by Everly Frost
There was a path, and maybe, if I squinted and hoped, there was the outline of a building in the distance. The cabin. My nerve endings fired, my legs wanted to run—to hurry to the cabin and get whatever it was that my father wanted me to take, but as I got closer, I slowed to a creep.
The cabin came into view. It was small with crooked steps and a single window, just like the painting in my mother’s attic. A shallow balcony left a gaping hole underneath, where debris had gathered. I edged closer to peer into the muted dark.
An animal growled. The dog slunk out from behind the steps, forelegs hunched and head close to the ground. Black fur drew back from its teeth. It was enormous; its legs were thick trunks and powerful. Two eyes glinted like black glass in the weak lamplight.
Metal clanked.
The lamp shook as I backed up, until the rattle seeped through and registered.
There was a chain around its neck, keeping the dog tethered. The chain was old and rusted, slithering through the undergrowth, but must have been anchored somewhere behind the steps. I backed up some more, until the chain rose up off the ground and the animal stopped moving forward. It strained and snarled against its restraints.
Sweat pooled at my throat. I was slick with it. The beast was chained, which meant that I was safe if I stayed out of range, but staying out of range meant not going into the cabin—and I had to go in.
I dropped my head into my hands, squeezing my eyes shut.
My father hadn’t warned me about this. But I guessed he didn’t know the cabin was guarded.
There was no doubt in my mind that this was the animal that had chased me, had taken down Rebecca’s horse and killed the calves. This was the pup that Edith lost to the wild.
A hysterical laugh pushed at the back of my throat. No, not lost. She’d taken it and trained it for another purpose: to attack and kill.
I thought fast, calculating the length of the chain. If I circled around to the back of the cabin, the dog might not be able to reach me. I could try to find a back door, or even a window large enough to climb through.
Keeping my eyes on the creature, I swept around in an arc, leaving the path and clambering between trees and through brush as crickets chirped. Rodents rustled through the leaves and an owl called. The rustling stopped.
When the back of the cabin became visible, I judged the distance from the front, estimating the length of the chain. If I was quick, I could probably make it before the animal reached me, except… there was no door and no window—no way in at the back at all.
I wanted to scream, but I swallowed my frustration and dragged a hand across the little hollow at the base of my neck, trying to soothe my frantic thoughts.
The owl called again as I pushed my way to the front of the cabin. The dog had followed my movements, crouching, its hackles raised. With a shock, I realized that I’d cut my return too close, and it was only a few yards away.
I jumped backward, but not before I was close enough to see patches of missing hair on its legs and back, and a ring of red in the fur around its snout. Edith had muzzled it and treated it badly. Had she fed it at all? Or allowed it to starve to the point that it attacked anything that would make a meal?
My stomach turned while I stumbled over logs and leaves until I was safe again. My legs buckled, forcing me to sit in the wet mush and watch the tormented animal across the clearing.
I contemplated the rifle that rested across my lap.
I could shoot the dog and put it out of its misery, but I’d never killed anything before, and I didn’t want to.
Still, I rose to my knees, propped the rifle against my shoulder, lowered my head to the sight, and waited for the image of the dog to stop wobbling—for my hands to stop shaking.
My finger slipped against the trigger. I wiped my hand down my pants and tried again, attempting to blink the sweat out of my eyes so I could see its head and get a clean shot.
I only had two bullets. What if I missed it? What if I maimed it? That would make me as bad as Edith…
The growl grew louder, rumbling into a ferocious snarl. The animal strained, tugging and snapping its teeth at me, dribbling saliva onto the leaves. It was hungry. I pointed the gun at those sharp, white teeth as they shivered in the sight.
My finger slipped again, sliding across the smooth metal curve. I lowered the gun to point it at the ground and raked my hand across my face. I couldn’t do it.
There was a crackle behind me—the sound of something running fast.
I spun and whipped up the rifle, aiming into the darkness, and sighted on the outline of a person racing toward me.
“Shoot it!”
I would know that voice anywhere. While my heart thudded, my mind whirled. “Nathan? What—?”
“Shoot the dog!” His voice was filled with panic as he threw himself over the log, still twenty yards away. “Shoot it! Now, Caroline!”
Behind me, there was a final creak, followed by a snap.
I turned to a blur of claws as the animal leaped. I twisted in a futile attempt to protect myself.
Teeth clamped onto my arm and slashed.
I screamed, trying to keep hold of the rifle but it slipped and thudded to the ground.
Nathan roared. He turned his shoulder as he crashed into us, knocking the animal down and falling with it.
Released from the animal’s hold, I scrambled backward, trying to find the rifle with my good hand—the hand that still worked. Where was the gun? It was just here! I scrambled through the leaves and growth looking for it. It couldn’t be gone…
In the clearing behind me, Nathan grappled with the animal, barely keeping it at bay. There was growling and ripping and still my hands came up empty.
I was suddenly aware of a prowling pant—the animal dragging itself closer behind me. It crawled toward me, its mouth gaping and partly ripped, one of its legs lagging.
I sought Nathan with despair. He was lying with his back to me and I couldn’t tell if he was alive. I needed to find the rifle. It was my only hope, but in that moment, with the dog only two feet away, fear froze me to the spot.
My mind flew away to a blue room and a woman lying on a bed burning in sunlight.
She stirred.
She sat up surrounded by fluttering silks, fluid as a stream. She held up a beetle, all shiny, and put it on the bed as her pale face turned.
She looked at me.
For the first time with a face that was calm, serene, maybe even happy. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, down her back to her waist, and she was so beautiful.
She smiled at me and said my name. I love you, Caroline. I’m sorry I hurt you.
Then her hand lifted, golden in the sunlight.
She pointed at the ground in front of me.
Look.
I opened my eyes. The gun was under my fingers, right where she pointed.
I hefted it to my shoulder, twisted into the animal’s mouth, and pulled the trigger.
There was a slow drip from my fingers as I wobbled upright and scrambled over to Nathan. But before I reached him, I stopped, frozen. He was dead, I knew it—he had to be. He wasn’t moving. His chest was still.
I knelt at his back, realizing for the first time that there was a rip in the side of my clothes and it was terrible and bloody underneath. I couldn’t feel it though. Maybe that was shock. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Determined to ignore my wound, I reached out to Nathan with my good hand, my shoulder burning from the rifle recoil.
There was one spot on the back of his neck, strangely clean and devoid of blood.
He groaned.
“Nathan.”
“Caro…”
I didn’t know whether I should touch him, move him, but I took a chance and pulled him toward me so I could see his face, ignoring the blood all over him. “Where are you hurt?”
“I killed someone.”
“What? Nathan, where are you hurt?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I killed someone.”
“Nathan, you aren’t making sense. Tell me how to help you.”
One of his hands rose to my cheek. “I killed someone.”
I snatched up his hand before it fell and realized for the first time that two of his fingers were missing. “Nathan, it doesn’t matter. I need to help you.”
There had to be medical supplies inside the cabin. I rested his hand back on his chest and struggled to my feet, but as I reached the base of the steps, I sensed movement behind me—lots of it.
I ran back to the rifle, hefting it, waiting over Nathan, ready to protect him.
It was Jack. “Whoa, Caroline.”
Two other figures emerged into the clearing—Robert West and the doctor I recognized from long ago. My legs almost buckled with relief.
I rushed up to Jack, not realizing I was still brandishing the gun until he grabbed it. “Put it down, Caroline. Where’s Nathan?”
“Jack, you have to help him.”
His eyes widened as he saw Nathan on the ground. The doctor hurried over.
“Dr. Falkner will take care of him.”
“I don’t understand, why are you here? I sent you away.”
He snorted. “As if I was going to leave you. I went to get reinforcements. That stubborn lad insisted on riding ahead. Looks like it was lucky he did.” Jack tugged on my arm, but it was a cautious, gentle pull. “Come and sit down.”
Propped on the wobbly steps, I didn’t even notice Jack disappear inside and come out with a bottle, but I did notice when he poured it over my side.
“Holy—!”
There was a grin on his face, but it wasn’t a smile. “You got yourself all torn up, Miss Caroline.”
I leaned on the balustrade and allowed him to inspect my arm and my side.
“You’re lucky,” he said. “The doctor thought he was coming to pronounce a man dead, not stitch up a dying one.”
The doctor bent over Nathan, cutting off his clothing. A sharp needle flashed as the doctor worked and Robert poured enough alcohol over the wounds to make a conscious man shriek, but Nathan was perfectly still.
“Good doctor. Brought his own bottle.” I pulled at the whiskey, downing a few mouthfuls before Jack grabbed it off me.
“He’ll be stitching you next.”
I looked at Jack. “Nathan said he killed someone.”
“Yep.” Jack fixated on a point above the doctor and rubbed his jaw. “Some brute of a man—used to put on dog fights. He had a daughter that he’d beat up when things weren’t going well. One day, Nathan stepped in and the old man ended up dead.”
I shook my head. “Nathan didn’t want to talk about it. He protected someone. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to think of him like that. As someone who could take a life. Look, the guy he killed had unhappy friends. The dead man owed them money and they never got it back. It got real ugly. Luckily, the DA deemed it self-defense. The girl ended up living with her aunt—nice lady by all accounts—and Nathan left it all behind.”
I couldn’t keep a note of bitterness out of my voice. “So he told you, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“No, he didn’t tell me! That boy never told me a thing. It was Alice who found out. She had a way of finding things out, that woman.”
Nathan was so motionless. Somewhere inside me, I cried, but there were no tears on my cheeks. Nathan had said that Alice was kind to him when nobody else wanted anything to do with him. “Is he going to die?”
“Once he’s stitched up, we’ll take him into town. You have to be prepared…” Jack put a hand on mine, but I wrenched it away, and he stopped speaking when he saw my face.
My wound must have been clotting by then, because I couldn’t feel the drip anymore. I pulled myself upright, needing something else to think about, and suddenly remembered the box. “I have to get something.”
“Caroline, you really need sit down—”
I was already at the door, stepping into the gloom, and Jack let me go with a shake of his head.
A bed and washstand stood in the far left corner, with a number of cupboards along the wall. One of the cupboard doors was ajar and I guessed that was where Jack had found the bottle, but what I needed was on the other side of the room.
It was right there, on the oak desk in the corner—a wooden box, the size of an envelope and barely an inch high.
Next to the box lay the body of a snake, three glass jars resting near it. It stopped me still as I remembered another snake coming at me out of the grass. For a moment I was back in the pasture, the wind in my face, and Cloud’s powerful body protecting me.
This snake’s severed head sank its fangs through a papery wax cover on top of one of the bottles. A few drops of liquid glistened in the bottom of the glass.
Snake venom.
Next to it were empty bottles of pills: sleeping tablets, muscle relaxants, painkillers, bottles with warning after warning on their labels. Edith had used a concoction of drugs on my parents. My stomach turned but I forced myself to focus on the wooden box.
The key was nowhere in sight but to my surprise, the box was already open and full of documents.
What could be so important that my father’s dying wish was to send me here?
Pulling the documents from the box with my sticky, red fingers, I spread them across the clear side of the desk and tried not to smear them too much. A frown creased my forehead as I tried to make sense of what was in front of me.
Birth certificates.
I glazed over them to the document that looked different: my father’s last will and testament. It was short and concise: it left everything to his children. I guessed he had it drawn up after our mother died.
I started shoving the documents back into the box, preparing to take the whole lot with me, when one of them caught my eye.
I picked up one of the birth certificates. It was Samuel’s.
It had Edith’s name on it.
I blinked. The blood rushed up to my head and the room swam. No, that wasn’t right.
I snatched up another birth certificate: it was Edith’s. In the entry for her parents, there were names on it that I didn’t recognize.
I clutched the desk as I tried to make sense of it all, leaving two final bloody hand prints on the smooth wood. Shoving the papers back into the box, I snapped shut the lid. I thought about smashing the glass jars with the snake venom, but my side hurt and the venom didn’t seem to matter anymore. I could feel the pain now and I wondered how bad my wound really was and whether I should be lying down, just like Jack said. But it was too late for that.
It was too late to be scared of shadows anymore, too late to hide behind the other me, too late for my mother’s soul to reach up through me and try to use my hands to do what I had to do.
I scoured the room and picked up a box of matches and a small bottle of what I hoped was something flammable.
As I emerged from the gloomy cabin and stumbled past Jack down the uneven steps, the first rays of dawn touched the ground, reaching across the body of the dead animal and shining on the face of the man I loved.
“Jack.” I shoved the box into his arms. “Take that to Timothy.”
“Wait, where are you going?”
He juggled the box and tried to grab me, but I gave his hand a hard shove, glaring right into his eyes. “Take care of Nathan. You make sure he lives or I swear I’ll come back from the grave to haunt you.” Like my mother came back to haunt me. “Get that box to my brother or I’ll sing curses on your children.”
His lips twisted with what looked like a thousand responses, but I didn’t wait to hear them as I raced past the doctor, still working, and past the animal that had left me scarred and haunted.
Somehow, I made it back to my horse and climbed onto her back. I maneuvered her around the other horses and headed back toward the house, where walls and windows loomed in front of me, panes of glass dark.
Everyone was gone. Except one.
I
ran up the side steps onto the veranda, ignoring the fresh flow of blood down my side. The wound had opened up again. I was losing blood fast now, so I didn’t have much time.
The big, wide doors into the living room were flung open and Edith knelt there, laying out my father’s body on the rug. She didn’t startle when I stood in the doorway. She didn’t even look up.
“You’re still alive.” Her voice was sweet as cherries as she smoothed my father’s hair. Bending over him, she kissed him on the forehead. Her pearls swept forward and crossed his face. She unclasped the necklace, arranging it on his chest like a funeral wreath.
I said, “That’s the second time you tried to kill me.”
“Animals aren’t as efficient as humans. No matter how well they’re trained.”
“You cut my face. With a knife.”
She turned. Her hair fell down her back, curling around her body in dark, luscious waves that matched the red curves of her mouth. Her dress fell straight as she stood taller than I’d ever seen her stand before. There was a faint tilt to her long neck as she took a deep breath, like it was the first real breath she’d taken in years.
She said, “It’s good to get rid of the weight, isn’t it? The weight of so many people, dragging me down.”
“You’re sick, Edith.”
“I’m sick? I’m not the reincarnation of another person.” She tilted her head to the side, watching me. “How long has Meredith been in there? That’s what I’m curious about. Has she been there all your life? Or only since our dear aunty arrived? What twist of fate turned you into her? Your face. No matter what I do, I can never be rid of her.”
Edith’s mouth pressed thin as icy heat burned behind my eyes.
She said, “Wow, you look so much like her. Especially with blood all over you.” She moved in a swirl of black and the breeze picked up and swept the room. A sweet, poisonous scent clogged my nose, and all the stifled memories came ripping through from the underground of my brain. My mother’s face slammed against the floor, blood dripping from her split lip and her blue eyes—so angry. Her scream, her whole being, hurtling into my head, where she remained.