The next moment Mister Fergus’s voice went silent. Harlan no longer sensed the presence in his brain.
Before he began chanting the mantra, he thought about those final words.
He’d never told Mister Fergus or anyone else about his War Chest of Oddities. In a way, it was a relief for someone else to know about them, he decided.
The Shift agreed.
He smiled to himself and closed his eyes.
Chapter 18
Ray
Pink-tinged sunlight filtered through the plastic sheeting on the window. Was it morning or evening? Impossible to know.
Lizzy was nowhere in sight.
Upon awakening, Ray’s thoughts seemed clearer than they’d been since his capture. He remembered Lizzy feeding him. Remembered the sips of water she insisted he take. Remembered using his most appealing smile when asking her to loosen the chain dangling from the eye-bolts to his wrists. At some point during unconsciousness, Lizzy had apparently obliged. He could move a bit farther from the wall in a 180-degree range. His limbs and back felt stiff, but he could fully stand now. A plastic bucket placed near the woodpile contained a quarter-inch of amber liquid.
“Ugh,” he croaked. He had no memory of urinating in the bucket and the thought of Lizzy helping made him nauseated.
He shuffled toward it now, sliding down his fly. After adding another quarter-inch to the bucket, his gaze fell upon the desiccated wood in the corner. His thoughts were definitely clearer now. Most of the ketamine and midazolam must have passed through his kidneys and into the bucket.
The crumbling firewood lay in the corner of the cabin shored up by rocks on the outside. Still eyeing the corner, he reached for the water bottle next to the bucket. She may torture him in some grisly manner, but she would not let him die of thirst or hunger. A breakfast MRE lay next to the water. He recognized it as one from the warehouse — one of his favorites, actually.
What was the significance of those rocks, he wondered, idly chewing a cold maple sausage patty. Obviously, they reinforced the eroded soil in that spot, but maybe there was more to their positioning. What if the floor under all that rotting firewood was also rotting? Did a hole in the floor leading to the outside do him any good while shackled to a wall? No. Unless the wall was in a similar state. He imagined a cartoon version of himself sawing out a chunk and running away as chains, plaster, and boards chased him from behind.
“It’s not the worst idea,” he said to himself, “if I had a saw.” The sound of his own voice in the chilly quiet of the morning air startled him. Made him think about Lizzy: Where was she? How long had she been gone? What had she done to Fergus and the little girl?
It was time to focus on escape. He was no help to anyone in his current situation. He tested the eye bolts first, assuming Lizzy wouldn’t have merely screwed them in by hand — that would have made for an easy escape. A quick twist to the left of both proved his theory correct. Unscrewing those things would take leverage, a tool, or more strength than his fingers could provide at the moment.
He took a few steps, careful to check the floor’s integrity, and shuffled to the farthest reaches of his tether. The clanking chain sounded unnatural in the rustic setting. His fingertips couldn’t quite touch the woodstove, but they could discern some residual heat from the cast iron.
He studied every inch of the cabin now, scanning up and down, left to right. He began compiling mental spreadsheets of all that he’d identified visually. Then he closed his eyes and listened, being careful not to rattle the chain, and concentrated on nature’s ambient noise flowing through the plaster chinks: a hawk screeched from far above the roof; wind rushed through a nearby pine tree with a pleasant whoosh; mourning doves cooed; the faint but constant gurgle of water slid over stones on its way to somewhere else. He added the audible notes to his mental spreadsheet.
Next came olfactory: lingering wood smoke from the stove; fresh urine in the bucket and stale urine from the camouflage pants he’d been wearing for days; the residual aroma of food from last night’s supper and the more prevalent scent of maple sausage; the mustiness of decay from the walls; a faint whiff of rodent feces from the woodpile.
Suddenly, a much stronger scent assaulted his nostrils, carried on a breeze that filtered under the edges of the window’s plastic sheeting. It was a smell he’d never experienced before: earthy and pungent, but not unpleasant. A faint whiff of sweetness — berries perhaps — followed the aroma.
Something about the fragrance registered on the lizard part of his brain. He wasn’t completely surprised when a low-pitched snuffle resonated through the window.
Do not make a noise. Do not breathe. Do not even blink.
He was grateful for exactly one thing at that moment: Grizzlies did not populate the Smoky Mountains. But black bears did. An average female weighed about a hundred pounds. A male could get up to two-fifty. By autumn, bears had been packing on weight for months in preparation for winter hibernation. This time of year those numbers could double. Even a small female would have no problem crashing through that window.
He scanned the room again. Nothing within reach would serve as a weapon. Lizzy wouldn’t have been so careless.
Growls punctuated the snuffling now. The bear had caught his scent. The only weapon available was the chain tethering him to the wall. Could he strangle a bear? Would he survive the attempt? The notion seemed ludicrous.
There was nothing left to
