Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
I wasn’t sure.
His eyes were latched on me, and he was eerily still, an evil smile starting to tug at the ends of his mouth.
I didn’t scream, barely. Sweat formed on my forehead from the effort not to let out how I really felt. Howard was moaning at his feet, rolling over. The blood spewed as he did.
“I thought that would be an incentive, but you surprise me, Sister. I can do an eye next time? Or maybe below his knee?”
I shuddered. “What do you want, Ben?”
His face suddenly darkened, and he stepped over Howard, lunging two steps to me before stopping. Standing at his fullest height, he thundered, “You will not call me that name. Ben is dead. I’m your brother. I’ll be referred to as your brother.”
He was close enough I could reach out to him. I could grab him, fight him, and as if he read my mind, he retreated back on the other side of Howard, making himself so he was dramatically smaller. His head and shoulders both hunched down. “It’s been so long, Sister. We have so much to catch up on.”
I didn’t know what questions to ask him, which ones would set him off.
“What happened to you, Be—Brother?”
His eyes jerked to mine, but he relaxed as I used the appropriate term. “You’ll need to be more specific, Sister.”
My mouth pressed tight. He was boxing me in. He didn’t want to talk about Mom. “After…what happened with you and…”
Another warning lit from him.
“Where’ve you been this whole time?”
He shifted to the side, his mouth pursed before he rolled one shoulder back, tightly. “Some people raised me, the ones who found me. They kept me for themselves, said I’d grow to be a backwoodsie like them. They taught me to shoot. To kill. To hunt. They beat the shit out of me every Saturday night. It was their entertainment. They taught me other things too. How to live off the land. How to be a ghost. There were things they couldn't teach me, where I would need to leave to learn those skills. They didn’t want that, but they didn’t realize who I was. They thought they were turning a stray dog into a killing machine. They didn’t know they took in a cub that would grow into a wolf. That was their mistake." He raked his gaze over my face. “I killed them. I did it the way he used to.”
He. The Midwest Butcher.
We’d come full circle, back to the start.
I didn’t care about Cameron Fowler. He’d already destroyed my life once.
I wanted to talk about Mom.
I wanted to ask, so badly.
Is she alive? Please, Ben.
Maybe it was time, or maybe he felt my silent pleading because Ben all the sudden dropped the murderous gusto. He wouldn’t look at me. He was more than half turned away from me, turned away from the entire room. If he lifted his head, he would’ve been looking directly at the stairs.
Layers left him, lifting off him, and vanishing away until he was someone else.
My lips parted. A sense of longing filled me. Ben… Now I saw him.
There was my brother.
“She lied to me.” He half turned back to me, before swinging away. His back was almost to the room. “She left you on that sidewalk and told me that we were going to get ice cream. But we kept driving, and driving, and driving. We drove for so long." His voice thinned, sounding like a little boy, one that was scared. Confused. “I don’t remember when I realized she lied to me, but it hurt. I didn’t understand what was going on. Then she told me to get excited.” He paused again, frowning slightly. “She was crying, but she was smiling. She said we were going to see the Mississippi. She told me I’d never see a river so big, so grand. I was excited.” The last was breathed out, as if he was reliving it. That he felt something wondrous was happening.
He stopped again. His shoulders slouched so far down.
“We just kept going. The car went off the road, and Mom, she—” His voice was thick, so sad. “—she turned around as we were going down and told me to 'close your eyes, little angel, because we’re flying.'”
Close your eyes, little angel, so we can fly.
I heard her, clear as day.
A tear trickled down my face.
He still wasn’t looking at me, and his voice grew harder, more bitter, “I missed you, but I was excited for ice cream. Then I was confused and I wanted you. I kept asking to go back to you. She told me we were letting you go. She said the time had come when we could all be free. She told me we were letting you go live with another family.”
He turned my way, the soulless eyes had returned.