CHAPTER 42
The memories arrive all at once. A zombie horde back from the dead, grasping at me with peeled-skin hands. I try to fight them off but can’t. I’m surrounded, overwhelmed and convulsing as memory after memory returns. All those sounds and images I had kept at bay for so long. They’re all back, lodged into my mind, unshakeable as they play over and over in an endless loop.
Amy and her dead doll eyes.
Craig being dragged from the SUV.
Betz and Rodney with their palpable horror and desperation. They saw more than I did. They saw it all.
Yet I saw something they couldn’t. I saw Him. Crawling around Amy, whimpering, grabbing the knife, raising it.
That image is the one that repeats itself the most often. There’s something off about it, something I can’t quite comprehend.
Breaking free of Tina’s grip, I rush down the hall, my numb legs propelled only by the insistent tug of memory. My breathing is shallow. My heart clangs in my chest.
I don’t stop until I’m in the great room again. Right back where we started. I stand exactly where I stood a decade ago, staring at the spot where I last saw Him. It’s almost as if He’s still there, frozen in place for a decade. I see the raised knife in His hands. I see His smudged glasses. Behind the lenses, His wide and uncomprehending eyes are full moons of fear.
Of me.
He was afraid of me.
He thought I was going to hurt him. That I’m the one who had killed the others.
I drop to my knees and gasp, inhaling dusty air, coughing.
“It wasn’t him,” I say between body-rattling coughs. “He didn’t do it.”
Tina swoops toward me, the knife lowered, now forgotten. She kneels in front of me and grips my arms tight. So tight it hurts.
“Are you sure?” Hope colors her words. A trembling, uncertain, pitiable hope. “Tell me you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I now understand why we’re here. Why Tina sought out Lisa and me. She wanted me to remember everything, to prove His innocence, to declare once and for all that He didn’t do it.
It was all for him.
For Joe.
“I wanted to come with him,” Tina says. “I wanted to run away. Together. But he told me to stay. Even after I followed him down the hall to that broken door. He said he’d come back for me. So I stayed behind. Then they told me he was dead. That he’d killed a bunch of kids. But I knew he didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t know,” I say. “I truly thought it was him.”
“So who did it? Who killed them?”
Disbelief rises like bile in my throat. I cough again, trying to dislodge it. “Someone else.”
“You?” she asks. “Was it you, Quinn?”
God knows she has every right to think that. I’d forgotten so much. And she’s seen me angry. That was her goal, after all. To poke me, get me mad, see what I’m capable of. I didn’t disappoint.
“No,” I say. “I swear, it wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
I shake my head. I’m breathless, exhausted.
“I don’t know.”
But I do. At least, I think I do. Another memory arrives. A straggler. It’s a memory of me running through the woods, seeing something else.
Someone else.
“You’re remembering something,” Tina says.
I nod. I close my eyes. I think. I think until my head throbs.
And then I see it, as vibrant as the day it happened. I’m running through the woods, screaming, that branch all but punching me in the face. I see headlights. I see a man silhouetted in the brightness.
A cop. I see his uniform.
It’s covered with something dark and wet. In the dim moonlight, it almost looks like he’s been smeared with motor oil. Yet I know that’s not the case. Even as I run toward him, I know his uniform is covered with blood.
My blood. Janelle’s blood. Everyone’s blood.
But I’m too scared to think clearly. Especially with Joe somewhere in the woods behind me. Chasing me. The taste of his lips still on mine.
So I make a beeline toward the cop, embracing him, pressing my dress to his uniform.
Blood against blood.
They’re dead, I gasp. They’re all dead. And he’s still out here.
And suddenly Joe’s there, bursting through the trees. The cop draws his gun and fires off three shots. Two in the chest, one in the head. As loud in memory as they were in real life.
I hear a fourth shot.
Louder than memory.
Definitely real life.
It blasts through the cabin, vibrating off the walls. The energy of the bullet streaks from the open door into Pine Cottage. It has a presence, a force that fills the room.
A splatter of hot liquid hits my face.
I shriek when I feel it, my eyes flying open to see Tina slumping onto her side. One of her hands flings outward past her head, knuckles against the floor, knife skittering from her grip. A thin pool of blood starts to roll out from under her, spreading fast.
She’s not moving. I’m not even sure she’s still breathing.
“Tina?” I say, shaking her. “Tina?”
Noise drifts from the doorway. Someone breathing. I look up and see Coop standing there. Even in the darkness, I can make out the glint of his blue eyes as he lowers the gun.
“Quincy,” he says with a nod.
There’s always a nod.