The Cabin at the End of the World(29)
She blurts out, “Go away, all of you! And take off the mask and stop trying to scare us!” No one responds. None of the four, including the masked Redmond, look at her. Wen is terrified but she puts on her own mask, an angry face, the angriest one she has so that hers is not as blank and lifeless as the four others’ faces.
She shifts her hips and slides her left leg off Andrew’s lap. Her foot hovers a few inches above the floor as a brief test. No one moves to grab her, no one moves at all. She slides down farther until the toe of her sneaker kisses the hardwood. She waits. If no one notices, if no one says anything, she is going to run between Redmond and Leonard and then onto the deck. In her head, she is down the back stairs and running on the dirt road already, with long and shifty strides.
In one motion, Adriane lunges forward and swings her weapon. The raking claws whistle through the air.
Andrew
Even as Leonard and Adriane exchange positions in the common room, Andrew remains focused on and obsessed with Redmond: Why is he so familiar and why is he wearing that freak show of a mask and what can he see through it and why did he say, “Thank you,” and why did he say it the way he said it—low, guttural, breathless, not angry but groveling and as fervent as an ecstatic?
Wen says, “Go away, all of you! And take off the mask and stop trying to scare us!” She no longer has her arms wrapped around Andrew’s neck and she is not burrowed into his chest. Her weight is unbalanced on his lap. He tempers his efforts at pulling his legs and hands free from the ropes and chair for fear he’ll jostle her and she’ll fall awkwardly to the floor and get hurt.
She slowly leaks off his lap, to his left, and there’s nothing he can do to readjust her position. He’s about to say her name to jolt her into readjusting herself and staying put when it occurs to him that her sliding off is purposeful, and perhaps she’s getting ready to make a run for it like he told her to. She methodically stretches toward the floor with one leg and he’s now convinced she’s considering a mad dash outside the cabin and beyond. He silently pleads with her to go now and it’s all he can do to not say go out loud. She might not get another chance. If she does run, then one or two of them will go after her and that would buy him some time to work on loosening his restraints. Careful to not give away inadvertently an escape route by staring it down, Andrew surveys potential paths through the common room and possible roadblocks to the deck for Wen.
Andrew hears the movement first, a quick shuffle of feet coming from Redmond’s direction. Andrew assumes the noise is Redmond scrambling onto his feet, but he has not moved. Redmond is still kneeling on the floor, his spine straight and masked head held high. Then there’s a loud stomp on the floor behind Redmond. Adriane’s right foot is forward, planted only inches behind Redmond’s feet. Her hips pivot and she swings her staff. The sphere of raking claws comets through the air and the rusted metal crashes into the right side of Redmond’s face.
He sways with the impact, but he recovers and straightens again and remains kneeling and upright. A slight but visible shiver ripples throughout his body. A high-pitched, animal whimper escapes from under his mask.
At the same time as the impact of the blow, Eric exhales a loud grunt, as though he is the one who is struck. Wen completes her slide off his lap and is standing next to Andrew and the chair. She turns so she is facing the front door and wraps her arms around Andrew’s neck again. She doesn’t scream or cry. Her mouth is next to his ear and her breathing is off rhythm, exhaling too soon after a sharp inhale, and then too long a pause between breaths, and after the pause, air rushes out like she’s deflating.
Raking claw tips are caught, stuck in Redmond’s mask and face. Adriane pulls on the handle of her weapon as though working an ax out from a deep gash in a tree. The white mask stretches, stubbornly hooked on one of the claws. The right side of Redmond’s head turns as bright red as his shirt.
From Redmond’s right, Sabrina crow-hops forward and swings her staff in a horizontal arc, the tapered and oddly curled shovel blade held sideways so as to be more bladelike. She’s close enough to Andrew that he feels the whoosh of parting air. The thin edge of metal mashes into the front of Redmond’s face, in the area of his nose and mouth, and there’s a clang and scraping noise. Redmond collapses onto his side and loosens a wail, a liquid scream.
Adriane and Sabrina shower blow after blow upon Redmond. The abstract metal shapes at the ends of their handles rise and then strike downward like greedy bird heads. The women grunt with each swing and retrieval of their weapons. The metal configurations of the weapons chime and reverberate with contact, singing joyfully now that they are finally being used as their retrofitters intended. There are also hollow thuds and other sounds that are wet and wooden.
Redmond’s guttural screams and squeals weaken and become less recognizably human. Wen’s shallow, ragged breathing are Andrew’s own breaths, if he is in fact breathing at all.
Redmond’s mask remains in place despite the assault. Small puncture holes, black with blood, acne the white cloth, the whole of which has turned pink and red. The contents inside the mask have lost their original shape; the borders of his face and skull rupture and are amorphous.
His arms never once rise above his chest and shoulders to shield his head. His hands hang down to the tops of his thighs, and they flop and twitch as if attempting to break off and flee. His legs kick out and spasm, his shoes knocking a desperate SOS against the floor.