What Lies Beneath

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter 18

"What the hell do you want with her?"

"Oh Matthew, it will actually make you listen to me when I tell you what to do."

"Look, I'll do whatever you say but please don't hurt her."

"I won't if you would just do what I say!" Janet's not the same person that I knew before. The caring actions she's done for me and the way she made everything feel welcoming is gone.

"Ok, what do I need to do?"

She starts to circle Jamie and me as if she is going to pounce on us at any moment. "I have James, did you know that? I have him here with me and none of you knew! Ha!" Her eyes are wild with excitement, evil excitement. I have no idea where we are in this building, nowhere to escape.

"Why did you do it? Why would you take him away?"

"Because you little idiot, he was supposed to be with me and not my bitch of a sister. I was supposed to be the one he would be having children with and going away with every other month, but of course Shianna had to ruin everything for me. Can't you see how angry that made me? How torn?" she says more sincere but goes right back into Jane. "But no worries now. I'm about to get everything I've wanted for years." She starts to advance closer, closing in this circle she has created.

"But wait! Janet-"

"It's Jane! You bastard of a child!"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, just please hear me out. We know about the list." She's taken aback and automatically knows what I'm talking about.

"That goddam grocery list that your incoherent mother made for me? Ha! What a joke, as if she actually intended for me to follow out with that! There's only one thing that I wanted, and now I have it here. The only person that's in my way right now is you, and especially you," she says, looking directly toward Jamie.

She doesn't respond to my utter surprise, only stares back at her with hatred as if her actions are more audible than her words.

"What? Nothing to say?" she asks her directly.

"I do." Jamie doesn't speak any words, but a crude smile sprawls across her face at the sound of the stranger's voice. Jane stops dead in her footsteps and looks around in the darkness.

"Come out! You coward, come out now!" Janet presses herself up against a wall closest to James's room. Jamie grabs my shirt and drags me to the opposite corner from where Jane is. I hear footsteps from the vacant hallway but there's not enough light to show his face.

"You have not been very pleasant to my children, Jane. I'm afraid that I can't standby any longer." The voice is deep and weary, but those words were as strong as a hammer breaking through the silence that he created. He steps out into the light and, for the first time, I see my father standing before me.

"I have something of value to you and you have something of value to me, Jane. If you do not do as I say, there are going to be some major complications," David says sternly. Jane doesn't know how to react, so she runs into James's room.

"Don't be a coward Jane!" he screams. His voice echoes through the empty halls and her laugh spills from behind the closed doors.

"What do you want me to do?" Jamie asks eagerly.

"Take yourself and Matthew far away from here, I don't want either of you guys getting hurt."

"No!" I yell, "I don't want to lose you again."

David looks over at me for the first time and hugs me. It was one of those hugs where you aren't hugging just to do something, and it's not one of those cheap hugs where you know the person doesn't care. This is a hug where he grabs the back of my head and pulls it safely toward his chest, and his other arm is tight around my shoulders. It feels like a protective shield could never break the barrier he has put between us and the rest of the world. All too soon, he lets go and a tear falls from his eye.