by Jean Barrett
It must have burned years ago, she thought in disappointment. All that remained was a chimney and a stone foundation.
“Aha, they relocated. See it?”
She did. Farther along the lane, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant across fields and meadows, were a house and a barn. The farm, which looked intact, was nestled against a hillside.
“Maybe we’ll get to use that telephone, after all. Come on, Ellie.”
She grabbed her purse, joining him as he climbed from the van. The track curved away to the left and then doubled back again just below a gentle slope. A footpath, or what was left of one, offered a shortcut through the yard of the ruined homestead. Direct route or not, it was choked with waist-high weeds and brambles. Noah started to wade through them without pause, looking back when she didn’t immediately follow.
“What are you waiting for?”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick to the driveway.”
He stopped and turned around. “You forgetting the rule, Ellie? Where I go, you go.” He began to back away along the path, as if demonstrating its innocence. “Some location painter. Worried about a few thistles.”
“I don’t suffer for my art. At least not that way.” She turned her head to glance longingly at the lane, indicating her preference for it. “Why should I when—”
She broke off in bewilderment as she looked back. She was talking to empty air. There was no one there on the path. He was gone, not a sign of him.
“Hey, where are you?”
No answer. This was crazy. Short of being snatched by aliens, how could he just vanish into nowhere? She hesitated, struggling with an urge to turn and flee in the direction of Homer. No, she couldn’t do that. Not without knowing what happened to him.
Moving forward, she cautiously followed his course through the weeds. The thread of the path carried her straight to the explanation for his disappearance. In fact, she almost stumbled into it herself.
A well. He had backed into an old, stone-lined well. It had probably once been equipped with a hand pump on a wooden platform, but the pump had been removed when the well went dry. Since then the platform had rotted away, leaving the abandoned well wide open.
Ellie knelt on the crumbling, ground-level lip and peered into the depths, fearing what she would find. The well, hand-dug, was several feet in diameter and perhaps twenty feet to the bottom. The walls were still intact and so was the figure gazing up at her from below.
“Wondered when you’d decide to get here.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I came down like an arrow, never touched the sides, and landed in about two feet of muck. It was as good as a net, but it stinks like hell.”
If he had broken his neck, her concerns, as well as those of the state of Missouri, would have been solved. But she was glad he hadn’t, though she refused to question her relief.
“People who own this land ought to be shot for leaving a thing like this wide open,” he complained.
“Maybe they thought no one would be dumb enough to fall into it. Can you get out?”
“Does it look like I can? We’ll need the rope from the van. You’ll have to tie several lengths of it together, or it won’t reach. Hope there’s a tree up there for you to wrap your end around.”
“And you’re sure you aren’t injured?”
“Told you I wasn’t. What are you waiting for?” She didn’t answer him. “Ellie?”
“Yes?”
“You’re not going to help me out of here, are you?”
She smiled down at him where he stood in the gloom. “Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t just leave you down there. But you’re going to have to be patient. It may take me a while to get back here with the local sheriff and his deputies.”
Noah gazed up at her where her beguiling face was framed against the circle of light. He thought she’d softened back in the park where he had shared his story with her. He thought maybe she had begun to believe him, trust him a little. He was wrong. And he was angry.
“Why, you little—”
She drew back, her head disappearing from view. Her voice floated down to him, sweetly taunting. “I hope there are some frogs down there to keep you company. Sympathetic ones.”
Then she was gone.
ELLIE GAZED in discouragement at the farmhouse. She would find no telephone here, or any friendly occupants to help her. Now that she was at close range, she could see the place was little more than a shell with a roof that was beginning to collapse. The barn was in better shape, but like the house it must have been deserted for years.
Now what? she wondered. Homer, of course. She had no other choice. She had to hike to the town and hope that, along the way, she could either signal a passing car or find a farm that was inhabited. Not that she was counting on either one. This was lonely hill country.
Homer was still a good distance away, and the afternoon was lengthening. She needed to get moving. Instead, she stood there, looking back up the long slope. She was reluctant to return to the county road by retracing her path to the useless van. It would mean passing close by the well.
Ellie was trying not to think of Noah and how she had left him down there. Trying not to feel guilt over her action. Why should she when he was a killer, a fugitive who had kidnapped her? When, ever since St. Louis, she had been praying for escape and the chance to turn him in?
No, she wouldn’t go near that well again. If she did, she might surrender to temptation, make the effort to haul him out. Was there another route? She thought there might be.
The track didn’t end here at the farmhouse. She could see that it passed the weathered barn before curving to the right along the breast of the hill. She remembered noticing, just before they’d turned into the driveway, that ahead of them the county road swooped down to the left.
Ellie thought it was very likely the lane behind the barn joined the county road after that loop, possibly lessening the distance to Homer. There was every indication it was the primary entrance to the property, because the drive ahead of her was in better condition than the one behind her, as though it had been maintained for regular use.
It made sense, and she decided to go with it.
Crossing a ditch behind the barn, where water spilled away from a spring-fed pool, she struck off up the dirt track that clung to a man-made terrace on the side of the hill.
An artist who favored the pastoral couldn’t have asked for a better scene, with the farm down in the hollow and the woods on her left a riot of autumn colors. Ellie cared about none of it at this moment
She cared even less when the track rounded the hill and plunged into the woods, putting the farm out of sight behind her. It was a dense woods, thick with tangled growth. With the sky still overcast and the afternoon already waning, shortened by the season, the light was anything but cheerful. She refused to think of being caught out here after sundown. There was still plenty of time to reach Homer before nightfall.
But Ellie was less confident about that as the minutes passed and she failed to reach the paved road. How far had she come? Difficult to tell with the track dipping and winding every which way through the forest.
Her certainty that she was following the farm’s driveway ebbed rapidly as she moved on without result. This couldn’t be right. The distance was too great, the lane too rough and narrow now. She didn’t know why it had been cut through the woods, maybe just to fell and haul timber. Whatever the reason, she had made a mistake in choosing it. What now?
There was a fork just ahead. When she reached it, she stopped. She had a decision to make. The left branch was the main track, but it twisted off in the wrong direction, looking like a tunnel that would vanish into the heart of the forest. The other branch, though no better than a footpath, offered more hope. For one thing, it sliced straight through the trees in what had to be the right direction for the county road. Even better, she could see clear daylight in the distance, an indication that the path emerged from the forest<
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There was a third choice. She could play it safe and return to the farm and that other connection to the county road. But Ellie was reluctant to do that, not because of the time she would lose or the necessity of passing the well. Going back would mean dealing with all that forest again, and she wanted to leave the woods.
It was suddenly too quiet in here, the shadows too thick now. She didn’t like it. Sensible or not, she wanted the quickest way out. The path promised that.
Seconds later, hurrying along the trail, she had the uneasy feeling she was no longer alone. The silence was even deeper than before, but she couldn’t shake the impression of someone, or something, behind her. Was she being stalked?
Pausing, she listened. Nothing. And then she heard it. A rustling off in the underbrush. She wasn’t imagining it! There was something out there watching her!
Whatever it was, Ellie wasn’t interested in identifying it. All she cared about now was getting to that opening at the end of the path. Her mouth dry with fear, she rushed toward the light, only to face another disappointment when she arrived at its source.
This wasn’t the end of the woods. It was a clearing, what they called a heath bald in the eastern mountains. It was carpeted with mountain laurel that would dazzle the eyes when it bloomed in the spring. Just now the stuff was nothing but a frustration as she squeezed through its snarled, shiny growth, the tough branches whipping her legs and snagging her clothes.
A root caught her by the ankle, throwing her to the ground. The earth was still wet from this morning’s rain. Her hands and knees were plastered with mud when she picked herself up and moved on, determined to gain the other side of the clearing where the path continued through the trees.
She was winded and weary when she reached the place. She didn’t care what was after her. She had to rest. There was a stump, and she perched on it, clutching her purse. Alert for trouble, she looked, listened. No sign of anything, no menacing sound. She heaved a sigh that was part relief, part despair.
No point in denying it. She was lost, no longer able to tell north from south. How could she have been such a fool to get herself caught in here? And how was she going to get out? If she wandered around much longer, it would be dark. The thought of spending the night in these woods, alone with whatever lurked out there in the trees, made her shudder.
There was something else, something she could no longer block from her mind. Noah. He would be trapped in the well until morning. Whatever he had done, she couldn’t stand the thought of him in that deep hole all night. He must already be imagining the worst, suffering the certainty that she had left him there to die.
She had to find a way out of here. She had to get back to him, even if it meant retracing her route.
Ellie was on her feet, ready to pursue the path, when she heard it again. A body stirring in the underbrush not far away. It wasn’t any small animal like a squirrel either. This was something much larger, something that grunted. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
She no longer considered going back through the laurel thicket. She thought about nothing but running in the opposite direction, which was exactly what she did.
Crunching over fallen nuts and drifts of leaves, she fled through the trees. Whatever was behind her was not staying behind her. It was coming after her. She could hear it crashing through a mass of dogwood and wild grapevines.
What had happened to the path? It had somehow disappeared. Forget about it. Just keep moving.
Seconds later she could have shouted with joy when the woods thinned at last. Not that she had breath left in her for anything more than racing through the last of the white oaks and the shortleaf pines.
She was out at last! And there below her was the derelict farm. She had circled back to where she had started. All this time she had been going nowhere. It didn’t matter, not when the farm offered safety.
Nothing left to negotiate but a steep pasture. If she could reach that barn, somehow barricade herself inside…
Too late! The thing pursuing her was directly behind her now, snorting like a pig. Ellie stopped and whipped around in terror to confront her enemy.
It was a pig. And not a friendly farm animal either. She had heard about the wild razorback hogs that roamed the remote country in Tennessee. They were large, savage creatures, and they didn’t like their territory invaded. This one apparently regarded Ellie as a serious trespasser.
He wasn’t charging. Not yet. He had come to a halt when she turned. He stood there a few yards away, taking her measure. He had the meanest-looking eyes of any beast she’d ever encountered. Trying not to arouse him, she kept very still, which was nearly an impossibility since she was trembling in every limb.
The seconds passed, and they felt like eons. The hog pawed the ground, suddenly worried by something behind her. She didn’t dare turn her head to learn what. A moment later a familiar voice spoke softly at her back.
“Keep it easy, Ellie. We don’t want to make bacon here unless we have to.”
She didn’t question his silent arrival, didn’t wonder how he had managed to get out of the well. She didn’t think about anything but how glad she was to see him as he moved cautiously to her side. He had the revolver in his hand. The hog eyed him nervously.
Noah raised the gun. “If you get tough, pig, I get tough right back. What’s it gonna be?”
The animal was undecided.
“I figure,” he whispered to her, as if he were convinced the hog would actually understand him if it overheard, “that he’s like these street gangs I once had an acquaintance with. You get caught on their turf, you’d better be prepared to bluff your way out of it. Unless, of course, you run like hell.”
“I tried that. It didn’t work. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t, but he doesn’t realize that.” Noah raised his voice, waving the gun. “Come on, pig, make up your mind. Either you back off, or you get a taste of this.”
The hog lifted its head with disdain, pivoted sharply, and trotted back into the woods. Ellie resisted the temptation to hug Noah with relief as he stuck the gun back into his waistband.
“Let’s get out of here,” he urged, “before he decides to come back.”
She had no argument with that. They scrambled down the open hillside, not stopping until they were within reach of the barn. He turned then to regard her, grinning over the mud on her hands and knees and the snag in her sweater.
“Looks like you had a rough time of it in the wilderness, Rembrandt. Lost your way, did you?”
“At least my mud doesn’t smell.”
“Yeah, well, you try staying daisy-fresh climbing out of a hole in the ground.”
“But you did manage it.”
“Eventually. There were enough crevices between the stones to dig into, providing a person was mad enough to stick with it. And I was. Not very nice of you to leave me down there, Ellie.”
“Are you still mad?”
“I’ll let you know. After we’ve cleaned up Looks like the sink is over here.”
She offered no objection, following him as he led the way to the spring-fed pool. The water bubbling over a rocky ledge was shockingly cold, but it looked pure enough to drink. Ellie was so thirsty that she risked it, using her hands to cup water into her mouth. They spent the next several minutes silently ridding themselves of the worst of the mud.
She looked up when she was finished, knowing she could no longer avoid an expression of her gratitude. “Thank you for saving me from Porky,” she said briefly.
He nodded an acknowledgment, making no further reference to her desertion of him in the well. Nor did she offer any apology. The situation was already getting too friendly. How was she going to betray him after he’d rescued her like that?
Of course, he rescued you, she told herself sharply. He needs you to find Joel. Just remember that.
What a mess. She was back to where she had started, his prisoner again. Only this time the circumstanc
es were worse. It was already dusk, they had no transportation out of here, and the sky was threatening another downpour.
He must have read her concern, because he offered a nonchalant solution. “Looks like we spend the night in the barn there, Ellie.”
She didn’t relish the prospect of another intimate night alone with him. But she had no better suggestion. Besides, even if it had been possible to go on to Homer, she was too weary at this point to attempt it.
“I guess we don’t have a choice about it,” she agreed, glancing in the direction of the house with its sagging roof. “At least the barn doesn’t look like it would come down on top of us.”
“Funny thing about appearances,” he observed. “Back at the van we would have sworn that house was all in one piece. It just goes to show things aren’t always what they seem. People either, huh?”
If he was referring to himself, she wasn’t prepared to discuss the subject again. Turning her back on him, she started for the barn. He came after her, catching up with her as she climbed the earthen ramp and ventured through the yawning doorway.
The twilight had deepened, leaving the lofty interior heavy with shadows. There was the smell of dust and moldy decay in the stillness.
“Think we’re gonna find our bed up there,” he said, indicating a loft that revealed in the gloom a quantity of abandoned hay. “You prepared to spend a night in the hay with me, Ellie?”
He might have been joking, but she eyed the loft with uncertainty. “Maybe it’s better if we go back to the van.”
“Sure, we could do that. Wouldn’t hurt us to get wet.”
He nodded toward the open doorway. She had been too busy worrying about bedding down in the hay with Noah Rhyder to notice rain was falling. The kind of hard, steady rain that had settled in for the night. They would be soaked if they tried to reach the van now.
“You win,” she said.
He motioned her toward the ladder, staying close behind her as she scaled it. The last of the daylight, stealing between the gaps that were everywhere in the walls of the building, permitted them to find their way around the loft. There were also chinks in the roof through which the rain dripped.