TWENTY-FIVE

Alex lay with her eyes open. She curled not in her usual tight coil, but flat on her back, open like a flower, her boots laced tightly on her feet.

Brank lay beside her. Alex knew without looking that he was asleep; his snores droned steady as waves on a beach. For hours she’d feigned sleep, watching from under her captor’s ragged tent as the nearly full moon glided across an indigo sky.

That night he’d left her legs untied when he pushed her under the tarp, and the prospect of flight had tantalized her ever since. He’d gone to bed woozy from his moonshine, and ever since she’d lain awake, trying to figure out what to do. Murder tempted her—the thought of easing the knife out of his belt and plunging it deep into his chest brought a smile to her lips. But she hadn’t seen where he’d put the knife when he’d collapsed on his blanket, and if she woke him fumbling for it, she knew she’d be the one who would wind up with a blade through her heart.

That was when she’d decided on escape. Although running through the blackness of the forest with her hands bound would be dicey, anything was better than being Henry Brank’s plaything, listening to his weird Germanic ramblings about mad Trudy and Papa and Pennsylvania. She took a deep breath. The moon had already passed its apogee. If she was going to escape, she needed to go now.

He lay on his back, his mouth open, snoring the easy sleep of a man unbedeviled by dreams. Cautiously, she pulled herself upright. A shock of pain flared down her rib cage, but she inhaled deeply through her mouth, tamping it down to the point that she could bear to move. The nylon sleeping bag beneath her seemed to rustle with every eye blink, betraying her movement. She glanced over again at Brank, certain she’d awakened him, but he snored on, apparently undisturbed.

She started to pull her long legs beneath her, then realized that struggling upright without the leverage of her hands would make far too much noise. She would have to roll over and push up from her stomach. Keeping her eyes on Brank’s face, she rolled to her left. Hot fire instantly consumed her battered body, but she ignored it. Broken bones could not concern her now.

Every motion sounded like a cannon shot. Her sleeping bag rustled like a chorus of high-pitched violins. Her breath came in shallow, rapid gasps. Any second now he will open his eyes and see me. For an eternity she crouched motionless, holding her breath until her lungs burned, waiting to see what would happen. Her forehead grew damp with sweat. He snorted once in his sleep, making her dizzy with fear, but then turned his head away from her; his snores resumed.

So far, so good, she told herself. Cautiously, she rose to her knees. Then she brought her left knee forward, balanced her elbow on top of it, and lifted herself up. Her knees wobbled and nearly buckled, and she had to stoop to keep from hitting the top of the low tent, but at last she stood upright and untethered. She nearly wept with joy.

Standing seemed to make even more racket than turning over, but still Brank snored on. Now she had only to slip out of the tent. Then she would be free.

She held her breath and turned. Three more steps and she would be outside. It would be treacherous to find her way at night, but the moon still shone bright overhead and she’d taken extra care yesterday to try to memorize their trail. If she could run fast enough and long enough, she might be miles away before he even knew she was gone.

She took a step, then stopped. The nylon bag rustled, but still Brank did not move. The next step took her to the end of the bag. One more step and she would be free of the tent and into the forest. She pressed her arm against her right side and looked at Brank one final time. He slept on, still as death. Steeling herself against the pain, she ducked beneath the ragged flaps. The cold, dark air caressed her like a lover. She had done it. She was free.

She wasted no time. With rapid strides she slipped past their smoldering campfire, desperate to avoid any twigs that might crunch beneath her feet. Tall hemlocks thrust up into the night about twenty feet away. If she could reach them, she could slip into their shadows. . . .

She had to fight the urge to cut loose as she had done on her high-school track team. Go slow, she commanded herself. Go quiet. Just get into the trees.Then you can run. She took two more long steps. She longed to look over her shoulder, to make sure Brank wasn’t coming after her. Don’t stop, she told herself. Just get to those trees.

Three more quiet steps, then two, then the forgiving branches of the hemlocks reached out and enveloped her. Their pungent aroma reminded her of Christmas. Her heart pounded as if she’d sprinted a mile. Her breath came in gasps. I’ve done it, she thought, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. I have gotten away.

She twisted to look back at the tent, still expecting to see Brank roaring out like a madman, waving his gun in the air. But nothing moved. She knew, though, that would all soon change. He would wake up and find her gone. She had to put as much distance between her and that moment as possible. For an instant, however, she crouched beneath the hemlocks, breathing in their sharp, clean scent, remembering the Christmas she’d gotten a shiny blue twelve-speed bike.

“Whatever happens after this,” she said softly, gripping one branch tight in her hand, “at least I escaped once.”

She stood up and turned toward what she hoped was east, where the trees cast thick smudges of shadow on the ground. She might not remember the trail exactly, but she knew she must go opposite from where Brank had been taking her. Impulsively, she turned back to the tent and poked up the third finger of her right hand. “Fuckensie you,” she said under her breath. “You and your dumb cat-woman sister.” With that she turned and ran into the night.

At first she thought she’d stay beneath the trees, hidden from sight. The hemlocks, however, were thick; picking a path through them slowed her down and often led her far away from the old roadbed. At last she realized that if she was not to get hopelessly tangled in the forest, she would have to drop down to the trail. It would expose her to Brank, but it was the only way she knew to get back to the spring. She crept down to the roadbed and began to run.

It was harder than she’d thought. She tried the old, mile-chewing pace of her cross-country track-team years, but with her hands tied in front of her she couldn’t find the right rhythm. If she approached anything near speed, she lost her balance. If she worked at keeping her balance, then her pace slowed to a crawl.

“Bastard,” she cursed Brank aloud. “You just had to tie the hands, didn’t you?”

Finally she settled into an awkward, shuffling lope. She felt ridiculous, fleeing from a monster at a whopping two miles an hour, but it was the best she could do. Her moments of darkness were ticking away.

She ignored the pain in her right side and pressed on until the soft gray moonlight turned colorless and a few birds began to chirp. Soon it would be dawn. Soon she would have to decide whether to hole up and hide or keep running. That he would be after her, she had no doubt.

A raccoon scampered into the woods ahead of her, startled by the two-legged creature bursting into its universe. She clambered over a fallen tree she remembered climbing over the day before and smiled. She was on the right track.

Just as the sky grew pink in the east, she stopped, breathing hard. Water gurgled from some boulders at the top of a small rise. She hadn’t had a drop of water since the night before. Her throat felt like sandpaper: she knew if she was going to succeed, she must keep herself hydrated. She lifted her face to the icy spray of water. Her skin felt stung by a thousand frigid bees, but she didn’t care. She had just begun to scoop some water into her mouth when something flickered in the corner of her vision. She turned, then gasped. A gray scarecrow hobbled towards her, elbows flapping like the stubby wings of an ostrich.

It was Brank. And even with his scrambling, hunched-over gait, he was covering ground fast.

“Shit,” she cried. She sprang back onto the trail and ran. No time to worry about falling now. She clasped her hands tightly against her chest and tried to make her strides long and fast. Get ahead of him , she urged her tired body on. Then hide.

She threw herself along the trail, searching the dying shadows for any place that might give shelter. Thorns tore at her bare legs, her feet slipped on slick pine needles. She put her head down and concentrated. Run. He was probably at the top of the rise now. Just make it to this curve, and he won’t be able to see you.

Her breath rattled in her throat. Her legs pumped like pistons. She risked a glimpse over her shoulder. The scarecrow had crested the rise. She blinked. He was lifting one arm.

“Hey, Trudy!” He had seen her. His gravelly voice rang out through the trees. “We were just about to have some fun!”

“No!” she cried. Every stride sent a new shock of pain through her ribs, but she willed her legs to move faster. She couldn’t stop now. She couldn’t give up. Maybe there was a rock or a dead branch she could grab and smash his head in. But she couldn’t stop to find a weapon.

“Trudy!” His voice sounded closer. She turned. She saw his face. His mouth gaped open, but his eyes seemed to burn into her flesh, as if to brand her as his own.

She asked her legs for more, for the kick she’d always had in high school, but they did not respond. She was exhausted. “Please,” she begged, trying to dig in with her toes. Brank was gaining ground. She could hear his footsteps slapping the ground behind her.

“Please,” she whimpered one final time, just as her right foot snagged on the hidden branch of a tree. Desperately, she tried to recover her balance, and for a moment, she succeeded. She stayed upright, but then she hit the ground flat on her face, her breath escaping like air from a balloon. Instantly he fell on top of her, his sharp nails digging into the tender flesh of her shoulders.

For a while both of them just gasped, then his weight left her body and she felt a rope grip her left ankle. In another moment her right ankle was trussed up the same way.

“What’s the matter with you?” He sobbed above her. “We were getting along so well.”

He retied her ankles, but this time he left only about a foot of cord between them.

She rolled over on her back and looked up at him. “I can’t walk like this.”

“I guess you’ll have to.” Wheezing, he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Papa always said you were a handful. Looks like he was right.”

Alex shook her head, her eyes bright with fury. “Papa didn’t know me!” she screamed. “Papa has no idea what I’m like!”

He tied her old rope around her waist. “Then maybe I’ll just have to find out what you’re like,” he growled as he pulled the knot tight. “Maybe from now on I’ll make it my business to do just that.”