He drops face first to the dirt.
Molly drops the shovel and takes me in her arms. We shiver, we cry and we hold one another.
We did not resist.
We did not resist.
We did not resist.
Molly gets back onto her feet. She wipes her eyes, stemming a silent flow of tears. Marking the right side of her face is a streak of brown mud.
“ That’s enough, Bec,” she says, with a stone face.
With that, she reaches her hand out for me, helping me up off the dirt floor.
Chapter 69
Then I spotted somebody else. A short, squat silhouette of a man.
I stared at the man through the dirt and tears. Only I was aware of him.
Franny.
It was Franny and he had something in his hand. An iron bar of some kind. A two or three foot length of rusted rebar.
Franny.
Franny was holding the iron bar two-fisted over Whalen’s head. Unaware of Franny’s presence, the monster went about his work filling in the trench, burying me. It was all happening now in slow motion, one frame slowly following another as that iron bar came down, smacking Whalen in the center of his skull. Even from deep down inside the trench, the sound of metal coming down against skull and bone was like a mallet smacked against a rotting pumpkin. His black eyes went wide as knees gave out; as he collapsed onto my dirt-covered stomach.
Franny dropped the iron bar to the floor.
He came to me, bent down, and extended his left hand.
“Safe. Safe, safe, safe.”
Chapter 70
With Franny’s help, I managed to get back up onto my feet. As the fresh dirt fell off of me, I stood wobbly, out of balance. I spit out dirt and the skeletal remains of the long departed. I tried to spit out the taste of death.
But it was impossible.
Even to Franny I must have appeared a strange and desperate sight with my filthy clothing, cuts and bruises, and dirt-matted hair. Outside the house now you could hear the sound of thunder. Reaching out to me, Franny tried to brush off some of the dirt from my arms and face.
I grabbed hold of his hand and kissed it. I felt my lips on his hand. I smelled his skin, listened to his breaths. He averted his eyes and stared at the dirt floor.
Not three feet away, Whalen’s body occupied a trench meant for me. An open grave. His head was bleeding. Not a muscle in his body moved. Now I knew for certain that the monster was finally dead.
Cry, cry, cry…
But what if he wasn’t dead? What if he was alive still?
Behind me, Michael’s body hung upside-down from the ceiling, a blood pool directly below him staining the dirt floor, soaking it.
I wanted to go to him. Franny somehow knew this.
“No, Rebecca. NO! NO! NO!”
He put his arm around me, lifting me up off my feet. As I burst into tears, he carried me across the floor, up the stairs, out of the house and into the woods.
Chapter 71
A gray dawn erupted over Mount Desolation as we moved fast through the forest. We took no chances. By the time we made it to the stream bank, we hit the water running. Franny held onto me, wrapped his arms around me, keeping both our heads and shoulders just barely above water, feet kicking beneath him against the current.
As I held onto him with all the strength I had left in me, Franny pumped and pumped. But the drag of the storm-driven white water was too powerful, too relentless. Almost immediately it began to drag us downstream. I didn’t care. I wanted to drown. Still I held on, my arms wrapped around his shoulders and neck, fingernails digging into his skin. But how I managed to hang onto him without being swept away I did not know.
The frigid, white water was a shock to my body.
But I didn’t scream.
We were pulled under. But I didn’t panic, even when I swallowed water into my lungs. The water pulled us down. It poured over our heads. It filled our mouths. Until suddenly we reemerged gasping for breath, the water flowing out of our nostrils and mouths like blood from stab wounds.
I knew that if the stream were any wider, it would have consumed us entirely.
But the stream was not wide. I knew that without the heavy rain, the stream would not run full with heavy white water. But now it ran swift and heavy because of the torrential rains. Despite its pull, momentum was on our side. As the opposite bank approached, we swam and kicked. The cold water injected new life into our veins. It washed away the blood and the dirt that came from the devil’s basement.
When Franny reached out with his free hand and located a handhold along the opposite bank, I knew for sure we would survive. Pulling me in toward him, he wrenched my forearm from off his neck. At the same time, I was able to locate a thick tree root that stuck out of the bank. I gripped the root with both hands while my legs and feet continued their downstream trek, twisting my body sideways until parallel with the bank.
Now side by side in the stream, holding to the bank, I somehow managed a breath. With drenched bodies and faces, we gazed at one another for the briefest of moments before thrusting our bodies up and out of the fast water onto the safety of the solid earth.
Chapter 72
We emerge from out of the house in the woods arm in arm.
I’m still crying. But Molly is not. I know she’s convinced that the monster is dead. Even I believe he’s dead.
Molly is a rock.
She shushes me, tells me it’s going to be okay. She leads me through the woods, to the sound of water running brusquely over rocks.
When we come to the stream bank, she sets me down. She makes like a cup with her right hand, reaches into the stream and brings a handful of the water to my mouth.
“ Drink,” she says.
I do as she tells me.
The crystal clear water is cold, life renewing. It tastes pure, sweet.
In my mind I see him, what he tried to do to us. I’m sure he’s dead, but I’m frightened he’ll come back for
