Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted (27 page)

C
onfident now
, but still wary, Caleb rested with his back against a boulder and took a long drink from his water canister. He wiped his mouth and spilled some over the back of his neck. The sun sat lower in the sky and the heat had dissipated a little. His head ached badly but he no longer had any problems with his vision. Despite her attack, he was feeling pretty damned good about himself.

He looked down and noticed a small pool of blood beneath his boots. She had stopped here and rested for a spell. Good. He hoped she was hurting, he hoped she was feeling pain. He hoped she realised whatever she was feeling now would be nothing to what he would make her feel as soon as he caught up to her.

He took another drink. He was amazed at her audacity, doubling back like that. It went against every human instinct, so much so he would never have believed it possible. He might even have to come up with a new category for prey like her.

His father used to say a wounded beast was one of the most deadly creatures on earth. Didn’t matter if it was a bear or a possum, Aldo used to say, you injure or corner one then you best be prepared to kill it or suffer the consequences. Of course, the old man had said a lot of things over the years, and kept on saying things right up until the day Caleb had put a bullet in his back and another in his head.

How the old bastard would have laughed at his son being taken out by a bra.

The thought of his father dredged up memories that Caleb has long since shelved in a dusty portion of his brain. Aldo Switch had been a trapper and a hunter of some note. He was unfriendly to the point of feral and considered himself a man’s man, content to terrorise his wife and children and abscond at the turn of a breeze. In those absences, Caleb’s mother, sometimes swollen with child and beaten down by responsibility, would spend her evenings drinking cheap, foul-smelling alcohol, before falling asleep on the sofa, sobbing over the feckless no-good mean son of a bitch she had been fool enough to marry.

Caleb had never understood her sadness when Aldo was gone; for him it was the only time he could let his guard down a little. For those few precious times, he was free of the man with the eyes of a snake and a fuse that was liable to blow over a perceived slight as easily as a genuine one. Caleb could eat his cereal in peace, look in whatever direction he pleased and rest in his bed without fear of being awoken by a flurry of fists.

On the day he had killed his father, Caleb had left their home with no such thought on his mind. They had travelled eighty miles north in Aldo’s beat-up truck, heading deep into the wilderness. Caleb remembered Aldo had been in a strange mood, cheery even, bouncing with a nervous energy that Caleb knew could just as easily spell trouble.

‘It’s just sitting there. Can’t believe it was abandoned. Got me a 
friend,
’ Aldo had flicked his eyes slyly at Caleb ‘to look up the deeds and yup, owned by a batshit old fuck with shit in his drawers and shit for brains. Didn’t even remember he owned it, ain’t that something? Didn’t even 
know
! He’s sitting there in some home with shit for brains and shit leaking outta his ass and he’s worth gold.’

Caleb had leaned his head against the cracked glass of the passenger window and tried not to think about the image his father was creating. Normally his silence allowed him to slip under the radar, but on that particular day, the radar was monumentally messed up.

‘You listenin’ to me, boy?’

Caleb, then only two months shy of fifteen, was almost full height, but still sinew and bone. The question was a shot over his bow. The rest of his day depended on how he answered that question.

‘Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.’

‘I’m listening.’ But he had not been listening. Instead he had been thinking; he had been thinking that this was how it would be. He thought of Aldo’s rages, his unpredictable force ripping to pieces Caleb’s fragile life. He thought of the nature of Aldo. He thought of him as a black tunnel, stretching on with no light at the end, no end at all.

‘You better pay me heed, boy.’

And there it was, that note he knew so well, the familiar black thread that Aldo tightened around them.

That day something else occurred to Caleb Switch as they had parked the truck and walked the ancient trails. That day a thought took hold in Caleb Switch’s young mind and as he allowed it room, the thought that was unbelievable at first was then strangely … sensible.

There would be no respite as long as Aldo lived.

No respite. No end to his cruelty, to his endless rages.

Not as long as Aldo lived.

Aldo marched ahead at a blistering pace wearing a dark green jacket with many pockets. It was grimy with dirt and he had worn it for as long as Caleb could remember. Caleb watched his father’s broad shoulders and whispered his intent on the frigid air. He waited to see how it sat with him.

It sat fine. It sat better than fine.

They located the hides and Aldo sent Caleb up the trees to repair them. Caleb worked fast, replacing the rotten board and line hooks, his fingers numb with cold. As he worked, he repeated his intent under his breath, over and over like a mantra.

When he was finished, Caleb climbed down slowly and carefully. Aldo offered no word of thanks. He jerked his head and they returned to the jeep.

Caleb had to admit he was a touch curious about Aldo’s ‘secret’. Aldo was the kind of man who preferred his left hand to know nothing about what the right might be doing. Certainly, his father never took Caleb into his confidence about anything.

They turned left at a fork in the road. Aldo leaned so far forward over the steering wheel his nose almost touched the glass.

‘Deers ’round here ain’t used to people. Y’can practically walk up to one, pop it on the nose and it’s yours,’ Aldo said, his voice giddy. ‘Saw bald eagles t’other time, know ’bout a nest up near the bluff, heard tell of a fella looks to buy eggs for real money. Bit of a climb but nothing you can’t handle when the time’s right.’ He glanced at Caleb, his eyes glittering like spark plugs. ‘This is prime land, dummy, prime!’

Suddenly he swung off the road, through what looked like nothing but ditch. Caleb threw his arms across his face, expecting the truck to crash, but instead it jumped and ground over a mound of soil and shot out into an overgrown yard.

‘Ayeh!’ Aldo said, slamming the truck to halt. Caleb lowered his arms slowly and peered through the windscreen at a small cabin. His eyes moved over it, making note of the collapsed chimney stack, the loose rotten boards, the badly patched tin roof. He could just about make out the pitch of a roof behind the cabin and guessed whatever was back there was in much the same state.

‘What is this place?’

Aldo took a piece of paper from an inside pocket, opened it and shoved it under Caleb’s nose. ‘This is mine is what it is.’

Caleb read the deed of sale, flicking his eyes across the words, allowing his brain to digest the wording.

‘Prime,’ Aldo said again, refolding the paper and putting it back in his pocket. ‘Woods is full of game, and no fucking John Law making demands on tag anywhere near here. Come on, boy.’

They got out. Caleb whispered the words again; they danced like smoke on the air before his face, but Aldo’s attention had drifted.

‘Fix it up we can rent this shit easy. Ain’t no reason to quit on the seasons neither.’ Aldo walked off with his hands on his hips, squinting up at the roof.

Caleb walked slowly back to the truck and removed his father’s Winchester from the rack. He closed over the door and stood with the freezing wind nipping at his cheeks, his eyes watering. The gun felt light in his hands and as he lifted it to his shoulder and slid his finger through the trigger guard he whispered the mantra once more.

Aldo Switch never saw it coming.

Caleb would later think about that, and decide that it didn’t matter a curse. Aldo Switch had had it coming his whole life. And now, Caleb thought, moving off again, finding more of Jessie Conway’s blood trail, she had it coming too.

J
essie’s hands
ached and were too slippery from blood to keep going. She slumped onto a narrow ledge half way up the bluff and rubbed them against the surface of the rock, smearing them with dirt, desperately hoping it might help her grip.

She was exhausted, too weak to carry on, too frightened not to do so. Exposed here, with the wind picking up, she could not help but wonder if this was it, if this was her day to die. She had vowed not to look down, but now allowed herself a glimpse to the western horizon. Sunset was approaching, and with it her efforts and crazy ambitious hope seemed utterly laughable.

She rested her forehead against the rock face and tried to muster her reserves for the final climb. Her limbs were stiff and heavy and she no longer trusted her sight. She leaned out and looked up. Twenty feet. She tried not to think further than that.

A strong gust unsettled her and forced her to think about moving. She licked her lips and opened and closed her hands to loosen them. The slope here was not as steep, but that did not mean it was any less tricky to negotiate. There was very little to grab hold of if she slipped, and if she slipped it was a long way down to the rocks below.

She straightened, leaning into the wind again. Her muscles refused to engage for a moment and her initial grappling scared her senseless. Finally, her fingers dug deep into the soil and she hoisted herself up another foot towards the summit.

At ten feet from the top, she had to stop and rest. She looked over her shoulder and now the entire valley was visible to her. In the distance, she could make out the headlights of vehicles cruising down a road, a cruel reminder of the macabre pantomime of life. Her death would be nothing more than a footnote in history. Out there, people were heading home from work, thinking about food and what show to watch on television. They were talking to each other about trivial things, or vital things, or maybe not talking at all. They knew nothing about her.

But he knew. He was back there somewhere, in the dark, searching for her.

He knew.

Jessie swung her feet out behind her and dug her toes deep into the scree, ignoring the pain in her fingers, pressing on. She could see a small line of scrub bushes now, jutting prickled branches from the thin soil. Her lungs burned, her back ached, her bloody hands were in agony, but still she pulled and reached, driving her body closer and closer to the summit.

She managed to crawl over the final ledge. She was so exhausted she could not pull herself any further and lay there prone, with her feet dangling over the edge. She pressed her cheek into the dirt, feeling her heart knocking against her ribs. The wind dried the sweat on her body to salt. She knew she had to keep moving, she knew she was not yet safe. But knowing all these things as she did, it was almost unbearable when she hauled her legs under her and pushed herself up.

The sun was almost set behind the mountains and the sky was streaked with bands of purple and indigo; they seemed so close she could reach up and touch them. She turned her head, facing across the deeply shadowed trees. She thought she heard water somewhere. Far below, she saw in the valley the twinkling lights of a house – more than one. She tried to guess the distance; eight, maybe nine miles? Vast tracts of deep forest lay between her and them. She would be travelling in pitch dark for the most part. She clenched her bloody hands into fists. First she needed to get down from this damned mountain without breaking a leg, and then she could worry about her next move.

She took a step forward and as she did something punched her hard in the shoulder. She fell onto her knees. She felt pain and heat. She looked down and was shocked to see the tip of an arrowhead jutting through her clavicle, glistening red in the fading light.

Dazed and shocked, Jessie tried to crawl away from the ledge, but her arms would not support her weight. She managed to get her feet under her somehow, but on rising stumbled and pitched into nothing; free falling now, hitting rock and shrubs, gaining speed, flailing. She was launched into mid-air and then came another crushing bone-shattering collision.

Jessie lay still, with one leg bent double beneath her. It took a while before she could breathe again. She tried to move, but could manage only to turn one leg out. She rolled her eyes so that she could watch the horizon line far above her. She waited.

Nothing.

She managed to move her head slowly. The arrow was still protruded through her skin and now her left arm lay twisted at an angle at which it ought not to be. She guessed it was broken, though, strangely, she felt no pain.

Wasn’t that funny?

She managed to roll over a little and lifted her arm the right way around. She tried to sit up, but could not. She wondered if her back was broken.

Water. She heard water running somewhere, loud and fast.

She used her heel to shove her way backwards along the dirt and discovered she had fallen onto a shelf of soil and rock. Below where she rested a river rushed hard down the mountain, white foam still visible in the fading light. She turned her head and looked back up to the ridge from which she had fallen.

It took a while, but she made out the shape of a man silhouetted against the skyline. She felt his gaze pass over her as he scanned the area, then return to where she lay, broken in the dirt.

Jessie knew her race was run. Even now the blood pooled beneath her and what was left of her vision became speckled and black around the edges. She took a number of shallow breaths and tried to focus on him, trying to pinpoint where he was, but she could not stay fully conscious.

Far above her a plane went by. She watched twin lines of soft fluffy white trailing behind it in the pale purple sky. She breathed out and breathed in again. She touched the arrowhead with the fingers of her working hand. Sharp. She understood that: sharp, but only a word, nothing more.

For the first time since he had taken her, Jessie felt a sense of calm. She searched the sky above, locating one faint star and then another. It was so beautiful, she thought, majestic in its simplicity. A tear leaked from the corner of her eye, rolled down her cheek and entered her bloodied ear. She heard him land with a thump somewhere nearby.

She felt no fear.

‘I am sorry if I offended thee. I am in your hands,’ she said, softly as a second tear joined the first. ‘I am in your hands now.’

With tremendous effort of will she dug her heel into the ground and pushed her body closer to the ledge. She rested there and thought about Mike. She thought about his smile, about the way the skin crinkled around the corners of his eyes when he laughed. She wished more than anything she had kissed him goodbye that last morning. She wished so badly their last words together had not been wasteful ones.

Twigs snapped nearby. She concentrated on her breathing. She felt the heat in the soil beneath her and tried not to tremble.

She felt his presence before she saw him. He was there when she rolled her eyes left, standing in the shadows, watching her.

Be strong now, she thought, be strong. Don’t beg.

Carefully, he approached, his step light. When he drew closer she saw that he had a bow in his hands, with an arrow nocked, ready to fly. He lowered it when he saw how mangled she was.

‘You sure worked me good.’

Jessie did not respond. What was there to say to this thing? What special pleading would he enjoy?

‘Never had a one like you before, you better believe it.’

Jessie spoke softly, her words barely audible even to her.

He walked to her, bent down on one knee and placed his bow on the ground. He looked at her crooked foot, then raised his hand and pressed his fingers against the arrowhead as Jessie had done moments before, twisting it a little to gauge her reactions.

‘You don’t feel it, huh? Most likely you’re in shock.’

Jessie’s lips kept moving.

‘You praying?’

He leaned his head closer to hers.

‘What’re you saying? Hands? What hands?’

Jessie grabbed the front of his jacket with her good hand, swung her good leg up up and hooked it around the small of his back. Before Caleb could stop her, she threw all her weight to one side and pitched both of their bodies over the edge.

Locked together, they fell into darkness, into nothing.