Thirty-Eight

They said I slept for two days straight, woke up screaming Elijah’s name. It was Mrs. Hooper’s soothing voice and the familiar scent of her lavender hand cream that finally allowed my mind to clear, drove home the recognition that I was safe.

Even then, I didn’t fight the drugs the doctors gave me. Sleep offered me an out, a safe, unconscious place where Luke was still alive, sitting beside me.

“Hey there, Dee.”

The familiar voice echoed through my dreams. I swore for a second it was Luke, that the strong hand stroking mine was his. I opened my eyes, a smile already forming on my lips when his face came into focus.

“Mike?” I asked.

“It’s me,” he said, moving from the chair to the bed. His right arm was in a sling and there were stitches across his cheek. He looked tired and beaten down, and his hair was messed up. I reached up to smooth it and he caught my hand, squeezing it gently before lowering it back to the bed.

I glanced up at the clock hanging above the door. It was three a.m. “Are you okay?” I asked, curious as to why he was sitting here next to me and not asleep in his own room.

He tried for a smile, but his entire expression was shadowed in grief. “We made it to Henley. You’re safe now.”

“Did you tell them about Luke?” I asked. I didn’t remember anyone trying to question me. I didn’t know how much the doctors knew, or what part, if any, of the truth Mike had told them.

Mike grabbed my hand and brought it to his cheek, then turned his head so I couldn’t see his pain. But I felt it, felt the steady stream of his tears covering my palm. “I’m sorry, Dee.”

Sorry? What did he have to be sorry about? “Did you tell them? Did you tell them what happened to Luke? Did you tell them about Elijah and James?”

“I did,” he said, turning back to me. “But they don’t believe me. Nobody does.”

“What? Why?”

“I told the police everything—about us running out of gas, about the irrigation shed and James. I told them everything, Dee. Everything. But they think we made it up, that we’re suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress thing.”

That didn’t make any sense. The images in my mind were real. The feel of Luke’s dead body, his cold hands, James’s blood covering my feet … those images were too vivid, too real for me to have imagined them.

I frantically kicked the blanket away and struggled to sit up. My arms were bandaged from wrist to elbow and I tore at the gauze, frustrated by its strength. When I had the last bit of it unraveled, I thrust my arms in Mike’s direction. They were cut up—seven nearly identical slices marring my skin, eight if you counted Elijah’s binding mark on my palm.

“What about these? How do you explain these?”

“They think you tried to kill yourself. That after the accident, after Luke … well, they think you did that to yourself.”

“What accident?” I yelled. “What the hell are you talking about? There was no accident.”

“My dad and Mr. Hooper went to Purity Springs. They spent two days there with the police, asking questions and talking to Elijah. All they found was our mangled car lodged against a tractor. The officer they talked to in Purity Springs claimed it was a car accident, that the puncture in my shoulder and Luke’s injuries are consistent with the accident.”

Mike’s eyes met mine, and for a moment I could feel his tension, knew that the words he was about to utter were going to be bad. “According to the official report, I went through the windshield. That’s why I’m cut up.”

“But what about Luke?” I cried, remembering his body lying there on the ground, the blood from James’s throat edging closer to his tattered jeans. “What about James? What did they say about them?”

“They never found James. There’s no record of him or his brother at all. It’s as if they never existed.”

I stared at Mike, stunned. Joseph had told me his father was capable of fabricating entire lives. I’d watched him do it to me. But to deny the existence of his own nephews …

“Luke? What did they say about him?” I asked again.

Mike sighed and ran a hand through his hair, a mindless habit that made my entire body ache for Luke. “We buried him yesterday. The medical examiner from Purity Springs did an autopsy. They cremated his body, told my parents it’d be best if they didn’t see him first.”

“Why the hell not?” I yelled. Why wouldn’t Luke’s parents want to see him—dead or alive—one last time?

“The report says he was thrown from the car, that he got caught up in the chisel plow we hit. He was mangled beyond recognition.”

I knew what a chisel plow was, the rusted eight-inch shanks meant to loosen the soil. And there hadn’t been a chisel plow anywhere near our car, never mind a tractor. “That’s a lie,” I screamed.

I got out of the bed, began the frantic search for my clothes. I wanted my shoes. I wanted a pair of jeans. I wanted to walk out of this place and back to Purity Springs so I could haul Elijah Hawkins back here and make him tell the truth.

I found my muddy clogs in the room’s lone closet. Shoved in the left one was the doll Eden had given me. I took it out and brought it to my nose, inhaled the rotted scent. I tossed it to the ground; I’d drag Eden here as well if that’s what it took.

I shoved my feet into the clogs and went about untying my hospital gown. The sooner I was dressed, the sooner I could prove that my nightmare was true.

“They sent their apologies, you know.”

“Who?” I asked, scanning the hallway. The only person I could see out there was the night nurse, and she was staring at her phone, laughing as she texted away.

“Elijah. The town,” Mike answered.

“Did you tell him to go screw himself?”

“It’s not that easy,” he replied. I tossed my hands out, motioning for him to explain. “They managed to come up with this whole bullshit story, claimed we left Luke and wandered off in search of help. Elijah said that if he’d known there was more than one person in the car, he would’ve sent out a search party to find us, made sure we got medical care sooner.”

I had no doubt Elijah had sent out a search party, one armed with knives and Bibles.

“That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, we know names and details. We wouldn’t know all that … couldn’t know that if we hadn’t been there. They can’t explain away everything that happened.”

“He can and he did. According to city records, there’s no Elijah Hawkins. The mayor of that town is a man named John Smith. He had a wife named Abigail, but she died a few weeks ago of cancer.”

“What about Joseph and Eden? Are there any records of them?”

“Fourteen-year-old daughter, Evelyn. No son listed, or so my dad says.”

I shook my head, trying hard to understand what Mike was saying. “What about Joseph? I mean, he was with us. Surely he could back up our story. Get him. Tell him—”

“He’s gone, Dee.”

I frantically grasped at my last memories before waking up in the hospital. Henley. The high school and the enormous blue door I used as a pillow. Joseph sitting there next to me, tucking me into his side as I gave in to exhaustion. He was there. Joseph was there. “What do you mean, he’s gone?”

“I fell asleep right after you and woke up to the school’s principal nudging my foot. No one was there with us. No one.”

I brought my hands to my head and squeezed. Digging my fingers into my scalp, I tried uselessly to claw Mike’s words from my mind. Joseph was gone. I’d done everything I could to help him. Bled for him. Bound myself to his father. Risked Mike’s life and gotten Luke killed. All for him. All so that he could have the chance to save his sister, and this was how he thanked me. This!

The sound that ripped from my throat was feral, a cross between a sob and a war cry. I wasn’t crazy, and no doctor or police report could convince me I was.

“Do you believe it happened? Tell me you remember it. Luke. The house. The basement … all of it.”

“They think I’m crazy, Dee, that I feel guilty I lived and Luke didn’t. I needed to talk to you before they did, to see if you remember it the same way, prove to myself that I’m not going insane.”

Mike picked up my hand and ran his fingers across the thin pink ribbon of scars. “I spent two days waiting for you to wake up, Dee. Two days listening to the doctors’ explanations and swallowing their pills, but it didn’t stop. The memories, the sounds, the smells, everything that happened in Purity Springs is stuck in my mind, but I couldn’t get out of that room, that ward, until I said what they wanted to hear.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that when my dad comes in here this morning, when the cops or Mrs. Hooper ask you what happened, you lie. Tell them it was an accident, that we hit a plow and left Luke there to go find help.”

Something in my mind shifted, a horrifying realization suddenly making its way into my consciousness. “You said you told the cops everything. The cops—were they from Purity Springs?”

“Hell no. I wouldn’t have let those bastards anywhere near me,” he said. “There were two of them, a sheriff and one of his deputies. They were from some neighboring town. I don’t remember the name. Elijah or John or whatever his name is apparently called them when I started talking. He thought it would be wise to have an ‘uninvolved’ third party do their own investigation.”

Dropping my head, I dug my hands into the wounds on my arms to make sure I wasn’t trapped in some hideous nightmare. The sharp burn told me I wasn’t, and I glanced up and scanned the doorway to make sure no one was listening.

“Dee? Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“His brother,” I choked out. “Elijah has two brothers. They control the neighboring towns. One is a sheriff. The other sits on some sort of town council. That’s how they fly under the radar. That’s why none of the neighboring towns suspect a damn thing about Purity Springs. If they know … ” I trailed off, unwilling to vocalize my suspicions. If the officer who got Mike locked up in the psych ward was who I thought he was, then Elijah’s brother had been here. Jared knew where we lived and how to find us.