My feet get tangled in a thick vine that reaches up through a crack in the wood to grab at me. I lose one of my boots, but Hart doesn’t wait for me to get it back on, and I have no choice but to keep stumbling along.
Like Elora. That night. Out in the bayou.
He hauls me all the way down to the Mystic Rose, but he doesn’t head toward the front porch. Instead, we end up out on the river dock. Hart lets go of my arm, and I look down at his finger marks. I rub the bruises I can already feel forming under the skin.
“What the hell?” I demand. “What’s wrong with you?” But he grabs me again and clamps a hand over my mouth.
Evie’s wind chimes are ringing in my ear. Frantic and frenzied.
“Shut up,” Hart whispers. “Just shut up for one goddamn minute. I have to show you something. And I need you to be quiet. Okay?” There’s something in his voice that makes my blood run cold.
I nod, and Hart takes his hand away. He glances up toward the plywood-covered windows along the boardwalk, then he ignores the danger sign and ducks under the safety rope.
I open my mouth to tell him to be careful – to watch out for the rotten places – but he’s already moving crates. A tall stack of old wooden boxes. They’ve been there a million years. So long that they’ve become a permanent part of the dock. And behind them there are five or six big oil drums. Huge fifty-five gallon barrels. Everything is piled up with rotten fishing nets and old crab traps and rusting anchor chains.
I want to remind Hart that stuff is dangerous. That’s what we’ve been told our whole lives.
Stay away from all that old junk out on the dock.
Don’t play around there.
It’s dangerous.
It takes him a while to move enough stuff to get back to the barrels.
“Come ’ere,” he says. But I’m rooted to the spot. Hart looks up at me and sighs. His eyes go soft. “Shit. Greycie. I’m sorry. About before. I just need you to see this. I don’t know any other way.” He motions for me to come toward him. “I need you to understand how seriously fucked up this all is. ’Cause you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. With that boy. And I need to make sure you believe me. I need –” He looks down toward the barrels. “I need you to be safe.”
I duck under the rope and take a few heavy steps toward Hart. He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the barrel in the center of the mess. I stand and watch as he tries to pry the lid off, but it’s stuck tight. “Goddammit,” he mutters, and he digs around for his pocketknife. He pulls it out and flips it open to start working around the edge of the barrel, like he’s opening a can of paint. It takes him forever. And the whole time he’s trying to get that barrel open, I don’t breathe.
When Hart finally gets the top pried loose, he slips his knife back in his pocket. “Ready?” he asks, but there is no way for me to answer that question.
He wrenches the lid off the big black barrel, and the smell hits me. Like something that’s been dead a really, really long time. I cover my mouth and my nose, but I can’t see anything. It’s too dark. He jerks his head, motioning for me to come closer. So I use every bit of strength I have left to make my feet move those last few steps.
And then I peek inside.
Moonlight bounces off something white. Long finger bones. And a skull. A faded overall strap with a brass button. That’s all I see before I scurry backward, gagging. Hart has to grab me by the arm again to keep me from backing right off the dock into the water.
“Hey. Easy,” he warns me. “It’s all rotten.”
But I don’t know if he’s talking about the wood we’re standing on, or what’s in the barrel.
“Is that –？”
Hart nods. “Dempsey Fontenot.”
I sink down to sit on one of the wooden crates while Hart puts the lid back on the barrel and restacks the boxes and junk all around it. I close my eyes and take deep breaths, trying to keep from throwing up.
“He’s been here all these years.” The words taste slimy in my mouth.
Every time I sat on the front steps of the Mystic Rose, I was looking right at him.
Jesus.
All those nights Zale sat here on the dock with Elora, his father was right there.
Close enough to touch.
My stomach rushes into my throat, and I jump up and lurch toward the edge of the dock. I fall to my knees and vomit into the river. Hart is instantly beside me. He grabs the back of my tank top tight in his fist. And he hangs on. “Hey,” he soothes. “You’re okay. I gotcha.” I feel his other hand in my hair. And the tenderness of it makes me choke. “Just breathe, Greycie.”