I suddenly remembered the dead girl’s name. Stephanie. That night on the trail, I had thought by saving Brooklyn, I could atone for not doing more to help Stephanie. I thought I could make up for those fights I’d picked in high school and the hell I’d put my dad through. For not being there for Sam. But the truth was I should have let Brooklyn die. I should have saved Stephanie, but I should have let Carver have Brooklyn.
Brooklyn turned to Damon. “Make sure the kid’s secure, then get rid of Sam’s body.”
Damon did as he was told. I heard a car start. I tried not to imagine Sam’s body in its trunk.
It was just me and Brooklyn now, but too much distance stretched between us for me to grab the gun.
I let Brooklyn usher me out the door, leaving Leo alone in the house. Giving me time to think. Figure a way out of this. Brooklyn walked me back the way I had arrived on the property. The moon caught the drops of dew on the grass so the blades looked like chips of ice.
She sped up, forcing me forward, and I recognized her purpose. We were headed for the valley oak at the edge of the property.
I had noticed the tree upon entering, but I had been too distracted to fully grasp its size. The oak must have been several hundred years old, its trunk broad and its limbs reaching a hundred feet into the air. As we drew closer, the limbs filtered much of the moonlight.
The earth changed here, too, grass becoming weeds. I recognized some of them: the three-petaled tarweed with its sticky leaves, the hairless stems of what I suspected was nutsedge. But most of what grew here had been too trampled to identify, ground into a tangle of leaves, stalk, and stem.
Within the spears of light beneath the valley oak, there was only dirt.
On my death walk, I noticed it all. I gulped the air, crisp and sweet, filling my lungs to the point of pain. I teetered on the edge of hyperventilating. But I could not allow myself that weakness. I looked for an opportunity. I saw none.
At least every step I took with her was a step away from my son. With Brooklyn occupied with me, and Damon disposing of Sam’s body, if Leo regained consciousness, maybe . . .
Brooklyn continued to herd me, and though she didn’t speak, I heard her breath. Fast. Excited. Reveling in a moment she had probably spent a long time imagining.
The dark sky, the oak, and this woman all brought me back to that first night on the trail. I tortured myself with every choice I had made, that night and since. In hindsight, I would do so much differently, but I didn’t think I could have stopped this. I was no more in control than the zebra herded into ambush by a pair of hunting lions.
I hated being that zebra. What could I do now that would save me, and save Leo? But she had me, at least for the moment, and she walked with the confidence of someone who knew it. Even if I managed to overpower her, it had never been my mortality that terrified me. Even if I escaped, it would be pointless if I couldn’t make it back to the house to save my son, or allow him the time to save himself.
“You won’t hurt him?” I asked, the question catching in my throat.
“No,” she said.
We both recognized the lie.
In her excitement, Brooklyn had allowed the gap between us to narrow. I slowed to bring her even closer.
Then in the shadows beyond the oak, a nightmare took form. On the ground, a hole. It was impossible to misconstrue its purpose—the rough rectangle stretched as long as a human body. My body.
Though I hadn’t measured it, I instinctively knew the dimensions were just about perfect. Labor hadn’t been wasted to construct a grave larger than I needed.
We stopped beside the hole and she stepped in front of me so that we faced one another. Comfortable with her leverage, she nevertheless put nearly ten feet between us, and between her and the edge of the grave. So, unfortunately, she wouldn’t fall in and save me the trouble of breaking her neck.
“This is where we gardened,” she said. “Dee and me.” She kicked a clod of dirt in the direction of the grave. “You know why we’re here, right? I’d hate for you not to know.”
I thought of what Red had told me about the night he had taken me from this place.
“You’re angry because I escaped this place and you didn’t.”
Her face tensed, her voice angry. “You didn’t escape,” she said. “You didn’t make a decision and walk away. You were chosen.”
As a toddler, I had no role in what happened back then, but such arguments wouldn’t serve me now. My captor was beyond appeasing.
“She made me bury my dog here,” Brooklyn said.
“That story you told me about Hannah’s abuse. That wasn’t her story. It was yours.”
The photos of Natalie she had shown me too: those had been hers, not Carver’s. She had witnessed my repulsion at seeing Natalie’s broken body even as she planned the same fate for me.
She glanced at the mound of dirt beside the hole, and her eyes glazed. For a couple of heartbeats, she disappeared into the past, and my foot slid forward. But before I could take another step, her eyes slid back to me.
“Dee was never very good at keeping her pets alive,” Brooklyn said. “Did you know they found Jerusalem crickets in Natalie’s grave? In the newspapers, they mentioned how she broke her fingers trying to escape, but they never mentioned the bites. Hundreds of them, according to Dee. She used to joke that when the police pulled Natalie from the ground, it looked like she had a bad case of chicken pox.
“But even if Dee killed her, Carver deserved prison for abandoning her like that. He deserved worse.”
I heard something then. The scratching of a small animal. I thought of all the creatures that lived here, creatures my corpse would soon feed, and my stomach turned.
“I think it’s time,” she said. “We haven’t dug Leo’s grave yet, so I’ll have to get Damon on that.”
Yet? My mind stumbled on that word.
I had hoped to disable her and, barring that, I had expected a bullet. I had hoped that with me dead, she would have no reason to kill Leo. Too late, I realized a quick death had never been her plan, for me or my son. Pinned beneath the earth, I would die as Natalie had died, but only after she killed Leo.
From behind, two hands shoved me, hard, on my back. I tumbled face-first into the perfectly sized grave.
46
I wasn’t alone in the box. I felt them, even as I heard their scuttling against the wood.
I probed the edges of the box, pushing against the lid even though I knew it wouldn’t open. There were a few small holes, but they were plugged with dirt, and the earth piled on the box would hold the lid in place as certainly as concrete. I took inventory of my pockets, but apparently I had left my coffin-opener in my other pants. I wished for the scissors Carver had stolen from me. Then again, they had done him no good either.
I felt them again—the bugs. Hard little shells grazed my calf as several of them breached my pant leg.
I closed my mouth and screwed my eyes shut. There was nothing I could do to safeguard my thrumming ears.
The scouting party reached my knees. How many? Five? Six? I pressed my thighs together. I thought of Natalie being buried in a grave like this one, her skin covered in bite marks. My chest grew tight, my skin slick. I struggled to breathe, and this reminded me that my nose was exposed too.