Twenty-Seven

A WEIGHTLESS PAPER shape circles an orb of light. Tickaticktick. Settles, whispers its wings, lifts off.

Focus on the moth. An exercise in concentration. I’m coming back, shedding the soft gauze of semiconsciousness, feeling a bolt of pain screwed into my lower back, my dry cotton mouth. Squeeze my eyes shut, look again. The filament in the bare bulb overhead burns like the tip of a white-hot soldering iron.

I take a breath, reach for my back, expecting to find blood, shredded skin—but what my fingers explore is a swollen lump above the waist of my jeans, like I was bitten by something small and extremely venomous. No light here except the bulb over the cot I’m lying on, and, in the far corner, the seething red grate of a small potbelly stove. The walls and ceiling are rough-hewn, exposed beams, unfinished.

The muscles of my torso jump and twitch in some delayed reaction as I realize I have no idea where I am. I remember Bree, running away from me. A hand, playing lightning between its fingers. Not lightning. Electricity. A Taser.

There’s a motor running steadily outside, and another sound, murmuring and soft, like flowing water, or a conversation so distant that the words lose all form. I sit up stiffly. Someone’s taken my coat.

He lets himself in, then, granting a brief glimpse of twilight before he shuts the door. I move back, knowing the big silhouette, the darkness of it, blending so well with the shadows as he goes to the stove, taking a second to warm himself. A rustle as he sheds some outer layers, a heavy coat, maybe some gloves. “There you are,” he says in his soft, modulated voice. “Took you long enough.”

Mr. Mac comes closer, dressed in what helps him look like part of the night: dark Carhartts, a black fleece vest over a black hooded sweatshirt. A ski cap he removes, gently squeezing it in his hands as he lowers it, never taking his eyes off me. They’re a mild shade of brown.

“What . . . ?” I shake my head, and maybe I’m not fully awake yet, because I feel like I’m floating, up there with the moth, and the questions I should ask won’t come.

“Go ahead and lie back.” He sets the hat on an unseen shelf, carries a big metal toolbox to a bench near the cot, opens it, brings out a handful of black plastic strips. Zip ties.

My body’s never given signals like this before—air traffic control with all the boards lit up, alarms blaring, flaggers signaling go, go now. I make a slight move to push myself off the cot; he turns, and I’m completely blocked by his bulk, my face level with the broadest part of his thigh.

We stare at each other for a moment, and then Mr. Mac sets the ties down, walks around the end of the cot, grabs a flashlight as he opens a closet door. He shines the beam straight down into a face: eyes huge, mouth covered in a strip of duct tape, dried blood all down one side of her head and neck. Hazel sees him, then me, and starts thrashing; her cries behind the strip are what I was hearing, that babbling brook.

He hunkers down beside her, glancing at me. “Okay, Clara? For every bit of trouble you give me”—he swirls the beam in Hazel’s face, watching her wince—“she’ll lose a little piece. One piece at a time.” He sniffs, maybe a touch of fall allergies. “You think about what piece I’ll start with, the next time you want to make this hard.”

He shuts her away.

I’m frozen. He makes another spinning gesture at my legs. “Pick them up.” I force myself down on the thin mattress pad. It’s covered in a white fitted sheet that smells fresh from the package, but it’s soaked into the walls, what’s been done here, a psychic assault that makes me retch, quietly, swallowing. No doubt he’s scrubbed the bits and pieces away—I saw gallon bottles of bleach on the closet floor around Hazel—but horror is a residue, molecules I inhale. “Let me go,” I whisper. Nothing; he’s busy getting his tools out. “You killed those kids.”

“Don’t tell me what I’ve done.” Conversational. He brings out a power drill. A hammer. A plastic box rolling with nails and screws. The light flickers overhead, and he tsks, tossing over at me, “Generator. It happens.”

I’m rigid as he kneels beside me. “Somebody will hear.”

He gives a half smile, gaze traveling from the crown of my head down to my arm, which he takes in a light grip, looping two zip ties around my wrist, strapping it to the metal frame of the cot. “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to hear us.” Jerks the ties so there’s no slack; I cry out. “Used to come out here hunting with my dad, before the state bought up the land.” Exhales as he sits back on his heels, gaze going over the ceiling, the light, with its moth. “Camp’s still here, though.”

State-owned land: we’re still in the marsh. “I just want to go home. Please.” Strain my arm against the tie. “We didn’t do anything to you.”

“You know what you do.” Mr. Mac drops to my level, folding his forearms on the pad, and my senses recoil from the normal-guy smell of him: Ivory soap, coffee, toothpaste, like some olfactory checklist of how he prepared for tonight, as if it were a Lady Elks’ playoff game. “I think you know exactly.” He reaches out, playing with the earrings in my lobe, flicking them. “But it’s different when we’re alone. Nobody laughing then.”

I shake my head, tears stinging, escaping down my face. “I’m not—”

“Ah. It’s okay. That’s just school.” He releases a sigh. “It was the same way when I went there. Everybody laughing.” He looks at the wall for a second, working the sheet between his fingers. “But now I’m big. And it’s so easy.” Nods toward the closet. “That one there? Got right in the car when I said Bree had had an accident. That her mom was waiting for her at the ER. All you guys did just what I wanted. I’ve been watching you, you know. Figuring you all out.” He moves down to my feet, secures my right ankle with two more ties. Pats my leg, pausing thoughtfully. “I’ve never done two at once before.”

My gaze is riveted on the last four ties. Can’t let him put those on me. “Nobody’s going to believe Hazel and I both ran away.”

He smiles slightly. “Maybe they’ll think the Mumbler did it.” He looks at me from the foot of the cot, expressionless, zip ties held loosely in his hand. Blinks rapidly, pulls his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second. “I just—I always wonder—you know, if it would be different. If we could just be together before. Let you get to know me. Instead of those other boys.”

I clear my throat, words coming slowly. “Just you and me?”

“Or any of the others.” His gaze works over my skin by the millimeter. “I really am good with kids.”

I swallow. “I think you are.”

His brown eyes, so close, as he leans farther over the bed. “You do?”

That’s when I jam my thumb into his eyeball.