Page 30 of Are You Scared, Krowe?
Spade presses his lips together.
"Bludgeoned him with the garden hoe." He doesn't sound the least bit remorseful; in fact, the corner of his mouth tips up into a smile as he confesses. "And tied him up where I took you down from."
"Seems fair." I shrug. "What did he look like?"
Spade considers that. "Like a nerd? I can say that because I am one.Wasone..." He sighs. "I can't believe we're dead."
"Can't you?" I laugh. "This doesn't feel like life to me."
"I just... always thought there would be something more. Something... beyond this."
"Well, this sure isn't heaven." I laugh again, imagining the preacher spouting off his scripture on Sundays at the church just down the road from where his son had a hand in my rape and murder.
"Maybe not for you." Spade says quietly. "But maybe you're my heaven."
I stare at him, disarmed by the devotion in his voice. It's not a throw-away comment, not an attempt at flirtation. It seems genuine, almost raw.
I laugh it off. "If your heaven is me, you must have done something shitty in life."
"Do you think? Maybe that's why we're still here?"
I turn to face him, sitting with his legs in a crisscross on his mattress. No part of me believes he could have done anything bad in life. And me? What the hell did I do to deserve to be trapped here? I've never killed anyone, never stolen, never assaulted anyone, never done anythingbad.
I'm fucking dead, and my spirit is trapped in the place it happened.
That's fucked.
"No." I say gently this time. "No, I don't think any of us were bad people. Not you, or me, or any of the rest of them." I think of his roommates, the family that we left downstairs after Natalie made us all lunch.
They were the ones who had to break the news that I died because Spade didn't even realize it himself.
I remember Rhodes telling me the story about the Hollow Fields Scarecrow right before I started to get sick, when I was drinking my cider. I could feel a sense of trepidation; I knew something was coming, but I never could have imagined it to besomething so vicious. He said that there was a family who lived in the old farmhouse on the hill, that they were brutally slain while they slept. I know now that family is still here... clinging to the place their lives ended.
It’s sad, and I don’t understand. I tried asking Natalie why we were all still here if we were dead, but she didn’t have an answer for me.
"What do you think keeps us good?" I ask suddenly. "You know, what keeps us from doing what we want? Rules? Laws? The threat of hell?"
Clearly, none of those things mattered to the fuckers who are responsible for my death.
The family's murders, at least, you can say were a product of mental illness. There's no support for it nowadays, which I know firsthand thanks to my mother, and there was even less of it fifty years ago.
Even Spade's death was an accident... it's why he forgets he's dead, Natalie said. He had a bad heart, and it gave out on him when he got scared. It could be classified as negligent homicide, depending on how you look at it.
But my death? Mine was brutal, savage, unfair. And it happened for no reason other than they thought they could take what they wanted without consequence. They thought they could do whatever they wanted to me, get their fill of debauchery, and then intimidate me into silence. I have no doubt that was the plan.
They wouldn't have killed me on purpose, because that will draw attention. But knowing their fathers run the town— the sheriff, the mayor, the preacher, even the damn doctor— there was no way they thought I'd go to the authorities about it.
"Not wanting to hurt other people." Spade says simply.
"Iwantto hurt people." I confess without missing a beat.
When my eyes land on him, he narrows his a little, searching for more. "Meaning what?"
"Meaning I want to hurt them all. Every one of them who hurt me... whokilledme."
"Okay." He grins easily, and fuck, if he's not beautiful.
Most of his face is obscured by paint that makes him look like a skeleton, but it accentuates his sharp cheekbones, his strong jaw, and it makes his eyes dazzle. His dark hair falls into his eyes just slightly, and his body? It’s fucking powerful.
