But her call was only met with more silence.
Her brother once told her that he thought that’s how it all had begun with their mother. Although she’d suffered from depression for decades, one day, out of the blue, the woman just began hearing voices . . . seeing things. The doctor diagnosed her with a series of additional mental disorders, including paranoid schizophrenia, and her condition only worsened. That’s when everything changed, he said, and the house became dangerous for everyone.
Not long after, their father left late one night for a six-pack of beer and never returned, which only made her mother’s mind deteriorate faster.
Shortly after the conversation about their mother, her brother shut her out. Allie understood now that it was probably because he’d begun hearing the voices, too. And now she—
She shook the thought from her head and walked to the back door. Just as she was about to touch the knob, she stepped into a patch of cold air.
The hair on her arms stood on end.
She took three steps backward and the air was again warm and moist.
What the—? No. I’m just so tired I’m hallucinating.
Flicking her cigarette through a shattered window, she walked down the hallway to the small bedroom in the back of the house.
Her brother’s bedroom.
CHAPTER 6
STREWN ACROSS HER brother’s musty room was more litter from either squatters or idiot kids. And they’d had a real field day with the walls. This time Allie didn’t subject herself to actually reading the graffiti.
Pieces of torn-up girlie magazines were everywhere. She knew those, though, had been her brother’s work. He had been very weird when it came to pornography. She never fully understood his obsessive hate for it, but she knew it had something to do with their mother being the town prostitute. Also, probably the late-night visits their mother sometimes made to his bedroom.
His television and CD player had been busted. She pried open the little door that housed the CDs, expecting to find it empty, but it wasn’t. She plucked out the unmarked disc that was in it and tucked it into her backpack. Then she climbed into the bed and pulled his musty army blanket on top of her.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She needed to sleep so that she could gain the energy to think again. To make sense of the big jumble of thoughts that pushed and pulled against her brain, threatening to rip it in two. But between the pain in her stomach and the ache in her heart . . . she couldn’t.
She lay there, huddled, for hours, until the sun set and the moon took up residence in the sky. Until the tree frogs began their evening songs.
Then finished those songs.
She was pretty certain that all the other sixteen-year-olds in the area had been called home and fed, and were laying in safe beds by now. That she, Allie, was the exception.
There was no one left to care whether she was safe or not. In fact, no one had ever cared whether she was at home tucked safely into bed or running the streets, making it with truck drivers just so she could survive.
No one but her brother had ever cared whether she lived or died. And several months before he died, he’d stopped.
As she finally drifted off to sleep, her mind replayed a night when she was five or six years old. It was the first time she had seen her mother drag a man’s body through the house. She still remembered the odor of death and the sickening bumping sounds the body had made as it slid from the carpet onto the linoleum, then out the back door.
It was just one of many times when she’d instinctively known to pretend she hadn’t seen anything. But sometimes her mother would still come and have “the talk” with her. During those moments, it took everything she had to not reveal that she was afraid. To convince her mother that she wouldn’t tell a soul.
Her mother had always been paranoid about the law, and rightfully so. But she and the sheriff had made a deal. He and his deputy would visit the house a couple of times a month in exchange for turning a blind eye to her career path. But when it came to the murders, she eluded them altogether. She was a very beautiful and intelligent woman. She was also incredibly crafty.
During the scariest of nights, Allie crawled into bed with her brother and together the two had listened to the savagery that happened within the house’s walls. Lying so close to him, she could feel his heart hammering inside his chest. Somehow knowing that they were going through it together helped make it easier to survive. Allie had been relieved when he finally killed their mother—and some of the madness stopped.
Since she was a little girl, all Allie ever wished for was the chance to live a normal life. To not be afraid all the time. To be normal. To be wanted and loved. But all of the pain had taken its toll on her, and now she only wished for a quick, painless escape from it all.
Whether she deserved it or not.
The memory of being attacked by a trucker hours earlier—the third of the four men who’d helped Allie get back to Louisiana—resurfaced that night in Allie’s nightmares.
“You look awful exhausted,” the trucker said, his cheeks rosy, his eyes kind. “Why don’t you crawl into my sleeper compartment and get a little shut-eye while I drive?”
Her stomach was killing her, so it had seemed like a no-brainer. But seconds after she crawled back into the cluttered area, he crawled in behind her.
She kicked and screamed as his lips ground against her face and his big, calloused hands roamed up the legs of her shorts.
“Get the hell off me!” she screamed. But he wouldn’t. Instead, he clamped a big hand over her mouth.
“You know you want it.” He grinned. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be wearin’ those sexy little booty shorts. Isn’t that what they call them nowadays?”
She managed to pull his hand away. “Get off me, you old perv!”