THE SHACK
Charlotte hopped the fence while Polly rocked herself on the ground out of the dog’s reach. The dog shook its head, clearing cobwebs. Polly looked up at her. The thing behind the girl’s eyes made Charlotte gasp out loud.
The reality of what she’d just seen, what the girl had done, came to her in one rush. It was the craziest thing Charlotte had ever seen in her goddamn life. She laughed like glass shattering. Polly looked up at her like Charlotte was the crazy one. Maybe she was.
“Is he okay?” Polly asked. “Somebody hurt him to make him that way. It’s not his fault.”
Polly handed the remains of the bear to Charlotte. Charlotte realized she could feel her tongue drying in the night air. Her mouth had been hanging open ever since Polly jumped into the yard. Polly picked a rock up off the ground. She raised it over her head to smash the doorknob.
“Polly,” Charlotte said. Polly stopped with the rock over her head.
“Maybe try it first,” Charlotte said.
Polly turned the doorknob. The door swung open. Polly tossed the rock, headed inside.
A sour-sweet smell hung in the air, a smell Charlotte knew from her uncle’s shack in deer season. It was the smell of blood both new and old. Polly pushed ahead. She stood in the doorway.
“Nick?” It was Nate’s voice. It was the voice of an old man. “Nick, I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t.”
Polly ran to him. Charlotte followed.
They’d tied him to a chair with rough twine. Purple wet furrows in his wrists where he’d fought against the rope, rubbed his skin away. Pinkflesh dots all over Charlotte knew to be cigarette burns. Blood on his chest, a bib of it from his mouth, from his face. Stab wounds in his chest weeping something darker than blood.
Polly held him fierce.
“It’s not Uncle Nick,” Polly said. “It’s me. I found you and you can’t leave ever again. You can’t.”
“We’ve got to untie him,” Charlotte said.
He heard Charlotte, lifted his head slow up at her. Her brain needed a second to identify the wrongness, the one blue gunfighter eye staring at her, the dark red pit staring at her.
Oh god they took his eye.