searching for. She found his shoulders.
The knife had been in his left hand.
‘What’s happening?’ Cora called. Her voice sounded shaky.
Abilene ran her right hand down Jim’s left shoulder and along his arm. The arm was sticking straight out away from his side, bent at the elbow. She slid her hand up the slick skin, past his wrist to his bunched fingers. She didn’t need to feel the knife to know it was still in his fist. She pinned his wrist to the floor.
‘I think I’ve got him,’ she said.
‘Hope so,’ Cora answered. ‘Wrecked my other fuckin’ leg.’
‘Just stay put. I’ve got him.’
‘Where’s Viv?’
‘Over here. I think she’s knocked out.’
‘Shit’
Keeping Jim’s knife-hand tight against the floor, Abilene hunched down and pressed her left forearm against his throat. She pushed.
‘What’re you doing?’ Cora asked.
‘Strangling the bast…’ The blow caught her just above the hip. Her breath burst out. She felt as if her side had been caved in, but she stayed on top of him. When he started to buck, trying to throw her off, she dropped down against his chest and thrust her arm as hard as she could against his throat. He punched her again, this time hammering her rib cage.
And his knife hand got free.
In an instant, the blade would be driving down into her back.
She flipped herself off Jim - away from the knife - and hit the floor rolling.
Jim growled. She heard him scuttling after her.
She rolled over again and again until a post blocked her across the belly. She dropped onto her back, sat up, glanced into the darkness toward the sounds of Jim rushing closer, then hurled herself over to her knees and scrambled up and ran.
Ran and saw twin patches of dim gray light off to her left and dashed toward them.
Windows.
The two at the rear of the dining area?
She wasn’t sure, didn’t care. They were a way out.
If Jim doesn’t get me first.
She could hear him huffing, pounding the floor, gaining on her.
The gray window straight ahead grew.
She couldn’t see whether it was a broken one.
They do it in the movies.
In the movies, it isn’t real glass.
But Abilene knew she would rather risk glass than face the certainty of Jim’s knife.
Arms hugging the sides of her head, right hand clutching the nape of her neck, she dived at the window. She rammed through. Glass exploded. Her head and neck got outside before the shards began to drop on her. She felt them bite and slice through the back of her blouse. The denim of her skirt seemed too heavy for them to penetrate, but they got her bare legs.
The dive took her clear of the window. She glimpsed the moonlit floor of the porch. Then its edge. Then the ground far below. She yelped ‘No! ’
Her hips and thighs pounded the floor, skidded. She flung her arms back, hoping to grab hold. Her fingertips brushed the edge of the porch as it slipped away. She dropped headfirst. Her legs flew up. Her heels struck the railing.
Then there was only the warm night air rushing around her.
This is it.
She saw the pale strip of granite along the rear of the lodge and wondered if she would miss it. As her legs swept down behind her, she saw the shadowed wall of the lodge and then the porch above her… the porch with its damn railing that she’d dived right under… then the second-story porch, then the edge of the roof. The moon was straight above her face when the ground crashed her rump. Her legs and back slammed down. Her head smacked.
Lights flared behind her eyes.
Not just in the cartoons.
There was a roar in her head. A roar and a blazing pain. Her whole body seemed to be roaring inside.
She wondered if this was how it felt to get hit by a car.
No. It’s how you feel if you go through a window and fall a story.
She wondered if she was conscious.
She opened her eyes. Standing at her feet, naked and pale in the moonlight, was Helen.
Helen. Though the handle of a knife jutted from her belly, Abilene saw no blood, no guts spilling out, no rips at all in her skin.
Joy welled up through her agony. It was followed quickly by terrible sorrow, for she knew this couldn’t be Helen. Not really. She was either dreaming or hallucinating. Helen was dead. Had to be.
‘Rough night, huh?’ Helen asked.
‘My God.’
‘How you feeling? Pretty shitty, I guess.’
‘You… you’re alive?’
‘No such luck.’
‘I don’t…’
‘Don’t you know a ghost when you see one?’ She smiled. ‘I couldn’t find a white sheet. But this is okay. It’s a pretty hot night.’ She raised her arms and looked up at the sky. ‘A gorgeous night.’ Her arms lowered. Her smile slipped away. ‘But look, you haven’t got much time. You’ve got to pull yourself together before Jim shows up. He didn’t want to hurt himself following you through the window, so he’ll be coming out the kitchen door. Any second now.’
Groaning, Abilene pushed at the ground with her elbow. She braced herself up.
‘Come and pay me a visit,’ Helen told her. ‘I’ve got something that’ll help.’ Her fingers closed around the knife handle. She slipped the long, thick blade from her belly. It came out, leaving no wound behind. ‘It’s his, after all. You can give it back to him.’
And Helen was gone.
And Jim lurched across the porch and rushed down the stairs. He’d lost his cut-offs. But he hadn’t lost his knife. It jumped up and down in his right hand, flashing silver moonlight.
Not his knife, Abilene thought as she struggled to her feet.
Finley’s knife.
His is in Helen. In the shower room.
But how?
Jim leaped off the last stairs and turned toward Abilene. Between her and the outer pool. But he no longer seemed to be in a hurry, maybe because she wasn’t running.
‘Gotcha now,’ he said.
With each step Jim took toward her, she sidestepped away from the lodge. Moving slowly further into the
