The banked fire illuminated the back part of the cabin, but it left the front shadowy and impenetrable. Her heart sank. She would have to look in the second window, too.
She withdrew her face from the fetid warmth and dropped back on her stomach. Again she squirmed forward through the dirt, still groping for traps. To her right a curious indentation dimpled the earth. Probably an old well, she decided. It seemed odd that anyone would put a well so close to the side of a cabin, but this was Ulagu. Ulagu could put his well any damn place he pleased.
She crawled for what felt like decades, the rustle of her body moving through the weeds thunderous in her ears. Ulagu must surely have heard her by now. Any second he would storm out of the door, shotgun in hand. But nothing happened. The cabin remained so still she wondered if he hadn’t slipped away while she and Joan slept. Finally she neared the last window. She could make no mistakes now. Who knew what the snap of a twig might pull down upon her head?
Her whole body trembling, she rose to her feet. Except for a single top pane, all this glass had been shattered. If anyone was looking out this window now, she would soon be staring them straight in the face.
Resolutely, she steadied herself. Just let Alex be in there, she prayed silently. And please at last let her still be alive. Finally she turned to the empty mullions. Her eyes took a moment to accustom to the light, then the interior of the cabin materialized from the darkness.
A cot stretched beneath the window. Though the head lay cloaked in shadow, she could see two feet protruding from the end of a ragged blanket. Two feet with long toenails and a thick growth of hair. Ulagu, she realized with a calm which surprised her. Now where’s Alex? She squinted into the darkness. A puddle of moonlight fell on a knotted rope looped around the man’s ankle. The rope sloped to the floor, then led to a torn mat a short distance from his bed. Mary fought back a gasp. There, not six feet away, staring straight at her, sat Alex.
She huddled there nude, her eyes riveted to Mary’s face. Her golden hair hung matted and limp. Her upper lip was bloody, both eyes were almost swollen shut. Her skin seemed pulled too tightly across her skull.
For an instant Mary could only stare helplessly at the beauty who had once reigned as Miss Chance Station, Texas. The features that two days ago she had known as well as her own now looked like a stranger’s. How dare this man do that to Alex! How dare this man harm anyone. Kill him now , the voice thundered in her brain. Roar through this window and tear out his eyes.
Suddenly Alex blinked, then her mouth began to quiver in a feeble version of her old smile. She put one finger to her lips, then pointed at the sleeping man and shook her head. Mary nodded her acknowledgment, then smiled. Whatever else Alex was, at least she was still alive.
A row of raccoon pelts stood on stretchers across the room, while snake skins hung from the ceiling. In one corner stood a sagging table that looked like it might have been stolen from some flea market—trinkets and clothing and toys and sporting equipment jumbled together, dripping from the table to the floor. Souvenirs, Mary thought, the realization raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Ulagu takes scalps.
She pushed that out of her mind. Instead, she looked back at Alex and smiled. In the shadows, Mary could see hope rekindling in her friend’s face. They would have to be beyond careful now. One sound from either of them would get them both killed. Cautiously, she reached through the shattered window and extended her index finger. Alex rose noiselessly, careful not to disturb the rope that bound her to Ulagu. In the moonlight they pressed their fingers together. Not much, but enough. The spark that had bound them together for the past twelve years passed between them again. Mary mouthed the word “later” and withdrew her arm. Alex raised her hand in farewell. With an extragavant wink, Mary grinned and nodded, then began to back away.
She had taken only a few steps when she saw Alex’s mouth become a horrified gap in her face. Simultaneously she felt the ground beneath her right foot give way. With a deep whump she tumbled backwards. The base of her spine bounced once on something hard, then she began to slide. She scrambled to catch herself in the slick damp clay but the hole angled precipitously away; disastrously out of control, she slid lower and lower, until her left foot snagged something that felt like a small root. She trembled there suspended, her hands clutching the earth above.
Idiot, she scolded herself. You’ve tracked Alex through hell and half of Georgia, only to fall in a stupid well! She looked above her and saw only darkness and the stars, but then she heard voices. Alex’s, then a second, deeper one. Angry, yelling.
“What the hell are you doing, Trude?” The deep voice boomed like a cannon.
“Charting my horoscope, you pinheaded asshole!” Alex’s Texas twang sounded weak, but it still carried the sting of spurs. “Now just leave me alone! Go back to where you came from!”
The hoarser voice roared something back in a language Mary couldn’t understand; Alex’s shrill “Get out of here!” ended abruptly with a slap and a muffled cry.
As Mary struggled to cling to the ground above her she realized what was happening. Her fall had awakened Ulagu. Now Alex was creating a diversion to give her a chance to escape. By the sound of the voices overhead, she needed to move fast.
Quickly, she began to search for a foothold. Balancing on the one small root that held her, she nudged the earthen walls with her free foot. She had just found a small crack she could dig her toes into when she heard it. A soft, buttery sound. She cocked her head and listened. Surely she was imagining things. Surely this was just an old well this monster had forgotten to cover. But the sound continued. Suddenly it was joined by another; then a third.
“Oh, God!” she cried involuntarily, an icy sweat instantly bathing her skin. This was no well she had fallen into. This was Ulagu’s lair, and she had fallen into Ulagu’s snake pit.
Panicked, she dug her toes desperately into the earth. If she fell to the bottom she would die. You could survive one snake bite, maybe two. But a dozen? Two dozen?
“Inadu,” she cried the Cherokee word for snake as she scrambled frantically upward. If she could just lift herself enough to get her elbows above ground maybe she could get the leverage to pull herself out . . .
She felt for another toehold in the earthen walls. A shower of crumbly dirt sifted into the darkness below; the snakes rattled louder as Alex and Ulagu bellowed through the darkness above. She searched the walls with her foot. Finally, one toe found another minuscule crack. She pressed her foot into it and pushed up. Her shoulders trembled with pain, but it felt like she moved a fraction of an inch upwards.
She clung with her fingers and now dug her toes into the earth, this time a little higher. She pushed up. More earth sifted down on the snakes, but her right elbow had almost reached the grassy surface above. She pushed and kicked once more, then suddenly she could bend her arm. Pressing it hard against the ground, she pushed with her left leg and abruptly her other arm and shoulders were free. Cool, sweet air caressed her face. She tugged herself upright, then turned to the cabin. She saw nothing, but she didn’t need to. Alex’s screams resounded through the moonliight like souls being ferried into hell.
For a moment she crouched frozen in place. What should she do? Her first instinct was to run back and rip out Ulagu’s heart with her bare hands. But Alex had screamed “Go away” and “Get out of here” too many times for her to ignore. Was she just yelling at her captor, or was it some kind of message for Mary?
She cringed as their shouts still echoed in the air. Ulagu was big and strong. His blood would be hot now, his muscles limber and warm. She would have little chance hand-to-hand with someone like that. Better to leave now, the voice whispered inside her head. Better to sneak up and surprise him later.That was what Alex was trying to tell you.
She turned and wriggled through the grass as quickly as she could, certain she would be discovered; waiting for Alex’s screams to stop and a bullet to snap her spine. Her breath sounded like a windstorm in h
er ears. When she reached the back side of the cabin she gathered her strength for the final sprint to the creek, then, with only thirty more yards to go, she took off. Her lungs were on fire but her legs, her heart, kept pumping. Finally, the shadows of the bushes reached out for her as she plunged into their forgiving darkness. For an eternity she lay flat on her belly, the cool, damp rushes soft against her cheek.
When she caught her breath she sat up and looked back at the cabin. Once again it was silent and ominously still. Alex had either been beaten to unconsciousness, or to death. Suddenly Mary felt a heat begin to bubble inside her. A rage. A hunger. A desire for revenge. All at once she remembered the six stones piled upon her mother’s grave, and she realized that the one act that would redeem her lay ahead.
“Tonight you have six, Mama,” she said quietly, thinking of the mystical Cherokee number that would grant her absolution. She stared up at the high, white moon. “But tomorrow you shall have seven.”
THIRTY-NINE
From that moment on, a high whine keened inside her like the hum of angry wasps. It warmed her as she waded through the icy creek to her boots and paint box, the only weapons she possessed, and it did not stop when she filled the box with water and threaded her way back to Joan. She moved supple as a panther in the jungle and she wondered, as she neared their woodpile, if she wasn’t glowing in some spectral shade of blue.
“Mary?” Joan crouched low to the ground, peering nervously into the woods. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
“Jeez, Mary! What happened over there? All I heard was screaming!”
Mary slid to the ground beside Joan and told her that the barefoot man kept snakes and traps and a curious collection of souvenirs; that Alex had been tied up but that she was alive; that Mary had fallen into a snake pit kept by Ulagu. She did not, however, reveal to Joan that the barefoot man may well have beaten Alex to death just minutes ago.
“It sounded horrible.” Joan shuddered. “I didn’t know what to do. . . .”
“You did okay,” Mary assured her, offering Joan some water from the paint box. Her own throat felt as papery as the snake skins that decorated Ulagu’s rafters. “You did just fine.”
“What are we going to do next?” Joan eagerly slurped some of the water.
“I’m going to go back and kill him.” The words came out of Mary’s mouth so fast and blunt that they surprised her. She’d just announced her intention to kill a man as casually as if she were going to debone a chicken.
Joan’s eye gleamed like a pearl in the moonlight. “You’re going to what?”
“Go back and kill him.” Mary stared at her, unsmiling.
“But couldn’t we just kidnap Alex back, when he’s gone?”
“He’d be after us in a heartbeat,” replied Mary, the wasp-hum inside her rising. “Even if we got a full day’s head start, he’d catch us.”
“How?”
“Joan, we marked our way with yellow paint,” Mary reminded her. “A myopic cripple could follow our trail. This monster would be eating our livers before dark.”
Joan drew herself up into a small, ragged ball. For a long time she stared mutely at the cabin, fear and misery both twisting across the planes of her face.
Suddenly Mary was stung by a poisonous guilt. If it hadn’t been for her, Joan would be back in Atlanta, safe in a sunny hospital room banked with flowers, talking her trauma out with some kind-eyed therapist. Instead she sat here—sick, feverish, huddled behind a rotting pile of logs, playing hide-and-seek with a madman. The hum notched higher inside her. Joan had been a brave woman to come on this trek. She deserved to survive. Mary knew she alone had the best chance of making that happen. She leaned over and said:
“If I kill him, we can rest. He’s got a fireplace where we can get warm. He’s got food we can eat. He’s even got a damn bottle of vitamins.” She squeezed Joan’s arm. “With him dead we can all walk out of here alive.”
For an instant Joan gaped at her as if she didn’t recognize her—as if the Mary Crow who’d crept into the darkness an hour ago had returned as someone else. Then her face contorted, as if she were remembering that afternoon at Atagahi, when a man had appeared from nowhere and ripped her world apart. “Okay,” she replied quietly. “How do we do it?”
Mary smiled. “Do you remember how tall he is?”
Joan shrugged. “I don’t know. Taller than Alex, probably.”
“Okay, let’s say over six feet. I’ll have to aim pretty high.”
“Aim what?”
“I’m going to take one of these logs and sneak back down to the porch. When he comes out in the morning, I’ll be right beside the front door, waiting.”
“And?”
Mary felt the hum again. “And then I’m going to smash his fucking head in.”
Joan pressed herself tighter against the logs. “Do you honestly think you could do that?” There was a quaver in her voice.
Mary looked into Joan’s mutilated face and remembered Alex’s bruises, then thought of her mother, lying still and broken, so many years ago. “There’s not a doubt in my mind,” she replied.
They talked on in the dark, working out the details of the plan. This time neither of them slept. A breeze rattled the trees. Shadows danced on the ground, and leaves tumbled across the meadow as if swept by an invisible broom. A front was blustering through from the north. This day would dawn frosty, rimmed in ice. Hog-killing weather, Mary thought with an odd little jolt of anticipation.
Joan finally wore out. She splashed some cool water on her infected foot and slumped down behind the logs, fitfully sleeping. Mary knew that she, too, should get some rest, but she did not feel tired. From the moment she had decided to kill Ulagu, a hot, expansive energy had infused her. She felt as if she could stay up all night, kill Ulagu, and party all day tomorrow. Maybe this was what made them kill, she thought, remembering Cal Whitman and the five other men she’d nailed in court. Maybe delivering death was the headiest thrill life had to offer.
She shook her head. She couldn’t allow herself to dwell there.
The old logs glowed like dull silver in the moonlight. She crawled over and pawed quietly through the pile, searching for just the right one. Most were too big and heavy for her to hold comfortably, but underneath some leaves she found a smaller one that had tumbled from the stack. It was almost a yard long and tapered at one end, like a thick baseball bat. She wrapped both hands around the splintery bark and swung it tentatively. The heft felt sweet and firm, and she knew without a doubt that it would cleave a man’s skull like a melon.
When the dark began to soften into dawn, she touched Joan’s shoulder.
“Joan,” she whispered. “I’m going now. I’ll need my jeans to crawl through those weeds.”
Joan blinked, sleepily. “Did we just plan to kill Barefoot?” she asked. “Or did I dream that?”
“No.” Mary untied the laces on her boots. “You didn’t dream that at all.”
Joan tugged off the pants and handed them to Mary.
“Is there anything else I can do to help?” Joan asked as Mary pulled on her jeans and relaced her boots.
Mary shook her head. “Just do like before. Keep watch and yell if you see him sneaking up on me. And you might say a prayer to whatever saint’s in charge of putting mad dogs out of their misery.”
“I can do that,” Joan promised, smiling crookedly. She wrapped her arms around Mary’s neck and held her close, as if trying to fill her with whatever small strength she had left. Mary felt the fever burning within her. “Thank you,” Joan whispered.
“Thank you?”
“For keeping me alive.”
Mary hugged her, then kissed the swollen cheek of the tiny soprano from Flatbush. “Your courage humbles me, Joan. Whatever happens now, I want you to know that you’re a true War Woman. And I’ve never called anybody that before in my life.”
Joan smiled up at her. Her eyes were wet with tears. “And I want you to know that yo
u did the right thing by coming up here. What is it you guys say? It’s a good day to die?”
Mary chuckled. “I heard that once in the movies.”
“Then it must be true.” Joan wiped her eyes.
“See you later.”
“Addio, amica del cuore. Here. Take this. At least it’s some kind of weapon.” Joan held out the palette knife.
Shouldering her log, Mary dropped the knife in the pocket of her jeans and slipped back through the trees. This time, however, she stopped at the back of the cabin. The weeds, she noted, grew taller here. She could creep through them and still remain hidden from anyone looking out.
“Okay, Wynona,” she murmured as she cradled the log in her arms and dived belly-down into the tall grass. “Stay with me one more time.”
The dew had made the weeds slippery and wet. She crawled with her elbows forward, always seeking the rim of another snake pit or the sharp metal edge of a trap. For every three feet she pushed herself through the cold, slick tangle, she felt as if she slid a foot back. She didn’t want to raise up from the grass and expose her position, so she picked one pale star from the Pleiades overhead and crawled directly towards it. Already it seemed to glow less brightly than when she’d started. If she was going to reach the porch before the sun rose, she needed to hurry.
She crawled on. Husks of ragweed tickled her nose. To her left she heard a rustling in the grass. She froze. Ulagu? Could he have seen the tall grass moving in the dark? She held her breath, then the who-who-who-whoooo? of an owl came from the creek. Her heart sank. Uguug. To the old Cherokees, owls foretold death. “So be it.” She shrugged as she crept on. “Let’s just hope Uguug’s calling for him.”
The hum pulled her forward. Her senses were sharp as razors; the dawning world blazed fiery green; she felt as if she could hear spiders spinning their webs in the forest of grass. Had Cal Whitman felt such power when he committed murder? This is what it’s like, a seductive voice whispered inside her brain. This is why they kill.
In The Forest Of Harm Page 27