Lay Me Down

21. Lay me down.

{Cary}

Cary curled on his side in the dark, his muscles still knotted with the tension of opening the ugliest part of himself with Pete in the room. It felt wrong for there to be no punishment after lying all these weeks and putting Pete's kids in danger—instead to change into pyjamas Mel had washed and folded for him and slide between soft sheets in his own room. It felt wrong for Pete to let him go without saying a single angry word about the thing he'd done. All the things his father had said before crawled over his skin and made his scalp prickle. He pressed his hand against his heart where it beat steadily underneath the "X" he'd carved to remember his promise. Maybe that was coming tomorrow. Maybe when Pete and Mel talked, they would find just the right word for him and use it to slice him out of their family for good.

He thought he heard a knock and lifted his eyes to the door.

Split-lip slipped into the room, light coming faintly off his skin in the dark. He stood next to the door, holding Cary's eyes. Cary couldn't open his mouth, but his heart leapt in his chest.

"What if he doesn't?" Split-lip said, like they were continuing a conversation they'd just left off. "What if he lets you stay?"

Cary was afraid to look away, but he curled his arms more tightly against his body. "He won't." His voice was hoarse and low.

"You don't know him," Split-lip said. "He's not like your father."

"He shouldn't," Cary whispered. "I don't—deserve to stay. You know. You know me."

He felt Split-lip's look go under his skin, travel through the hot, red cavern of his body, find the threads of black and follow them to the heart of him. Cary made a sound, shaking with Split-lip there—inside him.

Can I be here? Split-lip's voice rumbled softly.

There was so much dark, sticky poison there—nothing Cary wanted Split-lip to see. "No." He balled himself up small, waiting for the backhand that would knock him against the wall and remind him where he belonged.

In a moment, they were back in his bedroom, Cary's breath hitching in the quiet. Split-lip was hunkered against the wall beside his door, but his eyes didn't go into Cary. They were downcast—his mouth was soft, and his expression was peaceful—a light in the darkness.

Cary swallowed the sick feeling he'd had when they were in the place with everything wrong about him pulsing like a dark heart. "I hate that—I hate that part of me," he whispered. "Where I hurt people. Jon thinks it isn't real, but it is, isn't it?"

"Yes," Split-lip said quietly. "It's real."

A shudder went through Cary, and he pressed his hand against the back of his neck where his hair had lifted. "He could never get it out of me through my skin."

"I could." Split-lip lifted his eyes to Cary's again. Even in the dark, Cary could see flecks of gold glint in their depths. "I could get it out."

Cary's heart lurched—he closed his eyes to check if Split-lip had really said that. If he said it, Cary believed it. Split-lip had a power greater even than his father. Split-lip could flay him open and scrape everything dark out in the blink of an eye. It would kill him.

But he would die clean.

Cary tossed the blankets aside and crossed the floor, holding out his hands and arms to Split-lip, the scars ugly on his skin. He went to his knees, his heart in his throat, strangling him so he could barely speak. "Do it, then. Please, Jesus-God."

Split-lip took his hands, and then his arms were touching the skin of Cary's forearms, lifting them over his head and laying him down on the floor. He unzipped Cary, throat to navel, and Cary gasped, his hair lifting like he'd been plunged under a warm wave. Split-lip put his hands inside him, and Cary made a sound behind his teeth, feeling the snap-snap-snap of every sticky tendril as Split-lip broke their hold on Cary. He pressed his palms against the carpet, trying to stay still while Split-lip hurt him, unhooking that mess from the inside. There was a pull so hard it felt like his spine would come out with everything else, and his scream tore out his throat.

Then it was over. The warm feeling drained from his body, pooling around him with his own blood.

His voice was scraped to a thread. "Did you get everything?"

"Yes," Split-lip whispered back. Cary could still feel his hands resting in the hollow of his ribcage, his fingertips touching the stuttering muscle of his heart.

His lungs collapsed, and he fought to fill them one more time. "Thank y—"

Black.

Cold.

Silent.

"NOW LIVE."

The words travelled like a hot arc of electricity into his ear, and his heart jumped in Split-lip's hands. In a second, Split-lip had pulled his hands out of Cary and sealed his flesh and bones around himself, and he was whole again, sucking in huge breaths on the floor.

Cary rolled to his knees and sat up, pressing his hands against the smooth, warm skin of his chest. Alive. He raised his wide eyes to Split-lip.

There was a thing on the floor between them, shrivelled and black, like a desiccated corpse with hooked fingers and toes. Even with the skin pulled tightly over its cheekbones and the lips pulled back from its teeth, Cary recognized his own face. He scrambled back, as far from the thing as he could get.

"That's mine now," Split-lip said. He picked the thing up by its arm and dragged it onto his back, getting to his feet like it was heavy.

"What are you doing?" Cary was good at reading faces—that thing hurt Split-lip to carry.

"I'm taking care of this," Split lip said. He looked down at Cary, his eyes glinting gold in the dark. "What about you?"

Cary dropped his eyes under Split lip's look. He felt his heart beating steadily under his palm, and his chest rise and fall. Every breath was easy. There was no scrape and tug when that thing dug its fingernails in and twisted him up inside. He didn't even know what this feeling was called—he'd never felt it before.

There was a price for this. Jesus-God, he knew there was.

He lifted his face to Split-lip, then lifted his hands, open, so Split lip could do whatever he wanted with him. This body he had brought back to life belonged to him. This life he had put into Cary's chest belonged to him.

A smile lifted the side of Split-lip's mouth, and he nodded. "I'm coming back for you, Cary Douglas." Then he was gone.