6 Maple Leaf Hunter

by Maddie Cochere

  He nodded and struggled to find his voice. His voice was strained as he said, “The door opened, and Susan came out. She took a few steps, but it was hard for her, and she had to stop. She had her head down, so I don’t think she saw what happened.”

  “What happened,” Darby whispered.

  “The Sasquatch came around the corner of the cabin and clubbed the man on the back of the head. Susan fell, but it picked her up and threw her over its shoulder like a rag doll.” His look was tortured as he said, “Dad, it took her. She’s gone.”

  Mick covered his face with his hands. Nate burst into tears.

  Chapter Nine

  Pain swirled around me. Sharp, shooting pains wreaked havoc on my ankle. The stitch in my side refused to go away. At the moment, dying was preferable to the pain.

  I opened my eyes. I was in a bedroom in someone’s house. I definitely wasn’t in our room at the lodge. The room was dark, but I could see light under the door.

  Thunder rumbled overhead. Lightning flashed through the window, momentarily casting shadows about the room. My hair and clothes were wet, so I knew I hadn’t been here very long. I attempted to sit up to get off the bed, but pain held me back.

  Darkness closed in again.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Loud voices broke through my brain fog.

  A man and woman were arguing. I couldn’t make out their words, but they were angry with each other. I tried to call out, but my mouth was incredibly dry. I barely heard the sound myself.

  My mind focused on my body. My clothes were drier now, and there was no pain. No pain! The relief was overwhelming, but it was short lived. The minute I moved, it returned to flood my body.

  Tears slipped out, but I wasn’t really crying. I was too weak and tired to cry.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Someone shook my shoulder.

  “Can you wake up, dear?”

  The voice was female and non-threatening.

  I opened my eyes, but only one of them opened fully. Sunlight poured into the room, making it even more difficult to keep the eye open. I blinked both of them several times before they cooperated.

  I turned my head to see a middle-aged woman standing near the bed. She was wearing a dress and a full apron. Her face showed kindness.

  “My name’s Martha,” she said. “I’m here to help.”

  I noticed a first aid kit at the foot of the bed.

  “Where’s my husband?” I asked.

  She smiled warmly. “Let’s get you fixed up a bit, and then we’ll talk about your husband.”

  The woman poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the dresser and handed it to me. The water felt wonderful in my dry mouth, but I could only manage to swallow a few sips.

  I glanced down at my ankle and saw my shoes had been removed, and my right ankle was at least three times its normal size.

  “My ankle is sprained,” I told the woman, “and I think I have appendicitis. I’ve had pain in my side for the past two days, and it’s worse now. I don’t know if it’s inflamed or if it already burst, but I can’t move.”

  She showed signs of being flustered, even fearful. “My son might not be back for a while,” she said. “He snapped a picture of you, and he’s out asking around if anyone knows you.”

  “I’m staying at Emily and Dan Boling’s lodge. Do you know it?” I asked.

  “Of course, I do,” she said. “But I’m afraid that’s the last place my son will look. No one stays there anymore.”

  “Can I use your phone?” I asked. “I can call home collect and have someone get in touch with the lodge.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “We don’t have a telephone. Let’s just make you as comfortable as we can until we find your people for you. We’ll work it out when my son gets back.”

  She set to work wrapping my ankle and foot. She left the room for a few minutes and returned with several bags of frozen vegetables to put around my ankle.

  “How did I get here?” I asked.

  “We thought a tree came down on our chicken coop during the storm,” she said. “My son went out to investigate and found you lying on the ground. We couldn’t imagine how you ended up in our yard.”

  “The Sasquatch,” I said. “It put me there.”

  She patted me on the arm and said, “There’s no such thing as a Sasquatch, dear.”

  I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. I distinctly remember seeing the Sasquatch mere moments before I passed out at the cabin. I even had a fuzzy recollection of it carrying me.

  She put several pills into my hand. My first instinct was to deny them, but something in me hoped they would help with the pain. She hadn’t hurt me yet, so I downed all of them.

  It wasn’t long before I drifted off into a deep sleep.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  More pills. The woman woke me to press more pills into my hand. This was at least the fourth time she had given them to me. Her clothing alarmed me. She was wearing a different dress and apron than I remembered. Had I really been in and out of consciousness for an entire day? Where was help? Where was Mick?

  My pain had diminished greatly, so I assumed some of the pills were definitely for pain. How did she have so many pills in the first place? Fear crept into my mind.

  I popped the pills into my mouth and tucked them here, there, and under my tongue. When she handed the glass of water to me, I pretended to swallow all of them in one big gulp. I settled my head on the pillow and closed my eyes. I was perfectly still as I pretended to go right back to sleep.

  When I heard the door close, I spit all of the pills into my hand and shoved them under the pillow. I took another sip of water from the glass on the nightstand.

  My heart and mind raced. Was I a prisoner here? Had these people kidnapped me? Would I ever see Lizzie or Mick again? My eyes filled with tears.

  The house was quiet, but an occasional noise let me know Martha was moving around. I was careful not to move, and I held back tears for fear I would end up sobbing.

  The bedroom door opened. I did my best to breathe as if I were sleeping. It closed a few moments later, and I heard another door bang shut. There were no more sounds of movement in the house, and I assumed Martha went out. I sat up on the edge of the bed and waited for a bout of dizziness to pass. I desperately needed to find the bathroom, and I wanted to look outside to see if I could determine where I was.

  I stood on my good leg and hopped twice to grab onto of the edge of the dresser. I reached out and opened the door. “Martha,” I called out. “I need help. Where’s your bathroom?”

  It was a silly thing to ask, because I could see it was directly across the hall from me, but I wanted to be certain I was alone in the house.

  Two more hops, and I was in the bathroom. I flipped the light switch. The decor was vaguely familiar, and I assumed Martha had previously brought me in here. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My hair was matted and my face dirty.

  When I finished my business, I washed my hands and used cold water to wipe some of the dirt from my face. The coolness helped to eliminate more of the drugged feeling.

  Using the walls as support, I hopped a few steps at a time until I was in the kitchen. I looked out the window into the backyard and saw a small grassy area surrounded by forest. There weren’t any downed trees, and there was no sign of a chicken coop. Why did she lie about that?

  Standing at the window, I noticed the pain in my side had become a dull ache. The reduced pain gave me hope that the trouble might not be my appendix after all.

  I looked around the room. The counters held more junk than dishes, and I spotted three prescription bottles. The pills were for Ramsey Otis. One was a strong painkiller, and one was an antibiotic. The last bottle was a sedative. No wonder I had been sleeping for so long.

  I picked up the bottle with the painkillers again. The dose was one every twelve hours. She had given me four of them so far. Four! Had I been here for more than forty-eight hours? Why hadn’t anyone come fo
r me?

  Panic set in. I frantically searched the table and countertops for anything that would tell me where I was and what day it was. There was nothing. I hopped into the living room to look for a newspaper, but the room was clean and tidy. I pulled back the curtain and peered out the window to see a long driveway leading down to a dirt road. Across the road was the edge of a heavily wooded area that bordered a farm.

  I had no idea where I was.

  I turned from the window and lost my balance with the first hop. I pitched forward onto the carpet. There was pain, but it wasn’t nearly as sharp as it had been before. I rolled over with the intention of grabbing onto the easy chair to pull myself up, but instead, I screamed when I was suddenly face-to-face with a Sasquatch – stuffed into a shopping bag!

  I pulled myself into a sitting position and stared at the bag. It took a moment before my brain registered the bag held a costume. The Sasquatch wasn’t real.

  I was reminded of the morning in the cove when Darby and I had seen it. That’s why it seemed non aggressive – because it was. But how did the person wearing it make the horrible screaming sound? And if there was a man in the costume, was he the one who saved me from Ralph? If the Sasquatch was a Good Samaritan, why was I being held here like a prisoner? I picked up the shopping bag to set it beside me.

  Before I could pull the costume out and look at it, I cried out with relief. A telephone was on the floor. A pink princess telephone. This was another lie Martha had told. Why wouldn’t she let me use her telephone?

  I lifted the handset. There was no dial tone. I checked the cord in back and saw it was plugged in. On hands and knees, I followed the cord to the other end, where it lay on the floor next to the sofa. It had been unplugged from the wall outlet. I plugged it in and scooted back to lean against the chair again. I let out a small sigh of joy when I heard the dial tone.

  It never occurred to me to try 911. I automatically placed a collect call to Detective Bentley at the Carbide City Police Department. The officer on the other end of the call responded, “I’m sorry. We don’t accept collect calls.” The operator refused to place the call again.

  I sat stunned for a moment. The woman had given my name to the officer. I couldn’t imagine there weren’t standing orders to put any call from me through to the Detective. I never called him unless it was an emergency.

  I struggled to recall his personal cell phone number. It wasn’t a difficult number. The area code and exchange were easy to remember, because they were standard for our area. But what were the last four digits? It was something as simple as one, two, three, four. Why did I have to have a mental block on this now?

  I struggled to pull up a memory. Before Mick had become friends with the detective and put him on speed dial, he entered Detective Bentley’s number on his phone one evening. He muttered under his breath, “Christmas.” That was it! Christmas – twelve twenty-five. One, two, two, five.

  I dialed zero again and placed the collect call. The detective answered his phone and agreed to accept the charges.

  “Susan, I thought you were supposed to be home yesterday. Where are you that you’re calling me collect?”

  Yesterday? Did he say yesterday? If that was true, I had been held captive for longer than I thought. Mick would be worried to death.

  I could barely speak. “Chuck,” I said. The desperation in my voice was evident. “What day is it?”

  “It’s Sunday,” he said, “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “No. No,” I said. “I’m not all right. We’re still in Canada, and I’ve been abducted and drugged. Mick doesn’t know where I am, and neither do I.” I started crying. “Chuck, please, tell me what to do.”

  “Aw, hell, Susan,” he exclaimed. “I thought we were past all this.”

  My tears came harder, but I knew he wasn’t really mad. The concern in his voice was evident over the complaint.

  “Ok,” he said. “First things first. Are you in a safe place?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m in someone’s house. There’s no one here right now, but I haven’t been restrained. I have a sprained ankle and probably appendicitis, so they know I can’t go anywhere.”

  “Have you looked outside?” he asked. “Is there anything that would give you a clue as to your whereabouts?”

  “There are trees,” I said. “Trees, trees, and more trees. And a dirt road. And a farm. That’s it. I could be anywhere in all of Canada for all I know.” My voice bordered on hysterical.

  “Susan,” he said sharply. “Calm down. Are there any signs along the road?”

  I shook my head.

  “Susan? Signs along the road?” he asked again.

  It was the word sign that gave me pause. “No,” I said. “There aren’t any signs along the road, but the farm across the street has a barn with a tobacco advertisement on the side. I didn’t recognize the brand, but it had a black background, and it reminded me of the old Mail Pouch ads on old barns in the states. And the farm borders the edge of the forest. I don’t know what color this house is, but the driveway up to it is kind of long. It’s heavily wooded behind the house, too.”

  “That’s good, Susan,” he said. “That helps. Is the telephone number on the phone you’re using?”

  I checked the phone, hoping to find the number in the center of the dial. “No,” I said. “There’s no number.”

  “Do you know the telephone number where you were staying with Mick?” he asked.

  “They don’t have a phone there,” I said. “They only have email. Even for emergencies.”

  “What’s the name of the place?” he asked.

  I was stumped. My brain locked up again, and I couldn’t remember the name of the lodge. “I don’t remember,” I said with tears at the ready again. “It’s owned by Dan and Emily Boling. There’s a lodge and a campsite. The nearest town is Silver Run.”

  “That’s all I need to know,” he said. “Now listen. I know this is going to be hard, but you have to get out of the house. Look in closets and see if you can spot a pair of crutches. You’d be surprised how many people have a pair in their house somewhere. But crutches or not, you have to leave right away, even if you have to crawl. Stay out of sight, and try to make it over to the barn. I’ll talk with law enforcement up there, and we’ll set our sights on the barn to find you. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try,” I told him. “But it’s a long way.”

  “Susan, most people don’t live very long with their abductors,” he said. “They panic and do things they don’t intend to. You have to leave.”

  His words frightened me. “I will,” I said.

  “One last thing,” he said. “Don’t hang up. Leave the line open. I’m heading out for the station right now, and we’ll see if we can get a trace on the call. It’s a long shot though, and you still have to leave, so go now.”

  I was overwhelmed with relief knowing he would soon be in touch with Mick to let him know I was alive. I said tearfully into the phone, “Thank you, Chuck.”

  I put the phone back on the floor and positioned the shopping bag in front of it just as it was when I found it. I hoped it would be a long time before they figured out the phone was plugged in and open to a police detective.

  I checked the hall closet, but there weren’t any crutches. I hobbled back into the kitchen and opened a narrow door. It was a broom closet, and just as the detective had said, there was a pair of crutches behind mops and an ironing board. One of them was broken, but the other was solid.

  I grabbed the prescription bottles containing the antibiotic and the painkiller and shoved them into my pocket. Before leaving the house, I grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil to write a note. I left it on the table.

  Dear Martha,

  My husband came to pick me up. Thank you for taking such good care of me. I’ll forever be in your debt.

  Susan

  I thought the note might buy me some time before they figured out I had escaped. I used the crutch
to hobble to the back door, and I left the house.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Martha Otis was furious.

  That jerk Richard Rice had played her son for a fool long enough. The man at the cabin was most likely dead, and the girl could die if she didn’t get medical attention for her appendicitis soon.

  Martha wasn’t going to take the fall for her disappearance or her death. And she sure as hell wasn’t going back to jail.

  She slammed her hands against the steering wheel and put more pressure on the gas pedal. What happened to Ramsey? Why didn’t he come back when he said he was going for help? How could he bring the girl to the house and just leave her there like that?

  Their argument had been intense, but, as usual, she gave in, and allowed the girl to stay. He promised he would get help, and she would be gone by morning. That was two days ago.

  Her guilt was unbearable. If she hadn’t been an enabler and wrote the fake prescriptions for his addiction to painkillers five years ago, he would have never been thrown off the team or become a college dropout. Ramsey would be playing professional basketball in the States, and she wouldn’t have spent three years in jail for fraud.

  Now, this mess was turning their lives upside down once again. She should have never gone along with the ridiculous scheme in the first place. Dan and Emily Boling were nice people and didn’t deserve to have this happen to them. Ramsey almost quit playing the part when Walt fell into the ravine. He would have surely died down there, but when her son told her what happened, she made the anonymous call from the payphone in Walt’s store.

  She slammed her hands on the steering wheel again. She was angry enough to kill someone. Everything was spiraling out of control. When she confronted Richard today, and told him he had to come clean to the authorities, he had the audacity to tell her he didn’t know what she was talking about. He denied ever paying Ramsey to wear the Sasquatch costume in the woods and frighten Dan and Emily’s guests. Oh, he was smart. He had his backside covered all the way. There were no payment records, no emails, and no handwritten notes. It had all been verbal, and he had always paid Ramsey the thousand dollars every month in cash. It was a lot of money, and with Ramsey being depressed and not working, she didn’t stop the charade when she was released from jail two years ago.