AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Suddenly the tension made sense, the way she had been looking at Kyrie, the way she had mourned the disappearance of Amber. Someone she cared for, maybe even loved.
I walked to the stall door, placing my hand on it. “Fuck, Nicole. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that what—”
“Just please go away, Nicholas. Please. I’ve been handling it this way. Alone. If you tell them …”
I pressed my forehead to the stall door. “I won’t. We’ll find a way to … don’t worry. I won’t say anything.” It wasn’t my secret to tell, and anything she knew, I’d tell them I got the information somewhere else. I’d lie. I’d figure out a way to lie for her.
I’d lie for Nicole, and I’d try to save Kyrie from her fears—I’d keep them there with me, as long as I could.
TWENTY-EIGHT
She’d been a healthy meal. Drawn out, as always, until her parents’ grief had been so exquisite the Deacon knew it was time to end the suffering.
He’d wanted Valerie to do it—to take the life, he thought the magic of making Amber’s face look like Valerie’s foster sister would do it. But Valerie had been too long in the fire. The ranch had been a holding cell, a place for Nicholas to build his mocking, impenetrable rage and a home for Valerie to remain untouched. He’d planted fear into their minds. The men at the ranch knew never to touch Valerie. She thought it was her deformity. But it was the Deacon’s will.
She was the red virgin, a missing piece in his ascension. The reds were few, and they were always unique to him. It was why Sorina was so special to him—why he let her out, let her pretend she was fighting him, carrying out her ill-fated plans. You should let your children play.
And the townspeople were precisely that. His children. His little lambs.
It was a disappointment, the way Valerie had run out. But then she came back—they almost always came back.
And he’d ushered her into his home with open arms. The seed had been planted, and he saw the fire in her eyes dim. Now he just needed her to bring the boy with her. Bring him into the home, into the family. He didn’t want to drag him kicking and screaming. There was no fun in that. He wanted the chase to be real to the boy. He wanted him to nip at Sorina’s feet with delight. Right now he was only playing. And children shouldn’t play with their food.
He hadn’t wanted to tear Amber’s limbs from her body that night as she screamed in the dark. But Sorina had pushed him. He’d grown bored with her circling, her playtime in the water, her stalking of the cave entrance.
She could not get in.
The way was barred, but she liked to taunt him. And she liked to offer the girl promises she couldn’t keep. So he’d stared into Sorina’s eyes as he ripped the girl’s flesh apart. Tore and drank and smiled as Sorina thrashed at the entrance, forever barred until she could be good.
And she was never good. Not the way Valerie would be.
The funeral for Amber Hughes took place on a Sunday at the Holman Howe Funeral Home. The only funeral home in Hart Hollow. And her body was laid to rest, not at the cemetery near the woods by her father’s church, but in town at the Steele Memorial Cemetery.
Amber’s mother and father had fit in nicely in his small congregation.
The weight of leading his flock at the Hart Hollow Free Will Baptist Church was lifted from the pastor, and the grief had lessened. That’s how the Deacon knew it was time. Time to end their daughter’s life and renew the grey feeling of hollowness in their eyes.
They’d wept in the Deacon’s small, round church. They’d cried on his lawn. And he took them in. Fed them with Valerie by his side.
And when he ushered the pastor into the confessional, every ill thought he’d planted into the man spilled forth. The way he’d touched his daughter. The way he’d sinned. The way he’d strayed from the path.This was my punishment, he’d said. And the Deacon offered him forgiveness. Afterward, he held the hands of the Hughes and planted new seeds. They would pack up. They would move away and start over. He didn’t need their hollow shells. He didn’t need their gaunt faces in his church. He needed fresh meat. He needed a new family to take the mantel of the Hart Hollow Free Will Baptist Church. He needed new guards at each point of the cross.
TWENTY-NINE
Life had a way of going on despite tragedy. It was something I knew innately, a reality I cursed when my body and mind were used on the ranch. Each morning after, the sun would shine. There would be birds singing, and there would be smiles—even from the most desolate souls.
That’s how life went on in Hart Hollow. There was a funeral for Amber Hughes. I did not attend, though my friends did.
It felt wrong to show up, to mourn a girl who was nothing more than a face on a grocery store flyer.
I mourned future ills, my dreams and manifestations.
I mourned Sorina, who did not come back to school.
I mourned Nicole, who mourned in silence.
And I mourned Valerie, who rarely came home, leaving our shallow dance at family in the past.
Amber was not laid to rest in the cemetery near her father’s church.
