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“Yes, youdid,” Marge says, angrier now. An anger so palpable Charlie can feel it in her bones. “Now remember.”
“I can’t.” Charlie’s voice is a desperate rasp. “I can’t remember.”
“Then I’m going to make you.”
Marge lunges for her. Charlie bucks in the chair as Marge draws near. Its legs rattle against the floor, creaking from the strain. But Charlie can’t force herself from the restraints.
Not like this.
Not with Marge upon her now, pliers in hand, the tips still opening and closing.
Charlie closes her eyes and, in a last-ditch move to save herself, thrusts all her weight to the left, trying to topple the chair, even though the effort is futile. Her tooth can just as easily be yanked out while she’s on the floor.
Marge uses one hand to steady the chair. The other shoves the pliers between Charlie’s lips without hesitation. Charlie turns her head, but the tips of the pliers hook the corner of her mouth, like she’s a fish caught on a line. Marge keeps up the pressure, first twisting the pliers then knocking them against Charlie’s teeth.
A scream forms in Charlie’s lungs, filling them. She doesn’t want to scream. She knows it won’t help. Yet here it is anyway, rising in her chest, choking its way up her throat, parting her jaws.
Marge finds the opening and stuffs the pliers through it.
Charlie bites down on them, her teeth grinding against metal.
Marge tugs on the handles.
The pliers open, parting Charlie’s jaw like a car jack.
She tries to scream again, but the pliers are inside her mouth now, snapping open and shut until they close around her tongue.
Instead of a scream, another sound erupts from Charlie’s throat—a strange, grotesque grunt that continues as the ridgedinsides of the pliers dig into her tongue and Marge keeps pulling, pulling, pulling. So hard Charlie fears she’ll rip her tongue right out. The pain it creates causes more white spots, and Charlie knows their appearance means she’s going to pass out again. Not from chloroform but from pain.
The pliers slip from her tongue with an agonizing rasp and latch onto a molar at the back of Charlie’s mouth. Marge yanks, and Charlie lets out another brutal grunt that’s quickly drowned out by the pliers scraping tooth enamel. A horrible sound that echoes against the inside of her skull.
But then another noise comes.
Distant.
Glass shattering from somewhere else in the lodge.
Marge hears it, too, for the pliers release her tooth and go slack inside Charlie’s mouth.
There’s more noise now. A door opening somewhere and a crunch of glass.
Marge looks behind them. She drops the pliers to the floor and removes the pistol from her apron pocket. Then, without speaking, she stands, grabs one of the lanterns, and leaves to find the source of the noise.
Charlie—in pain, bound to the chair, white spots still swirling across her vision—can only watch as Marge vanishes down one of the lodge’s two wings. The glow of the lantern she carries forms a bubble of light around her. It isn’t until both Marge and the brightness turn a corner and disappear that Charlie sees someone else.
A figure emerging from the darkness in the opposite direction.
Josh.
Seeing him prompts a dozen disparate thoughts in Charlie’s head. Astonishment that he’s there. Relief that he’s alive. Worry about what he might do to her in retaliation for stabbing him.
Half of his sweatshirt is crusted with blood. The other half looks damp with sweat. Josh moves toward her, the stab wound makingonly half his body work properly. The other half drags behind him. Still, when his half-good, half-limping form draws near, Charlie flinches.
After what she did to him, she expects the worst.
But all Josh does is scan the lobby before whispering, “Where is she?”
Charlie jerks her head toward the wing Marge disappeared down.