12.6

‘I thought as much,’ Sam said, all trace of his toddler voice gone.

Luna stared at him in bemused horror.

His face changed. The childlike retarded innocence was gone, replaced by a mask of equal parts horror, despair and relief.

He looked up at Luna, smiled what was possibly the saddest smile she had ever seen, and said, ‘I wondered when he would pluck up the nerve. He’s been meaning to finish us off for months now.’

Luna still stared at him in utter disbelief.

Her mouth worked, but her mind was in tatters, so much so that no words could be vocalised.

‘I pretended,’ Sam said, with a sad smile. Tears began to roll down his cheeks, pooling on his ketchup-smeared Paw Patrol place mat.

Luna still couldn’t summon the words she needed.

‘For him,’ Sam said. ‘He thought he was saving us. Poor bastard. There ain’t no saving us. Any of us.’

‘You pretended?’ Luna said.

‘Yes. Don’t you understand?’

‘No. Not really. What the fuck, Sam?’

‘He put the pillow over Polly’s head when she was having a nap. But he bottled it. He realised what he was doing. When she woke up she had severe brain damage. She was like a toddler again.

‘And he loved that. Because it made her blind to everything that was going on outside this place. He decided that he wanted to do the same to me.

‘So I let him. There ain’t much worth living for these days anyway, so I thought why not?

‘But he got it wrong. He didn’t hold me down long enough. He’s a little fucked up too, as I’m sure you’ve gathered. He went downhill fast after Mam died.

‘He thought he held me under the water for much longer than it was. In reality it was only a few seconds. But when I came up, I knew he would want me to be a kid again. So that’s what I did. I pretended. For however fucking long this has been.

‘Because he is – sorry, was – a good man and I loved him. He was the best dad and he did all of this to protect us. He wanted us to know nothing of the outside world, so that’s what I did.

‘He was the sweetest guy. He made all of this furniture and the doll’s house, life-size. All for us.

‘All for us,’ he repeated, finally breaking down into the crying fit Luna had been expecting.

‘I understand,’ Luna said, nodding sadly. Tears slid down her cheeks.

She suddenly understood the whole sorry situation.

Why Pullman had done what he’d done.

Why Sam had pretended.

It was all for love, for mercy, to spare the suffering of their loved ones.

‘You poor bastards,’ Luna said, throwing her arm around his shoulder and hugging him in tight.

The force of his sorrow shook her entire body.

They held each other and cried.

‘That’s a sweet fucking thing you did,’ Luna said, wiping the tears from both of their faces.

Sam looked up at her through a veil of tears.

‘I did something kind for him. Because he tried to do something kind for us.’

Sam slumped back to the table and began to sob.

*

Some time later he stopped crying.

‘I’m so sorry, Sam, for everything.’

‘Thank you, that means a lot.’ His eyes were swollen and red.

He stood on unsteady legs, turned towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ she said.

‘To see them,’ he said.

‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Sam.’

‘I need to. To know they’re finally free from this. Please leave me a moment.’

She nodded.

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ she said.

He smiled sadly, tipped his gaze to the floor, and shuffled out.

*

Luna waited a while, listening.

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Sam was gone for what felt like an age.

The sudden realisation that he probably wasn’t coming back hit her.

Poor bastard, she thought.

The ordeal had drained her.

She suddenly felt knee deep in cement.

She saw a mattress on the floor behind the kitchen counter.

Despite the blood stains on it, it looked more inviting than any bed she’d ever seen.

She longed to lie down on it and close her eyes, but she had to know what had happened to Sam.

*

She stood on unsteady legs and staggered back to the room where she’d left Polly and Pullman.

As she looked around, she noticed that the ceiling had slanted pieces of brightly painted red wood attached to it, making it into a roof. The walls were painted with black doors and windows. There was life-size furniture in there. The whole thing was an adult-sized dollhouse.

It made her skin crawl, especially when she saw two of the corpses sitting at a table laid out with a fine china tea set.

Finally, she tore her eyes away from the bizarre and macabre sight and looked down at Sam.

He sat cross-legged on the floor. Polly was cuddled in tight to his right pectoral. Pullman was pulled in tight to his left.

A sharp kitchen knife lay a few feet behind him, a bloody handprint on the stainless steel handle.

She saw dripping wounds on Sam’s wrists and neck. Dozens of them.

‘I tried,’ he said, still sobbing a little. ‘I tried lots of times. But I couldn’t do it.’

She placed a comforting hand on his head.

‘When I’m done here, can I come with you?’ Sam asked, his big puppy dog eyes reminding her of when he was in his toddler mode.

Luna sunk down to her haunches, so she was on the same level as him. She looked deep into his eyes, stroking his hair a little and gave him a sad smile.

‘Fuck that,’ she said, plunging the knife up to its hilt in the right side of his throat.

She watched him bleed out, his dad and sister clutched to his chest until the very last second.

He slumped onto his right side.

When she was certain he was dead, she staggered back to the mattress in the kitchen and cried herself to sleep.

*

Some time later, she was rudely awoken by a sound she had heard many times before but never after.

Sunlight streamed in through gaps in the dirty newspaper that had been used to cover the windows.

Luna rubbed her eyes, groggy. Her eyes were still dry and swollen from all the crying.

She got up, bemused, and followed the strange sound. In a small section of the outer barn, she found half a dozen living, breathing chickens that seemed untainted by the fallout.

They were clucking and flapping around fit to raise hell.

The sight of them made her smile. In the vast majority of places, they were now as common as dinosaurs.

Her grin widened when she saw a small pile of eggs against the outer perimeter of the barn.

She grabbed three and took them back to the kitchen.

She made an omelette and practically inhaled it.

This and the homemade bread she found in the bread bin was one of the finest meals she’d had after.

When she was done, she searched the place, finding a small stash of guns that Pullman had kept in his bedroom.

She stopped to look in on Sam and his family one last time before she left. ‘I hope you’re all at peace now,’ she said, smiling sadly.

As she reached the barn, Luna caught movement in her peripheral vision.

She looked and saw that it was one of the creepy dolls, moving in the breeze.

The sight of them still made her skin crawl.

‘Get me the fuck out of here, like,’ she muttered.

A thorough search of the barn revealed some jerry cans of fuel. She filled up the dozer’s fuel tank and put a few spare cans in the driver’s cab.

Then she left the creepy-ass farm without looking back.

She remembered what King Solomon had always said to his Grims and, though she dreaded it, she knew where she had to go next.