The Affliction

by Wendy E. Marsh

  A force started to urge me toward whatever waited in Sundown as I changed into the jean shorts and T-shirt I had packed and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. Although I should have been scared, I was more excited than anything. I felt oddly invincible, as though the unknown force had sent me out on a mission, but I couldn’t decipher exactly what compelled me. I guessed some sort of superhero complex possessed me.

  Angela was not anywhere in sight when I returned downstairs. I didn’t have time to play her games, although I did feel guilty for shouting at her, for using her just like she said I was. “Bye, mom!” I yelled, surprising even myself as I shut the door behind me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tried to call her that, but just then the goodbye felt more like a final farewell than it ever had.

  The fuel gauge in my old Honda Civic told me I ran on less than a quarter of a tank of gas. That was a level my very used car often visited since I generally waited to fill up until I ran the chance of not making it to a gas station. I knew I would have to spend the cash at some point, but somehow doing it less often made it seem like I saved money.

  Although I led a relatively simple lifestyle, my minimum wage job at the local convenience store didn’t exactly keep money in my possession for long. And of course, I was a broke college student, enrolled for another semester at the Oil County Community College. Luckily it was only a thirty-five-mile drive to Sundown, and I would successfully make the round-trip without the necessity to stop at a gas station.

  I took the north road out of town, drove by my apartment building, and headed out toward the lake. Although I remained more conscious of my driving than I had on the short trip to Angela’s, I barely noticed the green scenery flashing past as I concocted possible scenarios for what I would find at the end of my path.

  I made the drive in about fifty minutes, which was fairly average for the trip. Although the road to the backwoods retreat wound through the hills, I had traveled it so often in my childhood and teenage years that I had no trouble navigating the course at higher speeds.

  I had started out pushing the needle of the speedometer as far as I could while maintaining control around the twists and curves, which should have delivered me to my destination in about thirty-five minutes. However, after I passed through the little burgh of Cherry Springs, some of the fear that I should have felt earlier started to seep in through the chinks in my armor and caused the needle to sink below the speed limit mark.

  What would I find there? Suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. An intense burst of intuition hit me and left me with the impression that whatever lay ahead would change my life indefinitely.

  I started to feel jittery as I passed through Bull Run, five minutes away from Sundown, but I increased my speed as though I were anxious to meet some gruesome fate. I bypassed the village since my destination remained a couple of minutes away on the other side of the lake, where Cara’s family and I spent much of our summers at their remote camp. I turned down a nameless dirt road that gave way to five little cottages hidden in the woods.

  The sun was high in the cerulean canopy of the earth and chartreuse light filtered through the leaves of the tall maple and beech trees flanking the sides of the narrow road. The old air conditioning unit sent barely cool air swirling around me, and it could do nothing to thwart the penetrating UV rays. My face began to feel oily and the skin beneath my clothes sticky. My legs stuck together and made a squelching sound when I pulled them apart, and my hands were slippery on the steering wheel.

  I turned off the music I had been listening to at near window-shattering decibels, and swung onto the familiar extensive driveway, leaving my disconcerted heartbeat the only accompaniment to the rumble of my poor engine. As I rolled up to the derelict cabin I realized I had pulled an ignorant move only fit for the idiotic characters in horror movies; you know, the ones we scream at from our couch, advising them not to pick up the phone or go into that creepy dark house alone.

  The muffler I was supposed to get fixed a month before was so loud I may as well have brought a megaphone to announce my arrival. I hadn’t even thought to bring along my fire poker, and uncharacteristic of a female’s purse, mine did not contain mace spray. The most deadly object I possessed was possibly my out of season snow scraper…How intimidating.

  I had a strong inclination to retreat to the main road, back to safety, but Cara’s agonized face leaped into my thoughts, and my superhero complex returned. Besides, I knew I was already too deep in the quicksand to crawl away.

  I parked directly in front of the cabin, which for the first time radiated an essence of unquenchable fear in its foreboding serenity.

  The sun’s rays refracted off the large paneled glass windows, spawning eerie shadows like ephemeral phantoms. The trickling of a hillside spring down to the lake behind the camp played as the soundtrack for this peculiar picture, and as I stepped boldly out of my car, an insipid breeze barely rustled a single hair in its purposeless path. The complete scene possessed an undeniable dream-like quality, everything a steamy haze of preternaturalness.

  Then the sound of shattering glass punctured my orb of fantasy and pulled me back through to the dimension of reality, which is harsher than any realm of fiction.

  Chapter 5

  Without hesitation I ran to the front door, not bothering to try the knob, and kicked it open with brute force I hadn’t used in years. There were four rooms in the one-story cottage: an open living room, two bedrooms, and a kitchen.

  I didn’t have to search for long because a shocking scene met my eyes as soon as the door caved away into the living room. I felt pain shooting through my veins like a drug, inducing me into a sorrowful stupor. I couldn’t move or stop staring at the miserable scene, with Cara spread-eagle on the floor. I could not catch a glimpse of life in her frail body. It looked as though all the suffering she felt inside had escaped and caused visible pain to her body. The night before, I saw her distress entrapped inside her eyes; but now, her body lay broken and bruised.

  Her left leg was unmistakably fractured, thrown out carelessly at a repulsive angle, as was her left arm, although not in such a revolting fashion. There were a few open, blood crusted lacerations on her face, which was swollen and red, a hint of sub dermal bruising apparent there. Ligature marks imprinted the skin of her neck, and as I beheld the crude prints, I almost got sick despite the fact that I have a strong stomach. Then I took a step closer and noticed that someone had placed a metal sign in her right hand. It looked like the perpetrator had snatched the sign from the small market in Sundown and it read “Live Bait.”

  I took a faltering step backward and looked around the cabin to make sure the probable serial killer wasn’t still lurking around. The backdoor was ajar, a couple of window panes broken out; was this the glass I had heard smashing when I got out of my car? Maybe the maniac had fled when he realized someone was about to intrude on his carnage.

  The sunlight shining through the grimy windows mocked me now, so bright as though everything was all right when it so unmistakably was not. It felt wrong like the weather should have played along to my story. It should have stormed or been dark at least, not light and warm. Was the sun then, too, ignoring the struggles of this earth? How could it still shine while my soul sank into unfathomable darkness?

  I could have sworn I saw Cara’s right hand twitch out of the corner of my eye, but as I gave myself whiplash turning to look at it, her hand lay still. And then I felt someone rush in the door behind me, and I turned to see Adam, eyes trained on Cara’s body, face stricken with agony. “He didn’t do this,” my mind said, but I retreated from him anyway.

  He ignored me as he ran to Cara and buried his face in her hair. He held onto her as he looked up at me through his dark, tear filled eyes and I almost staggered backward with the intensity of the emotion flowing from them. I had never seen a man so damaged as Adam was in that moment.

  If I had thought before then that I suffered from a broken heart, I had been wron
g. Here, in the middle of such tragedy, I found what had always been missing for me. In the distressed shadows of Adam’s haunted face, I witnessed true love, and it sent my head whirling.

  He propped her up against his chest and hugged her close to him. I didn’t know what to think, and Adam read my expression. “She’s not dead,” he said, and he pulled her even closer into his arms. I gaped at him until the words made sense.

  “Well, then we have to get her to a hospital!” I half yelled. He just shook his head and looked like he was trying to figure out what to say.

  “Aubrie, forgive me.” I second guessed my intuition and wondered if he had killed Cara. I didn’t know their circumstances there. He had left her. I took a step towards the door.

  “I asked her to meet me here, slipped a note in her purse. I had no idea they would find her at your apartment.” My mind skipped back to several hours before, when I had found the note on my floor that I assumed Cara had written for me. Adam scrawled it so untidily I hadn’t been able to distinguish his handwriting from hers. My jaw unclenched, and I blurted out a stream of questions, interrupting him before he could continue.

  “They? Who is they, Adam? And what are you doing here now, why didn’t you help her? You left her! Do you know what you’ve done to her, how much she’s been suffering?”

  Typical of Adam, he just sat there calm as ever like I didn’t just chew him out, and I lost steam as I ranted on, my voice softened and slowed as I watched his reaction. His face fell, a grim expression spreading over his features, and I immediately regretted what I had said. He evidently did know what he had done to her and felt extreme remorse for it, but I couldn’t comprehend why he left in the first place.

  As I just witnessed, the love he felt for her was nothing I had ever known. When I told Michael I loved him for the last time, it truly was with sincerity, authentic to the idea of love I held at the time, but that perception was nothing compared to what I saw in Adam. What would make him leave someone he felt so deeply for that it utterly crushed him to see her hurt?

  Adam opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but didn’t, either because he was afraid I would assault him with truthful accusations again, or because he couldn’t find the right words. He stared at Cara’s face when he spoke again, and he began to shake violently, as though trying to keep himself from exploding. I heard this same quality in his quivering, but tightly controlled voice.

  “I…didn’t…want this,” he whispered, voice cracking at the end. “I was trying…trying to help her.” He must have sensed I couldn’t comprehend that considering the circumstances because he kept talking, his voice stronger, the quiver disappearing.

  “I knew she would be in danger if I stayed with her. I left for her safety…had to leave without giving her any details or explanations. She apparently thought I was leaving her, didn’t love her, and it killed me, but it was better than her knowing the truth.”

  “What is the truth?” I managed to spit out. He looked at me with a face filled with fury. He lowered Cara onto the floor and started to stand up.

  “I was going to explain to her what’s going on. I couldn’t stand being away from her anymore, but they must have known what I was about to do because they came and took her from your apartment and brought her here. She must have known more than I thought or they wouldn’t have bothered so soon.” He was standing now.

  “Yeah, I think she did know, Adam. I saw it in her eyes last night; she knew who was breaking into my apartment.”

  His gray eyes flashed, hands balling into fists, and he kicked the metal sign on the floor. “Live Bait,” he mumbled and started towards the door. “Get her to a hospital.”

  “Hey, where are you going?” I shouted anxiously, but he didn’t stop to answer me, just broke into a run as he reached the doorway. I reflexively jumped up and ran after him, but he was already gone.

  Chapter 6

  I stood outside my car and berated myself for not thinking to charge my phone at my mom’s house. I desperately needed to call 911, so I could get Cara out of there, and the black screen haunted me as tears welled in my eyes. What if she didn’t make it and it was my fault I couldn’t save her?

  It would have been quicker for me to drive her to the hospital, but every time I thought about transporting her there myself, my head seemed to deplete itself of blood, threatening to drop me to the ground in a black-out. Something told me not to go there and I never ignored that something.

  I stood outside the cabin, so badly wanting to throw my phone on the ground and pulverize it to little pieces. Instead, I opened my front door, threw my phone into the console, and cranked the driver’s seat forward. Damn my two door coupe. A spacious and easily accessible back seat would be appreciated right now. I ran back into the cabin, fearful for what I was about to do. I was afraid of moving Cara’s body and that I might hurt her more, but I had no choice.

  Just to check, I bent down and placed my ear over her chest. Lub dup, Lub dup, Lub dup, her heart pounded out.

  I could feel her breathing, too, which hadn’t been visible before. I sat up, and my breath caught as I realized the fingerprints on her neck had faded and the scratches on her face looked at least a day old. I had to be imagining things, I thought.

  I carefully scooped her up in my arms, her larger build no problem even for my much shorter and slighter frame. I usually avoided using my strength, but it felt empowering to exert it after years of oppression. I had been worried my muscles had atrophied, but I managed Cara’s dead weight with ease, transferred her from the floor to the backseat efficiently. I strapped myself in and nervously locked the doors, igniting my grumbling engine to life.

  As I looped around and headed back down the driveway, I had an ominous feeling that someone was watching me, but I saw no one even though for once I used my mirrors. I accelerated considerably, both out of an instinctual fear that someone was chasing the car and the desire to deliver Cara to safety as soon as possible. I skidded around the corner of the driveway back onto the dirt path toward Sundown, where I could stop and make the necessary call. I needed to deliver Cara to the nearest hospital before she could turn into the lifeless cadaver I had believed her to be not so long before.

  Even though I drove with more urgency even than I had been coming from Aurora, the short jaunt into Sundown seemed to take particularly long, like some dark wizard had elongated the road between, wickedly cackling as he watched me struggle to rush my fading friend to safety. I frequently checked the backseat to see how Cara faired, which inevitably frustrated me further when I couldn’t see her breathing or any other sign of life. I couldn’t push away the fear that I would find her dead when I arrived.

  Finally, I rushed down the main lane into the lake-side village and didn’t even bother to tap my brakes at the stop signs. I skidded to a halt in a parking space of the Whitetail Inn’s sandy parking lot next to a bright orange Harley Davidson. After I checked that my fear was unfounded and Cara was in fact still breathing, I hesitated to leave her for even the few minutes it would take me to run inside the bar and call emergency services, afraid that something would happen to her in my short absence.

  I wasn’t entirely sure of what I was dealing with, but I had gathered enough from what Adam had said and the tone of voice he said it in, that I was suddenly in some deep shit. I glanced at Cara’s immobile body again, bit my lower lip, and decided there was no other way.

  I tried to inconspicuously lock the door behind me, although I had already drawn some attention from onlookers in a nearby picnic area with my reckless driving. I put my head down, speed walked into the Whitetail and darted towards the back wall where I knew the phone hung.

  My hands trembled as I picked up the receiver and dialed the numbers. When I told the irritatingly calm responder on the other end of the line my situation and location, I could barely spit the words out coherently.

  After I eventually managed to convey my emergency accurately, I slapped the phone back on the hook a
nd shook from head to toe. I could feel people as they stared at me even in the smoky darkness and suspected I would find everyone’s eyes on me when I turned around. I supposed I did cause quite a scene. This was probably the most excitement they’d had since the nutter at the trailer park stabbed his neighbor for sleeping with his wife.

  A large hand landed suddenly on my shoulder, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I let out a gasp and spun around as I backed into the wall with my hands up in defense. I panted as I observed the bearded, middle-aged man who stared at me cautiously with hands also raised, but in a gesture of peace.

  “Aubrie, it’s okay, what’s wrong?” I immediately relaxed. This man I recognized. It was Earl, the bar owner, and I had known him for quite some time. He was a close friend of Cara’s family.

  “Earl! You scared me…you have to help! It’s Cara; she’s in trouble!” I tried to say under my breath.

  His face turned to stone as he took in my words. “She ain’t hurt, is she?” he demanded. A little bit of redneck drawl and a pinch of leftover Pittsburg flair, from where he originally hailed, flavored Earl’s familiar speech. I just motioned for him to follow me and paced quickly out the doors, mildly aware of the stares I received, but at the moment I didn’t care about what anyone thought.

  I felt immense relief when I noticed that my car windows were still intact and Cara rested, alive and untouched, in the backseat of my car. I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me, and I realized it was Earl as he glimpsed her unconscious figure. I turned to him and upon seeing the horror and confusion on his face, I felt mortified that he had to see her in this condition.

  “What in the hell happened?” he asked. I wasn’t altogether sure of how to answer that. I didn’t know, in detail, what happened to her. I could tell him what I did know, but I had a theory that it may involve a Mafia or gang, the way Adam talked. I resolved to tell him nothing. I didn’t want to put him in danger, too.