She’s being pursued. Hunted like an animal.
She felt him out there – stalking her – from the moment she left the house but she has the advantage now. He’s in her forest. It’ll be easy to lose him here and once lost he’ll never find his way out. The never-ending forest protecting its own.
Why then can she still hear him? Like a wild boar barrelling through the undergrowth, slowly but surely gaining on her.
She’s not moving quickly enough. She’s barely moving at all.
She spots the branch blocking the path but can’t lift her feet. She can’t avoid it. Falling, landing hard. Flat on her face.
As she struggles to get back up it hits her. This body isn’t hers. Her arms stiff, hands useless. She can’t even bend her elbows. All she can do is lie still, a blank-faced mannequin gazing up at the night sky, a crack running across her cheek from where she hit the ground.
It should hurt but it doesn’t. All she feels is emptiness and the terrible knowledge that she is nothing more than a hollow hard shell.
All at once he’s there, a dark shadow filling her vision. She still can’t see his face.
*
Seven miles of white sand stretch out either side of Ana, who is curled up fast asleep on River’s car blanket. The water is flat and crystal clear, the beach protected by the distant shores of the bay – the far-off headland that leads to Port Arthur on one side, Bruny Island somewhere in the distance on the other. A glimpse of ocean lays in-between and at the very end of that the wilds of Antarctica.
Beside Ana, River sits upright. Standing watch. His eyes follow a dog running with its owner along the shoreline, tracking their silhouettes until they disappear from view. He casts a glance at Ana before resting his head down on his paws but a moment later is up on his feet, limping slowly towards the water.
*
When Ana wakes it’s the pounding in her head she notices first, even before she notices River is no longer by her side.
She looks around in a panic and spots him lying on the hard sand down by the shore. How the hell did he make it all the way down there?
‘River?’
Nothing. Not even a twitch of an ear.
Dread instantly has her but she knows his hearing isn’t what it used to be. The wind is coming in off the ocean. Her voice isn’t reaching him, that’s all.
Pain pierces her head as she forces herself to stand and make her way down to the water. She doesn’t call to him again. She waits until she’s close enough to see the reassuring rise and fall of his breathing.
‘Hey, boy, what you doing down here?’
River lifts his head and flips his tail as she sits down beside him.
He’s fine, just taking some time out in a peaceful setting, like she was, although she hadn’t intended to sleep. She doesn’t even remember laying her head down. Maybe she passed out. They say not to sleep when you have a suspected concussion but it didn’t seem to do Luke any harm.
By the movement of the sun Ana guesses she’s probably been out for two or more hours. It’s definitely past midday.
She vaguely remembers dreaming. She was running through the forest. She fell. Her body shattering, face opened up. She puts a hand to her cheek feeling for the crack but all she feels is a disturbing numbness. How can something be painful and numb at the same time?
River sits up beside her. Ana brushes the sand off the side of his head and then holds him lightly to make sure he doesn’t fall as he stands and limps a few steps, sniffing around along the water line. The tide is coming in and it’s colder than when they arrived, despite the sunshine.
Ana’s eyes stray to the far reaches of the beach, the same stretch she and River would happily walk together for hours on end just a few years ago. His coat flecked with sand, that exhausted kelpie grin plastered on his face. There’s only a small echo of that River left now, and even that will be gone soon too. Not yet though. They still have this time. She’s glad she brought him here. It’s not good for an animal to be cooped up inside. It’s not good for her. She needed time to think, away from the house, away from him . . .
Here on the edge of her world she can almost convince herself that none of them back there exist. Not Luke, not Rebecca, not Mike Marsden. If she had only driven past Rocky’s a few minutes later that first day she saw them they wouldn’t exist for her now. A woman would still be dead but that would have been the beginning and end of the story for Ana.
It has to be possible to get out of this, without having to expose herself and without anyone else getting hurt. She had a plan and it’s still a good one.
It’s going to be tricky to time everything right. She’ll need the cover of darkness to get him out of her house – but with his current refusal to eat or drink it’s hard to tell when it will happen. She’ll have to take a punt on his loss of consciousness coinciding with nightfall or close enough. Tomorrow night, or if not then, the night after.
Or the one after that?
The problem with her plan is she’s afraid to drug him now. She’s afraid to get too close, to touch him again. Not the man who attacked her, she could happily smash him, wipe the smugness off his face, but that other . . . She knows it’s ridiculous to separate them in her head, they are the same person after all. And yet they’re not. She’s afraid that if she meets him again, she won’t be able to let him go.
That way lies the madness she’s been trying to avoid.
Ana glances back to the top of the beach. It’s not that far but she’s not looking forward to the return to the car. She had to carry River most of the way down to the beach because of his difficulty walking in the soft sand so she knows it couldn’t have been easy for him getting down to the water on his own. It won’t be easy getting him back either. The way she feels she’s not even sure she can get herself there.