“I’ve got more pills, but it would be best if you try to keep the ones I’ve already given you down.”
The room cascaded around her in a whirlwind of colors. Her father’s face split into a thousand pieces. When he spoke, his voice sounded like it was coming out of speakers in the log walls.
“No, please,” she croaked. “No more pills, they’re not helping me. They’re making me sicker. My mouth is so dry, Daddy.”
He propped her up and fed her a sip of water from a tin cup. It was cool and sweet on her lips and went down easy. The water made her feel better. Not clearheaded, but better.
“More?” he asked in that scary, disembodied voice.
“Yes, please.” She drained the last drop from the cup in his hands.
The cabin. They were in the cabin.
“Cayman shot me.” She needed to explain it to him so he could get help.
“No.” He laughed.
Her father was laughing.
She was dying, and he was laughing.
“It was you who shot Cayman. Then you fainted. He’s deader than dirt, just waiting for me to feed him to the cougars.”
Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. She grabbed her throat, sucking in painful spasms of air.
Her father put his arms around her and rocked her back and forth. “Shh. Not to worry. I’m not going to feed my baby girl to the mountain lions. Not my Laura.”
She shoved his arms away. “What are you talking about? I didn’t shoot Cayman. I only pushed him. I don’t even have a gun.”
“You used his pistol. And now you’re going to kill yourself. They’ve already found your note. They just need to find your body. You see Cayman’s been watching you all these years. He suspected that it was you who killed Angelina, and he saw you with Harriet. He knows you killed her, too. He was onto you, so you shot him, and dragged his body out into the woods like you did Harriet’s. But then, my sweet Laura, you came back to your senses, and you were so filled with remorse that you took your own life. So you see, there’s no reason for Daddy to feed you to the animals. You can die in peace, and we’ll have a beautiful funeral. Everyone will understand it wasn’t your fault. You’re not right in the head.”
“I’m not crazy.” She gagged on a throat full of bile. “Why are you lying?”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“I never killed anyone.” She sat up fully and crawled as far away as possible from the man beside her on the mattress. He’d given her pills. The only reason she hadn’t died in this cabin last time she’d been given pills was because she’d been lucky enough to throw up. Without hesitating, she stuck her finger down her throat. She wretched, and out gushed a beautiful stream of fluorescent green liquid. She could see bits and pieces of pills floating around in her vomit.
He shouldn’t have let her drink so much water.
She was confused, but not too confused to understand that he was lying when he said she killed Angelina and when he said she’d killed Cayman.
She was not a monster.
How could a child have done all those things to Angelina, and to the others? “Dr. Duncan told me I couldn’t have gotten Angelina to the mountains when I was just a little girl. What you’re saying is impossible. It’s crazy.”
“No, darling, you’re the crazy one, remember? You killed Angelina, and I tried to cover it up to save you. But now I see what a terrible mistake that was.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. Her father’s lies floated before her in the air, written letter by letter with a bloody finger.
“I want you to be at peace, Laura. So I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “But then, I want you to take the rest of these pills and lie down and go to sleep like a good girl.”
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
“Yes, Laura, you will. Because that night, thirteen years ago, I heard a scream coming from Angelina’s room. I went in, and I found you standing over her with a pillow. You smothered her. I wanted to protect you, so I gave you some medicine to make you forget. Then, I wrote a ransom note to cover up her murder and make it seem like a kidnapping. Your mother woke up briefly, but she was so drunk she passed out again, and I didn’t even have to drug her. I brought you and Angelina up to this cabin. I left you here while I dragged her body out into the wilderness. She was already dead, but I stabbed her to confuse the police. Then I went home, and your mother and I called the cops.”
“Does Mother know what you did?” Laura could feel tears clogging her throat, but she refused to let them out.
“Of course not. She’s too stupid to know anything except exactly what I tell her. She thought your birth mother had kidnapped you, and she wanted the police to go out and find her.”