There was no wood to cover the window so Mattie took one of her thick quilts and folded it up. She used a chair to climb onto the worktable, knelt in front of the window and then carefully tucked the quilt into the frame, wrapping part of the top edge around the curtain rod so it would stay in place. Some of the draft still leaked around the edges, but at least the cold wasn’t pouring into the room. More importantly, the empty eye of the window was covered again. The monster (monsters?) couldn’t see inside.
She climbed down from the table. There was still plenty of firewood in the cabin, because William had expected her to stay inside all day. Mattie assembled the firewood and lit the kindling, feeling terribly daring as she did. She was only allowed to start the fire if William was watching.
Her stomach rumbled. The bread and cheese and butter were still on the dining table, just as she’d left them, and there was enough water for tea.
Mattie bustled around, slicing the bread and cheese, tending the fire, preparing the kettle and putting it over the flame. She felt soothed by the normalcy of it, the routine of doing chores. She set out two plates, just like she always did, and two cups for the tea, and when the water boiled she poured it out.
She noticed then that C.P. wasn’t in his fugue state any longer, but watching her with a curious expression on his face. Was it pity? Mattie felt herself flush. She didn’t need his pity. She didn’t deserve it, either.
“Sit . . . down . . . and . . . eat . . . something,” she said. She felt ashamed of the meager offering, unable to explain that William kept all the food in the storehouse under lock and key. They only had this much because he’d been in a generous mood, thinking that once he killed the demon he’d return home, the triumphant hunter.
And the triumphant hunter would then get sons on his little wife.
She felt the gorge rise in her throat but she swallowed it down. She didn’t need to submit to him anymore. Never again.
C.P. looked at the neat assembly of sliced bread and sliced cheese and the plate of butter Mattie had put out.
“We could make grilled cheese sandwiches with what you’ve got there. You have a pan, right?”
“Grilled cheese,” Mattie said, and she had a sense memory so strong it made her sway on her feet. Crunchy bread that tasted of butter and a thick layer of melted yellow cheese, still hot from the pan, and next to it a bowl of soup and the noodles in the soup were shaped like letters.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, making a movement like he was going to help her stand.
Mattie waved him away, closing her eyes. She could almost still smell the soup, taste the bread on her tongue.
“We don’t have to make it if you don’t want to,” C.P. said. “I just thought it might be better than cold bread.”
“We . . . can,” she said. “But . . . I . . . don’t . . . know . . . how.”
“Oh, well, I can do that. I can make four things in the kitchen without a microwave, and grilled cheese is one of them. Well, five things if you count cold cereal, but is it really making food if you just pour the cereal in a bowl and put milk on top? Sometimes I don’t even put the milk in, either, just eat the cereal out of the bowl like chips. That’s usually only if I have sugar cereal, though—you know, the stuff kids like to eat. Griff says it’s gross, that I have the habits of a four-year-old.”
He’d started buttering slices of bread while he talked, and at the mention of Griffin he faltered for a moment, his hands going slack. Then he started up again, with more energy.
“Can you put the pan over the fire, please? You’re lucky I’ve cooked over a fire before when we’ve been camping, otherwise who knows how these would turn out.”
Mattie didn’t respond as he chattered away, but he didn’t seem to need her to do so. He was filling the space with words so he wouldn’t have to think. She knew that. She placed the heavy pan on the fire on the same grate that she used to fry eggs.
He carried one plate full of cheese slices and buttered bread over to the fire. Mattie watched as he put the bread into the pan. It sizzled immediately, filling the air with the scent of browning butter, and C.P. laid a slice of cheese on each slice of bread.
“Gotta keep a good eye on it with a cast iron pan like this,” he said. “The bread could burn before the cheese melts. I need a spatula or something, and a clean plate for the sandwich.”
Mattie handed him the turner she used for the eggs and after a very brief time he flipped the two bread slices together and then took the sandwich out and put it on a plate.
“Ta-da!” he said, and handed it to Mattie before repeating the process twice more.
“I always make two sandwiches,” he said. “One isn’t enough for me. It would be awesome if you had some bacon and tomato. That’s the best way to make a grilled cheese—cheddar, bacon and tomato. Although sometimes I like to get really fancy and use mozzarella and prosciutto. Griff got this fig butter from Trader Joe’s and I put it on a mozzarella and prosciutto sandwich and it came out ah-may-zing.”
Mattie wasn’t really listening. She was staring at the sandwich he’d made for her—at the browned edges, the caramel-colored crumb, the ooze of yellow cheese over the side.
“Eat it before it gets too cold. Grilled cheese is one of man’s greatest inventions but it is not delicious when it’s cold.”
Mattie placed the sandwich on the table and sat down in her accustomed chair. She lifted the sandwich to her mouth, bit down, chewed slowly.
A moment later C.P. sat down across from her with his own plate. “How is it? Hey, are you crying? Is it that bad?”
Mattie shook her head, wiped her streaming eyes. “Been . . . so . . . long . . .”
“So long since you had a grilled cheese sandwich?”
“No. Yes,” she said. She wished she could explain. “So . . . long . . . since . . . sandwich. But . . . also . . . since . . . someone . . . made . . . for . . . me.”
Mattie was always the one who did the cooking. It was expected of her, even if she was sick or injured. William didn’t do women’s work.
But she remembered her mother standing at the stove, stirring a pot of soup, flipping sandwiches together just like C.P. had done, and when Mom put the meal in front of her it wasn’t just food to fill her up. It was love, love that made her mom buy the soup with the letters in it in the first place, love that had her standing at the stove cooking sandwiches when she was so tired all she wanted to do was shove two slices of cheese between bread and hand it to her daughter cold.
Mattie didn’t know how to explain to C.P. that she was crying because the sandwich reminded her of her mother, and of home, and William had made certain she would never have her mother or her home again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was strange having another man in the cabin. C.P. talked continuously, about everything, about things Mattie didn’t even understand. He talked about television programs she’d never seen on channels that she didn’t know existed, about countries he traveled to, about the things he studied at school, stores he liked to shop at, board games he liked to play, foods he liked to eat.
“A lot of Asians are lactose intolerant, they can’t even eat a grilled cheese or ice cream or whatever without getting a stomachache, but my grandfather—my mom’s dad—is actually French so I guess I got the French cheese-eating gene. Lucky for me. I went to France a couple of years ago, just backpacked around during the summer school break, and all I ate was cheese and pastries for two months. And wine, of course.”
Mattie had never had wine. She only had the vaguest idea of France, of where it was, of what its people were like.
The more C.P. ate, the more he talked. It was like filling his stomach released some kind of block in his brain, and he talked and talked and talked.
William never talked like this. He told Mattie what she needed to do, and sometimes what he planned to do for the day, or h
e gave her a list of chores they’d need to complete to get ready for the next season. He never chattered idly or talked about his likes and dislikes.
Mattie didn’t know what William would list as a like or dislike, in any case. He didn’t seem to like anything, not even the girl he wanted to own so much he’d taken her from her family in the dead of night.
The fire warmed the room and the food warmed their bellies and the terrors of the night seemed far away. They were safe inside four walls that kept the monsters at bay.
Mattie felt her head falling forward, her eyelids drifting at half-mast. She sat up with a start.
“Hey, you’re dead on your feet,” C.P. said. “I am, too, I guess. Why don’t you go get in the bed with Jen and I’ll sleep out here on this couch thing?”
Mattie hesitated. She didn’t know if she wanted to get into bed with a stranger. She also might disturb Jen if she got in the bed with her. And was it really safe to go to sleep? She didn’t know if they should let down their guard so completely. Anything might happen while they slept.
Anything might happen, but anything might happen even if you’re awake. He’s right—you’re dead on your feet and the only way you’re going to get off this mountain is if you rest. You don’t have the energy to walk three feet right now, much less a day or more.
“Jen won’t care, if that’s what you’re worried about,” C.P. said, waving his hand. “You’ll probably help keep her warm, to be honest. Let’s check and see how she’s doing, anyway.”
Mattie opened the door to the bedroom. The room seemed very chilly compared to the main room where the fire burned.
“Maybe we should leave this door open now that the front window is covered, huh?” C.P. said. “It’s freezing in here.”
The light from the main room cast just enough illumination for her to see the lump that was Jen on the bed. She didn’t seem to have moved at all. Her face seemed unnaturally still to Mattie.
What if she died? What if she died right there in bed while we ate grilled cheese sandwiches on the other side of the door?
C.P. entered behind her, crowding her as always, and Mattie moved to one side. He crossed to the bed and put his hand on Jen’s forehead.
“She’s not quite as cold as she was, and she doesn’t seem to have a fever. I wish I knew what was wrong with her.” He reached under the blanket and pulled out Jen’s arm so he could feel her wrist. “Her pulse is slow. Like, super-slow. She is a running nut so maybe it’s just that her resting heart rate is low but I don’t know. What if she had a heart attack or a stroke or something? That’s crazy, right? More likely she’s just in shock and she just shut down. I mean, between that guy chasing us with the gun and the cryptid and Griffin and everything . . . it’s a lot. Plus her leg got caught in the trap. Her brain might have just been on overload.”
Mattie felt a surge of resentment. She, too, had been terrorized by the monster and she’d been strangled by her husband and she’d been chased through the woods. And it wasn’t even the first time these things had happened to her. Why didn’t she get to faint and let someone else cope with all the horrors? Why did she have to keep pulling herself up and pushing on?
The resentment was almost immediately crushed beneath the weight of shame—shame that she would feel that way, shame that she would blame Jen for something she couldn’t help.
But Mattie was worried about what they would do in the morning if Jen still wasn’t moving and functioning. They didn’t know if William was still alive, but if he was, he would certainly chase them. And the creature would, too. They would never escape if they tried to drag Jen between them, and Mattie didn’t think C.P. would be willing to leave herself and Jen behind in the cabin while he went for help.
He might leave you behind. You’re nobody to him, and he made it clear that the only reason he helped was because of Griffin. He wouldn’t leave Jen, even if it’s more practical for him to go for help and return later.
What would happen in the morning would happen. Mattie needed to stop worrying about it and sleep. Maybe Jen would wake up, refreshed and ready to run. Maybe William would be dead, and Mattie would have one less fear.
“Well,” C.P. said. He said this often, Mattie noticed. He filled in empty spaces with words that had no purpose. “I guess I’ll go pitch my tent by the fire. Seems kind of unfair. It’s so much warmer out there. But you guys will be more comfortable in the bed, right? If you’d rather sleep by the fire I could climb in with Jen.”
Mattie must have looked as appalled as she felt, because C.P. laughed.
“I bet your religion says men shouldn’t sleep with women who aren’t their wives or something, right? It’s not like that. We’re just friends. We’ve slept in the same tent more times than I can count.”
It did seem strange to Mattie, very strange, but she pushed back against the strangeness because she knew this was something that William had taught her and everything William taught her was a lie.
“I . . . think . . . it . . . would . . . be . . . better . . . if . . . you . . .” Mattie gestured toward the bed.
“Are you sure?” C.P. asked. “I’m not going to lie, the couch didn’t look long enough for my legs, even if the fire is out there.”
Mattie nodded. This was preferable. C.P. said Jen wouldn’t mind but Mattie had a lot of trouble reconciling herself to the idea of sleeping next to a stranger. And this way C.P. could monitor his friend. Mattie suspected that if he slept in the main room he would be in and out of the bedroom several times, checking on Jen.
C.P. started pulling off his coat and boots and Mattie left the room quickly. She didn’t know if he would strip down to his underwear or not and she wasn’t comfortable staying in the same room if he did.
“Leave the door open,” he called after her
She wanted to take off her own heavy skirts and petticoats and change into a nightgown, but she heard the rustle of C.P. settling into the bed and decided not to go back in to get her night things. She hadn’t taken off her coat since they’d entered the cabin, though, so she put it away and then crouched in front of the couch, fairly certain that nobody would be able to see her from the bedroom. She slid her petticoats off so she just wore a wool skirt and stockings and her heavy sweater. Then she stoked the fire, adding wood so that it would burn well into the night.
Mattie climbed onto the couch and covered herself with a knitted blanket. It was warm and comfortable by the fire, and she was exhausted and her belly was full. She listened to the sounds of C.P. rolling around in the bed, clearly trying to get comfortable in a strange place. She wondered if she would be able to sleep with two strangers in the cabin.
William carried her down the stairs, away from Mom, away from her mother’s strange stillness and the sticky-sweet smell. Sam wasn’t wearing anything except pajamas, not even socks on her feet, and she knew that something was very wrong no matter what William said because Mom loved her and she would never let someone else take her away, not even William.
William was only Mom’s boyfriend. Sam had always liked him, because he played with her and Heather and sometimes he carried Sam on his shoulders when they were out. Sometimes she felt like he was a dad. She didn’t remember their real dad, who went away a long time ago.
But now William was acting weird and Mom didn’t answer when Sam called and she didn’t want to leave with William. He wasn’t her real dad. He couldn’t take her away. And Heather wasn’t home, Heather was at a sleepover party with a bunch of girls from her class and if Sam left now she wouldn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to her own sister.
“I don’t want to go!” she said. “Let me go!”
“Samantha,” William said. “I told you once that you are to listen to me and obey. I will not tell you again.”
Sam squirmed and wriggled but his arms were so strong. William’s arms were much stronger than her little self, and instead
of making her feel safe and happy they felt like a prison. She never felt so small as she did at that moment, when William changed from Mom’s silly boyfriend to a giant from a fairy tale, a giant with blood in his teeth.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he said, and his hand covered her nose as well as her mouth and she couldn’t breathe and then there was no more Mom, no more William, no more strange smells or the shadows of her bedroom at night.
When she opened her eyes she was in a vehicle and it was moving fast. She heard the rumble of the tires on the road and the whooshing sound of the wind outside. She was buckled into a seat belt that seemed too big for her—she was so small that her mother insisted she still use a booster seat in the car even though all of her friends were out of them. There was no booster seat now, and her feet were very far from the floor, and she could see the dashboard. That wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to sit in the front of the car—only in the back. Grownups sat in the front.
She wasn’t in a car. She was in a truck. Sam peered out the window and saw trees going by very fast. She sat up a little straighter and saw an empty highway ahead.
There was a jacket draped over her but it wasn’t her jacket. It was a leather jacket with a quilted lining and it was William’s. She recognized it right away. Her feet were cold even though the heater was blowing.
Then she remembered—William at the window, Mom lying so still in the bed, William covering her mouth with her hand.
“Awake, sleepyhead?” William said. “How’s my pretty girl?”
Sam sat up straighter and looked over at the driver. William was smiling at her as he drove. She didn’t smile back.
“Where’s Mom?” she said.
“I told you before, your mother wants me to take care of you for a while. It’s very difficult for her, you know. She’s all by herself with two little girls. You want to help your mother, don’t you? You want to make things easier for her?”
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