25

For a moment, everything is as it should be. Nothing rattles or falls from the shelves. The curtains billow as the breeze subsides. The lantern sits on the side table, right where she left it. The fireplace still blazes, even though Adelaide attempted to snuff it out before they left the cabin.

Adelaide would almost feel safe, if not for the dogs throwing themselves against her door.

Their collective weight thunders against the wood, and Adelaide wrangles the bolt into the locked position. She can only hope it holds. Behind her, somehow louder than the dogs, her clock ticks like a prophecy, dead-dead-dead.

Adelaide feels for the paring knife in her apron pocket, relieved to find it still in place.

The truck lights beam through her bedroom windows, and Adelaide finds River hiding above the kitchen hutch, where she first discovered the dirty bodies of two feral children in her home. The girl has folded herself tightly into the corner, the lower half of her face streaked with drying blood, her eyes large and pallid. That bewitchment they once held now gone, replaced by something that should never exist in the gaze of a child.

Adelaide reaches out to the girl, and River tumbles into her outstretched arms, hands grasping at her back. The girl smells of blood and soil, but Adelaide clings tightly, breathing in her scent as best she can.

She wishes there was somewhere to run, somewhere to hide. There are dark corners, cupboards, a small closet in her bedroom, but none of these places will conceal them forever.

“I’m so sorry, little one,” she says to River as she collapses with the child onto the sofa.

The dogs bay outside her door. Their nails tear at the wood.

A knock.

Adelaide cups the girl’s face, and River leans her forehead against Adelaide’s.

A second knock, slow and drawn out.

In the distance, a sorrowful howl. The wild woman seeks her daughter still.

At the door, wood splinters beneath determined claws. And then the old man’s voice, “Enough,” and the dogs go quiet.

Something explodes against the door, metal clanging against metal. Twice now. Three times. Another.

Adelaide grabs the girl by the shoulders and shoves her toward the kitchen.

“Hide!”

River stumbles against the sink as the front door explodes, and Adelaide cries out, collapsing onto the sofa. Beneath her, the chain under the floorboard rattles.

The old man stands in the doorway, flanked by dogs who now sprawl at their master’s feet. In his eyes is that same dark shimmer that Adelaide has tried to forget all her life.

In his hand is the shotgun.

He enters her home.

Adelaide had meant to stand tall against him, show him ferocity. Strength. But he is here. Again. And Adelaide tucks farther into her sofa, unable to look him in the eyes.

Instead, she looks to his cheeks, his forehead, his chin—anything to avoid those eyes. Adelaide studies every pore, every wrinkle. His skin is like a full moon, craters edged by the flickering light of the fire. He has changed so much, yet he is the same man.

And she is the same woman.

He peers around her living room as if he’s never seen it before. It is the same, if only a bit paler, disfigured by time.

As they both are.

Please. Please, don’t look in the kitchen.

Adelaide hears no sound from River, and hopes she is hidden. Once again on top of the hutch, perhaps. Or tucked into a cabinet. Before she can control herself, Adelaide turns her head.

River is there. She stands limp at the sink, eyes wide, mouth slack.

Adelaide is horrified. The girl is so conspicuous standing in the middle of the room. River does not growl. She does not crouch, readying for an attack. Her fury has gone silent.

The old man is different from the rest—Adelaide has always known this. The air is tight and heavy, buzzing with a strange energy. Something dangerous and uncertain. And now River feels it, too.

The man lingers in the doorway. He lights a cigarette and gazes intently at his fingers, as though reading prophecy in the smoke.

He wears no coat and does not seem to be shivering despite the chill pouring into the cabin. His cigarette leaves ruby trails in the air as he inhales only once, before snuffing it out on her wall. A small nugget of fire rolls from the wood and smolders on her floor. Adelaide wills it to ignite at his feet and consume him in flame, but the old man grinds it into dust with his boot, leaving a black scar in the wood.

It’s all Adelaide can stare at—that little black mark. A black mark, next to her broken door, in a cabin surrounded by a dead son, a burnt garden, and in her kitchen, a bloodstained little girl.

He walks toward her, but she cannot take her eyes from the burn mark on her floor. He is so close that she can smell him now, his scent of sweat.

From the corner of her eye, a flash of light—the fireplace glinting off the barrel of the shotgun slung over his shoulder. She can still feel the weight of it in her own hands, and she curses herself for leaving it behind. Maybe she could have carried both the gun and the child. They might have made it to the cabin before the dogs caught up to them. It’s possible; she should have tried.

She can’t bear the silence. It is louder than the shattering of her door. Louder than the screaming in her head. Louder even than the clock behind her, still regurgitating, dead-dead-dead.

The sofa sinks as the old man sits beside her, and Adelaide braids her fingers against her stomach and holds her breath.

Everything in the cabin swirls around her, his proximity like a splinter lodged in her heart.

At least he has not seen River.

The old man slips the shotgun from his shoulder, leaning the weapon against the sofa.

(His arms. His hands. Squeezing. Pushing. That’s what she feels.)

He exhales into his palms, and his breath fills the small room.

(His stench on her body, thrust from the recesses of his lungs. That’s what Adelaide smells.)

He cradles his head in his hands, falling over his knees.

(His arched back, pulsing, sweating. It’s all she sees.)

With the old man beside her, Adelaide is twenty years old again. Self-sufficient, but lonely. That knock on her door. Checking her hair in a full-length mirror that once hung in her bedroom—the mirror that would reveal to her, only a few short months later, a new future, like a witch’s magic mirror—before approaching the door. That knocking. So persistent. She hears it again. She is there again. Her petite hand reaching for the doorknob. Could she have stopped it? Likely not. But maybe. Expecting a camper, a lost hiker. Maybe a distant neighbor or a friend from town. Opened the door with a smile is what she did, way back then, when she was a young woman. Those dark, bewitching eyes. A beautiful stranger. Handsome, older. Skin deeply tanned. He’d smiled.

She had sensed something about him, even back then, before she knew. When he smiled, she lost her own. The air changed. The energy changed. Despite his alluring eyes, his boyish grin, she wanted to close the door, deny his request for water.

But she was young. Stupid. And so innocent. Fool. And she didn’t want to be rude.

The reality of it all is jarring. Things could have been different, if only she hadn’t opened the door. Perhaps. But now here she sits. And here he sits.

Before Adelaide can settle on a sentence or an action to take, the old man begins to cry. His sobs are deep, trapped in his chest, and he struggles to hold them back as they burst into his palms. Adelaide can see fragments of his face through the gaps of his fingers. He grimaces into his hands, teeth bared. His back convulses, and Adelaide resists the urge to place her hand on his shoulders. It is an automatic response to such emotion, and she chastises herself for forgetting where she is. Who he is.

Somehow the old man’s grief is more frightening to her than his anger. Adelaide knows anger. She can anticipate the actions that follow anger. But his sorrow elicits compassion from Adelaide, and the conflict is bewildering.

She grips the armrest of the sofa, pulling herself as far away from the old man as she can manage, and she looks into the kitchen.

River is still there, but just barely. She has tucked herself into a dark corner, and only her frightened eyes and the curve of her legs are visible.

Good, Adelaide thinks.

Adelaide stares at the burn mark on her floor while she waits for whatever comes next. The spot sways and swells in her vision, and she wills it to grow large enough to swallow her and River whole.

The woman is hurt. More hurt than before. The girl feels it all the way down into her toes, but she feels it in her heart most of all. Like her chest is going to fall off her body and sink through the ground, leaving only her arms and legs and head behind. The girl doesn’t understand how the woman can walk around with this much hurt. It’s like she is very sick, and the girl doesn’t understand how the woman doesn’t die from it.

The man looks a little bit like the woman, but he feels very different. He hurts, too, but it is not the same kind of hurt. The man’s hurt is like a worm living in his belly. Like the small, fat worms that the girl, brother, and mother used to eat—the ones that live underneath the skin of a tree. The ones that pinch your lips, taking little chunks of your flesh before you bite down and eat them. That’s what his hurt is like. And the girl doesn’t know how to help a hurt like that, so she tries her best not to feel it.

The girl looks to the top of the hutch, where she hid with brother before they learned that the woman was kind and not scary. It is dark up there. It could hide her again. The girl wants to curl up in those shadows, way up high, and go to sleep. And when she wakes up, maybe it will be a long time ago, before mother was ever hurt in the square forest, and before brother went away forever.

She tastes blood in her mouth—blood from the man outside who hurt mother and the woman.

The woman turns and looks at the girl, and the girl knows she is going to have to do it again. She is going to have to make this man go away forever. She hopes she is strong enough.

The woman is not a mother, not really. If she were really a mother, she would bite the man’s throat right now. She would know that he is rotten like the fruit mother tells her not to eat from the ground once the flies come, and she would run away. The woman doesn’t understand, but the girl does.

Somewhere outside, mother runs and calls for the girl.

A dog whines in the doorway.

The girl decides that she will not hide on top of the hutch, in the dark shadows. She needs to help the woman. And teach the woman how to be brave.

The girl inches away from the corner, just a little. She waits for the right time. And when that time comes, she will help the woman get away from the man with the worms under his skin.

Adelaide roots through her mind, looking for anything that might bring her strength. She hates herself. She’s a goddamned coward.

Finally, the old man speaks.

“My boys,” he says, his voice trailing away.

Adelaide turns from him, staring at her own reflection distorted in the glass globe of her lantern. She claws at the side of the sofa, her distress leaving tunnels through the fraying fabric.

“Those were my boys,” he states plainly, “and now they’re gone.”

Outside the doorway, his hounds watch. They are on alert, awaiting a signal from their master, awaiting the permission to do something, anything.

Adelaide sits between the dogs and the old man, contemplating which she fears more, as she slips a hand into her apron and withdraws the paring knife.

River emerges from the shadows.

No.

The dried blood on her face paints her like a warrior. But warrior or not, this man is different from the others, and River is just a little girl. Adelaide widens her eyes and shakes her head, trying to hide the motion.

The hounds watch from the door. Their eyes are large and hopeful, their ears high and jostling in the breeze, as if they want to play. But Adelaide knows that all it takes is one command, one flick of the wrist from the old man.

The girl can be fast. So Adelaide will need to be faster. She has to be faster. Adelaide wraps her fingers around the thin hilt of the knife.

Her blade stands no chance against a gun, but the shotgun leans against the sofa, forgotten. For the moment.

The old man continues to stare forward, nodding to himself, speaking to himself. “They were all I had.”

For a brief moment, Adelaide feels pity for the man. She knows what it’s like to be in over your head. To regret. To lose a child. Her first child, in a way. And now another, buried in her garden. She’s likely the only person for miles who knows how he feels.

Part of Adelaide thinks that if she waits long enough, stays quiet long enough, the old man will leave. He’s lost so much already. Perhaps more blood need not be shed this night. Perhaps he will leave as suddenly as he arrived. She would have considered this, would have trusted in this hope—were it not for River. The girl is almost to the sofa now, and Adelaide can no longer expect the man to make a quiet exit.

It has to be now.

Adelaide swallows the lump in her throat and twists her body so that she might have a chance at him. Should she aim for his chest? His neck? His eye? Adelaide doesn’t want a struggle. She doesn’t want to have to do it twice. Once. Just once.

The old man glides his hand toward her thigh, but she is rigid, unable to pull away.

The blade trembles in her grip, but he does not see it. Or he does not care.

When the weight of his hand presses into her flesh, Adelaide gasps.

His touch is warm, yet she shivers beneath it. She is young again. He is imposing again. And strong. Very strong. So much power he has over her in that one small touch.

But she has the knife. She has it! It’s in her hand, goddammit!

Adelaide opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. She wants his hand gone. She wants it off her skin, but she can’t think. Can’t think.

And she can’t tear her eyes from his. They have her. And they are changing. His mouth settles into a large fissure across his face.

“You know,” he begins, (Adelaide wants to scream; he is touching her leg and speaking to her, and he is mere inches from her face, and she wants to scream.) “the polite thing to do is offer me a glass of water.”