He could barely see through the tears, the thorns in his feet sending stabs of pain up his legs.
At last, he broke out of the trees.
Saw the bonfire in the distance, flames twisting in the wind like braids of orange hair.
The sand felt better than the forest floor. It still held some warmth from a day of baking under the sun.
Luther sprinted, the noise of his family getting louder.
He collapsed at the foot of the dunes and crawled through sea grass to the top, where he lay breathless.
The bonfire raged thirty yards away.
Katie was hogtied and writhing like an earthworm, screaming incomprehensibly, Rufus right there beside her, screaming, “Please! Please! Please!” in a guttural expression of absolute horror.
Maxine didn’t make a sound.
Luther couldn’t see anything but his mother’s swollen face, and he didn’t understand what Winston was doing to her.
The man’s pants were pulled down to his knees, and he was lying on top of Luther’s mother, moving back and forth, back and forth.
Maxine wasn’t even crying.
Her eyes were wide and she looked like she was someplace else entirely.
In a daydream.
Another world.
Years later, he would catch her staring off into space with that same catatonic emptiness, and wonder if she had returned to this moment.
“Mama,” Luther whispered. “Oh, Mama.”
The man who’d chased him into the woods stood over Rufus and Katie, pointing the shotgun at them, but watching Winston and Maxine, his meaty face sweaty and smiling in the firelight.
Luther grabbed a handful of sand and squeezed, his knuckles blanching, but it didn’t do a thing to temper the fire that had begun to smolder in his belly.
Winston hit his mother in the face and told her to make some pretty noise.
Luther crying angry tears now.
His mother said something that caused him to hit her again, and this time, she cried out and made a strange noise.
Winston didn’t hit her again, just moved over her faster and faster.
Rufus said, “Close your eyes, Katie. Go someplace else.”
Ben said, “Little girl, if you close your eyes, I’ll fucking cut you out of your skin.”
Luther clambered to his feet, took two steps down the dune, and stopped.
He turned around, went back to his hiding spot.
Wept bitterly into his shirt.
If he ran down to the bonfire and tried to stop this from happening, he’d only get hurt, tied up, maybe even killed.
He was five years old.
Tiny.
Weak.
Slow.
He couldn’t stop anything.
Couldn’t save his family from these terrible men.
The complete helplessness crushed him under terror and shame—a weight he would never be rid of.
Luther looked back toward the bonfire.
Winston was on his feet now, pulling up his trousers.
“Sorry about the sloppy seconds, brother,” Winston said, taking the shotgun from Ben.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I plan on breaking new ground.”
“Excuse me?”
Ben pointed at Katie.
“Oh…all right then.”
“You son of a bitch!” Rufus cried. “She’s eight!”
Ben smiled. “That’s what I call a selling point.”
“I’ll kill you,” Rufus said.
Ben squatted down in front of Luther’s father. He cocked back his fist and swung down, hitting Rufus in the face with a blow that cracked bone.
Luther couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t just sit there and watch this happen for another second. Anything, maybe even death, would be better.
He crawled down the front side of the dune, the voices getting louder and clearer.
“Let me tell you what’s about to happen,” Ben said to Rufus. “This is your last hour of living. In that hour, you’re gonna watch me hurt your little girl. Hurt her so good. And you better watch every fucking second. And then—”
“Why?” Rufus screamed. “What have we ever done to you?”
“Didn’t you hear what Winston told you? It’s fate. All your miserable lives you been racing toward this moment. Toward this awful end. And now it’s here.”
Rufus was hysterical, blubbering. “We’re a good family. We’re decent people. We’ve never hurt anyone. Why?”
Maxine lay unmoving in the sand, and as Luther crawled closer, he wondered if she was dead.
“‘Cause we like it, you stupid fuck,” Ben seethed.
Then he stood, pulled out his pocket knife, and flicked open the blade.
Luther crawling faster and faster through the sand.
Ben stared down at Katie.
“I don’t think I got your name, sweetheart.”
Katie squirming, trying to scoot away.
Rufus said, “I’ll do anything you want. Anything. Please don’t do this to my little girl.”
“I’m Ben,” Ben said to Katie, kneeling down beside her.
Luther was twenty feet away.
Ben grabbed Katie by the back of her shirt and dragged her toward him through the sand.
He rolled Katie over onto her back, her wrists bound, arms pinned underneath her.
She was crying, and Rufus begging, and Maxine still trapped in her horrified daze.
Luther stopped.
Ten feet behind Ben.
Hidden in shadow just outside the ring of illuminated sand.
As Ben cut into the side of Katie’s yellow swimsuit, the girl began to hyperventilate.
Luther telling himself to get up, run full speed at the man, claw his eyes, hit him, just do something to make this stop—
“Ben, you hear that?” Winston said.
Ben looked up and down the length of the beach.
It took him a moment, but Luther heard it too over the constant crush of the breakers—the low rumble of an engine.
In the distance, a pair of headlights appeared, and then another.
Winston walked over to Rufus and put the barrel of the shotgun against his throat.
“Where are the keys to the truck?”
“In the ignition.”
“Maybe they won’t even stop,” Ben said.
“Maybe they fucking will. Maybe there’s a half-dozen people coming to crash the beach party. We’ll never get off this island if word gets out.”
Ben closed his knife, slipped it into his pocket. Then he scooped Katie up and threw her over his
