My Wife Is Missing(81)

It could be a nice life. A new start.

According to the time on the stove clock, it was nearly three in the morning. Kate and Chuck would be awake in a couple of hours to tend to their cows. She knew resting could still be beneficial without sleep, so Natalie prepared to return to the warmth of her bed before she had to get up at dawn.

As she was leaving the kitchen, from outside came the distinct sound of a stick snapping in two. She froze the way a deer might when sensing a predator. Peering out the window over the kitchen sink revealed only a canvas of black. Any moonlight was well concealed by cloud cover. She pushed herself up on the counter, leaning her body forward to try to get a clear look outside.

She was fully awake now. That sound was too real to have been imagined. Natalie listened with intense focus, but all she heard were those damn bugs. Perhaps an animal had passed by, a cow that got loose, or a coyote if those hunted in these parts, or maybe a bear or a fox.

She pondered those possibilities while pressing her face against the window, but it was no use. She couldn’t see anything outside.

Then, she heard it again.

Crack.

There was no mistaking the sound of wood splintering. Once again, she could clearly imagine a boot, something heavy soled—a sound which no longer seemed at all imaginary or the product of a rusty radiator.

Recoiling, Natalie fell away from the window as she dropped back to the floor. She tried to land silent as a cat, stifling the scream rising up her throat. Something was out there, or someone, stalking the house under the cloak of darkness. She had to know.

Quietly as she could, Natalie opened the back door on its well-oiled hinges (thank goodness for that silence). Slipping sideways, she ventured out into the chilly night air. The rain that had fallen earlier turned the ground spongey beneath her feet, and her eyes soon adjusted to the darkness.

She could now make out the shape of a nearby tree, its branches like spindly arms scraping the sky. The chirp of tree frogs filled her ears, but Natalie wasn’t interested in any of these sounds. She was on the lookout for whatever creature—or person—had broken that stick. Her eyes scanned the foreground, her nerves on edge. Nothing. No sound. No movement at all.

A dream. She must have suffered another one of her waking dreams.

Call it what it is, she told herself. A hallucination.

She was about to head back into the house when the sensation of movement behind her made her turn around and look at that tree again. She was sure something was there. The wind picked up. Branches swayed. When the wind died, all went still. Then it picked up again, and as it did, a slim shadow slowly emerged from behind the tree. Natalie had hoped for an animal, but this figure appeared to stand on two legs.

Soon the shape of a man came into sharp focus, long and lanky, his arms dangling limply at his sides, no hurry in his body language. He was no more than thirty feet from where she stood. Even from that distance, Natalie could see the gun in the man’s right hand, the barrel like a finger pointing toward the muddy earth. His arm rose, and before Natalie knew it, that gun was pointed right at her.

She gasped as the shadowy man moved toward her. Without hesitating, Natalie dashed back into the house, slamming the door behind her—as if that would shield her from a bullet. She raced up the stairs, her feet thundering on the wood steps. Terror clutched at her throat.

“Wake up! Wake up!” she banged on the doors to her children’s rooms. Kate heard the commotion and burst into the hallway, disoriented and frightened. She was dressed in a white nightgown, her hair a Medusa-like tangle.

“What’s going on?” she asked breathlessly.

Natalie could barely get out the words.

“I heard someone inside the house,” she said in a panic-drenched voice. “I thought I might have dreamt it, but then I heard a different sound, a stick breaking outside, so I went to have a look, and saw him, a man. He’s here, Kate. I don’t know how, but Michael’s found me.”

“Chuck,” Kate cried out as she rummaged through her bedroom closet. “Get up. We’ve got trouble.”

Moments later, Kate emerged from her closet wielding a shotgun. Addie and Bryce had stepped out from their respective bedrooms into the hallway to join the commotion, both groggily rubbing at their eyes.

“What’s going on?” asked Addie with an anxious tremor. Fearing another asthma attack, Natalie found a measure of calm.

“It’s all okay. Come with me, children,” she said, as she ushered them into her bedroom. Natalie closed the door behind them, shutting her kids inside, while she remained in the hallway to debrief Kate.

“He was hiding behind the big tree outside the kitchen,” she said. “He has a gun.”

“You stay here with the kids.” Kate spoke with authority—an order, not a request—before turning her attention back to her bedroom. “Dammit, Chuck, hurry up!” she cried out.

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Natalie asked nervously.

Kate laughed to highlight the absurdity.

“Out here? These parts? By the time they got here we’d all be Swiss cheese.”

She hefted the shotgun in her hands.

“This is the only authority we need. Chuck! Let’s go!”

Chuck, wearing an untied camel-colored robe, his patterned boxers showing along with an ample belly, came plodding along with shuffling steps.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, checking the gun in his hand, a pistol of some sort, to make sure it was loaded.