He had the drop on me when I wasn’t wearing anything but a towel. In the reality that existed outside my head, he had only really looked at me and not even in a lustful way. He had kept his bewildered gaze on my eyes as I fell to pieces.
Had he seen the burns?
Not likely.
He could still be planning something, though. Possibly to kill me in my sleep. My father had warned me about them, about what they were really like.
He’d told me vivid tales of terror that would traumatize any kid, particularly one as young as I was at the time. Most kids worried about monsters under the closet. I worried about people like the Graves.
I was always checking under the bed, in the closet, in the hall, in the yard, just to make sure they weren’t there to snatch me away. I slept with my bedroom window nailed shut until I was fifteen.
Augustus was a Graves, which made him dangerous. To me and all others like me, as well as the neighborhood cats. And he was in my place. All my worst, childhood nightmares had come true. I was literally locked up with a Graves and had nowhere to go. I considered the window. The apartment was on the first floor, so the drop wouldn’t even hurt me, let alone kill me. I had a lot of stuff, though, none of which I wanted to leave behind.
It was also more than possible that he would know what I was doing and bring me right back, using the quarantine as an excuse. Then I would really be in for it.
Even if I did get away, my father would have to come all the way back, which would make him mad, not in the least because I’d wasted so much of his hard-earned money insisting on going to college when he didn’t even want me to in the first place, only to have to give up.
If I had to return home, I could be in for another “reminder,” aka punishment, and I really didn’t want that. I was trapped with a Graves and there was nothing I could do about it.
It really shouldn’t have been my priority at that exact moment, but I couldn’t help but wonder why Augustus hadn’t tried to hide who he was. Surly others knew about his family and their ‘temple.’ The founding chapter and Salem had certainly made enough of a stink.
Yet he was here, registered at the school and walking around on campus, under his actual name. Like I found out online, there were only so many dudes named Augustus to go around and Graves wasn’t all that much more popular of a name. At least not in our part of the world.
If he was trying to fly under the radar, he would have used another name. Like when the Dusks changed their name to Dawn, to throw people off the scent. Not that they were the same as the Graves, though I didn’t know that at the time.
As far as I knew, anyone who wasn’t like us was evil and to be avoided if not stopped entirely. With a bullet if necessary. To kill went against the Lord’s word but it was still considered doing the Lord’s work if necessary, and so in way, it was looked at as being a wash, where I grew up.
The realization hit like a battering ram. I’d found out his name, but I had never given him mine. Not my full name, anyway.
There were lots of girls named Rachel all over the place. Even O’Flanagan wasn’t that uncommon of a name. So, if he did happen to find out my last name, he wouldn’t immediately connect me to my family or their crusade. All of a sudden, after what seemed like hours of fear, I realized I was the one who had the advantage over him.
Energized, I jumped up from the chair and whipped off the towel. Going to my desk, the cool air kissing my bare skin, I put on my playlist of choral pieces and selected my clothes.
It didn’t really matter what I chose, not in the least because I couldn’t go out even if I wanted to, the campus having put all of us on lockdown with a series of follow-up emails about how important it was that we stay home and shelter in place, but also because I’d decided to try and avoid Augustus.
He was, no doubt, wondering what the heck was going on but I decided I’d let him wonder. It was a small price to pay.
Some would likely say that it wasn’t good to blame the son for the sins of the father, and that we all had original sin. Except that would have required thinking clearly. Which I absolutely was not doing at this moment in time. I was only thinking about my own survival.