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I don’t want to lie to myself anymore…
“No, no, no…” I whisper, covering my hands with my mouth.
It can’t be. It’s impossible.
Isn’t it?
I could stop right now. Call the cops. Call Dane, even.
But I’m not going to do that. The day of reckoning has come…and I’m finally ready to meet it.
Leaving the boots and the shovel, I exit through the back kitchen door.
Chunks of mud trail down the steps and across the garden. A pair of drag marks furrow the dirt, leading into the woods.
I could follow the mud and the drag marks.
It’s almost like they were left there on purpose, like breadcrumbs…
I even have a pretty good idea of what I’d find at the end.
Instead, I turn and gaze across the garden at the sagging shape of my uncle’s old work shed.
I haven’t gone in there once since we came to Grimstone.
At least…not that I remember.
The barn looms up in the dark, weeds choking the path to the entrance, that strange, unsettling smell leaking out from the gaps between the boards.
The wooden doors groan on their hinges, releasing a gust of fetid air as I step inside the stuffy space. Spiderwebs tickle the back of my hand when I grope for the light switch.
The light flickers on, revealing a jumbled space stuffed floor to ceiling with junk. The towering piles of trash lean against each other, old bicycles and machinery, stacks of books and magazines and newspapers, broken lanterns, rusted saws, camping tents, even a canoe balanced on its nose.
Jude hasn’t cleaned this place out at all, not one bit.
And if I’m honest with myself…I knew he wasn’t working on it.
Traps dangle from the rafters—coil spring traps, the type you step on that close around your ankle like teeth, raccoon traps that look like a collar and chain, and small cages with doors that slam shut.
The traps are the source of the smell, or part of it, anyway—the clinging bits of bloody fur give me a pretty good idea of why so many pets have been disappearing from Grimstone.
And maybe something bigger, too…I stare with horror at a bear trap with dark blood crusted on its teeth.
The far wall is papered with drawings—strange, disturbing scribbles of eyes and mouths, of moth wings, and dismembered limbs. Pages of bizarre poetry. And mixed in, my furniture designs, torn from my notebook—pinned up with everything else like the mad ramblings of a seriously fucked-up brain.
“Remi?” a voice says behind me.
My brother steps inside the shed. He’s wearing his pajamas, hair rumpled like he just woke up.
“The kitchen’s flooded again…” He looks around the workshop, blinking like he’s confused. “What’s all this?”
“You tell me.”
Jude tilts his head, regarding the drawings on the wall.
“What do you mean?” His voice is strangely flat. “That looks like your handwriting to me.”
The funny thing is, itdoeslook like my handwriting.
