70.

“I’ll send someone back for you,” said Anne as she stood up. Cutter turned and stared with the same surprise as someone viewing an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

Anne held up her unshackled arms. “Tada!” she said, confirming her achievement with a vocal flourish.

“Get me loose,” he demanded.

“Can’t do that,” said Anne. “You haven’t earned the trust.”

“What if he comes back?”

“Then the first part of your plan has been accomplished. I won’t be here to bait his trap to frame you. Anyway, I’ll be quick about it. Gotta be a phone somewhere near here.”

Anne took a few steps toward the cabin door. A sudden gust disturbed the air, and the flame in the kerosene lamp on the table fluttered wildly. Shadows raced across the walls like a disturbed colony of bats. They distracted Anne. She hesitated. Cutter lunged. This time his steel bed didn’t catch in a loose floorboard and fetch him up.

“You’re going nowhere!” He sounded desperate and menacing.

He heaved up his end of the bed with his cuffed arm and hurled himself toward the door like a football lineman. The bed followed. His strength and speed were surprising and unexpected, and his sprint left him within arm’s reach of the door. He blocked her escape.

“I haven’t finished with you yet.”

Anne was alarmed at his agility and strength, and she would be no match if he grabbed her. She froze in place, closer to the other end of the metal frame, nearer the middle of the room. Cutter’s eyes burned with rage as he assessed his next move. The lamplight glowed harsh and yellow. Cutter’s skin took on a sallow, oily cast. His eyes were blood red, but unkind shadows turned the hollows of his face as black as a spider’s hole.

Anne took another slow cautious step back. Her foot came down on a dried spruce cone. She faltered, and Cutter attacked again. Awkwardly, Anne threw herself back and spun further away. As she did, she heard the shattering of glass.

Cutter’s last lunge had carried the bed with him, and it collided with the table. The table shook, and the oil lamp toppled, rolled, and crashed to the floor. For a fraction of a second, near-total darkness consumed the cabin. Then a spark in the wick caught the spilled kerosene, and the room filled with light. Anne and Cutter watched as the pool of oil spread thinly in every direction. Flames followed the trail. The blaze flared hungrily and smoked. It fed on kerosene and scraps of tinder and bits of trash scattered about the floor and, having fed, spit out an even more malevolent flame.

Cutter abandoned his vengeful assault on Anne and backed away from the fire. He tried frantically and unsuccessfully to free his hand from the bed, but managed to pull himself closer to the cabin door. Freedom was only a few taunting inches away. His eyes blazed wildly with fear. The smoke thickened. It gripped him, and he hacked and coughed to spit it out.

Anne was amazed at the speed with which the fire grew, and her eyes scoured the room for a way to escape. Within a minute or two the flames had formed a wall that spanned the width of the room. She could scarcely see Cutter through the gathering smoke. So even if the door was undefended, she could not reach it now. Instead, she hurled herself once or twice against the boarded wall of the ancient cabin, but the boards were sound and the nails stubborn. Her only other option was at the end wall, a fixed window to let in morning light. It was the only one in the cabin, but it was high, too far up for Anne to reach.

Cutter’s screams paralyzed Anne. Her thoughts fell apart. At first his screams were ones of horror, as if he had just stumbled into a nest of snakes, their eyes glinting in the moonlight, their movement against his clothing shrivelling his skin. When the first of the flames touched his trousers, they danced with orange delight. Then horror turned to terror with the first bite of their searing tongues. Then his shirt caught, and he recoiled at the lunge of death toward him. He twitched and shuddered and beat against the lapping of death against his flesh. Then he loosed a scream so wretched that Anne nearly collapsed with dread. More screams. Gasps. Whimpering groans. And a final shrieking litany of gibberish and paradox spilled from his mouth: “O god, o my god, o god, ohmygod, godammit, o god, godamn you…you…you…godamn you…o my god damn you…oh, oh…ohhh!”

Cutter’s long hair caught and burned with a distasteful smell and crackle. He screamed a long, tortured howl. Then he gasped to wail once more but, with that second breath, his mouth and throat and lungs filled. He tasted the flavour of pain, and his agony quenched itself in a writhing death.

Anne remained transfixed by the horrors before her until a sharp crackle of burning wood snapped her attention back to her own perilous condition. Her thinking became crystal clear. The window was her only escape route. Anne seized a wooden cabinet and dragged it to the wall below the window. Still, she could not reach the glass after she stood on the cabinet. The chair with the broken back was nearby. So she grabbed it and climbed once again onto the cabinet, hauling the chair up with her. Above floor level the air was thick with smoke. She retched and coughed. The fire grew closer. The heat flashed toward her in waves. It became intense.

From her cabinet-top perch, Anne swung the chair above her head and beat the window as savagely as she had strength to do. The first swing shattered the glass and, as it broke, Anne heard a startling whoosh. The fire was vented. A stream of oxygen flooded in and fed the conflagration. The flames roared with a fresh vengeance and, in a ghastly flight of fancy, Anne imagined Cutter’s dead soul somehow driving the ravenous sweep of fire toward her. Anne shuddered at her own madness, but fear bristled inside her, fuelled her desperation, and she swung the chair with renewed force. Her second and third swings cleared shards of glass and jagged splinters from the window frame.

Anne set the chair on the cabinet top and climbed carefully up on the chair. From that height she could easily grip the newly made hole. Anne muscled up until her head stuck out the hole. She took a long breath of fresh air. Then, with a firm grasp on the empty frame, she rolled forward. She lost her grip as she tumbled out, but her fall was softer than she had expected, and she managed to land on her feet.

Anne staggered, stumbled, and crawled from the foot of the cabin toward a semi-dark cluster of withered spruce trees. She leaned against scarred, coarse bark and drew a deep breath. It was cool, clean, and fresh, and she felt exhilaration, the electrifying euphoria of being alive. It lasted for a few short moments. Then her hands began to tremble. Palsy gripped her, and the horrors she had endured the past evening forced themselves once more into her mind.

Anne was helpless to defend herself. She felt as if she had been viciously slapped and forced to acquiesce and live through it again: the terror of rousing from sleep at home, a dark figure enveloping her, choking her, drugging her; her desperate efforts to control her body, to quell the nausea that would lead unquestionably to asphyxiation; the dread at finding herself face to face with death at the hands of two brutes; the horror of Cutter’s pitiful screams as he burned; and the eerie haunting echo of Cutter’s last utterance, his last wish—his final desire to send her into the fiery hell with him.

Anne curled into a ball on the damp ground, the horror, the anger, and the hatred of it all swirling in her mind. Tears streamed from her eyes. Her body convulsed with sobs, and her hands shielded her eyes as if they could shut out the debilitating impact of her experience. For a while Anne had felt as if she had left her body altogether and was floating freely and terrifyingly in a sea of all-too-real memory, and she had wondered if she were going mad.

But those feelings were dissipating now—like the back side of a wave—and she could feel herself once again. Her fingertips sensed the texture of the ground beneath her. Her ears heard the crack of burning timbers, and again she drew strength from the feeling that she really had survived.

Then a sudden roar, like a speeding car passing too closely, startled her. The sound had come from the cabin. The fire had broken through the roof. Smoke billowed. Flames shot skyward. The ground all around her glowed with a yellow-orange light, and shadows danced eerily beside spruce saplings and blueberry bushes.

The roar of the fire had heightened Anne’s vigilance. Her attention leapt from past terrors and present reprieve to future survival. First, she had to get out of there. MacFarlane would be back soon, and if he found her he would have to kill her, and the woodlands surrounding her were vast enough to hide a small body. No one would find her remains…ever.

Anne quickly gathered herself together and made for the rutted trail that led out of this place. Her ankle ached as she hobbled up the path. She was confident she could walk it off. If she was going to die, she would go out kicking and screaming, she thought.

Once the cabin dropped from sight, the path she took cut through thick stands of spruce and endless acres of reforested white pine. The light from the cabin fire gradually diminished. Darkness closed in upon her, and it wasn’t until then that she realized it had started to rain. The rain was light and soft and welcome. It was clean and cool. Refreshing.

Anne moved slowly and steadily along, careful not to turn her ankle again, but the road was uneven and seemed never to end. Darkness had dimmed her sense of time and distance, and she stumbled around for almost an hour. Impatience started to dog her. Then she spotted the intersection, a few yards ahead. At the sight of it, her pulse quickened, and expectations mounted. Even this late at night, the odd car would be travelling the road. A house would be near at hand.

The paved road, however, was a disappointment. Anne peered to the right and then to the left. There was no sign of civilization in either direction, but a glow of light against the overcast sky suggested that Charlottetown was southwest, and that was the direction she chose.

Anne trudged along. The highway cut through endless fields of potatoes and the stubble of freshly cut grain. The few houses she encountered were summer residences, unlit and unoccupied. Several long laneways branched from the highway, but they promised nothing but darkness. No porch light or barn lamp offered hope, and there was no assurance that a house lay at the end of any of the lanes. Anne heard the occasional barking of a dog. She also heard the baying of coyotes and, for that reason, she resolved to remain on the road and await the chance of a passing vehicle.

The ache in her ankle had not yet worked its way out. Running, if she had to, was not possible. Add to that, the rain. It was still light, but it was no longer refreshing. She felt the cold creeping into her bones. Her hair was dripping and her light sweatshirt was heavy with dampness.

Then, at a downcast moment, Anne saw the lights of a car rounding a bend in the road. She felt a jolt of elation. The car was heading her way. Its cold blue halogen lights raked the trees on the bend. Anne waved excitedly. Just as quickly, though, a pang of fear swept over her.

What if it’s MacFarlane? He’d use the same route to return, she thought, and he was due back. Long overdue, she thought. What if it’s him?

The car’s headlights had not yet illuminated her figure on the side of the road. Fear won out. Anne limped off the shoulder and slid into the ditch, and the car passed without incident.

It might have been MacFarlane…and it might not have been.

She couldn’t tell.

Anne climbed the bank and resumed her hapless trek and, like a gambler walking empty-pocketed, she dreamed the sweet victory of a win, but felt only the cold regret of loss.