rologueThorn’s dream of Olympic glory abandoned him in an instant, driven away by a sharp sound from outside his window. A breaking twig? He lay still in his bed for a long moment, not breathing, just listening. He wished he could turn down the volume on his pounding heart, as he strained to hear over it and the accompanying swishes of blood rushing past his ears. He heard nothing else from outside.“Prob’ly just a raccoon,” he murmured, rolling onto his stomach and closing his eyes again. He knew people weren’t supposed to talk to themselves, but sometimes he did it anyway. It was good to have the company of a voice in the middle of the night, even if it was just his own. After five months in the house, he still didn’t like being there alone at night.He knew he shouldn’t be scared. He was eleven years old – almost grown, he thought – but he’d have felt a lot better about being there if his mother had bought him the gun he wanted.A distant bump came, something brushing against the far end of the house. “Big raccoon,” he told himself.Nighttime visits by forest creatures were a common occurrence. The house was surrounded by woods, the only break being the long, dirt drive that led out to the highway. Still, he rolled and reached out through the darkness to grasp the baseball bat he kept propped in the corner. He felt a little better then.Wielding the bat above him like a martial arts bo, he lay in bed and listened for more sounds from the raccoon-that-might-not-be-a-raccoon. He didn’t know anything about the bo yet – only what he’d learned from watching the more advanced students at his karate school. His instructor told him he couldn’t learn bo until he had all the basics down, but he was going for his yellow belt the next day. It was a start.He went still when he heard a creak. It sounded like a floorboard, but he was alone in the house. He’d have known if somebody came in, wouldn’t he? The rented white farmhouse was old. It just made noises sometimes. Still, he was too wired to stay in bed any longer.Thorn kicked off the covers and rolled to his feet, taking the bat with him. Feeling naked in his T-shirt and boxers, he dressed in the dark, shoes and all, and carried the bat as he made his way through the house.Once upon a time, he’d been afraid of the dark. When his mother had first started working at night, he’d wanted the lights on. Now he was older and smarter. He knew that if somebody came in the house, he would have the advantage. He knew where everything was. Besides, if the lights were out, he could see people outside the windows, but they couldn’t see him. Now he liked the house in the dark. The darker the better. Still, he would have preferred not to be alone in it.He made his way to the living room and crept to the window. In the moon’s light, he had a clear view of the front yard, seeing all the way to where the trees started in front of the house. Some houses had grass in their yards. All this one had was native South Carolina clay and dirt.He raised his eyes to the glow above the treetops. His mother was there now, just on the other side of the highway, in the place where the lights were shining.When they’d first moved, it had been early spring, and Thorn had a good view through the trees. He could see the lights of the bar where his mother met men and the motel where she took them afterwards. Then the trees and bushes got their leaves, so now all he could see of the bar and motel was the haze in the nighttime sky. Still, it was better than nothing. It made him feel closer to his mother.Thorn heard another bump, followed closely by a scratching sound. Something’s back there! Was it at a window? The door?“Just a branch,” he whispered. But there’d never been a branch there before.He wanted to go look, needed to, but was too scared. If somebody was there, he didn’t want to know. He knew he needed to. But he was afraid to know. He wanted somebody else, somebody bigger, to come look for him. The police. They had guns. But his mother told him he couldn’t ever call them except for a real emergency. They might take him away from her if they found out she left him alone at night.It had been a long time since Thorn had gotten spooked. That night, though, something just didn’t feel right.He wanted his mother.Finally he dared a glance towards the back door; he couldn’t see it in the darkness, but he knew where it was – right across from the front one, which was beside the window where he stood. Wanting to keep his bearings in relation to both doors in case he had to make a run for it, he turned and side-walked away from the window, eyes darting back and forth between the doors. He picked up the phone on the table beside the couch and dialed. It took a couple of tries because his hand was shaking. “Please answer,” he whispered when it started ringing. His eyes returned to door-watching.“Hey, Honey,” his mother answered. She normally used his name, but not when there were strangers around her to hear it.Relief flooded through him at the quiet sound of her voice. “Hi, Mama.” He didn’t hear loud sounds of music and laughter. She must have left the bar already. That meant she would probably be in a room at the motel. “Are you busy?”“Little bit,” she answered. Thorn heard a man’s voice in the background. It didn’t sound like a nice voice.It made Thorn sad that his mother had to be nice to mean people to get money for the things they needed. Once upon a time she had a real job. She’d been a high school teacher. Science and health education. But she lost her job because she wasn’t healthy enough to keep it.Now she had pink business cards with fancy, silver writing that called her ‘Lana Reeves’. Her real name was Irena MacDonnell, but she didn’t want that on there. The cards also said she was a ‘Dance Instructor’. She did dance, he thought, but mostly she just had sex. She gave the cards to men she met at her HIV support groups. They gave them to friends of theirs. There were a lot of men with HIV who were willing to pay money for somebody to have sex with them. And his mother was still pretty. Not as pretty as she’d been when he was little, but still prettier than most people, and a lot of men seemed to like the look of Native American women. She was half Cherokee, a quarter Crow, and a quarter Lakota Sioux. She never seemed to have trouble finding people to pay her for sex.“You okay?” his mother asked.“Yeah,” he answered. “Just hearin’ noises.”“Like what?”He heard the man’s voice again. It was louder. “What the fuck is this shit?”Thorn swallowed. He didn’t want to make the man mad. He might hurt his mother. “Prob’ly just raccoons or something.”“I’m not paying you to talk on the God-damned phone!” he heard.“Honey?” his mother said. “I know all the windows and doors are locked. But double-check. Stay awake. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Okay?”“Okay, Mama.” Thorn bit his lip. “Can I call the police if somebody’s here?”“Are you that scared?”“I don’t know,” he answered. “Something just doesn’t feel right.”“I’ll be right there.”“Are you sure that’s okay?”“I’ll be there,” she promised. “I love you.”“I love you, too, Mama.” He put the phone down, hating himself for being a big baby. He’d never called his mother home from work before, and hoped she would forgive him for this one time. He checked the front and back doors and the windows. While he was checking the lock on his mother’s window, something changed outside. It was like a shadow passing. He shifted his eyes but saw nothing. Probably just a cloud passing over the moon. He raised his eyes but didn’t see any clouds.Thorn moved back to the front window to watch for his mother’s arrival, longing for the first sight of those headlights he knew so well.The sound of breaking glass shattered the silence. Kitchen door, his mind supplied, as he spun to face that direction. Because of the open layout of the house, he would have had a clear view of it from the living room if it hadn’t been dark. As it was, he could hear movement – a hand scrabbling for the inside locks.He thought about the phone, the police, but it would take them awhile to get there. If Thorn didn’t do something, then whoever was outside would be in the house long before they arrived. Besides, he didn’t have time for a phone call right then.Thorn was in too big a hurry to worry about being quiet as he covered the distance between the front window and the back door, raising the bat as he went. He swung, using the groping sounds as his guide. The impact jarred his whole body, but he was rewarded with the sound of a pained bellow as the hand withdrew. He pulled the bat back over his shoulder and waited.“You’re gonna’ pay for that!” came a voice from outside.Thorn’s mouth went dry. It wasn’t the voice of a sci-fi monster or a stranger. It was much worse. It was his father’s voice.Thorn hadn’t heard it in more than a year, and he’d hoped to never hear it again. He’d been scared before, but now he was terrified.Travis MacDonnell had said he’d kill them if they ever left him. For a time, that threat kept Irena MacDonnell paralyzed. But as Travis became increasingly violent, Irena decided they might end up dead, anyway. And so she took Thorn and left, and tried to disappear. Thorn’s mother still had a protective order from the court, but those didn’t mean much in the middle of the night when there weren’t any police around to enforce them.Oh, God, he’d called his mother home. She would come, and his father would get her, and it would all be Thorn’s fault. He needed to call and tell her not to come. But that wouldn’t work. If he told her his father was there, she would come to help him. And if he didn’t tell her, and pretended everything was all right, then his father would just kill him and be waiting when she did come home. “Shit,” he breathed. “What am I s’posed to do?”The hand didn’t come back inside. Instead, Thorn heard the sound of something heavy hitting the door. He could feel the vibration in the house. His father meant to crash through. Thorn didn’t know whether to stay and fight, or turn and run. The memory of his father’s six-foot-five, 230-pound bulk convinced him to run. His father was the one who’d brought HIV home to his wife, but as of the last time Thorn had seen him, it hadn’t hit him nearly as hard as it had hit her.Running was better anyway, Thorn told himself, as he headed toward the front door. He could maybe catch his mother before she got to the house, and they could speed away. He didn’t know where his father had parked, but it was probably some distance away, since Thorn hadn’t heard a car approach.His hands fumbled with the locks in the darkness. “Damn it,” he breathed. He almost kicked the door in his frustration that the very things meant to provide security were instead hindering his escape. He didn’t, though, because he didn’t want his father to know where he was.Finally, he got the chain and slide-bolt unlocked. All that remained was the little lock above the doorknob. As he turned it, the back door crashed inward. He yanked the door open, then turned and hurled the bat in the direction of his father’s heavy breathing. It was gratifying to hear he’d hit the mark. He hated losing the bat, but it would have slowed him down anyway. He tore through the doorway and raced across the front porch, jumping to the ground and running as fast as his legs would carry him. He wished he could fly.He heard his father behind him and thought about moving into the woods to hide, but decided his best bet was to stay on the driveway. If he could make it to the highway and across, there would be people there. He would be safe. He was almost there.An engine’s roar came, drowning out his panting breaths and his father’s wheezing ones. It overrode the sounds of his feet as well as his father’s as it rushed toward him.There were no headlights, but he saw moonlight on metal as the car tore across the highway and into the drive. He and the car were both moving too quickly to stop. Thorn swerved to the right and prayed his mother would veer the other way. He heard the tires skidding on dirt and gravel; she’d put on the brakes. Time slowed down as the car slid toward him. It didn’t hurt as much as he’d feared it would when it hit, but it sent him flying.Landing hurt. He hit hard and rolled, feeling explosions of pain all over him. He ended up on his back. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breathe.“Thorn!” He heard his mother scream. “Please be all right!” He wanted to tell her to run, but he didn’t have the air. Her face appeared above him. Someone had hit her again. Probably his fault for getting the man angry with her for leaving him.Thorn finally found a word. “Run!” But it was too late. His father’s face loomed above him, just beyond his mother’s.Something clamped around Thorn’s ankle, and then he was dragged back toward the house as his father backed in that direction. One of his father’s huge hands held him with bruising force while the other was wrapped in his mother’s hair. She struggled to stay on her feet.Thorn bent his body, reaching for his father’s hand, to try to get free.“Be still!” his father commanded, savagely wrenching his mother’s hair, driving her to her knees.Thorn knew that routine all too well. Anything he did would cause his father to hurt his mother more. But what did it matter now, when the asshole was probably going to kill them both anyway? A little chance was better than none at all. He weighed his limited options and decided a foot to his father’s groin was about the best he could manage, in his current state of confinement. Maybe things would get better after that.“Don’t, Thorn!” his mother said. “Just do what he says.”He growled from frustration. It sucked sometimes that mothers could read minds.Now he didn’t know what to do. How could he fight now, when his mother told him not to, knowing he could end up making things worse for her? He hated feeling powerless. He didn’t want to think about what his father would do when he got them into the house. The last time he’d gotten his hands on them, they’d both ended up in the hospital. But that was before he said he’d kill them.Thorn focused on protecting his head as he was yanked feet-first up the front steps. Once inside, his father slung him across the room. Thorn hit the wall hard, jarring the breath from him and sending shards of pain through his already hurting body. He slid downward toward the floor. He tried to push himself up, but it was more than he could manage at that moment. He lay on the floor in a heap, praying for strength and the wisdom to use it.The light came on, and Thorn squinted. His father looked just the way he had the last time Thorn saw him – big and mean. He still had the same blond crewcut, ice-blue eyes, and sneering mouth.“Thought you could get away, did you?” Travis demanded, giving Irena a backhanded blow that sent her flying to the opposite wall. He wrapped his hands in her hair, yanking her to her feet and slamming her head into the wall. “I told you what would happen!”“Please, Travis,” Irena pleaded. “Just sit down and let’s talk.”“I’m done talkin’!” Travis said. “Told you that when you called the cops on me!”“Why are you here?”“You know why.”Irena shook her head as if that could negate the intent. “You can’t mean that, Travis.”“Hell yes, I can.”“But you said you loved me.”“I do,” Travis said. “How you think it makes me feel, knowin’ you’re whorin’ yourself for that little bastard over there?”“It isn’t like that, Travis.”“The hell it’s not!” he said, shaking her and pushing her head into the wall again. “This is your last chance. You go get in the car. And wait for me.”“Come on, Thorn,” his mother said.“Not him,” Travis said, shaking his head. “Just you.”“What about Thorn?”“I’ll deal with him.”Thorn’s heart raced, his mind reeling with the knowledge of what that might mean. Desperation gave him the strength to gain his feet.“I am not leaving my son!”“Just what I figured.” Travis returned.“He’s a child, Travis.”“From the day that little bastard was born, everything’s been about him!”“No,” she said. “We could have all been happy. But you needed to stop drinking.”“It’s always about what I got to change!” he yelled, hurling her across the room. He strode to stand over Thorn. “This!” he said, grabbing Thorn’s hair and shaking him. “This was the only thing that ever needed to change. I told you to get an abortion!” He picked Thorn up and threw him. Thorn landed on his mother, and her arms wrapped around him. “You made your choice, Irena,” Travis said, looming over them. “And just like always, you left me without one!”Thorn tried not to cry out as his father’s boot landed on his back, but the sound was torn from him. Irena rolled on top of Thorn, placing her body between his and his father’s before Thorn recovered enough to stop her. Thorn felt the impact of his father’s fist on his mother’s back as she was pressed into him. Then they were lifted together and thrown. They hit the floor and rolled until they slammed into the couch. Travis was on them, his fists flying.Thorn and Irena had little hope of deflecting the blows, but they tried. Because they were together beneath him, one generally ended up taking the hits that had been aimed at the other. Thorn struggled to put some distance between himself and his mother, so he wouldn’t hurt her.“He’s crazy!” Irena yelled.Thorn had known that for a long time. Apparently, though, his mother had come to realize that this time was different from the others. Usually Travis at least slowed down a little once he had them both bleeding. That wasn’t happening this time. Travis was yelling, but they weren’t a man’s sounds. He was like an animal as he raged above them.“Have to stop him!” Irena ground out, as she landed a well-directed fist on her husband’s nose. He howled with rage as the blood started, but only hit her harder.Thorn had never seen his mother fight back – and she’d definitely never told him to do it. She always said it was better to endure than to make Travis angrier, and so they’d both gotten very good at enduring. Evidently she realized they couldn’t take what Travis had planned for that night.Thorn didn’t need a second invitation to fight. He doubted it would do any good, but it beat the hell out of the alternative. Between them, Thorn and his mother had four hands and four feet, and they used them all. Thorn gained some measure of satisfaction as he drove three fingers into his father’s right eye. Travis bellowed and leaned away. Thorn scrambled to escape, preferring to fight on his feet rather than his back. Travis caught his arm. Thorn spun, ignoring the pain, and landed his heel at the base of his father’s skull. Travis’s grip loosened for a second, and that was all Thorn needed.He jerked loose and scrambled across the room, knowing Travis would follow. Thorn’s eyes sought the bat. He found it but couldn’t get there in time. His father’s weight crashed onto his back and he fell to the floor, pain screaming through his body as he was sandwiched between the hardwood floor and his father’s massive bulk.There was a crash above him – something broke – and his father yelled. The weight rolled away, and Thorn crawled forward. He looked back over his shoulder as Travis turned on Irena. She backed away, holding what was left of the lamp in her hand. Thorn didn’t watch. He couldn’t. He turned around and fixed his eyes on the bat. His hand closed around the handle and he rolled to his feet.By the time Thorn got there, Travis had hit Irena again. Thorn aimed high and swung hard, as Travis turned toward him. He hit the side of Travis’s neck, knocking him down. While Thorn raised the bat for another swing, his mother closed in with the fireplace shovel. She brought it down on her husband’s back, and he grunted.Thorn knew they might not be able to hold onto those weapons at close range. If Travis got hold of them, he’d be able to take them away. “Go to the kitchen,” he told his mother, as he hit his father with the bat again. There was lots of stuff in there they could use. Thorn was only a few steps behind her, but he was limping. The car had done something to his leg.His mother flipped the switch, flooding the kitchen with light. “Don’t!” Thorn said, and she immediately flipped the switch again. There was still a little light flowing in from the other room, but he thought the kitchen was dark enough to provide them some cover.He heard his mother slide a knife from the wooden holder. “What are you gonna’ do?”“Throw it!”“No,” Thorn said. “Then he’d have it.” He didn’t like the idea of Travis MacDonnell with a butcher knife in his hand. “Keep it, in case he gets close.”“Right,” Irena said.The wooden block that held the knives was too close to the door, too close to his father, for his comfort. He wrapped an arm around the block and carried it to the other side of the kitchen.Thorn had spent a lot of time thinking about strategies. He’d also spent a lot of hours watching horror movies and Court TV. He moved into the back corner of the kitchen, pulling his mother with him, and opened the cabinet where they kept the canned goods. “These’ll hurt,” he whispered, pressing a big can into her hand. He pulled out another for himself – and they waited.Travis appeared on the other side of the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. He made his way toward them, getting bigger with every step. They threw the cans together. Irena’s hit him on the chest. Thorn’s got him in the face. Thorn got a second one in, hitting Travis’s groin, before Travis decided to back away. He ducked, and Thorn couldn’t see him any more. Thorn heard loud sounds. He thought Travis was looking for weapons. Thorn held the bat between his legs and a can in his hand.He turned on the sink – not all the way, but enough to get hot and have some pressure. He lifted the sprayer nozzle and put it in his mother’s hand. She held it in front of her, two-handed, like a gun. Thorn reached for the phone. He crouched down, so Travis wouldn’t see where he was, and dialed.“911, what is your emergency?”“My father’s here. Trying to kill us,” Thorn whispered. “How do we stop him?”“What’s he doing?”“Looking for stuff to beat us to death with, I think!” Thorn whispered. Couldn’t the woman on the other end of the line hear all that banging and cursing? “Hurry up! How do I stop him?”“Son… I can’t tell you what to do. I’m not there. But tell me…”“Send help,” Thorn whispered. “Route One, Number Fifteen. Right across from The Firelight Inn.”“What’s your name?”“Thorn,” he told the woman. “But I can’t talk now.”His father was coming back. Thorn could hear him but couldn’t see him.“Wait, son.”“I gotta’ go!”“Stay on the line!”“Tell them to be careful of the blood. We all got HIV.”“Son!” the woman called, through the phone.Thorn put the receiver on the floor. He kept himself low as he moved closer to the bar. His father was quiet now, apparently trying to be sneaky. Thorn thought he was just on the other side of the bar – probably planning to jump it or to rush through the door. He prayed for the bar not to protest as he leaned his weight on it. He wanted to look, but knew his father might be waiting for that. Thorn held his breath, his ears straining for the sound of his father’s breathing. There. He threw the can in his hand with all he had and was rewarded with a thunk and a howl. By the time Travis raised himself, Thorn was swinging the bat again. Travis yelped like a dog when it hit his head and stumbled backwards. Irena squirted him with hot water and he bellowed, backing away.Thorn wished he was better at karate. He would have been, too, if he hadn’t lost all that time with lessons because his father didn’t want him learning it. He had no idea how to stop the man. They could maybe hold him off for awhile… but how could they stop him? He wished the police would hurry up.The first of the cans sailed back toward them, over the bar. It missed, but the second one hit Irena’s leg. She made a pained sound. They both scrambled for new positions. In the minutes that followed, they hurled cans, dishes, cookware, and the microwave at Travis as he made his advances. But then came the moment Thorn had dreaded. Travis rushed into the kitchen, ignoring the barrage, and threw himself on top of Irena. Thorn got in a few good hits with the bat before Travis’s hand closed around his arm. Thorn knew Travis meant to disarm him, and there was no way Thorn could hold onto his weapon if Travis got his hands on it. Thorn used his other hand to fling the bat into the other room, out of Travis’s reach.Something hit Thorn’s head. Maybe a can, maybe his father’s fist, he didn’t know. It hit him again. He didn’t look, didn’t want to know. If he looked, it would hit his face. He saw his mother drive her knife into his father’s back and yank it away again. Another hit came on his head and he fell. With Thorn down, Travis returned his attention to Irena. Thorn managed to push himself upward, driven by his mother’s cries. He drew back his arm and slammed the heel of his hand into Travis’s already injured nose. Travis roared with the pain, but caught Thorn’s arm. Then he put his other hand to Thorn’s arm, too. Thorn struggled to get free, but couldn’t. He gritted his teeth, awaiting the pain of his arm being broken, even as he fought to save it.His father cried out and let go. Irena had managed to bury the blade of her knife in Travis’s shoulder, but she lost her hold on the blood-slick handle when he wrenched away. Travis’s hands reached for the knife. Thorn couldn’t let him have that. He yanked the iron skillet off the floor and swung it like a bat, slamming it into the side of his father’s face. Travis fell back, his hands still clutching for the knife protruding from his shoulder. Thorn hit Travis’s hands with the frying pan, yanked the knife loose, and pressed it into his mother’s hand. She plunged it into Travis’s gut. Thorn ran into the living room, retrieved the bat, and hit his father a couple more times.Finally, Travis was lying still – but so was Irena.Thorn moved to lean over his mother. He could see her face in the light from the other room, but she was unrecognizable. He blinked back tears. “Mama?”“Run… Thorn.” She found his hand and put the knife into it.He shook his head. He didn’t want to be in the house, but he couldn’t leave her. He tried to help her up, but she couldn’t do much. Thorn was dizzy from the hits on his head and he hurt all over. He got his mother halfway up, but they fell.Thorn prayed for more strength. He couldn’t lift her again. Still holding the knife, he dragged her across the kitchen, over his father’s still form, and into the living room, wanting to put as much distance between them and Travis as he could.He opened the front door and heard the sirens. For the first time since he’d recognized his father at the back door, hope coursed through him. He knelt beside his mother. “They’re almost here.”He didn’t think she heard. Something wasn’t right. He moved until he could see her face better. Her eyes were open, but there was something wrong. He didn’t think she saw him. “Mama?” Thorn’s heart stopped and then raced at the sudden realization. His mother had dead-people eyes. “Mama?”The world stopped, for Thorn.He heard movement behind him and turned, lifting the knife as he went. His mother wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead. But he wasn’t going to let his father touch her. Not ever again.Thorn reared up as his father lunged forward. He slid the knife into his father’s throat and wrenched it sideways, screaming the agony of his soul as the blood erupted onto him.
Original artwork provided
by
Ann Simko
and
Richard McAlpin
An
Ivey Banks
Excerpt