The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  And she saw Jason, who was already on her track, caring too little if he were unprepared for the cold outside, caring much less he was burned, wounded and mistreated. He held the gun and was coming to her as a desperate animal.

  Clarice looked at the horizon again, trying to figure where the road would be. If she were able to escape, she would have to find the road to run away from that place. She knew where, sort of, even when it all was drowned in darkness. Beyond the horizon, beyond the distant mountains, the sky already took to itself some purple and cerulean shades. The break of dawn was not that far and she was counting on it.

  Clarice was one step away from entering the pine woods when a magnificent explosion woke everything and everyone around, releasing uncontrolled torrents of smoke to the skies when the glass that encased and composed the entire ground structure of the cabin blew away, not standing the pressure or the heat any longer, causing the whole framework to crumble down while the flames, like fire snakes, swallowed everything above and around.

  And Clarice ran.

  The snow underneath her boots didn’t make her walk at fast steps any easier and, at times, stones and other debris made her falter and lose balance, something she could easily regain, aware that Jason was reaching her by the second, perhaps already panting behind her shoulders.

  She wouldn’t look back. If she looked back, she would die. The face seemed to be attacked by countless frozen needles, her lips already trembled, but she kept on running, sneaking around the tree trunks and bushes, through the old twigs, prominent rocks and more trunks, more trees, more obstacles.

  She was lost. Everything around looked the same.

  It was extremely dark in there and she had no flashlight or something to help her find herself. The illumination coming from the flames had been left behind and all that remained was the weak moonlight from behind the thick dark clouds above her. It was not a starry summer night, it was not midday.

  She could wait for the morning to come, but she would be dead by then. Jason would reach her. She had to go on…

  “Clarice?” His voice called from somewhere and she came to a stop, nervously looking for the source of the call. Around herself, no signs.

  Clarice kept on moving forward, now cautiously and trying to be silent, the triggered crossbow in her hands.

  “Clarice!” He called again and, at the same time his voice sounded distant, it seemed to surround her, seemed to come from all directions, echoing among the trees. “You cannot beat me in my own habitat, Clarice.”

  She advanced a few more steps, feeling betrayed by nature. The dark trunks covered by moss and ice seemed alive. The movements caused by the strong growling wind scared her, causing Clarice to suspect Jason of being everywhere, even by her side.

  She turned around again and stopped, trying to breathe, to listen.

  Nothing. Just the emptiness of the woods, that common silence of nature, with its moans and blows, the creaking of branches and the ruffling of the wind.

  “Where are you now? Tell me, Clarice.”

  She took a few steps back, suspecting he was coming, right there, in front of her. Slowly she lifted the crossbow with trembling hands, both by the cold and the adrenaline, that annoying heat burning her neck.

  “Clarice… I’m coming…”

  A twig broke. Behind.

  Clarice turned.

  The finger was faster than her eyes and she pulled the trigger, releasing the arrow.

  Tuck.

  The impact, dry, told her she had hit something.

  As soon as her eyes allowed her seeing again, Clarice saw her arrow had sank into Jason’s leg, who still pointed the gun at her.

  “It’s the cold.” He replied and shot.

  The blow echoed and Clarice could swear she heard birds flying when she felt her shoulder burn, the crossbow falling to the ground. Putting the hand on the shoulder, she noticed the bullet hadn’t pierced, but scratched her skin, burning the layers of fabric and her as well.

  She ran and hid behind a trunk, trying to find Jason, trying to watch him. The dim light made her task difficult and she could only hear her own breathing, out of air, while she heard the blood pumping in her ears, followed by her heart beat.

  Jason let the gun fall, in pain. He put his hands around the arrow and in a fast and steady movement, he pulled it out, some drops of his blood painting the frozen floor beneath him, dropping the arrow at the same place. He was unarmed. She was unarmed.

  “I’m here, Clarice.”

  She inhaled deeply and pressed herself harder against the pine trunk, trying to recollect all strength she still had left. The shoulder burned and ached, taking some of her focus away, but she knew what she should do.

  Clarice took one step ahead and put herself ready to jump at him.

  Unfortunately, he was faster and when she came to her senses, they were both rolling on the snow, while Jason tried to immobilize her and Clarice struggled to get away from his grip.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted?” He screamed, trying to put himself on top of her, spreading her legs open with his, trying to hold her by the wrists.

  Clarice yelled at feeling Jason’s grip, her wrists were still wounded and the extreme weather didn’t help. She didn’t want to be under him, she knew if she continued being there, she would soon die.

  And that was the moment Jason dropped her wrists to hold her neck. He would try that same move from before, the most efficient. She felt his cold, rough, severely charred fingers against the smooth skin of her neck. As much as Jason tried to apply enough pressure to choke her, his limbs were too injured to get it done. Clarice kept on struggling, fearing an adrenaline peak could shatter her spine, while Jason tried to apply more and more pressure, sinking her head into the mud and snow, shoving her against the hard-solid ground, ignoring the pain that pinched and itched his fingers.

  And Jason stopped moving. He stopped moving and his eyes widened, saliva coming down his surprised lips and dripping onto Clarice’s face. He blinked a few times and mouthed words, trying to speak, but Clarice shove it deeper inside, forcing a grunt to escape from Jason’s mouth.

  She pushed him aside and he fell, the silver fruit knife stuck in his stomach. As a cat finally finding freedom, Clarice jumped onto her feet again, while Jason tried to pull himself up with the metal still shoved in his belly.

  Jason kneeled, his body trembling, and he stood on his left hand, while the right one tried to keep the weapon of chance still. Then he relied onto his feet and stood up, faltering and falling again.

  She just watched, hands on her knees, trying to resume her breath. Breathing, there, hurt. The nose burned, the roof of her mouth ached, the throat contracted itself due to the excessive cold and the panting. With one eye on the abandoned gun and the other in Jason, Clarice took a few steps aside, moving down and distracting herself only to get the gun.

  When she came up again, Jason was once more heading for her, forcing her to raise the gun and point it at him for a repeated time. This time, Jason knew, the bullet was already on the go. The click proved it to be triggered and all Clarice had to do was to pull the trigger.

  Jason sighed and laughed, a chuckle that become a deeper sigh, followed by one single tear that came down his face.

  “So this is it. You bring the cycle to an end.” He grunted, the right hand holding on to the stolen knife’s handle stuck into his guts.

  Before Clarice could say anything in response, Jason plucked it out from his body, revealing to Clarice she had sank in more than just the blade, but part of the handle as well. As the star huntsman he were, Jason didn’t need that much strength to do so.

  Only then Clarice did see the conditions he was in, and it was deplorable. His face was dark with the soot, as were his charred hands. Besides the dirt from the flames, the cut had already clotted, but it had twisted his face entirely, just like the other hits and blows from Clarice did. And Jason nervously shook. Not only due to the blood loss and the pain, but the co
ld. His coat had been eaten by the flames, as well as his flannel shirt, and now he was surrendered to the effects of the extreme cold, so unprotected. His lips shivered, pale, while his horrendous eyes stared at her.

  He didn’t seem about to attack, so Clarice lowered the gun.

  “Shoot, Clarice.”

  “I said I didn’t come here to kill you.”

  He sighed, the tear streams building small frozen paths through his face.

  “I am already dead. You said yourself…” He inhaled deeply, ignoring the cold and the pain. “I’m dead inside, so kill me.”

  “I’m not like you, Jason, I’m no cold-blooded killer.”

  “Your cycle ends here, Clarice. Wasn’t… Wasn’t it what you wanted?”

  He pressed harder against his stomach, his face already turning paler.

  “Revenge?” He opened a distorted smile, disrupted by the wounds, but that tried to convey scorn. “Justice? Michelle’s happy.”

  “Michelle’s dead.”

  “No, no, no, no, no… She’s here. She’s here, for me.”

  Clarice laughed, although she didn’t mean to, she didn’t even have the spirit for that. The situation also didn’t seem right, after all, but she laughed anyway.

  “She’s not here, Jason. Not for you. I could bring it all to an end right now, end your suffering. Or I could just leave you here, handed over to the cold and to your wounds, increasing your suffering.”

  “I’d die anyway.”

  “That’s what you thought about Michelle, how did that turn out?”

  “What would this represent to you?”

  He moved towards her, and Clarice couldn’t understand if that were intentional or just a fail at keeping himself up.

  “Nothing.”

  “So, kill me.”

  “That day, Michelle was leaving, Jason. We decided, together, we would leave and never come back. A decision we could only take because we had each other. And you ended that dream.”

  “I stole…” He sighed and staggered again, smiling. “Your freedom.”

  “My hopes. My dreams. Indirectly, you killed me, Jason. Our paths became so entangled and so apart at the same time, that I don’t even know how to tell you goodbye.”

  “Kill me.”

  “But in the same way, I don’t know if I’d find pleasure in either killing your or knowing you suffered to your last breath and not only the physical pain of death, but the pain of losing all that once represented anything at all to you. This last option, to be honest, is the closest to what you offered Michelle. To the life you offered me.”

  “Then leave me. Go.”

  “I don’t want to give you the taste of victory to die in here knowing I only left you because you asked me to. And I didn’t come here for revenge, this won’t change my past in any ways, my memories. It won’t change the world. For one Jason and one Nathan that are taken down, thousands of others exist out there, repeating this cycle, destroying other lives, creating and killing other Michelles. You, Jason… you’re just insignificant.”

  “Then… then kill me. Like… like you did your husband, like you did that poor dog, Martha… kill me. Let me go.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You must. I’m your liability. If I survive, what will you be left with?”

  “Your confession. And Marco’s. No longer having the sheriff’s support. You still haven’t understood what I’m trying to show you here, Jason.”

  “I accept it.” He roared with the remaining forces he had. “I accept death. I accept my fate, Clarice. I accept it.”

  “You need to accept what you’ve done.”

  “I do.” And Jason burst into tears and Clarice couldn’t say if they were finally real. “I accept for knowing what this pain is. You destroyed it all, Clarice, just for the pleasure of… you--”

  “You don’t understand the pain, Jason, you couldn’t ever possibly know it, even if I spent all years of my life doing to you what I did. You are incapable of feeling, of suffering, of having a little empathy.”

  “Kill me, Clarice. Kill me.”

  “You don’t deserve death, Jason. But you don’t deserve to live, either. I can’t still know it--”

  “Fucking kill me! I know you want it… this is the end.”

  Jason had already accepted the end, but not Clarice. What did it mean coming to the end of a cycle? The start of another story or the restart of the old one? She had planned it all, from start to finish and she was now ready to conclude it, but something inside her didn’t allow Clarice to put it finally to an end, didn’t allow her to accept that that history, right there, had to end, had to bury itself so that the rest of the world could keep on moving on. And the rest of the world would keep on moving on, the same way the flames would keep on swallowing that house and the same way the smoke, the blows and everything else would tell the neighbors, who would tell the police. Life went on and she only needed a sign, just…

  Jason flashed the knife and moved against her once more. He smiled.

  She smiled back and raised the gun.

  “Goodbye, Jason.”

  And it took her only one shot to bring it all to its end. A straight shot right in the middle of his forehead, a shot that turned Jason off once and for all, his body coldly dropping onto the frozen ground of the woods.

  Clarice dropped the gun and her eyes burned, flooded by the tears the unannouncedly came. She withheld the crying the longest she could, the best way she could, until she burst in sobs, sighs and yells, loud pleads for her life, at last, to go back to normal, for all of that really having meant that it was the end.

  It wasn’t the end, not yet.

  Clarice shouted, raising her head to the skies, yelling at it with all the power she had in her lungs, in her throat, in her chest. She had to let it off, finally, all those emotions.

  And she had to leave.

  For her plan to go right, she had to leave immediately.

  She grabbed the gun from the ground again. Her blood was there, just like Jason’s prints. Hers, however, had been covered by her leather gloves. Holding the Walther by the barrel, Clarice turned to the woods and threw it far away, saying goodbye to that last piece that still connected her to her old life, to Nathan.

  In staggers and shakes, she dragged herself to the crossbow and put her foot down once more, sticking the tip of the boot into the stirrup. She needed to nock it, she needed that shocking presentation. Although she no longer had the cloth from the kitchen or the aiding rope, she now had time, while Jason bled dead behind her, being covered by the snow that suddenly decided to come down again. Perhaps the snowstorm would come back soon, maybe it wouldn’t. She had the only option of waiting.

  Clarice tried it once.

  And she tried it again.

  And one more time.

  The string kept on escaping, hurting her hand, forcing her into giving up. And she almost did, falling onto her own legs, crying. She couldn’t afford crying or suffering, she couldn’t afford feeling all those pains now, she had to act faster on it. Clarice recalled Michelle and all the other girls from Agnes. She recalled herself, months before, in her deep melancholy and hopelessness about living.

  It all worked as fuel for her to get up again and try once more. It would be her last attempt, or she would just give up that idea that no longer seemed interesting.

  She needed that detail. In case her plan didn’t go as well as she had thought and Jason was found earlier, she would have an explanation, a defense. In case he wasn’t found, though, she would be the helpless, beaten girl who was found after running away from a severe attack.

  She tried for a last time.

  Clenching her teeth and yelling as loud as she could to let the pain out too, Clarice pulled and kept on pulling until the string seemed unwilling to move. On a last pull, focusing all she still had, she got it and the crossbow was again ready to shoot.

  Clarice wiped her face from the tears and hair, and looked for the arrow that ha
d hit Jason, the same one he had removed and left at the floor. It was near his body, in a small frozen puddle of blood on the snow. Exhaustion started taking its toll. That had been a long night, and mental exhaustion started to overlap the physical one, ignoring all the pains and wounds, even ignoring the extreme cold that surrounded her.

  Clarice fell sitting down, without even having time to support herself and find support in her feet. Some icy flakes touched her face, gently melting, just like the memories, just like her past, slowly dissolving until none of that would exist anymore, leaving behind only the painful feeling, a vivid trail of a bruise that would be forever there.

  She gave herself a few seconds, shutting her eyes, while breathing the cutting air. Jason was there, dead, and he wouldn’t attack her anymore. She no longer had reasons for fearing him.

  She no longer had reasons to fear anyone.

  She put herself on her feet again, the carbon arrow in hands, grasping the crossbow afterwards. She was armed, all she needed was energy to set the arrow on the shaft and a little more energy for what would come after that. Before leaving the crossbow ready to go, Clarice looked to the skies again. The smoke behind her pointed he location she had come from, the first clear signs on the clouds showed her where she should go to. And she would follow the break of dawn.

  Turning her attention back to the bow, Clarice raised it. The arrow head, pointed to herself, seemed much more aggressive, even more when covered with Jason’s blood. She inhaled deeply; the air came out in a thick fog from her mouth and nostrils. Would it me an exaggeration or a precaution measure? They’d come, they’d find her, she also needed her own backup story. With all she already had, what better option was left than being a victim, as she really was?

  She inhaled and exhaled the cold air again, slowly and deeply, allowing herself to think that move through. Yes, that’s what she would do. She needed to get it right and it would surely hurt, but what hadn’t so far? What would it cost her?

  Clarice neared the arrow head to her left shoulder and, trying to keep it steady despite its weight and her trembling, she placed her thumbs onto the trigger. She filled her lungs one last time and kept the air in there, still unsure, and she finally pulled the trigger.