When I’d finished, I couldn’t help but glance at her nearest neighbor—scorched blacker than a roasted marshmallow, its eyes shone like boiled eggs.
Horace Boone was watching me.
I dragged Steve inside, but my skin crawled, and I’d lost the composure to hang him up. So I left him sitting in the corner behind his wife and rushed back out into the passageway.
I took the lantern from Vi and turned up the flame. We walked together back down the corridor, the way we’d come, Vi grasping my arm, still trembling. We turned a corner, and the passageway split. I couldn’t remember which way to go, so I took the corridor that branched right.
The lantern provided just enough illumination to see a few steps ahead. Beyond the ellipse of firelight, the darkness gaped with a silence that seemed to hum, though I knew that sound was only the blood between my ears.
The corridor abruptly terminated. I imagined some failed convert stumbling blindly into this wall, hearing Rufus or Luther, maybe even Maxine coming for them through the darkness.
Returning to the intersection with the wider corridor, we veered into the left-hand passageway, soon passing through the cramped room with the old chair and bed frame. I felt reasonably sure I could get us to the staircase now, but after a series of turns, we arrived at another dead end.
We wandered through the dark tunnels for another twenty minutes, growing increasingly unnerved at our inability to find our way out. At one point, we heard distant shouting, though I couldn’t tell if it came from upstairs or somewhere in the basement.
We were walking through a particularly narrow passageway when Vi stopped and pointed ahead.
"Light," she whispered.
The passageway ended, and we emerged from the labyrinth on the opposite side of the staircase from which we’d all entered just an hour ago. The screening room and those stone rooms where we’d agonized in pitch-black isolation loomed just ahead.
An ax leaned against the wall.
We swung around the staircase and there, perfectly still, stood the Kite family—Luther, Rufus, Maxine. The old woman held baby Max in her arms, his tiny head resting on her shoulder, snoozing.
"Thought we might have to come find you," Rufus said.
"Yeah, we got turned around in there," I said.
I glanced at Vi. She eyed her baby.
"How’d you kids like the trophy case?" Maxine asked.
None of them had moved.
"Charming little room," I answered, mustering a sarcastic smile.
"Heard y’all hollering," Maxine said. "Funny stuff."
As Luther stared a hole through me, Vi stepped forward. I pulled her back.
"What is it, young lady?" Rufus asked.
"Give him back to me."
Rufus sighed. "Violet, I’m afraid I’ve got a piece of bad news."
"What?"
"Have a seat against the wall. Max, give her the baby."
Maxine walked over and presented the baby to its mother. Vi sat down with him, crying now, and it was a full minute before she tore her eyes away from her sleeping son.
The old man and his wife towered over Vi. She gazed up at them, tears plowing through the dirt on her cheeks.
"Here’s the thing," Rufus said. "We think you were terrific today. Really. Hell, you drew first blood. Unflinching. Brutal. Lovely. But I think Andy has a lot more in the way of potential. He was icy out there. Calm. And he’s a thinker. More than I can say for my own son."
"I don’t understand," Vi said, stroking the nape of her son’s neck. "I don’t—"
"Andy needs our full attention, Violet. It’s just not fair to him to keep you around."
"But I did what you wanted."
"Kiss your son goodbye and hand him back to Maxine."
"You lied."
"Rufus, just a—"
"Andy, don’t make this worse."
Maxine reached down and grabbed little Max under his arms.
"No!" Vi screamed. "Get away from him!"
The baby awoke, emitting a tender cry.
"There, there," Maxine cooed. "Let’s not—"
Vi cocked her right arm and cracked the old woman’s jaw with the back of her fist.
Maxine roared and wrangled the baby away from its mother.
Vi started to rise, but Rufus stamped his boot into her chest and pinned her back against the wall.
"Now you’ve pissed her off," he said.
Maxine wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. Then she took hold of the baby’s ankles and held it upside down, little Max now screaming and flailing.
Vi wailed, too, as Maxine began to spin around, swinging the baby faster and faster.
"Now we start inching toward the wall!" she called out, her faded house dress twirling, her snowy hair whipping around like a shock of white cotton candy. "And after this, we’ll all play hide and seek! See, the fun never ends!"
I lunged for Maxine, but Rufus caught me on the chin with an elbow and my knees buckled.
I hit the ground, Vi screaming, the room spinning, expecting at any moment to hear the fracture of the tiny skull meeting the stone.
Luther caught the baby in his hands and snatched it away from his mother.
In shock, Maxine steadied herself, leveling her gaze on her son.
"Boy, are you loony?"
She grabbed Luther’s earlobe, so short she could only yank down.
"I dare you to hold onto that baby two more seconds," she seethed.
Rufus was in stitches.
As I struggled to my feet, Luther set the infant in the dirt.
When Maxine stooped for the baby, Luther lifted his mother off the ground and slammed her flush into the rock wall. There was a hollow pop when her head snapped back. Luther set her down on her feet, but her eyes rolled up in her head and she dropped.
Rufus charged his son, scooping him under the knees and driving him into the dirt floor. Vi sprang up, rushed over to Max, grabbed him, and scrambled up the staircase.
Rufus’s physical strength was staggering. In a matter of seconds, he’d straddled Luther, one hand on his neck, the other raining blows upon his pale face, laughing while he beat his son, laughing while I lifted the ax and limped toward them.
Luther’s loss of consciousness did nothing to detour his father’s hysterical rage.
Standing behind them now, I hoisted the ax.
It fell, the weight of the head propelling it earthward.
Rufus thought to glance back at me just as the blade clove his spine.
I jerked it back out as he convulsed, toppling backward into the dirt. When he stopped shivering, I thought he was dead, but his eyes blinked calmly, and he grinned at me, arms twitching, legs now and forever inert.
He said, "I can’t move my legs."
"Yeah, I got your spine."
"Beautiful?" he called out. He turned his head, saw Maxine sprawled motionless against the stone. I thought he might call out to her again, but instead he looked back at me, reached out, and grasped my hand.
"I still believe in you," he said. "I know you see past the illusions."
"Had a little regression of our own, didn’t we?"
He grinned and winced, the pain flooding in now.
"Rufus, I just want you to know…" I leaned in close to insure he heard every word. "I think you’re full of shit."
Rufus grunted, shook his head.
"No you don’t," he whispered, then smiled and closed his eyes, full of peace and joy, as though he were ascending into some invisible glory.
His fingers opened, he let go of my hand, and died.
# # #
I took the ax with me and limped up the rickety staircase. Vi was crouched on the top step with baby Max, shivering.
"It’s locked," she whispered as I neared them. "I can’t get it open."
"Scoot down a few steps."
With Vi safely beneath me, I buried the ax blade in the small door, heard it splinter, hinges creaking. On the fifth blow, it burst open. I stepped across the threshold into the foyer, glimpsed late afternoon sunlight streaming through the living room windows, gilding clouds of dust.