That might have something more to do with the bodies hidden in the walls than my inability to clean. My mother said I needed friends, and to her warped and twisted mind, dead friends were better than no friends.
I stop recalling her brushing the hair of a little girl who wasn’t much younger than me before placing her into the wall of my room when the creak of a door being roughly yanked open sounds through my ears. Charles is standing at the foot of the entryway. He is next to a shovel and tarp that wasn’t there earlier, and his expression is somewhat confused.
“What did I tell you, sweetie? Coming back here won’t do you any good.” He steps out of the doorway, closes it behind him, then peers up at a window on the top level. When the light switches off, he shifts his focus back to me. “If you scare his little pet, he’ll be even harder on you.” He nudges his head in the direction I just sprinted from. “Now go on, get back out there.”
Recalling Dexter’s demand for me to bring him out of hiding, I shake my head then stomp down my foot, wordlessly announcing that I’m not budging unless forced.
Guilt creeps into my veins when Charles hesitates for the quickest second before he steps closer to me. He seemed kind while taking me out into the forest to be hunted. He laid a blanket down for me and loosened the water bottle’s lid so I wouldn’t struggle, but that doesn’t excuse the fact he drugged me before he left me to fend for myself. And it most certainly doesn’t justify Dexter’s claim that he knew his father was going to force him to watch me be assaulted.
Dexter said Charles is his father’s right-hand man. He knows everything bad he does, and more times than not, he encourages more violence. Dexter’s father likes to show off.
My father was the same. That’s why he let the men take my mother into her room when she didn’t want to go. He said he was sharing as all good little girls should. It made my skin crawl when he said comments like that, but since the winds whipping up through the floorboards hid my shivers, he never knew how much his comments scared me.
“You need to go back. Defying him will only make your punishment worse.” A grin curls on Charles’s lips when his eyes drop to the smear of blood on my knee. It isn’t a nice smile. It’s vindictive and cold, and it has me desperate to slide my switchblade across his jugular like I did his master only hours earlier.
The only reason I don’t is because within a nanosecond of gripping my arm, he marches me straight in the direction Dexter is lying in wait. “If you do as you’re told, he will let you live. He has a pet in training, and you’ll be a good reminder to her of what happens if she doesn’t follow therules...” He chokes on his last word when our entrance into the stable-like building sees him confronted with the image of his master lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. “What did you do, and where is Moose—”
His words are interrupted for the second time. This time, it is compliments to Dexter bracing the barrel of a gun at the back of his head. “So you did know what he was planning to do?” Charles shakes his head, which switches Dexter’s tone from manic to downright enraged. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Charles! He doesn’t hunt when he has a pet already on the hook, especially when she looksexactlylike my mother. He parades women in front of her, shows her what disobedience costs, then fucks their almost-corpse in front of her.” His finger inches back the trigger with each word he speaks. “The game hasn’t changed since I was a kid. Only his victims altered.” He walks in a circle until he is standing in front of Charles. “Because he already fucked my head, he switched his cruel tactics to women.”
“He taught you how to survive—”
“He taught me how to hate!” Dexter screams in Charles’s face. “How to maim, cheat, and steal! He taught me how to be heartless enough to kill a man while staring into his eyes and not feel an ounce of remorse.”
“Dexter—” Anything further Charles is planning to say is cut off by the boom of a bullet racing out of a gun. It lodges deep into his skull, stunning him so much, he remains standing for almost three whole seconds before he eventually slumps to the ground with a thud.
twenty-four
DEXTER
As the smell of a recently fired gun lingers in the air, a sense of calm washes over me. I thought my head was muddled from the drugs my mother forced down my throat during my prepubescent years and the nightmares that used to keep me awake in my teens were just that, nightmares, but the more the cloak of sedation wears off, the more I realize I was played for a fool.
He maimed me.
He manipulated me.
And now, the man who groomed my father so he knew exactly how to groom me will be buried in the same shallow grave as him.
My father is classed as a national treasure. He would have had a state funeral that would have seen the who’s who of Hollywood elite in attendance, but now, once I expose him as the monster he truly was, there will be no one at his grave. Not even the man he once called son.
“Grab his legs. We need to move him closer since half of his face exploded.”
Megan grimaces for the quickest second before she hoists Charles off the ground by his legs and assists me in moving him closer to my father. If her strength wasn’t already an aphrodisiac, seeing her scoop up remnants of his brain and dump them next to his no longer recognizable face surely is.
She is a fucking skitzo with no sense of morality.
A perfect little doll for me to keep for eternity.
Megan’s eyes light up like a Christmas tree when I say, “Should we burn this place down too?” After winking at her eagerness, I add, “It will make the process of identification harder but their trip to hell faster.”
She moves for the gasoline tins at the back of the stables before all my reply leaves my mouth. She wasn’t as eager at the hotel because she was worried about sleeping guests getting caught in the flames, but out here, she has no concerns. Anyone here deserves to die, and if they don’t, they’d be wishing they were dead anyway.
In a way, we’re being humane.
Once the barn is well lit, we make our way to the manor. We’re far enough out that by the time flames are noticed, it will be too late to salvage anything. But the quicker we commence this half of our ruse, the faster some of the anger burning me alive will subside. I’m not a man known for dallying, so you can imagine how frustrating the past several years locked up in a mental hospital have been.
My wings are finally expanding, and Megan will soon learn that hers weren’t hacked off years ago. They were merely clipped.
“Grab anything you need for a couple of nights on the road. It’s a long drive from here to Ravenshoe when you have to take all the back streets.”
