The Hybrid Project

Chapter 4

May’s POV

The rope slid from my hands.

It made no sound.

Nothing did...

Behind me, Gretchen lowed softly and nudged my back, because she thought I might have fallen. Somewhere a hen was complaining.

The rain went on and on and on...

Steady and cold. And it was the strangest thing, but all I could think about was how very clean the air smelled.

Young.

Healthy.

Nothing wrong with her that anyone wouldn’t pay to fix...

I’d thought I was the one doing the saving. All the way across the yard, all the way through the barn, with that rope in my fists and my heart in my throat. I had been Captain Dawn. I’d been standing between a monster and the helpless thing I loved.

But that wasn’t the story I was in.

I’d never been in that story.

I was the thing for sale...

“Told you,” Dean was saying, grinning, to nobody in particular. “Didn’t I say? Perfect woman.”

I looked at them.

My brothers…

But they didn’t feel like family. They made jokes that felt like dirt was smudged onto my skin. They laughed at things that were cruel and hurtful. They didn’t care about the weak and those who were below them. They used their strength to keep people under their heel and did so with a smile on their faces.

Whatever they did, I was sure to my bones that it wasn’t anything good...

I wasn’t sure what “being sold” entailed---

But I knew it wasn’t right!

I turned---

And ran!

I don’t know what I thought.

I don’t think I thought anything.

My feet knew where to go before my head did. It was the woods! The black line of the trees across the pasture. I had the whole of the field before me, and the rain roaring in my ears.

I was fast.

I’d always been fast and quick.

I’d learned to be from years of being chased...

But I didn’t make it far.

I never expected to.

Four against one was never a fair fight for me...

A hand closed on the back of my neck, and fear slammed into me, cold and unforgiving. My body froze, and the air was trapped in my lungs with no way to escape...

It was Calvin!

I didn’t even hear him move. One moment there was the barn in front of me, and the next there were fingers. Long and cold and horribly strong, clamped around the base of my skull.

He didn’t pull...

He didn’t need to. He simply held, and the whole world stopped. As if I’d been lifted off the ground by the scruff, like a cat...

“Easy,” he said in my ear.

He turned me round. He did it so lightly, like a man turning a chair. And then his other hand was under my chin, and he tipped my face up into the lantern light, until there was nowhere in the world to look but at him.

“Look at me!”

I shut my eyes.

I wasn’t sure why, but some defiant part of me wanted to let him know that this wasn’t over yet. Or maybe I was just so scared I wanted this nightmare to be over.

His grip tightened, just a little. A

nd something in my neck gave a warning pop.

“Mary. Look at me!"

I didn’t want to. I’d spent years not looking at my brother’s eyes, and I had gotten very good at it. It was the one thing in all of that house I had ever managed to keep.

But my eyes opened anyway.

His face was very close. Rain ran down it in bright lines. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his mouth was curved in that mild, warm, patient smile. And above it were his eyes. They were as blue and clear as a summer morning.

“There,” he murmured, sugary sweet. “That’s better.”

I thought of Captain Dawn. I thought of her on her hands and knees on the broken bridge. With a monster standing over her.

I thought:

Get up!

Stand up!

I thought it as hard as I’d ever thought anything.

My legs didn’t know that story.

And tears pressed against the corner of my eyes...

“Now, listen carefully,” Calvin said.

His thumb moved, once, along the edge of my jaw.

Almost tender-like.

A cold shiver ran down my spine!

“Dr. Wren pays on delivery,” he explained in that same calm, calculating tone I’d heard him use on the girls in town. “And he pays for a girl who arrives in good health. That’s the only reason you’re still standing here and not lying in that mud. Do you understand?”

I understood...

“I’d hate to damage the merchandise.”

The rain drummed on my skull.

Behind him, the others had gone quiet.

Even Dean.

Even Harlan, who’d never in his life stopped to wonder at anything. I could feel them watching, the way you feel the heat of a fire at your back.

“So you’re going to come back to the house now,” Calvin said, softly. “And you’re going to be good! And you’re going to stay where I can see you until the end of the week. And I’m not going to have to chase you again.”

His fingers tightened.

“Because I’d enjoy it, Mary. And I don’t think you’d like how much.”

Something moved, deep in his eyes.

A brightening.

Like that lamp being turned up that I’d seen before. Slow and bright and eager, behind a window. It was the same look he’d worn at the barn when I was thirteen. And it made my whole body coil with dread and some primal warning that pushed me to get as far away from him as possible.

But I couldn’t…

All I could do was nod.

“Good!”

He pushed me in front of him, and we walked back towards the house. Dean and Harlan picked up their jokes again, mocking and ridiculing me. John talked to Calvin about all the things they could buy with the money.

And Calvin---

Watched me!

I knew then that there was no hell on Earth as terrifying and unpleasant as my oldest brother...

And in the dark behind me, Gretchen lowed, long and low and frightened.

But nobody answered her at all...

That night, for the first time since the fire, I slept in a bed.

Slept is a generous word.

It wasn’t mine...

Calvin had told me so at the foot of the stairs, with his hand still resting on the back of my neck like a collar.

“You’ll sleep in my room!”

Nobody argued.

John was too busy pouring himself something stronger than beer. Eve kept on wiping a plate that was already dry. Dean made some remark about my being lucky, and Harlan laughed. I stood there with my wet hair dripping down my back and did not understand any of it.

Calvin’s room was the neatest in the house. Everything in it sat exactly where he’d put it, and nothing was ever out of place unless he’d placed it there on purpose. A row of hunting knives hung along one wall, in order of size. Each on its own nail, the blades clean and bright.

The bed was narrow, with a gray wool blanket pulled so tight you could have bounced a coin off it.

He locked the door behind us, the latch as loud as a bomb going off in my mind. I watched while he slid the key beneath his pillow, his eyes never leaving mine.

My body shivered from something I didn't have a name for. But my heart lurched in my chest, and my stomach felt loose until I wanted to vomit...

Then he took a length of cord from his pocket, the soft, thick kind used to tie off feed sacks, and he looped one end around my left wrist.

He did it slowly, his fingers lingering on my skin. Involuntarily, the hairs on my arm rose, and every instinct I had told me to pull away.

To slap his fingers away and run!

But I remained still...

His lips curled into a small grin, as if he enjoyed my discomfort.

He tied the other end around his own right wrist, and gave it a small, thoughtful tug, as if testing the line on a trap.

“Sleep, Mary,” he said, his voice low but an order nevertheless. “I’ll know if you don’t.”