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The cabin is silent. So are the crickets and trees and leaves. Everything’s either dead or fled. Everything but me.
I sit up, the pain at my stomach surpassing the pain at my shoulder. Both still bleed. My dress is soaked with blood and water. Mostly blood. It’s thicker.
Somehow, I get to my feet, now bare, shoes God knows where. Somehow, these weary legs take me through the open door. And somehow I remain upright in the hall, even after I spy Betz dead in the other room, surrounded by liquid from the knife-pierced waterbed.
Rodney is farther down the hall, also dead. I avoid looking at him when I step over his corpse.
It’s not real, I whisper.None of this is real.
I don’t see Him until I’m all the way into the great room, standing by the fireplace, shivering from cold and blood loss. He’s on all fours next to Amy, like a dog sniffing at a carcass, wondering if it’s worth consuming.
Strange sounds rise from the back of His throat. Tiny whimpers. The dog’s in pain.
Then He notices I’m there, head whipping around to face me. The knife is on the floor beside Him, black with fresh blood. He grabs it, lifts it over His head.
I was leaving, He says, breathing hard.I heard screams. I came back. And saw—
I don’t hear the rest because I’m too busy running. Terror and hurt and rage burn through me, mixing together, bubbling under my skin like a chemical reaction. I keep on running.
Out of the cabin.
Into the woods.
Screaming all the way.
42.
The memories arrive all at once. A zombie horde back from the dead, grasping at me with peeled-skin hands. I try to fight them off but can’t. I’m surrounded, overwhelmed and convulsing as memory after memory returns. All those sounds and images I had kept at bay for so long. They’re all back, lodged into my mind, unshakable as they play over and over in an endless loop.
Amy and her dead doll eyes.
Craig being dragged from the SUV.
Betz and Rodney with their palpable horror and desperation. They saw more than I did. They saw it all.
Yet I saw something they couldn’t. I saw Him. Crawling around Amy, whimpering, grabbing the knife, raising it.
That image is the one that repeats itself most often. There’s something off about it, something I can’t quite comprehend.
Breaking free of Tina’s grip, I rush down the hall, my numb legs propelled only by the insistent tug of memory. My breathing is shallow. My heart clangs in my chest.
I don’t stop until I’m in the great room again. Right back where we started. I stand exactly where I stood a decade ago, staring at the spot where I last saw Him. It’s almost as if He’s still there, frozen in place for a decade. I see the raised knife in His hands. I see His smudged glasses. Behind the lenses, His wide and uncomprehending eyes are full moons of fear.
Of me.
He was afraid ofme.
He thought I was going to hurt him. That I’m the one who had killed the others.
I drop to my knees and gasp, inhaling dusty air, coughing.
“It wasn’t him,” I say between body-rattling coughs. “He didn’t do it.”
Tina swoops toward me, the knife lowered, now forgotten. She kneels in front of me and grips my arms tight. So tight it hurts.
“Are you sure?” Hope colors her words. A trembling, uncertain, pitiable hope. “Tell me you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”