Beth started to dry heave then. Over and over again, her stomach wrenched, as if she had a virus or food poisoning. As she vomited nothing but saliva, I watched her face contort at the sour taste of stomach acid.
“You’re upsetting her,” I said.
“Her stomach’s just empty,” the professor countered. “She needs to eat. Beth, dear, you need to eat. You always get nauseated if you go more than two hours without putting something in your stomach.”
Professor Barnard guided Beth by the hand to the table then, and Beth, worn out from the ordeal, let her.
“Come on, Ruby. You too.” She pulled out a chair. “We can discuss this over dinner.”
I crossed my arms and said nothing. I didn’t want to participate in the professor’s fantasy, the three of us sharing meals at the cabin table like the sisters in Little Women.
Besides, my curiosity had been sated, now that the professor had explained who she really was and why she took us. There was nothing keeping me there, nothing forcing me to listen to her crazy notions any longer. Earlier, Beth had mentioned Professor Barnard’s gun, but I had yet to see one. So when the professor rushed to the kitchen, presumably to get Beth something to eat, I followed, hoping to take her off guard somehow. But she was one step ahead of me. Turning the kitchen corner, I walked right into the end of the revolver she aimed at my chest. Looped around her other hand was a piece of rope.
“I didn’t want to do it this way, Ruby,” she said, pushing me back into the main room. “But now you’ve given me no choice.”
“You wouldn’t shoot me,” I said, as she lowered me to the chair across from Beth.
She didn’t respond and instead, using the rope, she tied my left wrist to the base of the wooden dining table, all the while watching Beth for any sudden movement. I thought about reaching for the gun, which she’d set down at the far end of the table so she could tie my hand, but before I could put thought into action, she was done.
“Do I need to tie you up too?” she asked Beth.
Beth shook her head no.
The professor left the room only briefly—not long enough for Beth and I to whisper or gesture anything coherent to each other—and she returned with a steaming platter, what looked to be a whole roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas, and my stomach ached with hunger. I had eaten nothing but a doughnut hole that morning.
I watched Beth push chunks of chicken and forkfuls of mashed potatoes into her mouth with vigor. I couldn’t blame her for indulging. She was, after all, eating for two. The professor also made me a plate, which she set before me. She then sat down and began eating. I eyed the food. The chicken was not the least pink, the peas a vibrant green, the potatoes a creamy white. Could poison look so nutritious?
Professor Barnard seemed to read my mind. “Why would I poison you?”
It was a rhetorical question, and I didn’t answer. Instead, I stuffed a tablespoon of peas into my mouth. They were delicious—fresh and definitely not canned.
We ate in silence, less the ting of cutlery and chewing, until I looked around the room and asked, “How did you get access to this cabin?”
“I’m renting it, from the woman Mark sold it to,” the professor explained as she started to clear our dishes. “In fact, she’s the person I pretended to be when I called. I told Mark I wanted to sell the cabin back to him. And I knew he’d be interested. He only sold it to make himself more alluring to you, Beth, so you would marry him. And now, distraught over losing you, he needs the comfort of something familiar.”
“You called Mark?” I asked.
“I had to, if I wanted him to come here.”
“He’s coming here?” Beth said. “When?”
The professor checked her watch, and her eyes widened. “In less than an hour, so we better discuss the plan.” She spoke coolly, as if planning an annual fund-raiser.
“Why do you want to do this?” Beth pleaded. “Why can’t we just get him fired, like you wanted to do in the first place?”
“Because I realize now, that’s not enough. He’ll just keep hurting girls. Over and over and over again.”
The professor’s voice was tight, stretched like a rubber band ready to break, and her eyes were desperate, dark, and vulnerable. And I knew we’d never leave that cabin, never escape, unless we indulged her. Unless we pretended to go along with her plan.
“If we do this,” I said. “If we . . . you know . . . then you’ll let us go?”
“You have my word,” she said.
Beth and I locked eyes then, and an unspoken understanding passed between us.
“Okay,” Beth said. “We’ll do it.”
The cabin grew chilly once the sun went down, and Professor Barnard started a fire. The flames, primitive and ritualistic, cast an eerie orange glow on everything—the floor, our faces—and set the tone for what Professor Barnard wanted us to do that night. The plan was simple. Get Mark to admit what he’d done and apologize for his cavalier behavior and dishonesty, then punish him in the worst way imaginable to a man.
Beth and I were in position beside the fire when we heard a car on the gravel road. The hum of the engine struck me. There was a whirring, a slight whistle, and I knew it was Mark’s Jeep. Beth seemed to know it too. Soon, we heard a knock—one long and two short, like a code—and waited until the professor answered the door before speaking.
“How are we going to do this?” Beth whispered. “Without really doing it? She cares more about hurting him than she does us. I’m afraid she’ll shoot us if we diverge from her plan.”
I heard the front door squeak open and gulped down the knot forming in my throat. “When we see a chance to disarm her, we’ll take it,” I said.
We heard Mark’s immediate surprise when he saw his colleague, Virginia Barnard, answer the cabin door. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I live here,” she said.
“Really?” He let out a huff. “Small world.”
“Good thing,” we heard her say. “Or our paths would not have crossed again.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” he said.
“A long time ago, Mark. But I found you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You will be,” she said.
We heard the cock of a gun then. I held my breath, and I heard Beth do the same.
“What the fuck?” Mark blurted.
Professor Barnard pushed him through the doorway then, digging the gun into his back. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you?” she said. “Not to use that kind of language in front of a lady?”
Mark’s face seemed to crumble at the sight of us. It lost all structure of cheekbone and turned to a wobble of surprise.
“Beth!” he called before darting for her. But Professor Barnard held him back by the arm and dug the gun farther into his back. His body was contained, but his voice carried the distance. “Beth, you’re alive!”
Mark’s eyes watered. I could see the dampness shimmer in the firelight.
“I’ll kill you,” he spat at Professor Barnard’s face. She kicked him in the leg then, hard enough to make him wince, and pushed him into the chair we’d set up for him. And that’s when he finally noticed me.
“Is that Ruby?” He stood from his chair in another wave of anger.
There was no time for truth. It wasn’t in the script, and it would have to come out later. Once Professor Barnard held the gun to his temple, we worked quickly, tying his hands behind his back and his feet together, and both to the chair. I tried making the knots loose, but the professor noticed.
“Tighter, ladies,” she scolded. “Tighter.”
Once Mark was secured to the chair, she let him have it.
“You’re a disgusting excuse for a man,” she said, before elbowing him in the face.
Despite the force, he took the blow well, as if trying to prove he was a man who could take a hit from a woman. His face contorted as the beginning of a bruise crossed his cheek.
“Apologize to these girls,” she said.
“Me? Apologize? You’re the crazy bitch who took them.”
This outburst earned Mark another elbow to the jaw. When he grunted through the pain, I felt Beth flinch beside me. I watched Professor Barnard for any sign of weakness, but her hold on the gun was still tight. We’d have to forge ahead.
“Then apologize to me,” Professor Barnard said.
“You?” He threw her an incredulous look. “What for? I hardly know you.”
“You have no idea who I am?”
“A deranged lunatic?”
The professor butted the gun against his cheek like a slap to the face. “Does the name Jenny Barnard ring a bell? Have you forgotten what you did to her? What you did to my sister?”
He stared at her, at first hard and cold and unsympathetically. It had been more than twenty years since Mark had dated that girl at Tulane. But suddenly, his expression turned somber. It was the same sadness I’d seen cross his face on the Tulane campus, before he lied and said Jenny had gone into the Peace Corps.
“She trusted you, Mark,” the professor hissed. “With her heart. With her body. And you stole from her, stole her love, stole her virginity, stole her innocence. You threw her away like a piece of trash, like a worthless banana peel.”
Mark closed his eyes and shook his head. “I was young,” he said. “And stupid. I . . . I never thought she would . . . hurt herself.”
“She didn’t hurt herself. You hurt her. You killed her baby. You killed her.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Just let Beth go. Please, let Beth go.”
For a moment, I saw a look of satisfaction cross Professor Barnard’s face, but it was soon replaced with malice. “Sorry isn’t good enough,” she spat.
“Then why the fuck did you make me say it?”
She whipped Mark with the butt of the gun again, causing his nose to spurt blood. It dripped down his chin onto his chest.
“You used my sister, and you used Ruby. And Tina. And Madeline. And Julie.”
He whimpered. “Tina? Who’s Tina?”
“Say it,” she screamed. “Say you used those innocent girls.”
“Okay, I used them. There, I said it. You have me. Now let Beth go.”
Beth, I thought. It was Beth he saw the moment he came into the cabin, not me. It was Beth’s freedom he was willing to trade his life for, not mine. He never loved me, I thought. Not like he loved her, not like he still loves her now. And for a moment, I pitied him. Because I knew Beth didn’t love him in return, and she never would. She hurt him just like he hurt me. And still he loved her. He’d do anything—even give his life—for her. At that point, my anger toward Mark eclipsed everything else.
“You stole my work,” I blurted.
Professor Barnard looked at me then like she had earlier that day, when I decided to come forward about my relationship with Mark. She was surprised I spoke, but proud.
“My thesis,” I went on. “You gave me a D, then published it under your name, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer at first, and the professor pressed the gun to his temple. “Answer her,” she charged.
“Yes,” he said.
“You stole Madeline’s work too. And Julie’s.”
“Yes,” he repeated.
“And you wrote about me. You used what happened to me as material for publication.”
He shook his head. Another drop of blood fell from his chin. “I never wrote about you.”
“But I saw it on your computer, Mark,” I argued. “What you wrote after I tried to kill myself. Her fractured mind. You called me delusional, and said I saw things that weren’t there. You wrote that about me.”
He paused. “I wrote that about my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“She was . . . schizophrenic.”
“You never told me that,” Beth said.
“It’s not something I wanted to tell. She was everything that word connotes. She heard voices. Saw people lurking in shadows. She was paranoid. And she tried to kill herself a couple of times when I was kid.” His eyes circled the room. “In this cabin.”
Looking at Mark, with blood staining his face and shirt, I saw him not as a manipulative womanizer but as a young, innocent, and vulnerable boy wrestling with his mother’s insanity, struggling for her affection, wondering why he wasn’t enough reason for his mother to want to live. Professor Barnard must have sensed my sudden sympathy for Mark, because she pulled a utility knife from her pocket then and handed it to me.
“That’s enough talking,” she ordered. “Let’s get this over with.”
I looked down at the knife; its blade gleamed in the flicker of firelight. My heartbeat thumped in my head. “But I thought we were going to tie—”
“That’s for his pants,” the professor spat. “You’ll have to cut them off.”
“My pants?” Mark huffed. “Ruby, what is she talking about? Beth? Beth? What is she talking about?”
“He said he was sorry,” Beth pleaded.
Professor Barnard tightened her grip on the gun and kept her eyes on me. “Ruby, do it.”
I knelt before him, and a loose nail head in the floorboard dug into my kneecap.
“What are you doing?” Mark yelled. “You’re not . . . oh, God, you’re not going to . . .”
“Don’t fight it, Mark. Or it will hurt even more,” the professor said.
I looked into Beth’s panic-filled eyes and saw she was on the verge of tears. Will she be able to overtake Professor Barnard? I wondered. How far will I have to go? How far will I have to take it?
Though he wriggled in the chair, I held Mark’s leg firmly and cut into his khakis, just above the knee. Then I pulled the small tear I created, splitting his pants all the way up until I saw his underwear under the shredded ends of fabric. When the outside air hit the tender skin of his inner thigh, Mark sucked in a breath.
“Ruby,” he screamed. “Don’t!”
“Keep going,” the professor commanded. “Cut his underwear.”
Looking at Mark’s crotch, at the fine hair lining the inside of his thighs, I felt like I was going to vomit. At one time, the sight of Mark undressed was alluring and intimate. Now, it was repulsive.
“Faster,” the professor charged.
Mark flinched when I brought the knife back to his crotch, and he writhed in the chair again, enough to jostle my arm and prick the inside of his thigh with the knife. I held my breath as I pulled the front of his underwear away from him with my thumb and index finger and worked the knife through it enough to make a hole. I ripped the rest like I did his pants. The flap of underwear lay over him like a loincloth. My hands began to sweat.
The professor took the knife from me then and replaced it with a long strand of kitchen twine, the kind I imagined she used to truss the legs of the chicken. My hands felt suddenly empty, and I regretted not acting when I had the knife. It was a weapon, the only weapon she would willingly give me, and I hadn’t used it against her. I knew I had to do something before it was too late, but I couldn’t seem to cross the line between thought and action. I assumed Beth felt the same.
“Now tie it,” the professor said.
My hands shook. “I can’t.”
She pointed the gun at Beth. “Do it, or I’ll shoot her.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
Professor Barnard fired the gun into the rafters. The sudden bang of the gun jolted me into tears. I covered my head as sawdust sprinkled us like snowfall.
“Tie it,” the professor ordered. “And it has to be tight to cut off the blood flow.”
“Oh, fuck,” Mark cried. “Fuck. Ruby, don’t do it.”
The professor stuffed a cloth napkin into Mark’s mouth to quiet him. “Do it,” she said.
I heard Mark’s muffled cries as I lifted the twine and dragged it under the flap of underwear, but my hands shook uncontrollably, and I didn’t have the dexterity to make a knot. I tried three times before I got the twine looped, but I didn’t pull the ends.
“Pull it,” the professor ordered. “Tight! Tight!”
“I can’t,” I cried again.
“Let me do it,” she hissed. She shoved me away to take my position, and I slammed into the wood floor, my cheek burned by the jagged wood. I heard Mark’s stifled wail as the professor pulled the knot tight. But a second later, I heard a body thump to the floor, and the gun skid across the cabin. I turned to see Beth holding a fire poker. She’d obviously hit the professor with it.
“Ruby, grab the gun,” Beth yelled as the professor bolted from the floor.
As I ran to retrieve it, the professor lunged at Mark, and Beth tried to stop her again with the poker. The two wrestled, their movements jerky and erratic, and I saw Mark’s chair tip over and land beside the fire. He was still bound to the chair, and his screams—sharp, screeching wails—told me the fire had begun singeing his skin.
I grabbed the gun and prepared to shoot but Professor Barnard was already on the floor—Beth had whacked her again with the poker—and I stood above her, ready to pull the trigger. Meanwhile, Beth pulled Mark’s chair from the fire and began slapping at the flames on his face and hair and chest with the napkin that had been in his mouth.
“Mark,” Beth yelled, once she’d patted away all the flames. “Where are your keys?”
Professor Barnard let out a cackle then, even though she lay perfectly still on the floor. “Go ahead and look,” she said. “You won’t find them.”
“Then we’ll call 911,” I said. “Mark, do you have your cell phone?”
Mark motioned to his pants pocket, the lining still visible via the exposed crotch of his pants. Beth pulled the phone out and read the words on the screen. NO SERVICE.
“Don’t you remember?” the professor said. “No cell towers for miles. You’ve all spent enough time at this cabin to know that.”
“Then let’s start walking,” Beth said. “We’ll tie her up until the police get here.”
“We can’t expect Mark to walk to the main road in his condition,” I argued.
“But he can’t stay here,” Beth countered. “He’ll kill her.”
“Ruby can stay,” Mark muttered through his burnt lips.
“I’m not leaving Ruby here alone,” she barked. “The three of us go. That’s final.”
“I’ll tie her up,” I offered, giving Beth the gun. I wanted it out of my hands.
After I tied Professor Barnard’s hands to the daybed, Beth and I untied Mark and pulled him up from the floor. It was hard to tell how much tissue damage had occurred, but he moved past us with a sudden burst of energy, as if to deny he’d even been hurt. Beth and I followed him a few steps before turning to look back at Professor Barnard. She should have looked vulnerable there in the dark, on the cold cabin floor. But she didn’t.
She looked peaceful, as if everything were right with the world.
I checked Mark’s phone every couple of yards, so I could call the police as soon as I got service. It was a slow, dark walk to the main road. Fortunately, the display screen from Mark’s phone allowed us a small amount of light, which I cast on the gravel road from time to time to ascertain whether we had drifted off course into the woods.
We walked in silence for what seemed like a long time until the road glowed in the dark, as if the moon had moved directly above us, lighting our path. We heard the stir of gravel next, and saw headlights appear in the distance. A moment later, we saw the flash of red and blue lights flicker above the car.
The police car stopped before us, and at first, I saw only black figures emerge, my eyes blinded by the lights. One of the cops—the thinner of the two—barked orders into the radio, and the other, a large ball of a man, approached us. Soon I made out his trench coat and mustache. It was Detective Pickens.
“Where’s Barnard?” he asked.
I pointed behind me. “Back at the cabin. Tied to the bed.”
The other police officer talked into the radio again while Detective Pickens moved closer. “Is anyone injured?” he asked.
I gestured to Mark.
The detective’s eyes shot in his direction and opened wide with alarm.
“Send two ambulances,” he shouted to his partner, before rushing to Beth’s side. “Have you been shot?” he asked her.
Beth shook her head no, but soon, her eyes followed to where the detective’s had been. And my gaze, in turn, followed to see the crotch and thighs of her pajama pants stained in a bright red blood.
Beth touched the red, as if she didn’t believe it was there, then brought her shaky hands up to inspect the evidence on her fingers. She collapsed then, falling into the detective’s arms.
“She’s pregnant,” I blurted.
And that’s when Mark dropped to his knees.