Switch Blade Romance

Sneedville

Sneedville, Tennessee, September 1999.
The cabin sat hunkered back in the pines like something that had grown there instead of been built, its weathered boards the color of old blood under the weak autumn sun. Down in Hancock County, where the hills folded in on themselves like secrets nobody wanted told, places like this didn't advertise. They just waited.
Debra Grady came down the basement stairs slow, one hand trailing the rough rail, the other clutching a kitchen knife so tight the blade sang with the bass thump of music drifting from Earl Rodmoore's old stereo upstairs. The vibration traveled up her arm like a bad pulse. She could hear Earl's voice now-low, steady, the chant of a man who'd long ago decided God wasn't listening anyway.
"Pick up the dagger, Charles. Just like I showed you."
"But Papa, I'm not sure-"
"Yes you can, boy. Do it."
Debra hit the bottom step in time to see it: her son, eight years old and small for it, drawing the blade across the throat of a blond girl who couldn't have been more than nineteen. The girl's eyes were wide, surprised more than anything, like she'd just realized the joke was on her. Blood sheeted down her chest in a bright, arterial rush. The air stank of copper and wet earth.
"Oh God, Earl," Debra screamed, the words ripping out of her. "What are you doing? What did you drag my baby into?"
Earl turned, smiling that slow, yellow-toothed smile of his. "Hey, baby. Just teaching the boy about sacrifice. The old ways. The real ones."
Debra's hands flew to her face. A sound came out of her-not a scream exactly, more like something deep in her chest breaking open and letting all the sorrow spill. Charles looked up at her, stunned, the knife still dripping in his small fist.
"Mama? What's wrong? Why are you crying?"
"Oh, baby," she whispered. "Oh my baby, my baby... what did I get us into?"
She opened her arms. "Come here, sweetheart. Let Mama hug you, okay?"
Charles half-smiled, nodded. Took a step.
Earl moved fast. He stepped between them, bent, and twisted the knife out of Debra's hand with a grunt. She fought, clawing at his wrist, but he was stronger, always had been.
"You dirty old bitch," he snarled. "You'd kill your own boy?"
Debra looked up at him, eyes blazing through tears. "I'd rather send him to heaven to be with Jesus and his daddy and his brother and sisters than let you turn him into whatever the hell you are."
Earl laughed-genuine, delighted. "Heaven? Heaven!"
He slapped her hard enough to knock her flat. Stars burst behind her eyes. She tasted blood.
"Your boy'll be beyond heaven when I'm done with him."
He turned to Charles, smile gleaming again. "Charlie-boy, go upstairs. Watch some TV, okay?"
"Yes, Papa."
Charles walked past her. Debra reached out weakly from the floor. Earl stepped on her hand-hard. Bones cracked. She screamed.
Charles kept going. Into the living room. Flicked on the TV. Some cartoon blared, bright and stupid.
From downstairs came his mother's screams-high, frantic-then nothing at all.
January 18, 2015. Some back road that might've been Tennessee, might've been Kentucky, might've been nowhere that mattered anymore.
Andrew didn't know. Didn't care. Tired had gone past bone-deep into something colder, something that lived in the hollows behind his eyes. Fear was still there, but it had worn smooth, like a river stone.
"Charles... where are we going?"
Charles Grady glanced over, casual as a man checking the rearview. "Sneedville, babe. My hometown. Matter of fact, we're already here."
Andrew straightened, peered out the station wagon's grimy window. Trees. More trees. A lake glinting cold and flat in the distance. Nothing else.
"I don't see anything."
Charles giggled-soft, almost fond. "Course not. Town proper's six miles thataway, other side of the lake. We're headed for the cabin."
Andrew slumped again. Charles reached over, patted his thigh like he was soothing a skittish dog. "Don't worry, baby. Everything's gonna be okay once we get home."
Five minutes later the wagon crunched off the blacktop onto a gravel drive that wound uphill through pines so thick the daylight turned green and thin. The cabin appeared at the end like it had been waiting: two stories of dark logs, blue curtains limp in the windows, a flower bed out front that held nothing now but dead stalks and winter dirt. It looked like the kind of place families rented for summer-barbecues, fireflies, kids shrieking in the yard. Looked, but didn't feel.
Andrew stared. "Whose house is this?"
"Was my mama's. And my stepdad's. Lived here a spell when I was a kid. Folks rent it out now, but winter? Nobody's coming. Means we got four, five months of playtime. Then we decide what's next."
Andrew just looked at him.
Charles leaned in, kissed him on the mouth. Andrew fought the gag rising in his throat, swallowed it down.
"Come on, baby. Let's get inside."
The cabin was cold but clean-too clean, like someone had scrubbed it of memory. Tan vinyl couch in the living room, maroon chair beside it, a small TV that looked like it hadn't worked since the Clinton administration. Pictures on the walls: smiling strangers, kids on porches, fishing trips. Rental people. People who came and left and never knew what waited in the walls.
Charles guided Andrew to the couch, sat him down gentle. "Baby, I'll be right back. Gotta grab firewood. Don't want you catching cold."
He went out. Door shut. Andrew looked around. No phone-no surprise, landlines were ghosts these days. No nothing that screamed hope. Just quiet. The kind of quiet that presses in.
Charles came back with an armload of kindling, dumped it by the fireplace. "You didn't freeze, did you?"
Andrew shook his head. "I'm fine."
"Good deal."
Charles knelt, snapped sticks, built a neat little teepee, struck a match. Flames caught quick. He stood, rubbed his hands. "Ah, man. Feels good, don't it, Andrew baby? Come stand by it."
Andrew got up slow, walked over. Heat pushed against his skin like a hand. It felt... good. Better than the cold outside. For a second he almost relaxed.
Then Charles's hand slid down, cupped his ass. Breath hot against his ear: "I've missed this so much, baby. Haven't you missed how I touch you?"
Andrew shuddered.
"Aiden-I mean Charles-is this really the time?"
Charles nodded, serious. "Can't think of a better one."
He kissed Andrew's neck, started tugging at his shirt. "Let's move to the couch, shall we?"
Clothes came off-Andrew's first, then Charles's. "Now, baby. Lay down on your stomach."
"Charles, please. I don't-"
Slap. Hard. Stars again.
"I said lay down, didn't I?"
Andrew cried-quiet, hopeless-and did it. Face to the vinyl, mind scrambling for anywhere else. A beach. A summer song. Rachel's laugh.
Then he saw it: Charles's jeans on the floor. The blue-jean pocket. The faint outline of a cellphone.
Andrew smiled inside his head-small, secret, the first real thing in days.
Maybe there was hope after all.
Maybe the devil's own house still had a way out.
But as Charles settled over him, heavy and sure, Andrew felt the cabin settle too-like it remembered. Like it approved.
And somewhere in the walls, or maybe just in his head, he thought he heard a woman's scream cut short, from a long time ago.
The fire crackled. The TV sat dark.
And the hills outside kept their secrets, same as always.