Creed (6 page)

“Fine. Whatever,” I said as I made my way back to the fire. Heat or no heat, I didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to spend ten more minutes in this creep-show house, never mind an entire night. “But as soon as the sun comes up, we’re leaving.”

SIX

I was lying on the couch with my head in Luke’s lap, staring at the front door and waiting for whoever lived here to come back home. The first trickle of true fear had finally settled like a living, breathing hum in my body.

“Tell me what you had planned for tonight,” Luke said, and I didn’t have to look up to see his forced smile; it rang clear in his voice. I doubted he really cared about our plans. Rather, he was trying to draw me out of my silence.

“Concert. I got third-row seats to see Mindhole. It was supposed to be an anniversary present,” I said. “Out of all the nights for things to go bad, it had to be this one.”

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Luke said. “I’ve got you here snuggled into me.”

His hand ran the same path across my back as it had for the last half-hour. It was meant to be soothing, but with the wind lashing at the windows and the icy snow pinging off the shutters, it made me more anxious.

“You know I love you, right?” he asked. “And you know I would never let anything hurt you. Mike either?”

“Yes,” I whispered. I knew that. Some days it was the
only
thing I knew, the only thing I could depend on.

“Then relax, Dee. I promise you’re safe here with me.”

Luke kissed the top of my head, his lips lingering there before moving to my cheek. “If it was supposed to be an anniversary present, then why did you bring Mike?”

I snorted at his attempt to change the subject. “I kinda needed his help with your parents. Lying to Mrs. Hooper was bad enough, but your parents … well, once I got in front of them, I could barely remember what I was supposed to say.”

I chuckled, remembering the one fumbling attempt I’d made before breaking down and recruiting Mike for the job. I’d seen Mike lie to teachers about homework he’d forgotten and get out of a dates with a girls he’d accidently asked out when he was drunk. Mike could dance around the truth better than anybody, and, unfortunately for me, I’d needed his skill to pull this off.

Granted, it meant I had to be willing to put up with him all weekend, but if anyone could construct a web of lies without casting suspicion, it was Mike.

“His price for lying to your parents was a concert ticket,” I said, leaving out the fact that I’d paid for Mike’s room, his food, and the weed he’d insisted on scoring for the trip. No point in bringing that up, not when Luke was clearly trying to lighten my mood.

Luke groaned and mumbled something under his breath. I didn’t catch much of it, just the vague promise that he’d make Mike pay.

I sat up and let my hands drop between my knees as I took another quick survey of the room. Mike was still in the bathroom. He’d spent the last ten minutes digging through the cabinets looking for contact lens solution. His was in the car. Even if he could get to it, it was probably frozen solid.

“This sucks.” I couldn’t help but feel responsible for the way things had turned out. Mike had originally suggested I forget the whole anniversary-concert-weekend-away thing and have a party with Luke’s friends. He thought we should take the money I’d saved up and bribe his older cousin to get us a keg. I’d brushed off his suggestion and told him I wasn’t interested in spending every last dime I had paying for Luke’s friends to get wasted. I wanted to spend time alone with Luke, not cleaning up after his friends. Besides, some stupid Friday night party wasn’t good enough. Luke deserved something better.

I hated to admit it, but I was beginning to think Mike was right. We should’ve stayed home and gotten a keg.

“If I’d gone with Mike’s suggestion, then we wouldn’t be stuck here.”

“And what did Mike’s plans involve? Beer and a crap-load of his friends?”

“Pretty much,” I said as I ran a hand across the couch cushion. It was stiff and completely stain-free. Not a pulled thread or worn spot in sight. My eyes traveled to the end table—completely devoid of family pictures—and then to the drab windows. There were no fancy fabrics or colorful patterns, only plain, old, white curtains. Nothing but perfectly boring symmetry everywhere you looked. If these people had any sort of life, you couldn’t tell.

“It’s not your fault, Dee.”

“It
is
my fault,” I said. The realization of exactly how screwed we were was finally settling in. “No one is going to notice we’re missing until Sunday night.”

“What do you mean, ‘Sunday night’? Is that what you told my parents?”

“Not me. Mike,” I said, the first tears beginning to pool in my eyes. “I told Mrs. Hooper I was staying at Dawn’s house for the weekend, working on a Spanish project. Your mom thinks you guys are at Syracuse for some early admittance football thing where you meet the team and they try to convince you that Syracuse is your best choice.”

Luke raked a hand through his hair, a character trait that usually meant he was pissed. Not at me necessarily, but pissed nonetheless. “And she believed that? Syracuse is on the bottom of my list.”

I groaned, fighting the urge to look out the window for the hundredth time. We had no clue where we were. No one knew we were here. And this house wigged me out.

No matter how you slice it, this sucked.

SEVEN

It was still dark when I woke up. The fire had died out, and the house was totally silent. It wasn’t noise or even my own fear that had startled me awake, just the soft dip in the couch cushion next to me. At first I didn’t realize where I was, but eventually reality came rushing back. I shot up, the blanket covering me falling to the floor as my body instinctively went into a defensive posture.

“Easy, Dee. It’s me,” Luke whispered.

It took a minute for the voice to register and my body to relax. Once it did, I threw my arms around him, grateful that it was Luke and not some psycho-nut with a meat cleaver.

I pulled back quickly, gasping as cold water seeped through my shirt.

“Sorry,” Luke said, shrugging off his coat.

“Why do you have your coat on, and why are you wet?” I asked.

I craned my neck to see the front door, sighing in relief when I saw the chair still propped beneath the handle and the lock firmly in place. I glanced back at Luke, confused. There were drops of water on his coat and his cheeks were red. He’d gone somewhere. Luke had waited until Mike and I had dozed off, and then that stubborn, stupid boyfriend of mine had gone outside.

“You went outside? Are you insane? What the hell were you thinking?” I yelled.

Mike woke up, grumbling something about me making too much noise before rolling over and settling back into the floor by the fire. I reached over and yanked his arm. “Luke left the house. Alone!”

Mike glanced at Luke. “Did you honestly expect him not to? He was pacing the floor half the night trying to figure a way out of here. Besides, it’s not like we were making any progress sitting here.”

Irritated that Mike wouldn’t take my side, I turned on Luke. “You could’ve gotten lost or frozen to death.”

Luke shook his head. “Nah. I was completely safe. I walked to the other houses on this street and checked to see if anyone was home. Nothing dangerous, I swear.”

I sat there, torn between anger and pride. It was incredibly stupid, but deep down, I knew he’d done it for me. Luke got how much I hated this place, how I’d fidgeted for the first couple hours, unable to let my mind calm down enough to sleep. Plus, a tiny piece of me liked that he’d gone out looking for help. It was nice to have someone looking out for me, to feel like I wasn’t completely on my own.

“Did you at least find a phone or some gas?” I asked.

“Nope, and I searched everywhere. I mean
everywhere
. No land-lines, no cell phones, not even a charger still plugged into a wall.”

Mike wiped the sleep from his eyes and gestured at a pile of books on the floor. “What are those?”

Luke shot him a look—a pissed-off,
now-is-not-the-time
look that immediately put me on edge. “Nothing.”

I looked at the six leatherbound books. Books that Luke obviously felt were important enough to drag back here. “That’s a whole lot of nothing,” I said. “What are they?”

Luke sighed and kicked the books out of my reach. “I don’t know for sure. I didn’t read them cover to cover, but my guess is they’re some kind of manual. Every house I went into had one stored in the exact same place.”

I heard the crack in his voice, the one that told me he was anxious and that there was more to these books than
he was letting on.

“Manual for what?” I reached out and snatched one from the pile, dodging his hands as he tried to get in my way. I read the title out loud, tracing the letters as I spoke: “ ‘Fashioning Children in the Image of God.’ ”

“Dee, wait. I don’t think it’s a good idea—” Luke’s voice was desperate and frustrated as he begged me to drop the book. I ignored him and opened it to some random page, curious about what he was hiding.

The book was well worn, the pages creased and spotted with dirt. My eyes raced over the words as my mind slowly struggled to comprehend what I was reading. I could feel the blood draining from my face, my hands shaking in time with each sentence I muttered.

The “board of education,” which appeared to be nothing more than a long, wooden paddle, was used to align a child’s thoughts with the teaching of scripture. Breaking the child’s will was a gift, the red welts seen as a blessing … “a deliverance from evil.”

I read farther down, wincing as the book graphically depicted how and where the blows were to be delivered and the number of strikes “reasonable” for the child’s age. Stripped naked, their body was to be bared to the congregation; their punishment was to take place in public for the approval of witnesses. One strike for a child over the age of twelve months; ten for a girl over the age of twelve.

The book fell from my hands as images flooded my mind. I knew how it felt to be beaten with a wooden spoon, a fist, a belt. Those were memories that never went away. Regardless of time and no matter how much security Luke and the Hoopers offered me, those bits of my past were always there. And this book was bringing them all back.

EIGHT

“Every house has one?” I asked, and Luke nodded. “Where?”

“Kitchen. First drawer on the left,” he said.

I flew off the couch, tripping over Luke’s feet. He reached out to steady me, and I flinched. Being sheltered was the last thing I wanted. I wanted confirmation, proof that this town was as messed up as I thought it was.

I yanked the drawer opened and grabbed the book. The same worn cover, same emblazoned title staring up at me. I opened it, trying to find the page I’d just read. I missed—but not by much—and had to scan the next dozen pages before I found the chapter I was looking for.

This one had notes. The name “Joseph” was handwritten in the margin with dates scribbled next to it, each one referencing a specific punishment. Three lashings for not bowing his head during the blessing of the meal. Five for coughing during Sunday services. Eight for wetting the bed when he was six. They’d gone so far as to count the bruises and mark them down like tallies on a score sheet. The more bruises, the bigger the welts, the more favor you were shown from God.

I went to turn the page, mumbling about the other medieval forms of discipline outlined, when Luke snagged the book from my hand and tossed it back into the drawer. “Trust me, Dee. You don’t want to read that.”

“Did you?” I asked.

Luke’s hand was fixed on the drawer, his fingers tightly clenched against the knob as if it might open on its own. “I read enough to know it’s not good.”

“Why didn’t you wake us up the minute you found these? We could have left right then, been miles from here already,” I said, wondering why he’d bothered to waste time reading the damn thing.

“It’s dark out, Dee. Call me crazy, but in the light of day I can see what’s coming at me.”

That fact that he thought something would be coming at him—at us—was messed up and completely in line with my own fears.

I looked up at the ceiling and tried to imagine the kid who lived here. The one who’d been beaten. There were three bedrooms upstairs, or so I’d been told. Luke and Mike had searched them last night. They’d insisted there was nothing upstairs but some beds, and that it was as sparse as the main floor. Now, for some insane reason, I needed to see for myself.

I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Mike and Luke were behind me, each hurling their own set of questions in my direction. Yes, it mattered what was upstairs, and no, I wouldn’t feel better leaving well enough alone. Ignoring their pleas to stop, I headed for the first room on the left.

Luke was right; this room contained nothing but the ba-sics. There was a large bed in the middle with a white quilt covering it. A cane-backed chair sat next to the nightstand, and a pine bureau rested against the far wall. It was bare, not so much as a lamp or a bottle of perfume sitting on it. Even the mirror that should’ve hung above it was missing, replaced with a giant wooden cross. These people weren’t simply religious, they were zealots.