Page 9 of Chaos

He knows that.

Ephie’s face stretches into a Munchian scream as she watches it happen, like she can’t process the horror of it any better than I can.

When he’s done, he releases me to scrabble myself back against the wall as he wipes his fingers on the back of his pants, reclaims his knife and points it at me like a manic conductor with an orchestral baton, shuddering with every rabid beat of his heart.

“That asshole fucking jarhead …. thatmeathead….fuckheadof yours is dead. And so are you.” His lower teeth bare, the whites of his eyes showing over his pupils. Undone. I don’t think my brain can process anything else. It justfocuses on that. He’s undone, lawless. “You will regret ever fighting me. I willmakeyou regret it. He should have let me having that fucking deer. This is his fault.”

I shrivel, naked—so naked, more naked than I’ve ever felt in my life—into the wall, the soft, bloody spot on my scalp scraping against the rough bricks, teeth chattering, my sluggish brain, probably concussed, reeling from rapid shifts from the moment in the woods, Ruby’s dead eyes to the sky, to the moment I shoved Shane down the hill, Yorke running behind the car, to this nightmare place, his nightmare face.

“This ishisfault,” Ben pants. “This is all his fault.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, unable to process a reaction.

“Say something!” he bellows. “Speak, you fucking awful whore!”

“What? W-what … what do you want me to say?”

“Say you hear me.”

“I hear you.”

“Say you blame Yorke for this.” That knife in his hand shakes again, and I can hear Yorke and Shasta and Jimmy and my mom and Jee and my dad and even Ruby, all the people, alive and dead, who’ve ever loved me, all of them telling me to say it.

But I can’t do it.

Instead, I force my eyes open, my gaze slithers to the top of the stairs, at the shadowed girl on the cusp of womanhood, clutching her gun, who just saw what he did to me.

“How old is she?” I ask. “Sixteen? Seventeen?”

He menaces closer.

“Do you have a thing for young women? Is it because they can’t yet see what you really are?”

His shoulder moves like he’s imagining where he wants to stab me. Instead, he spits, a huge glob of spit that lands on my foot, oozes between my toes like the promise of violence yet to come.

His … mine.

All of ours.

And then he leaves, and I’m alone in this dank hell, shaking, and trying to hold on to anything that matters.

Silent until a soft chorus, a purr almost, a lullaby, reaches my ears, and I’m certain I have a concussion.

Croo croooo.

It sounds exactly like a pigeon on the steps of that Roman Chapel.Santa Maria Della Vittoria.

If it’s my imagination, I welcome it.

Twenty-eight days ago

AMAN WITH A BALD HEADand a neck like raw meat comes down the next day and stops in the edge of the shadow cast by the open door at the top of the stairs.

He sets down two buckets with a thump.

I lie in the corner and watch. There’s a new animal wariness inside me, something I’m not sure I’ve felt before—something between predator and prey.

“Don’t move,” he grates and pulls out a knife. “Just going to unlock the cuffs.”