Seed (21 page)

“There’s only one reason to board someone up in a room like that, and that’s because you’re afraid of them. Steve and Glenda were scared of their own boy, and they must have had a reason. They knew there was something wrong, that there was something dangerous about that child, so they locked him up like some animal, never expecting that he would get out of that room not just to escape, but to avenge his incarceration. Or maybe he did what he did to reassure them.”

“Reassure them?”

Ginny nodded. “Reassure them that they were right,” she said. “That he wasn’t human: that he was a demon.”

A shudder rang through Jack’s body like a bell. Every nerve hissed. His fingers bit into the arm rests of his chair as though he was being electrocuted—like an epileptic on the cusp of a grand mal. But instead of falling to the ground in a seizure or spewing vomitus across Ginny’s desk, Jack managed to fight the oppressive weight that pressed him down and stood.

“I can’t thank you enough,” he told her, but his tone told a different story. Ginny’s narrative had set him on edge. All he wanted to do was bolt for the door, to run as fast and as far as he could to the point of collapse, and then maybe crumple in front of a big rig as it blew past, too close for the driver to slam on his brakes, torn apart… limb from limb.

Ginny watched him walk to the door, then spoke just as he pulled it open to make his exit.

“I’m Rosewood’s local historical expert. You said it yourself,” she said. “That isn’t a story I like to tell very often. But you asked, and I did. So now I have a question for
you
.”

Jack already knew what it was. His mouth went dry. He felt his legs wobble, and for a moment he was sure that if she asked what he knew she was going to ask, he’d turn on her; tear her to pieces.

“Jack Winter,” she said. “Did you kill your parents?”

His heart drained of blood. For a half second he couldn’t catch his breath, sure he’d never breathe again. A spark of rage fired in the pit of his stomach, but it subsided quickly, and he managed to form a reply.

With his hand on the doorknob and his back to the woman who had destroyed his entire world, Jack eventually answered.

“I don’t know,” he croaked. “But I think I probably did.”

Chapter Fourteen

J
abbing the end of a stick into the soft earth, Charlie brooded as she paced the lawn. It was hot and she was bored, and Abby was just sitting there reading some stupid book. She narrowed her eyes. Had Abigail not been such a crybaby, they could have been at the animal shelter picking out a new dog. But instead they were stuck in front of the house with nothing to do. It was all Abigail’s fault.

Charlie threw the stick across the road as hard as she could. It spun through the air like a helicopter blade and disappeared into the trees that flanked the other side of the street. She exhaled a little gasp to garner her sister’s interest. It worked. Abby looked up from her book.

“Did you see that?” Charlie asked, wide-eyed with mock surprise.

“See what?”

“A possum!” Charlie said. Abby made a face. She looked less than impressed and looked back to her book a moment later. Charlie squeezed her hands into tight little fists at her sides. “It was across the street,” she continued. Her tone was animated with childlike excitement, but no expression touched her face. “I think it had babies on its back.”

That got Abby’s attention immediately. “Babies?” She blinked at the news. Closing her book, she dropped it beside the trunk of the tree and met her little sister next to the road. They both peered across the street, searching for a possum that didn’t exist.

“I bet Momma would let us adopt one,” Charlie said. “We just have to catch up to it.”

That made Abigail hesitate; she had read somewhere that possums were aggressive. Trying to steal a baby off a mother possum’s back was a dangerous proposition—but the risk was outweighed by the dazzling possibility of having a baby possum to call their own. It was such a weird idea that Abby was smitten by it. And even if they couldn’t get close enough, she at least wanted to see them before they disappeared into the woods.

Charlie smiled to herself while Abby toed the edge of that road. They stood there like lawn ornaments, searching the trees. Even the rumble of an old pickup didn’t distract them. A rusty red Ford approached, and Charlie’s fingers twitched. She gritted her teeth, her eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. The truck rambled closer, a good ten miles over the thirty mile per hour limit.

Charlie lifted a hand behind Abigail’s back. She pulled her arm backward, waiting for the perfect moment.

The truck grew louder as it approached, its engine sputtering beneath a peeling hood. It was close enough for Charlotte to make out the driver’s face—a bushy beard hung on to the driver’s chin, a tangle of hair stuffed beneath a brimmed cap.

The truck was screaming now, loud as a locomotive. Charlie reared back, but Abby turned toward her sister just as the pickup bounced by.

“Should we go look for it?” Abby asked. Life was trickling back into her face. For the first time since the accident, she looked genuinely excited.

Charlie’s arm dropped to her side just as Abby had turned, and while rage simmered in her veins, her expression was enthusiastic—an expression a normal child was expected to wear when adventure calls.

“Maybe we should go ask Mom,” Charlie suggested, but it was the last thing she meant to do; like she’d ask that bitch for permission to do anything. Abby shook her head at the idea.

“We’ve probably waited too long as it is,” she said. “If we wait any longer there’s no way we’ll ever catch up to it.” That’s when Abby grabbed her hand and pulled her across the street. Charlie dragged her feet, putting on a show of little sister jitters. Had Abby glanced over her shoulder, she would have spotted a sinister smile spread wide across Charlie’s mouth.

Jack sat in the car, engine off, windows rolled up. For a long while he considered disappearing the same way he had when he was fourteen. His entire body felt numb. If what Ginny had said was true, he should have remembered
something
—but all he could dredge up was running across the lawn, looking over his shoulder at their trailer, trying to outrun something unseen. He had always assumed he’d been running from his parents, but maybe it had been something else. Maybe he had seen something terrible. Maybe he was running because he had caught sight of himself.

It all began to run together. Details started to feel less and less important as exhaustion settled in. More powerful than hunger, more compelling than thirst, the need for sleep was more potent than the horror that swirled through his brain. He slouched in the driver’s seat and closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than an hour or two to doze, to recalibrate.

Less than ten minutes into his nap, his cell screamed as loud as a hurricane siren.

He didn’t get a chance to say hello. As soon as he picked up, Aimee’s frantic crying drummed against his ear. She was sobbing, choking on her words, trying to form sentences around the gasps catching in her throat. A sour sense of dread stirred in Jack’s stomach. He’d heard this panic before. This was his mother’s panic. This was the sound of Gilda trying to explain why Stephen needed to lock Jack away.

“Jack,” Aimee sobbed. “Jack, are you there?”

“I’m here,” he said, and she cried harder. He waited, knowing the news would leech out of her like a toxin.

“Abigail is gone,” she wept. “Jack, Charlie took her. Abigail is gone.”

Jack flew down the highway toward Louisiana. His foot mashed the gas pedal against the floorboard. The engine rumbled with a surprising amount of muscle, like a sleeping Formula One car that had been disguised as a boring family sedan its entire life. Jack was doing one hundred and ten along a two lane road, the double yellow line blurring into an arrow, pointing him in the right direction. Driving as fast as the Devil himself, he wondered how the car managed to stay on the road, how it hadn’t veered off onto an embankment where the police would find him, collapsed skull and ribs poking through his chest like the flayed bones of a fancy roast. The faster he drove the more clearly he could see the twists and turns ahead of him. It was like some sort of high-speed intuition, a racer’s third eye.

It was’t him. Jack was very aware that he wasn’t the one keeping that car on the road. He was just a passenger. Someone else was driving him home.

He made it back to Live Oak in five and a half hours instead of eight—all done without passing a single police officer or filling up the gas tank. When he pulled up to the house, the tank had been dry for a good thirty miles, but the Olds kept rolling. The street was lined with Louisiana State Troopers, their lights flashing red and blue in a surreal sort of silence.

Jack parked the Olds halfway on the lawn and left the driver door open, running up the porch steps and into the house. Aimee was on the couch, a box of tissues balanced on her knees. Her face was swollen, as though she’d just climbed out of the boxing ring. When she saw Jack step through the door, she abandoned the officer asking her questions and threw herself at him. Dismissing her anger, her betrayal, as soon as her arms were around him she exploded into a fit of choking sobs.

“They’re gone,” she shrieked. “She took her, I know she did!”

The police turned their attention to Jack. Spotting a calm, collected member of the family, they flocked to him like mosquitoes to stagnant water.

“Mister Winter?”

Jack pried Aimee off of himself despite her protests and led her back to the couch. She settled into quiet whimpering, fisting handfuls of tissues against her eyes.

“Mister Winter, are you aware of the situation?” the officer asked. His name was engraved on a shiny gold nametag clipped to the pocket of his starched shirt. Marvin.

“Yes.” Jack paused. “Sort of.”

“Mister Winter, your wife has informed us that both of your daughters are missing,” Marvin told him, shooting for a tone between sympathetic and professional. He wasn’t very good at it, and he looked a little unsure of himself as he stood there, rehashing what he knew. “It’s of my understanding that the girls are six and ten years of age, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Jack replied.

Cops wandered around the house, taking notes, chatting in low tones. Jack felt like a guy on a tiny island, sharks circling his little patch of land. His thoughts drifted to his own crime, worried that someone would recognize his first name. Why hadn’t the police found him? He had been a stupid kid, not hiding, not even knowing he had done anything wrong save for running away. It didn’t make sense.

It doesn’t have to make sense,
he told himself.
It doesn’t have anything to
do
with you.

“Your wife: she’s understandably beside herself,” Marvin said. “We’ve had a time getting her to cooperate with us.”

But maybe now they’d figure it out. They’d realize who he was—a murderer, a guy who hacked up his parents like cheap meat for a dog’s dinner. He was a psychopath. A lunatic. He’d be put away for life.

“Mister Winter?”

For life.

“Mister Winter, I understand this is a difficult situation, but the more information we get about your daughters, and the faster we do it-”

“Sorry.” Jack shook his head. “Sure, you’re right… I’m just a little freaked out.”

Marvin nodded, motioned for Jack to join him at the kitchen table. Jack took his usual seat while Marvin took Charlie’s chair: the chair that had skidded across the kitchen before tipping sideways, Mr. Scratch smiling a jagged smile, wearing Charlie’s face like a mask.

“Do you have any recent photos of the girls?” Marvin asked. There had been plenty of photos around the house when Jack had left—pictures of the girls playing in the yard, the girls sitting at the base of a Christmas tree at their grandparent’s house. His favorite had always rested atop his piano. It was photo of Charlie dressed in her rocker wear, singing ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ into a pink plastic microphone. Officer Marvin’s question told him that those pictures were no longer where they used to be.

“Give me a minute,” Jack said and excused himself, stepping into the master bedroom, assuming it was where Aimee had tossed all of those framed photos in a fit of panicky rage. But rather than finding a bed piled with family photographs, he found an empty shoe box instead. Beside it were the photos he’d been squirreling away over time, the photos he didn’t want Aimee to see. Those secret photos were scattered across the bed, mere shadows of what they had been, torn to shreds by an inconsolable mother who was spiraling into the depth of maternal despair.

Seeing his secret uncovered, rage boiled up within him. Aimee had crossed the line.
She knows
was all he could think. And Aimee knowing was against the rules.

Closing the door behind him, Jack returned to the kitchen table and drew out his wallet. He plucked a small photograph of the girls from the plastic sleeve that held his driver’s license and handed it over. Marvin hesitantly took it before posing another question.

“Anything bigger?” he asked, thumbing the tiny snapshot.

“We have plenty bigger,” Jack confessed. “But they all seem to be missing.”

Marvin looked confused and Jack nodded toward the living room, signaling that the whimpering woman in the opposite room was the culprit. Marvin had never come across such a reaction, but he nodded, placing the photo on the table next to his clipboard, resolving to make do with what he’d been given.

“Mister Winter, your wife… she’s in a bad way,” Marvin said, then paused, weighing his words. “She has, however, had her lucid moments.” Again he stalled, puckering his lips, searching for a delicate way to rephrase what Aimee had wailed at the police when they had arrived. “The first thing she said to us when we arrived was that your daughter, Abigail, had been abducted.”

Jack said nothing. He simply offered Marvin a faint nod of his head to continue.

“Then it turned out that it wasn’t just Abigail who was missing, but also your youngest, Charlotte.” Marvin was hitching like an old pickup with a bad spark plug. The words trickled out of him with painful reservation. Eventually, he exhaled a sigh and leveled his gaze on Jack, leaning forward, closing some of the distance between them to speak under his breath. “Mister Winter…”