Rain and wind and water, and then nothing.
96
Shelter.
Shelby breaks out a back window and climbs in, cutting herself but not caring. Never so happy to see walls and a roof before in her entire life.
Collapsing.
She falls prostrate on a musty old rug and doesn’t move.
––I’m so proud of you, Remington says. You made it. You’re almost––
In shock.
Drained.
Spent.
Exhausted.
But, for the moment at least, protected from the hard rain and savage wind.
97
Dark water.
Zero visibility.
Capsized craft. Driving down, down, down.
Taylor surfaces, gasping, coughing, takes a big breath, then swims for shore beneath the beating rain.
Glancing back. Julian and Marc heading in too.
Slipping.
Pulling.
Climbing.
Falling.
Clawing.
The clay of the bank is as slick as ice, and it takes a while, and the help of exposed pine and cypress roots, to make it up to the soft, soggy ground.
For a few moments, she can’t do anything but lie there in the soaked soil and let the wind and water assail her, but soon she is sensing Shelby again, and pushes herself up and begins to run in the direction of the source.
Unable to move fast, she’s sure Marc and Julian will catch up to her soon, but whether they do or not, she can’t stop moving toward her sweet girl.
98
Nothing Daniel has seen so far has prepared him for what he finds in the next room.
He’s grateful it’s shrouded in darkness, that he only sees it in snapshot-like flashes as the narrow beam flits around the room.
Twin beds pushed together—one a hospital bed surrounded by medical equipment.
On one side—the regular twin side: Desk. Piles of paper. Stacks of folders. Heaps of books. Computer.
On the other: Mounted, boxy old TV. More medical equipment. Posters and reprints of Taylor Sean’s art. Shock. Reeling.
How?
Framed photographs—some fifty or more—standing on a long shelf, a table, the windowsill, hanging on the wall.
A life in pictures.
Half a life at least.
Aging images.
D. Kelly David. Arc—middle-aged to old man.
Young girl. Years. Growing family resemblance. Weak. Infirmed.
Later. Another young girl. Frankenstein family. Smiling man. Unhappy young woman. Unhappier young girl.
He kept her alive.
The resemblance to Taylor is stunning—especially as she grew. The child bride growing into young woman and mother of a stolen child is a pale, sickly shadow of Taylor.
Trevor Young is alive—or was. Savannah Summers is alive—or was. Prisoners of the demented doctor.
At a loss. Mystified. Confounded. Stunned.
David had somehow saved Trevor after separating her from Taylor and had kept her in a sort of half-alive state, and then at some point had kidnapped Savannah to create his own little sick, twisted version of a family.
Running out of the room, he rushes to the third closed door, finding it locked. Padlocked on the outside. Prison.
Three kicks and he has the door open. Little girl’s room. Savannah’s prison cell.
Shaking his head, growing even more disturbed and nauseated, he makes his way back into David and Trevor’s room and begins to go through the documents on the desk and near the bed.
D. Kelly David is far more monstrous than he could’ve ever imagined.
Because Taylor and Trevor shared many of their abdominal organs, Trevor has suffered with liver and bowel problems her entire pain-filled life. Unable to absorb food properly. Bowel obstructions. Liver failure. She’s undergone numerous surgeries, suffered through one life-threatening infection after another. It’s unfathomable what David has subjected her to over the years just to keep her something resembling alive.
Though he doesn’t overtly say so, it’s clear from his notes and journal entries he kidnapped Savannah in an attempt to make Trevor happy and create a family for her.
At some point in the not too distant past, Savannah died in what David refers to as an accident—something he’s suspiciously vague about.
Was she trying to escape? Is that it? Did you kill her because she stopped submitting?
Daniel stops reading. Checks behind him again. Rubs his eyes and tries to process what he’s just uncovered.
If David is Tiberinus and Trevor is Lupa, who is Romulus? And where is he? Somewhere in this dark asylum? Coiled? Readying to strike?
99
When Taylor opens the cabin door and sees her sister lying on the hospital bed in the center of the room, she is surprised and, somehow, surprisingly, not.
Eyes wide.
Catch of breath.
Speechless.
No wonder I never stopped sensing her. She never died. All this time . . . and . . . my twin . . . my sister . . . my other half.
I thought I was sensing Shelby. And I was, but somehow—guess when I got so close to her—I started picking up on Trevor instead.
She eases over to the bed and looks down at her dying doppelganger. Though the face is stress-lined and pain-aged, it’s her face.
Lifting the covers, she pulls back the bunched and gathered gown to see a scar that matches her own—plus many others, that unlike Taylor’s artistic scarification, represent unimaginable invasion and intrusion.
Slowly, blinkingly, Trevor opens her eyes and squints up at Taylor.
Her small, sad mouth forms an O accompanied by an ooohhh and drifts into an aaahhh.
—Trevor?
She nods and smiles.
—Is it really you? How . . . What . . . I don’t . . .
Her body is largely childlike. Diminutive. Underdeveloped. Though her face is identical save for the effects of suffering, there’s what appears to be a simplicity and innocence in her eyes.
—I’m Taylor. Your sister.
Another nod.
—What are you doing here? Where is Shelby?
—He’s got her. You’ve got to find her. Fast.
100
—Guess we can eliminate the doc, Will yells.
—Fuck! Sam yells.
—The fuck is goin’ on? Keith says.
The three of them are standing in the storm looking at the dead body of D. Kelly David inside the rusting old van. The old doctor’s body is a bloody mess, the result of a particularly violent assault with a sharp and serrated blade.
—Think Shelby could’ve . . .
—Look at the violence and brutality, Sam says. No way she could stab with that kind of force and repetition.
—Then who? Will says. Julian? Marc? He killed Shelby? One of them killed him?
—Let’s talk about this in the truck, Keith says. No need to be out here. We’ve seen enough.
—Goddamn it, Sam yells.
—What is it?
—Daniel, she says. He went to interview him.
—Who?
—David, she says, nodding toward the dead doctor. What if he runs into whoever killed him? No way to call him. We’ve got to go.
—Okay, Keith says. Load up.
—Y’all go ahead, Will says. I’m gonna stay here.
—What for?
—You don’t want to know.
—No, Keith says, but tell me anyway.
—Everything comes back to here, to the landing, to the river.
—Yeah?
—She’s out there. I’m going after her.
—In this?
—Told you. I’m gonna take the search and rescue boat. It’s built for—
—It ain’t built for this, Keith says. Nothing is.
—It’ll be fine.
—I’m going with you, Keith says. Sam, you take my truck.
101
Danie
l finds Carter in the candlelit kitchen where he left him.
—Sorry I was gone so long.
—Not a problem, no, sir. Just havin’ a little candlelight dinner. Yes, sir, I am.
He notices the file folder in Daniel’s hand.
—Whatta you got there?
—Is Romulus Ethan?
—How’s that?
—Is Romulus’s real name Ethan?
—Don’t call him that. Just Romulus. Better yet, be gone and don’t call him anything at all.
According to the file, Ethan Kerr is a conjoined twin who supposedly died to save his brother, but like Trevor, David kept him secretly alive. Perhaps brain damaged from lack of oxygen or just early childhood trauma, Ethan has continually displayed anti-social behaviors—something all David’s experimenting on him hasn’t helped.
Like Trevor, he’s undergone numerous surgeries, but unlike her, he’s shown a nearly superhuman resiliency.
Over the years, Ethan has nursed a growing grudge against David and an identification with Trevor as a wronged and wounded mother figure—an Oedipal complex with his surrogate family, which, Daniel suspects, included a kind of sibling rivalry with Savannah that ultimately led to her death.
Demented. Deadly. Delusional. And he’s now the leading candidate to have abducted Shelby.
102
As Shelby lies unconscious on its floor, the houseboat she’s in becomes unmoored in the rising river, blows loose from the bank, and begins to be pushed downstream.
103
—Who’s got her? Taylor asks.
—Ethan, Trevor says. He’s gone crazy. Calls himself Romulus. Very dangerous. He just snapped. He’s been through so much. Always been troubled, but I thought he was . . . I thought I had saved him, been a good mother to him, but . . .
—Where is he?
—He plans to bring her here. You should go get help.
—They’re on the way. Are there any weapons here?
—You can’t shoot him. Please.
—I won’t, she says. Unless I have to—to save Shelby.
—Kelly has a gun cabinet in the bedroom.
—Kelly? she asks, rushing over to the bedroom. This is his cabin? How are you alive? Why didn’t he ever tell anyone?
She tells her.
Her voice is soft and weak, and especially difficult to hear with the wind and rain slamming the small cypress cabin.
Taylor notices that in addition to Trevor’s obvious physical infirmities, she suffers certain mental or emotional ones as well, but she can’t tell if it’s just that she’s juvenile and underdeveloped or if it’s something more systemic.
—You’ve been his prisoner all these years? Taylor says.
She’s holding a loaded 12-gauge shotgun now, its barrel pointed at the floor.
—No, he’s taken care of me. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him. Our parents wanted me dead.
—No. They wanted us—
—Yes, they did. He’s been so good to me. I owe him . . . well, everything.
Taylor realizes David has told Trevor a certain version of the events over the years—one in which he is no doubt heroic and godlike.
—He took my Savannah, she says.
—For me, yes, Trevor says. I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t’ve had him do it. I swear, but I was the best mama I could be to her. You’ve got to believe me. I tried to get him to give her back. I did. If I could have even contacted you, I would have.
Taylor’s not sure she believes her—this person who was once the half that made her whole.
—Why?
—Huh?
—Why’d he take her?
—For me. For us. So I could have what everybody else had. He was so good to me.
—Why wait until she was eight?
—I think because of how sick I was. All the operations. To see if I was gonna live.
—Where is he now?
—Ethan has him. Kelly started to suspect that he killed her.
—This Ethan killed my Savannah?
—He said she drowned in the river, but Kelly didn’t think so.
—This wasn’t that long ago, was it? Taylor says.
—No.
—I knew she was alive. Sensed it. Felt it when she died.
—Ethan told Kelly he planned to go get Shelby for me—he’s so devoted, so . . . he says I saved him. I guess he thought he’d replace Savannah. Kelly tried to stop him. Ethan took him hostage. Brought me here. Went to get Shelby. Gonna bring her here.
—What is this place?
—Our little getaway. Kelly built it for us. We really couldn’t go anywhere else. If anyone ever saw me, they’d try to take me away from—
She winces and tries to shift her frail little body in the bed.
—You okay?
—Rom—Ethan didn’t bring any of my medications or anything.
The door slings open, wind and rain rushing in, and Taylor comes up with the shotgun.
—Don’t shoot, Julian yells above the wind, lifting his hands.
Taylor lowers the gun as Julian steps in and pushes the door closed. Once he has the door secured, he turns to say something to Taylor, but Trevor catches his attention and he looks back and forth between them.
He’s soaked through, his dark hair plastered to his head.
—Where’s Marc? Taylor says. I need you two to go get help. Ethan, the man that has Shelby, is bringing her here.
—I’ve been yelling for you, he says. Why’d you leave?
—What? Y’all knew where I was going. Figured you’d catch up to me before I got here. Why? What is it?
—I’ve been trying to save him. Don’t really know CPR, but I did the best I could.
—What?
—He wasn’t breathing. He hit his head on something. The boat or motor. The tree.
—No. I saw you two swimming to shore.
—I was pulling him.
—What are you saying? No.
Something at Taylor’s center completely caves in, just falls way into absolute nothingness. Implosion. Desolation. Despair.
Julian begins to cry.
—It’s raining so hard. The wind . . . I did the best I could. He . . . Why’d you leave? I’ve been yelling and yelling.
104
Ethan Kerr was born. Then he died. Sacrificed for his conjoined twin, separated for his brother.
Dead, but not buried.
Reborn.
Romulus.
Carried by the river to his she-wolf mother.
Born of Lupa.
Transformation.
Reborn again. Re-reborn.
Wolf milk from wolf mother.
A wolf is born.
Now the wolf.
And the Wolf won’t stop coming. He has no range. He has no limit. He has nothing now, there is nothing now but the hunt.
105
Storm surge.
Flashfloods.
Tides. Mean water levels. Slope of continental shelf.
Push of storm winds.
Inundated.
Mangled marinas.
Destroyed docks.
Landscapes leveled.
Waterfront homes floating away.
Christine’s fury forces some fifteen feet of Gulf water to join the already high tide, drowning the area with a wall-like wave of warm, salty sea. At just ten feet above sea level, Tupelo is susceptible to flooding, and soon all low-lying areas are under water.
106
—Time to get up sweet girl, Remington says.
—Huh? Shelby says. Time for school?
He smiles.
Such warmth, she thinks. Such . . . she’s so glad he’s here with her. How would she have gotten this far if he hadn’t been?
—School of a kind, I guess, he says.
—What does that—
—Shelby, he says, louder this time. Wake up. Now. Right now. You’ve got to get up and get off the—
She wakes on the floor of the houseboat and looks around.
He was just here. Where’d he—
She can feel the boat moving, rocking back and forth as it rides the rough river toward the bay.
How long before it crashes into something? Or blows apart?
Like so many makeshift houseboats along the river, there’s not much to this one. A wooden utility shed atop a base of two-by-fours enclosing blocks of Styrofoam, the unit was not built to be on the river, let alone in a Cat 3 hurricane.
She jumps up, disbelieving how loud the wind is.
Whirring. Whistling. Whipping.
The small floating structure is racing downriver far faster than she would’ve imagined possible, rocking and spinning as it does.
She tries to open the door leading to the little porch, but is unable to, the wind pushing against it just too strong, but then the boat turns, the wind shifts, and she is able to force it open.
Hard slanting rain hits her like buckshot fired at close range, and she holds up her hands defensively in front of her face.
Should I jump in and risk getting hit by debris and drowning, or ride the river until the house blows down?
A sheet of plywood pulls loose from the roof of the porch, lifts away and disappears into the storm.
Then another.
And another.
She pulls the door closed and steps back.
Think.
I’m gonna die. Where the hell is Remington? Where’d he go? I need––
Breathe. Relax. Make a good decision.
The back of the houseboat catches a counter current and spins around, crashing into a stand of cypress trees in the water near the bank.
Boards cracking, splintering, snapping, Styrofoam blocks breaking free and floating away.
Careening off the swollen buttresses, the boat is slung back into the center of the river, gaining speed again.
Back end lower than the front now. Taking on water. Trailing lumber, trash, bits of debris behind it in the riotous river.
The Remington James Box Set Page 58
