Horror Game? Looks Cute novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Cot Thirteen

I carried the nurse's coffee cup down the cellar stairs because I could not carry anything else.

The Bear laid him on the thirteenth cot, which had not been there that morning.

It stood at the end of the row, narrow and neat, with a pink quilt folded under his chin.

Grover had come out from behind the stairs with his pink stitches and his jacket pulled tight.

He looked at the sleeping nurse and said nothing.

He took off his cap and held it against his chest.

The Bear stood over the cot with his paws hanging.

The red light came through the cellar vents and the lullaby played.

None of us said a word until the light went grey and gold.

The suit slid off Garvan.

Fur, bow, buttons, head, all of it folded down around his feet and went limp on the stone floor.

He stood there in his flannel with a ruined, hollow face.

"I told you to lock the door," he said.

"I did lock the door."

"You stood in front of me!"

"You stopped!"

"For barely ten seconds!"

His voice cracked against the stone.

"I couldn't turn around, Juno. I felt it in my legs. I took a man with a daughter."

"I know. I was there."

"I wish you hadn't been."

That hurt more than the shouting.

I put the cup down on the end of the cot, very carefully, and breathed through it.

"You think I'd rather be somewhere else?"

"I think you could be."

He rubbed his face.

"Grover knows the way to the tree. Take him and go. There's nothing in this house for you."

"Is that what you want?"

"It's what's safe."

"That isn't what I asked."

Garvan stared at me.

Grover, with exquisite tact, said he would go and see about the biscuits, and climbed the stairs one stiff step at a time.

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