He shook his head.
‘Please?’
‘Do I have to?’
Matt frowned at that and waited for a moment. Surprised at how submissive Jerry was being. Why wasn’t he just flinging himself forward and breaking Matt’s neck in those blood covered hands of his?
He wasn’t quite sure where the idea came from, though in the thick of stress who knows where such things are generated. Perhaps in madness, perhaps in wisdom. Often in panic. But wherever it came from, his hands and body had begun to obey the idea. Because the rabbit was nearly on him and he knew full well that the crumbling brick in his hand would do nothing against this beast and his knife.
So Matt reached down and yanked at the masks around his ankle. They sprang free instantly. A deflated goat face lay on the floor, staring at Kassy. While an owl dangled from his hand.
Jerry slowed to a stop. Watching all of this curiously.
Matt lifted the owl mask and slid it over his head.
‘Jerry Marlowe!’ Matt shouted. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’
Jerry took a single step backwards, knife in hand.
‘What’s all this?’ Matt the Owl took a step forward. His voice was pumped with low, cold authority. He saw Rachel turn her head and look at him. Baffled and horrified, but wise enough to stay silent. ‘Well?’
‘I …’ Jerry said. ‘I want it to end.’
‘Then put that knife away.’
Jerry looked down at his hand then jumped when Matt shouted again.
‘Do it now! And take your mask off.’
He shook his head. ‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes, you do have to. Take it off. Take it all off.’ There was something vile about the tone Matt was using. Something that made his stomach ache with nausea, but he couldn’t think of what else to do. So he kept on stoking those memories of subservience, barking out instructions from behind the rubber. ‘Take it off.’
Just do what they tell you, mate. Get it over with, it’s the best way.
Jerry’s shoulders shrank as he dropped the knife into his pocket.
‘And the mask,’ Matt said, more gently this time. ‘Take it off, son.’
‘I’m not like the rest of you,’ Jerry said, then he actually did what he was told. He peeled the mask back to reveal a bald head drenched in sweat beads trickling down his temples and streaking his cheeks. Though there were tears there too, Matt could tell that. It all glowed deep red in the light. ‘I need them to stop doing this to me.’
‘But they aren’t the ones to blame. You have to let them go.’
‘Pastor says the Devil’s behind every bad thing, and these are definitely the girls who threw Holly dow—’
Matt frowned. ‘Blame the people from this place, not them. It started with them.’
He was blinking repeatedly, looking at the floor. ‘Blame you, you mean?’
‘That’s right.’ He drew in a breath of the rubber owl mask and the thick air. ‘We’re the ones to hate. Not these girls. Hate us.’
‘I don’t want to hate you …’ He started to chew his thumb. ‘I’m scared to hate you.’
‘Then, I’ll get you help. Do you understand?’
‘You mean prison? You want me to go back to prison?’ Jerry staggered a few steps back, mask dangling from his chunk of a hand. ‘It’s as bad as it was down here.’ A fresh horror riddled his face now, with an awful implication of what he’d experienced inside. Eyes flooded with panic and sorrow, veins pulsed in his neck, and Matt saw that little lonely boy again. The one in the photograph of all those naked kids.
Kassy suddenly broke the silence. ‘You are going to prison, Jerry, but this time it’s going to be a thousand times worse.’
Matt looked at her and shook his owl head.
‘And even if you kill us,’ Kassy went on, ‘you’re still going to go there and live there, and probably die there. Aaaaaall alone.’
Matt put a hand out. ‘Kassy.’
‘You are going to prison, Jerry. The police are coming and they’re almost here.’ Kassy’s chest was heaving and her eyes were flashing full of life. Her voice sounded different. Lower. ‘And you absolutely are going to be pounded up the arse for the rest of your pathetic life. So listen to me—’
Matt took a step, pulling off his mask. ‘Kassy, shut up.’
‘So if you want this to end, Jerry, then why don’t you get that knife of yours and shove it in your neck.’
Jerry slowly – very slowly – stepped towards her.
‘Ignore her,’ Matt said. ‘Just hang tight and we’ll get you help. There are ways to deal with this.’ The sentiment seemed phenomenally naïve. ‘Just put it down.’
‘Nah, Rabbit, you hold on to it,’ Kassy said; and then in a seductive whisper she said, ‘Down the hill for suicide, a thousand times, to end your ride.’
Jerry was walking toward Kassy, transfixed by her voice, like it was the sweetest music he’d ever heard. Rachel said nothing. Just stared at it all, like a slowly blinking corpse on the floor.
‘My poem,’ Jerry whispered.
‘Shut up, Kassy,’ Matt said. ‘Shut up.’
‘Time to tear a light in shadows, almost there, almost there. Rabbit does …’
‘… what rabbit should,’ Jerry said. ‘Will I be free?’
‘Like a bird,’ Kassy said. ‘One last task for us, Rabbit, because we really are witches and we always will be. Just like I told you we were. So one final act of misery and then we’ll be full up and we’ll leave you alone. And you can rest in heaven for ever and we’ll find someone else. Maybe Matthew, here. And Holly’s up there too, you know? In heaven. She wants to see you. She wants to forgive you. They’re all there.’
‘Stop!’ Matt couldn’t believe what he was hearing. What was Kassy – was it Kassy? – thinking? He turned to Jerry. ‘Give me the knife. This is ending right now.’
‘Get that thing and shove it deep into your little neck, before the police get here. Then all the sadness is going to stop. But
