by JC Gatlin
“Can you walk?” she whispered.
“I think—”
A door to a back room opened, and Rayanne turned her head. A gaunt, emaciated man sitting in a wheelchair rolled himself into the room. His bald head remained still while his lethal stare slid snakelike to Rayanne.
“He’s finally awake,” the man said to her. “And now you’re leaving?”
She looked at him for several seconds. She didn’t know him. She didn’t want to know him. But she couldn’t turn away.
“Rayanne Meeks,” the man said, raising a hand from the arm of his wheelchair. “You can’t have him.” His smile widened into a hideous white grin. Crooked teeth jutted from his gums at all angles and his pale skin, drawn tight across his skull, looked pitted and scarred. His legs hung limply against the front of the wheelchair, giving him the appearance of some kind of scarecrow—unhealthy and dangerously thin. It was as if some deep hatred was eating him from the inside out, Rayanne thought, though she wasn’t sure why.
“Your husband has something of mine,” he said to her. “I want it back.”
Owen lifted his head. “I told you I don’t have it.”
Rayanne turned away. Grasping her husband, she rushed them out the back door and onto the porch. The door slammed behind them.
Rayanne could hear Scut’s loud voice behind her. He’d entered the cabin, yelling. There was a crash, possibly a chair had overturned. Maybe the table. She didn’t want to turn around, though, and focused on helping Owen step down from the porch.
She knew that back door was about to open and three murderous teenagers—and possibly the creepy bald man in the wheelchair—would spill out. They’d be on top of them at any moment.
She scanned the grounds. The safety of the tree line was a good forty or fifty yards away. They would never make it across the yard and into the twisted brush without being seen. Scut and his friends would chase them through the woods and hunt them down.
She glanced at the stone shed. It was closer. They could make it there in a few seconds and hide inside. But they’d be trapped. Like the coon in the cage. Besides, there was no way for them to reach the shed in time. She had seconds, maybe less. Out of options, she pulled Owen toward the edge of the back porch. They stepped onto the trampled grass path and rounded the corner.
Their bodies hugged the side wall as she heard the back door swing open. The boys stepped onto the porch. Rayanne could hear their heavy boots clomping on the wood.
“Where are they? Where’d they go?” It was Scut, his voice rising and falling with excitement.
“They probably ran into the woods.” It sounded like Roddy, or maybe the other one. He was at the edge of the porch, his hand gripping the corner of the shack.
Rayanne could see his fingers, and slid farther back along the wall.
23
Rayanne crouched along the wall and grabbed Owen’s arm, pulling him down with her. He leaned against the wood siding and watched her. She pointed to the crawl space under the house and the latticework that was broken away where she’d seen the raccoon hide the day before. She knelt beside the hole and removed a section of lattice. She peered into the blackness under the shack. It looked damp, dark, and infested with spiders.
Placing a hand in the dirt, she lay down in front of the hole. The ground felt cool and, on her back, she slid into the black space underneath. She prayed there wasn’t a family of coons living under the house, but she knew she’d have to risk it. Owen followed her in.
On her back, she reached above her head and put the lattice up, hiding their point of entry. In the dark shadow under the shack, she looked over at her husband. He was lying on his back, staring at her.
They listened to the boys leap off the back porch and holler.
“They’re not in the shed,” one of them was saying.
She could hear the coon cage rattling in the distance, and she thought maybe they were headed for the shed. Then two boots passed in front of her. She could barely see through the broken latticework concealing them, and the boots moved quickly out of her line of sight. Still, she could feel the teenager nearby, walking the perimeter of the shack.
Another voice shouted, “They’re in the woods!”
It sounded several yards away, and brought the boots back into view. Through the cracked lattice, she watched the teenagers’ legs stomp past her and out of her line of view again. The voices retreated and she was certain the boys must be headed away from them. She wiggled her back in the dirt. The crawlspace was tight. There wasn’t much room and she couldn’t sit up, but at least they hadn’t found her and Owen.
“I think we’re safe,” she whispered.
Owen let out a long, audible breath. “As long as there’s nothing under here with us,” he said.
Rayanne didn’t want to hear that. She intended to remain there until she felt certain the teens had hiked far away, even though she barely had enough room to turn her head. She would have to stand it, she thought, and cringed.
The air smelled stale and polluted with animal droppings and moldering leaves that had blown in through the holes in the latticework outlining the foundation. Wooden support posts were spaced all around them, with cottony tufts of spider webs stretching out in the corners. Rayanne guessed the space at about a foot in height.
A thin line of sunlight lit up the black dirt a couple of feet to her left, having fallen through a crack in the floorboards above. A larger, more irregular pattern of light, about the size of Owen’s hand, formed under another spacing in the floor.
After a few minutes lying on her back on the damp ground, staring up at narrow shafts of light in the floorboards above her, Rayanne nudged her husband. They had to get out of there. He blinked, and she skittered her body toward the opening. She reached for the broken lattice, and heard movement above her. A rolling sound. Wheels finding traction on the wooden floor. A man coughed and cleared his throat.
She knew instantly that the man in the wheelchair was above them, separated by barely a foot. He was talking. Someone was with him.
One of them said Owen’s name. They were clearly talking about him.
The man’s occasional throat clearing, a few muttered words, the sound of him shifting position … all of it made her impatient to hear what he was saying.
Silently she eased to the larger hole and leaned her head into the light. She peered up as best she could, but could only make out a small section of a worn tire on the man’s wheelchair. He rolled away, and Rayanne got a glimpse of the nerdy teen with the broken arm. The one Scut had beat with the baseball bat before he turned it on Darryl. His right arm was still in a cast, but no longer hanging in a sling. Nelson? Was that his name? Rayanne tried to remember as she listened to his voice carry into the crawl space under the floor.
“Scut’s out of control.”
Nelson adjusted his position, and she could see the man in the wheelchair too.
“You found him.” The wheelchair squeaked like a hamster’s wheel as the old man spoke. “You hired him. There’s no turning back now.”
“You really think Scut’ll return it to you if he gets his hands on it?” The boy moved out of Rayanne’s narrow line of sight. She could hear him, though. “He’ll make Owen tell him where it is, and then he’ll keep it.”
The man in the wheelchair laughed. “He doesn’t even know what it is precisely that Owen stole.”
“Yes, he does.” Nelson paced back and forth, the floorboards squeaking with every step. Rayanne could see his tennis shoes. He sounded panicked, the pitch of his voice rising with his emotions. “I told him. I told him we’re looking for the rabbit’s foot.”
Rayanne gasped and involuntarily reached for her pocket. She could feel the tiny object pressed against her thigh in her shorts pocket. It was still there. She returned her arm to her side, her hand hitting a post as she moved. A quick gasp of pain escaped her.
Rayanne’s eyes enlarged as she realized she’d made a noise. And if she could hear the
two men talking, surely they …. She peered through the hole, hoping.
The man in the wheelchair was no longer talking. He seemed to be nodding, searching the room. Suddenly he turned his head and looked down. His eyes locked with Rayanne’s single eye looking up through the hole in the floorboard.
At first she noticed the man’s eyes were black and open wide with shock, before squinting with such pure rage, such anger, that Rayanne knew—if ever she had doubted—they needed to get out of there.
24
Her heart raced as it never had before. She rolled her head away from the sliver of light and the view of the floor above, scooting her body back into the dark. She pressed against Owen’s body.
“Move! Now!” she said to him, no longer caring if those above heard her voice.
She shouldered her husband. Sliding on his back, he scuttled through the dark, knocked the broken piece of lattice aside, and started to pull himself through the open space. His upper body was outside, his legs in the crawl space beneath the house. Rayanne wormed her way behind him. The opening seemed to have narrowed, and her husband was stuck. She looked at another section of latticework to the right of the opening. She pressed her hands against the thin wood lath. She pushed with all the strength she could muster. The latticework gave way and she shoved it into the yard.
Rayanne crawled through and stood beside the wall of the shack. Barely catching her breath, she bent down and helped her husband out of the crawl space and to his feet. She could hear someone on the porch. The heavy footfalls were coming fast, echoing around her. Rayanne looked toward the back porch as Nelson came around the corner, yelling. He sounded enraged and terrified.
It took a moment before Rayanne realized he wasn’t yelling at them, but to Scut and Roddy in the woods. He was calling for them.
Rayanne squatted, considering her options. She surveyed the yard and the surrounding tree line. To the north, in the opposite direction, where the boys had run earlier, was the stone shed. Behind it, a deer path offered a narrow but clear route into the woods. If she and Owen could get to it and disappear before Scut and Roddy returned to the shack, they might be safe. They could hide. Even if Nelson, standing on the porch, saw their retreat, they could still get away.
Rayanne pulled Owen’s arm. “Run!”
She helped him sprint toward the shed as Nelson shouted. She knew he had them in his sight, and she urged Owen to move faster. They made it to the front of the shed as a bullet hit the drying rack, splintering wood above her head. The boar carcass swayed violently from the impact. Rayanne ducked. Owen held onto her. Now he was pulling her toward the stone shed.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot you in the back,” came a voice behind them.
Rayanne and Owen froze next to the tree stump and the caged raccoon. It wasn’t moving either, but hunched in a corner. Rayanne stared at it as Owen took her hand. They turned around. Nelson walked toward them with a revolver in his shaky left hand. He aimed it at them.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” he said. He stood a few feet in front of them and held up his right arm. Only his thumb protruded from the cast. “I just want the rabbit’s foot. It belongs to my uncle.”
Owen shook his head, saying, “I don’t have it.”
“I don’t believe you.” Nelson trembled as he spoke, and it made the revolver waver ever so slightly. “I know you stole it from my uncle fifteen years ago.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Owen said, his arms raised. “I don’t have it anymore.”
Nelson sighed. Rayanne watched his eyes narrow, and then she looked over at her husband’s hands. Blood trickled from his wrists, down both arms, and dripped off his elbows. She could take it no longer.
Jumping forward, she grabbed the wire cage, surprising the raccoon. It shrieked as she ripped off the wire door and turned. Nelson fired the gun. Rayanne threw the cage at him. The shot splintered stone on the shed behind them as the metal cage whacked Nelson in the face. The coon tumbled out onto his shoulders. Nelson screamed as the animal tore into him. He dropped the revolver and it went off again when it hit the ground. He thrashed his arms, hitting the animal with his cast. Its claws shredded his cheeks and then tore down his neck.
Rayanne watched in horror as Owen limped toward Nelson. The coon scrambled off the teen as he writhed in agony on the ground. Owen picked up the revolver. He aimed it at the coon and fired. The gun clicked. He pressed the trigger again. Another click.
“Dropp’n F,” he said, tossing the gun aside. He returned to Rayanne and pulled on her arm. Together they ran past the stone shed and headed for the trees. Owen stopped.
“Wait,” he said, pointing to four hay bales behind the shed. “Targets.”
Rayanne was at the tree line along the edge of the deer path when she stopped. “Come on, we don’t have time.”
Owen limped toward the bales. He pulled an arrow from the upper corner of the closest one. Rayanne yelled at him again. She could see Nelson lying on the ground in front of the shed, crying and writhing in agony. The coon was gone.
“Owen, we’ve got to get out of here,” she yelled.
He didn’t respond. He had found another arrow stuck in the makeshift target. He pulled it out. “We need a weapon.”
“It’s an arrow.” Rayanne was on the verge of screaming. “We don’t have a bow.”
“We don’t have a gun, either.” He found a third arrow in another bale. Grasping that one, he held it with the other two.
Finally he turned and limped to Rayanne. Together, they made their way deeper into the protection of the trees.
No other shot came.
They hurried along the deer trail. The woods were relatively quiet as they came to a bend in the path and paused there. Rayanne looked back.
“Maybe they’re not following us,” she whispered, grasping Owen’s arm for support. Her pulse hammered in her temples so loud, she wondered if he could hear it.
He shook his head. “They’re coming.”
Rayanne started to say something when Owen raised the hand clutching the three arrows, silencing her. Rayanne listened, at first noticing how quiet the woods were. No sound of animals or crickets or birds. Just deafening stillness, broken by a voice in the distance.
Rayanne looked at Owen. “It sounds like Scut.”
Another voice carried on the breeze. She couldn’t tell how far away it was or even make out what was being said. It was more a tone, really—and a gunshot. The bullet hit a tree out of their view, but she saw squawking birds launch into the air overhead. It was close.
The voices grew louder. Then laughter.
“It’s Scut and the bigger one, Roddy,” she said, but Owen didn’t answer.
He was looking at something behind them, something in the dirt, and she noticed he was leaving a blood trail. Droplets of red on trampled weeds and dark splotches on the ground. She looked at him, and couldn’t imagine how they were going to survive this. Owen took her hand. They moved on, picking up their pace.
After two more bends, the trail forked and they followed it toward the left. Rayanne worried they were circling back when the trail divided again. They chose the new path, praying they had confused and lost their pursuers. In the back of her mind, though, she feared that would not be possible with Owen’s blood spatters trailing them. They walked a solid twenty minutes before reaching a crest, and descended. Crossing a shallow gorge, they climbed a longer slope to a shelter of oak trees, where they stopped.
Rayanne turned and looked around, but saw no one. Owen plopped down on the ground, resting his back against a massive tree trunk. He dropped the arrows on the ground. Breathing deeply, he was almost gasping.
She watched him a moment, then stood over him. “I think we lost them.”
He tilted his head up. Pain showed on his face. “They’re not far behind,” he said between breaths. “We got to keep moving till we find a road or a farmhouse or someth’n.”
“If they were behind us, we’d have bullet hol
es in our backs,” she said. “We weren’t moving fast enough to outrun them. We must’ve lost them at one of the forks.”
Owen gripped his side now. He moved slightly so that his hip rested on an arrow shaft. It snapped under his weight and he jerked back. “This is my fault. I’m slowing you down.”
Rayanne touched his shoulder, silencing him. “I’m not leaving you again.”
“You’re right. We’re lucky we don’t have bullet holes in our backs.” Owen paused a moment, possibly thinking, possibly fighting against the pain. After awhile, his face relaxed. “Maybe we did lose them along one of the bends. Gave us just enough time to escape.”
“You think we were that lucky?” She stared at him, then slipped a hand in her pocket. Her fingers grazed the soft fur of the rabbit’s foot. She pulled her hand out and knelt down next to him. She touched his face. “How are you feeling?”
“I think adrenaline is pumping in.” He tried to stand, then clutched his stomach. He slipped back down against the tree trunk. “But I’m running on empty.”
“You’ve got to rest a minute, Owen. We’re hidden.” She observed his face as he tried to mask the pain, and she said, “Tell me what’s going on.”
Owen shut his eyes. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
Rayanne watched him a moment, waiting for him to continue. She shifted and placed a hand on his shoulder. “These people are hunting us. They killed Darryl. They’re trying to kill us, over what? A rabbit’s foot?”
He looked up at her, but said nothing.
She continued. “Is this about that silly rabbit’s foot you used to keep clipped to your belt?”
“It’s not just a rabbit’s foot.” Owen shook his head. Their eyes locked. “It’s something else. Something powerful.”
25
“What …?” Rayanne blinked. She stood over Owen as he sat on the ground with his back against the oak tree. She waited for him to continue, then pushed for an answer. “Do you know how that sounds?”