“He needs medical attention,” she tried.
Amon snorted. “I’m aware.”
I was aware, too.
You didn’t have to look further than my face to know that I needed medical attention.
“Let him go,” she gritted, still not forceful enough to make him do anything more than smile.
“I can’t do that,” he disagreed immediately. “Sadly, I’m not quite finished yet. I’ll be finished this evening, though. Then you can take him.”
I tried to move, but the agony in my entire left side was just too much.
If I moved around too much, I would pass out like I’d done last time.
“You can’t do this, Amon!” the girl whispered, sounding scared out of her mind. “This is going to be very, very bad for you.”
Amon, the goddamn freak of nature, looked at his sister a little too close for my comfort.
Like he knew that if he stared at her long enough, she’d back down.
God, I fuckin’ hoped that she didn’t back down.
Though it was apparent that Amon clearly thought she would. As in, she’d done it a hundred times before to get him to stop.
“I called the police,” she whispered fiercely. “Said I knew where the missing man was.”
Amon’s back straightened. “You what?”
“I called them,” she whispered. “They’re going to be here any second.”
God, I hoped that she was telling the truth.
“You called them to our house?” Amon asked curiously. “Why would you do that? You know that this is going to mean you’re homeless.”
“I haven’t lived here since I was eighteen,” she said quietly. “I don’t care if the damn thing burns to the ground.”
Amon smiled.
It was the weirdest smile I’d ever seen.
I’d never seen a smile look so good, and so bad at the same time.
It was as if he was happy on the outside, but inside, through his eyes, I could tell that he felt literally nothing.
“Let’s see.” He flicked his fingers, and I heard a lighter’s snick as the cap popped up.
Then I heard the telltale slide of the wheel against flint, and then there was a flame lighting up the room even more.
“Just kidding.” He laughed as he closed the cap. “I think that I’ll allow them to take me in this time. I’m curious if they can ‘fix me.’”
He put air quotes around ‘fix me’ and I wondered if he realized how creepy it made him sound.
Likely he did.
“Amon,” she said. “You…”
Just then we heard the sirens as they raced up to the house. Closer and closer they got until they were all right on top of us.
Why did I think it would’ve been better for them to come silently? Surprise the psycho with their presence?
“Just know this.” Amon looked over his shoulder as he climbed the stairs. “You’ll pay for going against family.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
But I also didn’t much care at that moment in time.
Maybe I should have.
But I passed out the moment he disappeared into the sunlight.
• • •
The next time I woke, I was in a hospital bed, and there was a doctor at my bedside going over a list of what I assumed were my injuries.
“…Concussion, quite severe. We’ll have to watch him overnight for a few days just because of that,” the doctor was saying. “He has a broken left ulna, a broken nose, ten broken ribs. He has a mass of cuts and scrapes from what we assume was his tumble into the shelter.”
The list went on, but all in all, I’d gotten lucky with what was likely ‘easy’ things to fix.
Other than the possible aneurysm I could have if my concussion worsened.
The next time I woke, it was with my family whispering.
I also heard Mimi, my girlfriend, crying.
“Should have shot him in the face and killed him,” I heard my older brother say.
“That girl has tried to get in here three times to see him,” Mimi said. “Don’t you think that’s weird? Don’t you think it’s crazy for her to even consider coming in here? I mean, her brother tried to kill him.”
“Weren’t you friends with that girl?”
Jeremiah.
“Not really.” She hesitated. “We went out for drinks. She wasn’t even allowed to drink. But I think Lulu, our friend, felt terrible about it.”
“Lulu, the dead chick by the log truck?” Shine.
“Yeah, her.” She hesitated. “That girl came to me and told me that she thought her brother was responsible for Lulu and Della’s deaths. That she thought he might try to come after Bird next. She’d tried to go to the police, but they didn’t believe her.”
“That’s because she’s apparently been reported as a girl that cries wolf,” my dad said. “But isn’t it fuckin’ weird that she would try to tell everyone that her brother is a psychopath, but nobody would listen? Then she tries to tell a cop about her brother and thinking that he was behind those two girls’ deaths, and possibly would come after Bram, but the cop doesn’t do anything? If that cop had listened, my son would’ve spent a whole lot less time getting tortured over a four-day period. Not to mention, had you believed her and sounded the alarm.”
That’s the first time I’d ever heard my dad get pissed at Mimi.
Holy shit.
“Darlin’,” my mom whispered. “Let’s not do this here.”
“I’m just fuckin’ pissed that that girl has tried to get in here three times now to make sure he’s okay, yet y’all keep sending her away when she’s the one responsible for him likely being alive right now. The other two he killed. She said that her brother liked to…”
I once again fell under, no longer hearing anything they had to say.
But the next time I woke, it was with the room dark, and the only thing making noise being the monitors.
One monitor, in particular, was really fuckin’ annoying.
The heart monitor.
I hated hospitals.
I reached blindly for the wires that I could feel tangled around my hands, but then cold fingers stilled my blind grab.
“Hey,” the quiet whisper said. “Still. Don’t do anything like pull those out. You need those to keep pumping you the medications that make the pain stay under control.”
My eyes opened to darkness.
Darkness but for one small sliver of light coming in from the hallway. That sliver of light lit up the girl that’d been the one to save me.
“Hey,” I rasped. “You finally snuck in.”
She smiled. “I just wanted to make sure that you were alive.”
“Still kickin’.” I paused. “Barely.”
My head hurt.
Other things hurt.
Hell, who was I kidding? I was barely kicking. But I was kicking. So there was that.
“Good,” she whispered. “I just… I just wanted to make sure. That you would live. That you were okay and nobody… for what it’s worth, I’m really sorry. I’ve tried so hard to tell everyone. To make them understand…”
But nobody would believe her.