Chapter Three
“Look at me.”
My father’s words are sharp. They slice through the walls and echo behind the thin plasterboard.
Today is my fifteenth birthday and instead of meeting Harlen at the river like I’d planned, I am in Jade’s room peeking through a small sliver I’d managed to crack at her door.
The beat of pop music filters out of a small second-hand set of speakers I’d stolen for her a year ago from our local thrift store. It acts as background noise for what is driving the grisly tempo beyond the safety of this door.
Our father is shit-faced again. And like every other day, his temper has flared.
This wasn’t unusual for him, he was a sloppy drunk, and an asshole at that, apparently the same way our grandfather had been.
But today, the depth of his wrath clung to the air differently.
Ominously. And the bones in my legs have grown rigid, as if each limb has moved into rigor mortis.
I blink through the hollow gap and watch my father curl his grease-stained fingers around my mother’s petite jaw, his handprint already purpling on her right cheek.
High pitched cries rattle through my mother’s chest, her shoulders shaking as she fights the force at her chin. Her hands at his wrists, broken nails attempting a desperate crawl beneath his steely grip.
My father holds her tighter though, pressing his forehead to hers, oscillating it toward her temple and back again. His filthy dark hair hangs limp, dripping sweat over her ashen face. And my mother squirms, hits and kicks, only for him to dig his fingers deeper.
“P-p-p-please, Jack, I can make this better.” Her voice quivers on a stutter, and my stomach coils, bile shooting up the back of my throat.
She was always trying to make things better, to placate him.
“Please, let me make this better,” she begs.
But to my father, her entreaty was a short stretch.
He reels his fist backward and punches her in the face, silencing her pleading cry.
His wife, the woman that carried and birthed his children—my mother—stumbles, then falls like a weightless domino, her temple cracking and bouncing off the timber floor, and I silence a gasp, biting into my bicep.
Jack Keller stands above her and scoffs.
It’s a dirty, filthy sound.
It boils my blood. With a hold on my breath, I step forward, ready to barrel through the door, only to take another two back when my father does the same, pushing forward, spitting on her.
“Fucking cunt.” He’s dragging his mouth across his arm, crouching down, his knees cracking.
He rests at my mother’s stirring, helpless side. She is groaning, pressing her palms flush against the blood-speckled floor when she tries to push herself up and away from him, failing, only to try again. And as she struggles, blinking, he remains perched over her, laughing uncontrollably.
My pulse is thundering in my ears, and I feel myself slipping into a trance-like state.
The kind that pushes the boundaries of black and white, leaving you lingering among a shadow of gray.
And when she falls back down, unmoving, her body weightless, my father grips her by the back of her hair and wrenches her upward.
He isn’t laughing anymore.
“Look what you made me do, you stupid bitch!” He wraps her hair around his knuckles and begins to drag her across the floor, deeper into the living room. Because he wasn’t done yet, he never was.
She tugs and rips and tears at his arms, an attempt to alleviate the pain that would be blasting across her scalp. It’s only when she gets her nails into him, pulling toward his elbow, that he stops.
A chill chases through me, goosebumps flaring across my skin. I feel like I’m going to be sick, and yet, I can’t stop watching.
My father is eerily calm, even though the skin at his knuckles has turned a stark white. He drags my mother beneath him. She’s on her knees, trying to get to her feet but he slaps her again, catches her, then uses the same hand to unbuckle the tattered belt from the loops of his dark denim jeans.
“Not now, Jack, please, not now. Wait until the kids l-l-leave,” her words are desperate and quiet.
My father doesn’t hear them though because he doesn’t stop. He rips the fake leather free and wraps a loop around my mother’s neck.
It’s then that I press my eyes closed.
I’d always known my father was a bad person, the kind that should be locked away, to never see the light of day.
But he had everyone fooled. The town of Devil’s Peak thought he was a loving husband, caring father and great colleague, yet behind closed doors, he was a monster.
And today, the violent buzz vibrating from him reeked only of selfishness and cruelty.
Today would end differently, unless I did what I should have done the first time I watched him lay a finger on my mom. Only, I couldn’t do what I needed to with my sister still in the house. Jade was twelve, almost thirteen, and she had already seen too much.
A small, warm hand catches the skin of my shoulder and I flinch, spinning around. I’m sitting on the edge of adrenaline, my pulse thumping out of my flesh. It takes me a moment to clear my vision, to see her standing in front of me.
“Chase, what is going on?” Jade asks, her urgent eyes seeking what’s behind me, behind the door, lying on the living room floor.
I suck on my front teeth, a chill trickling down my spine. I reach to close the gap between me and the door, then I shift toward my younger sister and crouch to eye level.
“Hey, I need you to do me a favor.” I feel like I’m talking through water, both of my hands desperately latching onto her thin biceps.
She shakes her head, then groans, “If it’s cleaning up your room again…I’m…” She pauses, looks down at my grip on her. “Chase, you-you’re hurting m-me.”
“Fuck,” I spit, letting go. “I didn’t mean—”
She cuts me off, smiles sadly. “I know.”
I take her arms again, this time, much more gently. “I need you to climb out the window and go to the shed, then I need you to count to five-thousand and if I’m not there by the time you reach it, go next door, okay?”
Jade crosses her arms and rolls her bright blue eyes. “I’m not ten any—”
She was ready to whine but when the sound of choking slips beneath the door, she flinches, eyes widening with fright.
“You hear me?” I ask, pinching her arms a little tighter as she stares over my head. “Go to the shed, count to five-thousand, if I’m not there—”
But she hasn’t taken her eyes from the door. “Chase…I’m scared…for her,” she admits, speaking over me.
And her truth silences me, then sparks pain through every synapse. Because so was I.
I pull her into my chest. I don’t say anything.
Jade begins to tremble and it almost kills me.
Another thud comes from behind the door, then a crash.
“You ready?” I ask, my eyes widening.
She nods, then reaches out, her hand pulling at my bright red hoodie. My eyes follow the movement, then flick back to hers, confused.
“Can I wear it?” she whispers.
I jerk my chin toward her chest of drawers. “Grab one of your—”
She cuts me off, a tear rolling down her cheek. “No,” she sobs. “I need to wear yours. I need to know you’ll come back for it.”
Then, my heart snaps in two.
I tear the fabric away from my body and pull it down over her head. She slips her thin arms in, pushing the cotton to the bends of her bony elbows. It’s huge on her, it swallows her whole.
“Alright, go.” I spin her around by her shoulders, guiding her toward the window.
She’s through it before I can blink, only before she runs, she turns back, her blue eyes latching onto mine. “Hey, Chase. Is she going to be okay?”
A spider of fear skitters across my arms.
I hope so.
Dark clouds muscle in, sliding over the sky, the rumble of thunder in the distance, an ominous picture and terrifying track of how I’m feeling on the inside.
I shiver again.
“Yes…” My voice comes out in a whisper.
And Jade nods and takes off toward the shed, and I clench my teeth when they begin to chatter.
The ache inside my chest only deepens as I watch my sister put distance between her and this fucked up, crying house.
But then, I force myself to move, to take a step back, toward the bedroom door, my fingers curling around the handle that hangs from its hinges.
I prop it open and peek around the edge, into the living room.
My mother’s long dark curls are sticky and wet, trailing down her back. She’s drenched, it’s as if he’s poured something on her, pissed on her. The stench of urine hits my nose. It makes me gag. I press a palm to my mouth.
I watch Mom fade in and out of consciousness as my father loosens the belt at her neck and steps away.
His hands are dripping with a mixture of their blood as he lifts his arms, rubs his forehead into the ditch of his elbow before taking his gray singlet and wiping it across his crimson-splattered face and turning around.
“You must like it when I hurt you, Heather. It’s like you’re begging for it.”
My mother falls to her side, defeated, both hands clasping where the belt lay around her throat. “You’re fucking delusional,” she rasps so quietly, but I heard it, and so did he.
I start to creep out of the room, only to pause, slipping back in when my father spins and hauls a beer bottle at her knees.
The translucent green glass shatters around her and she screams, only she’s silenced when he storms toward her and yanks at the belt around her throat.
Her legs splay out and she’s on her stomach before she can try to fight him.
He drags her over the broken shards of glass and the howls that erupt from my mother are cataclysmic.
Tiny fragments of glass embed themselves into her bruised skin.
And I know…I’m running out of time.
“I saw you talking to Harvey.” Harvey is Colton James’ father, Deputy Chief Officer James. “Batting your fucking eyelids at him.” He scoffs, shakes his head. “Once a cheap cunt, always a cheap cunt, huh?”
My father’s possessiveness would put my mother in an early grave if I didn’t hurry.