by Lexie Ray
“I don’t blame you, Blair,” she said. “I’m not going to judge anything you’ve done. It’s all understandable. I did insane things when I was a captive of the farmhouse. I didn’t always understand I was a captive. A lot of the things I did there, I actually believed I wanted to do—that I was choosing to do them. Like when I killed little girls.” Hunter said the last part under her breath, terrified that one of the younger girls on the other side of the door might hear her. “When I left and fled to New York, it still took me years to fully realize that I hadn’t chosen any of that. It’s going to take time, Blair, but I’m willing to wait and work with you.”
“What if I don’t want that?” asked Blair, returning her gaze once again.
“You’ve been brainwashed by him,” said Hunter.
“You are so arrogant,” said Blair.
“Right now, you’re in a state of being triggered. You’re operating on autopilot, reacting in the ways he taught you to react.”
Blair snorted a laugh, shaking her head. Hunter could tell her sister was disgusted and infuriated with her. She needed to break Blair down before Blair broke her.
“The basement is awful, and the barn is horrific. Once I learned that as long as I’m a killer, as long as I’m dark like him and function like him, I didn’t have to go there anymore. I could sleep in his bed and hurt others, instead of getting hurt. I did the same exact things as you. I understand you, Blair. But you’re free now. You never have to do those things again.”
“I like killing,” said Blair.
“So do I,” Hunter said. “I like it a lot.”
Blair’s narrowing gaze softened at that, as though she was surprised and refreshed by the admission.
“There are some people in this world you can kill, and you’ll be thanked for it. Some people deserve it,” said Hunter.
“Like those stupid girls,” said Blair.
“No, like the men at the farm,” said Hunter, quickly correcting her.
“They don’t die easy,” said Blair, her gaze softening, her pupils dilating wide as though she was slipping away.
“So, you’ve wanted to kill them?” asked Hunter, feeling encouraged.
“Yeah,” she said, as she stared deeper and deeper into space. “But there’s no use in it, no point.”
“Blair, go with that. Go with that feeling, follow it,” said Hunter, as she watched her sister’s focus soften even more radically. It was as though Blair needed to slip away, in order to gather her true self. She needed to find the pieces of her that had been hiding deep down inside before she could come back, as the little sister Hunter remembered, the little sister who was the real Blair Mann.
It was that expression on Blair’s face, the slack-jawed drifting away look that had been utterly heartbreaking to see growing up—so much so that Hunter had blocked Blair out of her memory. There was nothing worse than seeing her sister as a shell—empty and hollowed out—as though the farmhouse had siphoned her spirit away, killing her dead to the core, and leaving her as nothing but a shadow of herself.
The seventh rule of the shadow house entered Hunter’s mind: Remember to forget, forget to remember. She had done just that. Had Blair?
Suddenly, Blair’s vision popped into sharp focus. Hunter could tell in the way her sister all of a sudden was looking at her with an unwavering gaze, present and alert, as though she had just cleared through a thick fog.
“Blair, are you ok? How do you feel?” asked Hunter.
“My wrists hurt,” she said.
“Do you know where you are?”
Blair looked around the room innocently.
“We’re in Ash’s cabin,” said Hunter. “Grizzly doesn’t know where we are. You’re safe.”
Blair began to slowly nod that she understood.
“I’m going to untie you now, ok?” said Hunter.
A sly smile crept through the corner of Blair’s mouth, but Hunter missed it as she rose to her feet, leaning around her sister for the ties.
With a quick slice of her knife, Hunter cut through the plastic ties that had bound Blair to the cot. A moment later, she sat back down and watched her sister rub each wrist with her hands.
“I’m thirsty,” said Blair.
“I can get you a glass of water,” she said, rising immediately to her feet. “I’ll be back in a second.”
Once Hunter had left the room, Blair’s gaze darted to the gun on the washer, the disposable cell phone beside it. Hunter had left the doorway wide open, but the line-of-sight spanned the hall, not the living room full of girls.
Blair’s hand brushed over the gun, her fingertips grazing its cool surface. It was tempting, but she retracted her hand towards the cell phone.
Quickly she opened it and selected the “Contacts” button. There was only one name, one number. Blair took a moment to fathom her father’s genius, then dialed, gearing up to execute the next stage of her father’s brilliant plan.
* * *
Sarah flipped her cell phone shut, staring at her own determined reflection in the two-way mirror, the only thing that separated her from the interrogation room where Linden was sitting across from that kid, speaking in a desperate tone. What an idiot he was, thought Sarah. This investigation had gotten away from him, and he was letting the kid know that with his pleading, desperate tone of voice. Amateur.
Linden ran his pudgy fingers through his sweaty hair. She almost felt bad for the guy. The kid seemed laid back and confident. He was sitting far back in his chair, fingering the metal tab of his Coke can.
Then, Linden began glaring at the kid, initiating some kind of awkward staring contest. They don’t teach you that at the academy, she thought, as she watched the tactic immediately turn to crap. Linden sneezed. The local police must be especially grateful they had shown up, Sarah thought sarcastically to herself.
In an instant, Linden rose and was out the door. In a few seconds, he was standing beside Sarah, glaring at the kid through the two-way along side her.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Linden. “I had won him over. He was ready to talk about those girls. It would’ve been our only real evidence between the farmhouse, the missing girls, and the Brooklyn murders. It would have painted a much bigger picture of that farmhouse and why those men had come after Hunter and why she had attacked back. But now he’s not talking.”
“Shit,” said Sarah. “But at least now you believe me that Hunter isn’t some kind of demonic serial killer.”
Linden met her gaze. “She’s still a killer, Sarah. We still have to find her. But she’s a small part of a big picture.”
Sarah turned back, looking at Twitch through the two-way.
“Someone must have got to him,” said Linden. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“We don’t have him for much longer,” said Sarah.
“You think I don’t know that?” asked Linden, annoyed. She hadn’t seen him annoyed, snapping at her, well, ever. “We have to get the Feds involved,” he said finally.
“Whoa, Linden, that’s a terrible idea,” said Sarah.
“What choice do we have?”
“A lot, we don’t have to involve them until we’re made to.”
“If we don’t, the Sheriff will. It’s going to happen sooner or later.”
“Then, let it happen later,” said Sarah. “We need more time.”
Linden stared at Sarah for a long moment. There was something off about her. Something about this case was rattling her. He wasn’t blind to the fact she had been getting way too personally invested. But this was something else, something different, something new. Something had gotten under Sarah’s skin, and it was preventing her from doing good detective work. In fact, it was preventing the investigation from progressing properly.
And that’s when Linden decided he needed to make a phone call.
He stepped outside into the humid late-summer New England heat and dialed his cell. It only took a few rings for the call to get picked up. Linden looked
cautiously around himself before speaking quietly into the receiver.
“Hi, it’s Linden. I need a favor. Can you run a thorough background check, full history, on Sarah Voss? Last name spelled V-O-S-S. Brooklyn resident. I’m particularly interested in whether she has spent any time, significant time, in New Hampshire.”
* * *
Hunter entered the laundry room to find the pancake plate completely bare and set lazily on the cot beside Blair. She had eaten all of them and was staring up at the ceiling.
“Here’s your water,” Hunter said quietly, as she set the glass on the table, coming face to face with her gun, untouched, resting on the washing machine. Hunter couldn’t believe she had left it here. She couldn’t believe she could be so careless. But there it was just as she had left it. She was reminded of the time Dale had forgotten a pistol, leaving it with Hunter when she was a very young girl, and walked down range, his back to her, presenting an opportunity for her to kill him.
She realized Blair was looking at her, so Hunter slid the weapon down the back of her pants and grabbed the disposable phone, as well. Was the cell where she had left it also?
Blair kept her gaze on Hunter, while drinking at least half of her water.
“He’s going to come after you, you know,” said Blair, setting the glass down.
“That would be ideal,” said Hunter. “It would save us the wild goose chase of hunting him down.”
“It puts everyone here at risk,” said Blair. The way the bare light bulb glowed overhead illuminating her forehead, nose, and chin, leaving dark hollows where her eyes and mouth should be, gave Hunter an uneasy feeling, like she was speaking with a ghost.
“I doubt he’ll try to abduct our large group a third time. He’s just one man, now,” said Hunter. However, she barely believed what she was saying. Of course Grizzly could abduct them all and exile them to the basement of his farmhouse. He could let them starve to death and rot. No one knew of the farmhouse location yet, except for Sarah who may or may not have gotten their text messages and calls. That was another oddity that didn’t sit right with Hunter.
“I don’t think he’ll want to abduct,” Blair explained. “I’ll think he’ll want to kill.”
“Does he know where we are?” asked Hunter.
“How could he?” Blair questioned.
“I mean, does he know where Ash’s cabin is? Does he know that Ash still lives here?”
“What makes you think I would know something like that? I don’t know what he knows,” she said, but the argument wasn’t about to hold up. Blair’s tone had already given away the possibility of a lie.
“He likes to share his plans with the closest girls,” said Hunter. “I’ve forgotten a lot about those years, but I haven’t forgotten everything. He can’t sense his own brilliance unless he’s showing someone how he really is five steps ahead, playing everyone else. I used to think he didn’t care so much about what he was doing, but rather the fact that he had a little audience of impressed children watching and understanding that when so-and-so suffers it’s because Grizzly set that trap, baited the poor bastard, and played his strategy out perfectly. So, I’m asking you, did he say anything to you about Ash having a cabin or that he knows where it is?”
Blair held silent for a brief moment, disguising the lull with another long chug of her water.
“Not that I know of,” said Blair finally. “If he did wouldn’t he be here by now?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said, crossing her arms. “He’s calculating and now he’s alone. He’s more likely to wait, watch, and ambush perfectly.”
“I agree with you there,” Blair said. “So should we flee?”
“It crossed my mind, but we’d move too slowly. Think about it, a group of nearly ten girls, some children, some so emaciated and weak they can’t walk quickly.”
“I doubt he went back to the farmhouse,” said Blair.
“I know,” she said, the gears already turning in her mind. “Does that make it the perfect hiding place for us?”
Blair’s brow furrowed at the highly counter-intuitive suggestion. “If he can come after us here, he can come after us there,” she said, thinking out loud.
“But there could be some value in luring him back to the crime scene,” said Hunter.
“Crime scene?”
“Yeah,” she said. “The farmhouse, the barn, the thirty acres of land, fields, and forests are going to be treated like a crime scene, eventually.”
Once again, Blair fell silent. Hunter could tell she was thinking, considering the possibility from all angles: what it could mean to her and what it could mean to their father. This time Blair couldn’t hide behind a glass of water. When she lifted it to her mouth, it was already empty.
“If you call it in, Hunter, wouldn’t you also be incriminating yourself? You killed men at the farmhouse, didn’t you?” Blair’s voice was soft, worried sounding, fake.
Hunter sat down at the edge of the cot, looking Blair in the eyes which were no longer black hollow sockets, but fawn brown from her new, lower vantage point.
“I’m going to tell you something that might shock you and might make you angry. I felt both of those emotions when I found out, but I think it’s time you know,” said Hunter, gravely.
“What?”
“I found our mother.”
“What??” Blair asked, as though she couldn’t comprehend the words.
“Well, she found me, technically, me and Ash,” Hunter went on. “She’s a cop. She’s been helping. I trust her. I think you should meet her.”
Blair sat, unmoving. She didn’t even blink. Her head remained cocked, plastered at an awkward angle. The empty water glass in her hand hovered strangely over the bed, midway between her mouth and her knee, frozen.
“It’s crazy, I know,” said Hunter. “When I found out, I almost killed her.”
Blair’s eyes seemed to glaze over, vacant. Yet, Hunter could tell her sister was still present, looking at her, contemplating the facts as Hunter presented them. She would get used to the idea. She would come around, and they’d all work together to bring Grizzly down, Hunter told herself.
But that’s when she realized what was so strange about Blair’s expression, the look in her eye. Blair was fading away, slipping into a darker layer of herself. Blair wasn’t surprised by the information. She was taking cover. Did she know about their mother? And if so, what did she know?
* * *
“I tied her back up,” said Hunter as she walked beside Ash along the perimeter of his property where the tall grass met the tree line, separating field from forest. “She wasn’t happy, but I didn’t trust what her reaction could be. I mean, I shot at Sarah when I found out, and I was five years deep into recovery and healing from the farmhouse. I wouldn’t blame Blair if she did something rash and stupid, but if it’s preventable, then we should prevent it, right?”
“You made the right call,” Ash said. “Let her process the information, see if it brings anything up for her.”
Ash slid his fingers through hers, grasping her hand as they continued on. The moon above was nearly full. Its faint gray craters tipped upward, cheerfully, like a smiley-face looking down at them proudly. The air was crisp, cool finally. Ash bit a cigarette from his pack and lit it in a series of fluid motions that never required letting go of Hunter’s hand. They passed the smoke between them, as they thought in silence about what to do.
Eventually...
“She doesn’t know if Grizzly knows you live here,” said Hunter. “But I still don’t know how truthful she’s being, how much of her is protecting our dad.”
“He knows the address,” said Ash. “But he doesn’t know I’ve kept the place.”
“Would he go back to the farmhouse?” asked Hunter.
“Not if he thought the cops would show up.”
“We need to talk to Sarah,” said Hunter.
“Ok, just a little further,” he said, leading her even further out beyond earshot
of the girls in the cabin, who were still wide awake.
“How are you doing?” he asked, giving her hand a little squeeze.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Ash stopped, turned towards her, and looked down into her big brown eyes. “You and I are never fine. You killed someone, and your sister stabbed you.”
Hunter nearly laughed, but kept it to a self-deprecating smile. “I’m not allowed to use normal people words like fine?” she asked. “I feel strange. I don’t feel like myself. I feel like I’m watching someone else do all these things. I find Blair confusing. Sometimes I can see her child face clearly, as though it’s peaking out of her real face. And other times I look at her and she’s a complete stranger. I don’t believe she’s my sister. Everyone’s face keeps changing like that. I’m afraid to look at myself in the mirror. If I don’t feel like myself and don’t recognize myself, then who am I?”
Ash passed the cigarette to Hunter, threading it between her index and middle fingers, then he ran his fingers back through her wavy hair, tucking the locks behind her ears and holding her face. How was it that no matter how she felt, Ash could calm her? His touch was eternally soothing. He could extinguish any fear from her that threatened her stability and sanity. She thought he might say something, but he didn’t need to. She took a long drag of the cigarette before passing it back to him.
“Let’s try giving her a call now,” said Ash.
“Ok,” she said, pulling the burner phone from her jeans pocket.
Before flipping the phone open, dialing, and regrouping with Sarah, Hunter needed to feel reconnected to Ash, fully reconnected. She wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a firm, sensual kiss on his mouth. He stepped in closer, flicked the cigarette butt off into the wet grass, and wrapped his hands around her lower back, pulling her in even tighter. She moaned in surrender, wanting to be taken, swept up, and carried far away from the life that had chosen them and far away from being trapped between a rock and a hard place.
“We’ll find him,” whispered Ash. “We’ll find all the evidence. The world will know.”
He meant for those to be kind words. He meant for them to comfort Hunter; but, for some reason, they filled her with a sense of dread. Even if they accomplished all those things, even if Hunter killed Grizzly in exactly the manner she had always wanted, would it really solve anything? Would it really satisfy her? Hunter was starting to deeply fear that a part of her would always be darkly churning to draw blood, darkly craving the kill, as though nothing would be able to fully quench her thirst, nothing would be able to truly satisfy the desperate need for justice that lurked deep within her bones.
