But then I heard a whispered “No . . .” come from the circle. I looked up. My heart fell and a big fat lump filled my throat when I saw Heathan in the middle. Another of my uncles was holding him, about to lead him past me out of the door. I shook my head to see him better. I wiped the tears from my eyes. But when I did, all I felt was sadness. He was getting thin. And his pretty silver-gray eyes looked different. They were red and had big dark circles under them. They no longer shone.
My bottom lip wobbled. I lifted my arms, holding them out, wanting to hug him. Rabbit always kept me safe and warm. And I felt so so cold. He would make me feel warm. And maybe . . . maybe I could make him feel better too.
Maybe we could have another kiss.
“No . . .” he said again, but this time his voice was louder and his mouth grew tight. “Dolly.” He pushed Uncle Samuel’s hand off his shoulder. Uncle Samuel slammed his hand down on Heathan’s arm, but Heathan fought his grip and got away. He ran to me and threw his arms around me. I gripped him as hard as I could.
He was shaking.
His breathing was funny.
I inhaled deeply . . . Heathan. He might look different, but he still smelled like my Heathan.
Dark. The only way I could explain his scent was dark.
He stepped back and looked down. His eyes widened when he looked at my thighs, then his body shook even harder. He was so angry. I leaned against him and looked down at what he’d been looking at. All I could see was red. My socks were crumpled around my ankles, at the top of my new boots, but all my skin was red.
I gasped when I realized what I was seeing.
“Rabbit,” I managed to whisper. “Is . . . is that blood?”
My head was woozy. Rabbit turned and pushed me back against my papa’s desk. I sat on the edge, needing the rest. He stood in front of me. Blocking me from my papa and uncles. I peeked around his arm to see what was happening.
“I want them both,” I heard Uncle Lester say. “I want them at the same time. Fuck the poker games, I’ll pay whatever I have to to have them. Just look at them together . . . the way he loves her. Protects her. The way she gravitates to him. They are like magnets.” He shook his head. “For years I watched them get closer. You can’t create that kind of connection.” He sucked in his bottom lip. “Imagine how explosive just ten minutes with them both would be . . . You know I like the fight. Ready, able and willing is so fucking boring.”
Heathan made a choked noise in his throat. Then my papa came toward us. I ducked lower behind Heathan’s shoulder. I tensed. I didn’t like my papa much right now. He let Uncle John hurt me.
“Get back,” Heathan snarled. “Fuck me all you want, but touch her again and I’ll fucking kill you all. No one touches Dolly.”
My papa paused, all of my uncles did . . . then they all started laughing. The loud laughter hurt my ears; their open, laughing mouths wounded my eyes. I wanted them to stop. Wanted them to stop laughing at my Rabbit. I pressed my hands over my ears and tried to stop the laughing.
“Move aside, Heathan. You’re both going to have some fun with Uncle Lester.”
“Take me. Leave her.” Heathan moved so close to me that his back was flat against my chest. I didn’t like the way Heathan’s back smelled. It smelled of smoke again . . . like my uncles.
Like Uncle John had smelled.
“Last chance, boy,” my papa warned Heathan. “Don’t push me. This honorable shit is admirable, but futile.”
Then suddenly, Uncle Eric rushed from the back of the room, right at Heathan. Heathan reached behind us and ran his hand along the desk. He took something in his hands. As Uncle Eric grabbed Heathan’s black hair to pull him away from me, Heathan reached up and did something to Uncle Eric’s neck.
My eyes snapped shut. They wouldn’t let me see what Heathan had done. I heard a grunt, and a thud, and Heathan’s body was no longer pressed against mine. I opened and rubbed my eyes, and when I lowered them to the ground, I saw Heathan stabbing Uncle Eric’s throat . . . his chest . . . his stomach. Blood spat up and splashed my face, the warm liquid spilling down my cheeks.
Heathan’s black clothes were covered in red, as were his face, his hands, every inch of bare skin.
My papa and Uncle Lester lurched forward and pulled Heathan off Uncle Eric. I let out a scream when they hit my Rabbit . . . they hit him and hit him again. Heathan dropped whatever he was holding, and I realized what the blood-covered object was. Papa’s letter opener lay on the floor, the one engraved with a picture of the King of Hearts. Papa and my uncles loved to play poker. They always had cards lying about the house. Hearts was Papa’s favorite suit.
I looked at Uncle Eric on the floor, studying him harder, and I cried out. He was so still, and his eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. He wasn’t blinking. Blood poured from his neck.
“Rabbit!” I felt my tears coming faster. I needed him. I wanted to protect him. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t hurt. “Rabbit . . .” I sobbed as he fought to get back to me. He punched out at my papa, at my uncles, but he couldn’t get away.
“Dolly . . . Dol . . . ly . . .” he spat out as Uncle John wrapped his arm around Heathan’s throat. Heathan couldn’t speak, but his eyes never left mine. My hand reached out for him.
Papa ran to the phone beside me. He made a call, hung up and walked back to Heathan, who was still struggling against Uncle John’s arm. “You’ve fucked up, boy.”
“Leave her alone,” Heathan snarled, turning his head from Uncle John’s grip. My papa hit Heathan again. Heathan’s lip split open, blood dripping down his chin. Papa kept hitting him. And hitting him until Heathan’s teeth were coated in blood. Heathan sneered at my papa, blood and spit dripping to the floor.
I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I jumped off the desk and ran over to stop it. But Papa took hold of my arm and pushed me against his chest. Heathan looked me in the face. There was so much blood. My papa’s mouth arrived at my ear. “Say goodbye to your little friend, baby.” I stilled. “He’s going away now . . . to a place he can’t come back from.”
“No!” Heathan and I shouted at the same time. Papa stroked my hair as I stared at Heathan. Heathan stared at me too. I was crying. Crying so hard because my heart was breaking. Heathan was my best friend. My most favorite person in the world. I didn’t want him to go away.
He didn’t have any other friends.
I was his Dolly.
He was my Rabbit.
I . . . I loved him . . .
Then I saw it. I looked into Heathan’s silver eyes as a single tear slid out of one corner. I gasped, and my heart shattered into tiny pieces. Because Rabbit never cried. Never ever cried. Not even when his papa died did he shed a tear.
But he was crying now . . .
Because he was being taken away from me.
“Don’t . . . don’t cry, Rabbit,” I whispered. My throat was closing up. I was so sad I could barely speak. I tried to reach out and push the falling tear from his cheek, but my papa hit my hand away.
I heard the door open behind me. “Take her to her room,” my papa said without looking around. Mrs. Jenkins’s hand took hold of mine. I jerked it away. I needed to stay with Heathan. I was scared. Scared they were going to hurt him.
Papa tucked my hair behind my ear. “Say goodbye to Heathan, baby.”
“No!” I shouted, shaking my head.
Heathan struggled to get out of my uncle’s hold, but he couldn’t. I pushed forward, escaping the invisible chains that seemed to have locked me in place, and wrapped my arms around Heathan’s neck. I heard the sound of a car coming from outside and held him tighter. “Rabbit . . . I’m scared.” I felt the tear from his cheek kiss my own.
“I’m coming back for you, Dolly,” he whispered. “Wait for me. I’m gonna come back for you. To take you from this place . . . to Wonderland. Okay?”
My sob turned into a hiccup. “Okay.” Then Heathan put his mouth to my ear and said, “My vest pocket. Take it.”
>
I reached inside and pulled out his pocket watch. I clutched it in my palm, and then Mrs. Jenkins was dragging me from the room. “Heathan!” I screamed. I caught his eyes with my own and spoke what was in my heart. “I love you, Rabbit!” His eyes widened. “You’re my best friend!”
I didn’t hear Heathan’s reply, because I tripped over something. I nearly threw up when I saw it was Uncle Eric.
“Rabbit!” Now I’d found the words again, I couldn’t stop calling for Heathan, wanting my Rabbit to hold me. I cried his name over and over until Mrs. Jenkins threw me into my bedroom and slammed the door shut. I screamed and screamed, banging on the door, raking at the wood with my polished nails, but she didn’t come back. She had locked me inside.
I heard car doors opening outside my room. I ran to the window and pressed my hand against the glass. A big black van was in front of the house. Papa came outside, followed by two of my uncles, who were holding Heathan. I shouted his name, slamming at the pane of glass, as they threw him in the back. And I screamed when the van pulled away, taking my heart with it.
I watched the van drive away until I could no longer see the taillights.
My papa and uncles walked back inside the house. I cried and cried for hours as I watched the driveway, but Heathan and the van never came back. My legs wobbled, no longer able to hold me up, and I slid down the wall. I crashed down to the floor, the pain between my legs making me moan. And I stared at the door. I didn’t know if my papa or my uncles would return, so I just stared, praying they wouldn’t come.
My lip trembled as I remembered that Heathan had said he was coming back for me. That I just had to wait until he did. I looked down at my hand. It was in a fist. Even though it was shaking, I opened my fingers. Blood covered my palm, but when I wiped the blood away, I saw Heathan’s pocket watch in my hand. I stared at the cracked glass . . . at the two hands on the face. And I heard him in my head. I’m coming back for you . . .
My Rabbit was going to return and get me. Until then, I would count down the time. I gasped. The hands that had always been broken had jerked to life. They were moving! The hands were moving! I was seeing what Heathan always saw. It wasn’t all pretend . . . I could see them tell the time!
Lifting the watch to my ear, I kept my eyes on the door, checking for movement from the hallway and anyone coming inside. I tapped at the watch—just like Heathan did—and whispered, “Tick tock.” I swallowed, smiling as I heard the tick-tock of the clockwork hands. I knew Rabbit would never break his promise to me. “Tick tock . . . tick tock . . . tick tock . . .” I whispered to the rhythm of the watch, over and over again, until my voice no longer worked.
Tick tock . . . tick tock . . . tick tock.
I would count until my Rabbit came home.
Chapter 4
Heathan
Eleven years later . . .
I switched the stick shift down a gear as I arrived at a familiar set of gates. Only these gates were rusted and worn, hanging limply from their fragile hinges. Weeds wrapped like talons around the bars. They looked nothing like the imposing gates I remembered from my years spent living here. They were ruined and destroyed . . .
Just like anyone who had ever entered this fucking place had become.
Then again, maybe I was already different and altered when I first came here. But she wasn’t.
I got out of the car and approached the gates. The hot sun beamed down on me from above. I fixed my cravat, straightened my black shirt and vest, then smashed my foot against the gate’s pitiful lock. The gate groaned under my force but then swung open, baring the vast hell that lay beyond. I stood, breathing slowly, deeply, trying to calm the voices spinning around my head. The ones that told me to leave no soul here alive, to take down every one of the fuckers and make them pay in blood and screams and torture . . . The voices that had kept me company all these years, never letting me forget the penance that must be paid.
“In time,” I said out loud. Out of instinct, my hand ran over the pocket in my vest, searching for the pocket watch that had stayed by my side for so many years. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock . . .
I’m in here, it seemed to call from the mansion that lay beyond the long driveway and wayward trees. The siren’s call to the only two things that meant anything to my rotten core. My hand curled around the cane cradled in my palm. I glanced down, slipping my fingers down the black metal stick.
Rabbit, I heard Dolly’s voice whisper, a distant echo from the past, as I stared down at the decorative head of the cane. A white rabbit’s head, ears drawn back and teeth bared.
Rabbit.
Her rabbit.
Flicking my cane in a circle, I turned and got back into my car. I pulled forward, dust creating a smoky cloud behind me as my tires screeched on the now-dirt road. It was once paved and flat, but now it was bumped and degraded. I roared down the road, through the winding twists and turns. My hands tightened on the wheel when I approached the final bend.
The sprawling sight of the Earnshaw mansion lay just beyond. The house that birthed in me the beat that gave life, and the puncture that destroyed whatever semblance of a heart I once had.
My breath stalled as the edge of the brown-bricked building came into view. Moss and weeds crawled like a swarm of locusts up the once beautiful house, just like those spindling vines at the gates. The decay on the exterior reflected what had existed in the interior for too many years to count.
I knew those who had polluted this place with their poison were no longer here, but she was.
Finally, I was here to get her back.
As I pulled the car to a stop directly at the entrance, I looked at the stairs that led to the main doors. In my mind’s eye, the weeds covering the large oak doors I’d been dragged through as a child rolled back, baring the expensive shining wood beneath. The brass from the knob, shed of its orange and brown rust, gleamed in the sun once again. The overgrown grass on the lawn shrank to reveal acres of manicured land, and the dead and depressed floral border that framed the house sprouted into color, rich reds and yellows chasing away the thorns of dark and night. In my mind, the Earnshaw estate was once again pristine.
Then I too was back there. The night I was taken away. Taken from my darling . . . my Dolly . . . my breath, my sails . . . my soul . . .
The door swung open. Mr. Earnshaw marched out, followed by the “uncles” dragging me behind. My teeth clenched so hard I thought they would shatter as they yanked me down the stairs and into a waiting van.
Only seconds after I was thrown inside, the van pulled away. I sat in darkness, slamming my bloodied fists against the walls, trying to find my way out. “Dolly!” I screamed. “DOLLY!” I screamed over and over again. I screamed until my voice failed. My legs gave out, and I ignored the pain that shot through my body at the memory of what they’d done to me. One after the other for months and months. No reprieve. No breaks. Just them behind me, grunting and panting, ripping into me, pressing their chests against my back.
What they’d now done to Dolly. My Dolly. Her eyes . . . her eyes when that fat fuck brought her back to the room. Limping, blood running down her thighs. Tearful, pale . . . fucking destroyed.
My delicate living doll ruined.
In my mind, I replayed plunging the letter opener into Uncle Eric’s neck, his chest, his stomach. The blood that splattered onto my skin—hot and wet and strong in its metallic scent. The taste as it had hit my mouth, the flavor bursting on my tongue—the taste of his demise. The taste of my victorious kill. And I’d felt it, the power surging through me, as I’d felt his pulse slowing under my fingers. Saw his eyes draining of life.
I’d done that.
I’d ripped the life from him. With my own hands.
For Dolly. For my Dolly.
We drove for so long that I fell asleep. When I woke, it was dark outside again. A man dressed in black yanked me from the van and toward a tall water tower. It was white, but had no name painted on it. I looked around me: ther
e was nothing but fields and fields. The man dragged me to the bottom of the tower, where a door opened. Pushed forward, I stumbled into the tower to see a set of stairs winding down below ground.
The man gripped the nape of my neck, forcing me to move. Down and down I walked, through the dark, until I came to an iron door. Bolts unlocked, metal ground, then the door opened and I was pushed inside. My eyes widened. Rows and rows of cells lay before me. Then a man stepped out from the shadows. An old man. The minute my eyes landed on him, my lip curled in warning. He smiled at me.
I envisioned his death in my mind. A bullet through his mouth would blast his brains out the back of his thick skull. Messy. Bloody. Brutal.
“You fucked with the wrong set of men, kid,” he said. He shook his head. “Had some fucked-up people in here for years now, some have been here from their teens, but you’ve gotta be one of the youngest on record.” The man behind me laughed and rubbed his hand down my back. I lurched forward and turned, staring at the fucker. I hated to be touched.
“Lotta my men gonna like that you’re so young.” I turned back to the older man and glared. “Oh, would you look at that? The little sadistic murderer’s pissed.” He put his hand over his heart. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the warden of this here establishment. The land of the forgotten. A place even the government don’t know about. No police. No Child Protection Services. Just you and me, and my men, and a hundred other twisted sick fucks that messed with the wrong people.” He stepped forward. So close that I smelled the cigar smoke on his breath. Just like Mr. Earnshaw smelled. Just like the uncles. “No one’s coming to save you. This is your new home. A secret Alcatraz funded by the filthy rich, the one percent who pay me very well to remove . . . problems . . . from their lives.” He shrugged. “Rich men, you see. They like to commit crimes, but don’t like to deal with the aftermath. That’s where we come in. A cleanup service, if you will.”
The warden looked at the man behind me. “The only cell left with any room is fifty-two.”