Pretty Nightmare (Creeping Beautiful Book 2), page 28
The shivering comes back. The pain too. But there are no screams so I sleep.
I sleep for a very long time.
And when I wake up, all the beds around me are empty. Stripped down to the bare mattress like it’s sheet-changing day. Only there are no kids in here either.
It’s just me.
Donovan never comes back. So neither does Carter.
I’m glad Carter is gone, but I miss Donovan terribly.
And even though I didn’t like the other kids, I miss them.
And then I think about the little blond-blond boy and miss him too. He got out. He got away, just like he said he would.
Why didn’t he take me with him?
“Indie?” Someone is shaking me. “Indie, can you hear me?”
These words are very soft.
And then I smile. Because I recognize his voice. “You came back.”
“I came back.” He pulls me up into him and that’s when I realize he’s not a little boy.
He’s Nathan. My Nathan.
I open my eyes and almost scream, but his hand covers my mouth to stop it. “Shh,” he says. “Carter’s here.”
I shake my head quick and fast, say, “No,” into his tight palm.
“Carter. Is. Here.” Nathan stares down into my eyes.
I grip his hand and pull it off my mouth with such force, I take him by surprise. “You’re dead!” I hiss.
“I’m not dead.”
“I killed you!”
“You didn’t kill me. McKay saved me.”
“What?”
He cups his hand over my mouth again. “Shhhhhhhhhhhh! Carter is here, Indie. He came for you. But I’m not gonna let him get you. Not this time.”
I pry his hand off one more time. “You left me! You left me there! You left me in the freezing cold river and you got out!”
“I was five years old!”
I feel the tears welling up in my eyes, the pain in my heart as I think about how he got away and I didn’t. About how he had five extra years here—right here! On this very river!—while I was taken and… “Oh, God. You have no idea what they did to me, Nathan. None! Did you know? Did you know it was me, all this time?”
“Indie—”
“Fuck you! Fuck you, Nathan! And then you left again! Where did you go? Where have you been for the last four years?” He looks very sad right now. But I don’t care. “Answer me! Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why are you just coming here now?”
“Shh! For fuck’s sake! You tried to kill me, Indie! If it wasn’t for McKay, who knows? Maybe you’d come back to finish the job!”
“I didn’t—”
“Know? Is that what you’re gonna say? You didn’t know what you were doing when you tried to kill me?”
His words echo in my head. And then I picture that day when everything went wrong.
And then, like I’m being hit with a bolt of lightning, I know why it went wrong.
“Carter was there,” I whisper.
“He has always been there, Indie. You knew this.” He shakes me. Hard. “You knew this. And you know he’s here now, Indie!” He takes my face in his hands. Stares into me with those light-light eyes I would recognize in the darkness. “I’m sorry I left you when I was five. OK? Don’t you think I fucking regretted it every single day when I had to see you here? In these woods? Losing your fucking mind, day, after day, after day?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think!” He taps my head. “Remember! For once in your life, please! Just… make yourself face the fucking truth! Every day you came out to these woods and lost your mind. Every single fucking day you were living in some dream world where we had friends in other towns, and ate ice cream in drugstores, and… and had fun.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t fun, Indie. It wasn’t fun watching you go crazy every day, then talking you out of it before I could send you home to Adam and McKay and that piece of fucking shit, Donovan!”
“No. That’s… no. I remember everything now.”
“Is that right?”
“It wasn’t all fake. I didn’t make it all up. We have a child together. I loved you. And you. Loved. Me.”
His face softens now. “I do love you. The only reason I’m here right now is because of you. You wanna know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been working for Nick fucking Tate trying to stay one small step ahead of Carter Couture and his brood of little girl assassins all these years. But he caught up to me a few days ago. And he took the last two friends I had. I came here to get you and Maggie and get the fuck out of this place and away from these people once and for all! I’m sorry I left you when I was five. And I’m sorry I stopped trusting you four years ago. But you’re all I have left, Indie. You and Maggie are all I have left. I’m not leaving you now. And you’re not staying here. But we need to get Carter before we go or he will use all those little girls he made to hunt us down and—”
“Carter?” I gasp.
“We need to kill him, do you understand?”
“No!” I shake my head. “No! We can’t kill Carter!”
“We have to, Indie. There is no other way.”
I struggle against him. “No, no, no!”
And then I’m free.
On my feet.
Running.
But he grabs my ankle and I go down hard, hitting my head again.
And black out.
CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO - DONOVAN
He’s holding Maggie in his arms. She’s… not awake.
Probably not sleeping, either.
Not dead, drugged.
And then the image of the little empty vial of Brevital starts to make sense.
“Well, there he is.” My brother’s accent was always different than mine. It’s the one thing that really set us apart. “Finally. He shows.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Come on, Donny!” His laugh scares a small animal in the thick underbrush near his feet and it goes scurrying.
When he uses that name—Donny—I get a really sick feeling in my stomach.
“Donny, Donny, Donny. I kinda like calling you that. Ana did too, didn’t she?”
“Fuck you. You do not get to even say her name.”
“No? But I thought we shared everything?”
“Give me Maggie. Right now.”
“So you can do what? Take her back home?” He laughs again. “They’re never going to let you back in that house after this, Donny. You’re done here. It’s over.”
“No. You’re giving me that little girl, I’m going to take her back home, put her to bed, and then you and I can sort this out.”
“I’m afraid not, brother.” He tsks his tongue. “That’s not how it’s going down at all. You and me?” He points at himself, then me, then himself again. “We’ve been apart way too long, don’t think? You doing your thing. Me doing my thing. It’s kind of a waste.”
I don’t know what to say to that. “You want… me… and…”
“Yes! Yes. That’s exactly right. You’ve got it! I want us to be partners again.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “You’re insane.”
“If I’m insane, so are you.”
“No. I’m not the one holding a drugged little girl in the middle of the woods in the dead of night.”
Carter cocks his head at me. Smiles. “Are you sure about that, Donny?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - ADAM
We slow down once we enter the woods. I don’t know how familiar McKay is with the property these days, but my knowledge of this part of it was at its peak about ten years ago when he and I still had to round Indie up every night for dinner.
McKay slows. Then stops.
“What is it?”
He uses one of our familiar hand signals to tell me to be quiet.
Someone is up ahead.
I feel this person before I hear him. It’s like a sixth sense.
McKay leans into me. “It’s Nathan.” I listen more carefully. Because it’s not just Nathan. McKay adds, “I think he’s got Indie.”
“You mean Maggie.”
“No. Listen.”
I do. And he’s right. There is whispering. Urgent whispering that doesn’t come out of a kid’s mouth. Not even my kid—who, let’s face it, isn’t really a kid. “Then where the fuck is Maggie?”
“Maybe she’s unconscious?” McKay offers. “I saw him creeping into the woods, but he was alone.”
“Maybe he drugged her, then came back to get Indie?”
“Speaking of drugs—where the fuck is Donovan?”
We both look back at the house at the same time, then look at each other. I say, “Donovan wasn’t in the house when we left. I know we didn’t check, but—”
McKay cuts me off. “I agree. He wasn’t there. You can just feel when that house is empty.”
“Yeah,” I say, breathing out a sigh. “You can.”
The whispering up ahead becomes yelling and then abruptly stops. And then it’s just Nathan’s whispers, no Indie.
McKay is still looking at me. And I don’t need to say a word for him to know what I’m thinking. “We’ll find her. And Donovan. But first, we need to save Indie. Come on.”
We creep forward in stealth mode. McKay is leading, since he has always been better at this than me. It only takes a few minutes for the low whispers to become truly audible and we stop to pick out some words as we process the scene on the banks of the narrow creek that feeds into the river.
Nathan is sitting in the mud holding Indie in his arms. Rocking back and forth. Cradling her.
McKay bursts forward, all stealth gone now. “What the fuck—”
That’s as far as he gets, because I pull him back. “Easy,” I say. “Hold up.”
“She hit her head, McKay! Twice!” Nathan is frantic to explain. “I didn’t hurt her! I’m trying to save her!”
“From who?” I am seething with anger from the accusations in his voice.
“From Carter!”
McKay and I both go still. Then McKay says, “He’s here?”
“Of course he’s here! He’s always been here! What the fuck—”
Indie begins to moan and McKay rushes over to her, bending down to hold her head in his hands. She’s got a wound and it’s bleeding pretty good. But head wounds do that. It’s not always a sign of trauma. “Indie!” McKay is right down in her face now. “Indie, can you hear me?”
“Don’t kill him,” she grumbles. “Please, don’t kill him.”
I walk over to them and kneel down in the mud next to McKay. “Indie, we’re not going to kill Nathan. Don’t worry. As long as he cooperates—”
“Not Nathan!” She screams it. “Donovan, Adam! Don’t let him kill Donovan!”
McKay is confused. “Indie, we’re not gonna kill Donovan!”
At the same time I’m saying, “Why the fuck would we kill Donovan?”
And then Indie opens her eyes and looks up at Nathan. She’s begging him with those eyes. “Please. Don’t kill him. He’s my friend. He’s always been—”
“Indie!” Nathan yells it. “You know he’s not your friend! You know this! You saw what he did to those kids on the island! You saw him! You were there. We”—he pokes her in the chest, then pokes himself too—“we were there! And if you saw what I just saw on my way down here—if you even knew what he was doing all these years”—Nathan shakes his head—“you would not ask me to save him!”
“That wasn’t him!” Indie is screaming now too.
And McKay is saying, “What the fuck is happening? What the fuck are you talking about? Why the hell are we talking about Donovan?”
But I know why.
Suddenly all those pieces I was missing to this puzzle fall right into their proper places.
And then an offhanded thought pops into my head:
Someone has to die at the end.
That’s just how these stories go.
And that’s when Maggie screams from somewhere deep inside the woods.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - DONOVAN
Carter cocks his head at me. Smiles. “Are you sure about that, Donny?”
His accent is American. Always has been. I don’t know where he picked it up, maybe some Company official? I have never understood how we could be so alike in every way and yet sound so different when we spoke.
And suddenly I’m not sure about anything.
“Well, are you?” Carter takes a step towards me and I take a step back. “Where you going, Donny?” He laughs. “Do you really think you’re gonna get away this time? No, sir. This is what we psychiatrists call a transformative moment. Oftentimes goes hand in hand with its twin, cognitive dissonance.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He laughs. “Really? Come on, Donny. You’re not really gonna stand here and refuse to see the fucking truth, are you? When it is literally staring you right in the face?”
I take a step back. He takes a step forward.
“No. Stay away from me, you psycho. Stay. The fuck. Away from me.”
Carter is grinning like a boy. Then he leans forward just a little bit and says, “Look down, Donny.”
And I do it. I don’t want to, but I do it.
And then I drop to my knees and Maggie moans as she falls out of my arms and rolls on to her side in the mud.
3.5 MONTHS AGO
HYPNOSIS SESSION #89
Donovan Couture – Patient
Ana Avery, PhD, LMHC
Counselor In Attendance
ANA: OK, Mr. Couture. Tell me what we’re doing.
Donovan: Jesus, Ana. I signed a stack of papers four years ago and we do this every time.
I can’t risk it. You know that. I’m not a doctor.
Funny. Everyone calls you Doctor.
Just play along, please. Be a good boy, Donny. And I’ll make it worth your while tonight.
You little tramp.
Are we going to flirt all afternoon, or do you want to have this session? Because I’d rather be having tea. We’re not getting anywhere. We’ve been stuck for over six months now. I don’t know why you even want to keep doing this.
Because I feel like something has changed.
What has changed?
I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. But it’s been a long time since we had a session, so maybe that’s what I need?
Alternatively… you could let it go. If you were one of my healing center clients that would be my advice. You haven’t had a nightmare in almost a year. You’re back at work in LA, doing surgery twice a week, and you’re teaching a class at Duke. Everything is going great. Sometimes I wonder if you’re just…
Just what?
Looking for reasons to…
Reasons to? What?
Not be happy? Sometimes people have guilt—
You don’t need to lecture me. I understand this. But I really want this session. I can feel it. I’m approaching my transformative moment. One more good push and I’ll be on my way. And I want you to put me under deep this time.
Drugs?
Yes. Use the drugs.
You’re sure? Because you’ve spent the last four years insisting that we not use the drugs.
I hereby absolve you of all responsibility for questioning me under the drugs I have already prescribed myself.
Jesus Christ. You have the syringe ready?
I came prepared, Ana. This is it. This might be the last time we ever do one of these sessions. Now, are you ready? Because I’m gonna push these drugs in and if you’re not going to do your part, then I’ll just take a nice little nap and then we’ll just argue about it all over again when I wake up.
Fine. If that’s what you want. But let me check my notes real quick. I need to figure out a plan.
You do that. I’m just gonna tie the tourniquet.
Wow. You’re really good at that. Doing it to yourself, I mean. Using your teeth and everything. You’re such a clever little animal, Donny.
Funny.
OK. Shutting up. You go ahead. I’m right behind you.
…
How you feeling?
…
Donovan? Can you hear me?
Mmhh.
Good. I’d like to start with your childhood again because those sessions always felt… transformative. So… that island you lived on. Can you go there now?
…
Donovan?
…
Donovan?
I’m here.
Where’s here?
Home. My island.
Perfect. Can you describe it to me?
Tropical. Hot. Lots of kids. We like kids here.
Well, that’s nice. Children always make a place more cheerful, don’t they?
Not these kids.
What? And why are you talking in that accent, Donovan?
This is how I talk.
No… I’ve known you, quite intimately, for nearly ten years now. And you have never flashed an American accent at me.
You don’t know me at all, Ana Avery.
…
What’s wrong?
You’re… sitting up.
So?
I just watched you push a whole lot of diazepam into your arm. You should be feeling a little sleepy right now. Donovan! Donovan! I think you should sit down before you fall! Don’t come any closer! Donovan!
