was a splash.
“Help!” Mal shouted. “Help us!”
Letti and Maria hurried over.
“She jumped in. She just jumped in.”
The three of them formed a ring around the well, staring down into the blackness.
“Sue!” Letti called.
Sue didn’t reply. There were no splashing noises. No sounds of struggling.
Just bubbles.
The bubbles of someone letting all the air out of her lungs and sinking.
“It’s not your fault,” Letti said. “She would have found out eventually.”
Mal continued to stare into the well. Jumping in didn’t seem like a bad idea, actually.
“We need you,” Letti said, taking his good arm. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but we need to stick together to get out of here.”
“We can’t,” Mal said. “We can’t get away.”
“Yes we can.”
Mal pulled away. “They’ve been killing people for over forty years. More than five hundred people. No one has ever escaped to tell the world about it.”
“Then we’ll be the first.”
Mal stared into Letti’s eyes. They were strong, determined. Like Deb’s eyes.
“I guess I could lend a hand,” Mal said. “One, at least.”
He allowed Letti and Maria to lead him to the door. The next room was another storage area, thalidomide boxes stacked everywhere. There were three other doors, not including the one they came through.
“Kelly?” Letti said, looking around. “Kelly!”
But Kelly, the dog, and the boy were gone.
# # #
Felix opened his eyes to blurry, swirling lights. He took a breath and winced—add several broken ribs to his grocery list of things that hurt. Blinking, he realized he was on his back, lying in the woods. The two lights he saw were headlights, coming from a vehicle a dozen yards away.
The memories came to him in snippets.
...accidentally shooting John in the head...
...being taken here in a police car...
...the cougar attack...
...getting hit by the tow truck...
Felix knew the tow truck was part of this whole nightmare. He needed to get away from it. Far away.
Biting his lower lip so the whimpering wasn’t too loud, Felix managed to turn onto his side. There wasn’t a single part of his body that didn’t throb.
A stick broke, nearby. Someone walking through the underbrush.
Felix looked around, saw he was near a depression in the ground filled with dead leaves and pine needles. He rolled to it, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain, coming to a rest on his back because he couldn’t breathe while on his stomach with his ribs hurting so badly. Then he put a stick in his mouth to bite down on, and used his mangled hands to scoop dirt and dead foliage onto himself, trying to cover his body completely.
The sound got closer. It was steady, rhythmic.
Footsteps.
If Felix had any doubt it was Ulysses coming for him, those doubts were laid to rest when he heard, “Don’ make me come find you, little man. You make me hunt around, it’ll be worse on ya.”
If Felix had any sense of humor left, he might have laughed at the irony.
The footsteps got closer. Felix peeked up through the pine needles on his face, waiting for Ulysses to approach.
That’s when he noticed his cell phone.
He’d had it in his jeans pocket. It must have come out when he was hit by the truck, or when he was rolling. The tiny green light, indicating the phone was on, blinked like a homing beacon.
Just then, Ulysses walked into the clearing.
He was big, every bit as big as John. Thick in the shoulders and the chest. A head as massive as a tree stump. Felix could only make out his silhouette in the moonlight, but he could see Ulysses was carrying something long and curved.
Felix quickly reached out his hand, slapping his palm over his cell phone, covering the green light.
Then there was a burst of red. Ulysses had lit a flare.
The red glow illuminated the large man’s facial deformity. The right side of his face bulged out like he had a baseball under his skin. This stretched out his mouth, making it almost twice as wide as normal. Ulysses looked like he could swallow an orange, whole.
Felix stared, impotent, as the man stalked closer. Soon he was three steps away...
Two steps...
One step.
Ulysses’s work boot crunched down on Felix’s broken hand, prompting a pain so intense Felix had to gnash his teeth so he didn’t scream.
“Y’all put a dent in my truck,” Ulysses said, staring into the woods.
“When I find you, I’m gonna beat out that dent with your skull.”
Ulysses hacked and spat, hitting Felix on the cheek. Felix squeezed his eyes shut, feeling it slide down into his ear, knowing he couldn’t hold the scream in any longer.
Then Ulysses abruptly walked on, into the forest, the red flare growing dimmer and eventually disappearing.
With tremendous effort, Felix got up onto his knees, and shoved the cell phone back into his pocket using his thumb and pinky.
But with his mangled hands, he knew he was practically useless. He couldn’t hold a weapon. He couldn’t even open a door.
Squinting in the moonlight, he studied his bent digits. The bends and twists were primarily around the knuckles. But, incredibly, the two of the fingers Ulysses had steeped on looked better than before.
He brought his right hand up to his mouth, ready to stick his finger inside.
But Felix didn’t bite down. On the list of things he didn’t want to do, trying to fix his fingers ranked slightly above pouring gasoline on his head and setting his hair on fire.
