hissing lady’s expression change from hope to horror.
“They aren’t your army, dear. They’re mine. Did you forget tHAt?”
The nice man calmly walked across the street. The deer turned around and walked behind him, baring their teeth. Christopher and David strained against the hissing lady’s weight.
“Come back here before I get upset, soN.”
Christopher dragged her over the river of blood in the street. The river of blood in his nose. The clouds bumped together. Lightning ripped the sky. The nice man inched toward them.
“Come back here before I have to hIt you.”
Christopher’s heart raced. The nice man stepped closer. Christopher looked down. The soldier’s legs were wrong. He had deer legs.
“I don’t want to do that. Don’t maKe me do that.”
Christopher’s feet reached the lawn. The hissing lady closed her eyes. She was seconds from death.
“If you pull her off the street, I will hurT you.”
One more step.
“If you save her, I’ll kill your motHer.”
Christopher and David Olson pulled the hissing lady onto the lawn. Her skin instantly stopped burning. She got up, her legs shaking, her body still broken. She stood between the two boys and the nice man. A mother lion protecting her cubs. The nice man walked toward them, shaking with rage. The deer stalked behind him. Christopher saw their shadows in the moonlight. They weren’t deer anymore. They were hounds. With glowing eyes. The hissing lady turned to the boys. She ripped the key from her flesh and put it in David’s shaking hand. Then, she screamed.
“Get him out!”
Chapter 103
Mrs. Henderson crawled up the ladder to the tree house. The bullet wound in her side made the climbing slow. Each step excruciating. She would have stopped climbing, but her husband was calling to her from inside the tree house.
Come on, honey. Let’s go on that weekend trip. I want to show you how much I love you.
Ms. Lasko put her hand up to help the old woman climb faster. They had to hurry. She had to help her because it was waiting for her inside the tree house. She could taste it, cold and sharp and burning on her lips. That beautiful buzzy butterfly feeling in her belly and blood. The flush on her face.
You can feel drunk again. It’s waiting right in here.
Brady Collins felt so thankful. Mrs. Henderson said he did such a good job keeping the mailbox people in line. And now it was his turn to climb up those stairs to the tree house. He heard his mother in there. She was standing inside the warm kitchen, surrounded by the smell of hot soup and bread.
Come in from the doghouse, Brady. Mommy loves you. You’ll never be cold again.
Through the stitches on her eyelids, Jenny Hertzog watched Brady climb the ladder. He passed the first branch, where her stepbrother Scott was still twitching. Jenny was happy, but she still wondered why Scott didn’t die. Jenny looked up at the tree house and realized that she could hear her mother’s sweet voice calling down to her. The woods smelled like her mother’s old room. Sweet perfume and buttery popcorn.
Come inside, Jenny. We will have a slumber party together.
We’ll make popcorn and kill your stepbrother and watch movies.
And no one will come into your room again to hurt you.
We’ll drown Scott together in Floods. Floods.
Forever and ever and ever.
The four souls climbed past the branches, sagging from the weight of all the bodies hanging like Christmas ornaments. They just had to get to the tree house. They just had to walk into the light.
Then, they would be free.
Chapter 104
The hissing lady blocked the nice man as David and Christopher ran toward the Mission Street Woods. The nice man smiled, his teeth little daggers. The hissing lady squared off, burnt and bleeding. A coiled animal. Ready to strike.
“I’m off the street,” she smiled through broken teeth.
“He made me strongeR,” the nice man smiled back.
The two circled each other. The hissing lady felt the deer crawl toward her. She knew the window was closing. She launched herself at him, screaming at the top of her lungs, her fingernails ready to gouge out his eyes.
The nice man did not blink. He simply stood and waited for her as if she were a leaf falling in slow motion. He pivoted his body and hit her like swatting a fly. She flew back a hundred feet and crashed through Christopher’s front door. The splinters flew like shrapnel. Within seconds, the deer were on top of her, biting and scratching.