Ripples (4 page)

Amy

I bolt up—crawl backwards. Bryce’s bony hands all over me. I look around … he’s not here.

Don’t know how long I’ve been out. My stomach knots up again. If Bryce sees me sitting here by the side of the road, he’ll be on the warpath. I get up … follow a narrow trail down to the cove … my favorite place for skipping stones. Go there because it can’t be seen from the shack … lots of smooth, flat stones.

At the cove, I splash water on my face, dry off with my shirt. My knee’s stopped hurting. My first stone toss is a dud. Plops straight to the bottom. The next one, three skips. Third try’s a charm—eight skips. I pump my fists and spin around. Have to bite down on my lip to keep from squealing. Eight rings of tiny waves head out across the lake. Best ever.

Uh oh. The man’s standing on his shiny dock, staring through binoculars—straight at me. I drop to the ground … crawl for cover. Please don’t make a ruckus. Bryce’ll hear.

Haven’t gone far … I freeze. Can’t breathe. Snake—black and tan, wagging its tongue. The deadly kind Bryce always warns about. Coiled on the granite slab.

Wanna run. Can’t move. Can’t get to the water. The snake rattles its tail faster, louder. Jerks its head from side to side … tongue licking the air. Bryce says snakes can taste fear. Will bite if you’re afraid. Hope its bite won’t hurt as much as Bryce’s.

Tires crunch out on the gravel road. Oh my god! Tess is already back. Bryce is gonna kill me for sure. She skids to a stop. My heart pounding ... can feel it in my ears. How does she know I’m here? Please … go away … don’t spook the snake … it’ll bite.

She’s crashing through brush. Start to close my eyes … can’t. Brace for snake’s bite. It drops its head … unwinds … it’s running away.

I leap up, spin around, scramble for the water. Turn, run hard along the shore ... stumble into the brush ... catch my breath ... wait.

Jacob

There she is, skipping rocks. I’d bet good money it’s the same girl. I grab my 20X binoculars.

Damn. It is her—same girl I almost ran over with my Jeep. Why’d she lie, and why is she down on the ground crawling? And what the hell is that? A small brown pile on a sun-bleached granite slab. God, is that a rattler? Shit, it is. I jump in the Jeep. Probably won’t get there before the snake strikes, but I
will
keep her from dying. I reach under the driver’s seat for the first aid kit. It’s there. I punch the gas hard after turning out of my drive onto the gravel road.

Just around a bend I spot a game trail leading to the water. Slam on the brakes. I grab a shovel from back of the Jeep and storm through the brush, hoping to God I’m not too late and I’m at the right spot. With those binoculars, I’m sure what I saw was a Northern Pacific Rattler coiled up and ready to strike. Their venom can kill you.

At the water, I stop dead, looking in every direction. No girl. No snake. But there’s the granite slab—this has to be the place. I examine the spot where the snake had been.

Celine’s image pops into my head. She’s on the ground cowering. Now she’s gone. A pain stabs at the base of my skull and arcs to the top of my head. I drop the shovel and tumble to my knees. Sweat oozes from every pore. It’s happening again. I groan—please, no …. Everything goes black.

Amy

I peek through the bushes … duck back down. Too quiet. Makes no sense. Tess should be hollering her head off. She came crashing through the brush. Where’d she go? Maybe the road? That’s it. She snuck out to the road to wait for me. There’s gotta be a way out of this.

I know. I’ll crawl along the shore without making much noise. Cut back to the road without being seen. Walk up to the shack just like I was supposed to. If Tess asks how come she didn’t see me on the highway, I’ll say … must’ve been peeing in the woods when she came past.

There’s a low moan. I stop and listen. It’s coming from the cove. I crouch down. God, did the rattler get her? Wait … that’s not Tess. Moaning’s too low. Not Bryce either. He makes a whistling sound when he snores. I sneak up closer, keeping my head down. After a couple minutes, the moans stop. Tiny hairs on my arms and neck stand up. It’s a trap.

I peek over the brush. A man’s lying on his side in the cove. Can’t see the face, but he’s bigger than Bryce. And his clothes … same as the man in the shiny red car.

It’s the neighbor. There’s a shovel on the ground next to him. Did Bryce sneak down here and knock him out? Is he still around? No, wait. That’s not Bryce’s old shovel. Gotta be the man’s. Bryce wouldn’t hide. He’d stomp around, cussing. Yelling.

I keep low … on hands and knees … creep through the brush to the man’s side. Study him. His chest rises and falls, but only a little. He’s breathing. Have to leave him here. Too heavy to carry. He’ll wake up and be all right—I hope.

I start to pick up the shovel. No. He might need it to help him get back to his car.

Oh … the car. Must’ve been him who skidded to a stop on the gravel road … thought it was Tess. It wasn’t. His car is out there in plain sight. If Tess sees it when she gets back, she’ll snitch, and that’s trouble. Bryce can’t know the neighbor’s been this close.

I sneak out to the road … the motor’s running. Gotta get the car back to his cabin. Peek around … start to open the driver’s door … there’s a noise in the trees. I hold my breath, spin around, scan the woods.

Is it Bryce?

A gust rustles some branches. I let out my breath. Not Bryce.

I pull open the door and jump in. Gotta think this over. Tess moves this stick thing to get going. I pull the stick all the way back. Whoa, the car jerks. Hold my breath and slide my right foot onto a long pedal. Press down easy. The car starts rolling. Grip the wheel real tight, turn it hard to the left, and press down easy with my right foot. My shoulders are all knotted up, knuckles ache.

When I park in front of the man’s cabin, the knots in my shoulders go away. I stare at the picture of the little girl. It’s sitting in a tray … begs me to pick it up. I hold it … touch her cheek with my finger. I know that face. What would it be like to be happy like her? Tears trickle down my cheeks.

I wipe my eyes and put the picture back in the tray … climb out of the car and close the door. After taking a deep breath, I gawk at the cabin. A voice in my head says, “Go inside.” Another screams, “Don’t go.” I cover my ears ’til they go away. The last voice says “Go.”

I walk onto the deck and peek through a big window. That bed is huge, and this room could swallow up Bryce’s whole shack. Check out all his stuff. Only kings in fairytales have that much. ’Course, I’ve never seen a real fairytale king. Scrunch up my nose. No lanterns. He must have electricity like they do in town.

I’m about to turn and head back to the shack … hear tires kicking up rocks out on the road. Must be Tess driving like a bat out of hell. I take off into the woods … follow the trail along the lake. Gotta beat her back. Run hard as I know how.

When I burst into the shack … can barely catch my breath … Tess is trembling … telling Bryce about getting stuck behind the wreck. Talks about cops … she thought she’d get pulled over … expired plates. No license … no registration … they’d have taken her to jail.

He yells, “I send you out on a simple errand and you make a mess of things. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Tess slaps her forehead. “How was I to know some eighteen-wheeler was going to turn his truck over and block the highway?”

Bryce turns to me. “And what’s with you? Where you been all this time?”

If he catches me lying, no telling what he’ll do—I lie anyway … wanna keep him from going after the neighbor. Cringe as I say Tess probably didn’t see me out on the highway ’cause I was peeing in the woods.

He yells, “You’re a damned liar.”

I hunch up. Whimper. Wish I was a tiny flea … could hide anywhere. Not an ant. Ants get stomped on.

“Damn it!” he shouts. “I’ve got half a mind to ….”

I blurt out, “A woman made me get in her car … thought something bad was going to happen to me if I was out on the highway all alone. She said, ‘If you don’t get in I’ll call the police.’ I couldn’t say no. Got in her car. Made her drop me at the turnoff before the lake. Didn’t want her to come all the way here. After that … hung out in the woods.”

Bryce crushes an empty beer can with one hand. Takes off his belt … yanks down my pants … pulls them all the way off … shoves me across a wooden chair … face first … ass up. I peek. He whips the belt around over his head … eyes black … cold. I gulp … the buckle dangling at the loose end. My body tenses up. I think, candy wrappers … crinkly, red candy wrappers … I love cinnamon candy.

When he’s done thrashing me, I curl up on the chair … gasp for breath … gawk at my naked ass. My heart stops. Candy wrappers! How did those candy wrappers get all over me? I reach for one—bright red … crinkly. But it’s not a candy wrapper … it’s damp. My leg stings when I touch it.

Bryce isn’t done with me. He chases me up the ladder.

Wanna kick him when he yells, “Climb faster.” But don’t. Would just make him madder. Wish he’d fall off … hit his head on the floor … die.

Up in the loft he pushes me down on the mattress. Lays on top of me. Presses his face against my neck. Wanna puke.

He says, “Better drive my seed all the way in.”

I whimper. Count ripples … candy wrappers … nothing works.

He shoves it in me. Yanks it back out. Pounds it in again .... again … again. Grunting and wheezing. He whispers, “Yeah, cry like a baby. That’s right. A baby’s what you need to keep you where you belong.” He gets up and sneers. “Starting tonight, I’m doubling your chores. Every inch of this place will be spotless before you go to sleep. And if you’re not finished before daylight, you can just skip sleeping until you learn to work faster.”

I curl into a ball … his slime dribbles out.

He stumbles down the ladder … leaves me on the mattress, sobbing. Soon as his feet hit the floor below, he starts chewing out Tess. “You shouldn’t have let her go off on her own. Next, she’ll get the idea she’s free to wander off anywhere she pleases.”

Poke at the places where Bryce’s buckle made welts on my leg. They burn … ooze tiny beads of blood. The marks are bigger than the swelling he usually leaves behind. I crawl to the knothole in the wall … my candy wrappers. Pull one out and look through it at the sores on my leg. Smooth the wrapper over the worst of them.

When he finishes yelling at Tess, he stomps over to the ladder … shrieks, “Get your sorry ass down here and get to work. Now.”

I get up … hide the blood-stained candy wrapper. What doesn’t ache or sting is sore in other ways. I stumble to the ladder and hurry down. As my foot touches the floor below I see Tess, with her shirt unbuttoned, leading Bryce to their room. He looks back at me like he’s king of the world. Points to the stove. “You can start by shining that thing so good I can shave with it.”

Don’t know how Tess stands his touching … even likes him doing it.

Jacob

How the hell did I get here … on the wrong side of the lake, staring up at the stars? Last thing I remember, I stopped at a bad accident to see if anyone needed help. I check my arms, legs, ribs. Nothing seems broken. Crank my neck. Just sore and stiff from lying on the hard ground. There is a tender spot on top of my head … when I touch it, a sharp pain shoots through my skull … don’t feel any blood. Search for my cell phone; it’s nowhere around.

Good thing there’s a decent moon out. Makes walking back to the cabin along the gravel road a bit easier. Everything seems fine, but that changes when I turn down my drive. The Jeep. Why would I have parked like that? I open the driver’s door, and my cell phone’s in plain sight. I pick it up and punch the first name on my favorites list—Carl, my advisor for more than twenty years, and probably my only friend. While the phone’s ringing I study Celine’s picture; it’s been moved.

“Jake, what’s up?”

“Sorry to call so late.”

“It’s only ten. Since when is that late for you?”

“Carl, I think it happened again.”

“You blacked out?”

“Maybe that, too. But I think I had another episode, like the time I went to view that little girl’s body the police thought was Celine. The docs called it a cataleptic seizure.”

“Are you in a safe place now?”

Why isn’t Celine’s picture in the tray where it belongs?

“Jake, you still with me?”

“I’m home—but this time I was out for hours and can’t remember a thing that happened beforehand, except the accident—”

“Accident? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I wasn’t in it. There was a jackknifed semi stretched across the highway, an SUV accordioned into the trailer. Something snapped in me as I was checking out the SUV. My mind’s a total blank after that, until I wake up across the lake from my cabin, looking up at the stars.”

“Sure you’re okay?” Carl asks.

I’m not sure about anything at this point.

“Jake.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

“Damn it, Jake. Answer me.”

I force a reply. “Carl … I’m okay. Just a little worried.”

“You pay me for advice, but here’s some for free. It might be a good idea for you to get down off the mountain and spend a few days with Sandy and me. We have plenty of room.”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Okay, but you told me if you ever had another blackout, I should make you lock up your booze. Remember, doctors say it can make the seizures worse.”

“I don’t need a damn babysitter.”

“No one says you do. Just want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Why don’t you try to get some rest? I’ll call you tomorrow around noon. Okay?”

“Sure.” I hang up and return Celine’s to the tray.

As I climb out of the Jeep, the moaning that keeps me awake some nights is back. I’m beginning to think it’s human. I try to hone in on the sound. Wish I could figure out where it’s coming from, but it blends with the chorus of other noises. As though the whole forest is feeling its pain.

Back inside the cabin, I open a bottle of tempranillo before locking away the rest of my booze. I bury the key in a drawer under some dishtowels and grin. Okay, Carl. Does that count as locking up the stuff?