The remains Page 15

  I felt suddenly lighter.

  I began to move along the earth floor with increased speed while the sound of rushing water became more intense. A sudden burst of energy filled my veins. But when something stung the back of my leg, I dropped down face-first onto the path like a sack of rags and bones.

  My God, had I been shot?

  The ground zero of pain was located in the back of my right thigh. From there it rippled throughout my body. The pain shot up and down my backbone with surprising efficiency. I might have rolled over onto my back then, bled to death.

  But I attempted to move my feet, then my legs. Until I pulled myself up from off the wet ground. I leaned up straight, felt the welt growing behind my thigh. Because the wound was out of vision, I had no way of knowing if a bullet had actually lodged there or merely grazed the skin.

  My gut reaction was a graze. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to move my leg.

  Then, coming through the leaves, the quick whoosh of bullets flying overhead, slapping the foliage. Some of the rounds that pinged against the stones blew up red-yellow sparks. I dropped down hard onto my belly. My body ached while the bullets came at me fast, but missing all the time as though Whalen intended for them to miss. And I was sure he did.

  Whalen had lived in these woods, hunted them for food. He knew what he was doing. The silent rounds fell short, most embedding themselves into the ground only inches from my face. Water and mud splashed into my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. The rapid fire rounds burst through the trees, but not a hint of gunfire or a muzzle flash as though Whalen were using a silencer. The scene was like something out of Michael’s manuscripts-guns, bullets, silencers. But then I was no stranger to firearms. My dad had been a trooper, a hunter, a shooter, a gun collector. I’d lived with guns for my entire childhood.

  From down on the ground I reached around to my thigh, touching the spot of impact. The thick welt had already formed. There was a small tear in the jeans above it. I felt the sting of my touch. Bringing my fingertips back to my face, I raised them to my lips. I tasted the fresh blood.

  The rounds kept coming at me fast, furious and accurately inaccurate. If this weren’t like a surreal dream, I would have been too petrified to move. But none of this was real to me. It was all a bizarre dream that only bordered on the realistic. At least, if I wanted to live, if I wanted Michael to live, that’s what I had to believe.

  I had to do something. I could either lie there and waste precious time, worry over the pain, worry that I would never wake up from the nightmare, or I could make a move, get myself further downhill, out of range, and closer to the house in the woods. Closer to Michael.

  A scream pierced the darkness-a yelp coming from behind me along the high ground. The yelp shattered my senses; cut through flesh and bone.

  Whalen releasing thirty years of pent up desire?

  I made a silent three count. Breathing deep, I pushed myself up and onto my feet and bolted off through the brush like an angry field cat.

  Chapter 53

  I ran.

  Didn’t seem to matter where to, so long as he couldn’t aim a gun at me, hit me with a bullet. The whole of Mount Desolation had become an unrelenting obstacle. Branches whipped and flailed at my face, little devils stinging my arms and chest. I limped and hobbled as fast as I could, off trail, in a directionless panic, desperate to get myself out of range before one of Whalen’s near misses connected again.

  My escape should have been a good thing.

  But it turned out to be a grave mistake when a head-on collision with a tree trunk knocked me senseless.

  Chapter 54

  The noise from the slamming door shoots through me like an ice cold blade. Even Molly stops her incessant mattress jumping. She stops and stares at me. And me back at her.

  The solid noise of the slamming door… It’s a noise you feel as much as hear.

  “ Must be the wind,” Molly says, eyes wide.

  “ Must be,” I swallow, although I don’t recall much of a breeze blowing outside in those woods.

  For what seems forever we just stand still inside the second floor of that home. We wait for another noise to confirm the worst: that we are not alone.

  “ Maybe it’s dad,” Molly whispers.

  Trooper Dan.

  My stomach caves in on itself. Body grows weak, dizzy. I feel nauseas.

  Then a footstep along the first floor. Heavy, leaden. And another.

  Footsteps.

  “ That’s not dad,” I swallow.

  We wait, paralyzed, not knowing what to do.

  The footsteps bear down, their sound growing louder with each step. When I hear the footsteps pounding up the stairs, Molly screams. I drop to my knees.

  We’re not alone anymore.

  Chapter 55

  How long I was out, I have no idea. A minute, an hour. Who knows? Lying on my side on the soaked earth I had only a foggy memory of the head-on collision with a tree trunk. All I knew was this: one moment I was trying to run, bullets whizzing by my head, tearing off leaves and twigs, and the next I was opening my eyes onto a pain and a tight vice-grip pressure that began and ended in the center of my face. Like two separate sticks that had lodged themselves up inside my nasal passages, the tightness throbbing and stinging, making eyes fill up, my head ring.

  Lifting my right hand I extended the index finger, gently touching the crest of my nose. I felt the surface sting where the cartilage had fractured, the skin split down the middle. I could breathe, but only through my mouth.

  My nose was broken.

  Blood combined with the rain, running thick onto my lips and tongue. It tasted of salt and water. There was a sick, inside-out sensation in my stomach. I heard another shriek coming through the trees, not far behind me. Whalen knew these woods like he must have known his own face. His thirty year absence from them would make no difference. He must have recreated them a thousand times before in the solitary confines of his prison cell. I heard the rustling of leaves and branches. Still, I could not see him. His presence was invisible to me. He was a small, wiry man. But the noise sounded like a bear crashing through the forest.

  That’s when I felt them on my legs.

  The snakes.

  Maybe I couldn’t see, hear or smell them, but I could feel their thick rubbery, legless bodies slithering over my lower legs, one after the other as if I were laid out atop a nest.

  The garden snakes frightened me almost as much as Whalen. All that rain must have forced them out of their holes; out from their havens in between the rocks. They were crawling on me and I could not move. I was immobile, catatonic.

  I had to move. I had to get out of there, get away from the devil, away from the snakes. Inhaling a breath, I issued a near-silent shriek and forced myself up.

  A pair of snakes fell to the ground. I felt and heard the sound of their rubbery bodies coiling against the leaves and the pine needles. With the powerless flashlight gripped in my right hand, I shuffled through the thick woods. Not in any specific direction, but away from the snakes; away from the devil monster crashing through the trees.

  Without warning, I fell.

  Chapter 56

  The whirling current took hold of my body, drawing me into its center. I felt myself being pulled under, body spiraling, going down. I had no choice but to let myself go, be drawn under the surface of the drowning pool, be dragged along the rocky bottom of a rushing stream, spit out over the waterfall.

  But something happened then. I didn’t free fall to the rocky stream-bed below. I found myself reaching out, clawing for something to grab onto, my nails bending back and tearing. Until I found a handhold in the form of a thick tree root that protruded from out of the cliff side.

  The wide open valley lie a half mile away. Beyond it, my parents’ homestead. The farmhouse and the barn roofs were flash-lit by long spider-veined lightening strikes. To my left, the rushing stream water spewed out over the cliff edge. It shot off into mid-air before arcing downward, falling
through the black night to the invisible rocks below.

  To my right, the rock face. Positioning the toes on my boots, I searched for a foothold against the loose shale until I managed to locate some solid footing. Grip tight, I pulled and chinned myself up and over the tree root. When my head was above the rock-face’s edge, I raised my right leg, located a secure toe-hold.

  Pressing my full weight down on the right foot, I let go of the tree root and thrust my right hand over the cliff edge. I then pushed the palm down flat onto the wet, gravelly floor. With my left hand still secured to the root, all I needed was to lift my body up and over the side.

  It’s precisely what I started on when my right hand exploded in pain.

  Chapter 57

  I faced my nightmare in the flesh. Whalen stood over me, green goggles covering his eyes, masking his face. He stood erect, body dripping rain water. I sensed him with every nerve and neuron in my body.

  His right foot had come down on my right hand, boot heel crushing flesh and bone. The pain shot through my arm, passed the elbow and up into the shoulder, then up into my head. The entire right side of my body was on fire. I screamed, my voice howling into a night punctuated with rain, thunder and darkness. I heard my own voice echoing off the cliff-side, shooting out into the valley, out over the deep woods, out over the fields of tall grass, out over the valley and the farmlands.

  I felt the pain with every exposed nerve in my body. I held to the edge, ran my free hand over the shale wall, searched for a chunk of loose rock. I located a piece about the size of my own hand. The rock was smooth on one side, with a sharp jagged edge on the other. I fit the rock into the palm of my left hand, gripped it with every ounce of my strength. Then, with one swift downwards swing of my arm, thrust the sharp edge into his foot.

  He screamed, his high-pitched voice crying out into the deep night. He was the suddenly maimed monster. Whalen may have had the power to see in the night. But he never anticipated the chunk of sharp shale coming for his foot. He yanked his right foot out from under the rock, yanked it loose from the tip of the sharpened edge and fell flat onto his back.

  The pain left me then.

  There was only the bleeding and a rush of energy that shot up from the tips of my toes, entering into my limbs. I did not pull myself over the edge so much as leapt over it, landing directly on top of him.

  I wasn’t me anymore. I’d become my sister.

  It was as if Molly-her strength, her fearlessness, her courage-had entered into my body and my soul. Pressing knees against Whalen’s arms, I pulled the flashlight from my pant waist, raised it high. Using it like a club, I swung. There was the good feel of a tooth or maybe teeth breaking on contact, his lips popping, gums tearing. Two tubular incandescent eyes stared up at me while the monster once more screamed a high-pitched yodel that cut not only through the forest, but sliced its way into my skull and brain.

  I loved every second of it. Molly loved every second. We’d been waiting for a chance like this for thirty years. Not even death was going to keep Mol from having her revenge.

  I swung wildly, hitting the monster again and again. But the pain I inflicted seemed to do no good. Whalen lifted his head, spit blood into my face, and smiled. The devil smiled, worked up a gurgled laugh while swinging his right arm around so quick, I never saw the rock that slammed against my skull.

  The tables had reversed themselves then. Now it was me who was on my back, left side of my head pounding in rapid pulses of sting.

  I gazed up at green eyes.

  “Kill me now!”

  The air went abruptly still. The rain, the wind, even the lightning seemed to halt their fury as if God Himself were creating a still-life of the scene. Whalen wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, did it without the least bit of effort as though impervious to the pain.

  He spit another wad of blood and spittle.

  “Little… kitten… has… lost… her… mittens,” he whispered through clenched, broken, blood stained teeth. “Cry, cry, cry little kitten.”

  From down on my back I stared up into the mechanical green eyes, at the rain water that dribbled down off his shaved head, down onto bloody lips. I tried to speak. But no words would come. Only the silent motion of a mouth opening and closing. As if responding to the silence, he reared back and away from me.

  Just like that, the devil shot off into the night.

  Chapter 58

  Down flat on my back, I sucked wet air through a gaping mouth. I opened my eyes, set my left hand onto the ground and pushed myself up onto my feet. Stuffing my damaged hand into my jeans, I approached the tree line.

  Bushwhacking almost blindly through the thick greenbrier and second growth saplings, the sound of stream water grew more prominent with each step forward. I had no choice but to swallow the pain, ignore the five senses and focus instead on the anger, on the determination to reach Michael.

  But there was something I had to do before anything else. My nose was broken. I couldn’t leave it like that. If I was going to get to Michael, I needed to breathe through it. Without thinking about it, I cupped the broken nose inside my two hands. Supporting the fleshy nostril portion between opposing thumbs, I sucked a deep breath through my mouth, cracked the cartilage back in place.

  I released a strained shriek that shot off into the valley.

  But when the sting went away, I sensed only a dull soreness where the skin was split.

  There was one more thing I had to do. It dawned on me that maybe if I opened up the flashlight, shifted the batteries around, there’d be enough power left in them to give me light. Even if only for the few minutes it took to get to the house. That’s exactly what my father used to do when I was little and the power went out. He’d make the flashlight batteries last longer by shifting them around inside the tube. I unscrewed the end, poured the batteries out into my hand, reversed their original order and reloaded them into the tube. Holding my breath, I switched the light on.

  It worked. I had light. Not a strong light, but enough of a dull yellow glow for me to see my way through the darkness.

  I took off.

  Trekking through the thick growth, the rain poured down even harder than before. It came down with such force, it penetrated the tree cover, raindrops shooting and scooting between the now illuminated leaves like a spray of bright yellow paint. The rain smacked against my face, stinging the laceration on my nose. For the first time since having been dropped into the woods, I felt like I had to come to grips with my exhaustion.

  I was dead tired. Tired and wired. I was living a very bad dream and all was as much surreal as it was the real deal. Branches slapped and jabbed at my face. It was as if the trees had eyes and saw me coming. But I didn’t feel the pain and sting anymore. I felt only the urgent need to get to Michael.

  I knew then that Whalen was going to kill us. That it was only a matter of time. I didn’t want to die alone. Not at the hands of the devil. I wanted to die alongside Michael; wanted to die in his arms, the two of us married once more.

  Chapter 59

  He’s a thin man. Not short, not tall. But wiry and strong. He’s dressed in filthy khakis, work boots, a white t-shirt that’s turned filthy gray, and a green baseball hat with the words ‘Christian Brothers Academy’ sewn across its brim. His face is gaunt and covered in black stubble. He’s holding a pistol. He doesn’t say a word when he grabs hold of my hair and pulls me in toward him.

  When Molly comes at him, her hands and fingers held out before her like claws, he cocks back that pistol, hits her over the head with the butt. She falls like a rock beside me on the floor.

  I want to scream, but the pain in my head is too great. The man grabs hold of my hair with one hand and tries to caress it with the other. It’s the first time a man other than my father has touched my hair and I become immediately nauseous.

  I feel him shiver, his body quake.

  “ Two little kittens,” he chants. “Two little kittens have lost their mittens and the
y begin to cry. You naughty kittens. Now you shall have no pie.”

  “ I’m sorry,” I plead, tears streaming down my face. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “ And they begin to cry,” he repeats. “Cry, cry, cry.”

  He drags me downstairs, then goes back up after Molly. I want to run but I’m afraid he’ll kill her.

  Molly is groggy by the time she is laid out on the warped floor beside me. Without a word about his intentions, Whalen is kneeling over us. He’s tearing off these extra long pieces of duct tape, wrapping them around my right wrist and Molly’s left wrist so that we’re joined together. When he’s finished, he yanks us up onto our feet.

  “ Little kittens have lost their mittens,” he chants, “Run away little kittens so I can catch you. Cry, cry, cry.”

  Molly is more awake now. But she’s not saying anything.

  The man presses his forearm against his eyes.

  “ I’m counting little kittens,” he sings.

  “ Run,” Molly insists. “Anyway we can, as fast we can.”

  Chapter 60

  I broke through the tree-line, the trembling beam of flashlight lighting the way. I spotted the stream. It ran fast and wide on its way to the pool and beyond that the cliff. I scanned the beam of dull flashlight over the surface of the stream, searched for a way to get across without being dragged under by the storm-fed white water. I looked for that old bridge of boulders that Molly and I had used-the one with one rock succeeding another. At the same time I looked for the lightning struck tree that might have fallen across the stream’s width. I found neither.

  My hand was broken, my ribs stinging and my face split down the center. If I tried to swim, I’d drown. I moved my way upstream for maybe thirty feet, then downstream until I came to the edge of the pool.