by Jeff Gunhus
John swallows hard. “I had ads out all over the place. Internet mostly. You’d know better than I would.”
“You’re right. I should know,” she says. “But I don’t. Did I call you on the phone? Did we exchange emails about me renting this place?”
“You emailed me,” he says, but he sounds like a kid lying. He’s not good at it.
“Then why don’t I remember that?”
“Put the gun down. Please. It’s me.”
“Why don’t I remember?” The sound of sirens rises up from the soundtrack in her head.
“It’s all right. Just calm down. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Have I?” she says, her voice cracking. “I remember driving here but that’s it. I don’t remember finding this place. Or emailing you. It doesn’t make any sense.” She steps closer, gun shaking in her trembling hands. The sounds of emergency sirens louder now. “What are you doing to me? What’s going on in this place?”
John’s reaction isn’t what she expects. Tears well in his eyes and his lower lip trembles. He slowly walks toward her, arms still open.
“Stop,” she says, holding up the gun. “Stop right there.”
But he doesn’t stop. He gets closer and closer until the barrel of the gun is pressed up against his chest. Now tears track down his cheeks and he makes no move to wipe them away.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.
“Who are you?” she asks again, barely able to get the words out. It feels like she’s under water, unable to breathe. “Tell me what’s happening.”
He moves his hands slowly to her gun and she lets him take it. Once she lets go of it, the sirens fade. She puts a hand on his chest and feels his heart pounding.
Something deep inside her stirs and she moves her body closer to his. He just stands there, his breath shallow. His body trembling against hers.
She leans forward to kiss him and stops with their lips nearly touching.
“We can’t,” he says.
Their eyes connect, search for something and find it. She kisses him. The second she does, the soundtrack in her head clicks off.
He’s hesitant at first, but that doesn’t last. They kiss harder, their mouths craving each other. Bodies pressed together.
She pulls away, takes his hand and grabs a blanket from the couch. She pulls him to the sliding door and walks him outside.
They stand in front of one another, the full moon and a canopy of brilliant stars overhead. They slowly undress each other. Taking their time with each piece of clothing. Caressing. Kissing. Finally, they’re naked, standing only inches apart, their skin glowing in the moonlight.
They stand there, not touching, but so close she can feel his warmth on her skin. John's fingers dance over her body, still not touching, tracing the contours of her breasts, her stomach, the small of her back. Finally, they reach for one another. Fingers caress every inch of bare skin. John's lips brush along her neck. Her shoulder. Tender. Slow. They move together and kiss, the urgency building, moving now as if they are unable to get close enough.
She pushes him backward and he lies down on the blanket, his eyes never leaving hers.
She straddles him and arches her back as she guides him into her. They move slowly at first, careful and delicate. But the need overtakes their caution and she quickens her rhythm. They’re both panting now, groaning. She pulls his hands to her hips and lets him guide her thrusts. She wants him deeper inside of her. She wants all of him. And he’s willing to give it.
Chapter Sixteen
Rachel wakes up and sees light streaming through the bedroom windows. She feels John’s heat in the bed next to her and his hand draped over her shoulder. Carefully, she slides out of bed without disturbing him, pulls on jeans and a sweater and leaves the room.
Underwood greets her, gleaming and well oiled. Keys ready to do her bidding, promising that if pressed in just the right order for just the right period of time, art might be created. For the first time in a long while, there’s no sense of anxiety when she looks at the blank pages stacked next to the typewriter. There’s a different emotion, unexpected in its simplicity and its purity.
Hope.
She sits down at the table, giving Underwood a slight nod in greeting before she plucks a blank sheet of paper from the pile. She feeds it into Underwood’s roller and turns the wheel with confidence, none of the usual uncertainty in her movements today, and lines the paper up. Her fingers come to rest on the keys. They feel cool to the touch but familiar, like a handshake with an old friend.
“Good morning, Underwood,” she whispers. “I’ve missed you.”
Her fingers dance and the keys whip the paper in a blur of motion. Seconds later, a sentence of her thoughts exists on the page, the abstract made solid and real. She doesn’t stop to read it or to think about what those words mean, she just tells her fingers to dance some more. And they do.
The cabin fills with a furious rat-tat-tat, staccato bursts of words that fill one page, then another. And another. Her hands cramp, out of practice, but she ignores it. This is the glorious flood after the dam breaks and she intends to ride it for as long as she can. The only two outside thoughts she allows in are that she looks forward to John waking up to share the moment with her. And that, aside from the sounds of the typewriter, the birdsong filtering in from outside and the story spinning from her head to her fingers, her mind is gloriously silent.
No sirens. No white noise of the fire burning. It’s just her. Whole again.
An entire glorious hour passes before she allows herself to take a break. She stacks the finished pages on the table next to Underwood, stands and stretches, rubbing the knuckles of her hands. She scribbles a note to John on the cover page, Read if you want. She nearly decides to crumple the invitation, but she shrugs and leaves it there. She wants John to read it. Not her best work ever, but it’s who she is and she wants to share that with him.
She opens the sliding door and the sound of singing birds doubles in volume. There’s a slight breeze, just cool enough to make it pleasant. Cotton ball clouds drift overhead, backed by a perfect blue sky. She walks past the blanket on the ground and smiles, thinking for a second that she might go back inside to wake John up and reward herself for her morning writing session with a morning session of a different kind. But she knows that can wait. He’s not going anywhere. Not on this perfect day with her typed pages on her desk and the beautiful silence in her head. This was exactly how things were supposed to be here at the cabin, the perfect place she’d always imagined in her mind.
She walks to the end of the short dock and sits on the edge, her feet hanging to the green-tinged water, and watches the world slowly pass by her. The sound of a door closing catches her attention and she feels her heart beat a little faster, like a schoolgirl whose crush just walked near. But she realizes the sound came from in front of her, not behind. She squints at Granger’s cabin across the way and sees the old man walking toward the water’s edge, binoculars up to his face. She’s feeling mischievous so she waves at him to make sure she has his attention, then flashes him the middle finger, first on one hand, then adding the other for a double air-pumping F-you. The old man lowers his binoculars, turns and goes back to his cabin.
“Yeah, you better run away,” she says.
The sliding door opens behind her and John steps outside. She waves at him, wondering if he saw her flipping off the neighbor. She notices her typed pages in his hand and she immediately regrets her note telling him he could read it. First draft work isn’t meant for human consumption, she knows that. What felt like pure poetry coming out could turn to complete shit within hours of being written. But as he walks up to her, the fear that it hadn’t been any good melts away. John holds the pages tenderly, like they are a sacred thing, his eyes red and swollen as if he’s been crying. He sits next to her on the dock, but says nothing. Finally, it’s too much for her to bear.
“Did you like it?” she asks.
She feels
his body trembling next to her.
“He was beautiful,” he says, the words no more than a whisper. “The boy you wrote about.”
She’s confused by the reaction. She pulls back from him. “Are you all right?”
“Last night,” he says. “That broke the rules. I’m not allowed to stay. But I’ll be back. I promise.”
“Rules? What are you talking about?” The words but I’ll be back mean he’s leaving. She can’t stand that idea. Not when everything is perfect now. She stands up, angry. “Whose rules?”
John gets to his feet and takes her hands. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he says. “I think you’re ready to hear the truth.”
She shakes her head. A day ago she wanted the truth, now she just wants whatever last night was. Whatever this morning was. That was truth enough for her.
She steps away, leaving him alone at the end of the dock. He looks frightened and unsure with the pages she wrote that morning clutched in his hands.
“I have to tell you.”
“No,” she says, backing away. There’s a distant sound of a siren, so real that it can’t be just in her head. There’s a siren and it’s coming her way. It’s coming because someone called for it in panic. It’s rushing toward her in the hope that it’s not too late. But it is too late. Because every time it comes, it’s too late.
“Rachel, you know who I am.” He holds up the pages in his hand. “It’s right here.”
“It’s too late,” she whispers. “It’s too late every time.”
“No, it’s not,” he replies softly. “We can do this. We can leave this place together. All you have to do is—”
She knows what’s going to happen even before the bullet arrives. Some premonition causes her to look over at Granger’s cabin in time to see the flash when the old man fires his rifle. Time turns elastic and stretches out all around her. She hears the sound next and turns back to John. She wants to lunge forward and knock him out of the way, but she can’t move. All she can do is watch with the horrible knowledge of what’s about to happen.
The front of John’s chest explodes in a spray of blood and bone, coating the dock in front of him. He lurches forward, but steadies himself, still standing. He looks at her with pleading eyes, reaches for her, then teeters backward and falls into the water.
She screams and runs to the end of the dock.
Bloody pages of her manuscript float on the water. No sign of John.
She dives in and swims for the bottom. Her eyes are open but she can’t see anything. Frantic, she flails her arms, searching for him. Her lungs start to burn as her oxygen gives out.
She kicks to the surface, sucks in another breath and dives back down to the bottom.
It’s not until her air runs out again that she feels the soft flesh of John’s arm. She grabs it and pulls him toward the surface, choking, fighting her body’s impulse to open her mouth to breathe.
They break the surface and she gasps for air. John slips through her fingers and starts to sink, but she grabs him. Grunting from the effort, she pulls him toward the shore, getting a foothold on the shallow bottom just when she thinks she can’t go any farther. She drags him onto the small beach. His chest and stomach are drenched in blood, but his eyes open and they meet hers.
“I’m… sorry…” he mumbles.
She ignores him, takes his hands and puts them on the exit wound in his chest. “Press tight. Right here. I’m getting the car.”
He says something to her but she’s already running toward her Honda. The keys are in the ignition and she cranks the motor and throws it into drive. She mows over the bushes in her way and pulls the car alongside John’s body. She climbs out and somehow finds the strength to pull him into the backseat of the car. By the time she’s done, slick, hot blood covers her hands and her arms up to her elbows.
She climbs in, puts the Honda back into drive and peels out in the soft ground. John groans as she bumps roughly through the bushes and slides into the turn to take the short road back to the main road.
“Hang in there,” she calls out to the backseat. She adjusts the rearview mirror so that it shows John. His face is white, covered with beads of sweat, eyes rolling around unfocused. “Press on it,” she says. “Press on it hard.”
They hit the highway and her foot jams the accelerator to the floor. The car reacts slowly but speed builds, topping out at ninety-five miles per hour. The trees on either side fly by in a blur. There are no other cars so she drives in the center of the road, devouring the white lines that whip past her so fast they look solid. Ahead the clouds churn in the sky, dark and menacing. She ignores them and drives.
“Hold on. I’m going to get you to a hospital.”
She glances in the mirror. John’s lost consciousness, his head lolling to one side. His hand twitches, the only sign that there’s life left in his body. She presses the accelerator harder.
“Come on. Come on,” she says to the car.
John groans and she looks up into the mirror.
“We’re almost there,” she says. “Just hang on, you hear me? Hang on.”
When she looks back at the road she cries out and slams her foot on the brake. The wheels lock up and the car fishtails wildly, coming to a stop sideways across the road. She leans down in her seat to look out the window at the thing blocking her way, not ready to believe her eyes. Slowly, she opens her door and steps out, craning her neck upward.
Across the center of the road is a sheer mountain wall, hundreds of feet high. The blacktop simply runs into it and disappears as if the mountain had fallen from the sky and landed there. Looking left and right, the rock wall extends as far as she can see in either direction. Above her, the sky roils with black clouds lit by sheets of lightning.
She gets back in her car, breathing hard, a pain in her chest. She tries to put the car in drive but misses and puts it in neutral. When she hits the gas, the car gives a loud high-pitched whine.
“Come on!” she cries.
She jams it into drive, grinding the gear. The tires squeal and she nearly loses control on the soft shoulder next to the road. She corrects it and speeds down the highway. The rock wall doesn’t make any sense, but she can’t worry about that now. She must have missed a turn somewhere because she was going so fast. She flies back down the road, this time keeping her eyes moving, darting back and forth on both sides, only allowing herself quick looks at John.
“Almost there. I promise.”
She’s speeding still, but not as fast as before, not wanting to miss a turn to get her out of the forest and back to civilization. The rain starts, big, heavy drops that splatter against the windshield. She leans against her window and looks up. The storm clouds that were over the mountain are following her. The wind picks up and the trees on either side of the road pitch and twist with sudden violence. The car veers across the road and she has to correct the opposite direction, turning into the gust of wind. The clouds open up and the rain gushes, her wipers barely able to keep up. She scans each side of the road, still able to see the road to know if there’s a turn-off.
But there isn’t one.
She comes to the end of the pavement, the spot where the gravel road to the cabin branches off into the trees, and she stops the car. There is no way out. Not by the road anyway. As the storm howls around her, wind buffeting the car, rain hitting the metal roof like a thousand angry hands, her mind reels at the impossibility of it all.
John groans from the backseat. She hasn’t the luxury to sit there and think. She has to do something.
She hits the gas and takes the road back to the cabin. Branches and leaves fall all around her, littering the road and bouncing off the hood of the car and windshield. She parks and gets out, fending off the debris thrown at her by the storm. When she opens the back door, John half-falls out and she thinks for a second that he’s already dead. But when she grabs his arms she can feel him try to support himself. Together, they struggle the short distance from the car t
o the cabin door, the storm doing its best to knock them off their feet. Once inside, she gets him over to the living room before they fall onto the floor.
“Stop,” he groans. “No more. Let me go.”
She slides behind him so that she’s propped up against the wall and he’s cradled against her chest, her arms wrapped around him. He shudders and she closes her eyes, holding him tight. The lightning strikes are so frequent outside she can see even without a lantern on. In the bursts of light, she sees that the far wall across from her has been ripped apart, drywall and wood everywhere, the edges marked with thick claw marks. In the center of it all is the door. Closed. Light glowing around the edges.
She shakes her head. “The door. I can’t do it. I can’t go through it.”
John manages to grab her hand. “Then you’ll stay here forever.”
She twists to the side so she can see his face. He leans against the wall, taking ragged, short breaths. She blinks back tears. “I want to be with you.”
He smiles but it turns immediately into wincing pain. “Then you have to go,” he says, looking at the door. “Y… your decision… your choice.”
She stands and the cabin shakes with thunder overhead. The wind howls and it’s mixed with the sound of wolves howling. She looks at the sliding glass door and sees black birds, flapping erratically with broken wings and bloodied faces as they ram themselves into the cabin. She turns back to the door and walks toward it. On the edge of her peripheral vision she sees Granger on the deck, standing in the middle of the storm, making no effort to protect himself from its fury. He’s watching her but she doesn’t care. Not anymore.
She reaches out, grasps the handle and opens the door. Light streams out, enveloping her, but she doesn’t squint or shield her eyes. With one last look at John, she gathers all of her courage and steps through.
Chapter Seventeen
Rachel sits in the passenger seat of her car, the spot meant for Underwood and Daniels. She’s been here before so she’s not surprised when she looks at the driver’s seat and sees herself. Not a mirror image, but an actual separate version of herself humming along with the radio, fingers thumping against the steering wheel.
