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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Twelve years prior…
age thirteen
The sky was dark. There were hardly any stars out, and the moon was hidden behind the clouds. The bonfire several feet away was our main source of light. It was quiet except for the croaking of some frogs and crackling of the fire.
We all stood on the bank with the lake behind us—me, Chandler, Lincoln, our fathers, and three strangers who were lined up on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs and a burlap sack over their heads.
My father stood behind the kneeling strangers. “Each of these people represents a burden that weighs on the world today. This man is poverty.” He placed his hand on top of the first man’s head, then pulled off the sack. I immediately recognized him as the same man I’d caught jacking off while he stared through the window of Tatum’s cabin earlier. I’d pulled her out of there and made her sleep in my cabin when I saw her tiny little panties in his hand. Who knew what sick things he wanted to do to her. There was no way I was leaving her alone.
Dad moved to the next person, obviously a woman. He held his hand on top of her head and removed her sack. She was thin with sunken-in cheekbones. She looked like a skeleton with skin. “She represents hunger.” The woman visibly trembled, and he moved over to the next guy, yanking the sack off his head. This one was older with silver hair that shone in the night. He was well-dressed and looked nothing like the other two. “This one represents greed.”
Chandler, Lincoln, and I shared a look that said we wanted nothing to do with whatever came next but knew we had no choice.
Dad moved to stand behind the three kneelers. The orange-red glow of the fire danced over his sharp features, making him look like a god among men.
Or a devil.
“It’s our job to rid the world of these burdens,” he continued, and the woman—Hunger—started to cry. Dad smoothed a hand over her dark hair as if he were trying to console her. We all knew he wasn’t.
Malcolm Huntington spoke up. “Every year, we each choose a problem we see in the world, a burden we want to focus on, a worry we want to banish. Our forefathers called these burdens our ‘cares.’ The rest of that year, we focus on that care. But on this night, Mischief Night, we begin with the desecration of a symbol, an effigy of that burden.”
A sacrifice.
They were going to kill these people.
Pierce Carmichael opened a small black chest. “Normally, this would be more of a sport, but being that you’re younger and this isn’t an actual ceremony but more of an initiation, we’re doing it a bit differently.”
A sport? What did he mean by “sport”?
The woman was sobbing. The silver-haired man had pissed his pants after he’d tried to crawl away, but my father kicked him hard in the gut. The pervert just kneeled there, his eyes black and his mouth in a snarl. Like he was mentally ripping us apart, piece by piece.
“Boys, tonight you will become men,” Dad said.
I swallowed hard. My pulse pounded in my ears. Realization hit me like a freight train.
They weren’t going to kill these people.
We were.
“Choose your weapons,” Pierce said as he nodded toward the open chest.
Chandler took the gun.
Lincoln picked up an axe.
I chose the knife.
We held our weapons like a group of skilled warriors instead of teenage boys. There was no fear on Lincoln or Chandler’s faces, just pure indignation. I recognized it because I felt it too. We would all change tonight. Our fathers had made sure of it.
I remembered when I was a toddler, barely learning to walk. My father took me out back to the pool and threw me in. I’d heard my mother scream, but Dad had simply stood there, waiting to see if I would swim or drown.
I swam.
I swam because even at a young age, I had to learn that in our world, you did what you had to do to survive. If you didn’t you would drown.
As we stood here, holding our weapons and staring death in the eye, I wondered if Chandler and Lincoln’s father had made them swim, too.
