“Who did this to you?” she whispered and then took a step back in fright at the head snapping in her direction at the sound of her voice. No sooner had this happened, however, than the stag flopped down flat and went completely limp and motionless. Susan stood and stared at it for a long time, wondering if it had died but at the same time scared that it had not.
As it always did with Susan, her curiosity got the better of her fear and she took another tentative step forward.
“You still alive?” she asked in her normal speaking voice. This time there was no sign of awareness on the stricken deer’s part. She stamped her feet and still no reaction came. Now she walked a few steps closer, making noise as she did so. Her eyes moved from the ribs to the head looking for signs of breathing but no movement or vapour came to vision.
When close enough, Susan moved in a large arc so that she could come around to the stag head on and see its face. When at last she could see the eyes were wide open, but it was clear that there was no life in them. A great pang of sadness came over Susan and she walked the last few feet and fell to her knees at the huge head of the magnificent animal. Tears came to her eyes as she stroked the still warm cheeks, the fur soft and silky to her touch. She looked over his hulking frame, her eyes falling once more on the injuries that had crippled it and then saw something that surprised her. There was long stakes of wood, not stakes exactly, not formed like stakes but sharp sticks maybe, jutting out from the bloodied wounds.
“How did you do that?” she asked thinking now that this had been some freak accident involving only the deer and a splintered tree trunk. She looked into the woods where the deer must have come from but could see no evidence of the tree that caused this. Was it possible these wooden spikes were the only loose ones on the tree until the collision, and the stag had then taken them all away with him in his unstoppable motion?
The wounds looked so painful; certainly a horrible way to die. Susan supposed she should tell the sheriff about it when she got back to Mercy. The animal would have to be moved off the road at the very least. She imagined the whole town could be fed for a couple of weeks with the meat if it was dressed properly. Though she liked deer meat, somehow this animal didn’t seem all that appealing given the injuries she was seeing close up. She knew that a bullet didn’t leave a pleasant wound either but she didn’t normally see what her dinner looked like just after it had been killed.
A rustling in the thicket caught her ear, and she looked into the trees. There was nothing, but she wondered was it perhaps the mate of this fallen stag. Susan felt eyes on her but couldn’t locate them. That same fear as before came over her and she stood up, preparing to run back to her car if need be. Another noise, rustling and like twigs breaking at the same time. Still she saw no movement.
“Hello?” she called out, more out of scared instinct than anything else. Silence answered her. The feeling of unease moved her body back a step but she was still facing the trees where the sound had come from. Her heart pounded, and all she wanted right then was to be in her car and on her way home.
A thunderous crash resounded in the air and Susan looked in horror as what seemed like a huge scraggly bush came bounding at her across the snow. She screamed and turned to run losing her footing a moment and going down on one hand and knee. Scurrying forward in panic she got back to her feet but still was slipping as she tried to run away.
Whatever it was behind her was sliding and scratching all over the icy road and she could only hope it went down hard and was unable to get up long enough for her to get the car. The door was still open and the key in the ignition waiting for her.
A ferocious growl came from so close she jumped in ever deeper fear than before and then felt the hard slam of huge weight into her side. Her ribs ached, and the wind was knocked from her lungs and the pain and feeling of not breathing terrified her. She felt weightless, and it took a split second for her to realise she was no longer on the ground. The air spun around her and she felt her stomach churn as she went head over heels and landed heavily in the woody debris-filled ditch on the opposite side of the road.
Laying there, all Susan could do was look up into the sky and hope some air would some back into her lungs before the animal came on her again. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, hot like flowing lava it seemed, but though the breath was returning to her, it was shockingly painful to draw it.
Whatever had attacked her was out of sight, back up on the road but she could hear it moving around. It shuffled back and forth like something agitated and the growls though low were menacing in tone. Each scrape of the ground brought new terror to her as she though it would appear at the edge of the ditch and look down hungrily at her before pouncing down and finishing her off.
For what seemed like a very long time, noises came from the road above her. The sounds were muffled in her snow packed ears and though she could understand the growling from time to time, nothing else made sense to her. After a time in which she felt she must have passed out for a couple of minutes, she came to notice that there was no more noise. She was conscious now and painfully raising one arm to clear the snow from her face and head, she tilted her head to listen better.
Many minutes passed like this and only the quiet of the forest met her ears. A deep sigh escaped painfully as she felt safe — safe from an imminent bad end, anyway. There was still the matter of her badly injured body; she didn’t know how badly but she knew damn sure she had never felt this pained in her entire life. She’d broken her leg as a teenager but this felt much worse than that and she was having trouble breathing comfortably. She needed to try get back to the car; she didn’t know if she would be able to drive or not, but she also knew that lying here in this ditch would not be doing her body any favours.
Susan looked up the embankment and was glad at least that it was not too high, only about seven feet. She could do this, she was sure of it. Gritting her teeth, she moved on to her front. The pain was so incredibly sharp that she let out a fresh scream and black spots appeared in her visions; she was sure she would pass out again.
“Goddamn!” she said when finally she was able to. At least she had completed the turn, however, and she was now on her belly on the slope. Over the next hour, with frequent and increasingly long breaks, she slowly made her way to the crest.
At last, her head topped the rise and she let it fall heavily to the snow bank to rest. She felt both euphoric and heavily drowsy at the same time. From her new vantage, she could see the road once more; her car waiting as she had left it so it would seem. Her eyes drew back to the stag, and she was shocked to see that it was no longer there. Whatever had come at her must have taken it away. Was that why she had been attacked in the first place? Did some animal think she was trying to steal its dinner? She certainly hoped so and the relief this brought to her, along with the agonizing pain and effort she had made combined to exhaust her and Susan fell asleep on the roadside in the snow.
Chapter 15
On that same morning, Jeff was traveling back from Emerson too. He’d become so annoyed at Ava’s pleading eyes every time he went into the tavern, that he had decided to go to get the parts needed for the car and get them on their way, rather than wait for the delivery to Mercy as he would have normally. He hadn’t stopped grumbling about the trip all the way there and now he was at the same again on his way back. In his head, he was calculating all the gas he was using, and he would put that, plus a premium, on the young couple’s bill for his hardships. He intended to drink his few beers in peace tonight; with no one looking forlornly at him wanting work done he wasn’t in a position to get done yet.
Glancing at his watch, he saw the trip had taken him longer than he’d both hoped and planned. The store was closed and by now it was possible he was missing customers — it didn’t matter that they had nowhere else to shop and that they would be back later when they saw he was open; Jeff always considered a delayed sale as being the same as a lost sale. Perhaps he should stick an estimate
of this on their bill too, he thought.
Not much farther up the road, Jeff saw that someone was parked pretty much in the middle of the lane.
“What’s this stupidity, now?” he wondered. He couldn’t make out the car yet but he imagined it would be a roadside fix for him to have to do. This was the last thing he needed today.
As he got closer, he was able to see that it was Susan Bloom’s car. Jeff liked Susan, and had been friends with her father before he passed away. The door on the driver side was open, but he didn’t see her standing around anywhere. He wondered with a childish smile if she had been caught short and had darted into the trees to relieve herself. Her cheeks would be brightly blazing when she came out and saw him if that was the case. Jeff slowed up and came to a halt behind Susan’s car and looked around once more. He decided he would give her a minute to appear before he got out and called out to her.
When a more than sufficient time to answer a call of nature elapsed, Jeff thought something might not be right here. It wasn’t all that far to town from here after all; surely if she needed to use the bathroom, she would have waited until she got home. He stepped out of his car and called out,
“Susan?” No answer came, and he looked around for any sign of her. Leaning back into the car he honked the horn a couple of time and then stood up and waited a moment to see if this would bring her from whatever was holding her up. After a minute it was clear she was not coming.
Jeff walked over to her car and looked inside; it was empty, and the key was still in the ignition though the engine was not ticking over. He went to the front of the vehicle and felt the hood. It was warm, but not very. The engine had been killed a few hours past by now. This was worrying, but he tried not to think the worst; it was possible she’d had some engine trouble and was now walking back to town. And the door open and the key in the ignition? His mind asked. She rushed off and forgot, he thought, but it didn’t sound likely. His eyes wandered to the ground searching out the footprints that would show Susan had walked towards town. They were there alright, but as he followed them absently, he was confronted with a massive smudged red slush of snow that could only be blood!
Before knowing why, or even what he was doing, Jeff ran over and stood at the spot looking down. There was no mistaking it was blood. Was it Susan’s? Instinctively he called out her name again, and he heard the infused panic in his own voice. He looked around and felt the horrible beating of his pounding heart in his chest as true fear took over. What the hell had happened here? He looked back to his own car parked behind Susan’s and it seemed like it couldn’t be farther away.
In this fearful state, his mind turned to his gun which was under his seat in the car. Without thinking anymore he ran, his eyes darting all over for some attack that might originate from any direction. In this frantic spinning of head and roving of eyes something familiar caught his eye, and he looked a moment longer at the mound of snow on the opposite side of the road. For a moment, he didn’t know what he was seeing at all but slowly it came to him. It was a person; a woman lying there in the snow. It was Susan!
Jeff stopped in his run and slid but at the same time had the thought that something bad had happened here and that perhaps the gun might still be required. He shuffled on the rest of the way, got it out and looked around once more before going back to where Susan lay.
The first thing that struck him, apart from the fact she was unconscious, was how little blood was on her. There was a gash on her head and some cuts about her, but nothing that could explain even a sixteenth of the blood that was on the road.
“Susan, are you alright? Can you hear me? It’s Jeff!” he said as he shook her first gently and then a little harder on getting no response. He leaned in and listened at her back and he could hear her heart was beating. It was slow and weak but it was there. Still feeling fearful at not knowing what had happened here, he looked around to make sure nothing, or no one was stalking up on him.
“We better get you to Sally,” he said looking over Susan’s arms and legs for any sign of obvious breakages. He didn’t want to do any more damage to her in the move. He thought for a second of going back to town and bringing help here but who knew how long Susan had been lying in this snow; he had to get her indoors and warmed up as soon as possible. He ran back over to his car and opened the back door where he planned to put her. His eyes darted everywhere, and he knew that he had never been so afraid in his life. He rushed back to Susan and picked her up — not as easy a task as he had anticipated and then struggled back to the car, ready at any moment for the possibility he would have to drop her and cock the rifle if whatever had attacked her came back. Thankfully, in the end, this was unnecessary and nothing came from the shadows to kill him.
Just as Jeff was about to drive away he saw Susan’s still open door and thought of the keys in the ignition. Should he get them, he wondered, but his fear answered very clearly no, you should not! He put his foot hard on the pedal and the back of the car swerved on the ice as he took off back towards Mercy.
The two miles of winding bumping road had never seemed so long in all of Jeff’s life. He leaned back from time to time to tap Susan on the face or shake her, and he spoke loudly to her all the way. He was very afraid that she would die before he got her to town.
“C’mon Susan!” he shouted back just as Mercy came into view.
As Jeff drove past the sheriff’s office he peered in but was moving too fast to see if Moorefield was there or not — he didn’t think so as the jeep was not parked outside. A puff of snow went up in the air as Jeff pulled to a sharp halt outside the Lone Wolf Tavern.
“Sally!” he called out as he got out and opened the back door to take Susan out. “Sally!”
“What’s all the hollering about?” Sally’s gruff voice came from behind him a moment later. Everything in her jocular facade changed when she saw the bloodied head of Susan Bloom loll in Jeff’s arms as he pulled her from the car.
“What happened?” Sally cried.
“I don’t know; I found her like this out on the Emerson road,” Jeff said pushing against Sally to get her to move towards the tavern. Taking the hint Sally turned and held open the door.
“Get her inside, down to one of the rooms,” she said.
Sally rushed around him and opened the door to the short hall of rooms, looking at Susan and happy at least to see that she was breathing as Jeff moved her around laboriously.
“She was out on the road, alone?” Sally asked not having gotten her head around that idea.
“Her car was parked in the middle of the road and she was lying in the ditch like this,” Jeff said clearly struggling for breath.
“Set her down on the bed,” Sally said as they entered one of the rooms. “As gently as you can,” she added, afraid he would just drop her in his exhaustion.
“Susan!” a new voice entered and both Jeff and Sally turned in surprise to see Sam rushing in through the door. He’d seen them come into the tavern as he was coming back into town from working this morning. “Susan!” he said again pushing past the two of them to get to her side. Jeff and Sally looked at one another and it was clear that neither of them thought feelings could run this deep between the two younger people. As far as anyone knew there was nothing going on between them.
“Take is easy, Sam,” Sally said trying to ease him back from the bedside. “I need to take a look.”
“What can you do for her?” Sam asked shrugging her hands from him.
“Sally was a nurse before she came to town,” Jeff said calmly. “She’s the only one of us here who can possibly do anything.” Sam looked up at Jeff as though to assess if he was telling the truth and then reluctantly made way for Sally.
Sally quickly leaned in and two men watched as she ran her hand over Susan’s body and then looked more carefully at the head wound. After a few minutes she stood back up,
“I’ll go get some water and clean her up.”
“Is she going to be alright?�
� Sam asked.
“Feels like a couple of broken ribs and hopefully only a concussion.”
“Hopefully?”
“Yes, I hope that’s why she’s unconscious because if it’s not it could be a lot worse,” Sally said almost angrily. Then in a lighter voice said, “I’ll strap up her ribs and wash her cuts and hopefully she’ll come round when she’s more comfortable.” Sam looked appalled at this and Jeff took him by the arm,
“I’m sure Susan will be fine, Sam,” he said. “Let’s get out of Sally’s way and let her do what’s needed.” This time, Sam did not resist the hands that were on him and with one last forlorn look at Susan he let himself be led from the room.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” Sally said. “I’m good at this stuff.”
“Let’s go get ourselves a drink,” Jeff said, and he saw that his hands were shaking. He was very glad that his main responsibility in this matter was at an end.
“Go take what you want from the bar,” Sally said, and she went down the hall to get the water and supplies she would need for Susan.
Chapter 16
Sheriff Joe Moorefield pulled up outside the office having been up at the Thorndean place again this morning. He’d been looking for more signs of Maul, clambering through the limbs of the trees to see if there was any sign of accident around the place. It made no sense at all that Maul would have just disappeared knowing how fiercely he valued the land he owned, even with the overrun of trees.
As Joe got out of the car, he noticed that Jeff Sorkin’s vehicle was parked outside the tavern which was unusual; he never parked anywhere other than at his house behind the store on the other side of the wide road. It was odd, but it wasn’t enough to warrant Joe going down to find out why; he was sure there would be some easy explanation. He was probably working on the young couple’s car and parked close so as not to have to lift parts across the street.
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