Near the Bone(14)

What if the stranger finds the bones and is interested in the creature? What if crowds of people come up to the mountain to find out about it?

William would be furious if that happened. Though perhaps one of those people would take Mattie away, if she asked.

William said you belong to him and nobody could take you away. A wife belongs to her husband.

But what if somebody did take her away? What if somebody with a kind face, kind eyes like that stranger had, what if somebody like that helped her? What if she could find the place again, the place where Heather was?

William said that place isn’t real, it’s a dream, a dream sent by the devil to tempt you away.

She stared at the back of his jacket, at the graying hair he kept cut close to his head, at the huge hard hands that swung at his sides. One of those hands held the rifle, and Mattie had a sudden burst of insight.

He never taught me how to use the rifle because he doesn’t want me to use it on him.

Mattie would never do that. She would never hurt her own husband. Would she? She didn’t think she would do that. She didn’t want to hurt him. She only wanted William to stop hurting her.

What would have happened if she’d asked the stranger in the meadow to take her away?

William would have shot you both dead on the spot, that’s what.

He was going to beat her when they got home. Probably worse than he had in years, Mattie knew. He was angry about so many things at the moment, and all of those things would be attributable to her somehow.

She heard his breath, harsh and fast, and knew without seeing his face that he was remembering everything that happened earlier and arranging it to his liking.

Mattie turned her eyes up to the trees, wanting to see anything except William’s back, the angry set of his shoulders, the corded veins in his neck.

She halted, her mouth suddenly dry, shaking her head because it didn’t seem possible that she was seeing what she thought was there.

Up above, hanging from nearly every tree, were animal corpses. Most of them were small animals—chipmunks and squirrels and possums and field mice—but some were larger. She saw at least two foxes and even a lynx.

Each animal was arranged neatly over the path that Mattie and William followed. There were one or two animals per tree, each one tied to a branch by a bit of its own viscera.

Like Christmas ornaments, and the thought made her sway on her feet, for a memory pushed through the fog in her brain.

The enormous Christmas tree in the living room, far too big for the space, and all the pretty colored lights winking, the silver star on top and the piles of gifts underneath wrapped in red and green paper.

Christmas, and one pile is for me and one is for Heather. There are our stockings with our names on them. One says HEATHER and the other says SAMANTHA.

“Samantha,” she whispered. “Not Martha. Samantha.”

“Mattie!” William roared.

She looked at him, not really seeing him, still seeing the blurred outline of a name on a stocking, and it wasn’t the name he’d called her all these years.

“Mattie!” he yelled again.

She shook away the stocking, the ornaments, the girl who might have been called Samantha. William had gotten much farther along than she, and he beckoned to her so that she’d catch up.

Mattie remembered the animals then, all the little rabbits and rodents hung in a row, like strange breadcrumbs showing the way to the meadow.

“William,” she croaked, her throat hardly able to say his name. “William.”

He stomped back in her direction, and she knew she should be afraid, because his face said that he wasn’t going to wait until they got home. He was going to punish her right then.

She swallowed, pointed up, tried to make the words come out as he closed in on her.

“The trees, William,” she said, but her voice was so small and far away, it had dried up in her throat, and half of her was still under the Christmas tree, staring at the name on the stocking.

Then his fists were on her, and she didn’t remember any more.





CHAPTER FOUR



Mattie woke coughing, a cough that became a choke, and she’d swallowed enough blood in her time to know her mouth was filled with it. Her head bumped along the ground, snow in her hair and seeping down her neck and under her coat. She’d lost her hat. A cruel hand clamped around her ankle, yanking her along on her back like she was a sled being pulled by its string.

William halted, looked back over his shoulder at her, his eyes full of contempt. He released her leg, letting it drop to the ground. Mattie cried out.

“Get up, you useless little bitch. Now that you’re awake you can walk yourself home.”

Mattie stared up at him, then past him to the trees overhead. There were no more animals. William must have dragged her out of the creature’s territory.

Or maybe it just hasn’t finished marking all the trees. Maybe it’s trying to mark every one in the forest.

“Get up, I said.” He kicked her in the ribs, and she rolled to one side, every bit of her aching. “Sun’s going down in a couple of hours and I’m not carrying you home.”

Mattie spit a mouthful of blood into the snow. It looked shockingly red—like a bull-flag, like lipstick, like a stop sign.

Red means stop, she thought. Red means I can’t go on anymore.

But she tried to rise up anyway, tried to push her rubbery legs into place. She couldn’t manage it and fell back into the snow again.