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I have to stop. I have to get it together. None of this matters now. I don’t want to die. I am not going to die. You have to move. The
whisper is urgent. Persistent. You have to move, and you have to move now.
I search the house, looking for a phone. Of course, I’m not that lucky. The only thing I find is a safe. No computer, no TV, no phone. Is that where he keeps it? Locked away? I know he has a cellphone. He said he’d been watching my house. Was it just another of his lies? I sink to the floor. I need to find keys, a car. I need to get out of this house. It would be stupid to walk out into the night in search of help. It’s getting dark, I have no idea where I am, or even which direction to drive, even if I can manage to locate Warren’s keys. This means I’m stuck here with his dead body until dawn unless by some miracle I manage to locate his cell. I pop two aspirin into my mouth and chase them down with a small amount of water. Ignoring the pain in my ankle, I stumble toward the bedroom and riffle through the drawers in search of clothes. It is not surprising to find that JC Warren is meticulous; everything is white and folded neatly, in identical fashion. I jostle through the clothing, looking for anything that might be hidden. In the end I find nothing, except for a pair of long johns, a baggy pair of men’s jeans, a flannel, and wool socks that are too large for my feet. In the closet, I find a row of TVs, each screen showing a different area of the house. The display provides me with a good view of the rest of the house, and, creepily, the room I was in, with cameras mounted at multiple angles, Warren had a shot of me from all sides.
There is a shot into the garage where the old truck is, a vintage Bronco as it turns out. If I can’t locate the keys, I may be able to hot wire it, an old trick my dad showed me once or twice, when my mother took his keys and refused to give them back. Those memories, situations that felt chaotic and awful at the time, now feel like a pot of gold at the end of a very shady rainbow.
When I scan the row of screens and locate the kitchen, my breath catches and hitches in my throat. Warren is not slumped over on the floor in the place that I left him.
Frantically, I scan the screens for movement. I see nothing. My knees grow weak and threaten to buckle.
Taking the fire iron from the dresser, I realize I have to make a decision. I have to take one or the other, but not both. The knife is too large, the blade too dangerous, to be stuffed into my pants.
I search the screens once more. There’s no sign of him. Not in any of the shots. I consider that my mind could be playing tricks on me. Ultimately, I know better. Likely, there’s a delay, and also, he would know how to avoid the cameras. I scan the images, going from room to room, trying to spot trails of blood. I’m just about to give up when I see it. In a bedroom down the hall, behind the door, a foot. He looks directly at the camera and flips the bird. Next thing I know, there are footsteps behind me. I can feel his breath on my neck. I catch a momentary glimpse of a handgun, almost as though he knew it would come to this. I swing at him, his fleshy barren face, lurching backward, his teeth bared. His eyeballs bulge, mere tissue in their sockets. They stare directly at me like an unspoken challenge.
Chapter Thirty-One
Charlotte
I swing the fire iron as he fires the gun. I don’t immediately realize that I have been hit—I am too busy swinging. I make contact with his head, landing a blow to his left temple. He goes down clutching the gun, but I do not give him a chance to aim or fire. Relentlessly, I strike him in the head again and again, until the walls are splattered with his blood and tufts of brain matter, reminiscent of the inside of a pumpkin, sticks to my arms and legs, and tiny bits of his skull are littered among the fibers of the carpet.
I don’t stop for a long time, until there’s almost nothing left of his head. My arms feel heavy and tired when I finally stop. They feel like jelly.
Nothing has ever felt more right than seeing his body there, his head obliterated. The nothingness in what’s left of his eyes.
It’s hard to know at first whose blood is whose, since I’m covered in it from head to toe. Adrenaline floods my system, and for the first time in days, I feel no pain.
This, as it turns out, is not a good thing. The fire iron falls to the floor, and I begin to feel lightheaded. The room feels a little off kilter, and suddenly I start to panic, shedding myself of the bloody clothes. It’s then that I see it: a small hole in my lower abdomen pumps out blood. I slink forward, bending over, clutching my waist. If I don’t do something, I very well could bleed out right here on this floor, next to this corpse. This is not how I want to die, not after everything.
I stumble to the bathroom, clutching my side, walking like the hunchback of Notre Dame. I search under the cabinets for a first aid kit, something with which to stop the bleeding, but find nothing save for a couple of towels and a roll of toilet paper.
Back to the bedroom I go, where I grab a shirt from his dresser and fold it, pressing it to the wound. All of a sudden, I am very cold, ceaselessly shivering, but also naked. In any case, it isn’t good.
Using a T-shirt and a roll of duct tape, I fix a makeshift bandage. I throw on another set of clothes and rummage through the kitchen, ultimately grabbing a handful of bottles of water, a loaf of bread, and a bunch of bananas.
The bananas are the last thing I remember before my whole world goes black.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Charlotte
When I come to, I am sprawled out on the marble floor. My head aches, and my vision is blurry. I’m certain I have suffered a concussion as a result of passing out and hitting the floor.
Terribly slowly, I pull myself over to a chair and slothfully manage to get myself to a seated position. From there, after several failed and painful attempts, I manage to stand.
It takes me an eternity, but eventually I stumble from the kitchen out to the garage, where I attempt to hot wire the Bronco. It takes the better part of two hours before I am forced to give up. I am too tired and too cold to go on.
If I’m going to die, there are worse places I can think of to do it.
Still, I know better than to fall asleep. I can’t be sure it won’t be a permanent situation. Fumbling through the sack of items from the kitchen, I open the loaf of bread and remove a slice, tearing the tiniest pieces, slipping them onto my tongue. I am not particularly hungry, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep me from losing consciousness. I need all of the energy and strength I can get. It’s then that I think of the IV back in the bedroom. If Warren had those supplies, he is bound to have others. Unfortunately, it’s too late to go back. I know I cannot summon the strength it would take to stumble back to the house and up those stairs. I would die trying. And I refuse to die in that house.
I hear a motor running, and I think I must be dreaming. When I open my eyes, beacons of light filter in through the garage door. When I look down, I can see that I have bled through the T-shirt.
“Hello?” I hear a voice call. “Warren?”
There’s a knocking sound, followed by a car door opening and shutting. I don’t have the energy to make it to the garage door opener attached to the wall on time. I hear the truck shift into reverse. I let my eyes close and drift off toward darkness. Suddenly, I am sitting in my father’s pickup truck in front of the county feed store. “I’ll just be a minute, peanut,” he says to me. “If anyone tries to get in, you just lay on the horn.”
My eyes shoot open, and I give everything left in me to pressing down on that horn.
