Page 98 of The Dearly Departed

"Hey, hey, hey," I said gently, holding out my hands. "You’re all right, I promise. I’m not going to hurt either one of you, okay? I swear.”

Still, they sobbed, clutching each other as they cried for their mommy and daddy, but neither of them was on the way. Nobody was.

I hated being the one to bring them terror.

I hated that I’d brought them pain.

I would be the bogeyman in their nightmares forever, and how the fuck was I supposed to live with that?

Make it better. Try.

“Hey,” I said again, still speaking gently. “My name is Abraham. What’s yours?”

Finally, the older of the two spoke in a soft, trembling voice.

"C-Cora," she whispered before hiccupping. "This is my sister, Lara."

I nodded. "Those are pretty names. How old are you two?”

“Four,” Cora whispered. “My sister is two.”

"Sir?" Dean called down the stairs. "Are you all right?"

I deflated with a sigh, staring at the terrified eyes of the two innocents huddled beneath the stairs.

"Well, my leg's messed up," I answered.

“Bad?”

“I’m not really thinking about that right now, Dean.”

“What?” I could hear his frown.

“We have a situation down here.”

His feet were on the stairs in an instant, pounding against the unstable treads.

"What are you—" His words died in his throat as he followed the beam of the phone light and saw Marco's daughters, unable to take their wide-eyed stare from me. "Ah shit."

"Dean, this is Cora and Lara," I said. "Girls, this is my friend, Dean."

"W-why did y-you hurt Da-Daddy?" Lara asked me, tears streaming down her face.

I swallowed and hung my head, wishing I'd been more careful. Wishing I had known they were hiding here. I never would've killed him in that moment if I’d been aware. I would've gotten them away, out of the room. Let Dean do the dirty work for once while I made sure they saw or heard nothing.

"I'm sorry," I told them. "I didn't mean for that to happen."

"It was an accident?" Cora asked, the hope in her small voice piercing the place where my heart might’ve been if it still existed.

Dean cleared his throat from beside me, but I held up a gloved hand, stopping him from saying whatever stupid crap was floating around in his head.

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Something like that."

"Are you a bad man?"

I poked my cheek with my tongue, thinking of what to say to ease their worries, even just a little bit. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bad man, but I needed them to trust me. Nothing was going to happen to them; I would make sure of that. They were going to be all right, but in order for that to happen, I needed them to believe I was at least in some way good.

Finally, I replied, "Sometimes, I have to do bad things to protect people from other bad men."