The Play

  The Play

  A Novel

  by Karina Halle

  Also by Karina Halle

  The Experiment in Terror Series

  Darkhouse (EIT #1)

  Red Fox (EIT #2)

  The Benson (EIT #2.5)

  Dead Sky Morning (EIT #3)

  Lying Season (EIT #4)

  On Demon Wings (EIT #5)

  Old Blood (EIT #5.5)

  The Dex-Files (EIT #5.7)

  Into the Hollow (EIT #6)

  And With Madness Comes the Light (EIT #6.5)

  Come Alive (EIT #7)

  Ashes to Ashes (EIT #8)

  Dust to Dust (EIT #9)

  Novels by Karina Halle

  The Devil’s Metal (Devils #1)

  The Devil’s Reprise (Devils #2)

  Sins and Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1)

  On Every Street (An Artists Trilogy Novella #0.5)

  Shooting Scars (The Artists Trilogy #2)

  Bold Tricks (The Artists Trilogy #3)

  Donners of the Dead

  Dirty Angels

  Dirty Deeds

  Dirty Promises

  Love, in English

  Love, in Spanish

  Where Sea Meets Sky (from Atria Books)

  Racing the Sun (from Atria Books)

  The Play

  First edition published by

  Metal Blonde Books November 2015

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Karina Halle

  Digital Edition

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Cover design by Hang Le Designs

  Metal Blonde Books

  P.O. Box 845

  Point Roberts, WA

  98281 USA

  Manufactured in the USA

  For more information about the series and author visit:

  http://authorkarinahalle.com/

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Two

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  For Bruce, pit bulls, and other misunderstood beings who are rarely given a second chance in life.

  “I’ll awake you from this living sleep”- Matador, Faith No More

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  1987

  It had started to snow the night before. The boy woke up on the floor by the fire, like he sometimes did when the winds blew in too cold and mum didn’t pay the electric bill. But by the time morning came around, the fire was out, just smoldering ash, and he couldn’t feel his fingers or his nose, the only things sticking out of the itchy flannel blanket.

  Despite the cold and the damp that coated the small, dark living room, the boy woke up happy. Today was his special day. He was turning five, and his mother had promised, promised him last year, on his last birthday, when he had no presents at all, that when he turned five and became a big boy, he could go to the toy store and get whatever toy he wanted.

  He had spent most of the year flipping through discarded catalogues he found in the housing complex’s rubbish (sometimes he’d have to wait on the sidelines while some rough, unpredictable characters looted around for food or something they could pawn), looking for toys that caught his fancy. He would find them, rip the pages out, and take them to the bedroom he shared with his mother, hiding them in the inner pocket of the single coat he had.

  When he wasn’t so lucky with the catalogues, he would flip through the magazines he found at the library. That’s where he spent most of his time. He wasn’t in school, though he should have been at this point¸ so his mum had to put him somewhere while she did her business. The library was the best place for him. In the chaotic slums of Muirhouse, no one in the library noticed the little boy in his ill-fitting, threadbare clothes, sitting on the library floor for hours, looking through magazines and dreaming about a different life.

  The truth was, as his birthday came around, he didn’t care at all about what toy he ended up getting. He just wanted something he could call his own. And even though he knew that boys like him should want army figurines and cars, he just wanted something comforting. A stuffed animal, maybe a bear or a dog. He loved dogs, even the ones who belonged to his neighbor that barked all night and tried to bite if you got too close. He loved those dogs, too.

  The boy got up, shivering even with the blanket draped around his shoulders, and went to go look out the window. His large grey-green eyes widened in awe. The grime and dirt of the godforsaken streets below were completely wiped away by a layer of clean, white snow. It was the first snowfall in Edinburgh this year, and he couldn’t help but think that it was all for him, for his special day. With cold, fumbling fingers, he pulled his cross necklace out of his shirt and kissed it as thanks to God.

  He wanted to tell his mother about the snow, so he ran across the thin rug, ever covered in tears and cigarette burns, and to the bedroom.

  He really should have knocked first. In his excitement he forgot one of the few rules his mother gave him: “If I have a friend over, you must sleep in the living room,” and, “If my door is closed, never open it.”

  But he opened it.

  The window had a crack in it, and the frozen wind was seeping in, blowing the faded curtains around. Below the window was the bed, where his mother, clad in a dirty negligee, was currently sleeping facedown.

  A naked man was standing over her, smoking from a pipe.

  The boy froze, but it was too late. The man saw him, slammed down the pipe in anger, and in a second was across the room, holding him by the throat.

  “You think you can judge me?” the man hissed in his face with rank breath that smelled of onions and blood. The boy closed his eyes and shook his head fearfully.

  He had seen the man a few times before—his mother had so many male friends. They would all disappear into the bedroom. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for minutes. He would hear coughing, laughing, and cries of excitement on good days. On bad days, he would hear shouting, his mother crying, things being thrown around the room. On those bad days, his mother would be covered in cuts and bruises. She wouldn’t talk to him, and she wouldn’t go outside. He just stayed by her side, bringing her weak tea from teabags that had already been used a few times, because that’s all there was left.

  “Do you?!” the man yelled again and squeezed and squeezed his neck. The boy couldn’t breathe at all. He thought this terrible man with the purple, bulbous nose and the mean eyes, was going to kill him.

  In some ways, he wanted him to.


  “Hey,” his mother said from the bed, slowly stirring. “What’s going on?” Her voice was ragged, and slurred as she sat up. “Leave my son alone.”

  The man released his grip, and then looked behind him to glare at the woman. The boy pawed at his own raw throat, wheezing, trying to say he was sorry, but nothing was coming out.

  It didn’t matter. The man suddenly whirled around and backhanded the boy across the face. It made his head explode with shards of glass, and he went flying backwards.

  He banged into the doorframe and landed on the ground with a thump, and prayed to the same God who had made it snow that he would never feel this pain again.

  But this wouldn’t be the last of it. He had a whole life of pain to get through first.

  “You shut up,” the man yelled back at his mother.

  She looked frightened to death but still managed to tell her son to get up and go in the bathroom and lock the door.

  The boy could barely move, but somehow he did it. He got to his feet, his head pounding, coughing hard, and went into the bathroom. The floor was wet with urine. Clumsily, he slid the lock in place and sat on the toilet and waited.

  There was shouting and more shouting and then finally a door slammed.

  A few gentle knocks at the door and he knew his mum was okay.

  “You better get ready,” she said to him when he opened the door a crack. She smiled at him quickly with crooked, yellow teeth, and gathered a robe over her frail body, her chest bones protruding like prison bars. “It’s your birthday and I haven’t forgotten what I promised you.”

  Her voice cracked over the last words and she quickly hurried away, shoulders slumped, head down.

  Soon the two of them were fully dressed and trudging through the snow, heading to the bus stop. The boy couldn’t help but smile at everyone and everything they passed: the scary people who slept on the street and talked to themselves, the dogs that shivered and ran away, the rats that feasted on dead things on the side of the road. None of that mattered to the boy because the world seemed bright and pure and all for him. He kicked at the snow and watched it fall to the ground and told his mum that this must be what heaven was like, walking in the clouds all day long.

  She wiped away a mascara-stained tear and agreed.

  The bus ride took a long time, but eventually they found themselves at one of the large concrete shopping centers. This was the boy’s big moment, what he’d been looking forward to for a year.

  He didn’t even notice the odd looks that he and his mother sometimes got; he was so focused on that toy that the whole world seemed to slip away. Despite the bump at the back of his head, his cheek that was swollen and slowly growing purple, this was the happiest day of his life.

  “Now we don’t have much time,” his mother said. “So hurry and pick out your present and I’ll pay for it.”

  The boy heard the urgency in her voice and suddenly he was so overwhelmed. There were action figures, superheroes, cars and trucks, horses, dolls, stuffed animals, building sets, art supplies and Lego, and a million other things he wanted. He stood there, completely dumbfounded, and looked around and around, his heart thumping in his chest.

  “Please,” his mother said again. She was at the cashier, ready to pay. He was suddenly so afraid that if he didn’t pick something right that second he wouldn’t get anything at all. At the same time, he was old enough to know that they didn’t have much money, so anything fancy and expensive was too much.

  Panicking, he headed toward the stuffed animals. They were all crammed into a box—giraffes, bears, dogs, cats. They all looked like they needed a home, and it broke his heart to think he could only take one of them.

  But he had to make a choice. He was gravitating toward a stuffed puppy when he noticed a lion half-buried in the pile, only his sly feline eyes and furry yellow mane poking out. It was no place for such a majestic beast.

  The boy plucked the lion from the animals, so soft and huggable in his arms, and ran over to his mother with it, hoping she hadn’t changed her mind.

  She looked at the lion and smiled. He had done well.

  After she paid, he hugged that lion with all his might. It felt so good to hold something, and it felt like the lion was holding him back, thanking him for the rescue.

  “What is the lion’s name?” his mother asked quietly. There was so much sadness in her voice that it nearly broke the spell the boy was under, that dizzy spell of love.

  “Lionel,” he said after thinking about it for a moment. “Lionel the lion. And I love him.”

  “And you know he loves you, don’t you?” she said, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her faux-fur coat. It smeared her red lipstick. “Just as I love you.”

  His mother didn’t tell him that she loved him all that often so he was surprised to hear it. It made his birthday that much better.

  Soon they were back on the bus, but this time they weren’t headed back to the house. The roads were unfamiliar, and the city was slowly left behind them. The yards got bigger, the snow deeper.

  “Where are we going?” he asked. “This isn’t the way home.”

  “We’re going to see some friends of mine,” she said.

  The boy didn’t like that. He hugged his lion tight to him. He didn’t like her friends.

  She put her hand on his shoulder but wouldn’t look at him. They were the only people on the bus which made him feel even more alone.

  “Don’t worry,” she said eventually. “They have boys your age there.”

  That didn’t make him feel any better. He didn’t get along with other kids, whether they were his age or not. He was shy and often got picked on for being too quiet. That only made him sink more into himself, where it was always safe and comfortable.

  Eventually the bus stopped by huge iron gates and a stone wall, and the mother grabbed his hand, holding her purse close to her as they shuffled out into the snow. The bus pulled away and the boy wished he could have stayed on it. They were in the hills, in the middle of nowhere, and even though his home was cold and dirty, it was still home.

  The boy couldn’t read the sign on the wall so he asked his mother what it said.

  “It says we are welcome,” she said, hurrying him along until they were standing in front of the gates. She pressed a buzzer on the intercom.

  The boy stared through the iron bars at the giant mansion on the hill. He didn’t like it. Something about it, maybe the bars on the windows or the overgrown ivy, or the way it bared down on them, like a brick beast, ready to pounce. He was grateful at that moment to have a lion like Lionel, but it didn’t stop him from digging in his heels.

  “Come on,” his mother hissed, yanking him forward until they were climbing up the stairs.

  The front door opened, and a tall, thin man with a beak for a nose and slicked back hair appeared, peering down at them.

  “Welcome, Miss Lockhart,” he said, and then gestured for them to come inside.

  The man was speaking to them still as they stepped into the mansion, but the boy wasn’t listening. He was struck by the cold all around him. From the sickly yellow lights to the industrial feeling walls and floor—everything screamed inhospitable. There were bad vibes here, a place that held nothing but wicked things.

  But his mother pulled him along down the lifeless hall until they were in an office. They both sat down in leathery chairs across from the man, and she handed him an envelope from her purse.

  “I trust this is all in order,” the man said, his voice deep and emotionless.

  His mother nodded. “It is.” She paused and looked at her boy with eyes that held a world of regret, before talking to the man again. “I hope you’ll take care of him. It’s not his fault. It’s mine.”

  The man only nodded, looking over the papers.

  “What are you talking about?” the boy asked her. “When are we going home?”

  “Son,” the man said, staring into him with beady eyes. The boy swore he could feel them trying to poke
holes into his soul. “This is your new home.”

  He couldn’t comprehend what the man was saying. He shook his head and looked to his mother, but she was crying and getting out of her chair.

  “Mum!” he yelled, dropping his lion so he could grab her coat with both hands. She nearly dragged him out of his chair. He scrambled to his feet as she went for the door, but he was held back by the man, who had a strong, merciless grip on him. “Mum!” he screamed again, arms outstretched.

  She paused at the door, only briefly, mascara running down her cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry, Lachlan,” she sobbed to the boy, gripping the doorframe until her knuckles were white. “I love you. But I just can’t have you in my life. I’m so sorry.”

  “But mum!” Lachlan screamed, his voice ripping out of him. “I’ll be good! I promise. You can take Lionel back to the store, just take me back home, please!”

  His mother only shook her head and whispered, “Goodbye.”

  Lachlan continued to cry, to wail, to try and get out of the man’s grasp, as he watched his mother walk away and disappear out of sight.

  “Please!” he bellowed, such a large sound from such a small boy. He felt his feet give way, and the man was now holding him up, legs dangling beneath him. “Please come back, mum, please! Take me home, take me home!”

  “This is your home,” the man said again. He brought Lachlan’s head back to his mouth and whispered in his ear, wet and harsh. “And if you don’t stop screaming and making noise like a little twat, you’re going to get twenty lashings from my belt. Is that what you want for your first day here at the Hillside Orphanage? Is it?”

  But Lachlan couldn’t stop screaming. He couldn’t care less about being beaten. He’d been hit that morning; he’d been beaten many times before. The true pain was the pain he felt inside, raging through him, tearing him apart. He felt like he was drowning in ice water and the flood was starting in his soul.

  “Fine then,” the man said, and threw Lachlan to the ground. He picked Lionel up from the floor and held the lion up in the air. “If you don’t shut your bloody mouth, you’ll never see this again. I’ll give it to another boy.”