Page 111 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

The gun fires.

Smits flies back, hands going up. He starts to fall. Josie tumbles backward, gun still in her hand. Smits hits the ground, hands flying to his chest.

Blood. I see blood.

He’s shot.

I run to him, but he’s already scrambling up, snarling at me to get the fuck out of his way. There’s no bullet hole. Just a splatter of blood, as if the shot grazed him. He stalks over to where Josie fell backward and he reaches down to snatch the gun.

“You’re lucky you didn’t—” he snaps.

Then he stops.

There’s a sound. A low animal sound. Smits drops to his knees and shakes Josie, and her head flops up and—

There’s blood on her face.

Not just blood. Torn flesh and gray bits and—

A hole where her eye had been.

Thirty-Three

A whimper bubbles up in me, and I rock there, telling myself I’m wrong, Josie isn’t dead.

Not dead? With that wound?

Then I’ve lost my mind. It snapped when my aunt disappeared, maybe even before that. Yes, this is the answer. Gail was right—I killed those animals and chopped them up, my father’s dark side finally bubbling to the surface. The rest has been a fever dream, where I’m wandering around the property alone, scenes playing out in my head, and now I’m imagining Josie is…

Josie is dead. She is dead, and I am here, awake, lucid.

“Josie?” My voice comes out as a whimper.

This cannot be happening.

First Gail, who had only tried to help me. Now Josie, who’d done the same. Funny and clever and lonely Josie, making me feel as special as a shy first grader who catches the attention of the most vibrant girl in class.

Josie.

I drop to my knees beside her. I stare at her beautiful face, always so alive, every expression writ large, from her joy to her worry to her fury. Josie, exploding with decades of repressed anger toward her father and hurt, too, because he’d proven to be everything she’d alwaysfeared, and she was finally going to stand up to him and make him tell the truth and—

Rage creeps in as my gaze rises to Smits, holding his daughter’s hand and saying her name.

Josie. Sweet Josie. His only child. Maybe the one person he’d actually loved. And he’d killed her. As much as he loved her—adoredher—he still would not back down and just tell her what the hell he did with Ben. He fought knowing she had a loaded gun—

“Get away from my daughter.”

Smits is rising, his voice a rasp.

“Get the fuck away from my daughter, you twisted piece of Payne shit.”

“What?”

“You and your family. You’re all alike. Lording it over us, using us, making us kill people for scraps of what you already have. A little bit of luck, that’s all we ever wanted. Enough to get by, while you hoarded the rest for yourselves.”

“I had nothing to do—”

“You’re a Payne,” he spits. He’s on his feet now, and I get to mine, very aware of Josie’s gun near his feet. “You came back, and I played my role. The Smits role. I looked after you. I let my own daughter come here when she wanted to get to know you. I thought that was good. The next generation. Give you time, and then I’d tell you the truth, and you and Josie would take over, and it would be the way it used to be. Do you know what that makes me?” He lunges toward me. “A goddamn fucking fool!”