Page 57 of Creeping Lily

TITAN

L ily’s breathing reaches me from across the cabin—quick, uneven, almost catching on itself. The place is so small the air seems to fold in on us, every sound pressing close, so intimate I can hear her draw each inhale like it’s mine.

Her eyes are fixed on the object in my hands, pupils wide, lips slightly parted. She’s seen it at last—the thing I’ve kept hidden until now. The ledger. The one book that could tear down an empire, brick by brick, name by name.

I turn it over slowly, my fingers brushing over the cracked red leather.

Time hasn’t been kind to it. The cover is blotched in patches where the sun baked it or rain gnawed at its edges, fading it from crimson to something like dried blood.

It smells faintly of mildew an old scent that’s full of secrets.

My mind flickers back to Larry Shine. His face when I slid the blade against his wife’s throat—how the light in his eyes went wild, not with grief but with the sharp awareness that I wasn’t bluffing.

The words had fallen out of him in a frantic tumble, the location of the ledger spilling from his mouth like a confession.

He knew it wouldn’t save him. Not from me.

Not from whatever waited for him after I was done.

He’d hidden it in the filter cavity of the range hood above his greasy stove, probably thinking grease stains and neglect would keep it safe. One glance through its pages and I knew I was holding the real thing. The weight of it in my hand was proof enough.

I slit his throat clean and quick, leaving an angry red line that sagged open before his chin sank to his chest. I couldn’t linger—every second put more distance between me and Lily. Even knowing she couldn’t get far, the thought of her gone churned something dark and ugly inside me.

“Are you going to open it?” she asks now, her voice soft but steady. She comes closer.

I meet her eyes. I’m thinking of the names inside, the bodies in unmarked graves, the monsters who’ll wish they’d never crawled out from under their rocks. Closure for families. Justice for some. Hell for others.

“I need you to read it to me.”

Surprise flashes across her face, but she takes it.

That’s what I love about Lily—she doesn’t argue when I give her something heavy to carry.

She holds it like it matters. Her fingers skim the cover, and there’s a quiet hunger in her eyes, like she’s about to pry open something no one else has touched in years.

She sinks into the armchair. I sit beside her, close enough that my knee brushes hers, close enough to remind her she’s mine whether she’s reading to me or bleeding out beside me.

“Where do you want me to start?” she asks. “First entry is January eleventh, 1981.”

“That old,” I murmur. He’d been at this long before then. That’s just when he got arrogant enough to write it down. Stupid man. The first name in this book was always going to be his own.

Her breath stutters. I see her hand grip her shirt, knuckles white. Her lips part, then press into a thin line. She shuts the book fast, like the words on the page might burn through her skin if she stares too long.

“What do you think you’re going to find, Titan?” she asks quietly. “What’s in here that you need so badly?”

“What is it?” I demand.

She just shakes her head.

I hold out my hand. “I can read it myself.”

She doesn’t give it back. She just opens it again, slow, like she’s bracing for something that’s going to hurt.

Her voice shakes when she starts. It makes me want to take the book from her, shield her from every ugly word inside—but I don’t. I let her read, even though every instinct in me is screaming to protect her from this.

The words scrape the air between us. And as she goes on, I start to wonder if I’ve made a mistake—if asking her to share this weight with me is a cruelty I can’t justify.

Because Lily isn’t like me. She still has pieces of herself that haven’t been blackened or burned away. And what’s inside this book? It might just take them from her.

She starts to read.

“Eleventh January 1981.

Matthew Rosewood, 1118 Navarro Crescent, East Millgate.

8 years. Blonde, blue eyed. Red and white striped long sleeve shirt, black pants.

Deceased thirtieth June 1983. Burial site: cremated.”

She flips the page and starts reading again .

“Sixteenth October 1981.

Nathaniel Rush, 6/913 Colebee Street, Houston.

Three years. Brown hair, blue eyes. White short sleeve t-shirt, khaki overalls. Taken from Grovehouse Fairground.

Sold: Seventeenth October 1981”

Mary and James Pipwaite – 83 Shallowater Road, Lackey”

She turns the page again and starts on another entry. Her voice trembles, breaking with each word.

“Fourth March 1982

Freida March and Doris Somersby”

“How many pages are there?” I cut in, halting her voice mid-sentence.

Lily blinks, startled, and looks up at me like I’ve pulled her out of another world.

She flips through the book, her fingers grazing each brittle sheet, eyes scanning the thickness as if she’s weighing the truth.

“About a hundred and seventy,” she says finally, her voice carrying that quiet certainty only a real book lover could muster.

She adds, “Only one entry per page,” like it’s supposed to soften the blow. It doesn’t. Not even close. That just means one neat little confession per leaf—each one a wound waiting to be reopened, a name tied to a crime someone thought they’d buried for good.

I think about what it’ll take for Goliath to get through it all.

Every name. Every date. Every ugly, blood-soaked line of ink.

Verifying each one, matching it to the bodies, the disappearances, the cold cases nobody wanted to admit were unsolved.

For some families, it might bring closure.

For others… forty years is a long time to wait for answers.

Some of them will never hold their loved ones again .

Lily’s hands tremble around the book. “Do you… want me to keep going?” she asks, voice unsteady.

I shake my head and take it from her, the leather warm from her grip. The sound of it slamming shut is louder than I expect, sharp in the stillness of the cabin. I set it down on the side table like it might burn through the wood if I hold it too long.

“It’s fine,” I say. A lie. Nothing about it is fine, but I’m not about to watch her eyes glass over with tears because of something I dragged into her hands. This book is poison. It could stain her in ways she’d never scrub clean.

I stand, stretching the stiffness from my legs.

My arms lift over my head, pulling my hoodie up just enough to expose the ink curling across my ribs.

Her gaze flickers there before she can stop it, quick and sharp, like she’s caught herself looking somewhere she shouldn’t.

I bite back a smirk and let my arms drop, saying nothing as I take a step away.

“This is what you do?” she asks after a beat. “You slay demons that prey on the vulnerable?”

“I’ve never killed a man who didn’t deserve it.” My tone is flat, factual.

Her eyes narrow slightly. “And the woman?”

I know exactly who she means. Sheila Shine. Larry’s wife. People thought she was the victim. They didn’t know the half of it.

“Sheila Shine was the mastermind,” I tell her. “Larry started it, but Sheila? She perfected it. She brought the torture. She found the victims. She was worse than him—meaner, colder. She made sure their screams went unheard.”

Lily swallows, like she’s weighing what I’ve just told her. “How do you find them? The Shines of the world?”

“It’s my job,” I say. “You pull one thread, it leads to another, then another… until you’ve got the whole ugly knot in your hands. ”

Her voice softens, curious, wary. “And what is it that you’re looking for, Titan?”

I meet her eyes and hold them there, letting the silence stretch until it almost hurts. “Redemption.”

The word tastes wrong in my mouth. Too clean for what I really mean. It’s not salvation I’m after—it’s the kind of redemption written in blood. The kind that stains as much as it saves. And the more I chase it, the more I know…

I’m not sure which side of the ledger my own name belongs on.