Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Where are we going?” I asked Ricky as we drove.

He stayed on the arrow-straight highway, leaving Random far behind us. We continued under the moon’s glow, and snow flurries fell from the cold night sky. After a while, I guessed what our destination was, and I said nothing more. Honestly, it felt right to go there, like the end and the beginning of my story coming together in the same place.

It took us an hour to reach Norm’s trailer. I could sense my stress rising as we got closer. My heart always felt it, like a shadow coming over my soul. We traveled first on the highway, then on the rutted dirt road through the national forest. Eventually, I saw the familiar glint of the silver frame through the headlights. Ricky pulled off the road onto a bed of fallen leaves and stopped. I could see in the tire tracks that he’d been coming and going for several weeks.

“You’ve been staying here?” I asked.

“Yeah. Ironic, huh?”

“Weren’t you afraid Norm would find out?”

“A buddy of mine rented it from Norm for a couple of months. Told him he was having trouble with the wife, and they needed time apart. So we have our privacy here, don’t worry. It’s just you and me.”

I got out of the car. Ricky headed straight for the trailer, but I lingered by the woods. Somewhere nearby, I heard the hoot of an owl, like a sign, like a warning. When I’d been ten years old, an owl had tried to alert me that the Ursulina was close by. That I was in danger. I inhaled, to see if I could smell the beast. I listened for the hufffffff. There was nothing. But I could feel its presence looming over me, the way I had that night near Sunflower Lake. If I plunged into the darkness, I was sure I would find it, or it would find me. We would be reunited, the monster and the girl. In my heart, we’d been inseparable ever since that moment. The two of us joined together by blood.

I followed Ricky inside the trailer. My chest convulsed with terror when I closed the trailer door, as if no time had passed. It was seven years ago again. I was right back where everything had started.

Ricky sat on the bed. He didn’t turn on the lights, so he was nothing but a dim shadow. He still wore the fur coat, the fur pants; he still looked like the beast, waiting for me. The trailer floor creaked under my feet as I walked toward him. He patted the bed, which was unmade, and I sat down beside him.

This was my moment of truth.

I’m sorry, Shelby. I wish I could keep this from you forever. I’ve held back my secret from you, and maybe that was wrong of me. Maybe I should have told you at the beginning—told you who I am and what I did—but then what? I couldn’t expect you to understand it until you knew me. Until you knew my whole story.

But now?

Now I have to tell you who your mother really is. You can decide for yourself if there is any salvation possible for someone like me.

I stared at Ricky. It was obvious what he wanted to hear, and there was no point in holding it back anymore. It was time to say out loud what we’d both known and both kept from each other.

“So you knew all along that I killed them,” I said. “You knew when you met me that I was the one who murdered Kip and Racer.”

There was enough moonlight through the window for me to see his white teeth.

“Yeah. That was part of the thrill.”

I stood up from the bed. I had to swallow down the urge to vomit, hearing my own confession. For seven years, I’d hidden my sins from the world. I’d lied to Darrell. I’d lied to everyone. I’d lived in terror of being discovered. And all along, the whole time, Ricky knew.

He’d found my camera.

“Where are the rest of the photographs?” I asked, with a kind of clinical curiosity. “I want to see them.”

“They’re in the cabinet over the sink.”

I went and turned on the small light there, and then I opened the cabinet door. There was a small envelope of pictures on the lowest shelf, next to a dated thirty-five-millimeter camera. I grazed my fingers across its familiar frame.

It was the camera that I’d seen in Ricky’s hand in the film I’d watched at Ben Malloy’s house.

The same camera I’d used to take the photograph of Gordon Brink, Kip Wells, and Racer Moritz seven years earlier.

The same camera I’d dropped that day when I was running for my life.

My camera.

I’d dreaded for years that someone would find it. I’d searched for it after I escaped from the trailer, and I’d come back during Ben’s Ursulina hunt to search for it again. But I never found it. I’d assumed, hoped, prayed that the camera—and the roll of film inside it—had long since decomposed with the rain and snow.

But I was wrong.

Ricky had found it. He’d found the camera and developed the film inside. And then he’d set about finding the girl who’d taken the pictures.

I opened up the envelope and removed the photographs. I picked up the one on top. It was of me. I’d taken it in the woods that July day. My eyes so dark and serious, my black hair a mess, as it usually was. Sunflower Lake was behind me, shining in the morning light.

I was still an innocent girl in that picture, with no idea of the horror that lay ahead of me.

“I bought the camera that summer,” I murmured. “I was still getting used to the features. I remembered using the self-timer a couple of times, so I knew there were pictures of me on the roll. Me, and then a few frames later, them. Brink, Kip, Racer. I was in a panic when I couldn’t find the camera. I knew if anyone else found it . . .”

My voice trailed off.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you knew what I’d done?” I asked him. “All you’ve ever wanted to do was control me. Own me. Why not lord it over me that you could expose my secret?”

Ricky’s voice oozed with triumph. “I liked you not knowing. I was a cat with a mouse. I had all the power. Anytime I wanted, all I had to do was swipe my paw to take you down. There were so many times when I wanted to say it. Tell you what I knew. See your face when you found out. Sometimes I’d see a look in your eyes, that little fire when you were ready to fight back, and I’d think: Just try it, Bec. See what happens if you push me too far. But I was in no hurry. When you hold all the aces, you can relax and enjoy the game. So I waited. I waited for the perfect moment. And now it’s here. It’s payback time. You think you can get rid of me? Not a chance. You belong to me, and you always will.”

God, I hated the boasting in his voice. The shallow, arrogant ego. I hated that I’d been a fool for him all those years. I wasn’t going to live with it anymore, not with the fear, not with the abuse. The time had come. I could feel the electricity sizzling in my blood.

“I need a drink,” I said, my voice cool and casual. Like he’d won. Like he’d defeated me. “Do you need one?”

“Sure.”

“Beer?”

“There’s some in the fridge.”

I opened the door of the small refrigerator, which temporarily blocked me from Ricky’s view. That was the opportunity I needed. I found two bottles of Budweiser, and I saw that there was an opener next to the sink. When I had the bottles open, I closed the fridge and brought them over to the bed.

I handed one to Ricky, and as I sat down next to him again, he took my wrist and twisted it hard enough to make me wince.

“I want you to say it,” he told me.

“What?” I asked, but I knew. I knew exactly what he wanted me to say.

“I want to hear the words from that pretty mouth of yours,” he went on. “I’ve been waiting years for that. Tell me who you are.”

He let go of my wrist. I stared at him, working hard to keep the hatred off my face. I couldn’t let him see it yet.

Did he really think I’d take him back into my life? Did he really believe I would allow him anywhere near you, Shelby? After what he’d done to me, after the evil I’d seen in his eyes when he was holding you? I knew what would happen to us. Oh, I knew. Sooner or later, on a day when the cat got tired of playing with the mice, he’d kill us both.

I watched him take a long swallow from his bottle of Budweiser, and he never tasted the powder of the four Xanax pills I’d dropped inside.

“Say it,” Ricky told me again.

So I did. The truth is, I wanted to say it. I felt a surge of power running through me, a power I knew only too well, a power that had come over me twice before in my life. When I transformed. When the beast and I became one. When I evolved into what I really was.

I told you that the monster was real, Shelby.

I told you that from the very beginning.

I leaned into Ricky’s face, and then I whispered the words. The same words I’d painted on the wall in that trailer seven years earlier. The same words I’d painted above Gordon Brink’s bed.

The words I couldn’t run away from. The words that had defined my life.

“I . . . am . . . the Ursulina.”

*

I was twenty years old that July.

I was on my own, my father and brother both working jobs far away. I had no job myself, and I didn’t know when I’d get one, because the economy was terrible. Yes, I’d just completed a two-year degree program, but that wouldn’t do me much good when no one was hiring. I had no job, no money, no one in my life, and I felt the kind of loneliness that becomes like a friend after a while.

I did only two things that whole summer. I stayed home reading books. And I hunted for the Ursulina.

The legend of Bigfoot was all the rage back then. You’d see him everywhere—in books, on television, in magazines and newspapers. The beast in the woods that walked upright like a man. Was he real or a myth? Were there actual photos of him, or were they hoaxes? Of course, I knew he existed, or something like him did. I knew there was one of those beasts haunting the forest near Sunflower Lake. We had a special connection, him and me. I was sure that if anyone could find him, if anyone could draw him out, I could.

That’s why I bought the camera. It was a luxury I could barely afford, but if I found the Ursulina again, if I could get a picture of him, then my whole life would change. So day after day, with nothing else to do, I searched the national forest. Sometimes I arrived before dawn and left as the sun went down. Other times I brought a backpack and camped. I’d hike for miles, watching for movement in the trees or tracks on the ground, inhaling the air for a whiff of his breath, listening for that unmistakable hufffffff.

I thought he’d come back when he knew it was me. He’d show himself.

It’s Rebecca. Don’t you remember? Where are you?

But as the days passed, I saw no sign of him. All I did was take pictures. Sometimes of the woods, the lake, the flowers, the animals, the birds. Sometimes of myself, when I would put the camera on a rock and take a self-portrait in the shadows.

That was my summer seven years earlier, sweetheart. The lazy summer of a young woman trying to figure out her future. Until that one terrible afternoon, when I saw sunlight glinting on silver.

Norm’s trailer.

I knew where I was. I’d been here before with Norm and Will. I heard voices, and I assumed it was them, so I headed that way to say hello. As I got closer, I also brought the camera to my eyes to take a picture. The light off the trailer reflected like a kind of rainbow, as if I were staring at a spaceship, and I thought that was cool. There were people in the foreground, like aliens. It was only when I stared through the viewfinder and snapped the shutter that I realized the men standing there were strangers. Not Norm and Will.

Three of them. Three men.

Their conversation froze into silence when they saw me. Six eyes locked on me at once; they locked on me and on my camera. I knew at once that I’d just made the worst mistake of my life. Every woman knows hard men of evil purpose at a glance, and I saw it in those men. Two were dressed in ratty clothes; one wore a suit and looked oddly out of place in the wilderness. That man focused on me, as coldly cruel as a reptile. I had no idea who he was, but I was never going to forget his face, and he was never going to forget mine.

He glanced at the other two men and said simply, “Get her.”

I ran.

I screamed for help, but no one was around to hear me, not out there. I beat my way through the woods, the branches drawing blood, the vines tripping me up. Behind me, I heard their footsteps trampling through the underbrush like beasts, like monsters. I ran even faster, to get away, to lose them. Somewhere, I don’t know where, the limb of a tree ripped my camera away from my neck. It dropped; I just kept running. I zigzagged, changing directions when I heard them getting closer. Desperation drove me on. Maybe I would have gotten away, because I was young and fast, but my foot hit the bulge of a tree root, which flipped me into the air. I landed hard, twisting my ankle, and when I got up again, I couldn’t run anymore. I limped for a while until it got too painful to move, and then I squatted down and tried to hide, but they found me.

The men came at me from two sides, and they had me trapped. They tied me up with belts around my wrists and ankles. Gagged me with one of their shirts. Hit me in the face, the first of many blows. And then they carried me, struggling and fighting, on their shoulders like trophy game. The other man was waiting at the trailer.

“Kill her,” he directed them, with a hard, casual glance at my face. “Bury her where no one will find the body.”

But the one holding my legs—later, I’d find out that was Kip—laughed at him. I remember his exact words. “Just like that? Juicy Fruit like this one? No way, man. First we play.”

First we play.

That was what they did, Shelby.

For the next thirty-six hours, they played with me. A day and a half. They played. More than two thousand minutes, each minute making me wish I were dead. They played. I was Juicy Fruit, and they chewed me up. They tied me to the bed, moving me when they wanted to change the game. Faceup. Facedown. On all fours. On my knees. They took turns. Kip. Racer. And the third man. Gordon Brink. He played, too.

I was a virgin when they carried me inside. Soon I wasn’t a virgin or a girl or a woman or even a human being anymore. I became an animal, and I did what animals do. I survived. I distanced myself from the body on the bed. She was not me. She was weak, a victim. I dug a hole for my emotions, and I buried them and shoveled dirt over their grave. The only thing still alive inside me was my brain. The brain of Rebecca Colder, stronger and bolder.

Rebecca Colder, who would watch them, study them, learn from them, find their vulnerabilities. Rebecca Colder, who would figure out how to stay alive.

Racer was the weak link. I realized that quickly. Brink was intelligent, Kip was sly, but Racer was stupid. He drank and drank from the dozens of liquor bottles in the trailer. He smoked weed until the cloud made me choke. He had a hundred pounds on me, so I couldn’t overpower him, but he was impatient and careless. When he was the one who tied me up, he didn’t get the knots right. That didn’t matter if all of them were in the trailer to watch me, but if I had a time when Racer was alone with me, then I had a chance.

Thirty-six hours later, Kip and Brink got ready to leave. Brink was done with me, done with the game. I’d seen something on his face the last time he raped me that made me realize he’d begun to hate himself for what was happening. He wanted out. He wanted to erase me and this whole experience from his memory. Whenever Kip got back, that would be the end. If Rebecca Colder was going to get away, it would have to be while they were gone.

So in the darkness, after they left, it was just me and Racer.

He had his way with me again. I no longer even cared, because I knew that when he was done, he would drink. He always did. He drank and drank and drank and drank, and I waited for him to pass out. But the minutes ticked by in agonized frustration, and somehow he stayed conscious. I was terrified that Kip would return, and my opportunity would be gone for good. If Racer stayed awake much longer, I’d have to slip my wrists out of the loose rope and hope that he was clumsy enough that I could evade him. But the trailer was small, and he was huge. I didn’t like my chances.

Then, at last, his head tilted back, his eyes blinked shut, and he was out cold.

I freed myself quickly. It took only seconds, because Racer had barely even tightened the knots this time. Silently, I got up from the bed, feeling torture in my body from everything they’d done to me. The trailer groaned with each step I made, so I went slowly, trying not to awaken Racer. I didn’t have to worry. I slipped right past him, and he never moved at all. His snores were like blasts from a trumpet.

Ahead of me was the trailer door. Beyond the door was the forest, the night, and my freedom. All I had to do was gather up my clothes and go through it, and I would be gone.

But I didn’t leave.

I’m not sure if I can even explain what happened to me next. There were dirty plates in the sink from their dinner, and among the plates I saw a long, sharp kitchen knife. I took it in my hand. I wanted a weapon, because as soon as they discovered I was gone, they’d lay chase. Or at least, that was what I told myself. But as I held the knife, a sensation came over me that was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. A murderous fury bubbled out of that hole in which I’d buried my soul, like a hot spring. I was not weak. I was not a victim. I would not run away from this man, tail between my legs. Standing there in the trailer, I felt myself grow bigger. Taller. Stronger. My breaths came hot and deep from my chest, and when I exhaled, I recognized the smell of the beast from when I was a girl. When I looked at my fingers, I didn’t see my own tiny hands anymore. I saw giant paws.

And when I looked at Racer, I saw prey.

You may not believe any of this. I don’t know if I believe it myself, except it happened to me, and I know it’s true. I was not Rebecca Colder anymore. I had transformed into a monster, just like the legend said. I had become the Ursulina. And with a fierce growl, I leaped upon Racer with the knife, stabbing and stabbing, his blood spurting and flying, soaking me, covering the walls. He awoke in agony after the first blow and tried to push me away, but this huge man was helpless beneath my body. My paws went up and down, up and down, burying the knife over and over until there wasn’t enough blood left for his heart to beat anymore.

When I was done, I stood over him, drenched in his blood, and I unleashed a savage, primal, aroused scream of joy.

I could have left the trailer then.

I could have escaped.

But there was more prey to be killed. More vengeance to be done. I stood motionless in the darkness behind the trailer door, and I waited patiently. How long did I stand there? An hour? Two? I could have waited for days if I’d needed to. Then, finally, I heard footsteps crunching in the dirt outside. The door opened, and Kip was back. He had only a split second to see the gory scene that was waiting for him before I struck. My knife rained down on him like a hailstorm, and the more blood that drained out of him, the wilder I became. Until he was dead, too. Until all that was left to do was sign my name on the wall.

To let everyone know who I was.

To make them tremble in fear.

Outside, afterward, I marched into the woods. I made my way to the lake and purified myself in the cold water. When I emerged naked onto the shore, I was Rebecca Colder again. The beast had left me. I barely even remembered what I’d done. I found my way back to the place where I’d parked my car, and I drove home. I had no guilt. No regret. There was nothing to tie me to the murder scene. No one had known where I was going. No one had known I was gone.

It was only when I awoke from a dreamless sleep that I remembered my camera.

The thought of it panicked me. If someone found the camera, the pictures I’d taken would show the world who the Ursulina really was. So I went back to the killing ground to search. Norm hadn’t found the bodies yet, and when I saw the trailer again, I felt a wave of horror knowing what was inside, as if the ghosts of the corpses would rise up and surround me. I wasted no time. I looked everywhere, I spent hours, but I had no idea where I’d dropped the camera. There was simply too much ground to cover.

So I sweated out the next few weeks, terrified that someone else would find it and that my secret would be revealed. But no. The knock on my door never came. Even after deputies went through the woods. Even after Ben’s Ursulina hunt with all his volunteers. No one showed up to arrest me. As the time went by, I began to believe I was safe.

I never dreamed when I met Ricky that he’d already found the camera, developed the film, and decided to collect me like a rare breed of carnivorous butterfly. He found me at a time when I needed to pretend that I was still an ordinary woman, not a killer, not a beast. I needed to punish myself for what I’d done. So no matter what Ricky did or said to me, I kept the Ursulina locked away as the sentence for my crime.

That was my life for six years. A gray, loveless life that probably would have gone on forever.

Until Gordon Brink came back to town.

Until the Ursulina came back.

At that point, sweetheart, I had no idea who Brink was. My mind had a face, but no name. And obviously, Brink was terrified of running into me. I can only imagine the horror he’d felt when Ajax told him about the murders. He’d assumed that Kip and Racer had buried me in the forest along with his sins. Instead, he knew there was a woman in Black Wolf County burning for vengeance, a woman who would never forget his face.

Maybe, if not for the pig’s blood dousing his wife, he and I never would have met again. She called the sheriff’s department without telling Gordon, and I was the one Jerry sent to investigate. Fate. When we saw each other, he didn’t miss the surge of violence on my face, the shock that became blinding rage. He knew I’d be back for him. He knew. That Sunday before Christmas, while the town and my husband were at the 126 watching Jamie Lee Curtis take off her shirt, I was knocking on Gordon Brink’s office door out in the woods.

He was no fool. He had a gun, because he assumed I was there to do to him what I’d done to Kip and Racer. It was kill or be killed. But I tried to put him at ease. I told him that too much time had gone by, that neither one of us wanted the truth to come out. I said I was there so we could come to some kind of arrangement. Money. A lot of money. I suggested we drink on it.

As he poured the whiskey, I hit him in the back of the head.

When he was unconscious, I dragged him to the bed. I could feel the beast in my bloodstream, putting me into a kind of fugue where I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing. When I awoke from my transformation, I was soaked in blood, the meat shredders in my hands. Gordon Brink lay on the bed with the look of someone who’d seen the face of hell before dying.

The message from the beast was already painted on the wall.

In that moment, Shelby, I thought—I swear I thought—I was free. It was over. Done. I’d purged the beast. The past was the past, and it had given up its grip on me. But of course, no evil deed comes without consequences.

There was a horrific price to be paid for my revenge, a bloody trail of grief, loss, and death that followed in my footsteps. Will paid the price. Jay paid the price. Even Ajax did, though that one was by Ricky’s hands, not mine. And in a way, Ruby, Penny, and so many others, they all paid for what I did, too.

So did you, Shelby.

You most of all.

In the end, the Ursulina claimed us both.