by M K Farrar
She refused to die like this.
“Go away!” she yelled, waving her good arm in the air. She was sure she’d read somewhere, or perhaps even watched on a television documentary, that a person needed to make themselves appear threatening when confronted by a bear. She wasn’t sure how threatening she could look, however, when she probably weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds by now and was clearly injured. “Shoo! I’m not your dinner, bear! Get away from me!”
The bear stopped and sniffed the air. It didn’t appear in the slightest bit frightened of her, however, and was more curious than anything. It took several steps closer, its huge body bustling from side to side. The animal was so big. Never in her imagination had she considered that bears were so huge.
The knife!
In her fear, she’d almost forgotten the weapon she’d brought with her. Keeping her gaze locked on the bear, she pulled the bag off her shoulder and yanked open the top.
“Stay away!” she yelled, though her throat was so sore, the sound broke halfway through. “I’ve got a knife. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Adrenaline had given her an extra boost, but she was still exhausted and weak and trembling.
She fumbled the knife, and it dropped to the ground, the blade embedding in the dirt, so the handle quivered in the air. She’d only narrowly missed her foot.
“No!”
She’d been trying to make herself as big as possible, but now she was going to have to bend over to pull the knife out of the ground. When she did that, she was going to appear vulnerable, and she knew the bear would attack.
She wouldn’t be able to climb the wing and get through the door and into the plane without the bear catching her. Not with her bad hand, and bouts of dizziness. He’d just yank her straight off the wing.
With no other choice, Cass bent for the knife.
The bear let out a roar and came at her at a run.
She huddled into a ball, holding the knife out with both hands, hoping the animal would impale itself before it got the chance to kill her.
But suddenly, it stopped.
She dared to lift her head.
The bear had drawn to a halt, and now she saw why. The shapes of seven women, all lined up together, holding hands, created a barrier between her and the bear. She could only see them from behind, and she’d never known them in real life, but she was able to name each of them now. Sonja Holland. Becky Dawson. Susie Banks. Meaghan Brunner. Maria Moore. Keely Smith. And Anna Whittle.
The seven women murdered by the Magician.
She was hallucinating; she knew that. Terrified, hunched down, waiting for the bear to leap for her, she’d conjured up the final few friends she felt she had in this world, women who’d understand some of what she’d been through.
The bear lifted itself up on its hind legs, opened its mouth, and growled. It shook its massive head, and then turned and bustled its way back into the woods, its wide backside hustling from side to side.
When Cass dared look again, the women were gone.
Chapter Twenty-three
Weak with relief, and a part of her mind unable to process what had just happened, Cass got back to her feet, the knife still clutched between her fingers. She turned and stumbled the final short distance between where she’d been rooted to the spot, trying to scare off the bear, and the closest plane.
The keys? What had she done with the keys?
Suddenly frantic, she dropped the bag back on the ground and rifled through the top. The metal glinted among the other items, and she exhaled a sigh of relief. She must have dropped them in when she’d taken out the knife.
Cass glanced over her shoulder again, reassuring herself the bear had gone and wasn’t just waiting for the next opportune moment. But there was no sign of the animal, and she hadn’t heard anything more since it had gone crashing through the undergrowth away from her.
After the women had scared it away.
No, that wasn’t possible. Something else had changed the bear’s mind. It was simply coincidence that she’d hallucinated them all right at that moment. Maybe she’d even gone temporarily insane. It would hardly be surprising considering the state she was in and everything she’d been through. The possibility of being eaten by a bear had just been one step too far for her frazzled mind, and she’d lost her grip on this world for a moment.
“It doesn’t matter how it happened,” she told herself. “The bear is gone, and you still need to get into the plane.”
Palming the keys and squeezing them hard so the ridges of metal dug into her skin, she reached the plane belonging to the Magician. Getting up onto the wing and then into the cockpit wasn’t going to be easy with only one good hand, but she had to do it. She circled the wing of the plane to bring herself behind it. At least she no longer had her feet chained. That was something to be thankful for. She placed the elbow of her good arm on the wing and leaned forward, hoping to swing her leg up and haul herself up that way, but there was no way she could do it without putting some weight on her bad hand.
Cass clenched her jaw, her molars grinding together. This was going to hurt like a bitch, but she couldn’t see any way of getting up onto the wing without using that hand in some capacity.
“Fuck.”
There was no way around it, and she couldn’t keep hesitating. She’d had a lucky escape with the bear, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still out there, waiting for her to show a moment of weakness so it could attack again. She would be safe inside the body of the aircraft, and the only way she could get up there was by climbing. She was better off just getting it over and done with.
Facing the wing, she put her elbow back on the flat surface and leaned forward, so that arm was supporting most of her weight, then she peeled her bad hand away from where she’d been supporting it against her chest and cautiously put that elbow on the wing as well. She slid forward, leaning to her good side, and then lifted her leg. Her bones and muscles felt like they belonged to an elderly woman, not someone of twenty-three, and her back and hip joint screamed in protest. This was not an elegant position, but she couldn’t stop now. Pushing with the foot that was still on the ground, she hauled herself up. As she’d predicted, she had no choice but to press her upper body weight onto her bad hand, and a white blast of pain shot up her arm. Black dots danced at the edges of her vision, and her eyes rolled in her head.
You need to stay conscious, or you’re going to slide straight back off this thing.
If she landed on the ground, unconscious and defenseless, she would make an excellent meal for a hungry bear.
With an extra shove and a wriggle, she was able to get her foot off the ground, so she was on the wing of the plane. Quickly, she rolled to her back, her injured hand huddled back against her chest to protect it. She pounded her feet against the solid surface of the wing, the metal hot beneath her body, and did her best not to scream. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes, and she just lay there, breathing hard, willing the pain to fade.
Finally, the intense agony ebbed away, and she was able to think again. Shakily, she sat up and twisted around to face the door. She still had the keys in her good hand, the metal now imprinted in red marks against her skin. Her hand trembled as she selected a key that looked like the right fit and tried it in the lock.
It opened on the first attempt, and she would have punched the air in elation had she not been in so much pain and so exhausted she barely wanted to move.
Cass climbed into the cockpit of the plane and settled herself into the pilot’s seat.
“Oh my God.” She sank back against the padded leather, the comfort bringing tears to her eyes for a whole different reason. She’d never again take for granted how it felt to have somewhere comfortable to sit and sleep. Her eyelids grew heavy, and she started sinking deep into that place of sleep, but she forced herself back to wakefulness. There might be something here that was going to get her rescued, and she didn’t want to delay that any longer than she had to.
“Come on, Cass. There will be plenty of time for sleep later.”
She stared around at the cockpit on the plane, wondering where the hell to start. There were too many buttons and levers, and she was terrified she was going to end up pressing something that would get her in more trouble. Knowing her luck, she’d end up hitting the button for the ejector seat and being thrown a hundred feet into the air. She laughed to herself at that idea. She didn’t even think planes had ejector seats.
The radio was in the front panel. She flicked some switches, then remembered the keys. Quickly, she checked for the ignition and plugged in the key, turning it once to switch on the battery. Lights lit up on the dashboard, including those on the radio.
Cass looked around again, hoping to get some idea of how to get it working. She spotted a headset and grabbed it and placed it over her ears, the microphone close to her mouth.
Leaning forward, she flicked the switches. Over the headset, static fizzed and buzzed.
“Hello?” she said. “Can anyone hear me? Mayday. Mayday. I need help.”
She bent to check down the sides of the seats and beneath them. Her gaze fell upon a small ringed notepad. She tugged out the notebook and flipped through it. It was a checklist for the plane. One of the lists was a radio checklist—what to do in case of radio failure. Checking the frequency was part of the instructions.
Quickly, she scanned the screen of the radio. The frequency was on a different number than what was shown on the checklist. A button was below the screen, so she twisted it one way and then the next, watching the numbers go up and then down again. The static in her ears changed in volume and pitch.
“Hello?” she said again. “Mayday. I’m in need of help.”
“Say again?” a male voice replied in her ear.
Her heart leaped. “Hello? My name is Cassandra Draper. I’ve been abducted, and I don’t know where I am.”
Whoever was on the other end faltered from the standard radio speak. “Did you just say you’ve been abducted?”
“Yes. I think it was by the man the police call the Magician. He’s dead now, but I’m in the middle of nowhere in his plane, and I need help. I’m hurt.”
“Okay. Don’t panic. We can find you through the plane’s transponder and your radio frequency.”
Cass burst into tears. “You can? Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course, ma’am. Just hang in there. Someone will be with you as quickly as possible.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Another four hours passed before help arrived.
By that point, she was barely conscious and most likely incoherent. She only had fragments of memory of the police helping her from the plane, asking her questions and checking her injuries.
They took Cass directly to the hospital. The police would want to speak with her, of course, but first the doctors needed to work on her. She zoned in and out of what was being said but managed to pick up on them mentioning surgery and dehydration—none of which she was surprised about. She didn’t even care about whether she would get the use of her thumb and forefinger back. Perhaps she would at a later date, but right now she was simply relieved to be safe.
She had no intention of telling the police about how she’d imagined the women speaking to her while she’d been chained to the tree, or even that she’d seen them when the bear had tried to attack. Now she was here, surrounded by the clean lines of the hospital, with the busy, efficient doctors and nurses around her, and the smell of bleach, she’d doubted what she’d seen herself.
Besides, she realized, if they had been real, they’d have been able to tell her that the first man, who she’d believed to have been their killer, wasn’t responsible for the deaths. They’d surely have warned her that there was a second man she needed to be wary of.
Wouldn’t they?
She cried for them all that first night in the hospital bed. Cried for herself, too, for all the trauma she’d been through since the age of six, right up until her rescue, when she’d heard the police helicopter circling while it was trying to find her. When it had landed, and a male and female police officer had run to her, she been partly delirious, not trusting herself that they were real. It wasn’t until she was actually at the hospital that she believed she wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating and was no longer in the woods.
Finally, she was somewhere safe, and she did what she’d struggled to do all these years. She gave in to the exhaustion, closed her eyes, and slept.
This time, her sleep was free of nightmares.
HER EYELIDS FLICKERED open to a new morning light. She’d slept the whole night through, oblivious to the beeping machines beside her hospital bed, and the nurses and doctors rushing along the corridors outside, and the shouts and moans of other patients.
Two people were standing at her bedside. Even though it had been over a year since she’d last seen them, she recognized them instantly.
“Mom?” She woke fully and tried to sit up in bed. Pain wrapped her body in a vise, and she sucked in air over her teeth. “Dad?”
Her mother stepped closer and took hold of her hand—the hand that wasn’t wrapped in bandages. “Oh, thank God. You’re awake.”
Cass looked between them. “You’re here?”
Her mother nodded earnestly. “Of course, we’re here. We flew to New York the moment we got word that you were missing.”
Her dad moved to the side of her bed. “We’re so relieved you’re okay, Cassie.”
“I can’t tell you how frightened we’ve been.” Her mother put her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.
“I thought.... I thought...” She was going to say that she thought they would have been pleased to finally get rid of her, but she could see from their faces that wouldn’t have been the right thing to say.
“It’s hard enough having lost one of you,” her dad continued, “but your mother and I couldn’t have handled it if we’d lost you, too.”
But Cass couldn’t help the words coming from her mouth, needing to hear that confirmation from them. “I felt like since what happened with Bradley that maybe you be relieved...”
Her mother’s eyes widened, her mouth dropping open in shock. “Oh, Cassie. How could you think something like that? You were six years old. What happened was completely our fault. We should have been supervising you both better.” She stroked Cass’s cheek. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding us? Why you moved so far away and never speak to us?”
She nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. “I thought every time you looked at me, you saw what happened.”
“We did,” her dad admitted, and her stomach sank, “and it hurt horribly. But we never felt bad because we blamed you for what had happened. We felt so terrible because we knew how this would haunt you, too, and that it was something you’d never get over. Not really. A moment of carelessness didn’t only destroy our son’s life, it destroyed yours, too.”
“It destroyed all of our lives,” she said, her voice strangled.
Tears poured down her mother’s cheeks. “Oh, sweetheart, it did, and I’m so sorry. But you’re still young. You can still have your life.”
She joined her mother’s tears with tears of her own.
She remembered what the women in the clearing had said about her being so desperate to fight for her life, but so far not having even lived one. She’d promised them she’d try to live her life properly, if she survived.
“Yes, I can,” she said, sniffing, “or at least I can try, but I want you both to try, too.”
Her mother nodded, her lips pressed together as though to try to contain her emotion. “If we can have you in our lives, then that would be a life worth trying for.”
She pulled Cass in for a hug, and her dad stepped in as well, circling them both with his big arms so they were in an awkward little circle, joined in their grief, but each now looking toward a future where they had each other in their lives.
The police came in to question her, and her parents ma
de their excuses to go and grab a coffee to give them some space.
She told the police everything she could, from start to finish, but left out the parts about how she’d heard the murdered women talking to her in her darkest moments, and had even seen them. She told herself she must have seen their photographs on social media before she’d been taken, and some part of her subconsciousness must have stored their faces away, only to project them when she’d needed the company the most.
It transpired the two men—her abductor and the real Magician—had known each other from a flying club, which was why they both had access to light aircraft. Her abductor, whose real name was John Lester, and the Magician—real name, Erik Terry—had struck up a strange kind of friendship. Other members of the club said they’d divided themselves off from everyone else and were often seen with their heads together, conducting conversations that stopped abruptly when others tried to approach. Erik Terry must have been unable to keep his murders to himself and had divulged the location where the women had been killed and buried. John Lester then took it upon himself, without Terry’s knowledge, to replicate the murders by abducting Cass, and therefore making himself a copycat of the Magician.
Of course, he’d failed because Cass had survived.
Cass knew she’d never forget the names and faces of the other women she’d shared her time with in the clearing.
Over the course of several weeks, as the bodies were recovered, she met the families of the murdered women. A part of her had wanted to tell them how their lost daughters, and friends, and mother had kept her company during her darkest times, but she kept her mouth shut, not wanting them to think her crazy.
Perhaps she should have told them, and hoped her words would give them comfort, but there were some secrets that would remain where they belonged...
In the woods.
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