No way across the open water. No way across. No rocks, no felled tree, no shallow land bridge. The house in the woods was located on the opposite side of the stream. Michael was held hostage in the basement of that house.
I made my way back upstream and stood on the edge of the bank, feeling the oily mist on my face, feeling the stream’s white force. I had to think like Molly. What would Molly do if she were in my boots? I knew exactly what she would do. I stuffed the flashlight into my jeans, teetered on the edge of the white water and gulped down my dread.
I jumped.
Chapter 61
We skip and hop our way down the porch stairs, onto a narrow path that leads out into the woods. Molly has regained some of her strength. Groggily, she pulls me along.
“ Come on,” she says in a muted but screaming voice. “We can make it out of here if we try.”
But I’m slowing her down. I’m so scared I can hardly move. We’re identical Siamese twins, joined at the wrists. I’m crying, tripping, struggling to keep up.
Together we fall along the path.
Molly screams, “Get up! Get up!”
I cry, try to lift myself, but we fall again. I try again to raise myself up and this time it works. We raise ourselves up together. We hobble along the path until we hear the sound of the stream.
“ All we have to do is get across that stream,” she exclaims. “Then we try for home.”
We keep moving, playing the man’s strange game of cat and mouse. All the while the sound of rushing stream water gets louder, more forceful. When we come to its edge, Molly asks me if I’m ready. Ready to jump in, that is.
She would pull me in if isn’t for the gunshot.
Chapter 62
The ice cold whitewater dragged me downstream in a direct path for the drowning pool. I held out my hands for anything I could latch onto. Body twisting and turning in the water, I grabbed onto a rock with both hands and arms. For maybe a second or two I managed to stop my downstream progress toward the pool. But it didn’t take long for the smooth, moss-covered rock to betray me. As the frigid water pulled at my body and the rock slipped out of my hands, I felt my body once more being carried away.
My head and body were pulled underneath the water’s surface. I swallowed the water and felt myself drowning. Until my head would once more reemerge, only to be sucked under again. Deeper this time, the water filling my lungs, choking me.
But instead of panic, an explosion of anger erupted inside of me. It built up and up until nothing mattered anymore. Not my pain, not the cold, not exhaustion, not the suffocating sensation of drowning. Not fear. There was only the need to beat the stream, to beat my fear, to put an end to Whalen. To get to Michael.
Despite the pull of the rushing water I yanked the flashlight from out of my pants and flicked it on. I ducked under the stream’s surface and righted myself so that my chest and legs were parallel with the streambed. I shined the light in the direction of the opposite bank. An instant passed before I located a felled tree that had been completely submerged by heavy water.
As I came upon the tree, I took aim at one of its thick branches. With my good hand, I grabbed hold of the branch, grasping it as tightly as I could. It worked. Pulling myself up and out of the stream, I spit out the water that filled my mouth and lungs. Then I sucked in a deep breath of sweet oxygen. Pulling myself in toward the tree, I planted my right foot in the secure place where the branch met the tree’s thick trunk. With my last breath, I heaved my torso up and over the stream bank.
Chapter 63
I stood frozen, water-soaked and afraid. But I was also proud of myself. Confident. It must have been the way Molly felt so many times in her life. I swore I had to be smiling. I could feel the muscles in my jaws constricting, tightening. A smile, despite everything that had happened to me in the woods.
My drenched body shivered.
I shined the light upstream. Through the trees and the thick brush, I could make out the clapboard farmhouse. A dull beam of flashlight lit up the exterior wall. Just ahead of me was a narrow trail. I burst into an all out sprint along that trail in the direction of the house
Body tingled, head buzzed, lungs filled with oxygen. My feet moved rapidly beneath me, the pain in my legs having all but disappeared. Not ten feet of trail separated me from the house in the woods when a hand reached out, grabbing hold of my long blonde hair.
Chapter 64
He’s right behind us. The mad man is following us the entire time. He grabs Molly’s hair, pulls it back.
She screams. He laughs.
“ Cry, cry, cry,” he spits.
He pulls mine. I begin to weep. I fall, bringing Molly down with me.
There’s a pistol barrel in our faces. He is holding the pistol that he now tucks into his pant waist. Bending, he grabs my left foot and Molly’s right, starts dragging us back across the narrow foot trail to the house.
“ Little kittens lost their mittens. Cry, cry, cry, little kittens.”
When he gets us to the porch, he pulls out a long silver knife from the sheath on his belt, cuts the tape that binds our wrists. I lie still on the ground while Molly jumps up, tries to run. But he is too quick for her. He grabs hold of her T-shirt, drags her back down and once more whips her over the head with the pistol grip.
Molly goes to sleep again.
That’s when the devil grabs hold of me. The devil drags me up the porch steps, in through the open front door, across the floor, through a door that leads to a black, rank basement.
He pulls me down the basement stairs by my hair. My spine pounds against the wood treads. At the bottom of the stairs he pulls me across the cold dirt floor. He handcuffs me to something. It’s pitch dark. The place smells of must, urine and death. I’m shivering with fear and disbelief.
An overhead light is turned on.
I can see that I’m chained to this iron pipe in the middle of a square-shaped room. It’s a basement room constructed of stone, concrete, narrow windows located at the very top of the walls. Heavy gauge wires hang from the exposed rafters. Besides the wires are big hooks. They look like the hooks the farmers use to hang their freshly butchered meat. From where I sit, I can see that the hooks are stained with blood.
For a time the beast just stares down at me. He’s breathing hard.
“ What are you going to do to me?” I beg, the handcuffs tight and cutting into my wrists.
“ Cry, cry, cry, little kitten,” he sings.
I scream.
But only the devil can hear me.
