by L. G. Davis
The sound of the floorboards creaking as he walks makes my head hurt even more, like there are fiery explosions going off inside of it.
Something smashes against the wall. I can’t tell whether it’s one of the DVDs. I want to look, but the pain has rendered me immobile.
I’m still trying to push through the pain in my head when more pain explodes in me—this time in my middle. He’s kicked me. Now I’m falling hard and fast into the darkness.
“My son,” I whisper, but I’m unable to say more.
“I know where he is,” Cole calls out. “When all this is over, I’ll bring him here. We’ll go hunting together. I’ll teach him how to be a man. I failed with Brett, but I have a chance to try again.”
“No,” I croak. I want to stay and fight for my son. When I lift my arm a few inches off the floor, it falls back down. My strength is seeping out of me, leaving me deflated.
It’s over. I failed Clark. I failed myself.
My eyes close.
40
My eyes fly open and my lungs suck in air. No matter how greedy I am, how much I gulp in, it’s not enough.
Everything is dark except for a blinking red light above me, very close to my face.
When I try to stretch my arms out, they meet a soft surface, some kind of fabric. I force my mind to push through the pain and figure out where I am.
“Welcome back,” Cole says. “Be still. Try not to panic or you’ll run out of air.”
It wasn’t a nightmare. He did find me. This time, he’ll never let me go. He’ll kill me, and I’ll never see Clark again.
A hot tear slides down the side of my face.
“I planned this moment for a year,” he continues. “I always knew it would end like this.”
“What...” I can’t speak because my mouth is so dry, and my head is on the verge of exploding.
“Where, you mean? Well, you’re inside your pretty coffin. I had it custom-made for you.”
My body stiffens and panic like I’ve never known before flares up inside me.
He has buried me alive?
“No,” I say, but the words only come out in a whisper. “No,” I repeat even though it hurts to speak.
“It will be much harder if you resist it. My suggestion is that you should enjoy your last doses of oxygen. Your supply is limited.”
“Let me out,” I shout. “Please, Cole.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
This is my worst nightmare.
When I was six, my parents died in a mall that had collapsed. Ever since, I’ve been afraid of being buried alive. I found out years later that they did not die from being crushed, but from suffocating underneath the rubble. They were found four days later after taking who knows how long to die. That thought has haunted me all my life.
Once I told Brett that if I died, I wanted to be cremated to ensure I was really dead. I’d read horror stories of people who woke up in their coffins and ended up dying from lack of oxygen.
Now my life is doomed to end in exactly the way I’d feared.
My mind goes back to Clark, and I remember Cole telling me that he knows his location. I hope he was only trying to scare me. If he was busy coming after me, how would he know where Tasha took him? Unless of course, he paid someone to follow them.
“Don’t hurt my son,” I say, fresh tears burning my eyes.
“Don’t worry, our son will be safe. I’ll toughen him up a bit. I don’t want him to end up like Brett did.”
I can’t let him do it. I can’t let him destroy Clark.
“He’s not yours,” I shout, pressing against the silky coffin lining. My will to fight rewards me with a huge dose of adrenaline that I use to push against the top of the coffin.
Nothing moves.
“Push harder.” He laughs. “Just a little harder.”
I don’t know if he’s playing games with me, but he doesn’t need to tell me to push harder because I already am. I won’t go down without a fight.
To my surprise, the cover pops open and air rushes into my lungs. It smells of rotten leaves and wet earth.
It’s still dark outside, but it was darker inside the closed coffin. I scramble to my feet to get out of the coffin, my skin crawling. Dizziness makes me fall back in, so I crawl out instead and lie next to it on the damp ground, panting as I look up at the moonlight that slices through the leaves of the trees above.
Move. Save yourself.
Wherever he is, Cole is watching. I’m the prey, and he’s waiting to pounce. He released me from the coffin so he can have fun chasing me before he ends my life.
First, I roll to my side and then onto my hands and knees.
I almost fall into a deep hole next to the coffin.
I swallow a scream as I kick my feet into the ground and use my hands to move me away from the grave he’s dug for me. If I don’t save myself, I’ll end up back inside the coffin, six feet under.
I struggle to my feet, ignoring the pain roiling through my body.
When I start to run blindly into the trees, gulping in the smell of decomposing wood, his laughter rings out around me. My body is weak, but I keep going, breaking twigs with my bare feet and jumping over logs. I fall a couple of times, but I pick myself up again.
It’s only when my lungs start to burn that I stop to listen, to try and determine how far away he is. I no longer hear his voice. The only sound is that of the river.
But not for long.
The sound of pounding feet alerts me that he’s running after me.
He refuses to let me get away. If he didn’t have a limp, he would probably have caught up with me already.
I need to lose him. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know if he has a trap waiting for me ahead, or if I might end up being attacked by wild animals, but I need to keep moving.
A gunshot slices the night and I fall to the ground as if I have been hit by the bullet. When I realize I’m fine, I get back on my feet again and continue.
“You won’t get far,” he says behind me. He’s using a megaphone. I don’t know how far he is now. I can’t turn to look. It will only slow me down.
I keep running until the pain in my chest threatens to stop me, but I push my body to its limit. The trees are both my friends and enemies. They hide me, but their thorns and branches also cut into my skin. I don’t care. Pain is better than death.
“Run, Meghan, run,” he booms. “Run like Brett used to when I chased him like an animal. He was a coward even as a kid.”
My breath catches in my throat.
Is this what he did to his son, what he wants to do to mine?
“Hunting was supposed to teach him how to be a man. He was the animal and I was the prey. I always caught up. He never told you, did he?”
I struggle to recover from the emotional blow that accompanies Cole’s words, but I need to keep running. I want to stop, to throw up. But that’s not an option.
My feet continue to pound the earth, but I feel myself slowing down. My body is reaching its limit, and there’s not much I can do about it. His confession has served its purpose. It has weakened me.
Another bullet splits the silence only moments before a sharp pain strikes my right leg. I bite back a scream when the force of impact stops me in my tracks.
It’s game over.
Brett once came home with a wound in his leg. He told me there was an accident and he refused to go to the hospital. Now I know the truth. His father had shot him, too.
I fall to the ground, writhing with pain. Still determined to get away, I bury my nails into the soil, begging it to move me forward. But nothing happens.
I can make out his footfalls now. He’s getting closer, closer, closer.
By the time he reaches me, I’m barely conscious. My eyes close as soon as he lifts me from the ground. They only open again when we arrive at the cabin.
I try to squirm from his grip, but he’s strong. He doesn’t speak as he drops me into a chair in the l
iving room in front of the TV.
Blood is seeping from my wound. I feel it sliding down the back of my leg to the floor, as my weak body slumps to the side.
He pushes me upright again and ties something around my chest, a rope maybe.
There’s not an ounce of strength left in my body to fight him.
“You came looking for answers,” he whispers into my ear. “You’re about to get them in brilliant color.” When my head lolls forward, he grips my hair and turns my face back to the screen, which is now flickering to life.
My eyes are blurry, but I am forcing myself to watch my life unfolding in front of me.
I’m watching a video of him falling over me in the hotel room the night before my wedding. He has the rape on video. The raw anguish spills out of me in a low moan as my wounded heart demands the revenge that it may never find.
After what seems like an eternity, he changes the DVD. The next one is of me and Brett in our bedroom, making love.
He was watching us the entire time. He listened to every one of our conversations. That must be how he heard me tell Brett that I was terrified of being buried alive. He wanted to bring my worst fears to life.
In the DVD after that, Brett is asking me to help him die. Cole has a grin on his face, but he doesn’t say a word as he slides in another DVD. He’s only showing me snippets, only what he wants me to see.
I watch my husband on screen, lying in bed, and begging me to take him out of his misery. I listen to myself telling him I can’t do it and fleeing from the room.
The TV goes blank.
“I knew you wouldn’t go through with it.” Cole puts the DVDs back in their cases.
“So, you killed your own son.” My eyes are blazing at him now. The physical pain is forgotten, distant, as if it belongs to someone else.
“It’s a good thing he died, Meghan. It was time. He was useless to me and to you. He was my biggest mistake.” He shakes his head. “All my life I tried to cleanse him, turn him from the son of a dead prostitute to a respectable, powerful, and strong man. I never wanted the boy, but I was curious to see if I could turn him into me. I guess I failed.”
Brett never told me that his mother was a prostitute. He never wanted to talk about her. He only mentioned that she left him when he was a child.
Cole tilts his head to the side. “Now that you have the truth you came searching for, it’s time for you to die. Your coffin is waiting.” He unties the rope from around my body.
I don’t know what gets into me, but I jump to my feet, prepared to escape. It’s foolish. He has too much power over me for it to work.
“Don’t you dare come near me, you monster.” Even though my body is vibrating with adrenaline, my wounded leg refuses to play along. I limp to the back of the chair, daring him to approach me.
“Stop resisting, Meghan. It’s over now. No one can save you out here.” He pulls a silver handgun from his back pocket and takes a step toward me.
When he comes closer, I use the little strength I have left to lift the chair, swinging it as hard as I can in his direction. It strikes him on the left side of his body. He growls and drops his gun, but otherwise he doesn’t flinch.
Both our gazes move to the weapon on the floor. It’s closer to me than to him. Since I can’t walk, I fall over it. He lunges for me as my fingers curl around the gun.
“Goodbye, Meghan.” He grabs my hair and drives my head into the floor before snatching the gun from my hand.
Before my eyes can close, I hear a gunshot.
41
Ithought I’d never wake up again, but I do. I can still smell him. His presence is suffocating me, but I can’t see him.
“Where am I?” I ask even though I’m not sure if anyone is with me.
“You’re in the hospital,” a woman’s voice says. It’s familiar, but I have to wade through the mess inside my head to place it. When I do, my eyes fill with tears.
“Tasha,” I whisper, choking up.
“Are you okay, Zoe?” She comes to my bedside, her eyes sparkling. My vision is blurred, but it’s starting to clear.
Without moving my head, which is still hurting, I scan the room. I can tell from the pressure around it that it’s bandaged, as is my leg.
“Where is Clark? Where is my son?”
“Don’t worry.” Tasha strokes my cheek. “Clark is fine. He’s safe. So are you.”
“Where is he? Where’s...Cole?” I’d heard a bullet. Did I manage to shoot him? Did he shoot me?
“He was shot by the police.” She wipes her cheek. “They got to him just in time. If they came even a second later, he could have killed you.”
I blink at her, confused. How could the police have shot Cole when they were not at the cabin?
“He’s dead?” I bite into my trembling bottom lip.
“No, Mrs. Wilton,” a man answers from the doorway. “But you never have to worry about him again.” He stretches out a hand to shake mine. “I’m detective Jason Rogers.”
The forty-something detective is tall with pale skin, red hair, and eyes so dark they look black.
“You saved my life?” I squeeze his hand.
“No, a taxi driver called the police. He said he drove you to the cabin, and Cole Wilton stabbed him with a knife. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it. But if it weren’t for him, you might not have either.”
Another person is dead because of me. That’s all I can think as I listen to what the detective is telling me. He gives me the time I need to cry for the man who saved my life. Tasha strokes my back in silence.
“Cole did it,” I say finally. “He also killed my husband, Brett Wilton, and our housekeeper. There were DVDs.”
“We know that.”
“Was my husband’s murder recorded?”
The detective shakes his head. “No, but he admitted to being involved in your husband’s murder.”
“I’m innocent.” I hold on to Tasha’s hand, overcome with emotion.
The man nods with a smile. “You are innocent of murder, yes.”
Three hours after I speak to Detective Rogers, Clark steps into my hospital room. He’s holding a teddy bear I haven’t seen before.
“Mommy, Mommy.” He rushes to my bedside. With tears in his eyes, he places his little hand on my forehead. “Don’t die.”
“No.” I smile through my tears. “That won’t happen. I’m not going anywhere.”
The detective said that since there was evidence that I did intend to kill Brett, and even had the deadly medication prepared, I could still be charged. However, I spoke to a lawyer over the phone, who promised to do everything to clear my name of any charges. She doubted I would end up in prison.
“What’s that?” I ask about an object Clark is holding in his other hand.
“It’s a syringe. The nurse gave it to me. But it’s not a real injection.”
“Do you want to make Mommy better?” I ask, remembering the game he used to play with Brett.
His face goes blank and he shakes his head. “I don’t want to.” His voice is trembling now.
“Why not? You can pretend you’re the doctor. I’m your patient.”
“But I don’t want you to leave and go to heaven.”
I frown. “Baby, what do you mean? I won’t go anywhere.”
“But daddy did.”
“Yes, because he was very sick. He was in a lot of pain.”
Clark nods and drops his head. “I wanted to make his pain go away, but he went to get better in heaven.”
“You tried to make it go away?” A cold shower of realization hits me. “What are you saying?”
After a long silence, he speaks. “Grandpa said if I inject daddy, he will not have pain anymore. He will go to heaven and rest. He said we are daddy’s secret angels.” Clark puts a finger on his lips. “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”
“Okay, I won’t.” I sit up and the room starts to spin. “You... you tried to make daddy better? You injected him?”
�
�Grandpa gave me the injection. He said I had to be brave for daddy. He said I am a big man.”
“Did he show you how to do it?” My mouth feels like dry, dusty paper.
Clark nods. “He helped me. I pushed the thing in the injection and daddy got the medicine.” He crawls up to lie next to me in the hospital bed. When I wrap my arms around him, I’m trembling.
It suddenly occurs to me why Cole always said he was involved in Brett’s murder, but he never actually said he killed him.
That’s because he made somebody else do it. He made my son, a child, commit the murder. Cole was the one who had left Clark’s door open that night.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Isit on the grass, enjoying the touch of the breeze as it sweeps through my hair. The blades of grass underneath my feet feel like heaven.
“I want more juice,” Clark says and I smile, reaching for his plastic cup.
The picnic was his idea. He hates being indoors, and I understand. Now that he’s free to be a kid again, we spend a lot of time outdoors making up for lost time.
At a distance, several children are playing. A few minutes ago, Clark played with some of them. Seeing him play with other children warmed my heart and broke it at the same time.
He’s still a child like them, but at the same time, he has been robbed of his innocence.
No matter how many years go by, I will remember what Cole did to him.
My fear now is that Clark will never forget that night. And if he does forget, there will come a day when he will want to know how his father died. Brett was for sure his father. A DNA test proved that Clark was not Cole’s.
Cole is the one who went to prison for Brett’s murder, among other things, because he was the mastermind and the adult. One day, though, Clark will be old enough to ask the hard questions and understand what his grandfather made him do.
At his sentencing, Cole shocked the entire courtroom when he shouted that he may be in prison, but he still lives on in Clark and that he will continue his legacy one day. In my mind, I immediately shut down his comment. I was determined to do everything possible to make sure my son never followed in Cole’s footsteps.
