Near the Bone(59)

“Don’t answer him,” Jen whispered.

“I know you’re in there fornicating with those men. You’re a sinner, Martha, and it is the duty of a husband to discipline his wife and save her soul for heaven,” William said.

Mattie would have laughed if she hadn’t been so terrified. William still thought she was having affairs with strange men? When was she supposed to be doing that—before or after she’d trekked through the woods in the night, certain that at any moment the creature would appear out of the trees and snatch her away like it did Griffin?

“You can’t hide forever. When you open that door, I’ll be here, Martha. I’ll be waiting for you.”

She heard the rustling of clothes, saw the door shift again. William must have sat down on the porch in front of the door.

“No,” she moaned. What were they going to do now? They couldn’t escape with William right there. There was hardly any food in the cabin because William hid it all from her in the storehouse. And Jen could barely walk, so even if they managed to get past William, they would be unable to run if he chased them.

Why had she thought she could get away from him? She should just give herself up now, hope that she could bargain for Jen and C.P.’s safety. Surely William would let the other two go as long as he had her. Surely they would be safe.

Don’t be stupid. He can’t let them go. They know what he did to you. They know he kidnapped you. They heard him say he killed your mother. He can’t risk them leaving, telling the police, bringing them back here to arrest him.

This was Samantha again, bossy Samantha who always made Mattie feel slightly stupid.

Then what am I to do? She heard the plaintiveness in her own thoughts, could feel defeat slumping her shoulders, rounding her back.

Stop letting him grind you up under his heel, Samantha said. There has to be a way if you’d only think.

Mattie felt the wall of the cabin press against her back. She’d retreated from the door as she thought (no, you weren’t thinking, you were panicking), her body moving as far from William as possible.

“Now what?” C.P. whispered.

He couldn’t sit there by the door. Anything could happen to him there. Mattie felt sure that William would find some way to reach through the door and hurt him—break it down with the axe, or shoot him right through the wood.

“Come . . . here,” she said, beckoning him toward her.

He carefully levered his body out of the chair, trying to make as little noise as possible, and started toward Mattie.

Jen had stopped moving around on the floor. Mattie turned the flashlight toward her and saw she was completely still, her eyes closed.

“Shit,” C.P. said. “I think she’s passed out.”

He knelt beside her and felt for her pulse, then put his hand on her forehead.

“She’s still alive, but she feels like ice. She’s probably in shock or something. Let’s put a blanket on her.”

Mattie dragged one of the handmade blankets off the couch and covered Jen with it. Jen was so still and cold that Mattie felt certain they were covering a corpse.

“Probably we should disinfect her cuts,” C.P. said. “But we can’t clean them unless we cut her pant leg off, and I don’t want to move her around now. So, what are we going to do?”

He was staring at her so expectantly. He seemed to think she had answers. Did he know that she didn’t know anything, that she was hoping he would have ideas? Didn’t he know that her whole world had been in this room for twelve years?

Stop. Panicking. Stop right now.

It was so easy to say this but so hard to do. She’d spent more of her life afraid than not.

Mattie swallowed hard, because it was still difficult for her to talk. “Can’t . . . leave . . . with . . . William . . .”

“With that guy out there. Yeah, I figured that much out.” He spoke in a low whisper, his shoulders rounded and his head bent so the words stayed in the space between the two of them. It felt uncomfortably intimate, but since Mattie was already pressed up against the wall there was nowhere she could go to make space for herself. “So what are we going to do about it? Is there a gun in here that we can use?”

William had two rifles—the deer rifle and the large one he’d just acquired to kill the giant creature in the woods. It was probable that the deer rifle was still in the cabin, leaning next to the wall on William’s side of the bed. It was so much a part of the furniture that Mattie never really thought about it. And she only remembered seeing him take the larger rifle that morning, though she supposed he might have returned to the cabin for more firepower after the events of the day.

“Maybe,” Mattie said, and started toward the bedroom. Her boot heels rang out on the floor even though she was trying to be quiet.

Mattie paused. She didn’t want William to know what she was doing, or where she was moving to in the cabin. She was certain he was listening hard at the door for any sounds that might indicate what they were doing, and that he was calculating how he might take advantage.

She handed the flashlight back to C.P. and crouched down to take her boots off.

“You’re worried about the floors?” C.P. said. “I don’t think the finish is a priority, you know.”

Mattie frowned up at him. “Noisy.”

“Right,” he said. “Sorry. I’m just really wound up, I guess. First Griffin is taken and then Jen got caught in the trap and now we’re stuck in this place with a psycho outside. I don’t know how we’re going to get to Griffin or what kind of state he’ll be in when we find him.”