Son of Destruction

28




Dan


A quick study, Dan leaves the attic before the kids can distract him, rehearsing their names. Coleman. Von Harten. Kalen. Bellinger. Four names, sixteen steps. It won’t take long. Chaplin’s off the list – those watery blue eyes. With four locals to research, it won’t be hard. Then he can hunt down and slay, or . . . He doesn’t know. It’s like that old movie: I know who you are and I know what you did. Except he doesn’t.

He aches all over, as if they just told him that his father died. How do you grieve for somebody you never knew? It’s odd. He does. He always has.

Get down on your knees and thank your God.

What? He trips, nicking his hand on a latch. ‘What!’ Oh, crap, this house is not good for me. Why is he still on the second floor?

It’s in the blood.

‘Get the f*ck out of my head!’

Not him. Never. Do you hear?

The hell of it is, he does. Where he should be downstairs and out of here at a dead run, Dan’s like a car with a dead battery, stalled in front of her bedroom door. Either he’s batshit crazy or the old bitch really is yelling, It’s in the blood.

Out, he thinks, got to get out, but he lingers, boiling with questions. Then, my God! At his back, there’s a disturbance in the air. Before he can swivel to see, there’s a thump between his shoulder blades. Mom!

Air knifes into his chest.

Liberated, he runs for the exit, wondering how the f*ck his mother got into this house.