by Traci Finlay
I can’t even respond because the lady in the sunhat jogs back over to us, and I didn’t even realize she’d left. She slaps big rectangular stickers on our stomachs with our racing numbers and says, “The other three people registered for the obstacle course are no-shows, apparently. The race begins in two minutes.” My heart starts pounding, and I look at Ian. He somehow arranged it so we’re the only two running this race, and my god, he’s dangerous and clever.
I turn to the lady. “Are there staff members along the route, you know in case we fall and get hurt or anything?”
She looks at me sympathetically. “Generally there are, but we’re really short-staffed today. So instead of having one at every obstacle, there’s one in the middle and one at the end.”
So basically, I’m fucked.
Crowds start gathering to send us off, and I can’t speak with Jack alone because spectators are being pushed behind the yellow tape and it’s just Ian and me left at the starting line, and what’s stopping me from blowing Ian’s cover right here in front of everyone? He can’t kill me here; there are too many people, and Nikka’s nowhere around.
I’m going to do it. Jack’s standing ten feet away, surrounded by spectators, and all I have to do is walk over there and tell him Dan is Ian. My feet are moving toward him, my eyes on him like a target. I’m telling him.
I’m stopped by a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around. Ian looks pissed and he puts both hands on my shoulders like he’s giving me a motivational speech before the race—a front.
“Go over there and tell him. Do it. Nikka will die before the cops get here.”
“Nikka’s in the middle of a race. She’s nowhere near here,” I retort.
“Exactly. She’s out there in those woods, and I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a pretty good hunter, Chuck. I’ll find her and murder her in the woods and no one will ever find her body, so go. Tell your boyfriend who I am.”
No one can hear our conversation amongst the cheering crowd and the blaring voice that comes over the loud speaker: Runners, get on your mark.
Ian steps away from me and takes his place at the starting line, and I turn to Jack for one last plea. He still won’t make eye contact with me. I move to the starting line next to Ian and glance at Jack one more time, and for the love of God, Jack, please! Suddenly his eyes jerk to my face, and I think I see realization flooding them, but I don’t have time to find out because Get set, Go! and the gun fires for the race to begin.
Seven miles. That’s not what I’m worried about. It’s not even the challenges scattered throughout. It’s the fact that as soon as that gun goes off, and Ian and I break into a sprint heading straight for the woods, I only have about a hundred meters of public eye before it’s just the two of us alone in the forest. Seven miles, nothing. I’m going to die before I finish one.
We’re running side by side, and I know this is for public appearances. As soon as we disappear behind the line of trees, I glance at him. He stares straight ahead, and about a few hundred feet into the woods he looks deliberately at me. “Stop running.”
I hesitate, but decide to obey because if he’s gonna kill me now, I’m closer to the entrance and I’ll run back to civilization. We stand in the middle of the path, barely winded, looking at each other. His hands go to his hips. “Hi there, Chuck.”
“Hi, E.”
He starts laughing, and I’m getting more and more scared as the seconds tick by. “So regardless of how far you got away from me, and how long it took, here we are. Back where we left off. What did I tell you would happen if I caught you?”
“You’d kill me.”
He nods.
“You won’t do that, though.”
His eyebrows shoot up amusedly. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because you’ll go to jail.”
He laughs like I just told him a sexist joke. “Who says I’d go to jail? I’d leave your dead ass out in the woods, maybe throw you off a cliff into the water. No one will ever know. I’d duck outta here before anyone even knows you’re gone. They’ll be looking for Dan Fisher for a while.”
That’s when I turn and dash back toward the starting line, which is stupid, if you think about it, because Ian intercepts me before I even get past him.
His fingers are a vise around my arm, and I’m staring into the face I saw weeks ago back in Cadillac, the one that told me to run and never come back. How did I get here? How am I right back at the starting point? “You will run this race, Chuck. You will run, and I will chase you. But what’s the one rule, Charles? What is it?”
“Don’t let you catch me,” I whisper.
“Because if I catch you, what will happen?”
“I’ll die.”
It’s as simple as that; I can’t out-strategize him now. I can’t use all the people standing around to my advantage. It’s not about staying quiet to keep Nikka safe. I can’t dye my hair and hitch rides with perverts. It boils down to Ian and me, and I’m going to have to run for my life in a game that I’ve never won.
“Ten seconds. You have ten seconds to get as far down that way,” he nods deeper into the woods, toward the seven miles of obstacles, “as you can. But after ten seconds…”
“Why do you want to kill me?” I blurt.
Ian lets go of my arm. “Ten. Nine. Eight…”
And damn it all if I don’t turn and run for my life.
I’m pissed that my pride caused me to lose three seconds of my head start. I should’ve known better than to question him, regardless of the amount of balls I’ve grown in the last couple weeks. So I run as hard as I can for the first mile, which I realize was a mistake when I come upon the first obstacle. I’m winded, and now I have to climb a rope over a twenty-foot wall that extends across the entire path. There’s no way to even run around it; the trees are too thick to divert this chase into the woods. Besides, Ian would see me straying off the path, then I’d really be dead.
I stop and put my hands on my knees, breathing heavily as I stare at the beast of a wall in front of me. The path has been very curvy, so while I’ve no doubt Ian isn’t far behind, I don’t see him yet. The wheels start turning in my head—I wonder if there’s any possible way I can hide near this wall and let Ian think I’ve conquered it and am moving on, but then I remember all the games of Burken we’ve played, and just don’t even try it, Charlotte, because Ian knows.
And I’ve plotted for too long because I hear him coming around the corner, and winded or not, I sprint toward the wall and in a flying leap, grab the rope and hike myself up. I’m halfway up when Ian approaches the wall, looks up at me, and begins shimmying up the rope behind me. My arms are burning but I won’t even let myself think about that. Ian has a lot more upper body strength and if I slow down at all, I know exactly how he’ll kill me from the top of this twenty-foot wall.
It’s amazing what the human body is capable of when it’s faced with death. No need to train for these; stick a rampant killer on you and let survival mode kick in. I manage to reach the top of the wall, and I actually hear him breathing at my feet. His fingers skim the bottom of my shoe as I flip my body over the top of it, and I don’t care that the rope continues down the other side—I’m hanging by my fingertips from the top of the wall, and I let go.
I plunge to the earth, twist my ankle. Bad. But Ian’s flipping over the wall now, but I’m more agile than he is. There’s no way he’ll drop from the top of that wall. As he scurries down the rope at a neck-breaking pace, I utilize the few extra seconds and take off, telling myself this is just an ankle twist, nothing’s broken, no reason to slow down.
I have a good pace going, and I’ve always been good at listening for Ian’s proximity instead of looking back and breaking my pace. I don’t hear him, but after about a half a mile, I do. He’s gaining on me. I step it up as we surge for the second obstacle. Where is it? Tears stream from the sides of my eyes when his fingers swipe at my hair. He’s going to catch me and where the hell is the secon
d obstacle?
I turn a corner, and finally—it’s straight ahead. A net splays across the path, about two feet off the ground. The army-crawl. I smile because I’ll kick Ian’s ass on this.
I dive beneath it and shuffle along on my belly in the dirt, and Ian’s growls wane farther away. I try kicking extra dirt into his eyes to slow him down, anything to help me get through five more miles.
I finally break out at the end of the net and transition smoothly to an upright position. I don’t even check to see where Ian is. I burn around a corner and am mortified to see we’re headed up a hill—the steep hill where Jack and I parked this morning—and what’s worse is that the path is right at the edge of a cliff. My lungs and legs are burning, but I huff and start my ascent.
This is exhausting, and the only solace I can muster is that Ian will tire on this hill, too. But all he needs to do at this point is shove me off the four-foot-wide path, and I’ll plummet to my death. So with that—no solace.
He’s gaining on me again, but I physically cannot push myself harder than I already am. Incline running is no joke, but it’s either that or I die. My body goes into overdrive, and I turn it up a notch with a loud grunt. Ian usually has a smartass comment when I do that, but he’s not saying anything. I hope it’s because he’s too tired.
I finally reach the top of the hill and jet down the path leading away from the cliffs and toward the third obstacle—the monkey bars Jack and I saw on the map. I have to run up a flight of stairs and scale across a series of rings that soar above a mud pit. I’ve never done anything like this before. As soon I reach the midpoint of the staircase, I hear Ian’s feet crashing onto the stairs. I’ve no time to figure out how to attack these rings because he’s right behind me.
I’m at the top and take a flying leap to the first ring and grab it easily, but I make the mistake of swinging on it instead of immediately advancing to the next ring. Ian grabs my leg on the backswing, and I scream. I twist around and kick him in the face with my other leg, and he lets go and stumbles backward as I swing back toward the next ring and grab onto it, forcing myself to use the momentum of each swing to push me to the next one.
I’m about three quarters of the way across when my hand slips, and I miss the next ring. My shoulders are on fire and my grip is failing, but Ian’s just a few rings behind me, and now I’m swinging back toward him because I missed the ring. He grabs at the ring behind me, but I’m already swinging forward again, and just before I grab the next ring, my grip gives out and I’m falling into the mud pit below.
Ian wastes no time falling behind me, and he hits the mud a half a second after I do. We’re wading through the mud pit, and when I reach the end I dive onto the pavement, but Ian’s right behind me. This is it. He throws himself forward and tackles me to the ground, and I scream but there’s no one to hear me.
We wrestle on the ground, but my shoulders are fried and I can’t even make a fist because my grip is gone, so all I can do is try to get away.
“I don’t know why you’re even trying, Chuck. I always win,” Ian growls. I can only cry and beg him to stop. I plead with him, but he ignores me.
Suddenly an engine roars, and we look up to see Jack’s car swerving around the corner. Jack slams on the brakes and jumps from the car with his gun aimed, and Ian rips me off the ground and holds me in front of him—I’m a human shield.
“Let her go!” Jack yells, moving cautiously toward us.
“Put the gun down, Sport. You’re not shooting anyone,” Ian says.
Jack steps closer. “No chance. Let her go.”
Ian wraps his arm around my neck and grips my chin. “I’ll snap her neck like a pretzel if you don’t put the gun down.”
I’m trying not to whimper, but I’m going to die, even with Jack’s failing attempts at heroism. Jack slowly lowers the gun, but his eyes darken. “Fuck you. I’m the one with a gun here.”
Ian moves toward him, forcing me along in front of him, and I’m tripping and sputtering like a rag doll.
“Give me your car,” Ian demands, and Jack tightens his grip on the gun and is shaking his head—not as if he’s telling Ian no, but as if he can’t believe this is happening and that Ian’s going to win.
Ian laughs and places his other hand on top of my head, turning it in an awkward position. I’m howling, and Ian tosses his head toward the car. “Get out of my way and give me your car, or so help me, I’ll rip her head clean off her body.”
Jack retreats from his car, walking backward toward the trees with his hands up, like Ian’s the one with the gun, even though it’s in his own hand and currently aimed at the sky.
Ian stops in front of the headlights. “Now throw the gun into the woods.”
Jack’s face explodes in rage. “Let her go, or I’ll blow the tires off the car.”
Ian smirks and assumes his neck-breaking position on my skull, and things are going numb and what isn’t numb hurts so badly that I scream and beg Jack to just do what he says.
“Shut up, Charlotte! He doesn’t have a spell on me like he does on you!”
“And by spell he means headlock,” Ian says as he twists slightly.
I feel the vertebrae in my neck pop, and my ear begins to ring. “Jack, he’s hurting me!”
Jack heaves the gun into the woods and screams, “Fuck you, Charlotte! Congratulations, you got what you wanted!”
Ian wastes no time stuffing me into the car, then turns to punch Jack in the face. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see Jack get pummeled because I know he didn’t mean what he said, and Ian jumps in the driver’s side, slamming the door and ripping Jack’s car in reverse, hightailing it onto the road.
Raindrops split themselves open as they crash into the windshield, and Ian finally flips the wipers on, just as I’m about to risk my life in telling him I can’t see a thing. The storm came out of nowhere; it might as well be midnight outside.
He looks at me huddled against the door, shivering, and he turns the air conditioning down. “What’s wrong with your wrist?” he asks.
I look down to see that I’m cradling my wrist. It’s swollen and blue. I’m so scared I didn’t even notice it was injured. But now that I know, the pain is nearly unbearable.
“It looks either broken or sprained. How’d you do that?” he asks, and I want to punch him because he shouldn’t be talking to me normally like this.
“I don’t know, Ian. Probably when you were trying to kill me back there.”
Ian winces. “It looks painful.”
“My neck hurts, too, ya know,” I comment.
He grins mischievously as the odometer rounds past eighty. “Sorry about that. But your stupid boyfriend was cramping my style. A guy can’t even play a game with his sister anymore without these idiots whipping guns around.”
I look at my brother. My crazy, insane brother. “This isn’t a game. It quit being a game when you started swinging Dad’s axe at me.” I look to the floor and mumble, “None of this is a game, it never was.”
Ian chuckles. “You’re so cute, Charles. So what else have you learned on your little journey? Any fun discoveries?”
I hold my breath as Ian maneuvers the car in and out of highway traffic, the rain impaling the windshield like miniature spears. I slip my seatbelt on and swallow. “I learned that Burken was never an innocent game. You played it to keep Dad from molesting me. ‘That monster’s gonna get me if I don’t run now’ wasn’t just a childish line, you were talking about him.”
Ian’s eyes light up and he pooches out his bottom lip, nodding satisfactorily. “Well, brava, little sis. I’m glad to see I was able to keep that a secret from you all those years. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Th-thank you.” And what the hell is wrong with me for thanking him when he nearly killed me back there? Folie á deux, indeed.
“That’s what I’m here for. To protect you. From perverts like that Jack guy,” he says, his eyes clouding and the odometer clearing ninety.
“Where are we going?” I ask, peering through the rainy darkness whizzing past us.
“Home,” he replies.
“But we’re in Jack’s car.”
Ian gives me a disgusted look and shakes his head in disappointment.
“I also learned you’re a sociopath,” I announce. “Mom told me. Did you know Mom came home?”
“Nope,” he says as if I’d asked if he saw last night’s episode of SNL. “Must’ve missed her.”
“Ian, did you hear me? Mom came home.”
He looks at me like he’s waiting for the punchline. “Okay, Chuck. I don’t care if she came home or not. I don’t care where she is, or if I ever see her again.”
“You two are a lot alike,” I say quietly, and study his hands on the steering wheel.
“More stuff you learned on your search for the meaning of life?” he quips.
I nod and repeat, “She told me you’re a sociopath.”
“I bet you needed that term explained to you, didn’t you?”
I ignore his question. “It took me a while, but I see now how you never really cared for me, E. I know that now. I know you used me because I was such an easy target because I loved you so much. I know that I made my friends accessible to your mind games. I know you talked Dad into killing Chrissy.”
Ian laughs and shakes his head like that was the punchline he’d been waiting for. “Oh, Tim Stahl. That waste of human flesh. He was dumber than a box of rocks. Once I found out about his sick pedophiliac fetish, I was able to hold that over his head for years before ruining his life. I still can’t believe that fool killed her. That was amazing.”
I look at him lopsidedly. “Ian, that was our dad.”
“And our dad was a pedophile. I saved you and Chrissy and hundreds of other girls from being defiled. You should be thanking me, Charlotte. You owe me huge. If it weren’t for me, you’d be this jacked-up chick addicted to drugs and alcohol and sex. Like Nikka.”
“I did thank you, Ian! But Chrissy didn’t have to die!” And now I’m crying.
