Chapter 20
twenty
The Heathen
It’s weird working with the police and not running from them, but Mercy wants to give her statement and tell them all the information we have in the hopes that they’ll track down the kids in the “DISCARD” pile and we’ll finally have closure.
I can’t argue with that, since she’s one of the girls who could have ended up there.
But I have the closure I came for—and the grief that comes with it, transcendent in its depth, endless in scope.
It’s not the outcome I wanted, but I knew it was a possibility.
Mom and Dad will be able to start the process of moving on too.
We were all holding on all these years. Telling them will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but not the hardest I’ll ever do.
Living when I know she didn’t will get that distinction.
Still, I tell myself it could be worse. That I could have lost Mercy too.
That at least I have the rest of the Quint to help me, to get through the days with me, though it won’t be the same for them.
I have my parents, who will grieve with me if I let them.
I have school and sports and friends to throw myself into, a girl I love in a whole different way from the one I lost.
After showering the dead guy’s blood off, we go along with her and give our own statements, though the police are less interested in those.
They’re not too happy with the fact that we called the press and a bunch of boats to pick up residents at the same time we called them.
A lot of the “inmates,” as the police keep calling them, already left the island before the cops got here.
We tell them that we don’t know anything about the murders or any gunshot wounds.
One of the escapees must have gotten a guard’s gun.
I’m not sure what Angel did with his piece.
For my part, I jogged up to a cliff not far from the asylum, where the lighthouse stands, and tossed my gun into the sea.
And they sure as fuck aren’t going to suspect a priest of bludgeoning a guy to death and then fucking one of his students within arm’s reach of the body.
At his instruction, we also leave out any mention of Walker Delacroix.
I have no idea what happened to the guy anyway, but we can’t wait around for him.
He’s a big boy, so I’m sure he’ll figure out a way to get home without us.
A few camera crews catch us going out and want to know anything we’ll tell them.
The police told us not to say anything, so we don’t, but they follow us to the boat, yelling questions the whole way.
And then we’re on the boat, leaving the island crawling with escaped asylum residents, cops, and reporters.
Just the kind of chaos that follows in the wake of a bunch of heathens.
Thanks to us, Havoc Harbor is living up to its name too.
The boats Saint hired to come over to the island and give passage back to the mainland just dropped off their passengers, most of whom haven’t figured out where to go.
We see a few of them wandering around the docks looking lost, one getting kicked out of a bar, and one who is almost definitely stealing a car in the parking lot when we get in our van and leave the pier.
“I feel bad for them,” Mercy frets, looking out the window. “Some of them have been there a long time.”
“Let the town deal with them,” Saint grumbles. “They let that shit go on under their noses for decades.”
“Yeah,” I agree, swallowing a couple pain pills dry. “Her blood’s on their hands.”
“They have families who put them there,” Angel assures Mercy. “They’ll get in touch with them and go home. In the meantime, can we get some food? I’m about to eat one of you, and not in the fun way. No offense, Mercy, but man cannot subsist on pussy alone.”
Father Salvatore pulls into a little shopping center with a fish market and a tiny grocery store, and we split up and go in to get food. On our way, I catch sight of the little ice cream shoppe with the flavors written on a board near the door that I saw on the way into town.
“Let’s get ice cream after,” I say, pointing. “We never got to go the other day.”
After we grab groceries and fish, we start back to the car.
I’d almost forgotten the ice cream until I see a flash of pink over that way.
When I turn, there’s no one there. Still, I convince the others to grab cones as a snack, since it’ll take a while to cook the food we bought.
We’re halfway to the place when the sign on the door flips from open to closed.
“That’s weird,” Saint says. “It’s evening. This should be their busiest time of day.”
We take a few more steps that way before the metal covering for the window rolls down, and I catch another flash of pink. This time I can tell it’s hair, a girl mostly hidden in shadow, standing on tiptoes to pull the window closed.
“Rude,” Angel says, pouting. “I was looking forward to a double chocolate cone.”
“How are you not bored with that?” I ask. “You’ve been ordering it for fifteen years.”
“Never gets old,” he says.
“I found a weekend rental,” Saint says, scrolling on his phone. “We can stay a couple nights before we go back.”
We reach the van and find a napkin shoved under the door handle.
“Don’t touch that,” Saint warns, scanning the area. “They put drugs on those.”
“Nobody’s giving away free drugs,” I say, plucking the napkin out. I’m about to drop it when I see a message scribbled on it, the soft fibers torn like it was written in a hurry.
“Don’t bring that in the van,” Mercy says, wrinkling her nose. I crumple it up and toss it away, pretending all is well, that there was nothing out of the ordinary. I sneak glances at the others, waiting for one of them to ask what it said, but they must not have seen it.
After dinner, I tell them I’m taking the van and going for a drive.
“I’ll come with,” Saint says, grabbing his hoodie.
“I think I want to be alone,” I say.
They’re all looking at me like I’m delicate as a baby bird, which pisses me off.
“You’re not going to do something stupid?” Angel asks, watching me suspiciously.
“I’ve never done anything stupid in my life,” I say, batting my eyes at him with as much innocence as Mercy does.
“If you’re not back in an hour, we’re coming to find you,” Father Salvatore says, handing me the keys.
I know he will, too. The guy will probably just don the collar and go next door to ask for the neighbor’s car.
People don’t like to say no to priests, and he acts all noble and charming when he’s not killing dudes and fucking girls in their blood.
A few minutes later, I’m parking back where we were this evening. I take a second to wonder if I’m doing something stupid, but I can’t get the message on that napkin out of my head.
Come back alone.
I might have thought it was someone fucking with us, trying to lure Mercy back into danger, but the doctor is dead, and if the Sinners are still around, they have nowhere to take her. That, and the napkin had three scratched lines, forming a slanting, crooked H.
Maybe it was for me. Maybe it’s a coincidence.
But I can’t get that flash of pink hair out of my head.
I shove my hands in my pockets and plow through the cold wind.
At least I have my knife for protection, since I don’t know for sure what I’m walking into.
A gun would be better, but that’s long gone.
I keep thinking about how we just left Walker Delacroix over on that island.
He knew his way around, though, and he could have come back on any of the boats.
I’m sure nothing bad happened to him. I was nice to him, so maybe he’s going to give me something.
He told us to look in ‘the boneyard,’ whatever that is.
We didn’t have a chance, but maybe he went there, found something of Eternity’s, and he’s going to return it to me to give my parents.
Like he said, he knows a thing or two about missing sisters.
And if he was going to get revenge on any of us, it would be Angel.
I’m almost to the board with the list of ice cream flavors when a girl steps from beside the building, blocking my path.
Her hair is pink now, and tattoos peak through the rips in her black jeans, but my heart stops anyway.
A few tattoos and a dye kit can’t hide the freckles across her nose, the eyes staring back at me, eyes of the rarest lavender.
I blink, knowing I’m seeing things. People do that, see the person they lost in every crowd, around every corner.
She’s still there, though. She doesn’t look like the version of my sister I’d hallucinate, the one I lost four years ago. She looks like someone new. Someone else.
Still my feet stay planted to the ground, and I keep staring like a total weirdo. She’s probably going to kick my ass for creeping her out. She looks like she could, with her motorcycle boots and hands shoved in the pockets of a black leather jacket.
“I thought that was you,” she says in a raspy voice. “I saw you on TV. Breaking news, live from Wild Isle, blah blah blah.”
“E?” I manage, croaking the word.
“H,” she says, eyeing me warily, like she really does think I’m a creep.
“It’s you,” I say, still not sure this is real. I must have fallen asleep at the house, and the double dosage of my pills gave me vivid dreams instead of knocking me out into a dreamless sleep like a single dose does.
“A version of me,” she says, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”
I want to wrap her up in my arms and never let go, but I don’t know if she’d like that. I want to ask a million questions all at once, but none come. I swallow the painful lump in my throat, then nod. “Okay.”