Oh no.
“We were so close,” I murmured. So close. But it wasn’t the Withered making the rest of the town kill, it was the other way around. The town was making the Withered kill. Randy wanted vengeance for his lost love, wanted Brielle to suffer the same way Sara had, and so Attina had done it. Brielle wanted Glassman to die for attacking her sister, fantasized about poisoning him for revenge, even went so far as to write the whole thing out in her journal, step by step … and so Attina had done it. I’d wanted to light a fire and Attina had lit one. I’d wanted to hit Corey with a truck so Attina hit him with a truck. Officer Glassman had leered at underage girls for years, trapped by a desire he didn’t dare to act on, but he’d wanted it so bad, wanted to dominate Jessica so completely, that as he watched outside her window Attina had leapt up and done the job more horribly and completely than he’d ever intended. And all of it, every death, every attack, every last catastrophe this town had seen, had started when I wanted to cut Derek into pieces. We never would have done it on our own, but Attina did. Attina had sensed it or felt it or known it, through whatever awful mechanism that lurked inside his mind, and he had done everything. Attina was a mirror, a perfect reflection of the community’s unspoken desires. It had been dormant for decades, maybe since the beginning of the town, hurting no one because no one in Dillon wanted to hurt. And then I arrived.
And unleashed hell.
“Get out of my house,” Mrs. Butler growled.
I moved the knife less than an inch from her face, still staring at Brielle’s corpse. “The Withered are defined by what they lack,” I said, thinking out loud. I could figure this out. Every Withered made perfect sense within its own reality, and now that I knew what that reality was, all I had to do was follow the logic. “Nobody didn’t have a body, so she stole them from other people.”
“What?”
“Elijah didn’t have memories. Rack didn’t have a heart. Forman didn’t have his own emotions, so he felt everyone else’s. Attina uses other people’s will, their ability to choose and act, which means he doesn’t have his own. It’s an empty vessel, a hollow shell, a spineless nothing who has no desires, no wants, no self-interest. Someone who fits perfectly into this town because it always wants exactly what everyone else does. A pushover—no … a mascot. Attina is the most representative example of Dillon life. It goes to church. It participates in community events. If you want food it makes food; if you freak out in a town meeting, it freaks out. If you want to hide or cry or complain, it—of course. Beth.”
“Beth?” whispered Mrs. Butler. She was trembling in terror. “Beth Gleason?”
“‘It’s too damn hot,’” I said, repeating her words from the gym. “‘Everyone was thinking it anyway.’” I pulled the knife away from Mrs. Butler’s face. “I wanted to get Brooke out of Dillon, so she took Brooke out of Dillon. That’s why she ran—she wasn’t afraid, she was protecting the person I wanted to protect. Ingrid came right out and told us: Beth will go along with anything.” I looked at Mrs. Butler. “Where would Beth go outside of town? If she needed to get away?”
“I…” Mrs. Butler swallowed, looking at the knife still inches from her face, too emotionally battered to think straight. “I don’t know. Maybe one of the old farms?”
“There’s a lot of them,” I said, remembering our ride into town the first night. We’d passed a dozen or more farms, all spread out in the flat land around the town. “Do you know which one specifically? Somewhere she’d feel familiar and safe.”
“Are you saying she … that she did this? That Beth killed my girls?”
I looked at the clock on the wall: time was up, and the lockdown was in place. I’d have to be as stealthy as possible. “I know you think I’m crazy and evil and you have no reason to trust me.” I opened the window to slip out that way. “But yes. Beth killed your girls, and I’m going to go kill her.”
“She has an old farm,” said Butler, wiping her eyes and fixing me with a grim expression. “She hasn’t lived there in thirty years, not since her husband died, and she sold all the surrounding land but kept the house. Uses it for barbecues and church parties.” She pointed north with a trembling finger. “Take Main Street about two miles, then turn on Barkwood Road and look for the mailbox with a rooster on it. It’s about another two miles.” She gritted her teeth, her fear coalescing into sudden, fierce anger. “Make it hurt.”