The tape acted like a mask. But I didn’t need to view the entire face to recognize Michael.
I wiped the beaded rainwater from the small screen, moving on to the next picture. Michael was still down on his knees. Only this time, he wasn’t inside a patch of woods. He was inside a building or a house. Down inside a basement. He was down on his knees on a hard-packed gravel and dirt floor. Surrounding him were stone and cinder block walls. He was bathed in harsh white light, just like in the previous picture. Probably from an exposed light bulb. I knew that basement, knew what had happened there. To Molly and me.
I dropped the phone, fell to my knees, and coughed up bile. The acidic bile filled my mouth, burned my throat. Spitting it out, I inhaled deeply of the cool wet air. I was afraid to pick the phone back up; afraid of what came next. I’d already seen enough.
But then I had no choice but to pick the phone back up. No choice but to keep on looking. It seemed to take every ounce of my will, but I thumbed to the next picture and drew my eyes to the screen.
This time I saw myself. Rather, not only myself, but Michael and I seated on the couch in my apartment, sipping wine. The picture appeared to have been snapped from directly outside the apartment window.
I depressed the keypad, moved on to the next picture. And the next, and the next…
Me, knapsack in one hand, one of Franny’s canvases in the other, moving toward my Cabriolet inside an empty downtown Broadway parking garage; me running for the Cabriolet; me jumping behind the wheel… Me standing on the porch of my parents’ home, staring out onto the woods and Mount Desolation beyond them… Me holding the black and white photo of Molly and me in my hand as I sat down onto the porch, pressed my back up against the clapboard wall… Me in bed, my eyes wide open in alarm, Michael asleep beside me…
I guess I wasn’t nuts after all. Whalen had been following me all along.
More photos appeared. Black and white images.
Molly and I when we were no more than three, running in the backyard behind our farmhouse. A color shot of Molly and me waiting for the school bus in our St. Catherine’s elementary school white and blue checkered uniform skirts. Molly and I as pre-teens playing one of our nightly games of flashlight tag in the tall grass behind our home on a hot summer’s night. Molly in her bed asleep; me undressing in my bedroom, both photos no doubt having been shot from outside our windows where Whalen must have perched himself on the porch overhang.
All those years ago…
Chapter 49
The phone pulsed in my hand. Thumbing SEND I read,
Run away little kitten. I’m going to chase u now. You remember the game. Flashlight tag. Cry, cry, cry.
I peered at the radiant display hoping that I would wake up from a dream. But this wasn’t a dream. It was the past relived. This was Whalen chasing Molly and me through the woods, again.
I closed the phone, shoved it in my pocket, looked up at the sky and saw only darkness and clouds illuminated by the distant flicker of lightning. I had to find a way to deal, get a grip.
I started by gripping the flashlight and aiming it dead ahead.
Chapter 50
The flashlight lit up a stand of brush, vines and trees directly in front of me. Making my way through that thick stuff would have been impossible. Shifting clockwise I began to pivot on the balls of my feet like a dancer pirouetting in slow motion. I kept this rotation up, keeping the shining light out ahead of me, until I recognized a narrow foot or deer trail that cut through the thick woods. Probably the same trail that had been here since Molly and I were girls.
I was doing my best to think clearly, without panic. Doing my best not to lose it. Doing my best not to lose my mind. If ever I wished Molly by my side, now was the time. I had to force myself to think like her. What would she do?
Swallowing a breath, I spoke to myself in a calm, collected manner. You need to figure out which way you are going so that you do not start running around in circles.
I aimed the flashlight up at a black and blue sky. No chance of viewing any stars or moon. Not that it would make an ounce of difference. I shined the light straight ahead toward the trail, then turning, shined it behind me. That’s when something began to go rapidly south.
The flashlight began to fade.
The beam started to fade to a kind of yellowish half light. My pulse picked up. I opened my mouth, allowing some of the rain to fall onto my tongue.
What I would do without the light? What would I do in the pitch dark? How would I find the house? How would I find Michael?
I shook the flashlight, but it was a useless, wasted motion. Common sense told me to use whatever available power I had left in the flashlight to enter onto the trailhead and get the hell away from this place. I aimed the dim light out ahead of me, making my way across the clearing in what I could only pray was Michael’s direction.
I was standing at the edge of the chosen trail when the flashlight went dead.
Chapter 51
Rain began to pour down in sheets of painful, ice-like bullets. The heavy cloud cover surrounded the hillside like a vapor ring. Directly before me came the intermittent explosions of lightning. Without them the darkness of the woods would have been absolute and impenetrable. Because of the cloud cover, no stars shined up above. No moonbeams penetrated the low lying mist and fog.
Another quick shot of lightning caught my attention just as I began the sightless journey onto the narrow trailhead. As I was about to place boot-heel to the soft mud-covered floor, the lightning struck the ground somewhere off in the distant valley, toward the field and my parents’ house at the far end of it. Because of its flat, dark appearance, I became convinced that I was looking directly at my parents’ property.
What had seemed like a dream was now painfully real. Whalen had kidnapped Michael and I, somehow dragged us up to Mount Desolation. Michael was inside that old house in the woods. He was tied up, held hostage in the basement. If I didn’t get to him before Whalen got to me, he would die. Or maybe we would both die anyway.
I inhaled a deep breath, exhaled, tried to get my head together, tried to think logically, without fear or emotion clouding my judgment. The distant lightning strikes provided just enough light to tell me the path I was about to tread would lead downhill. Downhill toward the house.
I also knew that downhill could be deceiving. Mount Desolation wasn’t really a mountain at all. It was made up of several large hills that crested and dipped before finally the flat, heavily wooded land took over. I also knew that if the empty field behind my parents’ house was located in front of me, then so was that terrible house in the woods.
Whether I liked it or not, that was my direction. I was the blind woman forced to move by touch, one foot before the other, the rain coming down stronger now against my face and head, running down my scrunched brow in streaks.
A branch slapped me in the face and my eyes teared up. Big tears fell and mixed with the rain on my face. I tried to stay on the narrow trail. I was blind, trying to stay free and clear of the brush and the trees; trying to do it by touch, by feel, with arms and hands extended out in front of me while I moved at a slow, frustrating trot.
Another lightning bolt revealed a landscape of thick, dripping growth. The sight of it lasted only a split
