Wrong (A Bad Boy Romance)(144)

Dad showed me this tunnel once. It still stands. In the barn, in the back corner, the half-rotted floorboard lifts up. The tunnel is dark, and barely tall enough for me to stand, bending my head a little. I take a flashlight and a stick. It’s always full of spiders. I fucking hate spiders. Suffer not the arachnid to live. I think that’s in the Bible somewhere.

If it’s not, it should be.

The tunnel is sixty feet long, shored up with old timbers that are so hard they may as well be stone. It looks like a mine shaft in a cowboy movie. When I was a kid, I was terrified of this place. Of course, it’s November and it’s freezing cold at night, so the few times I have to knock down the web the one that made it is already dead, spindly legs curled up on themselves. I didn’t need much encouragement to stay out of here when I was a kid but Dad made it very clear I wasn’t ever to travel the tunnel alone; once he was younger then I was the first time he showed it to me, he found a nest of black widows and it was just luck that he didn’t put his foot in it and get bitten half a hundred times. Probably would have killed him. Adults can usually survive the widow’s bite, but not that many.

When I emerge from the other side I’m covered in dust and a little dirt and my stick is coated with filmy old spider silk.

I toss it aside and cut off the flashlight, then take a few minutes for my eyes to adjust.

I make it about twenty yards when the dogs show up.

They fold out of the darkness on silent legs, black specters with bobbed tails and cropped ears that make them look like silky black devils. I stop and they surround me, staring, silent. One by one they bare their fangs.

One of them is older than the others, gray hairs silvery on his dark face. He pads over, the stump of his tail twitching as he tries to wag. I crouch down and offer him my hand. He sniffs, and gives me a friendly lick as I scratch behind his ears.

“Hey, buddy,” I whisper. “I wish I could remember which one you were.”

The others take their cue from the leader, surrounded me and sniff at me and I pet them one by one. They’d rip out an intruder’s throat and leave his rotting carcass to be found by the groundskeeper in the morning.

I’m not an intruder. The intruders are inside, sleeping in my fucking house.

One step at a time.

After I pay my respects to the dogs, I move silently through the grounds. This section is wooded, kept wooded to conceal the movements of runaway slaves and the new owners have let it run wild. There are oaks here that stood before the United States was the United States. Hell, the ivy growing on some of the trees is older than that. It’s like walking through some ancient forest. Dobermans hadn’t been developed yet but my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather probably walked these woods with a pack of hounds, just like I am now.

There used to be a path here but the stones are worn down smooth and covered with loam. I used to walk here all the time with my mother and father. When you’re a kid, Mom and Dad are just there. Only now with both of them gone do I realize how I miss them both so fucking much. I can see them in my mind’s eye on this very path on a warm autumn day, walking hand in hand. Dad was built like I am- tall and heavily muscled, but he kept his coal black hair closely cropped.

That was so long ago.

The garage is big enough to be a house on its own. A long, long time ago, it was a stables, but my grandfather, or maybe great grandfather, had it converted and rebuilt into a garage. His car, a lumbering Packard, is still in the furthest bay, or was when I was last here. I went for a ride in a few times. It’s big and slow and ponderous to drive and I’m not here for it.

I’m here for my Dad’s car. Technically, she’s mine. They’re holding her hostage here.

The garage is in sight, but so is the house. The lights are on on the second floor.

I shouldn’t. I should go nowhere near it, not yet.

Refusing to listen to that little voice that says you shouldn’t is probably how I ended up in prison for five years, but old habits die hard. I run across the grass, hoping I don’t set off a motion detector or end up on camera. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I could end up back in prison serving out the rest of my term for this, plus interest, but I have to see.

I did this a dozen times when I was a kid. The back of the house is a huge terrace, with a roof supported by massive columns of real marble. They’re so worn from age and acid rain that it’s easy to shimmy right up. The pockmarks are like handholds, like the stippling and grippy spots on a climbing wall.

I was twelve when I did this the last time, but I’m in the best of shape of my life. Lots of weight lifting and constant body weight exercises in my cell, you see. It’s easy to get up to the terrace roof, though I go on all fours where I used to run when I was a kid. Work my way across to the wall. A ledge runs all the way across the house, and these brick buttresses jut out from the sides. They’re slick from the rain, so I take it easy, and work my way down the ledge, using the brick handholds. My old room is four windows down. The light is on inside. I stop by the window and lean over.