Chapter Twenty-Eight
No, no, no, no, no.
I shot Robert a nervous look.
This had to be a mistake.
"Where are we going?" I asked, trying to sound casual, but my voice came out low and raspy.
"I think you know where."
The truck bounced along the uneven path, branches and twigs snapping beneath the tires, slapping the windows. Long, ominous shadows stretched across the foliage. Night had already taken hold of the woods.
"Let me out," I said carefully. Robert didn’t react. "Did you hear me? Stop the car!" I raised my voice and reached for the door, but it was locked.
"Soon. We’re not there yet." His tone was soft, almost gentle.
We were barely going thirty miles per hour, but it was still too fast for a loose, uneven road. I yanked the handle again. No luck.
"Let me out!" I lashed out at him in a panic, my hands flying at his face, fingers clawed. He didn’t even flinch, just threw out a massive arm, his palm connecting with my throat, and shoved me back against the seat with a force that knocked the breath from my lungs.
The ease of it stunned me. Even for a tall, broad man, he was too strong for his age.
The truck came to a stop, and Robert finally released his grip on my neck. Air rasped down my throat. Ahead of us, a cluster of vehicles sat like old wives. Four, maybe five. One of them looked just like the SUV that nearly ran us off the road earlier. I couldn’t be sure.
The locks clicked free.
With a trembling hand, I reached for the handle and flung open the door. But before I could run, rough hands tore me from the truck. I was yanked off my feet and slung down like a sack of potatoes.
I landed hard, elbows and knees tearing against gravel. The impact jarred my wrists, sending a sickening jolt up my arms. Before I could gather myself, hands dug under my armpits and wrenched me up in one brutal, snapping motion. My feet scrambled for solid ground, my vision swimming.
I twisted, tried to break free, but then—
A blow to the back of my head.
Sharp. Blinding.
White exploded behind my eyes. My legs buckled.
I would’ve collapsed, but claws—hands—dug into my arms, holding me up.
When the spinning slowed, when my vision focused, I realized I was pinned between two men in ski masks, their grips like iron.
"Careful there, boys," Robert called over his shoulder, glancing back at us. "Or you’ll end up carryin’ her."
He was already heading down the trail. The two men holding me dragged me along.
There was no way I was going deeper into that darkness with them.
"No!" I screamed, thrashing and kicking against them. "Let me go!"
"That’s enough!" one of them barked. Another man stepped forward, a short one—shorter than me, but stocky and broad. He wore a faded green jacket, and his scarf was pulled up high, hiding most of his face except for his eyes. His gaze was sharp and burning with quiet malice, eyes that wouldn’t flinch at killing, and wouldn’t lose sleep after.
With quick, practiced hands, he pulled a coil of rope from his pocket and wrapped it around my wrists, binding them tightly. The rope cut into my skin. He yanked it hard, forcing me to stumble forward. My feet slid beneath me, and I almost lost my balance again.
As the last remnants of daylight faded, so did my hope. I shouted for help, but it was pointless. They silenced me with a firm slap to the face, hard enough for me to taste blood in my cheek, but not to knock me out.
A near-perfect circle of the moon, ripe with anticipation, hung low above the trees.
There were still three days until the full moon.
A chill ran down my spine when I made the connection: Lucas had gone home to Black Water a few days before the Harvest Moon.
Had Robert done something to him? Had he killed his own son?
But why? And the most horrifying question of all: Was I next?
I moved numbly, astonished and disbelieving, but when we crossed the bridge and the woods fell into an eerie quiet, panic and despair flooded back. I couldn’t stop the tears. There was no way to convince them to spare me. I didn’t even bother begging.
A familiar wooden plaque loomed ahead, barely visible now: Private Property. Do Not Enter. Crossing that last threshold felt like stepping off the edge of the world.
Robert and his followers hadn’t used flashlights; somehow, they had managed to orient themselves in the darkness. But now, they lit up some torches, their flickering yellow flames making the clearing look unholy.
Robert, the only one not wearing a mask, unlocked the shed and ushered us inside.
The interior was bare—just a chain hanging from the wall, a shovel, a folded tarp, and a canister with unknown contents.
A row of 2-gallon bottles, filled with what I assumed was water, lined the left wall.
No altar, no magical trinkets, and nothing that resembled the grimoire Mathilda had mentioned.
Three of Robert’s companions stayed outside, and two came in with us.
One of them retrieved a chair from a dark corner.
"Sit," Robert instructed, pointing to a rickety chair.
The man next to me shoved me onto it, though I didn’t resist.
"What do you want from me?" I panted. "I didn’t have anything to do with Lucas’s disappearance, I swear!"
"I know you didn’t, Nellie," Robert said, his voice low and even.
He towered above me, a quiet but powerful force seeping from him.
The old man I had met at the police station, grief-stricken and vulnerable, was gone.
In his place stood someone else, someone who had shed his skin like a snake, revealing who he had been all along.
The killer.
"Then why are you doing this to me?" I sobbed.
He approached me slowly, his hand reaching out. I winced and recoiled, but he brushed his calloused, wrinkled fingers across my left cheek.
"I know all about you," he said softly. "But tell me about your friends, please."
"They’re just looking for their sister. She’s missing. I don’t know anything else."
Robert flicked his eyes toward one of his men. In an instant, a searing pain exploded across my face. My head snapped violently to the side. I thought for a moment my neck had been broken, but then I realized I’d been knocked off the chair entirely.
A punch drove into my stomach before I could react. My breath collapsed inward, and my body folded in half. Nausea churned in my gut as a searing pain tore through my abdomen, blossoming like an evil flower. My diaphragm convulsed, refusing to expand.
Another blow struck. My lungs burned, starving for oxygen.
Then another.
And another.
My world shrank to a single point: agony. I couldn’t even scream.
"Enough," Robert’s voice came through the blur.
The punches stopped, but the residual pain lingered, a throbbing ache that pulsed through my body. I lay there, whimpering, shaking on the ground.
I felt myself being yanked back into the chair. Robert crouched in front of me, offering a plastic bottle of water. I took a few sips, most of it spilling over my chin and onto my dirty shirt. He stepped back.
"It was you," I croaked, anger searing inside me like a wildfire, no turning back now. "You killed Lucas. You killed your own son."
Robert calmly closed the lid on the bottle and set it aside. Then, he turned to me, his eyes glinting with a cold, calculated menace, and said matter-of-factly, "Don’t talk about things you don’t know nothin’ about."
Another blow landed, less ferocious than the previous ones, but still sending shockwaves of pain through my battered body. I somehow managed to stay in the chair, my vision blurring at the edges.
Robert gave me a few seconds to catch my breath before asking again, "I need to know where your friends are. And what they know."
"I don’t know!" I blurted, catching a glimpse of movement to the left. "Please! I really don’t know! I’ve been trying to reach them all day! I have no idea what happened to them!"
"All three gone?" Robert didn’t buy it.
"No, just Mitch and June."
"What about the other one? Tall, dark hair?"
"He went home two days ago."
"Home where?" He pressed, drawing his minions closer with a wag of his fingers.
"Minnesota."
"Minnesota…" he repeated thoughtfully. "And he is…?"
"He was trying to find out what happened to his mother. She died here about a year ago." I deliberately didn’t say ‘got murdered’ to avoid triggering Robert and his lackeys.
"His mother died here?" Something crept into his voice. Disbelief, or perhaps surprise.
"Yes!" I exhaled.
Robert glanced at the wide-open front door, as though calculating his next move. He gave a subtle nod to one of the men, and my phone was handed to him. I hadn’t even noticed them take it.
"Give me the passcode."
I didn’t hesitate. Any defiance would only bring more pain.
He adjusted his eyeglasses, the frames glinting in the dim light, and measured the comfortable distance between his face and the screen, then scrolled through my contacts with a detached air.
"Is this one of them?" he turned the phone toward me. Mitchell’s name was on the screen.
A dark heaviness settled over me, fear and desperation swirling inside like a maelstrom. I nodded. If anything were to happen to Mitch, it would all be my fault.
He continued scrolling, stopping at Nick’s name. "And this one?"
I nodded again.
"I believe you," he finally said. "One last question: do you have it?"
"Have what?"
"The grimoire. One of you must have it."
I shook my head, the motion making me dizzy with pain. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
Without another word, one of Robert’s companions stepped forward, his fists clenched and ready. The blows that followed were relentless, each one like a deadly drumbeat. The chair cracked beneath me, splintering like kindling as I was thrown to the floor, my body shattered, broken.
"I swear, we don’t have it!" I spat from bloodied teeth. "She was looking for it, too!"
Robert grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head up with an unforgiving grip. "Who. Is. She?"