The Lies we Steal (The Hollow Boys Book 1)

Alistair

Usually after I hurt people I have this rush of elation that floods my entire system. It takes away the hunger, it feeds the anger, just long enough that I can regain control over my life. 

I get my fix for the day and I’m set until the next time I feel the need to destroy someone. 

Right now all I was feeling was self-loathing. So much of it that every breath felt like I was inhaling gasoline. More fuel to the fire inside of my chest that was not going out any time soon. 

My left hand wound tighter around the steering wheel, my foot punching the gas as my car tore across the asphalt. The gauge on my dash was trying to let me know this vehicle couldn’t go any faster, but even so I kept my foot to the floor. 

Music busted through my speakers and I could see out of the corner of my eye, Rook, air drumming against the dash, slinging his head back and forth to the beat. I watched my headlights peer down the nearly empty two-way road, trees on either side as we approached our destination. 

When you’re going that fast one slip of your wrist would send you rolling, the car would fly into the trees killing both of us almost instantly. But neither of us could be bothered. We focused on the dense sound of music, the drums that thundered and shook the glass of my windows. 

I told myself the feeling would leave after tonight. I would wreak havoc, end a life and the annoying tugging inside of my chest would leave. Pressing on the break for the first time since leaving the carnival, I began to slow down just enough to not flip the car as I make a right. 

Briar was a pawn in a large game of chess. A piece that had surprised me and had been fun to play with. I’d gotten what I wanted. I’d had her down on her knees with those pretty little eyes staring up at me, I had her twisted around my fist, I had my fingers deep in her cunt and watched as she found a high like never before with my name cursing her lips. 

I had broken her. 

Showed her that she is no better than I am. 

Just another person addicted to how it feels when you do something bad. I ripped away her idea of what she thought she wanted, shedding light on how all the dark parts of her were her power. 

I tore her down, just to build her up, only to yank the flooring right out from underneath her. Watching her crumble before my eyes. 

But that was what had to be done. 

I could not afford to have her poking around, getting involved where she shouldn’t be, asking me shit she doesn’t understand. 

It was better to break her heart now. Get it out of the way before something worse happened. Before she built this imaginary world with me in it, shoving me into a dream I had no business being a part of. Expecting me to be something I am not. Something I will never be. 

I wanted this, I thought. 

So why the fuck did I feel this way. 

With ease I pull into the driveway of the condemned house, right outside the weak metal gate that does a shit job of keeping people out. The no trespassing signs are so old that rust holes have started to eat away the words. 

Rook is out of the vehicle before I’m even in park. Electricity courses down my arms as I look up at the small two-story brick house. The night had come fast, it always does during this time of the year and the liberating task at hand we’d all been anticipating was only a few minutes away.

A gust of strong wind picks up a pile of leaves, carrying them across the brown yard, the draft howls through the house, slipping inside the damaged roof and between the cracks of the boarded windows.  

The last time I saw this place it housed a dead body. Tonight, it would do the same.

I step around to the back of my car, while Rook opens the trunk. Headlights blind me as Thatcher’s vehicle comes into view. Both him and Silas pull in next to me, cutting the engine and stepping out. 

We don’t talk, no words need to be said. We know why we are here and that pressure hangs heavy on each of our shoulders.

“Catch.” Rook mutters, tossing a long-handled axe in my direction. 

I snatch it from the air calmy, squeezing the wood in my palm, feeling the weight of the weapon in my hand. The chisel-shaped blade flashed in the night. And ideas for all the ways I could kill someone with this appeared in my mind’s eye. 

Hearing the sound of distorted wails as Thatcher and Silas walk from the back of their car, each of them carrying a half of the body of a restless Greg West. He fights, trying to kick his duct taped feet free. 

We follow their lead through the dead yard, up the unstable front steps and through the entrance of the trap house where we had found Rose. 

Stepping inside was similar to walking into a time machine. The last time we’d been here, Rose laid motionless on the same floor that we toss Greg onto. The boards on the floor creak with his weight, head banging onto the ground as he tries rolling around. 

Thatcher and Silas had waited outside of his house after we left the carnival, waiting for the perfect moment to snatch him up as he walked to his front door. Just when he thought he was going to be able to kick his feet up on the couch, click through the sports channel, Thatch had ruined it. Grabbing him up and throwing him in his trunk. 

Consequences of all of his actions up to this point made the air thick. 

Spilling blood for our revenge. Tempting the scale of moral compasses just to feel the relief of vengeance on our souls. If I ever got caught, I wouldn’t regret it. 

Even if I rotted in a prison cell for the rest of my days, this would have been worth it. 

They would always be worth it. 

I was ready to hear Greg say the words. We had followed the breadcrumbs and they’d led us to the person we’d been looking for. I just needed to hear the words. 

Rook rips the tape off his mouth, the sound of skin and hair tearing echoes, and shit immediately begins to pour out of his mouth, 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” 

“As a unit?” Thatcher ask, “Too many things to count.” 

Greg shoves his feet into the ground, trying his hardest to push himself away from the four of us. It’s kind of pathetic actually, the last feeble attempts of a trash human being.

“Did you mean to kill her, Greg?” Thatcher asks ignoring his question, “Or was it just dumb luck that she was allergic to the Ecstasy?” 

It’s interesting watching someone who had up to this point been completely confident that no one would ever know what he did. It’s interesting seeing the shock register in their ratty eyes and they begin to think, oh shit I’m in trouble. 

“I…I don’t know-” 

“We saw the flash drive.” I stop him from even trying to deny it. I wasn’t here to question him or get more information on the dealings of what he was into. I had enough evidence with the drive to know the police would look into anything we didn’t take care of ourselves. I came here to listen to him confess. 

I was prepared to become judge, jury, executioner. 

Like most evil disguised as humans, his mask melts right off his face. He knows he can’t deny it, he is aware of what we have seen. It’s either own up to it, hope that we respect him for admitting it, or go out like a bitch. 

“I’m assuming one of you was fucking her? That’s why I’m here?” He mocks, rolling his body so he is sitting up on his knees, his greasy hair falling in his face a bit as he spits on the floor,

“The X was just to make her more pliable for the buyer. She’d been sold the day I picked her up from the library. I didn’t know the dumb bitch would die from it. Cost us money we didn’t have to lose.” 

Blind rage takes hold of Rook at the sound of someone insulting Rose, taking the opportunity to acquaint himself with Greg. He twirls his bat, swinging the aluminum stick like a knife through butter, and crushing it across Greg’s side, sending him flapping in the air with a harsh thump. 

I silently hoped it punctured a lung. 

“You don’t get to speak about her. Not like that, fucking crook.” 

It was the first of many painful lessons we would be teaching our professor tonight. 

He mewls into the group, pressing his forehead into the dirt, eyes crossed in searing pain. Thatcher takes the sole of his Oxford clad shoe, pressing it into the same set of ribs that had just taken a major league swing and punts him onto his back. I felt the tightening in my chest, the pressure increasing across my entire body. Feeling it in my hands, my neck and jaw muscles as my fury built higher the longer he spoke. 

“You think killing me makes it any better? You’ll be just as bad as me, nothing but a killer. This won’t bring her back!” He yells, spit flying from his mouth like white bugs. “She’s dead. Nothing you do will change that.” 

I’d been waiting months for this. Spent sleepless nights thinking about what I would do if given the opportunity to get my hands on the person who took Rosemary from us. Burst of memories play in my mind. Of Silas, of Rose, all the good, all the bad. 

That was what no one was getting. 

We knew she was gone. We knew that no matter how much blood we spilled she wouldn’t come back. She was gone. 

We just didn’t fucking care. 

I stride forward, “No, it won’t,” twisting the axe in my hands so the blunt end points outward, “But it’ll make me feel a fuck ton better.” I slam the end of the weapon into his throat. 

The sound of kindling breaking over a tree crackles through the bottom floor of the house. Greg’s windpipe splinters in his throat from the strike of the back of the axe. The brutal choke that falls from his mouth would make me cringe if I wasn’t so amped up on how good this felt. 

High pitched breaths and wheezes is all he can manage. Not another word will come from his mouth. 

It’s then that Silas steps forward. 

Hands calm, eyes like coal. He stands over Greg, peering down at him so that he can take a peek into what a living human looks like when they lose their soul. 

The Grim Reaper gave up his duties for tonight, handing them over to Silas so that he could sentence a dirty soul to whatever hell awaited him. 

This had always been the plan. This had always been his kill. The retaliation he felt would make it up to Rose, because in his mind, he should have been there that night. 

Rose was walking home from the library because of a fight they had. I still didn’t know what it was over, but instead of waiting for Silas to pick her up she left on her own. 

Whatever his last words were to her were said in anger.

I’d give anything to know the thoughts that swirled in his mind right now as he stood face to face with the man who ended his girlfriend’s life. 

With subtle grace, he drops one knee down beside him, straddling his chest and pinning him to the floor with his weight. The floorboards creaked with the disturbance and all we could do was watch, waiting for the moment Silas needed us. 

“I hope it’s hard to breathe.” His voice is gravelly as he wipes the dust off his vocal cords, “I hope every single breath feels like razor blades carving your throat wide open.” 

His hands, wide, large and powerful sink down onto Greg’s face. Slipping his fingers behind his skull to hold him steady, and allowing his thumbs to brush over his eyelids. 

Greg coughed and fought for air, fear of death becoming more apparent and he couldn’t even scream for help that might’ve saved him. 

He wiggles, bucking off the ground, the last attempts of a man about to meet whatever maker he believed in. Never to take another breath again.  

“I want you to remember this fear in Hell. Remember this pain for eons as you roast alive in the pits of the underworld.” 

With unimaginable strength he sinks his thumbs into the sockets of Greg’s eyes. Pressing into the hollows, digging through the delicate skin of the eyelid, seeping farther into the spongy muscles of his eye. 

Guttural screams, like a static TV come from Greg’s chest. A pain that would have anyone begging for mercy. Yet, Silas barely flinches. Even as blood vessels begin to pop open allowing blood to squirt onto his chest, coating his thumbs as he gouges his eyes out. 

“Fuck,” Rook whispers under his breath as he stands beside me, Thatcher looking at it as if it’s some sort of demonstration and he should be taking notes. 

“I hope you think about her, how you could have avoided this had you never laid a hand on her.” He continues, looking unshaken, as if he’s digging into a peach to pry the pit out of the center, the soft flesh giving way to his pressure.

Crimson liquid replaces the hollows of his eyes, streams of the sticky blood race down the sides of his cheeks. The way he curls his thumbs beneath the side of the eye, pulling upwards abruptly. When Silas removes his fingers from inside his eyes, it looked like a digital horror effect. 

The way Greg’s eyes dangled from the sockets by tiny nerve endings, jiggling with the momentum of his body’s violent shakes. 

Without another word spoken, Silas wraps his hands around Greg’s throat and begins to compress. It takes four minutes to end his life. Four quiet minutes before his legs stop moving, his throat stops making gargled noises, and his heart rate completely stops. 

In those four minutes it felt like it was finally over. 

For now. 

Together we helped follow Thatcher’s instructions on cleaning up the body, picking up any traces of us being here, while he drowned the body in bleach. Making sure any form of DNA evidence we had left on his body was melted away by the chemicals. 

As our last measure of covering up our tracks, we let Rook douse him in lighter fluid, before setting Greg on fire. The smell of burnt flesh and fried blood took over any other smell. It came off as a perfume of death and my nose would still be smelling it years from now. 

I stood outside of the house, waiting for the body to disintegrate, smoking a cigarette against the brick when Silas came walking outside hood up and head facing the sky, like he was looking for her in the stars. 

“You good?” I ask him as I exhale the smoke from my lungs. 

“I asked you to stay a year, stay still we figured out who did it and we did that tonight. So I’m not gonna ask you to stay any longer.” He says, still not looking down from the night, “But I’m going after Frank.” 

I wasn’t offended by what he said. He knew what being here was like for me. Having to stay longer in a town that raised me to be an outcast with a family that put me there to begin with. I knew he was just trying to look out for me. 

But I told him I’d stay till he was done. I promised him. 

And I wouldn’t break it. Not even if it meant dealing with the trauma that comes with this place. 

I walk up behind him, placing my hand on his shoulder, “I’m with you, until the very end of this. I’m with you, Si.” And I meant that. I would be here until the end, whatever that meant for us. 

He nods, accepting my answer, “She used to say you were the most like the older brother.” 

I furrow my eyebrows, my throat suddenly clogged, “What?” 

“Rose. She used to say that you took on the older brother role, so that you could be what you never had. Always looking out, making sure nothing ever happened. It was one of her favorite things about you, because she knew I’d be alright as long as you were in charge.” There is a faint smile as he stares up into the night, telling me something I’d never heard before. 

I’d never told Rosemary about my family, but when you grow up around someone, it’s hard not to notice the inner workings of someone’s life. She knew enough to put certain things together. 

I let silence takeover. Allowing him some space, some time to think about what just happened. To come down from the adrenaline high we all were experiencing. 

Somewhere deep down I knew Rose was in the clouds angry with us. Angry with Silas for risking our lives just to avenge someone who was already dead. I could see her slitted eyes and furrowed brow. 

But even so, we could die knowing her killer met the same fate. 

That was enough. 

“Alistair!” Rook shouts from inside of the house, barreling through the entryway to the front porch. 

“What?” I ask, suddenly snapping back to high alert. Ready to fix whatever problem had just arisen. 

“Lyra, she called me on messenger.” He announces. 

“Lyra Abbott? What does she want?” 

“Just take it, here,” He shoves his phone at me, letting me grab it and place it to my ear. 

“Hello?” I say, confused being a massive understatement.

If she is calling me to bitch me out over Briar, I’m going to let her know very quickly this is not the right time for it. 

“Alistair! Oh, thank God. I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour. I didn’t have your number, and you don’t have Facebook, so I just started calling the other guys on here hoping you’d—” 

“Lyra what the fuck is going on?” 

I end her rambling, hoping she can get to the point. 

“It’s Briar.” She says on a breath, “Is she with you?” 

I’d delivered enough punishments to earn me a title in hell. I’d sent fear through more people than I could count. Pain in random men’s bodies just for fun during fights. 

I had gone my entire life almost without feeling this for myself. 

Absolute panic. 

I feel it in my chest. Like someone stabbing it with knives, each burning and digging into my flesh. My heart pounds so hard it vibrates my entire rib cage, the rapid thumping echoing in my ears. 

There is a ringing there as well, like a siren. So loud and high it nearly bursts my eardrums. Pins and needles prick my fingers, my toes, everything turning to numbness in less than twenty seconds. 

It was as if I’d submerged myself into water for a little too long. Held my head beneath the surface so long that when I came up, gasping for air, my throat burned and my brain was screaming at me to never stay under that long ever again. 

I’d never been scared before. 

And I imagine this is what terror feels like for others. 

“No. She didn’t leave with you at the carnival?” I manage. 

“Oh God, Briar.” She starts to weep into the speaker, sounding out of breath, “After you guys left I waited by the bathrooms and she never came back. I got a message from her phone saying she was going to your house, but it’s almost two in the morning and she hasn’t checked in. She’s not answering her phone either, Alistair what if—” 

“Stop.” I don’t need her to say the words. I don’t want to hear them out loud. 

I knew what she was going to say and the reality that it could be true made me want to hurl. I’d just watched a man have his eyes gouged out of his skull and I barely flinched. 

Yet the prospect of Briar being kidnapped and possibly sold as a sex slave was enough to send my stomach into a fit of kickflips. I pictured her fighting, doing everything she could think of to defend herself. 

Cause she was a fighter and I knew she wouldn’t go easy. 

But even so, all I could see was them using her. Touching her. Violating her. 

“Wait,” I say out loud, my brain spinning, “You said she texted you? Said she was going to my house?” 

Lightbulbs explode inside of my mind. 

The urge to throw up is quickly replaced with a bomb of fury that is seconds from exploding. 

“Yeah, why?” 

“I know who has her.” I tell her, “And I’m going to fucking kill him for taking her.”