by Amy Stuart
“Where?”
“To the mine.”
A barking cough overtakes Louise. Steve removes his sweater and kneels, eyes down, a reluctant witness to the scene. He hands Clare his sweater to wrap around Louise.
“Steve Gorman is here, Louise. We’ll carry you back to his truck.”
It will do no good with these wet clothes against Louise’s skin. Clare tries to hug her again, to warm her. What could she have been thinking to undo those restraints? She figured on some sixth sense, as Derek said. Cut her loose. She’d needed Louise to lead her. Instead Louise wandered into the woods and nearly met her death.
“I can carry her,” Steve says. “She can’t be much heavier than Danny.”
He hands Clare the shotgun and scoops up Louise. She tucks into the fetal position against him, her arms around Steve’s neck.
“You sure made it a long way by yourself,” Steve says.
“I came looking for you. You needed my help.”
“Me?” Steve asks.
“You were underground for so long.”
Steve looks to Clare, who mouths one word. Wilfred.
“It’s okay,” Steve says. “I’m here now. We’re all safe and sound.”
There might be a croak in his voice as he utters the words. The weight of Louise in his arms has no bearing on Steve’s gait. I’m here now, Steve said to her. He understood right away what was needed of him, a man of few cues, able to glean so much from so little. If only his son, Michael, had had such sense that day in the mine, his father’s intuition about what might come next, then he might have followed Wilfred into the chamber instead of climbing that shaft in escape.
Smoke. A curl rises from a broken window. Sara’s car is now parked next to Wilfred’s truck. The plume of smoke is wispy, its fire soundless. High above it the sun is a blot behind the clouds.
“Jesus,” Steve says, surveying the scene, Louise still in his arms. Clare opens the truck so that Steve can set Louise down in the backseat, her eyes closed, head lolling. Steve finds a bottle of water and touches it to Louise’s lips. She gulps.
“She needs to go to the hospital,” Clare says.
“No,” Louise says without opening her eyes.
“I think she’s hypothermic,” Clare says.
“Sara’s car is here,” Steve says. “I can’t leave.”
Louise curls into the seat. She appears to be asleep, her breathing steady. Steve finds a blanket under the backseat and drapes it over her. He snatches the shotgun from Clare.
“She’ll be fine for another minute,” he says. “This needs to end.”
“Charlie will kill you. Wilfred might kill you. We don’t know what’s happened here.”
“I’ll take that chance. I’m telling you. It ends.”
Of course Clare knows what he means. It needs to end. The sight of his daughter-in-law staggering home this morning, stoned and caked with mud. Steve takes firing hold of the gun and rounds the corner. The version of Clare that endured her husband’s wrath would surely run from this scene. That version of Clare was afraid, always afraid, accustomed to relying on her fear above all else. But now a vision of Louise staring down the cougar flashes before her. There is no point in cowering. Doing so never helped her much anyway. She checks Louise’s breathing again, then closes the door to the truck and turns the corner too.
“Charlie?” Steve calls. “Sara?”
Nothing. Steve’s gaze lands on something Clare cannot see. He wraps his finger around the trigger. Clare digs out her gun from her backpack and takes firing hold of it too, sidling up to Steve. Near the blown-open door of the mess hall stands Charlie, his rifle pointed back at them.
“Is Sara here?” Clare asks.
“No, no, no,” Charlie says. “She’s out cold. Couldn’t wake her with a gong.”
Finally she sees it in Charlie, the icy rage, the soul drained from his expression. Clare sidesteps away from Steve so that the three of them form a triangle.
“Should’ve brought my guard dog,” Charlie says, deadpan.
“Can we all just put down the guns?” Clare says.
“Him first.” Charlie flicks his chin at Steve.
In the sky the trail of smoke bends toward them in a breeze.
“Did you do that?” Charlie says, gesturing to the smoke. “Set my stuff on fire?”
Inside the building, the smoke has collected in a cloud that now spills out the doors. The toppled chemicals must have hit a bad wire, Clare thinks. Ignited.
“You know what they told me about Mike?” Steve says. “They told me he was obliterated down there. That was the word the guy from the head office used. Obliterated. I had to look it up in a goddamn dictionary. The ball of gas shooting up the shaft would’ve been so hot, the guy said, that Mikey would’ve turned to dust. Wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
“Lucky him,” Charlie says.
“Your father was a stupid man,” Steve says. “He owes me my son’s life.”
Steve wipes the sweat from his brow with his forearm, then clenches his hand to the trigger.
“Don’t do it,” Charlie says.
Clare points her gun at Charlie. “Don’t you do it,” she says.
But Charlie won’t avert his eyes from Steve. There is a click. Nothing. Clare can’t gauge where the sound comes from. Another click.
“You out of bullets?” Charlie asks, laughing.
Clare swings her gaze between the two men. Fear is etched across Steve’s face. He drops his shotgun to the ground and raises his arms.
“You Gormans,” Charlie says, his gun still aimed at Steve. “You never come prepared.”
Clare pinches one eye closed, the soft spot on Charlie’s temple centered down the line of her gun.
“Charlie?” she says. “I’m telling you. Don’t do it. Put your gun down.”
This time the blast is deafening, the echo darting around them. Charlie disappears from Clare’s sight line, lurching backwards. Shot.
It was not Clare who fired at Charlie. She turns. Behind Steve, Wilfred stands with his shotgun raised, the mist from the shot evaporated around him. Steve steps back until he is next to Wilfred, setting his hand gently on the barrel of Wilfred’s shotgun to lower it. Clare runs to Charlie and kicks his rifle away, then drops to her knees. He is conscious, his shirt soaked through with blood.
“Old man,” Charlie says, half smiling at Clare. “I think he got me right in the heart.”
“Just keep talking,” Clare says. “Keep breathing.”
“It doesn’t even hurt.” Charlie’s voice is a wheeze.
A sigh of hot air hits them. The flames lick out the building door. Clare sets down her backpack and tucks her own gun into it.
“We need to get him out of here,” Clare hollers.
“I say leave him,” Steve says, approaching.
“If he dies, this will get a lot worse for everyone.”
The pool of blood expands outward from under Charlie.
“Where’s Shayna?” Clare asks. “Is she here?”
Charlie shakes his head. He tries to speak but chokes instead, his head curling up with the effort.
“Now you’ll die here too,” Steve says, standing over Charlie.
“Don’t,” Clare says to Steve. “This is bad enough already.”
“You could’ve gone the other way, Merritt,” Steve says. “Done something with yourself. Now you’ll pay for it all, won’t you?”
Clare lifts Charlie’s shirt to examine the wound. The soft flesh just under his ribs is open like a flower and rimmed by smaller holes, blood pulsing out of it. There is a whistling to Charlie’s breath now, his skin paler than his golden beard. Clare can feel his dulled eyes tracking her, but she cannot bear to make eye contact. She tucks her backpack under his head and takes off her sweatshirt to press it to his chest. Charlie barely flinches.
“We need to call someone,” Clare says. “Get him and Louise to the hospital.”
Both Clare and Steve look up to wh
ere Wilfred had been standing.
“Where’d he go?” Steve says.
“I think I know,” Clare says. “You stay here with him. I’m going to find a cell signal.”
The smoke rises in a thick column from the building. Someone will surely spot it. Help will eventually come. Before Clare turns the corner she stops and looks back at them, Steve now crouched next to Charlie, his anger replaced by a look of sad worry. The steadiness of Clare’s own breathing surprises her. A sense of focus has descended, much as it did as she ran through the back field to her hidden car over six months ago. Charlie will die and Wilfred is around this corner. And Shayna? There is still a chance. Clare runs with her cell phone tight in her hand.
Wilfred is nowhere, his truck gone. In the backseat of the truck Louise is unconscious, her chest rising and falling steadily enough. Only instinct carries Clare forward now. She sprints to the far side of the clearing toward the old egress road. The mud of the road is deeply rutted now, the overgrowth bent, patterns in the tire tracks fresh. She takes out her phone. Still no signal, her earlier message still in queue. Clare types frantically anyway.
At mine. Charlie shot. Shayna here? Send help.
She accesses Malcolm’s contact and presses send. If a signal picks up, then Malcolm will get her messages, and help will come.
In a stumbling jog Clare follows the tracks on the road down and around the side of the mountain. She stops at the creek as it passes under the road through a culvert. She could take a sharp turn now, follow the creek all the way to the fire pit, to town. Find help. In a dash it might take twenty minutes. She could run back to Steve’s truck. Her gun is back at the building. In her backpack next to Charlie. Clare curses and wavers. There is no time. She continues downhill.
The road straightens out and comes to a fence. ABANDONED MINE: DO NOT ENTER. Its gate is unlocked. Nothing. No one. Ahead she can see a rounded hollow, like a cave entrance but with wooden doors. She approaches it. The faded sign reads, DANGER! MINE. And then, in small letters on the sign’s bottom corner, BLACKMORE MINE EAST EGRESS, TUNNELS 4,5,7,9. 1979.
Clare yanks the doors but they don’t budge. She presses her ear to them. There might be a voice. If she strains she is sure she can hear it. Clare bends and inspects the keyhole. No rust, only light scratches to show the markings of a key trying to fit its way in. She knocks.
“Anyone here?”
Is she imagining it? A woman’s voice? Clare holds still. Around her the woods crackle in a gust of wind. Only then does Clare notice the signs of life. A garbage bag tied and leaning against a tree. Next to it, a wad of toilet paper wet and crusted atop the pine needles. Human things, recent things. She spins, spying among the trees for a person, a body, some color, some movement. She follows what’s left of the road to the far side of the egress. Wilfred’s truck.
Her instinct is to run. Run! It might be that she hears the ground crack, the sound of a stick breaking. This might be why Clare stays still instead. Wilfred Cunningham steps out from behind his truck, his shotgun aimed at her. Before she can speak, before she can raise her hands, he fires. Clare drops to her knees, crouching, the rock face behind her exploding at the impact of the missed shot. Her father’s voice comes to her: Never crouch. It makes a tidy target. Clare pushes her body hard against the rock and clambers to standing.
“Please,” Clare says, pleading to Wilfred as he nears.
“You think you’re smart?”
“No. Please.”
“You’re in on it all. You and Charlie.”
“No!” Clare says. “No. Please. That’s not it at all. I was trying to find Shayna. I’m here to find Shayna. I was hired to find her.”
Wilfred lifts the gun again.
“Please don’t.”
Whatever daylight remains must be swallowed by the trees, because though he is closer now, twenty or maybe thirty feet away, there isn’t enough light to see the look on Wilfred’s face.
Then she hears it, the quiet click.
It used to be that Clare could count the beats between the blast of her gun and the instant her target would jolt at the impact. It used to feel like enough time to take a breath, to change her stance, to question whether she’d hit or missed. But when Wilfred Cunningham fires it seems to Clare that no time passes before her shoulder is pierced. She spins half a turn and tumbles onto her hands. But her arms will bear no weight, and she falls flat on her face. She can hear Wilfred’s footsteps crunching toward her. She rolls onto her back and the pain that sears up from her shoulder is so sharp that she cries out. Wilfred looms above her, his gun brushing the tip of her nose.
“Louise.” Clare shields her face with her good arm. “Louise.”
Something might stir in Wilfred. Or it might only be that he has no rounds left, his chamber emptied in two shots. He spins the gun and holds it by the barrel before swinging the butt of it against Clare’s head. The ground must be soaked with rain because Clare’s back is wet beneath her, the cold mixing with the warmth of her blood. Wilfred swings again, and this time Clare doesn’t even feel it hit her. Just silence, the trees above her swaying, the leaves quaking, and then everything else is still.
Wake up. Please, wake up.
A hand on her shoulder, shaking her.
Her head. It feels like someone is stepping on her head, crushing her skull with a boot. Clare is on her back, eyes open. An earthy ceiling is in shadow above her. A woman hovers. The pain shoots down her shoulder and into her fingers, and when she goes to lift her hand, her arm flaps back to the ground. Crying. Who is crying? Clare cranes her head to the side. The woman is huddled beside her now, head between her knees. In the dim light Clare can see that the woman’s face is streaked with dirt and tears. It must be her.
“Shayna?”
The woman looks up. Shayna.
“I don’t know who you are,” Shayna says.
Clare hears a grunt. Across from them sits Wilfred, the shotgun standing up between his bent knees. He holds a flashlight in one hand. Next to him, a propane lantern flickers.
“Wilfred?”
His jaw is slack but his eyes are lucid. The walls are dirt, held up by frames of thick timber spaced every ten feet. A tunnel wide and high enough for a vehicle. At one end Clare sees a locked and rusted grate and beyond it, through more tunnel, the wooden doors. The entrance to the mine. The egress. In the other direction the tunnel appears to slope upward into the mountain. She can see the shadow of another grate, the space in between a holding pen. Beside Wilfred is an unmade cot, a garbage bag, a scattering of water bottles and clothing, books, something that looks like a journal.
Shayna still cries. She wears jeans and a clean blue T-shirt, her dark hair tangled. Clare tucks her right hand under her shirt and feels for the wound. The skin above her collarbone is torn open, a scream of pain. Shayna stops crying and edges over to peel back Clare’s bloodied shirt. For the first time they look right at each other, Shayna’s face so recognizable, softer in real life. Shayna is here. Alive.
Clare cannot feel the phone in her pocket. Did Wilfred take it? Did the messages send? What would Malcolm make of this, of Clare having found Shayna?
“She’s bleeding,” Shayna says. “Dad? She’s bleeding badly.”
“She’s with Charlie,” Wilfred says.
“Dad. Look at me. You need to let us out. You can’t let her die here.”
“She’s on their side. Him and those brothers. Him and all those pills. They poisoned you. They lit the barn on fire.”
“Dad, no. That was years ago. They were kids. The Merritts are dead now.”
“Not Charlie,” Wilfred says, his voice unsteady.
The image of Charlie on the ground hits Clare. His chest a splash of red.
“I’ve never seen her before,” Shayna says. “I’d know her if she was friends with Charlie. I know his people.”
A surge of strength comes to Clare. She hoists herself to sitting.
“My name is Clare,” she says, pausing to b
reathe. “I only met Charlie when I got here.” She looks to Shayna. “I came to Blackmore to find you. I work for a man named Malcolm Boon. He sent me here to find you. Someone hired him. I don’t know who. You’ve been missing for three weeks.”
“Is that true?” Shayna asks.
“I swear,” Clare says. “Every word.”
It takes effort to speak. Clare’s breaths are pinched and painful. The smell of this place. Earth, staleness, sweat, blood. Under the cot, next to Wilfred, she sees large bottles of water and a scattering of empty prescription bottles. A bucket tipped on its side. She looks to Shayna again. Though her hair is messy and her cheeks smeared with dirt, she is no longer as gaunt as in the photos. There is a brightness in her eyes. Three weeks under her father’s lock and key. It makes sense.
“You were trying to help her,” Clare says to Wilfred.
Wilfred says nothing. Clare looks to Shayna, who takes her cue.
“You’re right,” Shayna says. “That’s what he was doing. Helping me.”
“And you’re better now, aren’t you, Shayna?”
“I’m better. Much better. And Dad? You said this wasn’t to punish me. That you’d let me out when I got better. When I didn’t need to be here anymore.”
“That’s why he locked you in here,” Clare says. “To give you time. He gave you time to recover.”
Shayna knows what to do. Talk Wilfred down, reason with him. She looks to Clare and wipes her eyes with her bare forearm.
“He took care of me,” Shayna says. “He gave me what I needed. He told me to write. It was all unclear. He kept me focused.”
“You disappeared from the gorge,” Clare says.
“I remember I woke up there after the party. I walked the creek to get home.”
Just as Jared said you did, Clare thinks. Woke up and walked the creek home.
“You were waiting for me, Dad. On the porch. You told me Mom had disappeared and we needed to go find her. We got in the truck and then we were walking. I was begging you to take me home. I was so mad at you. You dragged me across the creek. Dragged me.”