“She’s sick,” Zee told him. “She’s a diabetic and needs her medicine.”
“What about you?” he asked, turning to face Zee. “Don’t you need your medicine?”
“I can take it or leave it,” she lied. Even when she took her pills, she still heard voices, but her medication eliminated other problems, like hallucinations. She wanted out of there. “Let me go.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I already told you,” he said, his attention back on Natalie. “Natalie’s mother could have saved me, but she did nothing. She simply looked the other way. Someone had to pay. Since I couldn’t locate Sue Sterling, I figured her daughter should be punished in her place.” He sighed. “Look at me, Natalie.”
When she failed to move a muscle, he walked back to the stairs and disappeared within the dark space behind the steps. When he returned, he was pulling what looked like a fire hose along with him. “Nobody cared about me growing up,” he said as he approached. “I was tortured all my life, and yet nobody cared. How does it feel, Natalie, to be trapped and suffering and to have no one help you?”
Natalie lifted her head; the anger scrawled across her face matched his. “On May 14, 1999,” she said through gritted teeth, “the same day my mother visited you, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. My mother was more concerned about you than her diagnosis. She spent days making phone calls, pleading your case to get you the help you needed, but—”
The lines in his forehead deepened. He turned the nozzle, spraying Natalie in the face with a gushing stream of water, pushing her back against the cement and forcing her to turn her head to one side and gulp for breath.
“Stop it!” Zee cried.
A few more seconds passed before he finally shut off the water.
“My mom wanted to help you,” Natalie cried, water dripping from her face.
“Bullshit! She shook my father’s hand, the same hand that had been torturing me and my mother since the day I was born, and left without another glance my way.”
“She didn’t want your father to know that she was on to him. She knew you were suffering, and she wanted to help, but she was dead within weeks of visiting your home.”
Chills swept up Zee’s spine as she watched Scar’s expression change. He’s gone from slightly deranged to full-blown cray-cray. His face was red, eyes bulging, the muscles in his neck thick like corded rope.
“You’re a liar!” he shouted.
“It’s true,” Natalie said. “She was worried about you. Your name is Forrest Bloom. I only know that because you’re all she talked about. Years later, I looked you up and saw that you were enrolled in college and doing well.”
“After your mother left,” he said, his voice an octave higher than before, “Dad made my mother homeschool me so I would no longer have contact with the outside world.” His hands trembled. “Do you have any idea what my life was like after your mother left me to rot in hell?”
Nobody said a word.
“Dad liked to pull my teeth out with pliers just for fun, just because he could. If I wet my bed, he put me in a box outside, kept me there for days. He enjoyed throwing darts at my mom and me. He made me do unspeakable things. My own grandmother purposely starved herself so she wouldn’t have to watch us all suffer. I would have done the same if I could have found the courage to leave my mom alone with the bastard. He did all of these things to me because he enjoyed it. So, no,” he said, calmly now, “I was never doing well. I was never fine. My mom filled out applications and begged me to go to college after I was accepted.” His jaw hardened. “When I found out my mother passed away, I left school early so I could return home and take care of some unfinished business.”
Natalie lifted her chin a notch. “So now you spend your days hurting others just as your father hurt you?”
He smiled, a wicked smile that silenced all the voices inside Zee’s head.
“By George, I think you’ve got it!” he said, startling Zee. He turned the nozzle and sprayed Natalie again, forcing her to turn away. When he shut the hose off, Zee watched the excess water circle the drain in Natalie’s cell and disappear. A tiny stream of water trickled into her cell. She dropped to the ground and began to lap it up with her tongue.
“Is that tasty, Zee?”
She ignored him.
“I have something for you, too,” he said, which made Zee look over at him. He was holding a small box. Her stomach growled. She was starving.
He stood next to her door, close enough for her to reach out and touch him.
“Come and get it,” he said.
He likes you. It’s food! Reach through the bars and get it! Hurry before he feeds it to the bitch in the other cell!
She was confused, wasn’t sure what to do. She stood, then looked over at Natalie, who very subtly shook her head. She’s a smart lady, another voice warned. Don’t go over there.
You’re an idiot! She wants the food for herself. Go get it before that lady eats it all!
Zee walked over to him, her body pressed against metal as she reached through the bars and wiggled her fingers. “Give it to me,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Don’t be an ass.”
He pulled off the lid, raised the box high in the air, and then slammed the open end of the box against the metal bars above her head so that the contents spilled out over her. Tiny little legs skittered through her hair, down her face and neck. They were everywhere.
Terror froze her in place.
Spiders.
He knew she hated spiders. He knew her worst fear, and he was using it against her. There was one crawling inside her ear. The tiny creepy crawlers tickled her flesh as they worked their way into her shirt.
Move, you idiot! Walk. Dance. Hop. Jump up and down! Do something!
Her feet wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t move a muscle. She didn’t make a sound, either, not even when a spider darted into her mouth.
The monster laughed, guffawed as if he’d never seen anything so hilarious. His face changed again right before her eyes. He was suddenly one of the circus clowns she’d passed on her way there. Tufts of red, wiry hair above his ears vibrated with laughter. His mouth was wide-open, his brown-stained teeth pointy and revolting. Like most clowns, he had a red ball for a nose. It cracked and fell off. Blood oozed from both nostrils, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. He wouldn’t stop laughing.
The howling wolf man began shrieking and beating his fists against the wall closest to her. She wondered if he was laughing at her, too, or if he just wanted out.
Before today Zee had thought she knew crazy better than most. But this guy, Forrest Bloom, or whoever he was, gave crazy a whole new meaning.
THIRTY-ONE
Jessie had returned from the hospital fifteen minutes ago. After being interrogated by Olivia about what had happened during the attack, Jessie had escaped to the bathroom.
As she washed her hands, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her right eye was puffy and shaded with a half-moon of grayish black. She’d needed nine stitches under the left side of her chin. Gauze and tape covered her wound. The doctor had told her she’d been lucky. If the cut had been any deeper, she could have suffered nerve damage, or worse.
Before she’d run into Colin, she’d been in shock. Seeing all that blood had made her dizzy, barely able to walk. If she closed her eyes, she could see her attacker. Average height and build. No identifying tattoos or marks. He had expressive eyes. Angry eyes.
When she walked out of the bathroom, Colin was exiting the kitchen carrying a bowl of soup that he’d warmed up in the microwave. He set it next to the hot tea waiting for her on the table in front of the couch.
Olivia stood off to the side, a worried look on her face. Colin was watching her, too, but neither of them said a word.