13. Jael
Dream Girl Evil - Florence + The Machine
I ’ve never been more exhausted in my life, yet I can’t sleep that night. I flee the main cabin room where Bull’s chained up—doubling back to drag the case of weapons with me—and then I slam the door to the bedroom shut.
My chest heaves as I struggle to breathe, leaning back against the door. Air feels limited, like a luxury I’m no longer given. I scrub a hand over my face and sort through the whirlwind that’s become my thoughts.
I need rest.
Sleep.
I’m extremely sleep deprived. It’s been days since I got a full night’s rest. Since before I left Easton, where I’d stayed in the Klums’s apartment. Even then I’d been gripped so tightly by paranoia that the sleep I did get was fitful.
The hot shower and food helped earlier. But I’m still no good without some shuteye.
That’s evident if I’ve taken to licking the shadow man’s— Bull , I quickly remind myself—blood. If I was getting turned on while doing it.
Something about the way he stoically took it ignited a fire inside me. But it wasn’t the same burning rage and frustration I’d felt toward him since taking him captive, it was these emotions melting into something else, forbidden and taboo.
It was like hurting him turned me on. It made me wet to slice the blade into his skin and peer into his eyes, knowing this hulking man was being tormented by my hand yet he still didn’t give in. He bore the gashes and wounds in composed silence.
…until I took his mask away.
He was ashamed. Angry that I would expose him like that.
Thinking back on it evokes another feeling out of me. The same pity and sadness that I’d felt when he turned his head away and could no longer meet my gaze.
“Get some sleep,” I whisper. “You’re losing your mind.”
I barricade the bedroom door, pushing the heavy oak dresser in front of it and then the wardrobe cabinet that’s in the corner.
I set the knife down on the bedside table and crawl into bed with a hunting rifle. It’s not until I lay my head down on the pillow that I realize how bad the migraine I have is. The ache is almost unbearable, the throbbing pain in my skull excruciating.
It’s my brain begging for a break.
But as I lay there and my eyes close, I can’t fall asleep. It doesn’t come as the silence bears down on the room and even the subtlest noise becomes deafening. The squeak of the mattress when I shift sides. The sough of the wind from outside the windowpane. The ragged drag of his breath from the other room.
Tension shoots through me. I keep my eyes squeezed shut and will myself to go to sleep.
He can’t get to me. He’s chained. He’s captive and I’m in control.
I repeat this thought over and over again.
One way or another, I’m going to get the answers I need from him, then I’m going to find my sister. We’re going to be reunited for the first time in years, and we’ll be able to start over and build a new life for ourselves. We’ll leave the hurt and trauma in the past.
The shadow man—Bull—won’t be able to reach us.
The door bursts open with a deafening crash. The dresser and wardrobe skid out of the way as strips of broken wood fly everywhere. A hulking figure steps into the doorway, his broad shoulders nearly brushing the frame.
He’s monstrous in size, larger than should be humanly possible. Shadows engulf him, only the light from the other room silhouetting his huge form. He stands in the doorway for a moment, letting the terror settle over the room before he starts toward the bed.
Me.
He’s wearing the minotaur mask again, his mangled face obscured.
The room begins to shrink around him. His presence fills every corner. It sucks up what little air exists in the room.
Step by step, floorboard creak after floorboard creak, he closes in on me.
He grows closer, a true predator about to finally devour his prey.
I’ve frozen up, forgetting about the rifle next to me. Even forgetting how to scream.
My mouth drops open and I force the sound out?—
I snap awake with a gasp, bolting upright in bed. I’m slicked in sweat, huffing out sharp breaths.
The room is quiet. The door is intact.
There’s nobody in here with me. I’m alone with the rifle and hunting knife, lying in bed.
It was all a dream.
I drop my face into my hands and tell myself it was all a dream. I must’ve drifted off without even realizing it.
He got into my head.
He’s with me even when he isn’t.
I clutch the rifle to my chest and squeeze shut my eyes, willing myself to slip back off to sleep.
But when sleep does return, it’s no better than imagining Bull breaking down the door. Instead, my dreams are more nightmares. Distorted images that rattle me to my core. Things I’ve dreamed before. That I’ve told myself aren’t real.
“Go hide,” says the man who is my sister’s instructor. A smile twists onto his lips as he taps me on my bottom and a coldness grips me from the inside. “Go find somewhere dark where monsters will never find you.”
And I do.
I turn and take off through the arched halls of his huge home. I run while my sister plays, the beautiful melodies from her music following me wherever I go.
When I do find a place to hide, I scurry inside the closet and try to make myself disappear among the racks of clothes. But it’s no use—it’s only a matter of minutes before the door’s drawing open and the monster’s coming inside…
I wake naturally, hours into the morning. The birds are twittering outside and the sunlight breaks through the wooded area, spilling into the bedroom. I’m twisted up in the bedspread, a sore hand still clutching at the hunting rifle.
For a while, I lay like this, my expression vacant. My mind no lighter than when I went to sleep.
A night’s rest didn’t bring me the clarity I hoped. My slate’s not wiped clean. If anything, I feel worse. I feel sane yet deeply aware of all the things haunting me. At least before I could lose myself in the manic feelings. I could disappear into my imagination.
But, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I know I’m damaged. I know how.
It’s on my mind the rest of the morning.
Opening the bedroom door for the first time since last night, I pad down the hall and turn into the kitchen. After making myself a small breakfast—the Klums have blueberry oatmeal in their pantry—I pour some of what’s leftover into a bowl and grab a spoon.
Bull’s where I left him, still chained to the chair. His eyes seek mine out from the moment I enter the room. He watches me approach with the bowl of oatmeal, giving no reaction either way. I drag the chair I’d been sitting in last night closer and sit down.
“You must be starving.”
It’s the second time I’ve told him this, yet the tone couldn’t be more different. Last night I’d been taunting, a twisted sense of glee dripping from every word.
This morning I’m somber, worn down.
I scoop up some oatmeal and lean over, bringing the spoon to his lips.
He doesn’t part them to take it.
He merely stares, hardly blinking.
The tension has returned, as charged and confusing as ever.
I sigh and try to ignore how sickly he looks. The blood staining his skin has dried, though the gashes still gleam, far from healed. He’s huge and formidable and as intimidating as he’s always been, but human limitations are taking over.
He hasn’t eaten in who knows how long. Something tells me he probably didn’t sleep either. How could he when he’s been chained to a chair?
“Just eat, okay?” I say, pressing the spoon against his lips. “No catch this time. No punishment. Just take the olive branch.”
He finally relents as I push the spoon past his lips.
I scoop up more oatmeal, collecting a blueberry this time, and repeat the motion. The oatmeal disappears from the spoon, his thick throat working to swallow.
It’s how the next couple minutes pass, me feeding him and him swallowing what I give. We sit in silence as I scrape the last spoonful from the bowl and funnel it to his mouth.
He probably needs more.
“Still hungry?” I ask, rising from the chair with the empty bowl. “I saw some frozen breakfast sandwiches. I’ll heat one up.”
Minutes later, I return with the sausage biscuit offering. He digests that too, barely hiding how ravenous he is.
I sit back in the chair across from him and heave a sigh. “I wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t follow me. If you’d just left me alone…”
I don’t expect an answer from him. He never gives them. He probably never will.
But I keep talking anyway, the thoughts that have been trapped in my head suddenly pouring out.
“All I want is to start over. I spent years locked up there. Years I’ll never get back. And you didn’t help—you made them think I was crazy. Every time you lurked and then disappeared and when they went to look, you weren’t there. A part of me hates you for what you did,” I say, my throat going sore. I rub at my temples and shake my head. “But I’m not crazy. I’ve never been crazy… until things made me that way. What was I supposed to do? What did they expect?
“I was a kid. I didn’t know any better. My mother should’ve been there to… she was supposed to stop it…” The soreness in my throat intensifies, every word becoming an effort. I sigh again and start over. “All she cared about was my sister. Making sure she was perfect at the piano. That, and that man. That horrible piece of shit. He destroyed us.”
I get up from the chair to pace back and forth, suddenly desperate to purge what’s bottled up inside me.
“I blamed my sister,” I confess in a hushed whisper. “I was so angry at her when she returned but our mother was gone. She was dead and I knew my sister did it. So I tried to hurt her. I tried to burn it all down.”
The memories fade in and out before my eyes, the crackle of the flames feeling so real as they climb the walls.
I cover my head with my arms and shake the memories away. I beg for them to leave me alone. The last thing I need are reminders of why my sister never wrote me back. The reason she’s probably hiding from me this very moment.
Letting out a shaky breath, I glance over my shoulder at the man who has watched me unravel.
“I bet you think I’m a mess. Well… I am.”
I give off a dark laugh as if finding humor in a confession so pathetic. But it seems like the only thing I can do as I struggle to figure out what the hell I even want to do. I had thought I was so sure, setting this trap and luring him here, taping newspaper clippings to the wall, vowing to find my sister…
Suddenly, all of it feels like a waste of time. It takes so much energy when I have so little left to give.
“Bront?.”
I turn around at the guttural sound. It’s deep and hoarse, almost primitive, like someone who’s learning to speak.
“Bront??” I repeat, and then I get it. My eyes widen as I meet his gaze and realize he’s given me his name.
It’s weird to think that it feels significant. It feels like a secret shared between two confidants. Something intimate in a way I can’t explain.
“Bront?,” I say again. I step closer. “Do you want me to put your mask back on?”
A second passes. And then he nods. It’s a stiff, slow, single incline of his head. I grab the minotaur mask that I’d tossed to the floor last night and slide back into his lap. He’s so warm, the energy that comes off him instantly heating me up. I look him in the eye as I pull the mask back over his mangled face.
He releases a deep breath as if comfort has been restored. The one thing he needs is back.
“Why do you wear it?” I ask. My hand glides across the contours of the leather mask, my fingertips feeling every ridge that represents the monstrous minotaur. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of your scars. They’re a part of you.”
An abrupt knock interrupts the moment.
I draw back in his lap, glancing toward the front door.
My heart flips inside my chest. From through the part in the curtains I can make out who’s on the doorstep. It’s a man dressed in what looks like a sheriff’s uniform.