And she would leave them and the place they grew up together to travel the world, coming home for holidays to visit their kids. And how somewhere, somehow, she wished there was a universe where it was true.
Hank said something she couldn’t hear. She was so stunned by what she saw before, the rush of memory playing before her eyes.
But then his expression hardened, turned cold, and he thundered up the stairs. She didn’t have time to do anything but cower.
“Hank,” she said, as he was almost on top of her. “Please.”
But then he was racing past her, tackling a man who stood behind her with shovel raised. She heard their bodies connect with an ugly thud, hard release of breath, and then they were tumbling on the ground, roaring.
Rain grabbed the hammer.
FORTY-TWO
Bright moonlight, towering shadows of trees all around them, the sky a void above.
Rain stood, breath ragged, hammer poised.
The struggle between the two men on the ground was a tangle of limbs, a dervish. Hank delivered a blow to the middle of the other man. Then the stranger drove his elbow into Hank’s ribs, eliciting a cry of pain.
She was hypnotized, thinking that violence between people was never as you imagined it. The sound of flesh on flesh, it was soft. Blows were awkward, the sounds guttural and strange. Something kept her from diving in, from helping Hank. Where? How? What if she hit him by accident? She stood, feeling like the helpless woman in the movies, the one she always wanted to scream at: Don’t just stand there! Do something!
Then someone tackled her from behind and the ground rose up in an unforgiving wave, knocking the hammer from her hand. Shock. The terrible grappling of the mind. What just happened?
She tasted dirt, an impossibly heavy weight pinning her to the ground. All her breath left her. A blow, another one, the pain rocketing up her spine, into her arms. Another to her ribs. She was paralyzed. She saw stars, the world spinning and tilting. She tried to turn, to face her assailant, but she couldn’t move.
She felt herself freeze, go cold inside. It was too much, all of it. The things she’d seen and experienced. Kreskey in the woods. Hank and all his craziness. The night they went back. Markham. The Boston Boogeyman. There were too many monsters. And she was not strong enough to stop them all, and she was no closer to understanding why the world was what it was.
And then she thought about Lily, her daughter, sleeping peacefully waiting for her mama. Her child. The one thing she was sure she’d done right. How much Lily needed Rain, how much Rain needed Lily. Motherhood, it was a touchstone, or could be. The place you went to give meaning to all the madness outside your door.
A red-hot burst of adrenaline rocketed through her, and Rain spun powerfully to fend off a woman she had never seen, someone wild-eyed, mousy, with a tangle of unruly blond hair.
Her elbow connected with the stranger’s jaw. Hard. The other woman was surprisingly tiny, with sticks for arms—how could she be so heavy?
As the woman surged forward, Rain used her legs to knock her back, delivering a powerful shove to her middle. The other woman—who the hell was she?—stumbled, her body a comical arc, arms reaching. Then, backing over a fallen log, she fell. The other woman’s head hit the ground with a terrible thud, and then she was still.
Rain tumbled away, scrambling after the hammer, adrenaline pulsing, breath frantic.
When she felt the weight of it in her hand, she was back there again in that house with Kreskey, the knife clutched in her grasp. She ran that day, all her rage and sadness, an engine. She had no regrets. No remorse, even now. She could do it again. Detective Harper’s words bounced around her brain. Some people are better off dead. With effort, she pulled herself to her feet.
She lifted the hammer and the strange woman cowered, skinny arm up to hold her off.
“Please,” she whimpered. She couldn’t have been older than Rain, her clothing ragged and ill-fitting, “Please.”
Another voice, this time Sandy’s: We fight violence with more violence and only more violence follows. We dig our grave deeper and deeper—there’s no end.
How, she thought, how did I get here?
She let the hammer lower, rage, sadness flooding through her system. The moment was ugly, twisted. Those children down there—three, each in a cage, curled into corners. She could hear