I’m frozen. He makes another spinning gesture at my legs. “Pick them up.” I force myself down on the thin mattress pad. It’s covered in a white fitted sheet that smells fresh from the package, but it’s soaked into the walls, what’s been done here, a psychic assault that makes me retch, quietly, swallowing. No doubt he’s scrubbed the bits and pieces away—I saw gallon bottles of bleach on the closet floor around Hazel—but horror is a residue, molecules I inhale. “Let me go,” I whisper. Nothing; he’s busy getting his tools out. “You killed those kids.”

“Don’t tell me what I’ve done.” Conversational. He brings out a power drill. A hammer. A plastic box rolling with nails and screws. The light flickers overhead, and he tsks, tossing over at me, “Generator. It happens.”

I’m rigid as he kneels beside me. “Somebody will hear.”

He gives a half smile, gaze traveling from the crown of my head down to my arm, which he takes in a light grip, looping two zip ties around my wrist, strapping it to the metal frame of the cot. “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to hear us.” Jerks the ties so there’s no slack; I cry out. “Used to come out here hunting with my dad, before the state bought up the land.” Exhales as he sits back on his heels, gaze going over the ceiling, the light, with its moth. “Camp’s still here, though.”

State-owned land: we’re still in the marsh. “I just want to go home. Please.” Strain my arm against the tie. “We didn’t do anything to you.”

“You know what you do.” Mr. Mac drops to my level, folding his forearms on the pad, and my senses recoil from the normal-guy smell of him: Ivory soap, coffee, toothpaste, like some olfactory checklist of how he prepared for tonight, as if it were a Lady Elks’ playoff game. “I think you know exactly.” He reaches out, playing with the earrings in my lobe, flicking them. “But it’s different when we’re alone. Nobody laughing then.”

I shake my head, tears stinging, escaping down my face. “I’m not—”

“Ah. It’s okay. That’s just school.” He releases a sigh. “It was the same way when I went there. Everybody laughing.” He looks at the wall for a second, working the sheet between his fingers. “But now I’m big. And it’s so easy.” Nods toward the closet. “That one there? Got right in the car when I said Bree had had an accident. That her mom was waiting for her at the ER. All you guys did just what I wanted. I’ve been watching you, you know. Figuring you all out.” He moves down to my feet, secures my right ankle with two more ties. Pats my leg, pausing thoughtfully. “I’ve never done two at once before.”