Rage reached into the front of her shirt and pulled out an older style smart phone. Mr. Carson was passed out in his chair, his hands now covered in red, his blood dripping to the floor off the side of the table. Rage’s eyes went wide when she looked at the screen. Her face paled. She abruptly got up and grabbed the rope from my hands, but instead of lynching Mr. Carson or whatever his real name was, she stuffed a pink bandana in his mouth and tied him to the chair using a series of complicated looking knots.

“What’s going on?” I asked, hoping whatever it was had nothing to do with Bear.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I just sent a text to Bear. He’s on his way. Told me not to do anything until he gets here.”

I studied her face, her quick intake of breath. “Okay, but your phone. What was that? WHO was that?” I asked again and that’s when she looked up at me with glassy eyes and handed me the phone.

It was a selfie of a boy a little older than us. Handsome. Almost pretty. He was smiling into the camera, making a silly face with his hand on his chin.

“He’s cute?” I said but it came out like a question. I handed her the phone back.

“He is, but he’s also in trouble,” Rage said, staring down at the photo and running her fingers across the screen.

“You got that from a selfie? He looks happy to me.” I leaned over to look again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything, but again nothing stood out to me as being out of the ordinary.

Rage put her phone back into her shirt. “It’s his bat signal,” she said.

“His what?”

“His bat signal. He doesn’t like selfies. Said he would never take one. It’s our sign. He was only supposed to send one when he’s in trouble.”

“Rage…who is this boy to you?”

She bit her lip. “He’s…I don’t really know,” Rage answered quietly.

“You need to go to him,” I said, making her decision easier.

Rage started to protest, but I wouldn’t let her. “Listen to me, if the roles were reversed and Bear was in trouble, I wouldn’t give a second thought to leaving you. You said yourself that Bear is on his way. This dude is tied up and knocked out. I know how to shoot a gun. GO!” I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her like I was trying to shake some sense into her. “I got this,” I assured her.

Rage looked up at me, blinking though tears. In the next second she grabbed her gun from the table and handed me Mr. Carson’s. “Everything will be fine,” I said again.

She nodded. “Thank you,” she said before disappearing out the door.

Everything was not fine.

* * *

BEAR WOULD BE back soon and then I would be leaving that house and that town forever. I stared down the hall at my parents closed bedroom door. Neither Rage or I had opened that door in all the time we’d been there. And although I’d taken back some of the power the house had held over me, I hadn’t quite reclaimed it all. I was afraid if I left without making my peace with it, that it might haunt me forever.

I checked to make sure my prisoner was still tied tightly to the table and still unconscious, which he was.

Before I had a chance to think too much about it I was standing outside the closed door of the room I feared the most. The room where my father took his last breath.

My parents’ bedroom.

I turned the knob and pushed open the door which creaked as it slowly revealed the room to me.

My father’s blood stained the wood floors, which were buckling at the seams under the dried pool of red. Reluctantly, I took a step inside the room.

Maybe this isn’t so bad after all. It’s just blood.

I ran my fingers over the ornate gold-framed mirror that hung above my parents dresser. One of my mother’s favorite flea-market finds. I picked up a bottle of my father’s cologne and sprayed it into the air. Inhaling deeply, I smiled, remembering better times. I combed out my hair with my mothers brush and I stared at my reflection in the mirror until I was sure that my reflection had started talking back to me. “Get out of here,” I saw myself say. “It’s not safe.” And then finally. “Look behind you.”

I wasn’t fast enough. Just as I turned around, large hands clasped around my throat, turning me back facing the mirror. He squeezed, crushing my neck, closing my airway. I struggled and kicked and bucked, but it was no use. I watched in the mirror in horror as the whites of Mr. Carson’s eyes bulged out of his head as I struggled for air. I tried prying his fingers apart with my own but he didn’t move. “Night, night, you fucking cunt,” he whispered in my ear. With my vision rimmed in static like snow that grew larger and larger, I felt my body go limp. I fell sideways onto the floor and although he’d released me, my airway wouldn’t open. I couldn’t draw breath into my lungs.

The last thing I saw was a laughing Mr. Carson, standing over me, as he faded further and further away until he was gone and the only thing I was left looking at was the broken blade on the ceiling fan. Some sort of commotion was taking place out of the corner of my eye.

Someone screamed.

But it was too late.

It all went away.

Everything.

I was dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Thia

LIGHTS. SOUNDS.

Barking?

I woke up with a start like I’d been launched into consciousness from one world to the next. I sat up so quickly it was like an involuntary knee-jerk reaction to be able to pass air into my lungs again. Opening and closing my mouth I gulped for more air, which came much slower than I wanted.

But at least it came. My breaths were short and staccato.

I’d gone from the land of nothingness into a flurry of commotion. The room spun around me as each of my senses was shocked back to life like they’d just been struck by lightning.

My brief death had taken a toll on me. My neck was sore. My head throbbed. I reached for my throat. I swallowed and it felt as if I’d gargled with sand or broken glass, or a cocktail of both.

There was a crash.

Surprised by the sudden noise I stupidly craned my damaged neck around the side of the bed to see where the noise had come from, and was immediately rewarded with a severe stabbing sensation in and around my throat.

I pushed through the pain, dragging myself on the floor instead of causing further injury to my neck. When I’d moved far enough to see around the bed, my eyes landed on the scene playing out in front of me.

* * *

THE SPINNING ROOM began to slow until it thankfully came to a stop. When I was finally able to take a deep breath I coughed on the exhale, drawing the attention of Mr. Carson, who was on his knees beside the bed. His white shirt torn around his right arm, revealing an open and bloodied gash across his bicep. He pursed his lips and although he was the one on his knees he looked smug, like he’d somehow still won.

The Bear from that morning was not the same Bear who was now in that room, standing behind Mr. Carson with a gun to the back of his head.

Bear looked possessed. A vein throbbed in his temple. His chest heaving up and down. Even the veins running down his defined abdomen, disappearing into his low-slung jeans, looked as though they were pulsing with anger.

“Ti,” Bear said, calling me even further back to the land of the living. “You okay?”