Broken Branch by John Mantooth Page A

the sober look on his face, she was betting on the former, and this, she realized, was by far the more frightening of the two.
    â€œDid you bring it?” he said.
    â€œIt’s against the tree,” she said, pointing off into the shadows, not too far from where Trudy crouched. “But I don’t know why we need it.”
    â€œGod told me. It’s fulfillment of Otto’s prophecy.”
    Rachel nodded, as if this explained everything.
    â€œGo on, knock.”
    James stepped away, back into the shadows. He stopped just a few feet from where Trudy was, so close, she could hear him breathing, could smell his familiar sweat scent. Except this time it was different, and she couldn’t say exactly how.
    Rachel knocked on the back door and waited. She turned around and looked at James. He nodded. She knocked again.
    Trudy couldn’t move. She wanted to warn Helen and Hank, but she also didn’t want to give herself away. She decided to wait. To see what was going on. Once she was sure, she’d do whatever it took, she promised herself. The demon in her belly twisted in anticipation.
    Rachel knocked a third time. This time, the door swung open after a few moments.
    It was Hank.
    â€œIt’s late. I’m sleeping,” he said.
    â€œI know, and I wouldn’t have come except for Otto sent me,” Rachel said in that false sweet voice. “He wants you to see something.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIt’s over here.” She pointed at the trees opposite of where James waited.
    It happened so fast, Trudy barely had time to register it. James sprung from the nearby trees and swung a hatchet. It gleamed in the moonlight and the reflected light hit Trudy’s eyes and blinded her. She felt dizzy and braced herself against a tree to keep her balance.
    The sound of it striking flesh was the worst, and Trudy kept hearing it even after it was over. The clean whistle as it flew through the air, broken suddenly by a stiff, wet crunch as it met resistance. Him grunting as he pulled the hatchet out and swung again and again until there was no resistance and the head had been severed from Hank’s body.
    The head landed in the grass near James’s feet. The body stood there a second longer before the knees gave way and it fell softly onto the ground.
    Rachel moaned. Trudy looked away to keep from vomiting. When she looked back, James was dragging Hank’s torso into the trees. “Get his wife out here,” he said.
    But there was no need to get her. She already stood in the doorway, her mouth open in a silent scream.
    Trudy knew how she felt. Try as she might, no sound came from her lungs. She was simply too stunned to make a sound.

42
    By the time Trudy finally felt her lungs come back under her own control, it was too late to scream. Too late for Helen and Hank. Too late for James too, she realized, but maybe not for Trudy. Maybe not for Rodney and Mary.

43
    Later, after following them silently through the woods, Trudy watched them twisting the willow branches around Hank’s body, until it was as if he were in a cocoon. Except no butterfly would emerge on the other side. Instead, he would rot there among the willow branches, a false warning to all who gazed upon his spinning corpse. When they finished, and he bobbed—headless—next to Simpson, James picked up his head, weighing it in his hand before they tied several branches around it so that it hung like a moss-covered stone.
    â€œI’ll bring his wife back on my own. You go inside and write a note. Tell the truth about how they were planning on leaving.”
    Trudy didn’t hear what Rachel said because they walked off, and their voices were drowned out in the distance. Besides, something had caught her attention. The hatchet lay on the ground, beneath the spinning bodies.
    She forced herself not to look at poor Simpson swinging in the breeze or Hank, whose head seemed to dip and nod. She picked up