"She's bleeding."

"How long did you keep them alive? Days, weeks, months? Again, the possibilities. My cover afforded me the perfect opportunity to relish the hunt. But after that… It's the lack of time, the need to rush, rush, rush that's always troubled me. You spend so much energy luring them in, binding them up, and then, just when you're starting to enjoy things, you have to be practical. Someone might hear a noise, someone might get curious. You have to end the romance and get the job done. Doesn't do any good to call attention to yourself, even for the special ones.

"Tell me the truth," Charlie wanted to know "Weren't you the least bit inspired by my work? The nurse in '75. Totally an impulse job. I was out on the grounds. She was out on the grounds. One thing led to another. It was the biggest thing that ever happened to Boston State Mental, well, until your chamber was discovered. Benji? Benji, are you listening to me?"

Ben leaned over Charlie. The look on his face raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck. I dug my fingers into Bella's fur. I willed her not to make a sound.

I placed one hand on the floor and started silently easing myself and Bella toward the door.

"You hurt my Amy," Ben said. "Now I must hurt you."

At the last minute, Charlie seemed to realize he didn't have an ally. At the last minute, he raised the switchblade, realizing the danger he was in.

Ben caught Charlie's wrist in a single muscled hand. I heard the crunch of bones.

I hit the door, reaching up frantically, scrambling with the locks. Why, oh why did I have so many locks?

I couldn't look, but I also couldn't do a thing to block out the sound.

As my uncle tore the switchblade from Charlie Marvin's crushed hand. Then, very neatly, jammed the entire blade in Charlie

Marvin's eye. A scream. A wet popping sound. A long, low wheezing groan, like air being let out of tires.

Then silence.

"Oh, Amy" Ben said.

I couldn't help myself. Huddled with Bella against the locked door, I started to cry.

YOU'RE ALL I ever wanted, Amy," Ben was saying. "The other girls-they meant nothing to me. Mistakes. I saw the error of my ways years ago. And I waited for you. Until one day my patience was rewarded." He reached out with a bloody hand and stroked my cheek. I tried to shrink back; there was no place to go.

"Please unlock the door, Ben." I wanted to sound firm, but my voice came out shaky. "Bella, she's hurt. She needs immediate medical attention. Please, Ben."

He looked at me, sighed heavily. "You know I can't do that, Amy."

"I won't tell anyone about you. I'll say Charlie attacked me. Was crazy. I stabbed him myself. Look at the cuts all over my body. They'll believe me."

"It's not the same anymore. In the beginning, when I found you again, it was okay. I realized immediately that no one else knew who you were. You were special, untouched. You belonged to me."

"I won't move. I'll stay right here. Everything can be just the way it was before. I'll order fabric, you can deliver it every day."

"But it's not. You know now. The police know. It's not the same."

I closed my eyes, fighting for control. Bella whimpered again. The sound gave me strength. "I don't understand. You made it twenty-five years without me. You took those other girls. Obviously I mean nothing to you."

"Oh no," he said immediately, earnestly. "I didn't stop because I wanted to. That's not how it was at all." Ben removed his brown cap. And for the first time I saw the furrow running along the top of his head, a twisted scar that bore no hair. "This is what stopped me. If it hadn't been for this, I would've pursued you forever. Twenty-five years ago, Amy, you would've been mine."

"Oh God," I moaned, because in that moment I finally heard it. Ben may not have looked like my father, but if I listened to his voice, his intense, earnest voice as he sought to make his very important point… He sounded exactly like my father. Same tone, same rhythm, same voice.

Had I realized it before, made the connection on some subconscious level? Then let him in, made him my sole connection to the outside world because blood was thicker than water and part of me had rejoiced in finding family again?

"All I've ever wanted was someone who wouldn't leave me," he was saying now, my father's earnest voice continuing to emit from a terribly scarred skull. "Someone who would have to stay. I thought your mom was the one, but she misunderstood. Then I got myself thrown into prison." His tone fell, then picked back up. "But when I got out, I saw you and I understood.

"The way you smiled at me, Amy. The way you gripped my finger in your pudgy little fist. You were my family. You were the one person who would always love me, who would never leave. And I was so happy. Until the day I showed up and you were gone. Your whole family. Vanished."

"Bella is hurt," I pleaded. "Please."

"It was a terrible time. I knew, of course, that you never would've left me by choice. Obviously your father had made you do it." Ben took my hand, stroked my wrist with his blood-splattered fingers. "So I started asking around. An entire family can't just disappear. Everyone leaves some kind of trace. But no one could tell me anything. Then it came to me. My brother would need a job to support his family. Who could help get him a job? His former employer, of course. So I broke into Dr. Badington's house. I found his wife."

"What?"

"I came by in the afternoon. Naturally, Mrs. Badington refused to speak at first, but by the time I was done with her cat, she told me plenty. About your father's new position at MIT. A house in Arlington. Better yet, she never related my visit to anyone. The kinds of things I did to her, after all, are not the things you mention in polite society. Plus I promised that if she ever said a word, I'd return and do the exact same things to her husband."

"Oh my God…"

"I set out for Massachusetts. I was going to see you that very night. But it was late, I got lost and the craziest thing happened. I got carjacked. Wrong place, wrong time, with four big brothers who beat the shit out of me. Then they took my clothes and they… And then there was darkness. For such a long time.

"Bit by bit, I came around. I relearned how to eat, dress myself, brush my teeth. I spoke to very nice doctors who told me my life had gotten off to the wrong start but now was my second chance. I could be whoever I wanted to be, they said. I could reinvent myself.

"And for a while, I tried. It seemed like a nice idea. I could be Benji, whose father was a CIA operative and not just some drunken asshole who one day murdered his own wife before blowing out his brains. I liked being Benji. I really did.

"But I was so lonely, Amy. You must understand what it's like. To have no family. To have no one ever call you by your real name. To have no one who knows the whole you, the real you, and not just the façade all of us must wear in public. It's no way to live."

"Stop it," I whispered, tugging at my hand again. "Stop it, stop it." But he wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't stop speaking, my father's voice, my own thoughts, wiggling like snakes into my brain.

"I found the culvert one day when I was walking the grounds. It intrigued me enough to make it my own little home away from home. I was doing well by then, still living in the institute but enrolled in a nearby school. The culvert became a chamber, the chamber my study hall, and then, one day…

"I saw her. Walking home from school. I saw her and I could tell from the look on her face that she saw me, too. She liked me, she wanted to be with me. She was the one who would never leave."

"Shhhhh," I tried again, "Shh, shh, shh. You're crazy I hate you. My parents hated you. I wish you were dead."