ERIN OPENED HER EYES IN THE DARK, HER BODY PRESSED AGAINST the floor. She felt movement, then a sudden jolt from below. Where am I? she wondered, and the first realization that occurred to her was that she wasn’t dead. Not yet anyway. She had been hit in the face with a crowbar, and something else had happened after that. Or maybe it was before. It was hard to remember the order of things. There had been an electric train on a track, and tiny plastic people waiting for a ride. Thank you for visiting Wolf Point, she thought. All departures have been canceled for the day.
Erin tried to swallow. Her neck felt thick and swollen, and the cartilage clicked as it moved. Someone had knocked her to the ground and then choked her into unconsciousness. She could picture the woman’s face looming over her, her eyes bulging in their sockets.
(“What are you doing here? Haven’t you learned by now that you ought to leave well enough alone?”)
The space around her wasn’t completely dark. Her left eye was swollen shut, but she could see part of the floor and could feel fabric against her skin: a blanket maybe, thrown on top of her. Erin tried to push it off, but her arms were behind her back, bound at the wrists.
Squeak of hinges. The heavy chunk of a door as it swung shut.
Erin bent her knees and tried to get to her feet, but her ankles were bound together as well. She heard the soft crunch of footsteps on gravel. Then another door opened and the blanket was pulled off her, letting in faded sunlight through a rectangular window caked with dirt.
She could see the swell of a wheel well and felt a seat pressed against the top of her head. She was lying in the back of an SUV. Connie Griffin was standing beneath the open hatch.
Connie grabbed hold of the duct tape wrapped around Erin’s ankles and jerked her out. Erin’s body slid along the floor of the truck. As soon as her shoulder cleared the bumper, Connie let go of her feet, and Erin fell to the dirt driveway, landing on her side. The impact was like running full speed into a wall. She heard something snap—her collarbone, maybe—and a jolt of pain exploded in her right shoulder. She gritted her teeth against the agony, until it settled down and mixed with the rest of the things that were already broken.
Connie’s shoes were directly in front of her, brown sneakers with tan laces. Sensible shoes, Erin’s mother would’ve called them, although the pants—white capris with grass stains and a hole torn in one of the knees—were less appropriate for the weather. There was a deep gash in her left lower leg about two inches above the ankle. Blood had dried against the skin like the remains of a tattered red sock, and the edges of the wound puckered outward as she shifted her feet.
“You stay here for a moment,” Connie said. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
The woman turned and walked away, leaving Erin lying in the dust. She looked around as best she could. The driveway was flanked on both sides by flat land, although there was a long ditch that ran along one side of the front yard. When she used her feet to rotate the position of her body, she could see the corner of a house and part of the front porch. The place looked similar to the one they had just left. It was larger and less neglected, but for a moment Erin was struck with the disorienting notion that she was still back there, lying in the spot where Connie had choked her into unconsciousness.
She will drag me inside and there will be train tracks circling the couch, the smell of spaghetti and hot dogs coming from the kitchen.
There were no other houses that she could see. Erin opened her mouth and yelled for help. It came out as a whisper, a pathetic sound that fell away to nothing.
She heard the clump-clump of feet descending the front porch steps.
“You can scream all you want,” Connie said as she returned to the truck. “I’ll scream right along with you if you want me to. Not that it’ll help. We’re miles away from my closest neighbor.” She dropped a metal chain in the dirt, then squatted down and used a pair of heavy-duty scissors to cut away the duct tape from around Erin’s ankles.
“What do you want from me?”
“Shush-shush,” she said, scooping up the chain with a beefy hand and holding it out for Erin to see. “These are ankle shackles. You’ll be able to walk with these, but you can’t run. If you try, you’ll fall flat on your face and I’ll be forced to drag you the rest of the way. If it comes to that, I can assure you that the rest of the trip will not be a pleasant one.” She grabbed Erin by the chin and turned her face upward. “You think you can handle that, sweetie?”
Erin glanced at the shackles and nodded.
“Good,” she said, snapping them around her ankles. “Let’s get you up on your feet, shall we?”
She reached out and grabbed Erin by the hair, stabilizing her while Erin got to her knees and then to her feet. Erin’s vision blanched as she stood up. She staggered and leaned back against the side of the Cherokee.
“Rest for a bit,” Connie told her, letting go of her hair. “Slow and steady wins the race.”
Erin stood there for a few seconds while her body adjusted to its new position. She could see more of the house now, a one-story bungalow with a deep front porch and a few low-lying bushes along the perimeter. There was no light coming through the windows, just the house itself, waiting to envelop her.
“That’s enough resting,” Connie said. She put her hand on Erin’s shoulder and turned her in the direction of the porch. “Let’s get you into the house where we can spend some time together.”
Erin took a few shuffling strides toward the house. The porch steps were difficult to negotiate with the shackles around her ankles. She ascended them slowly, knowing that Connie would let her fall if she started to topple. It was best to avoid that if possible. With her hands bound behind her, she wouldn’t be able to use them to lessen the impact. The two-foot drop out of the back of the Cherokee had been bad enough.
There was a screen door that swung outward, and Connie held it open for her as Erin crossed the threshold. They walked down a short hallway and entered the kitchen. It was a small and tidy room with a bump-out window above the sink. There was a table with two chairs, a closed door to the left, and an open entryway to what looked like the family room straight ahead.
“I’d offer you a drink of water, but I’m too excited to show you my collection. It’s vain of me, I realize. But what good is having something if you can’t share it with others?”
She opened a drawer next to the refrigerator and pulled out a key. “Keep everything valuable locked away, then share it with others when it’s time to play.” She smiled at Erin. “You are my special friend today. We are going to have so much fun together.”
She talks like Abel, Erin thought, or rather, Abel had picked up some of his sayings from his mother. She watched as Connie walked to the door, placed the key in the lock, and gave it a turn. There was a click as the dead bolt retracted into its housing.
“I can tell you’re excited,” Connie said, “and you should be. Not too many people have seen the things that I’m about to show you.”
She placed her hand on the knob, opened the door, and flicked on the light. On the other side were steps leading down to the basement.
“Please,” Erin said. “You don’t have to do this. You could let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t even—”
“Blabbity-blabbity. You are such a talker.” Connie scrunched up her nose and gave Erin a half-smile. “You and I have a lot in common. We’ve both had people taken from us, but we don’t just sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. No, ma’am, and thank you, Sam. We know how to hit back, and we’ve got bodies in the basement to prove it.” She stood there studying Erin for a moment. “This may sound strange from a woman whose son was found buried on your farm, but I respect you and your father for what you did. It’s why I brought you here to show you. I know you’ll appreciate it.”
Erin looked down at the basement. She could see concrete flooring and a cinder-block wall. A naked light bulb protruded from the ceiling. The damp smell of mildew was mixed with something much older as it wafted up the staircase.
“Whatever happened here happened a long time ago,” Erin told her. “I don’t need to see it. It should be left in the past where it belongs.”
Connie put a hand on her shoulder, and Erin flinched. “Nothing in the past stays there forever. Buried things want to be discovered. Even the darkness seeks the light.”
She walked to the counter, retrieved a plastic cup from the cupboard, and filled it with water from the faucet. Erin turned around to face her, her back to the stairs.
“You know,” Connie said, “you have a collection of your own, back there on your father’s farm. Or at least you did until the police started digging it up. Maybe you think you’re better than me. Maybe you think this one won’t be anything special.”
“No,” she said. “That’s not it.”
Connie took a sip of water, looked at her, and then polished off the rest of it. Her throat moved up and down as she drank, the band of fat beneath her chin wobbling like a bow tie made of Crisco. “Ahhhh,” she said when she was finished, “I was thirstier than I thought.” She turned and placed the cup on the counter. “So what do you think? Are you ready?”
Erin shook her head.
Connie sighed. “Well, I don’t know why you’re being so difficult. You wouldn’t have broken into Abel’s house if you didn’t want to see what we’d been up to.”
She walked up to Erin and gave her a shove. It was enough to topple her backward, and Erin felt herself falling into open space. She bent at the waist and twisted her body as she tried to get her feet beneath her. Her broken ribs screamed in protest. She fell a quarter of the distance to the basement before she landed on the stairs, her right hip and ankle taking most of the impact. She bounced sideways, hit the rail, and tumbled the rest of the way until she came to a jolting stop at the bottom.
Sound of footsteps on the stairs above her.
She’s going to kill me. Going to chop me up into little pieces down here in the dark.
Erin squeezed her eyes shut against the tide of rising panic. Her ankle was broken and her pants were soaked with urine. The acrid stench of it should’ve filled her nostrils, but it was trapped beneath the other odors, the rancid smells of decay and utter hopelessness that filled the basement.
Her mind flashed to an image of Abel sitting on his couch, his bladder letting go as she leveled the gun at his head and willed herself to pull the trigger. “You understand why I’m killing you?” she’d asked. His head had bobbed up and down like a puppet on a string.
“You will do what I tell you,” Connie said as she got to the bottom of the stairs and stepped over her. “I have no tolerance for people who won’t listen.”
Erin opened her right eye, the one that wasn’t already swollen shut. “You made him kidnap those people. You forced him to do it against his will.”
“I was teaching him,” Connie said, and she gave Erin a soft kick in the ribs. “I was trying to make him responsible. Discipline and obedience. Children learn that early or they don’t learn it at all. Abel was slow, so in his case it took a little bit longer.”
Erin tried to look up at her, but the woman’s face was lost in the shadows. “You ruined him,” she said. “Everything he did was because of you.”
“I saved him,” Connie replied. “I taught him to take a stand. Your father ruined him. He ended my child the way I’m going to end you.”
The words hovered above them, like a hawk circling in the sky.
“They killed my father and one of my sons,” she continued. “They raped me beneath the bleachers and terrorized my family from one generation to the next. We had a right to be here. Do you understand that? Sooner or later, there comes a reckoning. ‘We have to carve out our survival.’ That’s what I told him. ‘We either take our place among the living, or we surrender ourselves to the dead.’”
“You made him take innocent people. My mother. Six-year-old Jimmy Raffey. What did they ever do to you?”
Connie toed her again in the ribs. “Jimmy’s older brother Craig was one of the kids who chased Abel into the barn that night. He almost burned alive, my boy, and when Miles came to rescue him, the place collapsed around them. So, innocent? No,” she said. “We bear the weight of our families and all of the evil things they do in the darkness. You of all people should understand that.”
“My mother. She was kind and good and never had a bad thing to say about anyone.”
“Your mother’s maiden name was Fisher. Her brother, Jason, was the boy who raped me when I was fourteen years old. He raped me and made a joke of it. I was too young to even know what was happening.”
“No,” she said. “That’s a lie.” Erin shook her head, the muscles of her neck tight and aching.
“It isn’t,” Connie said, and she kicked her hard this time, her foot connecting with Erin’s upper thigh. “Fourteen,” she repeated. “My mother sent me away to have the babies. I came back, though. I came back because I thought that maybe I could put it behind me. Instead, I lost both of my children. So you tell me about innocence. You stand aside while your father murders my boy and buries his body, and then you lecture me about this thing we call vengeance.”
Connie turned and looked at the basement. “This room,” she said, “I built it for Abel. I wanted him to have something to remember me by, a testament to the things we accomplished together.”
Erin looked up. The place was heavy with dust. There was a water spigot with an attached hose, and a drain in the center of the concrete floor. An assortment of tools were hanging from nails on the far side of the wall. She could see a handsaw, a sledgehammer, and a flathead axe. She turned to look at the rest of it. Skeletal remains were propped against the wall. They were clothed in the way that Abel had found them, and each of them had a necklace with a name tag resting against their chest.
Erin searched the room with her one good eye until she found her, a child’s skeleton with a name tag that read Angela Finley. Her stomach clenched as she choked on the taste of it, the memory of all the things she had tried so hard to forget.
“What have you done?” she whispered, but it was suddenly her mother standing over her, her arms folded across her chest.
“Angela was your friend,” Helen told her. “You could’ve helped her shovel the driveway. You could’ve gone to the hill together.”
“I’m sorry,” Erin said, but she was back at the candlelight vigil and she could see faces in the darkness, shifting features that moved in and out of focus. They stared blankly back at her, mothers and sons, husbands and daughters . . .
“Angela Finley,” a voice said, and Erin trained her gaze on the skeletal remains of the body in front of her.
“Rose Perry,” she whispered, and she shifted her gaze to the left.
“. . . Curt Hastings . . . Marian Montgomery . . .”
She focused on each of them in turn, just as they must have focused on the remains of the bodies before them. Except Angela, she thought, the first one. How long did she survive down here on her own?
She closed her eye until the images faded, until she could no longer hear the names of the people who had been taken from this town all those years ago. “You don’t even know them,” she told Connie.
“I know them better than you do, my dear. You’ll get to know them, too, before we’re finished.”
“But you mixed up the clothes,” she said. “Or maybe Abel did it by accident when he was helping you with the bodies.”
“The clothes are correct,” she said. “I washed their bodies and dressed them myself. These are my friends now. It wasn’t like that when they first arrived. But people grow on you. They’ve kept me company over the years and remind me of Abel.”
Erin rolled onto her side so she could see them better. “It’s not correct, though. I saw Angela Finley on the day she went missing. That’s not what she was wearing.”
“It is,” Connie told her. “You were too young to remember.”
“She was wearing a red scarf, the one you have on the body over there. I remember because I talked to her on the bus on the way home from school. It was the last time I ever saw her.”
Connie walked over to the body and looked down at the scarf.
“Abel must’ve switched it,” Erin said, “because he thought it looked better. Or maybe he was playing a joke on you. Maybe he thought it was funny.”
“He wouldn’t switch things. He knew better than that.”
Erin curled her body as she rolled onto her knees. The railing was attached to a wooden post at the bottom of the stairs, and she leaned against it as she got to her feet. It was difficult with her wrists bound behind her back. Her right ankle was swollen and throbbing, but she found that she could put some weight on it. She limped across the room and bent down over the remains of Marian Montgomery. “You see?” she said. “This shirt belongs to Rose Perry. It’s got the name of the diner where she worked.”
Connie stormed across the room to look at the body. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she said. “Abel wouldn’t do that. He knew how particular I was with the—”
Erin straightened herself quickly, throwing her head back as hard as she could. It connected with Connie’s face. There was a loud crunch and the big woman stumbled backward and fell to the floor.
Erin took two lurching strides toward the stairs before the chain connecting her ankle shackles pulled tight.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Connie asked as Erin fell forward onto her knees and then toppled the rest of the way to the floor. She looked down to see Connie’s hand clutching the chain. The bridge of her nose was shifted to the left, and there was a gash in the center of her upper lip. Her eyes hadn’t changed, though. They were still wild and devoid of reason.
Erin kicked out at her with her left leg. She caught Connie in the face with the heel of her boot. The woman grunted but kept coming, digging her hands into Erin’s urine-soaked jeans as she clawed her way up her legs.
Erin cocked her leg back and kicked again, but Connie tucked her chin and ducked. The boot struck a glancing blow to the back of her head.
Erin scissored her legs and kept kicking until the chain went taut. It had gotten snagged on something. The more she pulled, the tighter it got.
Connie lifted her head. Her face was dark red. The chain was wrapped around her neck, the metal links burying themselves in the ample flesh beneath her chin.
“Gaaaaggght. Thaaaaaaat.” Connie’s mouth opened and closed. A string of saliva hung from her lower lip and dangled above the concrete floor.
Erin slid her legs apart, tightening the chain. Connie’s face was dusky now, the way the sky had looked on the day she’d caught them sneaking back into the theater, the same day that Erin’s mother had gone missing.
Connie’s thick fingers dug at the chain. In another minute, she would be unconscious. I can get to a phone and call the police, Erin thought. She would use the axe to cut through the duct tape. If she could find the key, she would hop in the Cherokee and drive as far away from here as possible.
She felt a wrenching pain in her right ankle. Erin screamed and looked down to see Connie’s hands wrapped around her right foot, twisting it hard to the right. Something in her lower leg snapped, and the chain loosened. Erin pulled hard with her left leg, but it wasn’t enough. Connie had gone back to working on the chain. She got her chin under it and pulled the links over her head.
The woman let out a shrieking noise as she began to breathe again. She dropped the chain and lay with the side of her face against the concrete.
Go, Erin told herself. Go now or she’ll kill you as soon as she recovers.
(Your ankle. You won’t be able to walk on it.)
Watch me, Erin thought, and she forced herself to her feet.
“Dirty girl,” Connie whispered, but she was still facedown, still breathing with a loud whoop that sounded like a scream in reverse.
Erin’s right foot was turned outward at a grotesque angle. She took a step forward and felt the grind of bone ends as her weight settled upon it. The pain was unbearable. It rippled up her leg and then down again. No, I can’t, she told herself, but she did it anyway, taking first one step and then another.
She got to the bottom of the stairs and vomited without slowing. It was a thin yellow liquid that burned her throat and splashed down the front of her. Her mouth was filled with the metallic taste of fear and adrenaline. There was a slight tingle to it, like meat that had already begun to turn.
She moved up the steps as quickly as she could. The ankle had gone numb, which was good for the pain but bad for her footing. It was like trying to walk on a wooden stump, and twice she came close to falling.
(Not so fast. Your feet will get tangled up in the chain.)
Screw that, she thought, but something else was vying for her attention. The sound of Connie’s shrieking breaths had subsided. Instead, she heard footsteps across the concrete floor, the creak of wood below her as Connie reached the bottom of the stairwell.
(Don’t look back. Get to the door and get it closed.)
She reached the top of the stairs, entered the kitchen, and turned to close the door.
Connie was on the stairs, halfway up, only five or six steps from the kitchen.
(Close the door. There’s a key in the lock. You can use it on the dead bolt.)
Erin swung the door shut with her foot and pressed her shoulder against it. The key was in the lock, just as she remembered. She turned sideways and reached for it with hands that were still taped together behind her back.
Connie hit the door from the other side, forcing it open. It swung outward less than a foot before Erin threw her weight against it, forcing it closed again.
(Wedge your foot against the bottom. Do it now and work the lock.)
She turned to face the hinges, jammed her left boot against the bottom of the door, and tried to turn the key. It made a quarter turn and then got stuck, the dead bolt jamming against the metal strike plate.
Connie hit the door again, pressing against it with the force of her body. She was heavier than Erin, but the wedge technique was working. The door moved an inch or two at the top, but held tight at the bottom.
Erin waited for her to ease up and for the door to return to its fully closed position. As soon as it did, she turned the key, and this time there was a thunk as the dead bolt slid into the strike plate.
She stepped away, just as Connie hit it again from the other side. The wood crackled beneath the force of the impact.
(It’ll hold for now, but it won’t hold forever. If she hits it enough times, she’ll eventually get it open.)
Erin looked around for a phone, but she didn’t see one in the kitchen. There were keys hanging from a hook on the wall, though. If the keys to the truck weren’t still in the ignition, chances were pretty good that one of these would get it started.
(Get your hands free. You can’t drive the truck with your hands bound behind your back.)
Erin moved her wrists back and forth as she tried to work them free from the duct tape. Connie had wrapped it tight, but it had been only a temporary measure, enough to get her into the house.
WHAM! The door shuddered in its frame.
Erin moved around the kitchen, opening drawers until she found the utensils. She pulled out a steak knife with a serrated blade. She could use the sharp point to punch through the duct tape. The trick was not to slice open her wrists in the process.
She pulled out a chair with her foot, sat down sideways in the seat, and placed the handle of the knife under her right buttock with the blade sticking out. Erin brought her hands around to her right hip, spread her wrists as much as possible, and pressed the tape against the point of the knife. It sliced through the center. She slid her wrists back and forth as she sawed through the rest of it.
WHAAM! The blade of an axe smashed through the door to the basement.
Oh no. Oh my God.
Erin got to her feet and staggered across the kitchen as Connie yanked the axe back through the gaping hole it had left in the door.
The knife clattered to the floor. She’d forgotten about the shackles and the chain pulled tight as she attempted to run. She fell to the floor, getting her arms out in front of her this time to break the fall.
Erin looked back over her shoulder. The basement door exploded again as the axe crashed through it. Erin screamed. There wasn’t much left of the door now. Connie would be through it in another couple of seconds.
She stood up and grabbed a handful of keys off the hook on the wall. There were too many of them, and no time to figure out which one would work on the Jeep.
Erin hit the screen door and stumbled out onto the porch. She descended the steps, but on the second step her right ankle cracked again. She couldn’t feel it, but she could hear the sound of it, like a burning log snapping in the fire.
She missed the next two steps and pitched forward into the yard.
Inside, she could hear the wooden chair topple to the floor as Connie burst through the door and made it into the kitchen.
“No!” Erin screamed. There was something coming for her. It meant to chop her up right here in the dirt.
She dragged herself to the truck, got her left leg under her, reached through the open window, and pulled herself to a standing position.
The keys! Where are the goddamn keys?!
She looked back and saw them lying in the grass.
I’m dead. I’m dead if she didn’t leave them in the ignition.
She yanked open the door and pulled herself inside. Erin reached down with her right hand and felt for the ignition.
Nothing. No key. Just empty space at the lock cylinder.
“Shit!” she screamed. She reached up and flipped down the sun visor. Nothing. She was going to die, either out here in the yard or back in the house, it didn’t really matter.
The screen door smacked open and struck the siding as Connie erupted from the house. She had the axe in her hands, and her lips and chin were caked with blood. Gray strands of hair hung in listless clumps along the sides of her face. Her eyes were wide and full of murder.
Connie looked across the yard and saw Erin sitting in the truck. She shrieked with rage.
This is it. These are the final seconds of my life.
The open window was powered by an electric switch. There was no way to put it up, not that it mattered with the axe in Connie’s hands. Erin leaned away from it and placed her hand in the passenger seat to lift herself over the center console.
Connie was still shrieking as she ran down the porch steps. She was in the yard now, forty feet from the truck.
Something metal pressed against the flesh of Erin’s palm. She lifted her hand and looked down at the seat.
(It’s a key. The key to the ignition is sitting on the seat next to you.)
Too late, she thought. I’ll never get it started in time.
She snatched up the key and jammed it into the ignition anyway. It turned when she twisted it, and the engine sprang to life.
The blade of the axe swung through the open window. Erin jerked away from it. The wooden handle struck the A-post with a loud SMACK and the axe ricocheted backward.
It almost got me. It almost embedded itself in the side of my head.
Erin grabbed the shifter and dropped the truck into Reverse. Her right foot and ankle were useless. She got them out of the way and stomped on the accelerator with her left foot. The truck lurched backward, away from the house.
The engine raced as Erin pushed the pedal to the floor. There was a limit to how fast the Cherokee would go in Reverse. Connie sprinted alongside of the vehicle. She brought the axe back again and swung it. The blade hit the metal A-post with a bang.
(Run her over. Run her over before she kills you.)
Erin jerked the steering wheel to the right. The front end of the Cherokee swerved to the left, striking Connie in the hip. She stumbled sideways and fell to the ground.
“Take that! Take that, you bitch!”
The tires bounced across the open yard, and Erin lost sight of her in the dust.
(Doesn’t matter. Put this thing in Drive and get the hell out of here.)
She turned the wheel to the left and swung the front end of the truck around so it was pointing toward the driveway.
Erin let up on the accelerator. Her left foot was stuck between the two pedals and the Cherokee continued to drift backward. The front end of the vehicle tilted upward and there was a loud thunk as the truck came to an abrupt stop.
“What the hell?” She dropped the shifter into Drive and pressed down on the accelerator. She could hear the engine racing and the tires spinning on their axles. The truck nudged forward a few inches, slid sideways, and then settled back again.
No. Not now. Not when I was so close to getting out of here.
She hit the accelerator again and felt the same brief movement of the Cherokee before it returned to its resting position.
Erin put her head through the open window and looked down. She had backed herself into a ditch, a dried-out riverbed about six feet across. The rear end of the SUV was braced against the far side of it, and the wheels were only in partial contact with the ground. As for the front end, it was pointed skyward, the wheels touching nothing but air.
I’m stuck. I’ll never get it out in time.
(Then run. Climb out of the truck and run from here.)
No. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t even walk.
(Crawl, then. Crawl away and hide in the bushes.)
Erin looked around her. A cloud of dust still hung in the yard. There were no bushes, just a smattering of weeds along the bottom of the ditch.
(She’s coming for you. She’ll be here any second!)
“I know,” Erin whispered. She opened the driver’s door. The vehicle was tilted backward, and the door swung shut again on its hinges.
(Find something in the truck, a weapon you can use against her. Your mother kept a gun in the glove compartment. Maybe Connie does, too.)
Erin reached over and opened the glove compartment. There was a map of Northeast Montana, a tire pressure gauge roughly the size of a pen, and the vehicle registration.
The left rear passenger door opened and Connie climbed inside. Her face was a mess of blood and dust—just like Abel’s, Erin remembered, on the day that we killed him. There was a deep purple bruise around the flesh of her neck where the chain from the shackles had dug into her skin. The mixed odor of mildew and human decay still clung to her clothing.
She grabbed Erin by the hair and shook her back and forth. “You wasted your chance, missy. You had a chance to escape and you ended up in a ditch, didn’t you?”
Connie reached forward and released the lever to recline the seat back. She pulled Erin over the seat and out through the rear passenger door by the hair. When they were on the ground Connie latched her hand around Erin’s left wrist. She dragged her through the weeds of the riverbed.
“You’re a fighter, I’ll give you that,” she said as she stopped to catch her breath. “How many body parts do you think you can lose before you bleed to death, I wonder. I’ve got a belt. We can use that as a tourniquet.”
Connie dragged her up and onto the bank of the riverbed. She let go of Erin’s wrist and stood there with the dust settling around her. The Cherokee’s engine idled in the background.
“There you are, my sweet,” Connie said. She bent over and picked up the axe from where it lay in the yard. “It’s not subtle, but it does the job. We all have parts that we can live without. That’s the first lesson, my darling. You’ll learn that right here in the yard.”
She raised the instrument high over her head and brought it down as hard as she could. Erin jerked her leg away from it. The blade struck the earth where her left ankle had been a moment before.
“Don’t do this!” Erin screamed as she rolled away from her.
Connie took a step forward, raised the axe, and swung again.
Erin rolled to the right. The blade bit into the soil an inch from her left shoulder. She felt the whump of it, the impact of the axe head through the ground.
She heard an engine racing, and under that the rapid thudding of her own heart. It wanted to save itself. It wanted to go right on beating for as long as it could.
I can’t get away from it. She’ll keep swinging until I’m dead.
The sound of the engine in her ears. The open sky above her. And somewhere between this place and heaven was more pain than she could possibly imagine.
Erin pulled herself into a ball and got her left foot under her. She caught a glimpse of the axe rising again, a hint of smoldering sunlight reflecting off the grim metal surface.
Erin pushed off with her left leg and propelled herself upward into a standing position. The tire pressure gauge was in her right hand, its base nestled against her palm with the thin cylinder protruding between her fingers. She slammed it into the front of Connie’s neck just to the right of midline.
The big woman staggered backward. Half of the thin metal rod was buried in her neck.
“Gaaaaack,” she said. “Daaazzn’t maikk uhh differanss.” She laughed, but there was an odd sound to it, like the hiss of air leaking from a tire.
(Run! For God’s sake, run!)
Connie took a step forward. A flow of dark red blood was spilling from her neck where the tire gauge was lodged. A few bubbles seeped out from under the skin.
The axe was still high above her head, poised for the next swing. She screamed, a sound that started low and then built to a crescendo. The sound of the engine screamed along with her. Erin looked to the right just as a massive shadow appeared in a haze of swirling dust from the driveway. It was something new coming fast in their direction. Not the Cherokee, but—
Erin threw herself backward and rolled down the embankment. She left Connie standing there with the axe held high. The woman turned in the direction of the vehicle, her mouth open and the scream still rising from her throat. The Wrangler struck her in mid-scream, launching her body backward.
Erin looked up as the woman and vehicle sailed across the open stretch of the embankment and struck the far wall of the riverbed, the weight of the Wrangler crushing Connie’s body against the earth.
Everything settled. The axe was lying a short distance from Erin’s feet. She left it there and dragged herself through the weeds until she could see the woman lying beneath the front end of the vehicle. Connie’s face was turned sideways, her eyes wide and staring. She opened her mouth as if she intended to speak. “Gaaaaaaaaaaa,” she said, and the tire gauge bobbed up and down in her neck.
She died right there in the riverbed, the awareness leaving her face like a mask she had decided to remove for the evening. Erin called to her, spoke her name, but the woman was gone, just another ruined soul checking out of Wolf Point.
Erin went to the Wrangler and opened the door. Robbie’s head was tilted forward, but his body was still held in place by the seat belt. She reached in and touched the side of his face. “Are you hurt?” she asked. “Is anything broken?”
He opened his eyes. “I’m okay,” he said. He started to move, then winced with the effort. “Should’ve gotten here sooner. I got your message, but . . . I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I could go back there again.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You got here in time.” She turned her head and looked at the axe. It lay silent and motionless in the ditch, like a snake in the weeds. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Your truck was parked in the street, so I went inside,” he said. “There were signs of a struggle. I figured if you ran into anyone in that house, it was probably her. It made sense, didn’t it? It made sense for me to come here?”
He winced again and held his left hand against the lower part of his rib cage.
“Yes,” she said. “I would be dead if you hadn’t.”
“Good,” he said. “I wasn’t sure. Part of me was worried that you might be . . . you know . . . back there in the marsh.”
“Looking for something?”
“No,” he said, “not looking.” He swallowed and tried to move but winced again. His skin was pale and slick with sweat. Whatever saliva he’d been able to muster seemed to catch in his throat.
He stared at the instruments on the dashboard, then turned his gaze in Erin’s direction. “I thought that maybe . . . you’d already be buried back there in the marsh . . . in the same spot where we found your mother.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m right here. You tracked me down and saved me . . . just like before.”
He took a shallow breath. He was looking away from her again, his eyes focused on something only he could see. “I’m not a killer,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to hit him with the shovel.”
Erin put a hand on the back of his neck and leaned into him, their foreheads touching. “They’re gone,” she said, “Abel and his mother. They can’t hurt us any longer.”
“Okay,” he said. “It’s just that . . . Erin . . . it still feels like they’re with me.”
“I know,” she said. “It feels that way for me, too. But it’s over. We can let them go if we want to.”
He closed his eyes, a child succumbing to sleep at the end of the day.
“You’re hurt,” she said. “I should call an ambulance. Do you want me to unfasten your seat belt?”
“Yeah. Okay, Erin. Maybe you could do that.”
She reached across him and released the clasp. He slid forward in his seat but she caught him, cradled him in her arms.
“Take it easy,” she said. “Can you climb down? You can hang on to me if you need to.”
“What’s wrong with your foot?”
“Broken. I can’t walk on it.”
She leaned on him, and he leaned back. Together they made their way up the embankment.
“I didn’t have any booze before coming here,” he told her. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. I told myself, ‘You need to be sober for this. If you’re not, and something happens to her because of it . . .’”
“Thank you.”
They made it to the yard and dropped down onto the grass for a second to rest.
“How does it feel?” she asked. “Being sober, I mean.”
“It feels like shit,” he said. “I threw up on the way over here.”
“Me too,” she said. “I threw up in the basement.”
He turned to look at the house.
“What happened in there?”
Erin opened her mouth to tell him, but then closed it again without saying a word. It could wait, she decided. Robbie’s head was filled with enough horrors already.
He reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a cell phone. His hand was trembling, much worse than before.
He’s going to be in trouble, she thought. He’s already in withdrawal.
“Can I help you?”
He nodded and handed her the phone. “You could dial this for me. I don’t think I can do it.”
She took the phone. “Only one bar,” she said. “I hope this’ll make it out.”
“We’ll make it,” he said, and he rested his head on the grass.
Erin dialed 911, gave them the information, and clicked off the phone.
“Don’t let them run over me when they get here,” he said. “One person is enough.”
“Okay.”
She scooted over and lay next to him in the yard. He was shaking, his hands clasped tightly over his abdomen. Erin turned on her side and placed an arm around him. “We’re gonna make it,” she told him. “We just have to hold on a little bit longer.”
“Yeah,” he said, and neither one of them said anything else until the sirens grew loud in the distance.