Read The Border Part Two for Free Online Page B

question, but something about Joe’s tone seemed a little frantic now.
    “I just saw…” He paused, staring down at the table as if he was reliving the moment. “You know what I saw. I’m not saying it again.”
    “I know what you told us nine years ago.” She flicked through her notepad. “You said you saw a… Do you mind if I say it, Joe?”
    No reply.
    “You said you saw a man with a head like… You said he seemed to have antlers, or pieces of wood coming out of his head. Is that still correct?”
    He nodded.
    “Now,” she continued, “obviously that description presents a few challenges, because even though it’s very distinctive, it doesn’t -”
    “It’s what I saw.”
    “I believe you, but -”
    “He had something over his head, like a cloth, and…” He paused again. “I saw them in the moonlight.”
    “The antlers?”
    “They weren’t very big. Some of them were… All of them maybe, they were broken.”
    “Right.” She looked down at her notepad for a moment. “And did he -”
    “Then he came at me,” he continued, flinching slightly, “and he let out this noise, like a cry. He fell on me and knocked me over, and then he was on top and that’s when I felt…” Looking down, he placed his hands on the front of his overalls, as if he was feeling his belly. “I kept looking at her while he was doing it.”
    “Looking at her?”
    “C-C-Caitlin,” he stammered, as if the effort of saying that name had required an inordinate amount of effort. “I knew I couldn’t fight him off, I was just a lanky streak back then, and I didn’t know where to look while he was doing it to me, so I looked at her . She was up above me, in the tree. She was already dead. I just kept looking at her while he was putting the knife in me over and over. I wanted her to be okay.”
    “I know you did.”
    “She was dripping blood,” he added. “She was… I knew… I could tell she was gone. I tried to reach out to her, but the man was too heavy.”
    “He was holding you down?”
    “He had her heart in his hand.”
    “While he was attacking you?”
    He nodded.
    “So…” She paused. “This might be important, Joe. Did he keep her heart in his hand the whole time he was on top of you, or did he put it down somewhere?”
    “He held onto it.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I saw it.”
    She made a quick note. “And then what happened?”
    “Then he stopped. He leaned closer, real close, and looked into my eyes. I guess he thought I was dead, or as close as made no difference, and then he got off. I remember wondering why…” He paused. “I remember wondering why he was so delicate with her and arranged her all nice, and why he was so rough with me and just left me on the ground like that. The next thing I remember is being in the hospital, with everyone running around and all those voices shouting.”
    “But the face of the man who attacked you -”
    “I didn’t see it,” he continued. “He had something over it, like a piece of cloth or a sack, something like that. There were holes for the eyes, but I didn’t see anything in there. It’s like they weren’t there at all.” Suddenly, he started unbuttoning the front of his overalls. “I’ll show you what he did to me.”
    “It’s okay,” she replied. “I remember. I came to the hospital, remember?”
    “Look,” he continued, pulling the fabric aside to reveal his scarred belly. “That’s what he left!”
    “I know,” she told him. “I saw you nine years ago when you still very sick, when they didn’t know whether or not you’d -” She caught herself just in time. “I know what this monster did to you, and that’s why I’m going to make sure we catch him so that -”
    “You can’t catch him,” he replied.
    “I promise you, we can.”
    “Then why haven’t you?” He turned for a moment, as if he was hearing a voice nearby, before glancing back at her. “When I think about him,” he continued, “and I think about you,