“What did he do then?” Mitch got up then as she’d moved to the couch. He pulled on his pants as she took his shirt over her head and watched him. “Mitch, I need for you to tell me everything. I can see it, feel what they did to you, but I want you to tell me.”
“You’ll hate me.” She told him that was never going to be possible. “But I let them...I allowed them to take me as they wanted for another year after that.”
“You didn’t allow them to do anything to you, Mitch. They tied you up. They forced you.” He paced, thinking about the night before he’d run. “Mitch?”
“There were chains on all the beds. From the very beginning I had noticed them. And I never really gave it any thought when they’d come in and chain one of the other boys to the bed at night. But I never heard anything, so I never...I think they drugged us so they could do those things to us. I never...it wasn’t anything that happened to me, so if anything was brought up, I never heard it. I know now that they more than likely gave us something with our evening meal, and only tied up the ones that they were going to use who had not been drugged.” He walked to the window and looked out into the darkened yard. There were things moving about, things he was sure were there to protect them, but didn’t ask. It wasn’t important right now. “The night before I left, they had chained me and this other boy to our beds. I was screaming to be let go, telling them that I wanted to run. I guess in hindsight, that was the wrong thing to say to them, but they came in naked, both of them, and stood over our beds. It wasn’t the first time, of course, that I’d seen them do this to me, but it was the first time they’d had two of us. We were the only two boys there, I think.” His mind wandered to that night and the horrors of it. Mitch felt himself slide into the dream that had haunted him every night since he was a kid.
“What are you going to do to us?” Mitch remembered the other boy, Thomas was his name, screaming at them to back the fuck off when they got close to the bed. Mitch told them again he wanted no part of this. “You leave us alone. We don’t want you to touch us.”
Thomas kicked out at Carol when she came at him, grabbing him by the leg to flip him over onto his back. Thomas hit her once, knocking her back far enough that she hit her head and blacked out. Mitch was working at the cuff at his arm when he felt someone touch his naked flesh at his shoulder.
Looking up at the dick right in front of his face, he knew that Mark was going to make him take him into his mouth, something he’d done before while Carol had held him tight in her arms. He’d tried his best to bite the man, but she’d held his mouth open and he had to take him. It had sickened him for a week after. That was when he saw the ghost right behind Mark.
“A calmness seemed to settle over me, like I knew that this would be the last time anyone touched me this way again. The boy, I have no idea what his name was, simply put his hand out and touched the cuff at my wrist. It was then that I noticed the ones on my legs were already off. The lock opening made me reach up to grab Mark by the dick and twist.” Mitch thought about that day a lot, even when he didn’t want to. “He screamed, his body falling backward against the wall as I watched the ghost touch the cuffs on Thomas’s legs and arms. I ran after that. Stayed on the streets until I was old enough to find a job for myself and stop stealing. I’ve...it’s been a goal of mine to pay back the people that I took from. I’m working through that all the time.”
“You called the state on the Bruces. But you never told them what they’d done to you.” Mitch shook his head. “Why not? Don’t you think it would have made it easier on the others had you done that?”
“No. They’d been taken care of so that they’d not be having sex with any of their charges again. That I know.” She asked him how. “The other children...they had killed two of the others that had been there and buried them in the back. I’ve gone to talk to them a couple of times or they came to find me. They protect, I guess you could say. Haunt them so they’re not able to go into the bedrooms to harm again.”
“Good. That’s wonderful. I never knew that ghosts could...I guess I should have guessed you’d not leave the others to be hurt.” He turned and looked at her, and when she smiled, he smiled with her. “Are you hungry? I’m not, but I could watch you eat. I’ve had Hugo bring in some food for you. If there is anything you don’t like or that you want, just—”
“Did you hear what I said? I said that they’re being haunted, and I made that happen.” She stood up, and he was disappointed when she wrapped a blanket from the back of the couch around her waist so that it covered her long lean legs. “I used what I can do to make their lives hell.”