Page 38 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth

Thirty-Five

Emily

T he attic smells like cedar and must. The rafters are exposed, and some of the floorboards are as well.

Wood paneling covers the walls, and old furniture, boxes, trunks, and bins are scattered apparently haphazardly throughout the space.

There’s a wooden framed standing mirror propped in one corner and an old vanity.

And there’s one round window, the kind you might see in a beach house.

It seems out of place in a farmhouse in the North Carolina mountains.

But I imagine with the peaked roof, it was the best shape the builder could come up with.

“If I have a signal, it’ll be over here.” She rushes to the portal window, and I follow.

The tang of sweat and fear rises from her skin, and I’m sure my own perspiration-slicked body is giving off a similarly metallic scent. I peer over her shoulder, squinting at the gray light streaming in through the window while she bends her head over the flip phone.

“No bars.” She raises her head and squares her shoulders. “You’re taller. Open the window for me.” She points, and I see a crank mechanism. I flip up the lock and turn the crank. The window opens to the side and cold rain trickles into the attic.

Alex stretches her arm out and holds the phone outside, pointing it toward the sky. She tilts the screen back toward the room so that we can see. We both let out a hoot of triumph. There’s a bar. Only one, but it’s there.

“You can call emergency services even if the tower is out, right?”

“As long as we have a signal, yes.”

She pulls her arm back in and hits the button for nine. The signal is so weak that I’m not sure it’ll go through. I close my eyes and pray.

A tremendous crash of glass echoes through the downstairs and the slam of the door shakes the house. I open my eyes and meet hers, my heart thumping. He’s come for us.

“Hurry up. Call,” I urge.

Alex’s finger shakes as she hits the one, then she clicks her tongue. “Lost the signal.”

She rises on her toes and holds the phone out through the open window to try again.

“Lexi, Emily, come out and play,” a male voice calls from below.

Alex starts, and the phone falls from her hand onto the pitched roof.

“No!” Her scream is anguished.

Nausea rises in my throat. My pulse races.

“You want to play hide-and-seek? Ready or not, here I come,” the man bellows.

Alex is leaning out the window, her feet dangling off the floor as she scrabbles for the phone.

“I know that voice,” I murmur to myself.

Alex cranes her head over her shoulder, still half-out the window. “Tristan?”

I shake my head. “No, but I know it. I know I know it. Does it sound familiar to you? Could it be Tate?”

“I don’t think so. But I don’t know. It’s been so long.”

“Whoever he is, he knows us.”

She drops her feet back to the floor and lets her head fall back against the wall, staring wide-eyed at the beams above. “I can’t reach the phone. It’s over.”

Her stricken expression chills me. My throat closes.

This is it. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop for seven years.

And now it has. I slide down the wall and let the kitchen knife slip from my hand.

Then I wrap my arms around my shins and rest my forehead on my knees. There’s no hope left.

A scene plays out in my mind. It’s my scene, the one I’ve had planned for my book. The scene where Maleen and Ruth come into their power. Now expanded, fleshed out by my visceral understanding of what the two women felt.

Maleen rent her hair in despair. “It’s over, Ruth. The food is gone. We have enough water for one more day. We’ve been forgotten, left to die in the windowless tower.”

Ruth raised her head, a defiant gleam in her eye. “You may be content to curl up and die here, but I’m not. I may die, but I’ll die trying.”

Maleen’s laughter was harsh. “Trying to do what?” She gestured around their prison. “ How do you intend to escape this tomb?”

Ruth’s determination faltered under the weight of Maleen’s statement.

And this—more than the lack of food, more than the knowledge that their deaths by starvation would be slow and painful, more than the pain of abandonment—terrified Maleen.

Ruth had always, always , been the strong one. The capable one.

Now, though, Ruth blanched. She sighed and hung her head. “You’re right. It’s over.”

And these words lit within Maleen a hidden flame she didn’t know she possessed. Fire burned low in her belly, and her voice was hot when she grasped Ruth’s shoulders. “No. Look at me.”

Ruth raised her head, tears shining in her eyes. “Your prince has forgotten you. Your father is most likely dead. If anyone remembers we’re here, they no longer care. Nobody’s coming to save us, Maleen.”

Maleen dropped her hands from Ruth’s shoulders and covered her face with her hands, the fire doused.

But Ruth scanned the dim interior of the round room, falling at last on the dull bread knives resting on the empty, dusty platter. She snatched up the utensils and pressed one into her friend’s hand, which hung limply at her side.

“What am I to do with this?” Maleen scoffed, laughing without humor.

“You’re right. Nobody’s coming.”

“So we save ourselves.” Maleen straightened her shoulders, gathered her skirts with her free hand, and knelt before the wall. She ran her fingers over the smooth, cold surface until she felt a seam. Then she took her silver knife and began to dig.

I lift my head and give Alex a fierce look.

“No. We’re not going down like this. We can’t. We haven’t survived all the shit we’ve survived to sit here waiting to die in an attic.”

I grab the knife off the floor, pull myself to my feet, and cross the small attic to stand in front of her. I take her by the shoulders and give her a gentle shake. “There are two of us and only one of him. Come on, Alex. You have a bucket list to work through. I’m pretty sure this isn’t on it.”

Alex holds my gaze for a moment, or maybe an hour. It feels interminable. Then a slow smile spreads across her lips. “Actually, killing the bastard who attacked me is on my bucket list.”

She grabs the poker that she rested against the wall when she tried to get a signal and grabs my free hand. We raise our interlocked hands overhead.

There’s so much to say, but none of it matters. Or maybe I don’t know how to word it. Before I can settle on an appropriate final statement, Alex drops her hand.

“Come on,” she says, suddenly reinvigorated. “Push everything you can against the door.” She points to a large rubber bin. “It’s full of books. It’s heavy. Help me.”

Grunting, we lay down our meager weapons and drag the bin full of books across the floor and against the door.

We pile boxes, a rocking chair, an old set of blinds, snow shoes, everything we can think of, against the door.

As we do, the taunts continue. The voice grows louder, coming closer, and then we hear the footsteps on the attic stairs.

My heart flutters so rapidly it feels like there’s a bird trapped in my chest. Alex picks up the knife and the poker and thrusts them both toward me.

“What are you doing? Keep that.” I try to push the poker back toward her.

“I’m going to go out on the roof.”

“No, you can’t. We’re going to fend him off—together.”

She hesitates, and I read in her expression what she won’t say. She doesn’t think I have the will to do it.

But what she says is, “Three digits, Emily. If I can grab the phone and call 911, we can take him down while help is on the way. Just in case.”

She definitely thinks I’ll freeze or fold in the face of danger. Sadly, she may not be wrong about that—but she is wrong about this plan of hers.

“You’ll fall,” I protest. “The roof is slick.”

“I won’t,” she promises.

“Alex, don’t,” I say.

Alex grips me by the shoulders and stares hard into my face. “I have to.”

“We have a plan.” I gesture with the weapons.

“We have to try everything. Now, come on, I need you to boost me out the window. I’ll be back in a flash and we can kick this guy’s ass.”

I don’t like it, but I do it. I set the poker and knife aside as she gets a running start, grabs the rounded window frame, and hoists herself up so that her head and torso hang out the porthole-shaped window.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Ready,” she calls back. Her voice is thin, ripped away by the wind and rain.

I grab her shoes and push forward. I don’t want to look, but I do. She slides down the roof. She’s moving fast, too fast, but she still manages to grab the phone on her way.

It’s a Pyrrhic victory, though, because she’s still sliding, headed for the eave and, then, I know, the ground.

“No!” I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for her to scream as she plunges over the side of the roof.

There’s no scream. Instead, there’s a loud thump followed by soft cursing.

Against my better judgment I open my eyes to see her lying against the gutter, twisted now from the impact. She looks up and flashes me a triumphant grin just as the pounding on the door starts.

“Knock, knock.”

I say nothing, my head swiveling from the door to the window. Alex starts to crawl back up the roof, the phone firmly in hand.

The pounding continues. “I said, knock, knock.”

I know this voice, I’m sure of it. But I still can’t place it.

Finally, I croak, “Who’s there?”

A high, long shriek fills my ears. I turn back to the window in time to see Alex sliding backward down the roof. She gathers speed, busting through the crumpled gutters, flies over the edge, and drops from view.