𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐒𝐎 | ᴍɪʟʟᴀʀᴅ ɴᴜʟʟɪɴɢꜱ

𝟏𝟔] 𝐆𝐎𝐃 𝐖𝐎𝐍𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐌𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐌𝐘 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐒

CHAPTER SIXTEEN ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ GOD WONT FORGIVE ME FOR MY SINS!

"THIS WHOLE TRIP HAS TURNED OUT TO BE SHIT," I told Jacob, stepping in a pile of horse poop. "Literally."

I didn't look up from the turdy checkerboard that stretched out before me until I'd crossed the ridge and was coming back into town, which is when I realized where all the mess had come from.

Where this morning a battalion of tractors had plied the gravel paths, hauling carts loaded with fish and peat-bricks up and down from the harbor, now those carts were being pulled by horses and mules. The clip-clop of hooves had replaced the growl of engines.

Missing, too, was the ever-present buzz of diesel generators. Had the island run out of gas in the few hours I'd been gone? And where had the townspeople been hiding all these big animals?

Also, why was everyone looking at us? Every person I passed stared at us goggle-eyed, stopping whatever they were doing to rubberneck as we walked by.

We must look as crazy as I feel, I thought, glancing down to see that I was covered in mud from the waist down and plaster from the waist up, so I ducked my head and walked as fast as I could toward the pub, where at least I could hide in the anonymous gloom until Dad came back for lunch.

We decided that when he did , we would tell him straight out that we wanted to go home as soon as possible. If he hesitated, Jacob would admit that he'd been hallucinating, and we'd be on the next ferry, guaranteed.

Inside the Hole were the usual collection of inebriated men bent over foamy pint glasses and the battered tables and dingy decor I'd come to know as my home away from home.

But as we headed for the staircase we heard an unfamiliar voice bark, "Where d'ya think yer going?"

I turned, one foot on the bottom step, to see the bartender looking me up and down. Only it wasn't Kev, but a scowling bullet-headed man I didn't recognize. He wore a bartender's apron and had a bushy unibrow and a caterpillar mustache that made his face look striped.

I might've said, I'm going upstairs to pack my suitcase, and if my dad still won't take me home I'm going to fake a seizure, but instead I answered, "Just up to my room," which came out sounding more like a question than a statement of fact.

"That so?" he said, clapping down the glass he'd been filling. "This look like a hotel to you?"

Wooden creaks as patrons swiveled around in their stools to get a look at me. I quickly scanned their faces. Not one of them was familiar.

I'm having a psychotic episode, I thought. Right now. This is what a psychotic episode feels like. Only it didn't feel like anything. I wasn't seeing lightning bolts or having palm sweats. It was more like the world was going crazy, not me.

I locked eyes with Jacob, who told the bartender that there had obviously been some mistake. "My family and I have the upstairs rooms," he said. "Look, we've got the key," and I produced it from my pocket as evidence.

"Lemme see that," he said, leaning over the counter to snatch it out of my hand. He held it up to the dingy light, eyeing it like a jeweler.

"This ain't our key," he growled, then slipped it into his own pocket. "Now tell me what you really want up there- and this time, don't lie!"

I felt my face go hot. I'd never been called a liar by a nonrelative adult before. "I told you already. We rented those rooms! Just ask Kev if you don't believe me!"

"I don't know no Kev, and I don't fancy bein' fed stories," he said coolly. "There ain't any rooms to let around here, and the only who one lives upstairs is me!"

We looked around, expecting someone to crack a smile, to let us in on the joke. But the men's faces were like stone.

"He's American," observed a man sporting a prodigious beard. "Army, could be."

"Bollocks," another one growled. "Look at 'im. He's practically a fetus! And the other-well I don't even know what that one is!"

"His mack, though," the bearded one said, reaching out to pinch the sleeve of Jacobs jacket. "You'd have a helluva time finding that in a shop. Army- gotta be."

"Look," Jacob said, "I'm not in the army, and I'm not trying to pull anything on you, I swear! I just want to find my dad, get my stuff, and—"

"American, my arse!" bellowed a fat man. He peeled his considerable girth off a stool to stand between me and the door, toward which we'd been slowly backing.

"His accent sounds rubbish to me. I'll wager he's a Jerry spy!"

"We're not spies," I said weakly. "Just lost."

"Got that right," he said with a laugh. "I say we get the truth out of 'em the old-fashioned way. With a rope!"

Drunken shouts of assent. I couldn't tell if they were being serious or just "taking a piss," but I didn't much care to stick around and find out.

One undiluted instinct coursed through the anxious muddle in my brain: Run. It would be a lot easier to figure out what the hell was going on without a roomful of drunks threatening, to launch me.

Of course, running away would only convincethem of our guilt, but I didn't care. I tried to step around the fat man. He made a grab for me, but slow and drunk is no match for fast and scared shitless.

I faked left and then dodged around him in the right. He howled with rage as the rest unglued themselves from barstools to lunge at both of us, but we managed to slip through their fingers and run out the door and into the bright afternoon.