“So, he woke to find himself tied up and Shelly holding a knife to his
throat,” I prompted.
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“She was six. What kind of threat could she have posed?” It made no sense.
“You’ve met Shelly, yes?”
“Yes.” Too many times.
“My son was evil. But he wasn’t smart about it. He couldn’t hide his crazy. It came out at the most inopportune times. He let anger get the best of him, and then he would hurt people, animals, anyone who stood in the way of what he wanted. Shelly, on the other hand, has always had cunning. She thought about her words before she spoke. And she planned everything, down to every last detail.”
“And that day?”
She shook her head. “Well, I wasn’t there, but I heard about it later.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“He’d beaten Lynn pretty badly. Left a few wounds. Shelly patched Lynn up while their mother drowned herself in a bottle. Then, when everyone was sleeping, Shelly crept into the room, tied him up—their mother was passed out on the couch downstairs—and then woke him very gently. She looked into his eyes as she told him that one day, she planned to kill him.
“She told him that no matter how good he might try to be from that moment forward, he could never make up for what he’d done to Lynn, so he should expect to die slowly and painfully at her hand. She told him that she would chop him into pieces so small that no one would be able to find anything left of him. She told him that he had better watch out, that she’d be watching from that moment on.
“Then she smiled at him and walked into the room she shared with Lynn, dragging her teddy bear by one arm. She got into bed, and went to sleep. The next day, after his wife untied him, she brought Shelly to me. She left her on the doorstep with nothing more than a stuffed bear. Shelly never saw her again. She died of liver disease when the girls were teenagers. She did see her father, though.”
“When?”
“When she killed him, of course.” She got up, adjusted her blouse, and looked down at me. “My son was evil. He was pure evil, and I was glad when he found a wife and became her problem. Then they started a family, and I spent my days waiting for the call that something had happened to my grandchild. I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know when.”
She leaned toward me and braced her arms on the table in front of me. “What you don’t understand is that Shelly is just as ruthless as her father. Only, in her case, her homicidal tendencies only come out when someone threatens Lynn. The rest of the time, she’s a darling girl. She has friends, she goes on dates, and she hangs out with Lynn and the others. She takes care of all of them. That’s her purpose in life. So, Dr. Peterson…”
She stopped and stared into my face, and I saw that she believed every word she was saying. “Please know that you’re alive because Shelly lets you stay alive. You make Lynn happy. Well, until recently.”
My back straightened.
“Yes, I know about that, too.” She let out a light laugh.
“What do you know?”
She laughed again and turned, opened the screen door, and stepped into the house.
I finally let out the breath I’d been holding.
Mind-fuckery. These people were so motherfucking good at it. But what they didn’t know was that I had my own brand of crazy deep inside. I just hid mine well. You can’t live, day in and day out, with someone like Lynn and not change a little on the inside. By that time, I was desperate, full of worry, and willing to dig deep inside for strength I’d never needed. Until now. I needed my wife back. And I was going to make it happen.
These people hadn’t seen crazy yet.
* * *
I sat on the porch until Mrs. Punter came back out. She cracked the screen door and held it open wide enough for a person to slip through. “I have something here you might want to see.”
Ash. Oh, my God. My mind immediately jumped to Ash. It had been at least a half hour since the last time I’d seen her. “Is Ash all right?” I got to my feet.
“Ash is fine. She’s in the kitchen, raiding the fridge.” She opened the door another few inches, beckoning me inside without saying a word. “I have missed that girl. She has a pureness, a lack of artifice, that the others don’t have. She’s sweet and gentle, and yet she can kick some serious ass. When she’s gone, I miss her. I imagine you do too.”
I stepped into the house and a cold chill slipped up my spine. It made me think of the cold rooms you saw on ghost hunter shows. But there were no ghosts here. These were living people. Cunning, deadly, living people. And my wife was gone. I was stuck with the cunning, deadly, living people until she came back. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms.
“What did you want me to see?” I asked.