Page 106 of Horror and Chill

Agatha

I’ve been holdingmy breath since Garron went into that church. It’s the kind of breathing that gets stuck in your ribs and forgets to come up. The air in the car tastes like metal and guilt. My fingers fold over themselves in my lap until the knuckles go white.

What seems like hours later, I see my parents exit and my heart starts to beat faster as I watch them head to their vehicle. Not once does my mother look up from the ground. If she did, my father would punish her later. It disgusts me.

I used to feel bad for her since she was a victim too. But that ended when I was seventeen and my dad went on a ministry trip for a weekend. I begged her to pack and leave with me. We could go anywhere. We could start over and be actual human beings, not property. She shook her head, lips pressed so tight they went white. “Your father will save us,” she whispered.

When he got home, she told him everything. Every word I said.

He dragged me into the bathroom, turned the bath on ice-cold, pushed my head under water, and held it until I thought I’d pass out. He called it cleansing. I called it waterboarding. He said he was drowning the rebellion out of me. My lungs burned, my throat locked, and when he finally yanked me back up, I vomited water all over the tile. My mother stood in the doorway and didn’t move.

After that, I knew. She wasn’t trapped. She had chosen. She wanted this life. She wanted me broken too. There would be no saving her. No convincing her this wasn’t right.

When the passenger door finally opens, Garron slides into the seat without looking at us and says one word to Corwin.

“Drive.”

Corwin grumbles but turns the key. The engine comes alive and we pull onto the road; the town blurring out the window as we cruise. Evander’s hand brushes mine, and I don’t pull away. There is a small steadiness in that contact.

“What happened?” he asks.

Garron turns and looks at me, fire in his eyes and, under it, a small smear of sympathy that makes me feel thin and dangerous at the same time.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I snap before I can stop myself. The words are louder than I meant them to be. “I got out. I left. Don’t look at me like they broke me.”

He doesn’t look away. “I can’t believe you came out of there. Everything they preach makes women servants, and they dress it up like scripture.”

My teeth grind together. “What happened in the church?” I force myself to ask.

Garron breathes, the sound tight in his throat. “I walked in and followed Michael down to the basement. I ran into Pastor Williams. He tried to sell me his sermon, and I sat through the men’s study while wanting to pluck my eyeballs out.They talk about grooming girls, keeping women small, teaching obedience. The whole thing made my skin crawl.”

“Then what?” Corwin presses.

“Michael showed me around upstairs afterward. He told me they had a daughter. He said she was dead to them because she would not bend. He said he had tried to break her, and he couldn’t. He called her a sinner and said she was beyond help.”

My jaw tightens so hard I think I’ll break a tooth.Dead to him?! He’s been dead to me for a long time. I left when I was eighteen, but he stopped being my father years before that.

Garron’s voice drops. “He took me to the women’s study group. I watched the youth pastor drag a woman up in front of everyone. He berated her for smiling at a man on the street. Said it was vanity, pride, and sin on display. Then he bent her over a desk and beat her with a yardstick until she was sobbing. Every woman in the room had to watch. When he was done, he sent them off like nothing happened. Told them to find their husbands and obey.”

“Sick bastards,” Corwin growls, his knuckles white on the wheel.

Garron keeps going. “Then I met Debra. She would barely look at me or shake my hand. Michael said she is not allowed to touch other men. I didn’t get to interact with her much. She had to be home to have dinner on the table at five.”

“Anything else?” Evander asks.

“That’s it.”

Garron looks at me, waiting. “Michael also said Pastor Williams tried to ‘train’ his daughter, that the pastor and others tried to break her as well.”

I freeze. My throat closes in a blink. I picture a Bible on a bench and a man’s voice moving through words like a whip.

“Little Horror,” Corwin says when silence hangs too long. “What does he mean by that?”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” I ask.

“Nope,” Garron says, popping the p. He sounds dangerous and delighted at the same time.

“Tell us,” Corwin growls. The edge in his voice is a blade, and I hand him my truth because it’s time.