Microsoft word winterb.., p.28
Microsoft Word - Winterborn_final-ADRoland, page 28
“No,” he whispered. I wanted to get away from you.
“Tamsyn.” He remembered when her eyes used to glitter and shine. How she could make
anything fun. How she used to laugh and take things easy, always with a smile.
She sighed and looked up, finally. “What do you want?”
“You. Whatever I've done, I've always been looking for you.”
“Oh good grief, Sean. Stuff the Nicholas Sparks dialogue and go see about that kid. I don't want to
be responsible for any bodies stripped of flesh and stuffed into closets.”
His heart crashed to his feet, leaving a hollow path in its wake. He wasn't so sure why he was
speechless; she always met any of his attempts at being heartfelt with irritation and sarcasm.
Didn't used to be like that.
She used to blush and smile.
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The years were ticking down to the total self-destruction of their lives. Ticking down? Shoot,
holding on to whatever remained of their life was like trying to hold on to a wet rope covered in dish
detergent.
“Okay. Okay.” He nodded and backed out of the partitioned exam room. He pushed aside the
curtain to Kevin’s cubicle. Stanley sat in the single chair, scribbling on his legal pad, his cell phone clamped between his ear and shoulder. He cast a glance up at Sean as he entered, and then went back
to his notes. Kevin slept, snoring, drooling. A cute nurse washed her hands at the sink, humming
softly to herself.
Tam used to hum.
A team of orderlies arrived. “Transport,” one announced. The nurse nodded, her ponytail
bouncing.
“He’s all set.”
Sean put one hand on the foot of the bed. “Whoa, wait, what’s going on?”
Stanley ended his call. “It’s in Kevin’s best interests if he spends a couple days here. We’re taking
him to Psych, and then he’ll be transferred over to the behavioral center.”
Pride demanded he object, but common sense shut his mouth. Sean nodded. Stanley guided him
out of the way of the orderlies. They prepped the bed and made sure the restraints secured Kevin in
place. Sean gave his son’s foot a squeeze as they rolled him by. “Be good, kiddo.”
Sean followed Stanley down the hall, to Tam's cubicle. The doctor finished up his work and
scooted his stool away from the tray table.
“Are ya'll done?” Tam sounded breathless.
“Almost. Just have to clean you up a little bit and bandage this, and you'll be all set.”
The nurse took over and swabbed the crusty dried blood off Tam's arm quickly, efficiently. With
the thick mask of blood gone, the wound looked like a lipless mouth, all puckered raw edges, black
stitches, and dots of blood that managed to ooze between the flaps of skin. Two and a half inches long,
the gash zigzagged— where he used his teeth to rip her skin away—back and forth.
“God, Tam...”
She cast a weary look in his direction. The nurse wrapped a thick layer of gauze around her
forearm, from her wrist almost to her elbow. The nurse secured the bandage with a couple of pieces of
tape. “We'll get you a sling to wear for a couple of days, if you want. Since the doctor had to really
stretch your skin to pull the edges together, your arm is going to be really tight for a while. All righty, all done with that, so I'm just going to go get your aftercare instructions and the prescription for
antibiotics. The human mouth just has so many germs!”
“Thanks.”
When the nurse left, Stanley leaned against the sink. Sean sat on the end of the bed again. The
caseworker cleared his throat. “Frankly, I'm worried the stress of the last year has finally gotten to be more than he can handle.”
“He believes his mother is alive and living in the Estate,” Tam said.
Stanley nodded. “He's obsessed with monsters and—”
“Oh, those are real,” Tam volunteered. “I killed one yesterday and buried it in the backyard.”
Stanley gaped at her, mouth open wide.
“Ignore her.” Sean sighed. “You think I should have him admitted to the psych ward.”
“Baker-acted would be a more accurate term.”
Sean shook his head. “Are you serious? He's eleven.”
“I spoke to the nurses and doctors. They told me everything that happened from the time he
walked in the door. He's talking about suicide and murder, Sean. What he did to your wife is more
than enough evidence for me to recommend he be held. I would really appreciate your cooperation
with this, Sean. For Kevin's sake. He needs a lot more help than I think any of us could have known.
This evaluation will help us figure out where to start getting him the help he needs.”
Sean paced the room, scrubbing his hand over his scalp. “He’s just a kid, Stan.”
“Are you having a lot of trouble with him at home?”
“He keeps siccing his monsters on me.” Tam slid off the edge of the bed.
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“Tam, hush.”
Stanley looked from Tam to him and back again. “Monsters?”
“Don't worry about it,” Sean said, waving his hand dismissively. “And we've been having some problems...”
“Like what?”
“He's violent. He trashed the living room. He threatens me constantly. He sneaks out of the house
at night, and he may or may not have been involved in something that happened at the Estate night
before last.” Tam stared at Sean while she spoke. Her eyes dared him to protest. Sean hated her for a
second, hated her for betraying Kevin.
“It's nothing we can't handle at home. He's still getting used to me. To us. He's a kid, Stanley.”
“Quit saying that. He's evil, Sean.” Tam winced as she lowered her arm to her lap. “Stanley, the
kid has to go back to his grandparents. It’s been a year and…he’s only getting worse.”
Stanley shook his head. “His grandparents aren’t the best influence. I wouldn’t recommend
placement with them. Granted it was over a year ago, but the last home visit alarmed me.”
Tam shrugged. “It’s that weird magic spirit-worship religion they practice, isn’t it? He grew up
there. He wasn’t like this until recently.”
Anger and desperation bubbled up inside Sean. The warring emotions made him shaky, weak. He
couldn't get Sharla's face out his head. She never told him about Kevin, but she sent the boy to him.
I’m supposed to take care of the kid. It didn't matter what any damn paternity test said, she had raised Kevin to think he was his father! “You're not his mother, Tamsyn, so you have no say in the
matter. He's my kid, and he's staying with me!”
Tam made the face she always made when she was trying not to cry. Seeing it made his anger
crumple up a little, like a sheet of tinfoil. A dot of red on the white gauze around her arm captured his attention. The dot darkened, spread. Tam ran her hand over the spot. “Okay then, let’s just forget I’m
your wife. All right. I'm going to get my stuff, and then you and your precious, demon-possessed son
can live happily ever after.”
It's me or him me or him me or him me or him.
Her voice spoke it over and over and over again in his head. She walked past him soundlessly, a
bloodstained mess.
She walked out of the exam room. The curtain rode the slight air current she created. The corner
drifted after her, like it was reaching for her.
She disappeared around the corner, and the silence rode so heavy on Sean's shoulder he thought
he was going to collapse. There was a terrible finality to the silence, to the weight on his heart. He
smelled her lavender-vanilla musk for a split second, long enough for his mind to batter his senses
with the remnants of her touch, her taste, the way she sighed when he made love to her, the way she
laughed when he did something stupid, the way she cried when he broke her heart.
He remembered how her tears tasted, and jerked aside the curtain so hard the little metal runners
popped off the track.
“Tamsyn!”
He caught up with her at the nurses' station. The nurse who had bandaged her arm held on to a
thin stack of papers by one end and she had the other. A blue fabric sling lay on the counter next to
Tam's elbow. Both women looked up as he skidded to a stop.
“Don't leave me.”
Tam's distant gaze clouded over. She blinked and turned her head toward the nurse once more.
“The sling,” she prompted, her voice flat.
“Oh, yes.” The nurse kept her eye on Sean as she helped Tam put the sling over her head then got
it adjusted around her arm. “There you go. Now, the doctor says no driving until you're able to bend
your arm without pulling the stitches. That skin is stretched tight.”
“Okay.”
“Get this prescription filled and take the antibiotics for the full course. Here's a prescription for
something for the pain.”
The look of relief, sheer, gut-deep relief, that flowed across Tam's face startled Sean on a visceral
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level. She repeated herself. “Okay.”
The nurse relinquished the papers and Tam walked toward the double doors. Sean hurried after
her. She walked as if in a deep sleep. When Sean touched her right arm, she jerked away, even though
she didn't spare him a glance.
“Tamsyn, talk to me.”
She froze. “I tried. I tried for how long now? Days. Months. Years. Almost a decade. I've
whispered, I've yelled, I've screamed. Talking to you doesn't work. I don't know what else to do. I've
put guns to my head and razors to my wrists. I've swallowed thousands of pills. All just to get through
to you. I've spilled my own blood, and you just look at me with that dead gaze, like I'm nothing. But if someone even mentions the name of your whore, you light up. Your smile goes all the way to your
eyes.”
Big tears ran down her cheeks. She swiped them away with the side of her hand. “I don't think I've
ever, ever put that look on your face. I'm tired of pretending that one day I will.”
“Tam, I love you.” Sean tried to stop her tide-like press for the exit doors. When she wouldn't stop
marching on, he got in front of her and pulled her into an alcove that housed a water fountain.
She stared at his chest. Desperate, he dragged her against his chest in a hard hug. She uttered a
muffled cry of pain. “You're not leaving me, Tam,” he growled against the top of her head. “You know
you can't leave me. You can try. You can run across the country—again—but we both know you'll be
back. Or I'll come to you. Me and you, though, we're stuck together.”
The sobs that rippled through her body broke his heart. He almost let her go, let her run. Her
hand, tangled in his shirt, anchored her to him. Sean wrapped both arms around her and held her
until he was breathless.
“If he comes back, I'm leaving.” Wet, teary eyes bored into his. Steel braced her glare. “Sean, I've
prayed and I've begged and I've pleaded with God to show me how to deal with him, and I'm not
getting any answers. You know as well as I do that I can't handle the stress. I'm about this far—” She
held her thumb and pointer finger a few millimeters apart— “from bat-crap-crazy myself.”
“Tamsyn, come on, baby. Go wait for me in the car. I'm going to take care of this with Kev and
then we'll go home and talk about this.”
“I already talked about it. I'm not changing my mind.”
****
Weird, the way Tam ran into the house, looking over her shoulders, staring into the woods all
around them. Sean's head hurt too badly to think about much more than getting inside and laying
down in a dark room.
He tripped over the coffee table a few steps into the living room. The sharp edge bit into his shin
like teeth. The pain took him to one knee, cursing.
The ache faded slowly. “Tam, why the hell is the coffee table right here?”
“Kevin.”
“That's not an explanation.”
“So? Kevin dragged it there when I was trying to get him out of the house.”
“What do you mean?” A million scenarios, all featuring a fanged, razor-clawed Tamsyn, raced
through his head.
She turned around. “I couldn't leave him here alone, Sean. I saw a new...there's another monster
out there.”
Limping a little, he followed her into the kitchen—and froze.
“Tam...”
“I had to.”
Two-by-fours blocked off the lower cabinets. The dining room table—a huge, heavy piece of
furniture—lay on its side, up against the cabinet doors beneath the sink. Tools—a hammer, his
cordless drill, a scattered handful of nails and screws—littered the floor. Tam stood next to a stack of wood propped up against the counter beside the fridge. The guilty expression on her face made her
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look about ten years old.
“I killed it, though. That's why he's so mad at me.”
“Killed what?” Sean couldn't draw in a breath deep enough to satisfy the prickly demand in his
lungs.
“His monster! That snaky thing? The one that bit Mike Walty. I hit it, then I shot it, and then I
might have stabbed it, and then I burned it. I buried it in the backyard.”
Sean righted one of the overturned chairs and plopped down. “You killed a…monster.”
“Um, it was pretty dang real, Sean. It came at me through a hole in the floor of the cabinet. You
saw it, and you saw it bite Mike. You know it was real.”
“Where was Kevin?”
She pointed at the broken window. “Watching that thing attack me. He threw a brick through the
window.” She grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge, twisted off the top, and drank deeply. She
frowned. “Have you noticed how weird the water tastes? No, you drink soda…anyway, I think he may
know what happened to those kids. He was all dirty and bloody when he came back. Look, his clothes
are still upstairs. Hold on, I'm going to get them.”
She ran out of the kitchen. Moments later she thundered down the stairs and dropped a pair of
filthy pajamas into his lap. Before he could shake them out and look for himself, she snatched the top
back.
“Look, see? That's blood. And there's a lot of it all over the pants.”
The dark streaks on the Spiderman pajamas did look like blood. But when he touched the stains,
the fabric felt hard, unyielding.
Like dried paint.
And for the last week, one of the projects involved touching up the newly-installed wood trim on
the staircases and wainscoting. What had he been using?
Dark brown wood stain.
“Tamsyn, you didn't tell any cops or anything about this, did you?”
“No, I haven't had the chance.”
“Smell this.” He pushed the pajama top under her nose. She tried to jerk away, but he held on.
“Smell it, Tam. What's it smell like?”
It took her a second. The determined look on her face vanished, as did the confident set of her
shoulders. “That's wood stain.”
“Yeah, it is. He must have gone over there the other night and was playing around with it. As for
those kids, the cops are pretty sure there were drugs involved, and none of them are exactly model
students. It's a pretty sure bet they're going to show up in a few days, when their money or their drugs run out.” Sean plowed his hand through his hair. “If that kid made a mess with that stain, I'm going
to...” His head hurt too badly to deal with that little bit of stress. “Tam, I need to go lay down.” He rose and started for the stairs.
“Oh, wait, hold on.” She ran around him and up the stairs. He followed, weary, dreading to see
what his screwed up little wifey had done to the bedroom.
“Dear Lord, Tamsyn!” Every knife, every candle, every match and lighter, every single thing that
could possibly be used as a weapon lay on the floor. “You were alone with him for one night.”
“One night is all it took to see what a lunatic that kid is!”
“Look who’s talking!”
“Sean, he threatened to kill me with every other breath. He pushed me down the stairs. He waved
a knife at me. I wasn't taking any chances. Do you understand why I'm telling you I'm leaving if he comes back here?”
“I need to lay down.” Later, he would deal with her psychosis. Ignoring her, he shucked off his
jeans and his shirt and stretched out on the bed. Something hard jabbed him from under his pillow.
“Do I wanna know?” he murmured as he fished whatever it was out. Round, grayish, and hard, it
looked like one of Tam's more morbid sculptures. “Tam, why are you sleeping with your art?”
She poked her head out of the bathroom. Mascara smudged black circles under her eyes and
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water ran down her face. A few soapsuds clung to her jaw. “My art? What?”
He held up the object without really looking at it. “Catch.”
It flew through the air, rotating. He caught a glimpse of dark spots, holes, and part of it fell away
in midair to clatter across the hard wood floor. Tam dropped her towel and fumbled to catch the main
piece. She almost fumbled it.
“Oh, God!” She held the object for a second before thrusting it away. “Sean!”
“Tamsyn.” He remembered when her eyes used to glitter and shine. How she could make
anything fun. How she used to laugh and take things easy, always with a smile.
She sighed and looked up, finally. “What do you want?”
“You. Whatever I've done, I've always been looking for you.”
“Oh good grief, Sean. Stuff the Nicholas Sparks dialogue and go see about that kid. I don't want to
be responsible for any bodies stripped of flesh and stuffed into closets.”
His heart crashed to his feet, leaving a hollow path in its wake. He wasn't so sure why he was
speechless; she always met any of his attempts at being heartfelt with irritation and sarcasm.
Didn't used to be like that.
She used to blush and smile.
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131
The years were ticking down to the total self-destruction of their lives. Ticking down? Shoot,
holding on to whatever remained of their life was like trying to hold on to a wet rope covered in dish
detergent.
“Okay. Okay.” He nodded and backed out of the partitioned exam room. He pushed aside the
curtain to Kevin’s cubicle. Stanley sat in the single chair, scribbling on his legal pad, his cell phone clamped between his ear and shoulder. He cast a glance up at Sean as he entered, and then went back
to his notes. Kevin slept, snoring, drooling. A cute nurse washed her hands at the sink, humming
softly to herself.
Tam used to hum.
A team of orderlies arrived. “Transport,” one announced. The nurse nodded, her ponytail
bouncing.
“He’s all set.”
Sean put one hand on the foot of the bed. “Whoa, wait, what’s going on?”
Stanley ended his call. “It’s in Kevin’s best interests if he spends a couple days here. We’re taking
him to Psych, and then he’ll be transferred over to the behavioral center.”
Pride demanded he object, but common sense shut his mouth. Sean nodded. Stanley guided him
out of the way of the orderlies. They prepped the bed and made sure the restraints secured Kevin in
place. Sean gave his son’s foot a squeeze as they rolled him by. “Be good, kiddo.”
Sean followed Stanley down the hall, to Tam's cubicle. The doctor finished up his work and
scooted his stool away from the tray table.
“Are ya'll done?” Tam sounded breathless.
“Almost. Just have to clean you up a little bit and bandage this, and you'll be all set.”
The nurse took over and swabbed the crusty dried blood off Tam's arm quickly, efficiently. With
the thick mask of blood gone, the wound looked like a lipless mouth, all puckered raw edges, black
stitches, and dots of blood that managed to ooze between the flaps of skin. Two and a half inches long,
the gash zigzagged— where he used his teeth to rip her skin away—back and forth.
“God, Tam...”
She cast a weary look in his direction. The nurse wrapped a thick layer of gauze around her
forearm, from her wrist almost to her elbow. The nurse secured the bandage with a couple of pieces of
tape. “We'll get you a sling to wear for a couple of days, if you want. Since the doctor had to really
stretch your skin to pull the edges together, your arm is going to be really tight for a while. All righty, all done with that, so I'm just going to go get your aftercare instructions and the prescription for
antibiotics. The human mouth just has so many germs!”
“Thanks.”
When the nurse left, Stanley leaned against the sink. Sean sat on the end of the bed again. The
caseworker cleared his throat. “Frankly, I'm worried the stress of the last year has finally gotten to be more than he can handle.”
“He believes his mother is alive and living in the Estate,” Tam said.
Stanley nodded. “He's obsessed with monsters and—”
“Oh, those are real,” Tam volunteered. “I killed one yesterday and buried it in the backyard.”
Stanley gaped at her, mouth open wide.
“Ignore her.” Sean sighed. “You think I should have him admitted to the psych ward.”
“Baker-acted would be a more accurate term.”
Sean shook his head. “Are you serious? He's eleven.”
“I spoke to the nurses and doctors. They told me everything that happened from the time he
walked in the door. He's talking about suicide and murder, Sean. What he did to your wife is more
than enough evidence for me to recommend he be held. I would really appreciate your cooperation
with this, Sean. For Kevin's sake. He needs a lot more help than I think any of us could have known.
This evaluation will help us figure out where to start getting him the help he needs.”
Sean paced the room, scrubbing his hand over his scalp. “He’s just a kid, Stan.”
“Are you having a lot of trouble with him at home?”
“He keeps siccing his monsters on me.” Tam slid off the edge of the bed.
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132
“Tam, hush.”
Stanley looked from Tam to him and back again. “Monsters?”
“Don't worry about it,” Sean said, waving his hand dismissively. “And we've been having some problems...”
“Like what?”
“He's violent. He trashed the living room. He threatens me constantly. He sneaks out of the house
at night, and he may or may not have been involved in something that happened at the Estate night
before last.” Tam stared at Sean while she spoke. Her eyes dared him to protest. Sean hated her for a
second, hated her for betraying Kevin.
“It's nothing we can't handle at home. He's still getting used to me. To us. He's a kid, Stanley.”
“Quit saying that. He's evil, Sean.” Tam winced as she lowered her arm to her lap. “Stanley, the
kid has to go back to his grandparents. It’s been a year and…he’s only getting worse.”
Stanley shook his head. “His grandparents aren’t the best influence. I wouldn’t recommend
placement with them. Granted it was over a year ago, but the last home visit alarmed me.”
Tam shrugged. “It’s that weird magic spirit-worship religion they practice, isn’t it? He grew up
there. He wasn’t like this until recently.”
Anger and desperation bubbled up inside Sean. The warring emotions made him shaky, weak. He
couldn't get Sharla's face out his head. She never told him about Kevin, but she sent the boy to him.
I’m supposed to take care of the kid. It didn't matter what any damn paternity test said, she had raised Kevin to think he was his father! “You're not his mother, Tamsyn, so you have no say in the
matter. He's my kid, and he's staying with me!”
Tam made the face she always made when she was trying not to cry. Seeing it made his anger
crumple up a little, like a sheet of tinfoil. A dot of red on the white gauze around her arm captured his attention. The dot darkened, spread. Tam ran her hand over the spot. “Okay then, let’s just forget I’m
your wife. All right. I'm going to get my stuff, and then you and your precious, demon-possessed son
can live happily ever after.”
It's me or him me or him me or him me or him.
Her voice spoke it over and over and over again in his head. She walked past him soundlessly, a
bloodstained mess.
She walked out of the exam room. The curtain rode the slight air current she created. The corner
drifted after her, like it was reaching for her.
She disappeared around the corner, and the silence rode so heavy on Sean's shoulder he thought
he was going to collapse. There was a terrible finality to the silence, to the weight on his heart. He
smelled her lavender-vanilla musk for a split second, long enough for his mind to batter his senses
with the remnants of her touch, her taste, the way she sighed when he made love to her, the way she
laughed when he did something stupid, the way she cried when he broke her heart.
He remembered how her tears tasted, and jerked aside the curtain so hard the little metal runners
popped off the track.
“Tamsyn!”
He caught up with her at the nurses' station. The nurse who had bandaged her arm held on to a
thin stack of papers by one end and she had the other. A blue fabric sling lay on the counter next to
Tam's elbow. Both women looked up as he skidded to a stop.
“Don't leave me.”
Tam's distant gaze clouded over. She blinked and turned her head toward the nurse once more.
“The sling,” she prompted, her voice flat.
“Oh, yes.” The nurse kept her eye on Sean as she helped Tam put the sling over her head then got
it adjusted around her arm. “There you go. Now, the doctor says no driving until you're able to bend
your arm without pulling the stitches. That skin is stretched tight.”
“Okay.”
“Get this prescription filled and take the antibiotics for the full course. Here's a prescription for
something for the pain.”
The look of relief, sheer, gut-deep relief, that flowed across Tam's face startled Sean on a visceral
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133
level. She repeated herself. “Okay.”
The nurse relinquished the papers and Tam walked toward the double doors. Sean hurried after
her. She walked as if in a deep sleep. When Sean touched her right arm, she jerked away, even though
she didn't spare him a glance.
“Tamsyn, talk to me.”
She froze. “I tried. I tried for how long now? Days. Months. Years. Almost a decade. I've
whispered, I've yelled, I've screamed. Talking to you doesn't work. I don't know what else to do. I've
put guns to my head and razors to my wrists. I've swallowed thousands of pills. All just to get through
to you. I've spilled my own blood, and you just look at me with that dead gaze, like I'm nothing. But if someone even mentions the name of your whore, you light up. Your smile goes all the way to your
eyes.”
Big tears ran down her cheeks. She swiped them away with the side of her hand. “I don't think I've
ever, ever put that look on your face. I'm tired of pretending that one day I will.”
“Tam, I love you.” Sean tried to stop her tide-like press for the exit doors. When she wouldn't stop
marching on, he got in front of her and pulled her into an alcove that housed a water fountain.
She stared at his chest. Desperate, he dragged her against his chest in a hard hug. She uttered a
muffled cry of pain. “You're not leaving me, Tam,” he growled against the top of her head. “You know
you can't leave me. You can try. You can run across the country—again—but we both know you'll be
back. Or I'll come to you. Me and you, though, we're stuck together.”
The sobs that rippled through her body broke his heart. He almost let her go, let her run. Her
hand, tangled in his shirt, anchored her to him. Sean wrapped both arms around her and held her
until he was breathless.
“If he comes back, I'm leaving.” Wet, teary eyes bored into his. Steel braced her glare. “Sean, I've
prayed and I've begged and I've pleaded with God to show me how to deal with him, and I'm not
getting any answers. You know as well as I do that I can't handle the stress. I'm about this far—” She
held her thumb and pointer finger a few millimeters apart— “from bat-crap-crazy myself.”
“Tamsyn, come on, baby. Go wait for me in the car. I'm going to take care of this with Kev and
then we'll go home and talk about this.”
“I already talked about it. I'm not changing my mind.”
****
Weird, the way Tam ran into the house, looking over her shoulders, staring into the woods all
around them. Sean's head hurt too badly to think about much more than getting inside and laying
down in a dark room.
He tripped over the coffee table a few steps into the living room. The sharp edge bit into his shin
like teeth. The pain took him to one knee, cursing.
The ache faded slowly. “Tam, why the hell is the coffee table right here?”
“Kevin.”
“That's not an explanation.”
“So? Kevin dragged it there when I was trying to get him out of the house.”
“What do you mean?” A million scenarios, all featuring a fanged, razor-clawed Tamsyn, raced
through his head.
She turned around. “I couldn't leave him here alone, Sean. I saw a new...there's another monster
out there.”
Limping a little, he followed her into the kitchen—and froze.
“Tam...”
“I had to.”
Two-by-fours blocked off the lower cabinets. The dining room table—a huge, heavy piece of
furniture—lay on its side, up against the cabinet doors beneath the sink. Tools—a hammer, his
cordless drill, a scattered handful of nails and screws—littered the floor. Tam stood next to a stack of wood propped up against the counter beside the fridge. The guilty expression on her face made her
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134
look about ten years old.
“I killed it, though. That's why he's so mad at me.”
“Killed what?” Sean couldn't draw in a breath deep enough to satisfy the prickly demand in his
lungs.
“His monster! That snaky thing? The one that bit Mike Walty. I hit it, then I shot it, and then I
might have stabbed it, and then I burned it. I buried it in the backyard.”
Sean righted one of the overturned chairs and plopped down. “You killed a…monster.”
“Um, it was pretty dang real, Sean. It came at me through a hole in the floor of the cabinet. You
saw it, and you saw it bite Mike. You know it was real.”
“Where was Kevin?”
She pointed at the broken window. “Watching that thing attack me. He threw a brick through the
window.” She grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge, twisted off the top, and drank deeply. She
frowned. “Have you noticed how weird the water tastes? No, you drink soda…anyway, I think he may
know what happened to those kids. He was all dirty and bloody when he came back. Look, his clothes
are still upstairs. Hold on, I'm going to get them.”
She ran out of the kitchen. Moments later she thundered down the stairs and dropped a pair of
filthy pajamas into his lap. Before he could shake them out and look for himself, she snatched the top
back.
“Look, see? That's blood. And there's a lot of it all over the pants.”
The dark streaks on the Spiderman pajamas did look like blood. But when he touched the stains,
the fabric felt hard, unyielding.
Like dried paint.
And for the last week, one of the projects involved touching up the newly-installed wood trim on
the staircases and wainscoting. What had he been using?
Dark brown wood stain.
“Tamsyn, you didn't tell any cops or anything about this, did you?”
“No, I haven't had the chance.”
“Smell this.” He pushed the pajama top under her nose. She tried to jerk away, but he held on.
“Smell it, Tam. What's it smell like?”
It took her a second. The determined look on her face vanished, as did the confident set of her
shoulders. “That's wood stain.”
“Yeah, it is. He must have gone over there the other night and was playing around with it. As for
those kids, the cops are pretty sure there were drugs involved, and none of them are exactly model
students. It's a pretty sure bet they're going to show up in a few days, when their money or their drugs run out.” Sean plowed his hand through his hair. “If that kid made a mess with that stain, I'm going
to...” His head hurt too badly to deal with that little bit of stress. “Tam, I need to go lay down.” He rose and started for the stairs.
“Oh, wait, hold on.” She ran around him and up the stairs. He followed, weary, dreading to see
what his screwed up little wifey had done to the bedroom.
“Dear Lord, Tamsyn!” Every knife, every candle, every match and lighter, every single thing that
could possibly be used as a weapon lay on the floor. “You were alone with him for one night.”
“One night is all it took to see what a lunatic that kid is!”
“Look who’s talking!”
“Sean, he threatened to kill me with every other breath. He pushed me down the stairs. He waved
a knife at me. I wasn't taking any chances. Do you understand why I'm telling you I'm leaving if he comes back here?”
“I need to lay down.” Later, he would deal with her psychosis. Ignoring her, he shucked off his
jeans and his shirt and stretched out on the bed. Something hard jabbed him from under his pillow.
“Do I wanna know?” he murmured as he fished whatever it was out. Round, grayish, and hard, it
looked like one of Tam's more morbid sculptures. “Tam, why are you sleeping with your art?”
She poked her head out of the bathroom. Mascara smudged black circles under her eyes and
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135
water ran down her face. A few soapsuds clung to her jaw. “My art? What?”
He held up the object without really looking at it. “Catch.”
It flew through the air, rotating. He caught a glimpse of dark spots, holes, and part of it fell away
in midair to clatter across the hard wood floor. Tam dropped her towel and fumbled to catch the main
piece. She almost fumbled it.
“Oh, God!” She held the object for a second before thrusting it away. “Sean!”
