Left for Dead: A gripping psychological thriller (7 page)

I choose right and move forward into the wilderness, which is like a fairground illusion that just keeps going. Pines, and spruce, and other trees that could be cedar and oak molt gold and copper leaves. Fall has come early. Soon the nights will be cold.

I tell myself that doesn’t matter because a day or two at the most and this nightmare will be over. I will be out of here, clasping a hot drink, foil blanket around my shoulders, telling the police everything I know. The ten things. Kermit the Frog. I will tell them about that and the army blanket and the mint Capri and the brass-rimmed aviators. And him. Rex. His face. It’s right here. I’ll never forget it. His kid’s too, the boy in that dog-eared photograph standing next to a black BMX in his white sports socks. I hope he won’t grow up to be like his father. I hope he won’t hate me for sending his daddy to prison because that’s exactly what I intend to do. It hits me then—I never got the license plate. How could I be so stupid? I search my befuddled brain. Maybe an O, K, 1, and a 7, but that’s it.

I walk all morning long, my bare feet cringing against the hard earth ground braided with roots and rock. I ignore the pain and trudge through the forest, searching for any sign of the road. But there are just trees and more trees.

The poles of spruce sway and creak high above my head and I lick my roughened lips and think of the water I don’t have but desperately need. I wonder how long a person can live without it, and whether I will just keep on shrinking until my body dries up like an onion skin left out in the sun. This makes me think of my mother, the sun worshipper, who would coat herself in baby oil until her flesh was as glossy as a Danish, then starfish on the concrete out in back of our tiny apartment for hours on end. My mother and those ugly watercolors she used to make and the paint-spattered Monet T-shirt she wore for a nightgown. Then I think of my father and how all of us waited night after night for him to come back.

Morning dissolves into midday then afternoon and there’s no hint of the road or the grave. I rest on a boulder and listen to the wind whistle through the trees. It all looks the same and I can’t be sure which way I’ve come. I chide myself for not having some sort of system. Marking trees as I went. Leaving a trail.

I wipe the debris from the soles of my feet, get up, and walk on.

I reach a slope with a series of switchbacks, pathways long overgrown, most likely belonging to an old packhorse trail. I stop and do a 360. There was none of this last night when I ran from my grave, I would have remembered.

But the switchbacks could lead to a hill allowing a better vantage point so I carry on, skirting them as best I can to avoid the brambles and what could be poison ivy. Back and forth I go, zigzagging upward, but the pathways only lead me into deeper, thicker woods.

I step in mud, then a puddle. I kneel down and scoop the brackish water into my mouth and wash my face. Sitting back on my heels, I look at the tiny pool. Branching out from the puddle is a trickle, just a ribbon really, and I wonder whether I should follow it. It could lead to a tributary then maybe a river or lake, and hikers or campers.

I continue on and track the water and it soon grows into a creek large enough to step into and soothe my feet. Every so often, I stop to ladle some into my mouth, and tell myself I mustn’t forget to do this—I can live without food for a while but not without water.

The ground becomes impassible, overrun with thistles, goosegrass, and gorse, and I’m forced to circle back down and leave the creek behind in the hope I can rejoin it on the other side. I weave through a swatch of trees, over some rocky hillocks, and hear the trickle again. I follow the sound until I see the glistening crack. But the creek is no more than a dribble now, and when I walk ten more yards, it dries up to nothing.

Fatigue overwhelms me and I lower myself onto a fallen log.

I have lost all sense of time. I can’t tell if light is fading or if the dimness is just because I am so low in the valley. For all I know, evening could be about to drop.

I pull a splinter from my left foot and watch a kernel of blood appear. I think of the red feather lure. Then him. I think about how stupid I am. For all of it. Believing I could do the trek in the first place, for lifting that God damn tire into that trunk, for being naive and trusting and just plain dumb.

I haul myself up and walk on. The light is deserting me, and I try not to think about how I will have to spend another night in the growing cold, without food, clean water, proper clothes, and with animals I cannot see. My body cries out for rest, especially the soles of my feet, which are being pummeled by the stony terrain. But there’s no choice. I have to keep going.

I ascend the slope, breaking a sweat, my arms two dead weights by my side. I pray the terrain will level out soon but it only gets steeper. Breathless, I wipe perspiration from my eyes and look over my shoulder. Dense woods are way behind me and I’m surprised to see how far up I’ve climbed. I face front and carry on until I’m stopped by a large cluster of rocks. This could be good, I think. Beyond the rocks there may be a summit.

Digging deep, I search out toeholds and places for my hands to grip, hoisting myself up a little at a time. My arms scream for me to stop but I keep going, and with one final push I crest the highest boulder and step out onto a ridge, where I’m rocked by a sudden, frenzied wind. That’s when I see, in a blink, how much trouble I’m in.

19

In the bleak, graying light, nothing but trees and hills for miles in every direction. No highway. No town. No tracks. Just woods. In the far distance, scree slopes and jagged, snowcapped peaks. All I can do is blink at the infinite landscape with my wind-dried eyes, not knowing what else to do.

A moonless black drops like a sheet and finally the dark and cold force me to move. Stumbling across to the other side of the ridge, I feel my way down a grassless slope until I am out of the wind. I take shelter in a gully of rocks and sit shivering, knees pulled up to my chest, back pressed into the iron-cold stone.

I am nothing in this sheer vastness. A mere seed in a canyon. How am I ever going to get out of this place? And what if he is here watching and lying in wait? No, I think, he’s returned home, slipping back into his mundane everyday world, reliving memories of my life slipping away in his hands. As far as he’s concerned I am dead and buried and no longer a problem.

There are nighttime noises again. Coming close, then backing away. Hairs on my arms stiffen. Thoughts become a jumble. My foot itches. I can’t let myself fall asleep. Whatever is out there could get me.
Stay awake. Remain upright. Count the stars.

The night crawls by. With my hands tucked into the pleats of my armpits, I listen to the constant hiss of the wind, my chattering teeth, the wailing wolves. I think of my old life. It wasn’t so bad, was it? There were clean sheets, mattresses, pillows, hot baths, Starbucks double shots and Supreme King burritos. How nice the Manhattan skyline would look right now, that spectacular view from my partner’s office I took for granted, the smoked fish canapés and Australian red wine, and all that mingling with corporate clients. Matthew.

Don’t go there, I tell myself. Don’t go to the Mexican restaurant we loved so much, and our hand-in-hand walks through Central Park past the guys on the bongo drums, and making love on a Sunday afternoon as the sun blessed us through the window. Don’t do it. Don’t look back.

By daybreak my head feels like it could slip from my shoulders and I know I can’t not sleep forever. But for now I return to the ridge. Sky the color of seawater hangs over the vast land. The beauty is not lost on me. Heaven, or some part of it, will surely look like this.

Tracking the frosted clouds as they drift east, I study the terrain. Four choices. North—mountains. East—flat land covered with thick trees. West—more mountains and fields of scree. South—the trees thin out, a small hill, possibly a clearing and grassland, the glint of a waterway and what looks like a gorge and maybe a bridge. This could mean farmland. From up here it’s too hard to tell, and I don’t know anything about distances, how many miles it would be to get there, just that it seems very far away.

But I can’t stay here and south could mean people.

Before I leave I use tiny pebbles to spell out my name and my mother’s phone number beneath a giant SOS, and the words—
Alive. Gone south.

All day long I weave my way through the assembly of trees, pausing frequently to scratch and inspect the underside of my troubling foot. I think about how cruel it was for him to take my shoes. Then I remember that it didn’t happen that way. I ran from him and he caught me and killed me and I came back to life. I tell myself that I mustn’t forget. The ten things, especially. Mint Capri. Kermit. Beaded seat cover. Boy on a bike. O, K, 1, and 7.

As I walk I think of my life, my childhood, my worst and best mistakes. I think of my mother.

“Talk to me, Amelia, I’m worried about you.” This was her refrain from my childhood. Her other favorite was “Sweets, it’s not good to bottle things up. You need to let them out.”

My mother is a verbalizer, the type of person who feels the need to announce every single thing that pops into her mind. What’s worse, she has no filter. Announcing things I think best kept private.

Like the times I’d hear her on the phone to her friends. Amelia got her first period today. Amelia had a bad case of diarrhea after camp and messed her pants. Amelia cries herself to sleep at night.

I never felt the need to share everything I did or felt, so whenever my mother said, “What’s going on in that head of yours?” I would tell her that everything was fine. “There’s nothing to talk about, Mom. I just need to get on with my homework.”

She didn’t even know I’d broken up with Matthew.

I know what she’s going to think when I don’t come back. She’s going to think I ran off. She’ll tell everyone I needed space, that I was more fragile than anyone ever knew. I think of how broken-hearted she’s going to be. What’s worse, she will blame herself. My poor mother, the woman who desperately tried to hold her fracturing family together after my father left.

Oh, how I wish she was here now. With a needle and a Band-Aid and some antiseptic cream for this irksome foot. My mother liked nothing more than to lance a boil. She once said she must have been a nurse in a former life.

*

Late morning and I breach the tree line and step into a field of astonishing yellow. Stretching out across the clearing, thousands of wild mustard plants convulse in the strong northerly wind. Bees levitate over the blossoms, their hind legs inked with gold. I bend to pluck a mustard flower, crushing it between my forefinger and thumb to rouse the spice. My nose itches and I toss the bud away and lift my chin to the sun.

I open my eyes. I must move on. Across the other side of the field, more woods and the hill I hope means the gorge and waterway I saw from the ridge. I move forward, passing through the bony green stalks, leaving a laneway of buckled plants in my wake.

I reenter the forested land and once again am besieged by gloom. I scan for water as I go. Sometimes I think I can hear raging rivers, only to step into total silence a few seconds later. The wilderness plays tricks on you like that, like an auditory mirage. Or maybe it’s just me.

Occasionally, I encounter dribbling ditches and stop and take some into my mouth. But it never feels enough. I worry about disease, especially with the hovering mosquitoes, which most likely means waterborne larvae. And who knows what other organisms and bacteria may be lurking there?

It’s maddening, also, that these little fingers of water never lead anywhere. Downhill or uphill, they just disappear into nothing. There are swimming holes and rivers out here for sure. But they remain hidden in the valleys, or blocked by the walls of green. There’s nothing I can do except play the numbers game and hope one of these creeks eventually leads me to a river, then people, then home.

Early afternoon I round a corner of moss-covered rock and smell the fruit before I see it. Plums. Hundreds of the ruby-skinned orbs lie in the grass, bird-pecked and fermenting. I glance up at the tree. A few less-damaged ones cling to the upper branches but it’s too far up to climb. So I take my chances on the windblown spoils and crouch down to select the largest plum I can find, wiping away the bugs to take a bite. It’s good. Sweet. I eat more, snatching them up, not caring about the syrup seeping through my fingers and forking at my chin. When I’ve devoured as many as I can, I sit back on my heels and lick my sticky hands. I feel better, appeased, and wonder if I should try to eat more, but decide the important thing is to continue on because I need to make the most of what is left of the light. Loading as much fruit as I can carry in the skirt of my dress, I set off.

I walk all through the afternoon. It’s slow going. A profound tiredness seems to have colonized every part of my body and I struggle not to stumble on my feet. I tell myself that I must keep going, that if I don’t find that waterway I will never get out of here.

But less than an hour later, I stop. I look around. No sign of the valley and I’m in dense woods again. A wrong turn somewhere back. Not good.

I blink heavily at my feet and make the decision to nap. Just a short one, I tell myself, then I’ll circle back and see if I can find a hill to get my bearings again.

To my left there’s a cluster of shrubs and I kneel beneath them, rolling the plums from my skirt and corralling them into a pile. Reaching for drifts of pine needles, browned and brittle from the summer, I rake them toward me, and once buried insects disperse in a frenzy.

When I have enough coverage, I smooth down the points until they all run the same way, and lie on my side, settling my head in the nook of my arm. My eyelids droop and I feel myself slip. Something skulks on the edge of my mind. A thought I can’t quite place. An image I can’t really see. Like a song heard only once and not fully remembered. Whatever it is retreats into the shadows, and I trip my way into a dark and dreamless sleep.