Free I Don't Want To Kill You by Dan Wells Page A

garden?’
     
    ‘Is school over already?’ the little girl asked.
     
    ‘Yes, it is,’ said Marci, holding out her hands. ‘Isn’t that awesome?’
     
    ‘Momma’s in the garden,’ said the boy.
     
    ‘Why is school so short?’ asked the girl.
     
    ‘Because we already know everything,’ Marci answered, leading us into the kitchen. It was old, like the rest of the house, and the kitchen table was sticky with jam that I assumed had come from the twins’ breakfast.
     
    ‘Momma’s in the garden,’ the boy repeated.
     
    ‘Thanks, Jaden, I heard you the first time.’
     
    ‘Do you really know everything?’ the girl asked. ‘Do you know how many stars there are?’
     
    Marci turned to face the twins, squatting down to meet their eyes. ‘Four billion, five zillion, six hundred and twenty-three. Do you guys want to watch cartoons?’
     
    ‘Yes!’ they shouted. Marci herded them back down the hall, and I heard a TV come on. A moment later she returned to the kitchen, smiling, and walked to the sink.
     
    ‘I remember being that happy.’ She picked up a wet rag, went over to the table and started scrubbing away the jam.
     
    I turned to look at the fridge. It was covered with calendars, flyers, crayon drawings, magnetic letters and more. One of the magnets was a splash of rubber water, with a rubber fish dangling in front of it on a stiff spring. I turned back to Marci and saw her leaning forwards, her hands braced against the table, watching me. I looked away again, at the window this time, and felt suddenly stupid. Why did I keep looking away? She probably thought I was a jerk. But just as suddenly, an answer popped into my head: it was my rules again, cutting in to stop me from looking at Marci’s chest. It was a force of habit so embedded that I hadn’t even noticed I was doing it. I needed to pay attention to her, not my rules. I forced myself to look back and saw her standing upright, leaning lightly against the counter with her arms folded.
     
    ‘You’re different,’ she said. ‘You know that?’
     
    ‘I’m sorry.’
     
    She raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t be sorry, whatever you do.’ She grabbed a purse off the counter and held it up. ‘You hungry?’
     
    ‘Not really.’
     
    ‘Me neither.’ She pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, then shook her head. ‘Can you believe this?’
     
    ‘You mean the Handyman, or the suicides?’
     
    ‘Any of it,’ she said. ‘All of it. What’s happening to us?’ She caught me with her gaze, staring intently. ‘Did you know the Clarks left town?’
     
    The Clarks lived next door to Max, in the neighbourhood called The Gardens. Max’s dad had been killed in front of their house just nine months ago, when Mr Crowley had ripped him in half. I’d been there, hiding, and I’d hesitated just a second too long to save him. I pushed the thought away and looked back innocently.
     
    ‘They moved?’
     
    ‘They haven’t sold their house yet,’ said Marci, ‘but they left. Three days ago. Said they wanted to get out before school started, so their kids could start the new year somewhere safe.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Fifteen people dead in a year, seventeen if you count the suicides.’ She opened her eyes and looked up at me. ‘Is that totally freaky, that I know that? Of all the sick things to keep track of.’
     
    It was actually nineteen dead, because Mr Crowley had killed two drifters nobody knew about, and hidden the bodies so well no one had ever found them. One, I knew, was in the lake, and the other was probably there as well. There might be even more; it had taken me almost two months to trace the killings to Crowley, and who knew what he’d done before I found him.
     
    Marci was staring at the wall now, her elbow planted on the table and her fist in front of her mouth. She was blowing into it, her face slack and her eyes moist.
     
    I pulled out a chair and sat across from her. ‘Knowing how many people have died