Page 110 of Nowhere Good

Maybe this was just a memory.

A light appeared. Shadows shapeshifted as a figure moved toward her, carrying an LED lantern. He looked like an alien. His torso was too tall. His limbs were too long. His face was nothing but a black splotch; a shadow man.

But she knew who he was.

The fear came on visceral and slow before it consumed her. She didn’t breathe.

Maybe if she didn’t move, he wouldn’t see her.

He wasn’t looking for her anyway. He moved toward the space beside her, beyond the bars. The light spread enough to illuminate another figure in the small brick room. They were slumped against the wall, unmoving. Denim overalls and a blue knitted turtleneck. Long hair, dark blonde, tangled and matted. Their head fell to the side at an unnatural angle, like it wasn’t even connected to the neck. The light drew closer.

Two empty eye sockets gaped back at her. A bony jaw, devoid of all flesh, hung open to reveal a full set of teeth.

And the figure had no skin.

A scream raked against Claire’s throat. She screamed more, hysterical, a burst of adrenaline giving her enough energy to scramble back, but she only pressed deeper into the bars behind her. She tried to scream again, but this time, nothing came out.

“Guess I don’t need this anymore,” her dad said. She watched in horror as he clasped something around the skeleton’s neck. A silver necklace with a butterfly pendant on it. “There we go. Right where it belongs.”

Claire’s hand slapped over her mouth as she stifled her sob. “It’s my mom. Oh, God, why is it my mom?”

But she already knew.

Some awareness returned through the foggy window panes of her memory. She couldn’t recall exactly what happened to bring her here, but she remembered her mom’s death. She remembered thinking her dad killed her. She just couldn’t prove it. Seth couldn’t prove it either.

Seth.

Dark blue eyes flashed in her mind before nausea speared through her stomach, into her throat. Somehow, she knew where to reach in the half-darkness, almost like she’d done this before. She must’ve, because the stomach acid that burned her esophagus fell onto a bucket of sloshing bile, the smell acrid in her nostrils.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” her dad crooned. “You don’t like what you see?”

“You… kept her,” Claire uttered, shoving the bucket aside. Her body was so weak. She slumped against the bars of the cage, much like the skeleton slumped against the wall. “Oh God, you kept her.”

Her dad’s joints crackled as he crouched in front of the bars and held the lantern up to his face, shifting his monstrous features. His irises were so light, they became ivory, blending with the whites of his eyes till he only had black, endless pupils. “Of course I kept ’er. I told your mother when she was alive that she’s mine. Always has been, always will be.”

Claire wanted to throw up again, but she had nothing left. She let her head fall back. This wasn’t really happening. Her mind was a cruel place, constructing cruel images from memory.

“You’re mine too, baby girl. I brought you into this world. Raised you on my dime, on the back of my daddy’s legacy. Now I get to decide how this ends. You always knew that was true, didn’t you, Claire Bear?”

“No,” she murmured. “No, no, no, this isn’t happening. It’s not real.”

“So why,” her dad continued, “did you think you could pull the stunts you pulled, huh? That’s the part that baffles me. I thought you were smarter than that, but you’re the same weak, defiant, pathetic little girl you’ve always been, and that’s why you’re here. Yet again, you are here.”

She forced herself to look at him. The stunt she pulled? He meant trying to sell him out, trying to get the cops involved, trying to tell… him.

Seth.

“No, I protected you. I knew… but I still never said the whole truth… I still thought… maybe I was wrong about you…”

“You didn’t protect me, sweetheart, you’d just never seen the truth, ’cause I didn’t trust ya. Rightfully so. I trusted your mother, and that turned into a big mess I had to contain too. Still, I gave you way too much freedom.” He stood up and left the lantern on the floor. The shadows danced over him, creating dark lines like the stripes of a tiger. “You should’ve lied, sweetheart. Maybe then someone would’ve listened.”

With a nod, her dad turned away.

“Go on, Dill,” he said, and only then did Claire notice the man tucked in the corner of the room. “Hit ’er again. The one thing Trevor was actually onto. It might just work.”

Dillon approached, awkwardly holding some tools. The bars creaked. Claire pinched her eyes shut. She wanted to run, to attack—she was sure she had before. She’d tried to fight back, and that must’ve been why her wrists were so sore. But she was too weak now. She felt her body being manipulated by familiar, callused hands.

Then, a pinprick around the inner part of her elbow, followed by a hot rush.