A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  Water, she thought. She could cry until her eyes bled and it wouldn't do her any good. But—

  Water…and kayaks. Probably they were locked, too. Anyone who put so much effort into security lights would probably lock the boats. It was why they'd been chained there, instead of just left stacked down by the dock.

  Slapping her other hand around the first one on the doorknob, she hauled herself up. Just standing took most of what she could muster, and the bright glare from the yard lights made her head feel like it was being attacked by a bag of rocks.

  But the cabin didn't only have a door. It had windows, and windows were made of glass. Stepping off the deck, she lost her balance and fell hard into a pile of rough, stripped tree bark, wood splinters, and a few old logs too knotty and gnarly to be usable for firewood.

  When her head hit one of the logs, she saw stars. But then she saw something else: Next to them stood a chopping block, a broad stump where the cabin owner propped good logs on end so he could split them, either by swinging an axe down hard if the log wasn't too big, or by driving a splitting wedge and sledgehammer into it.

  On the block lay a splitting wedge, a heavy length of cast iron forged into a blade shape at the business end and a broad, flattish shape at the other, to slam the hammer down onto. The part of her mouth that could still move twisted into a painful smile at the sight of it.

  The thought she'd had earlier about water and boats still flitted around in her head. But she didn't want to look at it too clearly now because of what the idea implied:

  Darkness, cold, and the possibility of drowning. But never mind; all that could come later. Tentatively, she reached up and grasped the metallic solidness of the cast-iron splitting wedge.

  Then she did smile, feeling but not paying any attention to the fresh gout of blood slipping over her lower lip and down her chin as she hefted the simple tool.

  Heavy, but not too heavy. Even in her weakened condition she could probably manage it. Clambering up again, she staggered toward the cabin with the wedge cradled in her hands, holding it out in front of her like an offering.

  Windows, she thought, stumbling onto the white pebbled path that ran along the cabin's side. The cabin was locked but it had windows. Made of—

  Standing on the deck with her feet planted apart she hurled the splitting wedge: closing her eyes, swinging her body around, and remembering to let go at the very last possible instant before the big plate-glass window overlooking the lake exploded.

  Lee, Helen thought as it shattered. She was still shivering hard, her teeth chattering hideously, her breath coming in short, uncontrollable gasps. I've got to stay alive. And I've got to get out of here, find Jody, and tell him about the guys who took Lee.

  He'd know what to do. It was why she'd stuck with him for so long, going on outings with him long after other girls would've quit; because even when she was mad at him, she knew in her bones the one thing that made it all worthwhile:

  He loved her. He really did. If he hadn't, he'd never have taken so much backtalk from her, or taught her to swim, or sent her out alone in the canoe in a windstorm, the black, terrifying waves as solid as buildings looming higher than her head.

  So that nowadays, she wouldn't deliberately go out in a wind like that. But if she got caught in one, at least she wouldn't do something stupid just on account of her panic. Thinking this, she climbed through the cabin's window frame, trying to avoid gashing herself on the glass daggers at the edges of it and mostly succeeding.

  Inside the cabin it was pitch dark, and the next thing she did was fall over a low table. As she pitched forward her hand slammed down onto something hard, solid and plastic-feeling…

  A flashlight. She wrapped her fingers around it. Dear God, thank you, it was a—

  Nothing. Shuddering, she snapped the switch back and forth frantically but nothing happened. Cold, she was so cold, and the batteries in the flashlight were probably cold, too.

  So maybe they'd gone dead. She probably would've sobbed over it, but she felt pretty sure that, as Jody would say, she was running on fumes now. Too hurt, too cold, too scared…

  She was conscious and able to move. But a calm, unkind voice inside her head remarked coolly that she wouldn't be for long. No one was going to help her, and she could still die here, easy as falling off a log.

  "No," she whimpered, crouched with the useless flashlight in her hands, but the sound of her own voice scared her pretty badly, too. It sounded like the girls in the horror movies she'd seen.

  And those girls never made it out alive. "No," she repeated, more strongly this time.

  Because she wasn't one of them…was she? Slowly and very carefully, because it was so dark in here that she could slam her head into something, Helen began to crawl.

  She wasn't like the girls in the scary movies…but they never thought they were either, did they? Not until it was too late. No one ever believed she was one until—

  No. Just shut up, now. Just stop telling that silly stuff to yourself.

  Trembling, she leaned on one arm and waved the other out blindly. Wall…chair…table legs … a wooden post. It was how a lot of these lakeside cabins were built, one big room with posts holding the beams up, all pretty much the same layout.

  At last she came up against the woodstove, its cool, gritty shape unmistakable under her fingers. Rising into a crouch, she found the stove's door and opened it, and felt around inside. And then she really did begin to weep, never mind how much it hurt, because someone had laid a fire in there, she could feel it, the newspapers and kindling and the split-log pieces set crosswise on top. So next time whoever it was visited the cabin, all he had to do was strike a match.

  But she didn't have one. Or a lighter. Sobbing, she let her body fall sideways against the wooden post, lowering her swollen face into one hand, flailing out blindly with the other, because it was too much. It was just…

  Her hand struck the flashlight she'd abandoned. It rolled across the floor, its plastic case striking the post with a sharp smack! The flashlight went on, sending a bright, unwavering beam of pale yellow across the cabin's linoleum floor.

  •••

  Here goes nothing. Entirely against her better judgment, Jake pushed through a stand of poplar and low huckleberry bushes to the driveway, snapped the flashlight on, and began walking.

  "Jody." She said it softly. No response. But that was to be expected; by now he should be far out ahead of her.

  Dark, quiet. It might work, what Pierce had planned. No meeting; instead getting behind the men unseen, disabling one or both of them, getting the girls out. Assuming they were here…

  She still wished Pierce hadn't come at all. Her own idea seemed better and safer. But there wasn't much she could do about it now; making her way through the pitch darkness, she kept the flashlight up high so the men who had Helen and Lee would see it and think Jake was following their instructions.

  Huge trees loomed around her, smelling of rain-soaked pines. Living things, each grown from a single seed long ago…

  Without warning, the memories came once more: her mother's hair, tied back by a velvet ribbon, her dress softly perfumed and silky-feeling, patterned with flowers. The two ruby earrings, red as heart's blood, just out of Jake's childish reach…

  But no. That was muzzle flash, ahead in the trees.

  And the flat pop-pop of a pair of gunshots.

  Helen found the matches in a box by the propane cookstove, in the kitchen area by the pitcher pump. Next to the pump was a jug of store-bought spring water; if you wanted to get sick, Jody always said, just drink water out of a beaver-inhabited lake. It was how you got what the old-timers called beaver fever, which would either kill you or make you wish you were dead.

  She struck one of the stick matches on the side of the wood-stove, stuck it inside. The paper flared up at once, igniting the pale yellow strips of kindling wood and sending flames roaring up the metal flue, which began radiating heat almost immediately.

>   Still shivering, she scuttled back to crouch by the stove, feeling its blazing warmth make her muscles start unclenching a little and her clothes begin drying. On the floor by the stove, a knife lay where somebody had dropped it; examining the thing, she accidentally pressed the button on the grooved ebony handle and the blade sprang out, wickedly long and sharp.

  It glittered at her redly and somehow suggestively by the light of the open stove door, but she had no immediate need for it. Closing the blade she put the knife absently aside and turned her mind to more pressing matters. Drink something hot, she could practically hear Jody saying, so as soon as she was able to pry herself away from the stove's blessed heat, she put a kettle on the propane burner in the kitchen area, and set about figuring out how to light it with another match. Rummaging further, she found a container of tea bags, and some saltines in a tin box.

  I could stay here, she thought as she dipped a saltine into hot tea, then placed a soggy piece of it carefully into her sore mouth. It hurt horribly, but the cracker piece went down.

  No one would blame me. I could stay here until morning, she thought, breaking another cracker into sections.

  Because for one thing, there was really no good way to get out. Walking wouldn't work; she didn't even know which direction the paved road lay in. And although she hadn't tried searching for one yet, she was sure the shed she'd seen outside wasn't big enough for an ATV or other motorized vehicle.

  She put the rest of the second cracker into her mouth and winced as a broiler-hot bolt of anguish erupted from one of her broken teeth. Outside, the yard lights had gone off. So even if those guys were still lurking around out there, no light would alert them. A whiff of wood smoke…well, she wasn't sure they'd figure out the reason behind that. Neither one of them seemed very outdoorsy

  So she was probably safe here. On the other hand…

  On the other hand, those bastards have still got Lee.

  Thinking this, she got up and lit some candles she found in another tin box in the kitchen area, placing them around so she could get a good view of the whole cabin.

  Two dark blue overstuffed chairs and a purple velveteen sofa filled one corner of the pine-paneled room. A square wooden table with a red-checked plastic tablecloth stood in the other corner, four wooden chairs pulled up to it. A bookcase held board games, a pair of binoculars, and old copies of Reader's Digest.

  The curtains were red-checked gingham, except for the drapes in front of the big broken plate glass window, which were made of more dark blue, very heavy and fortunately breeze-proof velveteen material. Helen pulled one drapery panel back a little.

  Dark. Thick, black, impenetrable dark, except for—

  There. Across the lake, a red beacon winked on and off. The radio tower, she realized, the big one on the community college campus.…Suddenly, she knew where she must be. Straight across the lake from here was Roughy Hill Road, which led to Route 1 and civilization.

  Nothing in these woods was really very far from help, Jody said. It was just that you could get all turned around so easily, lost beyond hope of finding yourself when you were really just a few hundred yards—or even less—from a main road.

  But now that she knew the right direction…sorrowfully, she sank into one of the wooden chairs at the table. Now that she did know, she had little excuse for staying. Because those kayaks were there, and unless she missed her guess the key for them was probably on a hook in that shed, with the life jackets.

  That's where Jody would've put them. It was, she realized to her surprise, where she would've decided to store them, too. Much to her amazement now, she'd actually learned a few things while tagging along behind her stepfather, whining and complaining.

  Even more amazing to her was that she seemed to have come to an unwelcome decision. Hurt, scared, lost, cold—but she wasn't any of those things anymore. Or anyway not so much. And the road was right over there, straight out across that lake.

  A mile or so, maybe a little more. She would need warmer clothes.…Moving gingerly around the cabin she found a chest of drawers containing men's sweaters, long underwear, and a few old sweatshirts.

  Pulling them on hurt like hell, but the next thing she knew she was wearing a bunch of them. She found the switchblade she'd put aside and slipped it into a sweater pocket, just in case.

  Next, Eat something more, a voice in her head commanded. And for the first time it wasn't Jody's. It was her own. Do the right thing, the smart thing, she instructed herself, whether she felt like it or not, so that with any luck she could end up at home, warm and safe instead of alone out here bleeding and crying.

  Her own voice…Helen might have spent a little more time wondering at this, but instead located chocolate pieces, fig bars, and a can of syrupy fruit with a pull top, in one of the kitchen cabinets. She didn't feel hungry, but she put them into her mouth one after another nevertheless, mushing them around in there with sips of warm tea.

  After that, she found a switch that kept the yard lights on, bashed the lock off the shed with the splitting wedge—this took a long time, and it hurt—and got the kayaks unlocked. She found herself a life jacket that fit, put it on, and pulled the straps tight around her chest.

  Finally she dragged one of the kayaks to the dock and was about to push it in when the first nauseating wave of dizziness washed over her. Dropping to her knees, she splashed lake water onto her face. But that brought on chills and when she opened her eyes again, her mouth was bleeding onto the dock's pale wood.

  Suddenly the blinking red light on the other side of the lake looked very far away, the sky unimaginably dark and uncaring overhead and the water so cold.

  But she could do it. She could. And she had to. There were houses on the road over there, and the people in them would help her.

  And…Forget about Jody for a minute, she told herself, this new thought more amazing to her than any before. Jody's who you want. But right now, he's not who you need. When she got back to Eastport, she decided very firmly for herself, it was Bob Arnold she needed to find, to tell him who the men who'd taken Lee away were: what they looked like, the kind of car they drove, and…

  And where they were going. The memory popped suddenly into her head as if triggered by the splash of cold lake water. A big cliff hanging way out over the water…

  Bridge to nowhere, the other guy had replied, not caring if she heard. They'd planned for her to be dead. But—

  I know that place, she thought. The scariest, most dangerous spot on the island…That's where they're going. Fresh urgency seized her; grimly she shoved the kayak into the water.

  If she just kept her eyes on the red beacon and paddled, she would be all right. Not comfortable; not for a while, yet. But…

  Eyes on the prize, Jody would've told her. But somehow what Jody would say wasn't important anymore.

  Which, she understood now, was what he had wanted all along. Because I can say it. I can say it myself.

  Grabbing the paddle she swung herself off the dock and into the kayak's seat, stuck the paddle's blade into the water—

  Her head jerked back suddenly, very hard. Such anguish as she had never before experienced nor even imagined shot through her jaw. Something yanked her head around and up.

  A man crouched on the dock. Pale hair, squinty eyes, and a walrus mustache were all she could see of him. He had a battery lantern in one hand and her long braid wrapped around the other hand like a dog's leash.

  "What the hell d'you think you're doing?" he demanded, and Helen tried to answer. She opened her mouth, sucked in a breath, and formed words, ready and eager to speak them. But then…she couldn't help it, she tried, but she really couldn't— her jaw locked up with a horrible, agonizing crunch! and she passed out.

  Afterward, when rough hands had come out of the darkness to seize Jake and snatch the little gun and the flashlight away from her, she understood why Pierce hadn't mentioned the screaming on the phone until he had to do it, to make his point.

  It
was because he couldn't bear to. Her, either; it was what had brought them both out here, she realized as the men hustled her roughly along. To do something about it; anything.

  Anything at all. Stupid, she berated herself bitterly.

  But it was too late for that, too. Night-vision goggles on thick, black rubber straps obscured the men's faces. They passed Pierce's body lying spread-eagled on the driveway, motionless.

  Blood stained the gravel. Maybe he'd seen them heading away from the house and decided to forget about ambushing them, just get in there while he had the chance. It was what she'd have done, too, found Helen and Lee if she could and rescued them.

  If they were there. But the men must've turned and spotted him. Craning her neck, she gazed back as they pushed and pulled her up the steps—pausing to search her pockets again, find her phone, and hurl it into the woods—and into the house.

  "Are you going to let me help him?" she demanded.

  Inside, the place smelled of cooking and cordite. "Or is it going to be murder you both end up getting charged with on top of everything else?"

  No Lee in sight anywhere; no Helen, either. And no Campbell, or anyway not as far as she could tell…Her knees trembled, and the gun smell in here was very worrisome. But people did scary things all the time, she reminded herself; Wade climbing the rope ladder, Ellie on an airplane, Bella marrying Jake's dad.

  Sam not drinking. And if she behaved like a victim, these guys would turn her into one; she could smell the sour, sweaty reek of casual violence coming off them in waves.

  "He'll die. Is that what you want? So far it's been fun and games, a sharp lawyer could bargain it down for you, but—"

  "Shut the freak up." The harsh, slightly nasal Jersey accent came from behind her; she turned.

  The second man was small, compactly built, with dark, curly hair, red lips, and a cruelly amused expression on a face that could've been handsome if it weren't so depraved, as if something inside him were deeply and permanently broken, human-being-wise.