Page 72 of My Girl

That hatred freezes inside of me, my chest opening up, letting Officer Gaines see my rotting heart. He knows he’s a horrible person. He accepts that he’s a blackmailing rapist. Embraces it, even. But he sees the horror inside of me too.

I watched people die. I never told the cops. And I’m planning Officer Gaines’s murder. Maybe I am just as bad as he is.

Someone shouts. The crowds of people trickle inside of the Galloway House. My phone buzzes.

Penny texts:Ouija time.

I cross my fingers, pleading to the universe that something happens. Even though it’s a silly party game, if it gives me one more detail, maybe I’ll figure out what I’m supposed to do now. If finding my father’s killer matters anymore.

“Looks like it’s time for you to go,” Officer Gaines says.

The house pulls me closer. A crawling sensation creeps through me with each step. At the gate, I look back at the mall, halfway expecting Officer Gaines to be following me, but there’s no one. It’s like he was never there.

A vision flashes in my mind: Officer Gaines’s corpse lying in the darkness. Crave standing above him, waiting for me. Another surprise. A gift.

Soon,I tell myself.

The strangers crowd around the dinner table, tea light candles glowing around the ouija board, the planchette held down by Penny and some of the other guests.

Penny nods at me. I start to nod back, but the planchette moves, and Penny focuses on the board.

My mind glosses over. I go through the back door. The executioner’s stone with the brown-black stain beams at me, streaked with fake red blood, the moonlight casting directly on it.

I sit on the rock and stare into the empty desert.

“Give us a sign!” someone shouts. “Anything!” Laughter erupts.

A shadow envelops me.

Black boots. Leather gloves. A mask. The zipper pulled shut over his mouth, like he has nothing to say. Those mesh-covered eyes focused on me.

Crave is here. Finally.

I stand, and once we’re toe to toe, he fists my hair. I shudder. He maneuvers me until my stomach is flat against the stone. My hair falls down to the sides of my face, and he pulls up my nightgown, the clink of his belt sending chills through me. The leather belt pulls through the loops, and I melt into the stone, ready to accept whatever he gives me. To let him take and take and take.

His metal-and-flesh cock enters me, ripping a hole inside of me, my newly healed flesh torn to shreds again. The nightgown falls down, covering my legs, but there’s no barrier when it comes to his cock and my pussy.

The edge of a sharp blade touches the back of my neck, and I can make out a long handle in my periphery.

My heart stops.

Crave holds an ax like the first murder in the Galloway House. The mother—Mrs. Galloway—was decapitated on this very rock. It’s like I’m her ghost right now, and Crave is fucking me, just like my father raped his wife right before he killed her.

A gasp rings through the air. I keep my head twisted toward Crave, my eyes locked onto the black holes of Crave’s mask. I can feel people watching us; I don’t care. With the long nightgown tucked around my legs, they can’t see us fucking. Even if they could, I wouldn’t stop.

A tingling sensation spreads through me. Crave is here.For me.And that means something.

He’s my father’s killer.

He has to be.

“Oh, wow,” someone says.

“The spirits are coming!”

“Dad joke, not funny. Thanks?—”

“That’s not a ghost. That’s the girl. The podcast chick?—”