“Mmmmf.” I didn’t want to acknowledge that I’d thought the same thing. That maybe all this time I’d been filling the gap left by my mother and Dante with the intensity of my Miskatonic Prep relationships. Not just with the guys, but with Greg and Andre and Loretta, too. And now Tillie seemed to be reaching out, tentatively seeking something from me she wasn’t getting anywhere else.
“So Deborah could be a part of that family?” Hope crept into Trey’s voice. “And the dogs, too.”
“Maybe. It’ll take time.” I nodded to the box beside me. “This is a good first step.”
“Do you think you’re ready to read those diaries?”
“Nope. But I’m going to do it anyway. Mom never talked about her past. Every time I asked she’d dodge the question or distract me or invent some story about running away from an ogre…” My finger pressed into the scar on my wrist. “Maybe that part wasn’t make-believe.”
“You know that what your mother did with your friend is statutory rape,” Trey said. “Now that you know about your mother… about her past… can you see how maybe she didn’t realize that she hurt you?”
“Do we get to keep blaming the past?” I asked. “It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Your dad bullied you, so you become a bully. My mother was raped by her father, so she stole the first guy I loved. I was betrayed, so I burn the betrayers. It’s like Deborah said – just a cycle of violence and horror.”
I shuddered as I thought about the fire ripping through the auditorium, how much I wanted my bullies and their parents to burn. I was part of the cycle, whether I wanted to be or not.
Trey was silent for a long while. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible over the roar of the waves. “When I was eight years old and Wilhem was six, my dad threw this big Christmas party at our home for his investors and executives and Eldritch Club members and important people. They’d set up a big screen in the ballroom to watch the launch of a new deep-space probe the team had spent five years building – it showed a live feed from the launch site and it was really exciting. I couldn’t believe my dad built something socool. I told him I wanted to run the company when I grew up. He beamed when I told him that – one of the few genuine smiles I’ve seen. I think it was the last time he ever smiled at me like that.
“I was expected to circle the room with my father and make small talk with the executives. At first, it was fun – I had this tiny port glass and Damon Delacorte kept refilling it. I told everyone who’d listen how proud I was of my dad and what he’d achieved. I stood with this group of executives who were all pretty plastered. During their conversation, it came out that to create the launch site, the company felled a huge chunk of native forest in Chile and displaced several endangered species. A bunch of environmentalists protested their presence, and so my dad hired a local gang to sneak into their camp and massacre them.”
The waves slammed against the cliff below. White foam rolled over rocks that jutted from the surf like rows of teeth. Dark waters swirled in wait, swallowing the horror of Trey’s words into the fathomless void.
Trey continued. “My father had those people slaughtered, and he was laughing about it with his friends like it was some funny party trick. I let go of his hand. My knees went weak. I asked him if the protesters were really all dead, and he told me that of course they were, he only hired the best assassins. He said there’d been a family there with two kids and a dog, and they killed the kids so they wouldn’t ‘grow up to be a nuisance.’ They even killed the dog so it couldn’t raise the alarm.
“I started to cry right there in the middle of the ballroom. Everyone was looking at me, and my father’s face was red and stormy. He commanded me to pull myself together, but you know when you’re a kid and someone tells you to stop crying and it just makes you want to cry harder? All I kept thinking about was my dad shooting two kids and a dog. He didn’t pull the trigger but to eight-year-old me, it was the same thing.”
“Itisthe same thing.” I squeezed his hand.
“Wilhem punched me in the arm and told me to stop being a baby, that is was ‘just business.’ He was six years old, but he was just parroting our dad. I said if assassins killed our parents would it be just business, and he laughed and said that would never happen. And he sounded so much like Dad that I ran from the room. Dad found me huddled under his desk and he dragged me into a cupboard and locked me inside. I was terrified of the dark at that age, and he knew it, so he yelled through the door, ‘you’re to sit in the dark and think about why you’re being punished.’”
“I sat in the dark for hours while the party raged all night. I banged on the door but no one came to rescue me. My stomach growled and I got angrier and angrier – at first at my Dad for locking me inside, and then at myself for being stupid enough to cry and make a scene, and then at those innocent people, because if they hadn’t been protesting then Dad wouldn’t have had to do what he did.” A shudder ran through Trey’s body. “The darkness closed in on me, and I could no longer tell reality from my nightmares. Over and over I saw my dad lift a gun to his shoulder and shoot a dog. Sometimes, the image was me. I could feel my finger squeeze the trigger as the dog panted hot breath in my face.
“Dad left me in that closet for two days. By the time I came out, I was babbling incoherently, weak from hunger and dehydration. I spent the next two weeks in bed recovering. Dad never once came to see how I was. But when I got well enough to walk around the house again, he found me and said, ‘Tell me why I punished you.’ Do you know what I said?”
I shook my head. My fingers closed around Trey’s and squeezed. I knew I didn’t want to hear the next words.
“I said, ‘You punished me because I was weak. I’ll never be weak again.’”
Yup. That was as bad as I expected.
Trey sucked in a shuddering breath. “But I didn’t understand what weakness was. That night at the party I’d stood against a powerful man for the first time, and I’d suffered for it, but I hadn’t lost. People at that party saw me break down, they heard me wailing about the family. Dad lost a couple of important investors that night, and they had to close the Chile operation. I’d won a victory against him, only I didn’t know it. From then on, every time I chose to do his bidding, I gave in to my weakness. Every time I defied him, he found new and imaginative ways to strip me of my power and freedom – but I couldn’t understand that meant I was having an impact – I was more powerful than ever. It wasn’t until you strode into Miskatonic Prep with that ‘don’t fuck with me’ look on your face that I learned what true strength was.”
Trey stood up. When he withdrew his leg, my body reacted with shock, desperate to hold him close, to tell him he never had to be afraid of the dark again. But of course, I couldn’t do that. It was a lie – the dark was coming, closing over us. Soon it would tear us apart forever.
There were so many layers to unpick – and that was only one trauma that Trey Bloomberg lived with every day, only one spoke in his own wheel of violence and horror.
I stood up on shaking legs and followed Trey along the ridge. We trudged the rest of the way in silence, arriving at school just as the sun made its final assault for freedom. The spires pierced the grey clouds – a threat of violence for any stranger who dared approach.
The front doors remained unlocked. We slipped into the atrium, my boots thudding across the marble. All was in darkness – faint grey light from the French doors illuminated the marble floor, but the stairs and hallways were cloaked in shadow.
As we sprinted up the stairs as quietly as we could, a light flared on the landing. I froze, raising my palm and thrusting it toward the other figure that stood in shadow beyond the flickering candle.
“Show yourself or I’ll light you up like a Christmas tree.” My voice carried more power than I felt.
“Wait, don’t burn me.”
The figure stepped closer. Candlelight danced over Dr. Morgan’s face. I thought about it for a moment. I lowered my hand.
“It’s best not to sneak up on me,” I said.
