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Brett paused, glancing at me. “Or a shade of wrong.” Like me. He was calling me wrong, and I prickled quietly while resisting my urge to tell him off. “It ain’t very fair to people like us, is it? Just because we’re born the way we’re born, because we think the way the think and feel the way we feel—or don’t feel—we’rethe bad ones.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I muttered.
“Of course not. How could you be? You’re the star of the show. You’re supposed to be the good one… but we both know you’re not good at all, so stop pretending like you are. You killed my cousin. You did whatever you could to get the upper hand, and then you killed him, and after you did, you set the scene. They had to identify him from his dental records.”
“I don’t care if they had to identify him from his dick size,” I said. “He deserved what he got, just like you’ll get yours, whether I give it to you or someone else does. It’s like you said back at the vigil: death’s coming for us all. Call me crazy, but I don’t think you’re going to live to see a natural death, Brett.”
He laughed, but it was a joyless sound, and I could tell he was barely holding himself back. “You’re cold. Do you know that? Ice fucking cold.”
I said nothing to that, turning my head to view the scenery passing by. Eastcreek was the kind of place that only had lights on the electrical poles where the intersections were, and even then, there weren’t many. For the longest time, it was like we were driving through the darkness, the shadows and night sky as our company. I think we passed a total of five cars coming from the opposite direction.
I didn’t know where we were going or what I’d see. I didn’t know who he could have, who had died at his hands as one lastfuck youto me. I didn’t want to die, but I knew this thing had to end, one way or another. It couldn’t go on like this forever.
After a long twenty-minute drive that felt more like an hour, we pulled off the road, onto a dirt driveway. I didn’t recognize where we were, though it was much harder to tell our location with how dark it was.
The dirt path seemed to last forever, and it was only after another five minutes we pulled up to a grassy clearing. Thanks to the headlights on the car, I could see an old barn in front of us, huge and forgotten, left to the sands of time, along with the field around it. The field itself was overgrown, nature reclaiming it bit by bit.
“The Dreary’s farm,” Brett said as he turned off his car, the light illuminating the outside of the barn turning off as well. “We did a lot of hunting here, as kids. The Drearys stopped farming years ago, and they refused to sell their land to the Montgomerys. They don’t even check on their land anymore. Stubborn old kooks.” He leaned back in his seat, his head slow to face me. “Get out and walk towards the door.” His tone had changed, hardening. There would be no arguing with him.
My hand went for the door handle, and I measuredly threw it open. The night air was much colder than it had been at the vigil, and as I got out of the car, I shivered. My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, though the moon over my head helped some.
The barn, with its numerous pieces of missing and rotten wood, looked as though it belonged in a horror movie. So in that way, I guess it fit. If this wasn’t a real-life horror movie, I didn’t know what would be. With people like me and Brett, like Gareth and Alistair and Rick… what was it, if not horror?
I took a step towards the barn door, like Brett had instructed.
Cue the music. It’s the final countdown.
Chapter Seventeen – Brianna
The wood of the barn door looked like it hadn’t been painted in decades. How long exactly it had sat here, untouched, was beyond me, but it had to be a while. Long enough that Brett felt comfortable storing a body here and bringing me here to show me.
Brett had gotten out of the car and strolled alongside me to the door, and once we reached it, he tossed me a grin and pulled it open enough so that we could slip inside.
Stepping inside was like stepping into the heart of darkness. Though part of the roof was missing and silver moonlight streamed in through it, it wasn’t enough to illuminate the inside of the barn. Not at all. I couldn’t see a thing once I walked in.
And then it hit me. The smell.
It was the kind of smell that was hard to describe, a smell I’d never had the misfortune of inhaling through my nose, a smell so strong you could taste it when you attempted to breathe through your mouth. As new as the smell was to me, my reaction to it was instinctual, something built into my brain, hardwired into me so I’d recognize it.
Death. Not the metallic twang blood gave the air when it was spilled in spades. A thousand times worse than that. Rot. Decay. Desecration. The smell of death, putrid and vile, so inherently disgusting it made me take a step back and ram myself right into Brett’s chest.
I gagged the moment the smell registered in my brain, and I just barely stopped myself from doubling over and throwing up.
“Yeah, sorry about the smell. There’s no electricity here, so I had to work fast.” Brett moved through the darkness with efficiency, telling me he was used to this place. He must’ve hit something, a switch on some battery-powered light, because after that, a bright white light illuminated the entire barn, coming from one of its corners.
I didn’t watch Brett as he returned to my side, nor did I fight him as he gripped my shoulders and pushed me forward. No, all I could do was stare at the covered object before me. A thick tarp covered it, but based on the smell and the size of the hidden object underneath it, I knew what it was.
A body.
So this wasn’t where he’d kept the other bodies, unless he’d kept them alive and killed them right before dumping them, so they’d stay fresh. But… no, that wouldn’t work, because Neo had basically told me they were dead.
And that meant this wasn’t his home base.
“Are you ready?” Brett asked, stopping me just five feet before the covered figure. I saw two lines of rope emerging from beneath the tarp, each rope tied tightly to a beam on either side of the barn. We stood in front of the light source, so he moved us aside to let the light shine unobstructed upon the tarp and the impending reveal. “This one is for you. All for you, Brianna.”
He couldn’t have gotten ahold of Gareth, could he have? No, Alistair wouldn’t allow it, and neither would Rick.
Brett moved around me, careful to avoid stepping in line with the light. He strolled over to the tarp and worked on undoing it. I saw then that both sides of the tarp were fixed to the rope, not hanging over the body it covered.
