Chapter 6
“Holy shit.”
I found Preston’s exclamation quite appropriate as we stood there in the middle of Archie’s living room, in the house where he lived with his aunt. The spot in nature I liked so much popped into my head, how an uneven rocky wall rose up, up, up on both sides of a narrow valley in the middle. This was like that, in a way. Except here, the valley wasn’t water, and the mountains weren’t stone, dirt, and roots. Although they might have been. At first glance, I saw just about everything else, junk everywhere, stacked, mounded, strewn. Instead of protected, I felt trapped. Instead of embraced, I felt suffocated. How in hell had Archie lived like this?
“Where’s the body?” I was shaking. I wanted to run, but the only clear egress was behind me, back out the front door, a
