That brief moment of elation was wiped away by panic when she saw Cam was missing. Kelly looked around the woods, but he wasn’t anywhere around.
“Cam!” she yelled.
She stood up, her vertebra crackling, and did a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn.
That thought made her skin crawl. She didn’t want to be out here, all alone.
“Cam! Where are you!”
“Hey, Kelly.”
Startled, Kelly spun around toward the voice. It was Cam. He had a weird look on his face, one that made him seem like a completely different person.
“I was scared,” she said, walking toward him.
“Me, too.”
And then his shoulders drooped and he began to cry. Kelly went to him, giving him a hug, feeling his whole body shake with his sobs.
“We’re going to get out of this,” she said, patting his back. “We’ll find my family, we’ll find your sister, and we’ll get to a road. It’s all going to be okay.”
Cam put his arms around her. “I keep hearing the screaming.”
Kelly wasn’t sure what he meant, but there had been a lot of screaming lately.
“It’s over now.”
Cam shoved her away. “No it’s not! I still hear it!”
Kelly was a bit shocked by how hard he pushed her. He almost knocked her over.
“Take it easy, Cam. There’s no one screaming right now.”
He put his face in his hands. “Yes there is.”
Kelly listened. She heard normal forest sounds, but no screaming.
“Cam, there’s really nobody screaming.”
Cam squatted, hugging his knees. He began to rock back and forth.
“I hear it,” he said. “I know it’s not real, but I hear it anyway. I just want to make it stop.”
“What are you talking about?”
Cam got a far-away look in his eyes.
“We were fourteen,” he said. “Me and my friend. When we went into that abandoned house. The autopsy report stated he was stabbed more than a hundred and thirty times. None of them were fatal. My best friend died of blood loss. I... I can hear his screams sometimes. Not just in my dreams. But when I’m awake. Like now. Sometimes I hear him. Screaming. Begging to be let go.”
She walked up to Cam, softly put her hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. You were locked in the closet.”
His face drained of color. He appeared terrified. “Do you know what it’s like to hear screaming all the time, Kelly?”
“You can’t blame yourself, Cam.” She rubbed his back.
“Sure I can. I could have done something. I could have stopped it.”
Kelly squatted down next to him. “You were just a kid. What were you supposed to do?”
“I can hear the screaming right now.” Cam cast a frantic glance into the woods. “I can hear him, like he’s right next to me. Begging to live. And then, after a while, begging to die.” He put his knuckle in his mouth. “It took him such a long time to die.”
Kelly wasn’t sure what to do. He was supposed to be the adult, not her. Lost in the woods, being chased by freaks and a mountain lion, wasn’t a good time to have a nervous breakdown.
“That’s over, Cam. Now you’re here with me. You need to be strong. And we need to go find help.”
Cam looked at Kelly like he hadn’t realized she’d been there. “There’s no help. Not for him.” A darkness came over his face. “And not for you.”
“Stop it, Cam. You’re scaring me.”
“That’s what my best friend said.” Cam said. “After I tied him up.”
Kelly felt the world start to spin. She thought Cam was just stressed, freaking out because of everything that had happened. Maybe having some kind of flashback.
But now she knew different.
“You killed him,” she whispered.
Cam didn’t say anything.
“Did you kill your friend, Cam?”
“I blamed it on a stranger. Said I was locked in the closet. I think the police suspected me, but no one could prove anything. I wore gloves. Brought along an extra set of clothes.”
“Why?” Kelly asked, backing away. She really didn’t want to know. She just wanted some time to get some distance between them.
“To see if I could get away with it. And I did. But even after he died, I could still hear his screams. They were so loud, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to kill myself, but the screaming still wouldn’t go away. So I did it again, with someone else. In the institution. I thought maybe if I killed another person, my friend would have some company, and finally shut the fuck up. But that didn’t work either. So now I’m thinking something else.”
But Kelly was too frightened to move.
“What are you thinking, Cam?” Kelly asked, her voice cracking.
Cam pulled a scalpel from his back pocket. “I’m thinking third time is a charm.”
He lunged at her, grabbing Kelly’s arm, poking her in the shoulder with the blade.
Kelly screamed like she’d never screamed before in her life.
“That’s how he screamed,” Cam said.
Then he poked her again.
# # #
Deb, who’d been in a dozen triathlons and three marathons, had never been so tired. They’d spent the entire night calling for Letti’s daughter, and she was practically hoarse. Each step she took was agonizing. Without the gel socks, her prosthetics chafed at her skin. It felt like everything below her pelvis was one giant blister, getting rubbed with sand.
Mal looked equally dishevelled. She knew how traumatic losing a limb was, both physically and emotionally. That he’d managed to keep going, and even retain a sense of humor, showed Deb what a hell of a guy he really was.
He’d noticed her grimacing earlier, and had offered to shoulder her suitcase with her extra legs in it.
“I don’t need you to give me a hand,” Deb had told him.
Mal had laughed at that, and when Deb realized what she said, she was mortified.
“It’s okay. It makes up for my
And he took her bag. Just lost a limb, and he took her bag.
Letti was the one who appeared most distraught of all. She continued pushing forward, even with a drastic limp, stopping every minute to shout her daughter’s name.
Deb knew it was counterproductive at this point. Kelly wasn’t answering. And undoubtedly both that cougar, and the remainder of Eleanor’s wacko family, could locate them without much difficulty. But neither she nor Mal told Letti to stop.
