Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

and pounded on the sides of the trunk. It was dark and it was small, so small, and she couldn’t breathe in there. She would die. “Let me out, let me out, let me out!”

She heard the lock clicking, then William’s voice, very close and clear.

“Stop that yelling right now. There are three holes drilled in the side so that you can breathe. I’m talking through them. Now I know you were good in the rest area but we’re going to a shopping center now to get you some clothes and some other things and I can’t take a chance that you’ll run away on me. You just stay in there until I’m done and then I’ll let you sit in the front seat again.”

“No,” Sam sobbed. “Let me out. Let me out. I’ll be a good girl.”

“I know you will be,” William said. “You’ll be my good girl forever.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mattie woke with a start, sitting straight up on the couch, her heart pounding. She’d forgotten the trunk. She’d forgotten so many things.

That trunk, that’s the same one that William keeps at the foot of the bed. He locked me inside it like I was a bad dog and left me there.

The fire had burned down but wasn’t completely out. The room was cold again, and Mattie rose slowly to put firewood on. The draft leaking in from the broken window seemed worse and she noticed that the bottom part of the quilt had come free from the window frame and was flapping in the breeze. It was no longer night outside.

She shuffled to the table where she kept the jug of water and poured some out for herself. It had little chunks of ice in it and hurt going down but she swallowed it all. She felt sick to her stomach, the lost memory lingering.

How could he have done that to me? How could I have forgotten it all?

She glanced at the bedroom. Through the open door she saw the piles of blankets and the unmoving lumps underneath them that told her C.P. and Jen were still asleep.

Today we leave, Mattie thought. I don’t care how hard it is, or what objections they raise. We have to get off this mountain, away from all the monsters.

Despite the cold and her fear she felt better than she had the previous day. Her throat didn’t feel as tender, and all her aches and pains had receded to dull throbs instead of sharp klaxons. Food and sleep were like magic.

That’s why William was always starving you, always working you when you were exhausted. Without food and sleep you couldn’t think, couldn’t fight him.

There was no food left in the cabin. Mattie wondered if the storehouse was unlocked as she’d suspected it was the day before.

She also wondered if it was safe to go outside.

No noise of any kind had disturbed her sleep the previous night. After the screaming, the roaring, the firing of William’s weapon there had been nothing. Mattie hoped that meant that both William and the creature were gone.

If we can only get a head start, she thought. The creature had to sleep sometime, and if they were lucky it had dragged William away somewhere.

The memory that had emerged while she slept prompted a fierce and burning hope that William had been ripped to shreds by the creature.

Mattie pulled on her coat and boots and went to the front door. She put her ear against it, listening for the sound of William leaning against the door. No matter how still he was he would make some noise, even if it was just the scrape of his jacket against the wood.

For a moment she thought she heard him breathing, heard the sound of his heart pulsing

(pulsing like the heart the creature gave us last night when I touched that thing it was still warm and I’ll never tell anyone that never)

but then she realized it was her own heartbeat thrumming against the wood. He wasn’t out there. He couldn’t be. If he was then he would be knocking on the door, demanding that Mattie open up and make his breakfast.

Her stomach rumbled. She was used to going without food, used to waiting for William to decide what they would eat and how much she should get. But the sandwich she’d eaten the night before—that decadent, buttered thing—had somehow made her hungrier than she’d ever been. She’d been full when she went to sleep, a feeling that she could not remember ever having since she came to live with William. And having felt full it seemed that she was greedy for that feeling again, the feeling of having eaten all she wanted and not needing any more.

“Are you going out?” C.P. asked.

Mattie started. She hadn’t heard him rise from the bed. She’d been listening through the door and then she’d gotten distracted, drifted away in her mind the way William always told her not to do.

William doesn’t have any say any longer. You don’t belong to him. You never did.

C.P. stood in the doorway to the bedroom, wearing his pants and shirt and socks. His very black hair was rumpled from sleep and he yawned.

“I was going to go out to the storehouse,” Mattie said, answering his question. She was very happy to hear that her voice was practically back to normal. It only sounded a little strained, and it didn’t hurt to talk—at least, it didn’t hurt as much as it had the day before. “There’s no food left here.”

“Do you think it’s safe to go out? Not to be crude or anything, but my back teeth are floating.”

Mattie tilted her head at him, confused. What did his teeth have to do with anything?

“I have to take a piss,” C.P. said.

“Oh,” Mattie said, and flushed. “Of course. The outhouse is behind the cabin.”

“Yeah, we saw it the other day,” he said. “Me and Griffin. I can’t believe you lived here