Page 144 of Pretty Nightmare

Carter’s arms.

“Donovan!” Indie shouts again. “Talk to me! Right now! You come out here and talk to me or I swear to God, I will… I will…”

But what can she do? She is not gonna kill him. I can see that now. She is not going to shoot this man or he would already be dead.

“You know”—everyone looks over at Nathan, even Carter—“I never liked you.”

Carter snarls at him, but doesn’t say nothing. And then his face screws up. Like… something is happening inside his head and he can’t quite control it.

“But,” Nathan continues, “Indie does, Donovan.” Carter moans a little. “She loves you, Donovan. And she begged me not to kill you tonight. Not kill Carter and let you become collateral damage. And at first—”

Carter starts to sob. And I look at Adam and find him just as disturbed as me.

“At first, Donovan, I didn’t think it was possible. But you are stronger than him. You fought him all these years. Even after your father tried to kill you. Tried to make you go away. You were too nice for him. You wouldn’t do the things that Carter would. That’s why he was in the woods that night when we were kids, and not you. You could not be that monster. But he could.” Nathan whispers that last part. “He could. That’s why he’s here. But you don’t need him—”

“Shut up!” Carter is breathing hard. Panting like a fucking dog when he screams this. “Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m the strong one! I’m the smart one! I’m the fucking doctor! Not him!”

“You’re wrong,” Adam says. “You’re plain wrong. Donovan Couture is the brains of this operation and you know it. He’s the one who went to medical school. He’s the one who—”

“Fuck you!” Carter is grabbing his hair with one hand and his eyes are closed. “That’s my name! My name on those diplomas! Not his! Everything he has is mine!

Carter is going to lose this game. I can feel it. He’s so close.

“He was the kind one,” I say, picking it up. “The good one. The one who loved and was loved back. Not you, Carter!”

And as soon as the words come out of my mouth I feel guilty. For not seeing this sooner.

Not his split personality, but his… heart.

“No, no, no…” Carter is moaning now. And then he tosses Maggie over to the side and she scrambles away on her hands and knees, then collapses into the mud just a little bit behind Donovan.

I want to go to her. Pull her out of this.

But Carter begins to scream. A chilling scream that is right at home in the Louisiana swamp.

He screams like a creature of this place. Like a wounded possum or a rabbit caught in the jaws of a gator.

And then he drops his head and just cries.

“Donovan!” Indie rushes forward, and I’m about to grab Maggie when Donovan looks up and points the gun at his own head. Indie stops in her tracks.

Maggie is squirming behind him. And at first I think she’s trying to get away, but then she’s pulling something out of the waistband of Donovan’s shorts and I see the gun.

“Donovan!” Indie yells. “Donovan, you listen to me, you crazy son-of-a-bitch. You are not going to kill yourself! Do you hear me?” He doesn’t say anything and she screams it. “Do you. Fucking. Hear. Me? We do not kill ourselves. There are too many people out there trying to do that for us! We do not kill ourselves! You are stopping by a wood on a fucking snowy evening and that’s all there is to this! Do you hear me! I don’t care what anyone says, he was just stopping in the fucking woods!”

At first I don’t even know what she’s talking about. And I get a sick feeling that she’s losing her mind right in front of my face. And then I remember her journal. And that poem by Robert Frost. And how she insisted, over the objection of just about everyone, that the man in the woods was not going to kill himself.

Donovan looks at her. Tears are streaming down his face as he presses the gun to the side of his head. “I can’t do this anymore, Indie. I can’t.”

“You can,” she says. “You will.” And now she’s crying too. “You will do this, Donovan. You will—”

And then Maggie has the gun in her hand and she’s squirming backwards, pointing it at the back of Donovan’s head.

Adam and I both yell, “No!”

Donovan turns.

Not around. He turns.