Jack tried to find a moment to apologize, and explain that he knew he should’ve done more to make sure this didn’t happen, but it never came. So he just stared at her pack, kept his mouth shut, and followed her to wherever the hell she was headed. Cara had fallen back with Charlie to make sure he kept going, but they were about twenty yards away now, and that was with her pushing him. Jack noticed they were starting to go uphill. He looked up past Mac, and saw it was a good sized one. But there was something familiar about it. He suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Mac kept going, not looking behind her, but let out an annoyed sigh. “There’s things I need to do. Feel free to stay here and wait, but I’m not coming back down to get you, so figure it out.”
His jaw tightened and flexed, but he started to follow her again against every self preservation instinct he had in his body. He kept marching on, staring down at his feet. Finally the land started to level out, and the buildings were just sitting where he knew they would be, like nothing ever happened. But he’d never forget what had. She made her way to that main office building, the door swinging open on its hinges, a the bullet hole marking up the front. He made the decision to wait outside for Charlie and Cara to catch up. Mac never looked back to see what he had chosen. She just went into the building, out the back door, then there was silence.
Jack turned to see Cara and Charlie standing behind them right where the land leveled off. Cara looked around at the area, not knowing what she was looking at, or why they were there. Charlie stood gasping for breath from the climb, but with a look of fear and panic from the realization of where they were. They caught each others eye, and stared, swallowing hard. Eventually Jack turned away, and started to really look at the place. Except for the bullet hole in the door, there was nothing to show they had ever been there. The tire tracks from the truck that brought them up there had been blown away or washed out in the month after. He looked over to where the deer carcass had once laid, and that had also vanished. But he couldn’t help look over his shoulder just a bit down that dirt road and wonder if the body of that woman still laid there, broken and decayed where she died for good. His body immediately reacted to the thought, pulse quickening, a bit of nausea creeping up from his stomach as he remembered the jolting of the truck as it hit her, and then rode right over her. The sound of those monsters’ laughter ringing in his ears.
“Hey.” Jack jumped as Cara put her hand on his shoulder. “What are we doing here? What is this place?”
Jack took a breath to collect himself, but Charlie was the first to answer from behind them.
“It’s the storage units,” he said as he too looked off to the road that disappeared down the hill.
Cara looked between them for a moment trying to think why the type of place it was answered her question, but then she suddenly got it. Understanding washed over her face, and her eyes grew wide. She turned back to the office and saw the bullet hole in the door.
“What the hell are we doing here?”
The question hung between them, because no one knew, and none of them wanted to even think about it. The three stood there uneasily. Cara poked around while the other two stood with their backs to the buildings as if any moment that green truck was going to drive right up, crest the hill, and head right for them.
Suddenly a loud bang jolted them out of their dark thoughts, and they scrambled towards each other, hands on their guns. They soon realized it was the back door slamming against the wall. Mac had walked out the front holding a tarp, blue with torn holes and frayed edges.
“Stay here and take a break until I get back. I won’t be stopping again until night fall.” She dropped her pack next to them, and walked on down the road carrying the tarp. They watched until her head disappeared below the ground.
Jack slid the smaller pack with the bat next to him and took his bottle of water out of his deep pocket, and a few apple rings from the other. Cara and Charlie followed his lead, and they all snacked and gazed nervously back to the open office door whenever a small breeze made it swing slightly.
After a few minutes Cara turned to them, “What’s down there? Do you know what she’s doing?”
Charlie and Jack didn’t look at each other, but kept doing what they were doing. Jack poked a stick into the dirt, and Charlie stared off into the office. They both were pretty sure they were thinking of the same thing: the ride that took them up there the first time.
“No,” Jack answered, still looking at the meaningless lines he was scratching. “There’s nothing down there. It just leads to the main road.”
Cara looked back over where Mac had gone. All of them sat there in silence for a while longer until Cara saw Mac’s head begin to rise back over the hill. She gave Jack and Charlie a nudge, and they got to their feet. They could see her hands were filthy and empty. The tarp had been left behind wherever she had went. Her clothes were dirt covered with smudges across her chest. Sweat that had dripped down her face had caught some dust, turning it to muddy lines on her cheeks and forehead. She walked past them again into the office. They heard the back door bang, and they waited. Moments later, they heard the bang again, and she reappeared. She walked over to them, and grabbed her large pack, swinging it onto her shoulders again. As they were about to follow her down the dirt drive to the main road, Cara looked back and saw a trickle of smoke rising from the storage units behind the office. She slapped his arm to get his attention as he was putting the small pack and bat back on. Charlie walked over to stand next to them, watching as the smoke grew into a large black plume. He spat at the office, then turned and followed after Mac.
They made their way down. Mac was a few yards ahead, when Jack noticed something out of the corner of his eye a few feet off the road. There were patches of bright blue tarp here and there, covered by a mound of rocks. He turned to look at Charlie, but he was already looking back at him. As they all walked on they stepped over a dirt encrusted, stained men’s sock that laid at the start of drag marks in the road, leading to the mound.
Hours later they had followed Mac to a less wooded area. Every hundred feet or so a small house would appear from within dry and overgrown yards. Unpruned shrubs and trees blocked whole sections of the homes. Each looked completely abandoned, and most had begun to deteriorate from disrepair. They had passed one where a large tree had snapped close to the base of the trunk and fallen. It laid in the house where it landed, splitting the building right down the middle. Part of a lace curtain clung to one of its branches, and wafted in the wind while it still hung slanted across the smashed window frame.
None of them had spoken since the storage units, and Mac never looked back for them. A few times she had stopped impatiently for them to gain a bit more ground between them, only to take off once again. As they walked through the once cute little neighborhood, she unexpectedly veered off the side of the road. When they had caught up, they saw she had walked into a front yard following a barely visible stone path in the over growth. They looked up to the front of the house, a single story ranch on a slab foundation, just in time to see her reach up over the front door, pull down a key which she used to unlock it, and then walked right in, leaving the door wide open.
Cara was the first to start after her, and into the house. Charlie followed. When Jack entered he was surprised to see a home. Though dusty, it still managed to look like someone lived there. Charlie sat on a couch in the front room staring at a black television screen positioned directly in front of it. Some pictures of the homeowners still stood on tops of shelves and side tables. They were a young couple, one of their wedding photos hanging front and center over a hutch full of nice dinner ware. Next to that room was the kitchen. Cara sat at the table, her elbows on top, and her head in her hands. A sliding glass door led to the back yard behind that.
Jack turned down the hall, all the doors were open just a crack, except for the one at the end, which was completely open. He could hear something rummaging around down there. He walked slowly, one step at
a time. His toe silently touching the worn and dusty runner that stretched the length of the hall. Every few steps the floor boards underneath would let a tiny creak out, and he’d tense. He wasn’t sure why he was so determined to not make a sound, but it felt more appropriate than stomping around.
When he reached the doorway he looked into a small, light pink room. One corner was filled with gift bags of every pastel color known to man. There was a small white dresser with a mat on top, a few tiny things scattered around the remaining uncovered surface. In the other corner sat a cream cushioned rocking chair. Next to that sat a half assembled crib, and in front of both on the mint green rug covered in purple and pink flowers was a large rust colored stain that poured over on to the floor boards. There was also a smeared hand print down one of the legs of the crib in the same rust color. His eyes wandered up to the wall, and above the crib hung the letters E-M-M-A from wide purple ribbon. The first “M” was slightly crooked. The closet door slid shut to his right, jarring him out of his horrified thoughts. He was standing in the center of the room, but didn’t even remember walking in from the hallway. Mac stood there, in front of a small closet shoving things into her pack. She zipped it up, and walked right passed him, and out the door.
When she left he put his hand to his mouth, and tried to collect himself. But he knew this image would be seared into his brain until the day he died. He took a deep breath, and started retreating backward out of the room. He closed the door, and slid down it to the floor. He looked to all the other doors down the hallway, and thought about how much he was going to avoid going inside all of them.
Mac stood where the kitchen, the hallway, and the living room connected. The red-orange glow of the sunset through the kitchen windows made her look like she was on fire. Then you saw her expression, and you knew she was.
“We should be at the next stop by now,” she said trying to contain her anger. “It’s too late. We’ll have to stay here tonight.”
Cara walked out from the kitchen and sat in the armchair next to the couch. She looked at Charlie who hung his head. They knew they were slowing her down, but they didn’t realize how much they had messed up her plans.
“Eat and drink. Find a place to sleep,” she said, swallowing some of her frustration. “I recommend staying away from the first room on the left.” She turned and walked through the kitchen, and out the sliding glass door.
Cara and Charlie look over at each other cautiously. Next to the hall’s entryway was a large grandfather clock, still swaying left and right. The ticks seemed to echo through the silence and emptiness of the home, but the time was still spot on. Someone had been tending it. When Charlie looked back down to the floor and started to loosen the laces on his boots a bit, Cara stood up and walked slowly over to the hallway and stopped. She was breathing heavy as she stared wide eyed at the first door on the left, the only door that was completely closed. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Jack, and turned to face him. His legs were stretched out to the other wall, and he looked at her with warning and sadness, shaking his head no, in an attempt to warn her. He could only think of the fact that if Mac thought the nursery was a more suitable place to sleep than that room, whatever warranted her to say the other wasn’t, had to be horrific. The clock’s pendulum still filled the silence between them, making her choice even more tense.
Cara looked away from him, and turned back to the door. She reached out slowly and grasped the doorknob, turning it little by little, the springs of the latch creaking as it went. When the knob could no longer turn, and her chest heaved with every nervous breath, she pushed. At first, she noticed nothing. The room was heavily shadowed from thick, dark curtains, but she could make out a bed, dresser, nightstands, a closet. There was a smell she couldn’t quite pin down. Something like damp and staleness, with a metallic and familiar stench, like when something had been in her fridge for too long. She closed the door behind her deciding she could definitely deal with the smell if it meant she can sleep in a bed away from the ticking of the clock. She walked across the room and opened the curtain in the hopes some of the sunset, though shining on the back of the house, would be able to make it into the room enough for her to get her bearings.
As she turned back to the room she froze, a scream catching in her throat, only a little squeaking gasp making it out. The wall along the hallway and door were covered in old, dried blood. Splashes, smears, hand prints. There were gouges and scrapes in the wood of the door and paint on the walls. Some looked like slashes made teeth, but most were clearly made by fingernails. The floor looked close to the same, though it was hard to see much past the gigantic dark spot that covered most of the wooden floor from the door to the middle of the room, then trailed to the bed. The bed was covered in a large handmade quilt of blue patches with different pretty patterned squares. The right side had an old red stain where the pillow laid, and as she looked at it, she could make out what she thought was the shape of a head and shoulders out of the aged, brownish marks. More smudges made their way down the quilt.
Cara was stuck between getting out of the room, but having to go towards and through the gore. She told herself it was old, dry, but the smell she recognized earlier became much more specific and she started to gag. She steeled herself and started to walk to the door. A bar of light from the setting sun had moved up from the floor to the door, and as she reached for the knob, it highlighted two fingernails still stuck in gouges in the wood. She started to panic and whipped the door open, running out and right into Jack. He put his hands on her shoulders seeing the fear in her face, and looked behind her into the room. The stain on the floor was enough for him, and he simply reached behind her, grabbed the knob, and closed the door. Charlie was standing in the middle of the living room looking at them confused. They heard Mac in the kitchen sliding the door shut.
“I told you. Try the spare room down the end of the hall.”
Once the sun had left the sky completely, their exhaustion had taken over in the darkness. Mac had lit a candle she pulled out of a kitchen drawer and placed it on an end table by the hallway. It cast a warm glow in the center of the space. Enough where everyone could find their way if need be.
Cara had decided on the spare bedroom once she saw it was blood free, while Charlie had stretched himself out on the couch. Jack had chosen the armchair once he discovered it reclined. He had already decided he would not be staying in any of the bedrooms regardless of their cleanliness. That, and he figured he wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night anyway. Mac didn’t even try to sleep. She had taken a seat at the kitchen table. Her feet up on another chair, staring out the sliding glass door at the pitch black backyard.
As Jack was settling into his “bed” for the night, he couldn’t help but watch her a bit. The chair was angled so he was looking in her direction. He watched as she sat. She hadn’t even taken off her boots or jacket. She had a sweatshirt on underneath, and its hood was over her head. She sat, shrouded and still, with one of her knives out and open, gripped in her hand. The candle cast her shadow against the wall as it flickered, the flame moving more than her. And then he fell asleep.
His eyes flicked open from a nightmare. He was in the block and every room he walked into had rusty, dried blood stains all over the floor, and no one to be found. He laid in the recliner trying to catch his breath, and get his bearings. It took him a while to remember where he was. Then he heard Charlie softly snoring on the couch next to him. The candle was now an inch lower, but the skies were still dark outside the windows. And Mac still sat at the table just like she was doing before he fell asleep. It looked like her chin may have been resting on her chest. Had she fallen asleep? He slowly pushed himself up on an elbow to get a better look when a light suddenly turned on outside.
Mac’s hand that had the knife in it slid silently across the table top to her lap, her whole body tensed. She leaned forward slightly, putting her feet back on the ground without a sound, and she just stared out the back door. Jack
didn’t understand, but he watched. Seconds later a doe and her fawn walked into view, and she brought her hand back up and rested it on the table top once more. She placed her feet back on the other chair. Because of the bright flood light out on the back of the house, he could see her now lit up face in the reflection against the glass door. Her eyes looked sad, but her jaw was clenched. Whatever it was she was waiting for he didn’t know whether it was a blessing to be in the dark about it, or a sitting duck in his ignorance. But he knew enough not to bother her and ask. Eventually the deer left, and the motion light turned itself back off. The same thing happened two more times for unseen reasons before he drifted back to sleep again, strangely feeling better knowing she would be up, and there for the night.
When the light flicked on and lit her face up, it also caught his. She never once looked back at him, though she could see him in the reflection of the glass when she let her eyes focus in from the outside. He looked at her sadly, worried, guiltily. Whether for her or himself or his friends, she didn’t know. She assumed it was for all of them, but she didn’t need his presence there or his judgments and feelings. She didn’t need any of theirs. This routine of hers, whenever she was in this house, was too intimate for her to have an audience. It was a private torture that she needed for her own repentance if she was ever going to forgive herself. It upset her to know he saw her there, and she was biting her tongue waiting for him to say something. She was ready to hold up her hand to him, still staring out the back door, and tell him to “Save it, Robin Hood”, but he never said a word. And when she saw he was asleep again, she wasn’t upset with him anymore over being there. She just appreciated his silence. She listened to them breathing slowly and deeply from the other room for the rest of the night until the sun rose again. It always did, regardless.
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