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 they 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.
