A knee slammed into my back, taking me down. I hit the gravel hard, my palms skidding across the small, sharp stones, ripping open my skin. Sudden pressure smashed my face down. Pain laced across my cheek.
“I should kill you now,” he seethed into my ear. Reaching up, he gripped my arm. “I told you to behave. I doubt it was that hard to understand.”
I tried to resist, but he overpowered me with brute strength. He wrenched my arm back, tucking under his knee against my lower back. His fingers dug into my other wrist and then both arms were pinned behind my back. The slap of cold steel around my wrists caused my stomach to churn with panic.
He hauled me onto my feet, roughly turning me around. Pain exploded along my jaw, knocking me back. My knees gave out under the shock. Blood pooled in my mouth. Dimly, I was aware that he had hit me.
Shaw lifted me up, dragging me toward the back steps with his hand over my mouth. He fished out a key. The hinges groaned as he opened the door and then shoved me inside. With my hands secured behind me, I lost my balance and went down on the kitchen tile.
Closing and locking the door behind him, his boots pounded off the floor as he then approached me. He got a handful of hair, hauling me onto my feet. “Does it look like you remember?”
My eyes darted around the kitchen. With the exception of a table and two chairs, it was bare. “No.” My jaw ached around the word.
“Yeah, because a family used to live here.” He led me forward, his hand wrapping tightly around my forearm. “A mother and a father and a son. They were happy for the most part.”
“No, they weren’t,” I whispered.
His grip tightened until I gasped. “I said ‘for the most part’, didn’t I?” He led me into the dark hall. My eyes had barely adjusted to the minimal light coming in through the front windows. “Did you ever wonder why this house never sold?”
I felt sick, close to throwing up. “Yes.”
“Bad vibes I always thought. Four years, it’s sat on the market. Rumor has it they’ll be demolishing it by the end of the year. How do you feel about that?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Seems like the whole town would just rather forget about the kid. God knows I’d love to.” He spun toward the stairs, and I balked. He pushed hard, and I fell forward, cracking my knees off the second step. He caught my arm before I ate the step above. “What? You don’t want to go upstairs? Too bad.”
I had little choice. He all but carried me up there, down the hall and past the wooden railing that seemed to bow out over the foyer. The door to Penn’s old bedroom was closed.
“Remember when we first met?”
Squeezing my eyes shut did nothing to change the past, so I forced them open. I’d been too upset to really pay attention to the stream of officers that had poured into the woods, who had disappeared among the trees, and seemed to never come back out.
“I was the first officer on the scene.” He turned me around, facing him. Half of his expression was lost in the darkness. Down below, something squeaked and scurried across the floor, its nails making quick rapping sounds.
My lower lip trembled. “And I… I found him.”
“You helped put him there.”
I jerked back into the wall, stirring dust.
“You and the rest of them,” he said, leaning in until his breath stirred the hair around my temple. “Brock. Monica. Wendy. Mason. Jensen. You.”
My breath rattled out of me. For the longest time, I carried that guilt. I always would, but it had lessened because I finally began to let it go. “Jensen and I—we didn’t do what Brock and them did. We went to a party. That’s all—”
“That’s all? Really?” Shaw tsked, and the sound turned my blood cold. “You don’t blame yourself anymore?” When I didn’t answer immediately, he gripped my chin until I cried out. “Do you still blame yourself?”
My legs shook as I held his gaze. “I will always… feel responsible.”
“But?” he sneered.
“But I loved Penn, and I never meant to hurt him.”
His head tilted to the side, his fingers digging into my flesh. “But you did.”
“It was just a party. That was all. We didn’t go to his party!” I shouted, and for the first time—for real—I believed what was coming out of my mouth. “I will always feel bad, and I will always wish I could go back and make a different decision, but Jensen and I didn’t kill him.”
“The thing is, you can’t go back.” He sounded almost sad about that.
Chest rising and falling heavily, my chin notched up. “I know.”
Shaw wrenched open the door and pushed me hard, and then again, once we were inside the room. Something caught me at the thighs, and I toppled over onto a hard, springy mattress that smelled of sweat and other things I didn’t want to think about.
I rolled up, using my feet to push myself across the bed. Walking in front of the bed, he bent at the waist, and a second later, a soft halo of light illuminated the room. A battery-operated lantern had been turned on.
Penn’s bedroom… it wasn’t like it used to be.
The single window was covered with a board. Everything except this rotten bed had been scraped from the room. Spray painted across the wall in red was something other than graffiti. Names repeated a thousand or more times.
Vee.
Brock.
Mason.
Wendy.
Monica.
Jensen.
Ella.
Over and over again, our names took up every square inch of the room, even the ceiling. It was obvious that Shaw had done this and hadn’t been worried about anyone stumbling into the room.
He really was crazy. Not like that should come as a surprise.
My gaze settled back to him. He watched me from the foot of the bed. One word came out. “Why?”
“Does that matter?” He held a black duffel bag in his hand. “Maybe seeing a young boy dead messed me up?”
I looked around the room, but he stood where he could get to the door quickly.
“Some scenes stick with you.” He paused, pulling something out of the duffel bag. “As part of an investigation for any unattended death, we have to talk. You know, I talked to you. I talked to Jensen. I talked to my cousin. I talked to Penn’s parents and yours and the school. I heard what was done to Penn.”
“It had to be hard. I know it was hard, but what you’re doing—”
He stared at me, his fingers clenching the edges of the duffle bag. “You have no idea. None whatsoever. Do you think I want to do this? That this is how I pictured my life going?”
“The… then you don’t have to,” I reasoned.
“Yeah.” He ran his other hand over his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t have to? That would be nice. You can’t go back and change anything. If you could, I wouldn’t have… well, I wouldn’t done what I did.”
My gaze darted toward the door and then back to him. There was not enough space between them.
“The last couple of years, I’d managed to do my best to forget about it. Like you.” His hand lowered as he pulled something out of the bag. The mask. My stomach tumbled. Its white plastic face shined eerily in the dim light. “Actually, you and I are a lot alike.”
“I’m nothing like you.” I stared at the mask.
“That’s what everyone says. You hid from what you did. So did I. Up until that call that afternoon. I couldn’t hide anymore.”
I shuddered as he reached up, pulling the mask on over his head, shielding his face. Every living breathing nightmare roared to life before me. White face. Dark empty eyes. Wide, red grotesque smile. There he was, the monster that was very real, flesh and bone, the worst kind of monster.
“All of you went about your lives,” he said, his voice different behind the mask. Deeper. Scarier. “Almost all of you.”
“I don’t understand.” My hands were starting to go numb. “You waited four years to do what? Take revenge for Penn? You
didn’t even know him.”
“It’s not for Penn.” He came around the side the door faced, coming closer. My muscles tensed as I drew back. “It’s never been for him.”
“What?” I couldn’t take my eyes away from the mask.
His head tilted to the side, so eerily familiar. “I’ve got to clean this mess up. This is my fault. I let it get to this point. Now I’ve got to deal with it.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, having no idea what he was talking about. He was more than just crazy. Like took a trip into insanity land and there was no coming back. “How did you pass the psych exams to become an officer?”
He reacted so fast I barely saw him move. His fist snapped out, catching me along the temple, knocking me over. I landed cheek first against the soiled sheets, pain radiating across my face and down my throat.
“Does that answer your question?” he asked, straightening.
Blood leaked out of my mouth as I squeezed my eyes shut. My head swam like I’d been dunked underwater.
“It’s really a shame.” His hand smoothed down my arm, forcing my eyes wide. He pulled back, slipping gloves on. ‘“I didn’t want this.”
He didn’t? “You want all of us… to die.”
“Something like that.” He gripped my arm, dragging me across the bed. “It’s necessary at this point.”
I kicked out, but he got my leg with his other hand. He yanked hard, lugging me right off the bed. My back hit the floor, knocking the air out of me. Stunned, I stared up at him as he towered over me, the horrible clown mask taking up the world. I knew I was covered in bruises, but not like that was going to matter by the end of the night.
Staring up in his face, I knew he was going to kill me. There would be no weeks of me being missing and experiencing God knows what at his hands. But through the pain and the fear, I knew I had to keep him talking if I had any hope of figuring a way out of this, because I didn’t want to die, not like this, in a house that once held good memories, but had been perverted into madness.
He placed me on my feet, keeping a hand on me as he turned to the closet door. Sore muscles in my back tensed as he opened it. My gaze tracked up to the bar that had been readjusted higher—too high for someone to reach on their own, and stopped on the belt hanging from it.
Oh God, my legs shook. My memory flashed back to the tree outside of Jensen’s house, to the two legs swaying back and forth. Was he going to make me hang myself?
Shaw guided me forward, and I couldn’t go in there. There was no way in hell. “Why Linds?” I asked, trying to stall.
“She got in the way.” The pressure on my back increased, tipping me forward. “So, in a way, that’s your fault.”
That didn’t hurt like he intended or what I’d expected. What happened to Linds wasn’t my fault. That was Shaw’s. But panic was clawing at me. Every part of my body shook. He reached for the belt. “Wait!” I shouted.
He halted.
“Why… why the mask?”
For a moment, I imagined he smiled behind the mask. “I was scared of clowns as a kid.”
Whoa. That just took this to a whole new level of crazy. And he didn’t see anything wrong with that or his reasons behind taking so many lives. “You’re a killer.”
“I didn’t kill them. I’m not a murderer.”
I gaped at him.
“They put the rope around their necks. Not me,” he explained, and a new kind of horror surfaced. “They made that choice. Just like you will.”
My gaze bounced to the thick belt. “They… you made them hang themselves?”
“After a while, they begged for it.”
The emptiness in his voice made my skin crawl. From what I’d known, the bodies had born marks of the torture, and while I’d known how Brock died, now I knew how the rest had. The things he had to have done to them to make them cave would haunt me.
Another well placed shove had me stumbling forward. I was almost in the closet when I turned toward Shaw. Suddenly, I thought of all those afternoons spent with Jensen. I’d taken those classes to defend myself and, dammit, I was not going to go down without a fight.
And I sure as hell wasn’t letting that belt go around my neck.
Like Jensen had instructed the first time we practiced together, I pretended to be weak. I swayed on my feet, and the hand on my back moved to grab for my arm, but in those tiny seconds, I brought my foot up and slammed it into his foot. I knew it wasn’t pain that caused him to jerk back. It was surprise and that was enough.
Using everything in me, I brought my knee up, connecting with his groin. It wasn’t the first time I got him there, but, hopefully, it was the last.
Shaw doubled over, gasping for air.
I spun around, practically leaping forward. Nudging the door open with my elbow, I pushed through and hit the hallway running.
“Shit.”
The sound of his voice was too close, and a second later, his body connected with mine. I hit the banister at the waist, doubling over. The railing shuddered under my weight. Wood creaked and groaned, and my heart dropped into my stomach. It was going to give, and the fall to the foyer below—God, it will kill someone.
Shaw grabbed ahold of my arm and I twisted violently, slamming my shoulder into him. He rocked into the banister, and this time wood splintered. The cracking reverberated through the house. Half of the railing snapped, falling down to the foyer below. It landed with a heavy, broken thud.
His hand grasped my arm, but I kept pulling until his hold slipped, and I turned toward him. He teetered on the edge, his arms out wide and the damn mask… the clown face smiled. He reached for me as he started to tip backward. His fingers grazed my arm.
A heartbeat passed and my eyes locked with the dark holes.
“You think this is over?” he asked.
I stepped back, out of his reach. “Yes.”
And he… he went right over, disappearing into the darkness that seemed to reach up, wrap its arms around him, and pull him down.
A thick, wet thud echoed in the otherwise silent house.
Breathing heavy, I crept toward the edge, twisting my wrists in the handcuffs, and peered down below. In the sliver of moonlight slicing across the floor, I saw Shaw. He lay with one leg twisted under him, and his neck rested at an unnatural angle. The clown mask was still secured on his face, smiling up at me.
Shaw didn’t move again.
Chapter 23
Everything was a blur as I climbed down the dusty stairs, careful not to misstep and lose my balance. Without my hands to break my fall, I’d be on that floor like Shaw.
I didn’t want to look at him, but I had to as I reached the landing. Moving slowly to his side, I stood and waited, watching his chest. Minutes had to have passed, and when I didn’t see it move, I let out a ragged breath of relief.
As I backed away, I kept an eye on him anyway. All I could think about was all those horror films were the bad guy was still alive. But Shaw didn’t come running after me. With the exception of my footsteps and the distant scurry of mice, the house was silent once more.
Getting out of the house and to a neighbor’s had zapped me of all my strength. The adrenaline faded once I convinced them I wasn’t an escaped criminal. While I waited for the police, sitting on the couch inside an older couples’ house, all the aches and pains started to blossom across my body. The only part of me that didn’t hurt was my hands, but I couldn’t feel them anyway.
“Would you… like something to drink?” the older woman asked.
I huddled down under the blanket she’d draped over my shoulders. “No… no, thank you.”
Things were a heady mess after that. The police showed up. I gave my statement as they found keys to unlock the cuffs. My wrists were bleeding and rubbed raw. I hadn’t even noticed. I told them about Shaw and some officers disappeared back out the front door. Trooper Ritter showed up, and there were EMTs. When one of them