, then somehow maneuvered herself to catch my eyes with hers. They were stone-cold, full of bravery, and I guessed that mine looked the exact opposite. I knew she wanted me to do something, but I had no idea what, and even if I did, I doubted I’d find the courage to do it.

  She broke eye contact, then tried to get to her feet; the man kicked her in the small of her back, making her collapse again, her cheek smacking into the gravel. He kept the heel of his shoe where he’d kicked her, put his weight on it. Andrea moaned, then screamed, even as she squirmed unsuccessfully to get free.

  The man turned his head toward me—I could see just enough of his features now to be sure I’d never met him before. He had a squashed face, a flat nose, scraggly hair.

  “Boy,” he said, “I reckon we need you tonight, but this little brat ain’t nothin’ but some insurance. Ya hear me?”

  He knelt down, placed his knees on her thighs, one each, then put his hands on the back of her neck. I glanced at the crowbar, so close to me—he obviously had no fear of me whatsoever, knew that I was too chicken or too weak to fight back, to hurt him. I slowly slid my hand out from beneath my stomach, inched it closer and closer to the handle-end of the bar.

  Andrea’s attacker had both hands wrapped around her neck, now, and I could tell he was squeezing because she made choking sounds and wiggled her middle section, thrashed with her arms, kicked with the bottom half of her legs. All of it to no avail. He weighed enough to keep her down, was strong enough to kill her. I had my doubts that he’d go that far, at least so soon in the night, but I didn’t have the luxury of making assumptions.

  Andrea gagged, coughed into the dust and rocks, kicked her feet. But her efforts had weakened.

  “Boy,” the man hollered at me. “Your stupid mama ever teach you the birds and the bees? Better yet, she ever show ya how it works?”

  My spirit broke. My mind broke. The world collapsed into a single collage of horrifying images, floating in my mind. My parents, dead, their heads chopped off. Andrea, raped, killed, her head chopped off. Leaving me alive and alone to watch it, live with it. I snapped.

  Gripping the crowbar as if it tethered me to my own heart, I jumped to my feet and ran as fast as my legs could cover the ground between me and Andrea’s attacker. I didn’t yell, didn’t scream, instead using all that energy, channeling it—along with the rage that threatened to erupt inside my chest—all of the power known to me and some not. All of it into my skinny little arm.

  The man saw me coming. Completely unimpressed, he casually let go of Andrea’s neck and rocked back on his knees, ready to spring to his feet and swat me away like a fly. But he was too late. Something had happened to me, had made me monstrous and strong for one brief moment. Bursting with hate and anger, I raised the crowbar above my head, then swung it 100 times harder than I had before. He raised his hand to ward it off, but he was too late for that, too.

  The claw end of the crowbar crashed into the top of his head with a solid thunk, sinking in all the way to the shaft of the bar itself. He screamed. I screamed as I yanked it back out, ripping brains, skull, skin, hair. Then I hit him again, this time right in the temple. His screams cut off and he fell off Andrea, collapsed in an unnatural position to the side of her. He went still, didn’t move in the slightest. I hit him one last time to be sure, then stood there, heaving breaths in and out.

  Andrea had scrambled away from the scene, facing the other direction, on her hands and knees, choking and spitting. I dropped the crowbar, so full of adrenaline I didn’t know how I could ever come back down to Earth from the realms of violent ecstasy in which I floated.

  I sensed a presence behind me. I turned to look, the world spinning far more than it should have. Three people stood over by the car. No, just one, their forms jittering, then melding together; my vision could hardly keep up with the speed of my churning metabolism.

  Pee Wee watched, his arms folded, showing no emotion whatsoever. He’d observed the whole thing, I knew it. Watched without trying to stop me.

  “It’s in your blood, son,” he said. “You know that, right? The violence. It’s in your blood. That’s the real reason you were able to kill him. Old Cousin T-Bone wasn’t much good for nothin’ anyhow. May he rot in peace.”

  My heart had started to slow, just a little, but not enough to speak.

  Pee Wee pulled a gun from behind him, pointed its barrel at me.

  “Time to go, now. Just a short walk. Bring her along if ya want.” He nodded at Andrea, who seemed to be recovering, sitting still in the grass just off the gravel road.

  “Where?” I managed to say.

  He answered, though it made no sense.

  “To the House of Tongues.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  July 2017

  After shooting the Baghead who hoofed it for the cornfield—filling his back with buckshot—I ran to Andrea, my mom, my kids. Sweeping the shotgun along with my vision as I turned in a circle, I scanned every direction, trying to spot signs of anyone or anything suspicious. Nothing.

  “Get in the van,” I said. “Quick.”

  We all acted. I took Logan from my mom’s arms as she opened the automatic side-door closest to us, then Andrea ushered Mason and Hazel inside as soon the door had slid far enough. Their grandma went next; I handed Logan to her when she took a seat, then pushed the lever to close the door. Andrea sprinted around the van to the passenger side and a few seconds later we both slammed our doors shut at the exact same moment. Before anything else, I engaged the locks throughout the vehicle, feeling the smallest hint of relief at the simultaneous series of thunks. With the key in my pocket, all I had to do next was push the ignition button—the van’s engine came to life with a surging roar, followed by a steady hum.

  “Seat belts!” I shouted, feeling a little ridiculous.

  I shifted the gear into drive and hit the gas, anxious to leave the house of my childhood for the first time I could ever remember. The tires spit a few pebbles and tufts of sand then caught traction, propelling us forward. We shot toward the spot where the man had fallen on his face—our headlights illuminating the shiny polka dots of blood that littered his body—before the curve of the gravel driveway turned us away from him back to the road in front of our house. I was just about to hit-the-pedal-to-the-metal and gun it out of there when I saw something move out of the left corner of my eye. A figure, a person.

  I slammed on the brakes, purely on instinct, curiosity winning over sanity.

  “What’re you doing?” Andrea snapped at me.

  Ignoring her, I stared out the window. A Baghead had come out of the cornfield, stepping from between the stalks like Malachai in Children of the Corn, every bit as creepy. He had no weapon I could see, his body still mostly lit up by the peripherals of the headlights. Taking slow, steady steps, almost ritualistic, he walked up to his friend, cousin, brother, whomever I’d killed. Then he bent his head to look down, stared for a few seconds, peering at bloody death through the thin veil of a cheap grocery bag, which pulsed with every breath.

  “David, get us the hell out of here!” Andrea yelled, whacking me on the arm.

  She was right. Of course she was right. I slipped my right foot from the brake and pressed it to the gas pedal. We spun out a little, then surged ahead once again, leaving a cloud of dust and spitting rocks to the new stranger who’d emerged from the fields. In my last glimpse of him, he’d raised both arms to cup his hands around his mouth, his body language suggesting that he was shouting as loudly as possible at us, leaning forward with the effort.

  But I couldn’t hear him, not a single word. And if I dared stop again, Andrea would probably kick me out and drive off herself, leaving me behind. I almost did it anyway, telling myself it might’ve been about Wesley or my dad. A clue. A direction.

  Or a trap. A diversion. This was no time for me to turn into a complete idiot.

  We hit the road, spun just a little in my over-exuberance to turn left, then the tires found their home against the asphalt. We zoomed ahead, the lights creating a consistent, eerie halo of misty white in the near distance while we drove, as if the night were so dark my lights could only penetrate its outer surface. My hands trembled so I gripped the steering wheel as tightly as I could, squeezing my fingers into stillness.

  “Where are we going?” Andrea asked.

  I thought of my son. I thought of my dad. Of my mom, right behind me.

  I thought of my three kids back there with her.

  “I don’t know.”

  Remnants of rain slicked the road, filled the divots and potholes. Puddles and practical lakes hemmed in from the sides, the swamp that veined our small town having swelled in size more than I’d seen since Hurricane Hugo. Another couple of stormy days and we would’ve turned into Venice. The tires swooshed through the wetness, the darkness over us like a veil on the world, a world that had shrunk in size to only include us, enclosed within a moony light that traveled as we traveled.

  Wesley, I thought. My son.

  Pain and guilt wracked me in equal measure. What was I doing? What in the hell was I doing? I slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop after a one-quarter turn that terrified my children. Whimpers and moans turned to wailing and screams.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “What is it?” Andrea asked, her voice shockingly calm.

  “What’s going on?” Mom said at the same time, pretending to be calm.

  I leaned forward until my forehead settled against the steering wheel. When I spoke, my voice cracked with emotion. “I don’t know what to do. The police aren’t responding, Sheriff Taylor isn’t, Dad isn’t, Wesley isn’t. What am I supposed to do?” I jerked back in my seat with that last question, slammed my fists against the dashboard. “We have to go back, find them. How can we leave?”

  “You’re scaring the kids,” my mom whispered, spooking me from right behind my ear.

  “They should be scared!” I shouted. Closing my eyes, I wished I could take it back. “I’m sorry, guys. I’m sorry.”

  Andrea reached over and took my hand. Squeezed. “Is there a safe place we could leave your mom and the kids? We could do that, then go back and look for them. Or find out where the cops are in this tiny town.”

  “Evelyn’s, I guess.” But even as I said it, the image flashed in my mind of that dead cop slumped against the window in his car. Nowhere was safe. Nowhere.

  “David.”

  I’d never heard my name said so ominously. It came from Andrea, and I knew something was wrong. I looked up, into the rear view mirror. Headlights, coming on fast.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered, though I had no way of knowing it was trouble. The odds were even against it—how many people could be driving down this road, for any number of reasons? Possibly, maybe, hopefully, it might even be a policeman or FBI agent.