This is a disclaimer.
AN: A real summary would be along the lines of "Kate can deal. No, really!"
By her bloodstained hands
For months afterwards, Danny draws. He has nightmares – they all do – and when he wakes, late at night in the dark of the home that isn't, he draws. No one ever sees the pictures, but then, as the therapist pointed out one day, that's not really the point of him drawing them.
Kate pretends. It's something she got very, very good at those first few months after Andy died, after her protector, her idol, was laid to rest in the sod where she would never be able to reach him again. She pretends, and she deals, in her own quiet way.
Neither of them have any idea how Mom and Dad are dealing with it. They don't want to, particularly. Moms and Dads don't need time to deal with things; they're meant to be stronger than that. After all, they've got to take care of their kids, right?
Even after the police have been and the place inspected and the forensic people have crawled over every inch of the cellar and walls and everything's been boarded up again and Uncle Ted's funeral is over with and the world begins, slowly, to settle back into place, the house makes them all nervous. The estate agents are not impressed.
"It's a prime piece of property, sir," the woman – Kate didn't catch her name, but she's never seen anyone look so like the personification of the word unctuous in her life – says one day in the kitchen. Her male companion nods, like a robot, stiff and brief. Up down. Up down.
"Prime," he parrots. "Good land, good location... you could make something of this farm, you and your family."
"My family nearly died on this farm," Dad says angrily.
"Of course, sir," the woman says. "Of course. The psychological trauma – we understand."
"You know, you should make sure the next owners are insured against dangerous psychopathic kids in the walls when you brainwash them into signing the contracts," Kate says, sugar-sweet, as they sweep past her on their way out of the little house of horrors.
In the end, the house looks the way it did in the beginning: boxes everywhere, dark rooms, lamps on the floor with cords trailing every which way.
Maybe that's why Danny crawls into the bed with Kate and sits on the second pillow beside her, with his knees drawn up to his chest and his eyes pensive and dark. Kate heaves a long-suffering sigh and puts her book away.
"I don't understand where they came from," Danny says. "No one ever actually told me, and I don't understand."
Kate heaves another sigh, rather more serious this time.
"They were born here. Their grandfather didn't want them, so he locked them up."
Danny doesn't look like that's a satisfactory answer, but Kate is determined not to say anything else. The kid's not quite twelve yet, his brother died less than two years ago and he's been living in a house that had murderers in the same way other houses have rats. Kate doesn't think he's ready to hear the rest. She's not even sure he knows what a paedophile is.
Yeah, all right, so maybe she's being a little naive. But he's her little brother, dammit. Andy's not here anymore, so she needs to make sure he's OK.
"I was useless," she says suddenly. Danny looks up at the ceiling, doesn't meet her eyes, but she knows he's listening. "I was totally useless in the shed. I mean, I stood there, and I shrieked. Who does that? Who stands around and shrieks when there's a – a thing trying to kill your Mom? I'll tell you who does that. Drew fucking Barrymore."
Danny snickers at the swearword (or possibly the reference). He looks over at her at last and shrugs.
"You could take, like, classes."
"In shrieking?" Kate says blankly.
"No, dumbass," he says, exasperated. "In boxing or something. Fighting."
"It's called self-defense," Kate says in her most withering older-sister tones, and shoves him out of bed. "Now get out. I'm trying to sleep."
Danny sticks his tongue out at her and slips out of the room. The next morning, they leave. Van packed, car loaded, house totally empty. Kate pauses at the bottom of the stairs and looks up at the dark windows, eyeholes staring into nothingness. She's almost expecting to see a lank figure at that window on the first floor, the window where it all started, the one she's never been able to walk past without feeling ill.
Mom lays a hand on her shoulder. "Honey? Let's go."
"They talked about ghosts," Kate says, not looking at her. "They talked about them, and we believed them. Those two – they might still be here. They might still be trapped." The idea took hold of her without warning, and now it won't let her go. Imagine, being trapped in this house for all your life, never seeing daylight, never even learning to talk properly, and then finding that after you die, nothing changes.
That would suck.
Mom wraps an arm around her shoulders and tugs her backwards, towards the car, towards Danny and Dad.
"They might be trapped, but we're not," she says. "We're not, OK?"
Kate gives her a look, cell phone in one hand, iPod in the other.
"Well, that was trite," she says, and climbs in the car. Iowa is a hundred million miles away from here, and they might do self-defense classes at her new high school.