Chapter Fifteen
The first thing Sarah grabs when she returns to the house is her knife. Now the knife, the only one in the house. It’s at the bottom of her backpack, wrapped in the cheap washcloth. She digs it out and shakes off the cloth, dazed by Elijah’s bombshell.
Caleb murdered his father. Maybe it had been in self-defense, maybe it was to protect Elijah. Like she’d done to Ben, but Caleb grew a taste for it, and two other men fell to his appetite. An appetite for standing over someone and feeling alive. Feeling free at last.
You know how it feels, Ben whispers.
Sarah tells him to shut up. Her parka is still open, and she slides the knife carefully into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie.
At least I never killed anyone, Ben whispers.
The second thing Sarah grabs is her backpack. She meets Elijah in the hallway. He holds a full duffel bag, and she wonders if, like herself, he’s had that bag packed for months in case he ever needs to run.
You like to run, don’t you, Ben whispers.
The staircase whines one last protest as they run down the steps. But Sarah has nothing to fear from the noise now. In the end, Sweetside Manor is only a house, not a living thing, and in time it’ll crumble into dust like the bones buried in the woods.
Elijah opens the front door. “Let’s go.”
Sarah nods grimly. Elijah’s not the brother she’d imagined running away with, but Caleb isn’t who she thought he was. No one is ever who you think they are, Ben whispers. Not even yourself.
They hurry down the driveway, boots scraping against salt and gravel and half-melted ice. Sarah’s stomach twists as she realizes the fresh salt under their feet could be shoveled from Ben’s resting place.
“Shit,” Elijah says.
It’s the first time she’s ever heard him swear.
A red pickup truck rumbles up the road from the motel to the driveway. The horn honks once, twice, the sound ripping through her tightening chest. Elijah grabs her hand. “Come on.”
He half-drags her past the truck. Caleb’s eyebrows draw together from his seat high up in the cab. The truck screeches to a halt, and the driver-side door swings open.
“Go!” Elijah says.
“Sarah!” Caleb calls out. “What are you doing?”
Elijah’s hand squeezes her clammy one. “Don’t answer him. Keep heading for the motel.”
Sarah runs, her body nothing but swinging arms and legs and stabbing breaths. The truck’s motor switches off, and Caleb launches himself out of the driver’s seat. “Sarah!” he yells.
“Run!” Elijah says, releasing her hand and picking up his heels.
Sarah tries to run faster, but she flails in the too-large boots.
Her heart throbs in her throat, and she makes the mistake of glancing back.
Caleb sprints toward her, the storm in his eyes as he closes the distance with his powerful legs.
He never did have to think about how much space he takes up.
Her mouth opens, ready to scream, anticipating those large, heavy hands around her neck.
He pushes past her and punches Elijah in the face.
Elijah grunts and falls backward onto the snow, dropping the duffel bag. Blood streams from both nostrils.
“Elijah!” Sarah rushes over to him. The key, the precious car key. Is he still holding it?
Elijah’s fingers fall open, revealing the black fob.
“Sarah, get away from him!” Caleb roars.
Sarah snatches at the fob, but Elijah’s fingers close like a trap. “Help me stand,” he hisses.
She glances up. Caleb advances.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she stomps on his hand.
To give love and then take it away, that is the only way to stay on top. Elijah yelps and his hand springs open again. Sarah snatches the key and jams it into her pocket.
Elijah spits out a mouthful of blood, scarlet on the white snow. Sarah expects him to say, What did I do wrong? How can we go back to where we were?
Instead he starts to laugh, like he did the day Ben hit him. His shoulders shake as he rocks on the snow. “How does it feel? How does it feel to hurt me? Do you feel alive?”
She can’t tell if he’s talking to her or Caleb.
Caleb stands in her path, as large as a wall. “What did he tell you?” he demands.
She can’t think fast enough to lie. “Your dad,” she says, her eyes darting around Caleb’s body for an exit. “The men who disappeared.”
“He told you I killed them.”
Her heart is hammering too quickly to choke out an answer.
“It wasn’t me, Sarah,” Caleb says. “It’s him, it’s always been him. You have to believe me.”
“Of course you’d say that.”
“And of course he’d say I did it.” Caleb thrusts a finger toward his brother. “What did he offer you, to get you to take him with you?”
Sarah’s heart slams so hard and fast against her ribs, she can’t hear anything else Caleb says.
His mouth moves but she doesn’t understand the words.
Make them feel sorry for you, then give love and acceptance.
Was Elijah playing her all along as she played him, and Caleb?
Showing her a harmless, innocent face, so that she would trust him instantly.
They’re more alike than she thought.
You can really pick ’em, Ben whispers.
Her pulse bangs and clatters. Her vision starts to blur, and Jacob Vass looms over her, leering, while Ben gurgles blood at her feet.
She sucks in a breath. The icy air slashes the inside of her nose, her throat. Her eyesight sharpens, and it’s Caleb standing before her while Elijah drools blood on the snow.
“I thought you knew,” Elijah wheezes. “I thought you understood, because you’re like me.”
Sarah stares down at the guileless boy with his cold, clever hands. Because she does understand. Two peas in a pod. They’re both survivors.
And killers.
“You’ve been protecting him all this time,” she says to Caleb. Protecting him from the law, and from his own urges. From Jacob Vass’s legacy of violence.
“I never lied about that.”
“Why didn’t you turn him in?”
“He’s my brother. He’s all I have.”
Elijah cackles, spitting blood over his father’s shearling coat. “All you’re left with.”
Caleb closes his eyes briefly, and his hands close into fists at his side. “I’m responsible for him. It’s all my fault.”
“You couldn’t have known when you left Sweetside your dad would—”
“No,” Caleb says. “It’s not that. I’m responsible for who he is. I made him.”
“Ask him how it felt,” Elijah says. His left eye is starting to darken again. “Ask him how it felt to kill Dad. Who would’ve thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
Sarah locks eyes with Caleb. His Adam’s apple bobs as he struggles to speak, and she reads the truth in his stricken face. He murdered their father, and now Elijah likes to replay the ritual, hungry for a taste of it.
I wanted him to get up so I can hit him again, she’d said.
Oh, she understands Elijah very well.
And then she runs.
That is, she tries to run. Caleb seizes her wrist. Her left wrist, which is still tender from Ben’s hand. “Sarah,” Caleb rasps. Ben had said her name too, both times, practically growled it. A dark fury flares under her skin.
She pulls out the knife and plunges it into Caleb.
In the middle of nowhere, no one can hear Sarah scream. No one can hear the hum of the blade slipping past wool and into muscle. No one can hear Elijah’s laughing or his snort as he gasps wetly.
“Look what you’ve become,” Elijah cackles. “You hurt me. And her. He wins. Dad wins, Caleb.”
No one can hear Caleb’s strangled grunt or Sarah’s cry as he releases her wrist. Triumphant, she sprints toward the road to the Suicide Motel.
Elijah had been right. She did enjoy the look of surprise on Caleb’s face.
* * *
Sarah tries to remember what freedom feels like. But all she can think of is the elation that surged through her when she swung those antlers and gored Ben. The giddy knowledge he would never lie to her again, and his look of disbelief as he gurgled his last breath.
She clings to that joy as she approaches the Suicide Motel.
The highway is visible from the parking lot, the ground vibrating beneath her feet from the occasional tanker truck rumbling by.
The motel is boarded up, plywood tucked where there should’ve been glass.
Caleb painted over the slur, but she knows it’s there.
Something that ugly isn’t easily covered up by a fresh coat of paint.
Ben’s rental car is camouflaged by half a foot of snow, stacked on top like cake icing.
The door is unlocked. Of course. Caleb would have made sure it supported the story that Ben abandoned the car for the woods.
Sarah slides into the driver’s seat, tossing her backpack in the back, praying she can start the cold engine before Caleb reaches her.
He’s staggering toward the parking lot in the distance.
She’s relieved the knife blow wasn’t fatal—she’s left enough bodies behind in Sweetside—but she can’t be blamed for anything that happens next.
Anger stains her euphoria at getting away.
It’s Caleb’s own fault. He should’ve come with her when she’d asked.
Look what you did. It doesn’t have to be like this.
She sticks the key in the ignition, as swiftly as she’d slid the knife into Caleb.
The dashboard lights up, and she starts the windshield wipers to brush away the worst of the snow.
The rubber blades squeal a protest, but there’s no time to get out with the ice scraper.
She turns the key and the car sputters, begging for a gentle warm-up.
It’ll have no such luck. She’ll have to burn rubber and hope the cold engine can keep up.
Caleb’s close enough that she can see him shouting in the rearview mirror. She turns the key again with a determined grunt. Nothing can stop her now, not even Caleb’s pretty blue eyes and her name in his pleading mouth.
Nothing except the black-and-white police cruiser that squeals off the highway and comes to a stop in the entrance of the lot.
Sarah’s pulse rattles as violently as the car’s engine. The cruiser’s high beams flick on. She freezes, putting up a hand to shield her eyes from the light.
A door opens, and slams. Officer Isaac is backlit, and Sarah can make out the raised, straight line of his arm and the black service revolver at the end. The rental car engine coughs, and dies, taking the last of her hopes with it.
Isaac approaches the driver’s side and opens the door. The gun and his steely gaze never waver. Sarah slowly raises her hands, shaking from the cold and adrenaline and terror.
“Well, well,” he drawls. “Miss Sarah. Good thing I decided to check out the mystery car idling in the parking lot. Get out, please.”
She obeys, because what else can she do. He’s law enforcement, and she’s an Oriental from the big bad city. She knows how that story ends.
Stumbling footfalls sound behind her, and the gun jumps upward. “Caleb,” Isaac says. “You were supposed to keep her contained. I’m disappointed in you, son. Both of you. Up to the house, now.”
“Uncle Isaac,” Caleb says, voice strained and his face pale and clammy. He puts up his hands. The left arm rises a little slower than the right. There’s a slash low in the shoulder of his coat, but no knife hilt. “Don’t be hard on Sarah. It’s my fault. I told her she could go.”
Caleb’s eyebrows draw together, and his apologetic smile doesn’t betray how much pain he must be in.
It strikes Sarah that he also has to act nice to survive.
Because he’s afraid of becoming his father.
Afraid of Jacob Vass’s ghost, looking out from his eyes, the way Ben has started to look out from hers.
She has as much in common with Caleb as she does with Elijah.
“That doesn’t matter. You’re both compromised now.” Isaac motions to the house with the gun. “Two weeks, at least. You know the rules. Walk, and no funny business. If I have to choose between you and the rest of the town, you know who I’ll pick.”
Caleb nods. “Yes, sir.”
They start the trudge back up to the house, Sarah too numb and scared to speak. Sweetside Manor looms up ahead, and she accepts at last it will not let her go until she’s served her time.
Ben’s voice in her head laughs and laughs.
Or maybe it’s Elijah. He staggers to his feet as they approach, eyes glittering behind his bruises.
Isaac tsks at him. “Not wearing a mask either, I see. Go on inside, Elijah.” He doesn’t mention Elijah’s swelling face or the blood oozing around his nose and mouth.
Elijah picks up his duffel and joins Sarah and Caleb on the death march to the house.
Isaac pulls out his cell phone and picks out a contact, his gun still trained on them.
The space between Sarah’s shoulder blades tickles.
“Jerry? Got a car at the motel that needs towing. Looks like it’s been abandoned.
” He pauses, and heaves a sigh. “No, the motel is not cursed. Obviously someone wanted to ditch their car and vanish. Don’t go spreading rumors.
Also gonna need your help with Sweetside Manor.
Round up all the guys you can. Get the table saw from Murry and bring extra plywood and tools if you got ’em. No, be nice. They’re cooperating.”
Isaac hangs up, and slams the open door of the pickup truck closed as he passes. Sarah flinches at the noise, convinced he’d discharged his gun. She reaches the front porch, mouth sour with dread and the spot between her shoulder blades itching.
“Inside,” Isaac says.
Elijah pushes the front door open, and the hinges shriek a welcome. “I’d lock your door,” is the last thing Isaac says before the door swings shut behind them.
Caleb gingerly peels off his coat, revealing a dark stain spread over his flannel shirt.
Elijah sniffles. His nose bleeds sluggishly, and he cradles his right hand to his belly.
Although his downtrodden air may be another act, Sarah can’t help responding.
She gently wraps him in a hug. He whimpers and rests his head on her shoulder.
She doesn’t tell him she’s sorry. Because she’s not.
They’re two peas in a pod, and he would have betrayed her in an instant, too.
He knows this; he sees her like no one else ever has. They see each other now.
She smells blood and cedar and turpentine, and it feels like home.
Caleb circles his arms around them both, and she closes her eyes and leans into his strength. “I’m sorry,” he says. Like her, he likes to apologize for things that aren’t his fault. He’s also a killer who has to hide his true nature.
Entwined with the Vass brothers, she knows she belongs in this gloomy old house and its hunger for dead things, its inhabitants haunted by ghosts. Here, she doesn’t have to pretend she’s not haunted, too. It hurts to pretend.
“How can we go back to where we were?” Caleb whispers into her hair.