Una blinked up at the intruder as the woman, this other Una, leaned over her. For a moment, Una drifted off, lulled back into sleep by the hot steady breath on her forehead. She was barely aware of the pressure on her throat, or the dull, deep drumbeat that grew increasingly louder. She was underwater. Down she floated, the drumbeat becoming louder and faster as she sank. Gasping for air, she at last opened her eyes, and looked into the face of her attacker.
“Eddie?” She had barely been able to whisper the name, but the effect upon the intruder was instantaneous. The expression on the face, mere inches above Una’s own, changed from rage to confusion. The hands loosened their grip. As Una gasped, she heard thunder, and the intruder fell upon her. For a moment, she lay there, choking on the stench of the perfume, the hair of the intruder’s blond wig covering her face. Then the body of Eddie March was rolled off of her, and she was looking into the worried face of Officer Lee. When she awoke again, in the unfamiliar room of the hospital, he was still with her, smiling down at her.
Alone in the Woods in the Deep Dark Night
Edward R. Rosick
With one last burst of desperate energy, Gary Irwin Chandler II shut the heavy back door against the howling winds. His breath came in frantic gulps and he shook with fear and cold, slumped on the hardwood floors of the cabin situated on the edge of the 50,000 acre Ojibwa National Forest in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The late November storm blew with a malevolent ferocity outside, lashing his abode with continuing blasts of wind and thick, wet sleet and snow that minutes before had almost cost Gary his life.
He curled his arms tight around his chest, his shivering body wracked with pain emanating from his cut right hand but even more so from his left leg. Gary glanced down, and his first crazy thought was that he was looking at the limb of a store mannequin that somehow had magically replaced his own.
But it wasn’t plaster or plastic; the bloody, managed limb was his leg. From the knee down his jeans had been torn away, revealing torn flesh looking like meat from a badly carved steak.
This can’t be real. This crap can’t be real. Just hours ago, I was talking with Donna, and now…
With one shaking finger, he lightly touched it. Nothing. No pain, no sensation. Encouraged, Gary pushed harder, then screamed. The pain was nothing like he had ever experienced. It was deep, sharp, exploding like a bomb and expanding into his guts.
That was fucking brilliant! A tiny malevolent voice chirped deep inside his head. Just like all the other fucking brilliant things you’ve done today!
Tears streaked his face and thick snot ran out of his nose; Gary felt his mind shutting down, knew that he was seconds away from passing out, and if that happened—sitting there wearing clothes soaking wet and in a freezing house with no heat—he wasn’t going to wake up.
“No,” he said out loud, using his voice to stay conscious. “I’m not dying today.”
But you are dying, you loser, the malevolent voice countered, and the sooner you realize it, the sooner the pain of your pathetic life can be over!
“No!” Gary said yet again. He forced himself to take deep breaths and slow his pounding heart over the demands of his shivering body that screamed for more oxygen and some form of warmth.
“I gotta get…dry clothes.” But where? There was no way he had the energy to crawl down the long hallway of the cabin to the master bedroom, but if he didn’t, he was going to—
“The laundry room,” Gary said. There was always a huge pile of dirty clothes in the laundry room, and that was just a few feet away.
See? the little voice sneered. Donna’s disdain for all things domestic like doing laundry might finally pay off for you yet!
Gary grabbed the kerosene lantern with his left hand and put it on the floor. The light feebly cut through the darkness of the hallway, but it was enough. With pain throbbing like a monstrous toothache in his left leg, Gary crawled the ten feet until the laundry room appeared to his left. Hardly any light from the lantern illuminated the room, but Gary didn’t need it; he knew that there would be a huge mound of clothes in there that Donna refused to wash (“I’m not your fucking maid, Gary!” was one of her favorite retorts to him asking her to at least do something around the house).
Gary entered the laundry room and reached the pile. It smelled of sweat, dirt, mildew, but it didn’t matter—the clothes were dry. With the last vestiges of his strength, he pulled the soaked garments off his portly (fat, Gary: you’re a fucking fat slob just like Donna used to say) body. As quickly as his shaking hands allowed, he put on dry underwear, long johns, five sweatshirts from his college days and two pairs of corduroy pants, then wrapped a t-shirt around his hand and a down comforter around his shoulders.
His heart pounded like he had drunk six cups of cappuccino and his leg ached horribly, but he was dry but still miserably cold. The storm was getting worse, the entire cabin now trembling under the hurricane-like blasts of freezing wind.
“I gotta get a fire going,” he croaked, his throat dry and parched. Gary grabbed the side of the washing machine and stood. Hobbling down the hallway, he grabbed the lantern and slowly made his way toward the living room and the vast, stone-faced fireplace that promised him salvation and life.
But he stopped halfway there as light from the lantern shown into the kitchen to his right.
“I’ll get some water,” Gary said, “then get a fire going, then—” (Then what, fat boy? You have no power, you have no ride, you got absolutely nothing!) “I’ll wait out the storm and…someone will come by. Someone has to come by.”
He didn’t allow himself to linger on how illogical that last line of reasoning was, but instead limped over to the sink before yet another realization came to him: the cabin had a well for water, which required a pump to pull it out of the frozen ground, a pump that required electricity to work.
If there’s no water pressure I’ll…Gary turned on the faucet. Water flowed out and he scooped it with a hand to his mouth like a Paleolithic caveman. See? There’s pressure left in the system, you’re able to drink and then you’ll be able to start a fire and everything will be just fine!
His thirst was sated, but his stomach growled at the thought of food; he glanced over at the refrigerator, sitting silent and mute next to the electric stove.
I need to eat as much as I needed to drink. Just a quick snack then I’ll get the fire going. He wrapped the bulky down comforter tighter around his still-shivering body and opened an overhead cupboard door to get a plate. As he reached in, Gary spied a rounded, green bottle on the back of the shelf.
"Look what we have here," he said, holding up the lantern for illumination. “I drove all the way to Marquette for you.” Gary retrieved the bottle of Armagnac and held it carefully in his hands. "I wanted to have something special for our dinner with the McNealin's and Doug.” He unscrewed the top and took a long drink of the strong, amber liquid. Better be careful there, Gary-boy, the tiny voice in the back of his head admonished him. You know how just a couple beers really fucks you up. After two glasses of Armagnac with dinner that night, you couldn't even get the pole up for Donna. Bet she was wishing that Dougie would have been between the sheets that night!
Tears of anger and frustration began to roll slowly down Gary's face then unleashed in a torrent. He was a city-boy, born and raised in the white-bread Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills in a 4,000-square foot house with running water, cable TV with 300 channels, and central air-conditioning. Out here, he was out of his element.
Way out of his element.
“Quit the pity-party, Gary,” he said, wiping tears away with the back of his hand, then grabbing a plate and filling it with a block of cheese and the hunk of venison sausage that Ray McNealin had given him. “You need to eat then start a fire. Then you’ll figure out something after that.”
He placed the plate, bottle, and lantern down on a large, ornately carved oak dinner table that Donna had insisted they buy, no matter the extravagant price tag, and sat.
His entire body ached and Gary felt decades older than his 43 years (but not when you were humpin’ away on your 31-year-old wife, right, Gary-boy? That sweet pussy was the best fountain of youth there is. Too bad it’s Dougie that’s now givin’ her his meat stick!)
Gary pulled the comforter close, took a small bite of the venison sausage, then washed it down with another large gulp of the Armagnac. He had to focus, to stick to the task of getting a fire going before he froze to death, but it was so damn easy to dwell on his mistakes, on what-ifs and maybes, to get lost in the memories of how he ended up in a freezing cabin smack dab in the middle of the American equivalent of Siberia.
“You made bad choices,” he said in a quiet, defeated voice, “or no choices at all. Just let stuff happen and hoped it would all turn out well.” (And what’d your old man used to tell you? Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first!)
A small bite of cheese, then another long drink of the Armagnac, and the memories came flooding back like a crazy-quilt film festival, complete with screen shots from This is Your Life, Gary Alan Chandler!
First scene: Gary met Donna at a local comic book store a week before Christmas. She was there to get something for her then-boyfriend’s 10-year old son. Gary was instantly drawn to her—as was any heterosexual male who had a heartbeat and cock—two inches taller than his five foot, seven inch height, with shoulder-length dark auburn hair, a finely featured face that held an easy Hollywood-white smile and sparkling green eyes that captivated Gary the moment he looked into them. He helped her pick up some comics (Spiderman and Batman, always solid choices), then, despite his usual shyness, walked her to her car, a 2016 Porsche Cayman (her boyfriend’s car, he would find out later), and in a burst of courage, gave her his business card. She took it, telling him that if she ever needed help in picking out comic books, she’d be sure to give him a call.
Which she did less than two months later on Valentine's Day.
Scene two: It was a whirlwind romance, as Gary’s deceased father would have said. Donna called Gary and told him that she had broken up with her Porsche Cayman boyfriend and needed someone to talk to, that Gary seemed so kind and friendly at the comic store, and she hoped he didn’t see this as too forthcoming, but would it be all right if they met for coffee and talked?
After two cups of decaf and multiple drinks at a local bar, they ended up at Gary’s house and fucked until the sun came up, then fucked some more. She was totally uninhibited, willing and wanting to do everything and anything. Gary fell immediately in love.
He learned a bit about her—after high school, she was a dancer at various strip clubs until she was 21, then a model for a semi-legit modeling agency out of Tampa, Florida for five years before giving it up, tired of the traveling and the constant sexual harassment. After coming back to Michigan, she had taken a job as hostess and employee manager at one of Detroit’s newest upscale lounges where, she told Gary, she could “be myself and still be well-paid without having to suck and fuck every dickhead with a contract and cash.”
Three month later, one week shy of Memorial Day, they were married.
Scene three: A month after their marriage, Gary received notice that the software company, where he was the well-paid, lead design engineer, was sold to a multi-billion-dollar Chinese conglomerate. The new company had offered to double Gary’s salary if he moved to their newly built U.S. headquarters in Mississippi.
“There’s no way in hell I’m moving back south,” Donna said. “I’ve had my fill of rednecks.” So, without further thought or consideration, Gary accepted a seven-figure buyout of his contract and for the first time since he was twenty-four years old, became unemployed.
But you didn’t care, did you, fat boy? You were so hot for that hard-bodied bitch that you would have eaten a shit-sandwich every morning and called it a gourmet breakfast!
For once, the malignant voice was right. Gary was so much in love with his voluptuous and carefree wife that he didn't think twice when Donna suggested they move to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a dark, cold land of trees, bears, and month after month of bitter cold weather. "It's so beautiful in the U.P.,” Donna said, harking back to her childhood days when her mother used to take her camping in the northern woods. “Me and my Mom used to call it God’s country. I bet you could go there, start your own software company and be the next Bill Gates."
In hindsight, Gary realized he was doomed from the start. Setting up his own business proved a thousand times more difficult than he had realized; his level of anxiety and frustration went up as his once-strong bank account went down. Donna was at first ecstatic in their rural abode but soon seemed to tire of the country life, talking about taking cruises to the Caribbean, flights to Paris and Rome, anything to, as she put it, “get a taste of some real culture.”
Which Gary could understand; he really could. What he couldn’t do was financially sustain such a lifestyle when the money coming in was a trickle at best. It was then that their house-shaking arguments began and their once-active sex life slowed to a couple times a month, if that. Gary was at his wit’s end on how to revive his life and marriage and to appease his increasingly agitated wife’s complaints of boredom and dwindling social life. As much as he detested social get-togethers, he decided that getting together with their nearest neighbors, the McNealins and Doug Freeman, might make Donna happy. It did, only in ways that Gary never imagined.
Doug was a twenty-seven-year-old laid off miner from Ispheming with a Hollywood actor’s face and a Greek god’s body who taught a wood-working class at the local high school, one which Donna enrolled in. Last night, Donna invited him and the McNealins over for dinner. Gary spent the entire evening brooding as he watched the sly glances Donna gave to Doug. After the McNealins and Doug left, Gary and Donna had another blow-up, cumulating in Donna packing her bags that morning and walking out. Gary had refused to give her keys to their Land Rover, so she walked.
Out into the first winter storm of the year.
She’ll come back, he told himself. But she didn’t, and after a few hours, with the storm increasing in its ferocity and the electricity in the house a memory—along with the light and heat, Gary decided to go after her.
He rummaged around in the kitchen cabinets until he found a working flashlight, then put on his heaviest winter coat, scarf, and brand-new leather driving gloves. At the back door, he lit the kerosene lantern that Donna insisted they buy and placed it on the top shelf to provide another source of light for when he returned, then went outside.
Gary’s first breath of the freezing air burned his lungs and brought tears to his eyes. Snow blew about him in angry, white eddies as he moved out into the yard, When he heard the loud crash from the other side of the house, Gary plodded through the snow and around the corner; there, under the heavy weight of the wet snow, sat their Land Rover, covered under the twisted steel and wood structure that used to be a carport, the bulk which had fallen on the hood and driver's side of the SUV. Gary took a deep breath, then began to pull on the twisted wreckage. He managed to remove the largest piece of the carport and almost had the second piece off when the oak support beam slid from the roof and into him.
The impact was like the kick of an angry horse. Gary was thrown back and instantly swallowed by the snow. The pain in his leg burst to life like an exploding sun. When he pushed himself up and tried to stand, the agony in his leg was an unseen force pinning him to the ground, yet he knew if he didn’t make it to the back door, he would die.
“But I made it,” Gary muttered in the dark of the kitchen as he continued to drain the bottle of Armagnac. “I had the guts to push through the pain, to do what I had to do to make it back to the house, even though I was all alone.”
A new memory blossomed in his mind, not of Donna but of a poem from his long-dormant childhood that his Aunt Mildred would sing to him when he felt frightened and alone:
Alone in the woods
in the deep dark night,
&
nbsp; under the stars,
under their light,
which show me the road,
which lift my fright,
and guide me to heaven—
Gary frowned; he couldn’t remember the last line. He tried to concentrate, to pull it up from his addled mind, until a strange sound intruded on him. It wasn’t the roar of the storm or the sound of the snow hitting the cabin. This noise was rhythmic, drifting in and out like static from a dying radio.
He held his breath and strained to hear. A tapping. Like someone percussing out a steady, even beat. And it was coming from inside.
Gary ran his left hand through his short greying hair and loudly sighed, his breath coming out of his mouth in a plume of gray, like an ancient dragon huffing in impotent rage. What now? The tapping continued on and off in no discernible pattern. You need to get up anyway and get the fire going. You also need to rewrap your hand…and do about a thousand other things before things progress from bad to very bad.
He limped into the hallway, holding the hissing kerosene lantern out in front of him like an ancient mariner on the deck of a ghost ship. To his right was his and Donna’s bedroom, the study, and the bathroom. To the left was the living room. Gary stood still and quiet, his labored breathing and the intermittent roaring of the storm the only sounds permeating the cold air.
The tapping was gone.
It must have been the wind. Maybe a tree hitting the house, the old TV antenna blown down and smacking against a window, or—
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