Page 74 of The Bright Lands

“How the fuck—”

Joel stepped forward. “Did you ever forgive Dylan for stealing your girl?”

“Bethany didn’t give him a choice.”

“How underwater is your family right now? Your parents own half the town, sure, but what’s to own? Everything’s closing. That big new subdevelopment’s empty.”

Luke narrowed his eyes.

“How bad does your family need the football program to keep going strong? Get new families moving in and sending their kids to Bentley High, buying houses, opening stores? How bad would it hurt y’all if my brother decided he hated football after all?”

“Dylan would never quit.” Luke almost laughed. “He needed the attention too much.”

“And what if he wasn’t who this town thought he was?”

Bull’s-eye. Luke all but recoiled from the question.

“Who told you that?”

Joel’s rage mounted.

“Who sent you the ad, Luke?” Joel was frightened by the calm in his own voice. A voice that no longer felt entirely his own. “Who told you the golden boy wasn’t very golden?”

“You watch too much TV, man.”

Liar!his intuition shouted.

“Whoever it is,”he’d promised his mother.“Whatever it takes.”

“I’m going to ask you one more time.” Joel took two long steps forward, bringing the boy within arm’s reach. “Where did you go after the game on Friday?”

“Fuck you, man.” Luke seemed to briefly consider throwing a punch at Joel with one of those big arms—Just try, the animal inside Joel pleaded,just fucking try—but instead the boy only turned away with a shake of his head. “I wasn’t hurting anybody.”

The moment Luke’s back was turned Joel’s vision went black. He felt the rage and the horror and the shame—the shame, always and forever theshame—tighten his heart. And Joel didn’t want to fight it any longer. He let his mind slip free and let the darkness take control and bent down to grab the blade on his ankle and all he could hear wasendthis—the blood in his ears whispering pleading demanding—endhimendyouendthis.

He had forgotten to undo the safety strap holding the knife in its sheath. He fumbled with it for a moment, just long enough for Luke to take a step away.

The strap popped free. Joel took hold of the knife’s handle.

And then the back window of the truck lowered and a young boy shouted, “Luke!” and Joel shot to his feet empty-handed and felt his brain stutter and crash and refuse to start up again.

Luke was a brother too. How had he forgotten? Luke was an older brother, just like him.

Evers turned back, shook his head at Joel.

“And I thought Dylan was the crazy one,” he said.

When Luke reached the truck he tousled the young boy’s hair and climbed into the cab and left Joel standing alone in the dark.

With all the amphetamine in his system it took ages for the adrenaline to wear off. Light eventually began to creep through cracks in his vision where a moment before only darkness had been. He marveled at how easily he had surrendered himself to all of the violence and rage and despair that had climbed up from the pit of his mind.

Marveled at the way some of that darkness felt as if it had come from somewhere else. Somewhere not inside him.

Perhaps Clark had been right last night when she’d started talking about her kooky mother. The nightmares Joel had experienced since Dylan’s murder—they didn’t feel like normal dreams. That hadn’t felt like normal rage. And while Margo Clark had seemed utterly bonkers, if she really had been in touch with some force or energy or occult magic, well: who could blame her for coming a little loose at the hinges?

After all, something had just come knocking at Joel’s own head. Something rotten. Somethingold.

With a twist of guilt he remembered that Clark had been called away to an emergency of her own. He texted her: