Chapter 14: The Liar's Bed

Chapter 14: The Liar's Bed

The world had been bleached of all color. After the visceral reds and browns of the barn and the grimy squalor of the trailer, Eli awoke to a world of absolute, sterile white. The ceiling was a perfect, unblemished plane. The sheets drawn up to his chest were a crisp, starched white. Even the air smelled white—a sharp, antiseptic scent that scoured his nostrils and reminded him of clinics and fevers from a childhood he barely remembered.

A machine beeped in a steady, metronomic rhythm beside him, a synthetic heartbeat keeping time with his own. A cool, pleasant numbness radiated from the IV line taped to his arm, a blessed chemical fog that kept the worst of the pain at bay. It was still there, of course. Below the sheets, where his legs should have been, was a dull, distant continent of fire, a constant, throbbing pressure that was the new, permanent geography of his body. But the morphine made it manageable. It made it someone else’s problem.

He was safe. Rescued. The word felt hollow, alien. He had been pulled from the abattoir, but the abattoir was now a part of him.

The door to his room opened with a soft whoosh, and a man stepped inside. He wasn't a doctor or a nurse. He wore a rumpled gray suit that looked like it had been slept in, and his face was a roadmap of exhaustion. But his eyes, behind a pair of cheap wire-rimmed glasses, were sharp, intelligent, and missed nothing. He carried a small, spiral-bound notebook and a pen that had been chewed on.

“Mr. Hale?” the man asked, his voice low and gravelly, as if he’d been drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes all night. “My name is Detective Harrington. I know you’ve been through a lot. I just have a few questions, if you’re feeling up to it.”

Eli’s mind, sluggish from the drugs, sharpened with a jolt of cold clarity. This was the next battle. He had survived the butcher; now he had to survive the men with notebooks. The physical test was over. The intellectual one was just beginning.

He nodded weakly, a gesture that felt like a monumental effort. He let his face fall into what he hoped was a mask of traumatized confusion, a performance made easier by the fact that it was mostly true.

Harrington pulled a plastic visitor’s chair to the bedside and sat, the cheap material groaning under his weight. He flipped open his notebook. “We identified the man from the property. Michael Garrett. Lived there his whole life. Kept to himself. No priors, other than a drunk and disorderly twenty years ago. As far as anyone knew, he was just a quiet man who did odd jobs.”

Eli said nothing, letting the silence stretch, forcing the detective to fill it. It was a small act of control, but it was all he had.

“Can you tell me what happened, Eli?” Harrington asked, his tone gentle, almost paternal. It was a practiced, disarming gentleness that set every nerve in Eli’s body on edge. He’d heard that tone before.

Eli took a slow, shaky breath. He had rehearsed this in the moments of lucidity between waves of pain and drug-induced sleep. He had constructed his ledger, a careful accounting of facts and fictions designed to balance perfectly.

“I was… driving,” he began, his voice a dry, hoarse whisper. “Late. Couldn’t sleep. Just… out on the back roads. My car… it was acting up.” He let his eyes drift to the ceiling, as if struggling to recall a nightmare. “He flagged me down. Said his truck had broken down a little ways back. He seemed… normal. Friendly.”

Harrington scribbled in his notebook. “Did you know him?”

“No. Never seen him before in my life.” The lie came easily.

“What happened next?”

“He offered me a beer. For helping. Said he had a cooler in his truck. I didn’t want it, but he insisted.” Eli closed his eyes, letting a tremor run through his body. “I don’t remember much after that. It must have been… in the drink. I woke up… there. In that barn.” The memory, raw and undiluted, threatened to overwhelm him. He let the genuine terror seep into his voice. “He… he had me chained to the wall.”

“And then?” the detective prompted, his pen scratching against the paper.

“He started talking,” Eli choked out. “Crazy things. About… art. About experiments. He was a monster.” He paused, letting the weight of the word hang in the sterile air. “I don’t know how long I was there. He… he started hurting me. I must have blacked out.”

This was the core of the lie: a foundation of absolute truth. The drugs, the chains, the pain—it was all real. He just had to edit the preface and omit the footnotes.

“How did you get away?” Harrington’s eyes were fixed on him, his gaze a physical weight.

“He… he unstrapped my arms to move me. To put me on that… that slab in the middle of the room.” The words came out as a ragged gasp. “He turned his back. There was a knife in his pocket. An old pocket knife. I don’t know why. It was just there.”

“So you grabbed it?”

Eli nodded, letting a single tear trace a path from the corner of his eye into his hairline. “I had to. He was going to kill me. I stabbed him. We… we fell. It was… I just reacted. I didn’t even think.” He portrayed himself as the ultimate victim, a creature of pure reflex, not the cold, calculating mind that had sought this violence out. He was the lamb who had miraculously, freakishly, killed the wolf.

Harrington was silent for a long time, just looking at him. Eli could feel the detective weighing his story, checking it for inconsistencies, for the subtle tells of deception. Eli kept his breathing shallow, his expression broken. He held the detective’s gaze, offering nothing but the image of a shattered young man.

Finally, Harrington nodded slowly. “You did what you had to do to survive, son. No one is going to fault you for that. You’re a very lucky, very brave young man.” He closed his notebook and tucked the pen into his shirt pocket. He stood, the chair groaning again in protest.

A wave of profound relief washed over Eli, so powerful it almost made him dizzy. He had done it. Harrington believed him. The ledger balanced. He was safe.

The detective walked to the door, his hand on the handle. He paused. “Just one more thing, son. A loose end. We’re trying to put together a timeline of Garrett’s last few days.”

He turned back, his expression unchanged, his voice still casual.

“Do you know a waitress named Emily from the Starlight Diner?”

The name hit Eli like a physical blow. Emily. The target. The sweet, innocent girl from the greasy spoon diner where the pact had been made over lukewarm coffee. The Starlight Diner. The name was a thunderclap in the silent, white room. How could they know? How could they possibly have that piece?

His heart, which had been beating with a slow, sedated rhythm, suddenly hammered against his ribs. The steady beep of the monitor beside his bed instantly betrayed him, its tempo accelerating into a frantic, panicked tattoo. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.

His mind raced, desperately searching for a foothold in the crumbling edifice of his lie. The support group, their shared predatory gaze, the cold certainty with which Mike had chosen her—it all flashed through his mind in a sickening, high-speed reel.

He forced his face to remain a mask of confusion. “Emily? No. I… I don’t think so. What diner?” The words felt clumsy, thick in his mouth. The denial was too quick. Too sharp.

Harrington’s eyes didn’t change, but Eli thought he saw something flicker deep within them—a glint of confirmation. The detective had been fishing, and the monitor had just told him he’d gotten a bite.

“Don’t worry about it,” Harrington said, his voice smooth as silk. “Just tying up loose ends. You get some rest, Mr. Hale. We’ll talk again when you’re feeling stronger.”

He slipped out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Eli was alone again in the white room, but the sanctuary had become a cage. The silence was no longer peaceful; it was accusatory. The steady beeping of the heart monitor was a frantic confession he couldn't silence. He had survived the butcher’s cleaver, only to find himself trapped under the detective’s scalpel. The seed of suspicion had been planted, and Eli knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than any memory of the barn, that it had already begun to grow.