by Lukens, Mark
Stella could see a movement out of the corner of her eye, Trevor sneaking up behind Jose, but she made herself look back at Jose.
Cole stared at Needles who seemed like he was about to alert Jose about Trevor, but after the look from Cole, Needles slumped back down in the recliner and didn’t say anything.
“Stella, we need your help,” Cole said. “Whatever you know about what’s going on out there could help us. I wish you would tell us.”
“You need my help?” Stella asked sarcastically and she couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that came out of her. “You run us off the road, carjack us, bring us to the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm, point guns at our faces, threaten to torture and kill us, and then you want my help?”
Cole sighed.
Stella could see Trevor creeping up right behind Jose, but she wouldn’t give him away.
“I’m not helping you,” Stella went on, trying to distract Jose from Trevor sneaking up behind him. “Not until you stop pointing your guns at me and threatening us.”
Trevor jammed the barrel of his gun into the back of Jose’s head. “She’s right,” he told Jose. “Lower your gun.”
“What the fuck, man?” Jose said, and a nervous laugh escaped him. “You’re going to shoot me over this woman?”
“And that kid,” Trevor said. “You heard Cole. We’re not going to kill anyone else. Especially not a woman and a child.”
“But they know something.”
“I don’t care.”
Jose sighed and lowered his gun hand slowly. He shoved his gun down into the waistband of his pants and held his hands up, showing that they were empty. Trevor lowered his gun away from Jose’s head and took a few steps back.
Jose walked away from Stella. He shook his head as he stared at Cole and Trevor. “You guys are making a big mistake.”
“We’re going to wait here for the next four hours and see what happens,” Trevor told Jose, his eyes on him, his gun still in his hand. “We’re going to call their bluff, just like we all agreed.”
CHAPTER 23
Five hours later the afternoon shadows grew longer, stretching across the snow as the sun dipped lower behind the trees.
Inside the cabin, Trevor sat at the dining room table with another hand of solitaire laid out in front of him. His gun was close by.
Everyone was tense as they waited.
Needles looked even more nervous now that their four hours were up. He glanced over at the two metal cases of money on the fireplace hearth like he was ready to grab them and bolt for the door, throw them outside in the hopes that it wasn’t too late. But he didn’t get out of his recliner. He just looked at the front door, and then he looked back down at the rug on the floor. The rug was colorful, full of patterns that seemed to change shape after a while. The more Needles stared at the colors and patterns, the more they seemed to swirl and move, morphing into something beautiful.
Jose paced from the living room to the kitchen, and then back to the living room again. He couldn’t sit still. He looked at Cole who sat at the dining room table with his brother, another cup of coffee in front of Cole.
“What’s our plan now?” Jose asked Cole.
“We sit tight for a little bit,” Cole answered. “See what they do next.”
“It’s been longer than four hours,” Jose reminded him. “Frank said we had four hours, and it’s been longer than four hours. Nothing’s happened. Nobody’s coming for us.”
Cole sipped his coffee.
“We gotta do something soon,” Jose continued. “It’s going to be dark in a few hours. Then we’ll have to stay another night.”
Cole still didn’t answer.
“I don’t want to stay in this place another night. We should do something. Go out there and look around. Try and find those motherfuckers out there.”
Cole glanced at Jose. “Just keep watching out the window.”
Jose shook his head and walked into the living room. He gave Stella and David a sneer as he walked over to one of the windows near the front door. He pulled the curtain aside and peeked out the window. “Nothing going on out there,” he said more to himself than to anyone else.
Trevor stood up and stretched. “I gotta take a whiz,” he let everyone know.
“Check the rooms back there,” Cole told him.
“I just checked them an hour ago. All the windows are locked. Back door’s locked.”
“Check them again.”
*
Trevor entered the guest bedroom down the hall. He walked around the bed to the window. He parted the curtains and peeked outside. Nothing. No sign of Frank or anyone else out there. He checked the window. Still locked. He let the curtains fall back in place.
He left the bedroom and walked down the hall, his boots thumped on the wood floor. He checked the back door. Still locked. He entered Tom Gordon’s room and checked the two windows in the bedroom—both still locked. He looked out at the snowy field that stretched out in all directions from the cabin. He stared at the line of trees in the distance that surrounded the fields like a wall of woods in every direction. The woods had grown darker with the approaching night, but he could still make out the individual trees, and he still didn’t see any movement anywhere.
Trevor left Tom Gordon’s bedroom and walked across the hall and entered the bathroom. He closed the door and walked to the toilet at the other end of the room. The toilet was against the long wall by the sink, and the small window was to his left. He took his gun out from the waistband of his pants and laid it on the toilet tank lid; the gun made a loud clinking sound on the ceramic when he set it there. He was about to unzip his pants, but something out of the corner of his eye demanded his attention. There was something moving outside the bathroom window in the snow.
He turned and stared out the window, his body frozen in shock. His muscles all sagged at once, like all of the energy had drained out of his body. His bladder let go and the urine ran down his leg inside of his pants. He wanted to scream, but he didn’t seem to have any breath inside of his lungs to do so. He just stared out the window, trying to understand what he saw, trying to understand how this could be possible. His mouth moved as he tried to speak, as he tried to scream. “I … I don’t understand …” were the only words he could utter in a whisper.
*
Cole sat at the dining room table, the cup of coffee still right in front of him. He had consumed so much coffee throughout the day that there was no way he was going to be able to sleep tonight; he was going to make sure of it. But he had a feeling that at some point during the night, he was going to drift off to sleep without realizing it. It seemed like no matter how much each one of them tried to stay awake, no matter who was on watch, at some moment in the night they would all fall asleep. Like we’re being put to sleep, his mind whispered. But he didn’t want to think of where that thought had come from. Who or what could put them to sleep whenever it wanted to?
Cole glanced at Trevor’s playing cards spread out all over the dining room table. Then he looked at Jose who leaned against the kitchen counter, still anxious, still unable to sit still for very long. “Trevor’s been in the bathroom for a while,” Cole said.
“Maybe he had to take a shit,” Jose answered.
Cole looked at Stella who sat beside David on the couch as he scribbled in his notebook. It seemed like David had already gone through nearly half of the pages in the notebook, drawing at a furious pace. Cole figured it was a way the kid dealt with what was going on. It couldn’t be easy on the little guy to be held captive in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. And coming from whatever they were running from, from wherever they had been, whatever Stella was hiding from the rest of them, had to have taken a toll on him as well.
Cole’s thoughts were interrupted when David jumped to his feet quickly; the notebook fell out of his hands, open to a page on the wood floor at his feet. He stared at the front door like something was frightening him.
*
Stella
had nearly dozed off when David jumped to his feet. She tried to take every opportunity to nap when she could so she could try to stay awake at night, or at least sleep as lightly as she could.
But she snapped awake when David stood up. She could hear his rapid breathing even before she looked at him, it sounded like he was having a panic attack, struggling for breath. She had seen this happen to him before at the dig site. He stared at the front door.
Something was outside. It had finally come for them.
“What’s wrong with that kid?” Stella heard Needles ask from his chair that he always sat in; the recliner—his talisman of safety that he curled up in, a place where he could rub his crucifix and pray to his God that he would be safe. But Stella didn’t think God was going to listen to Needles this time—they were all on their own.
“I don’t know,” Stella lied as she glanced at Needles. “He’s scared of something.”
Stella looked at David as he stared at the front door with wide, bulging eyes of fear. His mouth hung open and his body was frozen.
She was about to hold on to David, try her best to comfort him, but her eyes darted down to the open notebook on the floor that David had been drawing in—she saw the open pages. She saw what he had been drawing this whole time. And what she saw on the pages stopped her mind in its tracks for a moment.
That couldn’t be right, could it? her mind whispered. Those aren’t what I think they are, are they?
“Stella!” Cole yelled, breaking her momentary hypnosis.
She looked at Cole. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she said again. She would have to figure out what she’d seen in David’s notebook later. She would have to confront David about it eventually, ask him how he knew. But for now she needed to put the brakes on her spinning mind and try to act normal—her and David’s survival depended on her not revealing too much; she knew that from experience, she had learned that down at the dig site in New Mexico.
“What’s out there, kid?” Needles asked in a quivering voice.
David didn’t answer Needles. He stared at the front door. Then David’s eyes moved away from the door, scanned past the dining room table, to the hallway that led to the two bedrooms and the bathroom.
And that’s when they all heard the noise that came from the bathroom—a loud crashing noise.
CHAPTER 24
Cole ran to the bathroom door. Jose was right behind him, his gun drawn. Cole pounded on the bathroom door. “Trevor!” he called out. “You okay in there?”
No answer.
“Trevor, answer me! Are you okay?”
Still no answer.
Cole tried the door handle. It wasn’t locked, but it seemed like the door was stuck. “Trevor! Trevor, open the door!”
Trevor wasn’t answering them.
Cole looked at Jose who stood next to him, his gun in his hand. “I’m going to break the door down. You get ready to shoot if you have to.”
Jose nodded—he was ready.
“But be careful,” Cole told Jose. “Let’s see what’s going on before you start blasting away.”
“Yeah, man. I’m not going to shoot you.”
“I don’t want any accidents,” Cole said, then he turned back to face the bathroom door. “Trevor, I’m going to break this door down!”
Cole still heard nothing from inside the bathroom. He backed up a step and slammed his shoulder into the door and it almost caved in immediately. Cole backed up another step, ready to ram it again with his shoulder. He had played high school football, strong safety position, and he knew how to hit with his shoulder. He rammed the door again with his shoulder, and this time it flew open and slammed against the wall.
The bathroom was empty. Trevor was gone.
Cole entered the bathroom, looking around in shock. Everything looked the same in the bathroom except for two things: Trevor wasn’t there and the bathroom window was wide open and damaged around the edges. Cole walked towards the damaged window, the toilet to the right of the window. The toilet lid was up and Trevor’s gun was on the toilet tank lid.
“Look,” Jose whispered from behind Cole. “Look at the window.”
The freezing air from outside invaded the bathroom through the busted and damaged window.
Cole hurried to the window.
“What the fuck?” Jose said from behind Cole as he followed him. “You think Trevor went out that window? You think he’s trying to run?”
Cole didn’t bother with an answer. But Trevor going out this window didn’t seem possible—it was way too small for a man to fit through. He drew his gun and pointed it at the window, moving closer and closer to it.
“Trevor!” he called. “You out there?”
No answer from outside, no sound except the freezing wind.
Cole stuck his head and arm out the window; it was as much of his body as he could comfortably fit. The sleeves of his shirt brushed against the splintered window frame and the small bits of jagged glass that were still imbedded in the wood. He aimed his gun around outside, ready to fire if he needed to, and he tried to look everywhere at once. But there were no tracks in the snow; there was no blood in the snow, no splinters of wood or broken glass anywhere outside that he could see. He looked at the trees in the distance. There was no movement in the trees, nothing out here at all except the lonely wilderness.
Trevor was gone.
“Trevor!”
No answer.
“Cole, look at the window.”
Cole pulled himself back inside and studied the splintered wood around the window. The wood was cracked in many places, almost like it had been twisted by some unimaginable force, like something too big for the window had been pulled through quickly. But what was more disturbing were what looked like claw marks grooved into the wood at the bottom of the window sill, like fingernails had tried to hold on to the wood. And then Cole found the piece of a human fingernail stuck in the groove of the window sill where the window would have come down if it was still there. It was nearly a whole fingernail with blood and a small piece of flesh stuck to the end of it, like it had snapped off completely from a finger.
Trevor’s finger.
Cole’s mind buzzed with panic. Trevor was gone. His little brother was gone. Someone had pulled his brother out through the window. And they hadn’t heard anything in the living room except the crashing of glass and snapping of wood. No screams from Trevor. No gunshots. Trevor hadn’t even gone for his gun; it was still right there on the toilet tank lid.
How was this possible?
But Cole didn’t care how, he didn’t even care why at this moment, the only thing he could think of was going outside and finding his brother. He could feel a rage building up inside of him, a rage he hadn’t felt in so long, a rage that could make him kill someone.
Cole grabbed Trevor’s gun and shoved it down in the waistband of his pants. He brushed past Jose and ran out of the bathroom.
Jose turned to follow him. “Wait a minute, Cole! Where are you going?” Jose ran after Cole who ran right past the dining room table and straight for the front door.
“Wait for me,” Jose said to Cole.
But before Cole and Jose even reached the front door, still half a dozen steps away from it, something pelted the front door from outside—a loud and wet thump.
Cole stopped in his tracks and stared at the door, his gun still in his hand.
Jose stopped, too. He was only a few steps behind Cole. They waited a split second, but it felt like an eternity until they heard the next sounds—dozens of wet thumps pelting the front door, all at the same time.
“Oh God, no,” Cole whispered, and then he ran for the door. He unlocked the deadbolt with trembling fingers, still clutching his gun in his hand.
“Wait a minute, Cole,” Jose said from behind him.
But Cole didn’t hear Jose. He didn’t hear or see anything around him; it had all faded away into a white noise. All he could think about was getting to Trevor before it was too
late.
Cole twisted the small lock on the door handle and swung the door wide open.
It was too late for Trevor.
CHAPTER 25
Needles wouldn’t stop screaming. It was an insane scream. It was the screaming from someone whose mind had finally snapped. After seeing what was on the front porch, Needles’ grip on sanity was nearly gone.
Jose was still a few steps behind Cole who stood in the doorway staring down at the carnage littering the floorboards of the front porch. His body blocked much of what Jose could see, but he saw the splatters of blood on the front door of the cabin. He didn’t want to see what was out there, he didn’t want to make his feet move forward, but he had to—he had to back Cole up. He moved to the side of the doorway, nearly beside Cole, but still a few steps behind him, his gun up and ready to shoot. But his gun hand dropped back down as the strength drained out of his body when he saw what was on the front porch.
Stella let out a cry from the couch and turned David away from the gore on the porch. But she hadn’t been quick enough; she knew David had seen it, if only for a few seconds. But David let her guide his face away even though they had seen this before. They had seen many things like this at the dig site in New Mexico.
Cole stared down in horror at the pieces of Trevor’s body scattered on the floorboards of the front porch: pieces of Trevor’s arms, pieces of his legs, pieces of his flesh; some of the pieces were the size of small hams or turkeys. Most of the pieces of Trevor’s body still had clothing stuck to them, the cloth held in place by the drying and tacky blood which was so dark in some places it was almost black. A femur bone was splintered at the end of a chunk of flesh that used to be part of Trevor’s thigh; the fabric of the jeans was still wrapped around the skin of the leg. Trevor had been cut apart—no, it looked more like he’d been torn apart.
“No …” that was the only word Cole could utter. He could feel his stomach churning, the last meal and coffee he’d eaten and drank threatening to come back up.
