Chapter 30 Chloe
CHLOE
Blood goes everywhere. Red, hot, stinking blood. It covers my face, my hands. It splatters across the walls. Theo flings backward and lands in a pile of limbs and flesh, a faint curl of grey smoke rising from the mangle of his chest.
I let out a loud, wordless wail. The gun drops out of my hands and lands with a clatter. The room tilts, and I stumble away from the wall, pressing my hands against the pale green walls.
Part of me wants to go to Theo. To pull his head into my lap, to check his pulse. I don’t want him to be dead.
They come back.
I suck down deep, heaving breaths. I can’t imagine him coming back from what I just did. He looks like meat.
I force myself down the hallway, my head spinning. Oliver. Theo said Oliver was safe. Was he lying? I need to know for sure.
The sirens are getting louder.
“Oliver,” I rasp. I can barely hear myself. “Oliver!” I rasp again, louder. “Oliver! It’s me!” There’s a current of hysteria in my voice, and I hate that Oliver will probably hear it. “Please tell me you’re still here!” I scream.
I stumble down the hallway, kicking open the doors until I come to a room that seems to be Oliver’s: dinosaurs on the twin-sized bed, drawings taped all over the walls, a shelf of rocks in the corner. I sob again, because it’s so normal, and we destroyed that normalcy. Me and Theo.
“Oliver,” I call out weakly, and then I hear it. A sniffling from the closet.
I stumble toward it, hating that I’m leaving blood trails on the carpet, hating that any of this has happened. The closet door swings open before I get to it, though, and Oliver bursts out, his face pale and his eyes wide. There’s not a drop of blood on him. Not a single mark.
He screams when he sees me.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to sign the words, too. My hands don’t feel like they’re working properly. “I’m not hurt.”
“Theo?” He uses the special sign he made for him, and my chest squeezes tight. Theo’s the one he asks about? Not his parents? His brother?
The sirens scream outside the windows. Red and blue light floods through the room, staining Oliver’s face with color.
“Theo’s gone,” I say carefully.
Oliver looks at me.
And then he bursts into tears.
I don’t know what to do. I’m dripping blood on the lush carpet. I don’t know where it came from; I think it might be Theo’s. Police are shouting at each other outside. And Oliver’s weeping because I couldn’t protect him from a monster.
Because you killed the monster he thought would protect him.
“It’ll be okay,” I lie, kneeling down to pull Oliver into an embrace. He squeezes tight around me, his little arms like a noose around my neck, and I cling to him because the only thing I know I can do right now is keep him here, away from the bodies of his family.
Away from the body of Theo Shorn.
Something thumps downstairs, followed by a shout of, “Police! Keep your hands in the air!”
“Come here,” I whisper to Oliver, rising so I can step in front of him. He’s still sobbing, the sound a worse knife in my chest than anything else that’s happened. I lift my hands over my head. “In here!” I scream as loud as I can. “Upstairs!”
Voice spills from downstairs. So do shouts of horror and outrage. Footsteps echo on the stairs. “We’re unarmed!” I shout. “I have a child with me!”
The footsteps slow. A shadow passes over the door. The police lights flash red and blue across the wall, over and over, as one of the officers steps inside, his gun raised. I tense, but he lowers it when he sees us.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “What happened?”
“A madman,” I say, my voice shaky. I wish I could cover Oliver’s ears. Wish I could protect him from all of this in a way Theo didn’t see fit to do. “He’s down the hall. He’s—”
I can’t say it. Oliver wails, and the cop drops his gaze to him, his expression dark. I squeeze Oliver tight around the shoulders.
“He’s a ghost now.”