| |
The bang was so loud, it vibrated through her body. An intense pain hit her chest, as though someone had struck her and yanked her shoulders back at the same time.
Screams followed, cries of disbelief and horror. Then movement, everyone rushing around her, running forward, while she stood rooted to the spot, her arms and chest aching, her mind trying to process what had happened.
Blood filled her vision, making it hard to see. But deep down, she knew, and that knowledge sank into her with an understanding that everything had changed now. She had changed. The person she’d been, as yet not fully formed, would never reach the potential she might once have held.
She was crying, crying hard, as though her chest might burst open with her sorrow. What had happened was bad. So very bad. And there was nothing she could do to change it or take it back.
***
A FIRM FINGER FLICKED the top of her head.
Cass launched bolt upright, forgetting momentarily that her hands were still chained to the tree, and she was unable to go far. The chain around her wrist pulled tight, jerking her backward again.
She let out a groan. Most of her body was either asleep or hurting. Her face throbbed from where she’d been punched. Her fingers tingled with pins and needles, and she knew it was going to hurt like hell in a minute. Every part of her exposed skin itched with mosquito bites—those bastards must have been feeding on her as she slept. Her backside was numb, too, and her calves gave a twinge, threatening to cramp. She peeled her lips back from her teeth and swirled her tongue around the inside of her mouth, trying to generate some moisture.
What had woken her? It had felt like somebody flicking her head. But then she felt it again, that same tap against her skin, only this time on her forehead, and the flick was cold and wet. She lifted her face to the sky, and the same flicks hit her nose and cheeks.
It was raining.
Instantly, she sprang to life. Rain. Rain meant water.
The rain grew heavier, and Cass stepped away from the shelter of the tree’s branches above and tilted her face up to meet it. Droplets hit her skin, and she opened her mouth as wide as possible, capturing the blessed, cool moisture.
A laugh of delight escaped her lips. She tipped her head farther back and closed her eyes, raindrops drumming on her on her closed eyelids, cheeks and forehead. The cold water felt like heaven against the itchy mosquito bites. The rain grew heavier still, and she swallowed the water that had accumulated on her tongue. It soothed her parched throat and moistened her dry, cracked lips. She wished the rain would fall heavier, wanting to gulp down mouthful after mouthful. But she stayed in position, even though her neck strained, not knowing how long the rain would last, or when it would come again.
Eventually, the ache in her neck became too much to bear, and she was forced to lower her face. She was able to twist around and cup her hands, trying to fill her palms so she could drink from them instead, but the position was awkward and her hands were so close to the trunk of the tree, where the leaf and branch coverage was the thickest, that she didn’t managed to catch much.
The rain continued, pattering onto the ground around her, soaking into her hair and clothes. The branches of the tree she was chained to offered her some shelter, but the rain was heavy, and the leaves collected the rainwater until they became too great and tipped, spilling a fresh gush of water on top of her.
Now her initial euphoria at quenching her thirst had faded, she was left huddled in the rain, pressing herself closer to the tree trunk to try to make the most of the canopy of branches above her head. The rain had soaked right down to her skin, dripping off the ends of her hair, and it didn’t look like it was easing up any time soon. She grew colder by the second, and shivers wracked through her body.
The headache she’d been battling ever since she’d first woken and found herself in the passenger seat of the airplane was finally starting to abate, though all her other injuries continued to throb. The headache had been from dehydration, she had no doubt, and from the drugs she’d been given that had knocked her unconscious. She hated not being able to remember when that had happened, or the events preceding it.
It’s not the first time you’ve blocked something out because you don’t want to remember, is it?
She swallowed hard and pushed the thought away. There were things in her life she didn’t even want to think about. Things she wouldn’t be able to function as a normal human being if she dwelled on them. Look at her parents. They hadn’t been able to not think about what had happened, and it had eaten them up inside.
The rain continued, showing no sign of easing up. If only she had something she could use to catch the water, so at least when the rain stopped, she be able to drink. No, she wouldn’t be there that long, would she? Did she really need to start planning ahead to a point where she was going to need to worry about enough water to survive? What about food? There might be something in the rucksack, but she couldn’t reach it. Small bugs? Tree bark? The fungi? Were any of those things edible? She didn’t want to consider the possibility that she’d reach that point of desperation.
How long could she survive without water? How long without food? She was sure she’d heard something like three days without water, and three weeks without food, but she had no idea if that was right or not.
At least with the rain, the bugs had gone away—for the moment, anyway. No doubt they’d be back with a vengeance when the rain stopped. Right now, though, Cass felt like the rain would never stop. Soaked to the skin, she shivered hard. She was huddled against the tree trunk, her limbs once again going numb. Her fingers were a strange purple-blue color, with white tips, and she forced herself to wriggle them to keep the blood flowing. She wished she could wrap her arms around herself to try to keep warm, but that was impossible.
She suddenly realized how dark it was. Rain clouds had blocked out any light that might have been offered by the moon and stars, leaving her sitting in a thick black soup. She didn’t want to think about the man’s dead body only a matter of a few feet away. It was bad enough being in this situation without also being surrounded by the dead.
Cassandra... A whisper among the patter of raindrops on leaves and the ground around her.
She sat up straight, listening hard. Had she heard someone whisper her name? Or was she hearing things, her mind playing tricks on her? It was normal for a person’s imagination to run riot when placed in the dark, under extremely stressful situations. She’d probably be crazy not to start hearing things.
Still, she couldn’t help calling back. Someone might be out there—people searching for her, perhaps. What if she could have been rescued, only she’d missed her opportunity because she’d been too frightened to speak.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?”
Her voice sounded pitiful among the patter of rain, but she strained her ears, half expecting a reply. In her mind, bloated, pale hands, cold and dripping with rainwater, reached out to touch her face in the dark, and she pressed herself closer to the tree trunk, wishing she could vanish into the earth.
A sudden flash of lightning lit up the forest around her in a white-blue light. The trees appeared skeletal and threatening, the dead man’s corpse a dark shape on the ground. She strained her eyes in the moment of light, her heart pounding, half expecting to see a figure, standing somewhere ahead, the same one who’d hissed her name. But she didn’t see anything more than trees, and only one dead body, so she guessed that was okay.
The lightning flickered a couple of times, and then she found herself back in the dark again.
A rumble of thunder followed, a long roll across the sky, followed by a deafening boom. Cass cowered and let out a whimper. The thunder coaxed out memories of her dream, and she shook her head to try to rid herself of the images. She had enough to worry about without dragging all that back up.
How long would it be until morning? She had no way of telling the time. For once, she wished she was in the habit of wearing a watch, but she’d never really bothered since she always had her cell phone on her for the time. Lots of people had fallen into the trap of wearing one of those step-tracker watches, but she already knew she was on her feet all day when she was working and didn’t need a watch to tell her that. She certainly didn’t want a watch tracking her sleeping pattern either. Just like with her steps, she was perfectly aware her sleeping pattern left much to be desired, and seeing how little she slept in black and white wasn’t going to make her feel any better.
Right now, however, she regretted her decision. Her abductor had clearly rid her of her phone, but he might not have noticed a watch. Some of those watches even had the ability to send messages and receive calls. She imagined how much easier this would all be if she was simply able to call someone and have them come and rescue her. Her stubbornness not to follow trends might just have gotten her killed.
There was nothing she could do about it now. She couldn’t have been asleep for more than a couple of hours, and it had still been dusk when she’d drifted off. That meant she had a long time to go before it was morning.
This was going to be the longest night of her life.
“But at least you’re still alive,” she said out loud, trying to comfort herself with the sound of her voice. “You could be like one of the other women right now, and already be dead.”
You might end up deciding you’d have been better off letting him kill you.
The voice was in her head, she knew that, but it had sounded real and clear enough to have come from her left, in the direction of where the first woman had been buried. What had he said her name was?
Cass wracked her brains, trying to remember.
Sonja Holland. That had been it. The one with the silkiest, jet black hair and ivory skin. She’d been his first kill, and right now she was buried less than five yards away. Why did Cass think it had been Sonja’s voice she’d heard in her head? It wasn’t as though she even knew what the other woman sounded like, was it? Maybe she’d seen pictures of the first girl on social media or on the news, but she didn’t think she’d ever heard her speak.
It was ridiculous to even consider the possibility. This was just a case of her over-active imagination playing in the dark and conjuring ghosts. There was no such thing as ghosts—she’d decided that for herself a long time ago. If ghosts, just like aliens and other mythical creatures, were real, they’d have been caught on camera by now. Maybe thirty years ago, before everyone carried video cameras in their pockets, she might have believed, but now there was no way the paranormal existed. Something would have been definitively proven by now. Humans were blood and bone and flesh, and that was all. When they were gone, they were gone.
She needed to stop getting so spooked out and focus on facts. The dead couldn’t hurt her—it had been the living that had done that.
In the sky above, another lightning bolt forked across the sky, illuminating her prison. Moments later, it was followed by a second boom, roll, and crack of thunder.
Ghosts and the dark might not be able to hurt her, but lightning could. While she wasn’t out in the open, and this tree was one of thousands, somewhere in the back of her mind, the knowledge that lightning was attracted to metal popped into her head. Was that true? Could the metal chain act as some kind of conduit to the lightning and attract it to this particular tree instead of one of the others? The lightning might strike, and either kill her or badly burn her, or else it could hit the canopy of the trees and send huge branches down to crush her beneath.
The sky lit up once more, shortly followed by a crack of thunder, and Cass discovered she was no longer afraid of imagined ghosts, but was instead afraid of the very real thunderstorm. There was barely any time between the lightning and the thunder, which meant it was right on top of her. The rain continued to pelt down, striking her face and shoulders as she stared up into the sky, catching glimpses of the flashes between the branches of the trees above.
There was nothing she could do to stop the storm.
Remembering that lightning tended to hit things that were taller, all she could think to do to protect herself was hunker back down against the tree trunk. She edged the chain down the trunk, as low as it could get, and then curled up with her chained feet beneath her body, hoping the position would protect that particular piece of metal from the storm. She couldn’t do anything about her hands, however, and they remained elevated, near her head, since the chain wasn’t wide enough to allow her to pull it all the way down to the ground.
A leaf bent under the weight of the rainwater and spilled its load directly down the back of her neck. She gasped in shock and huddled in further, wishing she had shelter.
Wishing she was any place other than where she was right now.