by Ryan Casey
Sonia gasped then. Gasped and cried and smiled, the relief hitting her. The reality hitting her.
Then the urgency took over her. The urgency to get out of here. The urgency to get away. To get to Gina.
She moved over to Mike. Looked into his eyes. Knife by the rope around his body.
“You wouldn’t lie to me. She’s at that cabin. The cabin you told me about. Isn’t she?”
Mike took a deep breath. Then, he nodded. “Yes. She’s there. I promise. I promise.”
She let out a sigh.
She pulled back the knife.
And for a moment, Mike thought this was it. He thought she’d finally snapped. That look in her eyes. He could see something there. Something he didn’t like. Something he didn’t trust.
And then she sliced his ties.
Mike took a breath. He got to his feet. A little dizzy. A little unsteady.
But standing.
Sonia opposite him.
Gina’s mum opposite him.
“Come on,” Mike said, smile spreading across his face. “Let’s go to that cabin. Let’s go find your daughter.”
Sonia nodded.
She smiled, just a little.
But as they turned towards the woods, Mike still got the sense that something wasn’t quite right with Sonia.
Something not right at all.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alison wasn’t sure how long she and Ian had been walking when they heard the scream.
They had been searching for a while. Their journey up to now had mostly been quiet. Silent. Scarily so. There was something ominous about a deep silence when they were this far into the woods. After all, you’d think the birds would be making a cacophony of noise.
But there was nothing.
Which disconcerted Alison.
It made her wonder if somebody was close, after all.
Ian hadn’t said much on this journey. He still seemed… detached, somehow. She wanted to talk to him. Wanted to ask him how he was holding up. A fact that had been glossed over was that such a short period of time ago he’d tried to take his own life.
And now he was here. On a mission to hunt down Mike. To make sure wherever he was out there, he was okay.
She thought about Kelsie back at the cabin with Gina. She thought about Calvin. Tried to run it through her mind, all the processes she’d gone to in order to make sure he couldn’t get away easily. Had she tied a strong enough knot? Had she made sure his wrists were fully secured? His ankles all the same?
There was another thing, though. Something that bothered her.
She hadn’t covered Calvin’s mouth.
And in a sense, she’d done that for a reason. She’d done it because she trusted Gina to look out for Kelsie; to make sure Calvin didn’t try anything.
But at the same time, words could be a weapon.
She just had to hope Gina was strong enough to stand her ground. To show her resolve.
They were all on the same page, after all.
But the scream. The scream cut through the silence. It cut through their tension. It sent shivers right up Alison’s spine.
She looked at Ian. He looked… well. She’d be lying if she said he looked quite as taken aback as she felt. He was clearly still in that fugue state, a cloud of misery hanging over him, jarring his judgement.
But he’d heard it. He’d clearly noticed it, too.
Now they just had to go and find the source of it.
As daunting a task as that was.
They crept through the overgrown bushes. The scary thing about the scream? It hadn’t sounded far away, not really. Of course, it was hard to gauge when you were in a place this silent. Sound could travel far.
But this really did sound like it had come from somewhere close by.
And another thing?
This sounded like the same scream they’d heard when they were back at the cabin.
It didn’t sound like Mike.
They crept further through the grass. Alison’s heart raced. She held the knife in her sweaty hand. She longed for something stronger than a knife right now. Something less… well, melee. She wanted a bow and arrow. A hunting rifle. Something that’d allow her distance between herself and whatever was ahead, whatever was looming.
She crept further through the grass when she stopped.
She stopped because she saw what was ahead.
There was a man. A man standing there, in the middle of the trees.
The first thing that struck Alison was that he didn’t look in any way wounded. He didn’t look hurt. He was just standing there, looking ahead, eyes darting left to right. Not with fear. But with something else.
With… with curiosity.
And then he let out another cry.
It was eerie, just staring at him, standing there, letting out these agonised sounding screams, and then stopping. Because he didn’t look like he was in any pain. He didn’t look like he was suffering.
He just looked like he was doing this on purpose.
Doing this intentionally.
But why?
Alison glanced at Ian. His eyes were wide now, the uncertainty in them clear to see.
She went to whisper something to him. Wanted to spark something. Maybe they could go towards him. Maybe they could ambush him, capture him.
But then she stopped.
Because she heard something.
Something to her left.
Footsteps.
She looked around, heart pounding, sweat trickling down her forehead, and she saw him.
He was standing there between the trees.
He was looking around. Looking in a similar way to the other guy.
But he hadn’t met Alison’s eyes. Not yet.
But it was coming.
He was turning.
He was…
His eyes met hers.
For a moment, they lit up.
Then Alison knew there was no more time to hesitate.
“Run,” she said.
Alison and Ian ran. Alison didn’t turn around. She didn’t look back. She just raced through the trees, Ian by her side. She sensed she’d seen something. Looked in on something… something that felt forbidden. Something she really didn’t want to be seeing.
She felt like she’d peered through a looking glass. One she knew she really should be diverting her gaze away from.
And now she just had to get away.
She looked over her shoulder. She had to. She needed to know how much ground she’d made getting away from the guy. She had to know just how close he was to her—how close they probably both were to her at this stage.
But that’s when she realised something.
She slowed down. Slowed to a stop.
The two men were nowhere in sight.
Ian stopped beside her. Looked back too. Still that silence from the trees. Still that lack of life, that lack of presence, all around.
Alison heard Ian gulp, quite audibly, and she let out a sigh of her own. “Come on,” she said. “There’s no sign. We’d… we’d better go back to the cabin. We don’t want to be out here when it goes dark.”
It took them another hour to get back to the cabin.
Another hour with no sign of Mike.
Another hour with no sign of those people, either.
When they got back to the cabin, Alison knew something was wrong right away.
She heard her footsteps echoing against the wooden floor. “Gina?”
She checked the lounge.
No sign.
She staggered back into the hallway. “Kelsie? Arya?”
And then she looked at the door to the kitchen.
The door that was still slammed shut.
She felt the hairs on her neck standing on end. She felt that uncertainty. That uncertainty of what she was going to find. Because she had an idea. She thought she knew exactly what she was going to encounter when she opened this door.
She pushed it open.
&
nbsp; And when she looked inside it, her stomach sank completely.
Ian reached her side. “What’s happened?”
“He’s gone,” she said. “Calvin’s gone. They’re all gone.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The more of this journey Gina made, the more she began to question whether she’d made the right decision after all.
They’d been travelling through the woods for a while now. It was getting late. The darkness was thick and intense. She was trying her best to keep Calvin in her line of sight at all times, but she was struggling as the trees seemed to be getting thicker, their path seemed to be growing less and less visible.
Kelsie was walking by her side. She was holding on to her hand, which seemed to be growing colder with every step. She wasn’t saying much. Quite frankly, she wasn’t herself. Which was the main thing that made Gina convince herself that she was making the right call after all.
Because this wasn’t about her.
This wasn’t about anyone but Kelsie.
She’d made a judgement. An executive judgement.
And she’d decided that it made more sense to pursue this extraction point Calvin was talking about alone than it did to wait around for Alison, Ian, and Mike to return.
She thought about Alison and Ian getting back to the cabin after a hard venture rescuing Mike. She thought about them getting back there, such a sense of victory, such a sense of achievement.
Only to be faced with the pure gut punch that was Gina, Calvin, Kelsie, and Arya missing.
She shook her head. She was probably just imagining things. After all, chances were, they weren’t going to be back at the cabin. Chances were, they were in trouble. Or they were lost out there.
And as much as Gina felt bad for them, as much as she wanted to help them, wherever they were, there were bigger matters at hand right now.
“So how does it feel being the black sheep of your group, Gina?”
Gina frowned when she heard Calvin speak. She wasn’t here to talk, after all. She was here to do one thing, and one thing only. “Be quiet.”
But there was something about him. How composed he seemed. How… okay he seemed with all of this.
And how he was walking ahead. Leading the way. Never getting too far ahead, but sometimes Gina got the sense he was just testing her. Just disappearing for a couple of seconds, only to appear again.
She was growing cautious. Growing concerned.
But she’d made this decision. She had to own it now.
“It’s clear you aren’t on the same page as the rest of your people,” Calvin said. “After all, if you were, you wouldn’t have done this, would you? You wouldn’t have cut me free. You wouldn’t have let me go.”
“I told you to be quiet.”
“Oh, I will be quiet,” Calvin said. “Really. But I just want to say… I respect you. For what you’ve done. You’ve shown good judgement. Initiative. That’s more than Mike ever has—”
Gina wasn’t standing for this shit anymore.
She punched him. Punched him right in the back of the neck with a hammer she’d grabbed from the cabin before they left.
Calvin fell to the ground, wincing, grabbing the back of his neck. He looked around and back up at her, surprise in his barely-lit eyes.
“I don’t care who you think I am. I don’t care where you think I’ve come from. And I definitely don’t care about your little ways of trying to manipulate me. They might’ve worked on other people, but not me. Not me.”
Calvin smiled, then. He laughed, just a little. “Sure,” he said. “If you say so. It’s not like you let me free, after all. It’s not like you’re following me through dark woodlands. It’s not like I could disappear at any moment. Just like that.”
The thought made Gina shiver. She looked at the hammer in her hand. Never before had she thought so much about just ending it. Never before had she thought so much about silencing Calvin—for good.
Because she was seeing through the cracks. Seeing through the gaping cracks in his story. Seeing them for what they were, widening by the second.
But then he clicked his fingers and stood up, smiling. “We’d better get moving,” he said. “No time to waste—”
He didn’t say another word.
Because he was interrupted by something.
Something blood-curdling.
A scream.
Gina went still. Her muscles contracted. Every inch of her body went numb.
Because that scream.
It sounded so pained.
So agonised.
So close.
“What was that?” Kelsie asked.
She looked down at Kelsie. Looked at Arya by her side, ears up, head tilting either side. Like she was just as concerned as the rest of them.
“I don’t know,” Calvin said. “But it’s none of our business. Let them scream.”
He started walking on.
But Gina wasn’t sure. Because they sounded in danger. Immediate danger. They sounded in need of desperate help.
And there was something else bothering her.
She couldn’t get it out of her head that the scream… it sounded like Ian.
“We can’t just leave them,” Gina said.
Calvin frowned. He looked back at her, bewilderment on her face. “What?”
“That scream. It sounded like… it sounded like Ian. I can’t just leave him behind. We can’t do that.”
Calvin sighed. “You can do what you like. I’m keeping moving.”
“No,” Gina said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She stepped towards him as he kept on moving. And she realised he had her in a bind, now. He’d given her no choice.
“Hey. I said—”
Then there it was.
That scream again.
Only this time, it was right behind her.
She looked around. Into the darkness. Over her shoulder.
The branches of the trees.
The leaves.
The darkness.
And then…
Her body went numb.
Every inch of her froze.
Because in the distance, she swore she saw something.
Something glimmering in the moonlight.
Eyes.
“Calvin,” she said.
But then she stopped when she looked around.
“Calvin?”
Calvin was gone.
Arya had gone with him.
It was just Gina.
Just Kelsie.
And just those footsteps creeping closer and closer towards her, out of the darkness…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was dark when Mike realised he was lost.
He wasn’t sure how it had happened. He was sure he’d kept close track of exactly where he’d come from. And sure, the woods could be daunting and disorienting, but as long as he kept his cool and kept his composure, he was sure he could make his way through them successfully.
The wind was picking up. Every now and then, Mike felt a few specks of rain. He wondered if he was about to experience what he’d experienced these last few days. Whether another storm was rearing its head. He was unsure about it. Uncertain.
But he didn’t want to tell Sonia that he was lost. He wanted her to have faith in him. Have confidence in him.
Because as much as he’d convinced himself that taking her back to her daughter was the right thing to do… there was still something about her that unsettled him.
She was shaky. Jittery. Every little noise in the trees around her and she jumped, scanned the area closely.
“Something bothering you?” Mike asked.
Sonia looked around at him like even he’d made her jump. “The—the figures that lurk at night. Have to beware of them.”
Mike dismissed it as gibberish, turned around and kept on walking. “The sooner we get back to the cabin, the sooner we’ll be back to your Gina. Then you won’t have to worry about figures in the night. None of us
will.”
He kept on going despite Sonia’s uncertainty. And as he walked, he couldn’t stop running what Sonia had told him through his mind. The truth about the extraction point. About where they were taking people to. About the secrets they were keeping.
And a part of him wondered just how much of it was truth and how much of it was fantasy.
But again. She knew the thing about the changes in older women. She couldn’t have got that from nowhere. She couldn’t have just made it up.
But still. It just seemed… weird. He’d only met Sonia a few times in the world before. He recognised her, sure. And she recognised him.
But there seemed something more off about her now. More unhinged.
But hey. He was probably looking into things a bit too much. He probably seemed a bit different himself, after all.
“You don’t seem to have much faith in Gina being alive,” Mike said. He wasn’t sure where his thoughts came from. Why he’d decided to air them. It was just something he was uncertain about. A way Sonia spoke about her daughter that made him wonder.
“Oh, my Gina. Love her. Love her to bits. But she’s never been able to look after herself. Always worried about this, worried about that. Wouldn’t have made it a moment in this world.”
“But she has,” Mike said. “And… and I know you say that’s how your daughter is. But you’d be proud of her. So proud of her. She’s come so far. Grown so much. She’s independent. Confident. You wouldn’t recognise—”
“I don’t need someone to tell me how my daughter is. I know how she is, deep down. She needs her mother. She needs—she needs her family. She needs help. She might seem strong, but she’s not. Never was. Never will be. Not my Gina.”
A bitter taste in Mike’s mouth when Sonia said these words. Because it was getting him more uncertain about this whole turn of events. It was making him more concerned.
Not for Gina. Gina was fine. He was sure of that.
He was growing concerned about the effect her mother might have on her.
“I’m just saying,” Mike said. “Just trying to reassure you. She’s strong in this world. She wouldn’t have made it this far if she wasn’t.”
Sonia looked at Mike with disappointment in her eyes. Disappointment he couldn’t place. That he couldn’t understand. “She needs her mother,” she said.