Adam had been walking without a specific
destination. The restlessness that came from knowing something was happening but not being able to see it yet. The specific frustration of incomplete information.
He had taken a route he hadn't used before. Through the older streets where the buildings were lower and the stone was darker and the street was narrow enough that you could touch both walls if you spread your arms.
You didn't plan to go anywhere near the mill, he told himself.
He turned a corner and
stopped.
Marty was against the wall of a building that backed onto the mill yard. Father Frank stood in front of him.
They were alone. Frank was not touching the boy. He was standing close. Too close. Speaking quietly. Marty was pressed against the stone with his arms at his sides. Obviously uncomfortable, but not wanting to react in a way that would make things worse.
Adam walked forward.
Marty's face flickered. Fear. Relief. Adam was probably the last person Marty wanted to come save him.
Frank turned. Saw Adam coming. The warmth came on. Clean. Immediate. Like a light switch. His body did not move away from Marty.
"Adam." Pleasant. "Out for a walk?"
"Yes."
He stopped two feet from Frank. Looked at Marty. "You okay?"
Marty opened his mouth. Frank's hand moved to the boy's shoulder, applying the exact amount of force required to convey a message without creating evidence.
"Mathew and I were just talking." Frank smiled again. "Community things."
Community things.
"Marty. Come on. Walk with me."
Marty made a small, tentative movement toward Adam. Frank's grip tightened. Not by much. By the amount required.
"He'll walk with me." Still pleasant.
Adam took a step forward.
Frank looked at him. The warmth went out. Finally. Completely. What was underneath was not monstrous. That would be easier to process, Adam thought. What was underneath was old. Patient. Entirely certain of itself.
"Go back to your room, Adam. Get some rest. You've been working very hard."
Adam stood where he was. He thought about making a move and taking Marty by force, but then a whisper of doubt: Who do I think I am? I am not responsible for Marty.
Frank moved Marty forward. They went down the lane together. Turned a corner. Gone.
At that moment everything came flooding in — the time he had spent with Marty, the fact that he felt close enough to him to give him LAU.
Adam's eyes widened
with realization. I do care about him.
He was already calling Fon.
"Frank has Marty. They've gone into the mill yard. I'm at the lane behind the church."
"I'm two minutes away. Don't go in alone."
Adam was already running.
The mill was at the river bend. Old stone. Long decommissioned. A blank face to the towpath. The padlock on the side entrance was hanging open.
He went in.
Dark inside. Damp. The smell of old water and stone and something else he didn't try to name. Multiple rooms off a central passage. Low ceilings. His phone torch pressed against his palm to keep the light small and directional.
He moved as quietly as the stone floor would allow.
He heard Marty's voice. One word.
No.
Then silence.
The room had a heavy oak door. The door was open.
He came through it and saw them.
Frank stood with his back to Adam. His hands at his sides. Very still.
Marty was on the floor.
The priest turned. He looked at Adam with a face that was neither surprised nor alarmed. The measured face of a man in a situation he had been in before. Or something close enough to it.
He held Adam's gaze for a moment. Then he walked to the back wall, to a door flush with the stone that attempted to be hidden. He opened it. Walked through it. The door closed. He was gone.
Adam was already on his knees.
Marty lay on his side on the stone floor. Adam turned him gently. One hand supporting his head.
The boy's face was very still. His chest was not moving.
Adam put his hand onMarty's chest and waited for the rise and fall.
There was no rise and fall.
He stayed very still for a moment. A whole future. A notebook behind a brick. He said Marty's name twice.
No answer.
He did not know how long he was there. Time felt slower.
He became aware of Fon at some point. The man's hand on his shoulder first. Then his voice saying his name. Then Fon crouching beside him, looking at Marty's face with an expression that was very controlled and very, very tired.
"Adam."
Adam looked up. His hands were shaking. They had never done that before. Not once in nineteen years. There was a pressure behind his eyes. Enormous. Unfamiliar. He was crying. He didn't remember deciding to.
Fon said his name again. Gently.
Adam put Marty down on the stone.
He stood up. Did not look back.
He understood now, completely, why the boy had not looked back when he left the river bank.
Later, Adam tried to type to LAU about Marty's death and could not form sentences. He opened the text box, typed Marty, and closed the laptop.
*************
It was eleven. They had already left. No
discussion. No real plan. Fon had the car. Adam had the laptop, the USB drive with everything on it, and Marty's notebook — which he had retrieved from behind the loose brick, wrapped in a cloth, and tucked inside his jacket.
He wasn't going to leave it in Blord under any circumstance.
They went out the back of Mrs. Harrow's. Through the garden. Over the fence. Down the lane to where Fon had moved the car three days ago — a side street behind the old tannery, chosen for its sight lines.
The moon was high and thin. The river sound followed them — quieter as they moved inland, but still there, a low hum under everything. The grass in the lane was wet. It soaked through Adam's shoes in seconds. He didn't stop.
The town's nighttime quiet had a different quality now. Not peaceful. Held.
Fon drove slowly through the back streets. Lights off.
"Stop."
Fon stopped. No questions.
"The building on the end of Millway. Ground floor. Look at the sill."
A thin line of yellow light at ground level. The gap between a heavy curtain and the sill of a window that should not have existed, given the building's official foundations.
"There are no basements in the planning records for any building on this street."
Fon looked at the light for a moment. Then he put the car in park and got out.
The rear entrance was a wooden door in an old stone wall. Fon had the padlock open in forty seconds with a key he found hidden under a loose stone nearby — careless of them, or confident. The door swung in.
Ground floor was storage. Boxes. Equipment. A wooden hatch in the floor behind a set of heavy shelving. Fon moved the shelving. Adam opened the hatch.
Stairs going down. The smell of long occupation. Closed air.
Adam went first.
The basement was one large room with three doors off it. Stone walls. Low ceiling. A single bulb on a cord casting hard shadow. The walls were damp —not the damp of neglect, but the damp of something living. A bucket stood in the corner, half-full of gray water. A mop leaned beside it, its head stained a rusty brown. The floor had been scrubbed recently. Too recently. The smell of bleach was so strong it burned the back of Adam's throat.
The first two doors were open.
The first room held what remained of Elliot Marsh. He was on his back, his shirt gone, his chest opened in a Y-incision. The ribs had been cracked outward. The cavity was empty. Whatever they wanted, they had taken. His eyes were open. His mouth was open. A fly crawled across his lower lip.
The second room was smaller. Wendy propped in the corner like a doll someone had leaned against a wall and forgotten. Her throat had been opened from ear to ear — a single, clean line that gaped wide to show the pale tube of her trachea. The blood had sheeted down her front and pooled in her lap where her hands rested, palms up.
On the floor beside her, a small pair of shoes with purple laces. Caitlin's. Nothing else of her. Just the shoes.
A fourth door, previously hidden behind a stack of rotting pallets, stood ajar. Adam pushed it open. Inside, a smaller room. A child's body lay on a stained mattress. James. His eyes were closed. His hands were folded on his chest. Someone had arranged him that way. There was no blood. No visible injury. Just the stillness of something that had stopped.
Adam closed the door.
The third door in the main room was closed.
From behind it came the sound of a small person breathing.
He opened it.
A mattress on the floor. A coat folded as a blanket. A child asleep on the mattress. Both hands tucked under his chin.
Sam.
Still in the same clothes from the petrol station. Thinner. Visibly, unmistakably thinner. But breathing. Both hands curled under his chin. Asleep.
Adam crouched beside him. Said his name quietly.
Sam woke fast and wide.
Adam said, carefully andplainly: "I'm Adam. You touched my arm at the petrol station and said you liked my eyes."
Sam looked at him. The tension in his body — every muscle braced — did not leave. But something behind it shifted. He looked at Adam's eyes.
"Red eyes." His voice was smaller than Adam remembered. Rougher.
"Yes."
Sam reached up. Placed his hand on Adam's forearm. The same brief confirming touch as before. At the petrol station. In the sun.
Then he held on.
Adam picked him up. Sam weighed almost nothing. He pressed his face into Adam's jacket without a sound.
Adam held him with both
arms. Stood up. Turned around.
Fon was in the doorway. Looking at the child in Adam's arms. Fon's face moved. Controlled. But moved.
"The others," Adam said quietly. "James is here. He's gone."
Fon nodded once. "I saw. We can't take him. We have to move."
Adam looked at the two open doors, then at the closed one behind him. He let the weight sit on him for a moment. Then he turned and walked toward the stairs.
They made it to the car. Sam didn't speak for the first hour. He kept his hand in Adam's jacket, his face pressed against Adam's chest. When he finally did speak, his voice was a whisper.
"The man with the white hair said you wouldn't come."
Adam held him tighter.
Fon drove. They were half a mile out of town when headlights appeared in the rearview mirror. The dark SUV — the same one Fon had noticed near the mill. Gaining.
Fon pressed the accelerator. "They're following."
The road twisted through the trees. The SUV stayed with them. Fon took a sharp turn onto an unmarked gravel road. The SUV followed.
"Hold on," Fon said.
He killed the headlights. Drove by moonlight. The gravel road narrowed. Trees scraped the sides of the car. The SUV's lights swung wildly behind them, then disappeared as Fon took another turn.
Silence. Darkness. Fon pulled over behind a stand of old pines and killed the engine.
They waited.
Five minutes. Ten. No lights. No sound.
Fon started the car again. Drove without lights for another mile until the gravel road met a paved county route. Then he turned the lights back on and accelerated.
Blord was behind them.