1
KNOX
Silence is supposed to follow the dead, or so some would think.
They’d be wrong. My basement is proof of that.
I hear death in the smack of my feet against cement, a sound that reminds me to wipe the floors before the chemicals set in.
In the rattle of the vents, breathing out lime and decay.
In the whine of the rusty fan in the corner.
Then there’s the hide swaying from one of my hooks. Speckled with bits of flesh, it drips blood at an uneven pace into the tin bucket beneath it.
But the echoes of what’s left of them don’t bother me.
It’s a familiar chorus.
It’s home.
With these sounds in the background, I strip off my gloves, satisfied with the final touches on another hide I have stretched across my wooden frame. I’ve just finished oiling it, weeks after Jett, my older brother, brought it over.
This is what we do in Colbert, our small, rotting town.
Kill people. Turn their skin into leather. Sell it across the US under the neat disguise of livestock leather.
But people don’t just wander through here. We’re based in the middle of nowhere. No gas station, no convenience store, nothing.
That’s why we invented our tourist trap. The innocent-looking leather museum we built on Main Street. Each storefront is dressed up like a piece of our history, and you can’t enter unless you’ve booked a tour online.
The order is important because one in ten groups that venture out here never leaves. Spacing out the murders helps keep us Colberts under the radar.
If a family member or an investigator comes sniffing anyway, we feed them the same lies we always do.Sir, we haven’t seen them since they finished the tour. Go ahead, ma’am, search all you want. You won’t find them here.
That, like the rest of my life, will be nothing but a distant memory in three weeks.
No more tricking, murdering, or tanning people for me.
I’m getting out of Colbert.
A tinge of guilt stings me because when I’m gone, my family will have to take over the tanning side of the business.
Jett, Grandpa, and my parents are in charge only of luring both men and women to Colbert, then hunting, killing, and selling them.
But—no. I can’t feel sorry for them. They won’t be completely helpless.
Jett is more than capable of stepping into my role, in addition to his current responsibilities. He’s twenty-seven, two years older than me, and the second-strongest of the Colberts.
It’s actually why I haven’t killed the bastard yet.
He’ll look after the people I care about when I’m gone.
For the time being.
Maybe in a few years, they’ll let Reese handle the tanning once she’s older. She’s got what it takes for this job. I can see it in her.
Even at ten years old, my sister is as brutal as they come, her green eyes lighting up whenever new tourists come here.
