The Escape (17 page)

The adrenaline was coming fast and hard now, pumping through his veins. “Adam. It sounded like Adam.”

Avery took a step back, her eyes saucers as she shook her head from side to side. “No, Fletch. I didn’t hear anything. Maybe we should head back. I think this may have been a bad idea.”

Why
was
she
doing
that? Didn’t she want to find Adam?

What
happened
to
Adam?

He watched his own arm dart out like a venomous snake and grab Avery’s wrist. “Come on. Come on, let’s go.”

She followed, but after a few steps, she shook him off. “I think this was a bad idea, Fletch. I’m going to go back.”

“No! You can’t!” Fletcher stared into Avery’s eyes. “We can’t.”

“Fletch—”

“You found me once, Avery. Please don’t let me get lost again.”

Avery nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Fletch was acting weird.

Really weird.

His eyes were wild, and he jumped at every sound: a squirrel in the brush, his own foot snapping a twig. He was sweating profusely, though his breathing was more subdued. Still, something was wrong.

Fletcher stopped abruptly.

“What happened, Fletch? What happened out here?”

His lower lip started to tremble. He flapped his hand by his ear again. It almost sounded as if he was humming.

“Fletcher?”

He pointed to the ground. “We were here. Me and Adam.”

Avery’s palms went clammy against the notebook in her hand. “Go on.”

“He’s bad, Avery. He’s really, really bad.” He cocked his head, eyes still flashing primitively, and pressed his finger against his lips. “He’s probably listening right now.”

“Who’s listening? Who are you talking about?”

It sounded like Fletcher said “Adam.” But before she could ask, he reached out and gripped Avery by her wrist, yanking her along with him deeper into the gully. Enormous redwoods were all around them, branches crosshatched over their heads and blocking out the sunlight. The deep pine scent was claustrophobic. Avery dug in her heels.

“Stop it, Fletch. You know that Adam is dead.”

Fletcher looked at her. He blinked. “He had to.”

She pulled her arms free. “He had to what?”

“Die, Avery. Adam had to die.”

Ice water exploded in Avery’s veins. “Who said he had to die?”

Fletcher took another step toward her. Avery could smell him, the clean scent of detergent now smothered by sweat and dirt. He leaned close, his lips brushing against her ear. “
They
did.”

Avery’s heart slammed against her ribs. “Who are
they
?”

Fletcher licked his lips. “Do you miss your mom, Avery?”

The air went still.

“You already asked me that.”

He smiled, a toothy, easy smile that shot terror through her. “My mom is always watching me.”

He turned and began walking down the trail, winding deeper into the woods.

“Hey, Fletch, let’s just—”

Fletcher paused and kicked at a pinecone at the edge of the trail. “My mom is always watching me, Avery. I think…I think she does it for them.”

“That’s normal, Fletch. My dad watches me like a hawk.”

Fletcher cocked an eyebrow. “Does he?”

“Yeah.” Avery knew it was a lie but suddenly she felt exposed, felt the need to cover herself. She wasn’t exactly regretting coming out here with Fletcher, but she was no longer excited about it either.

“I think your father watches everyone.” Another turn, another few feet into the forest. “He doesn’t pay that much attention to you. He wasn’t even there that night.”

“What night?”

“The night all your windows were opened.”

“He was working.”

“He wasn’t there to see the way you looked when you came down the stairs.” He dragged his tongue over his lower lip, smiling faintly. His eyes were distant, like he was seeing something other than the trees around them. “You looked like one of those cops on TV.” He mimed holding a gun close to his chest, the way she had held her flashlight, as he sidestepped down a grade. “You looked so beautiful.”

Fletcher locked his gaze on Avery. She shivered. “You were there?”

He pressed a finger against her pursed lips and shushed her. “They were there.”

“Who are they?” Avery said, unable to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “You’re scaring me, Fletcher. Who are they and why did they want Adam to die and…and…”—her voice faltered even as she tried to pump in false bravado—“why were they at my house? How did they get in?”

Fletcher leaned close to Avery. “I let them in.”

• • •

Fletcher didn’t want to be in the forest. He’d thought he would be able to remember things, but the same fingers of darkness had reached out to him the second he set foot on the trail. They inched closer. But he couldn’t let Avery see…

He stomped down the whispers as best he could, but even then they reached back for him. One voice at first, then another, then the one he couldn’t stand: Adam’s. Adam’s was soft. Adam’s was sinister.

“Fletcher…” It was back again, hissing in his ear. “You remember what happened. You remember what happened out here… You remember what you did…”

“No, I don’t,” he forced out between gritted teeth.

Avery stopped walking. “Did you say something?”

Fletcher ignored Avery. The throbbing in his head matched the rise and fall of Adam’s whispered voice. He swatted as if the voice was a gnat in his ear and it laughed, enjoying toying with him.

Adam’s voice lured him farther and farther down the trail until the sunlight became mottled and sparse, blotted out by the canopy of old-growth trees knitted together more the deeper they went.

Avery kept talking, telling Fletcher she wanted to go back. He did too, but Adam’s voice—and something else—compelled him to keep moving. Maybe inside the forest he could find peace. Maybe if he went deep enough, they would leave him alone. The temperature started to drop and Avery wanted to know about
them
again
.
Fletcher ignored her and kept moving.

• • •

Avery had her phone out, holding it up until a few meager bars populated the screen. “I’m going to call my dad. He can send his guys in here and they can walk with you.”

Fletcher turned, his eyes wild, his lips twisted into a snarl. He was on Avery in a heartbeat, his hand knocking the phone from hers.

“No!”

The phone sailed out of her hand, skittering down the ridge and disappearing somewhere on the forest floor.

“What did you do that for?”

“You can’t call him! He’s going to send me away. You’re going to ask him to send me away.”

Fletcher’s face was a deep red and sweat raced over his brow. He dug both hands into his hair and gripped, baring his teeth. “I’m not crazy. I’m
not
crazy!”

Avery’s bottom lip started to tremble.

“I’m not crazy,” Fletcher said slowly.

Avery licked her lips and nodded, her mind racing, trying to remember if she’d ever heard that her father had been in a similar situation.
What
would
he
do?

“Of course you’re not crazy, Fletcher. I never said that.”

“Your dad will take me away.”

Avery’s eyes focused on Fletcher’s wild ones, her every muscle tensed and ready to run. “He won’t take you away. He just wants to help you like I do.”

“No, no.” Fletcher shook his head. “You can’t help me. You’re on their side. You’re one of them. Adam…Adam was one of them too.”

“Fletch—”

“That’s why he had to die, Avery. That’s why I had to kill him.”

Fire sparked somewhere low in Avery’s gut and singed every inch of her. She’d heard wrong. She had to have heard wrong. Evil was other people, not someone she knew. Not her friend. “You killed Adam?”

Fletcher leaned down low, legs spread as though he would pounce at any moment.

“Had to,” Fletcher said.

Suddenly, he straightened up and shimmied the backpack from his back. It landed with a thump.

If
he
turns
around, I’ll run
, she told herself.
I’ll make a break for it, back to the trailhead, back to the car.

But Fletcher had the keys. And even if he didn’t, Avery couldn’t drive.

She heard him unzip the backpack and rifle through it; from the corner of her eye she spied him removing two bottles of water. She saw the car keys slip down and disappear at the bottom of the pack.

I
could
lock
myself
in
the
car.

“My dad was going to send me away,” Fletcher said, opening one of the water bottles and taking a big gulp. “He told my mom I didn’t belong out in the world. Not after what I did to Susan.”

Avery snapped to attention. “Susan?”

“My sister.” He spat on the ground.

“What happened to your sister?”

Fletcher’s eyes pinned Avery’s. “Who told you?”

He roared and Avery covered her ears.

“Who told you about Susan?” Fletcher demanded again.

And then,
smack!

Avery reeled. The slap against her cheek burned fiery hot. “You hit me!”

“Did they tell you?” He had his hands on her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh as he shook her. “What did they tell you?”

• • •

The voices were growing more insistent. Whispers turned to screams that echoed in his mind, warning him. Avery was one of them. She wanted to put Fletcher away, wanted to lock him up and throw away the key.

He could feel her hot flesh under his palms, and that almost reminded him that she was the Avery Templeton who believed he wasn’t crazy. But then the voices began to separate and disappear, slipping from his head and out into the forest. He shoved Avery away when the first one flashed by him, a thick, black blur, running.

His head was hurting and he couldn’t stop thinking of Susan and Adam, and now Avery. He was in trouble. If he didn’t get them, they were going to get him. The voices told him to fight. The people in the forest—the ones darting behind trees just before he could see them, before he could figure out who they were—told him to kill her. They told him it was only a matter of time before Avery’s father came and took him away.

• • •

Avery’s feet tangled on Fletcher’s backpack, and she hit the ground with a thud. She could feel her palms shredding on the pebbles, and she shrieked when the weight of the backpack pulled her ankle, quirking it at a weird angle.

“Ow! Fletcher!”

But he wasn’t paying any attention to her. His lips were moving, but he wasn’t making a sound. He just turned in fast, jerky motions, looking at the trees, as though something was going to jump out at him.

“Why are you acting like this? What is wrong with you?”

“It’s Adam,” Fletcher said. He didn’t seem to be speaking to Avery, but she wasn’t sure
who
he was speaking to. “It was Adam. Adam this whole time. He’s trying to kill me. They are all trying to kill me.”

Avery extracted her foot from the backpack strap and massaged her ankle. It didn’t seem to be broken but was swelling against her boot. “Fletch, you have to stop—” Avery stopped in midsentence when the flash of something silver sliding out of the backpack caught her eye.

A pocketknife.

About the size of her palm, about the size of the imprint left in Adam’s knife case.

“Fletch, how do you have this?”

He turned and blinked at her, his eyes wide like saucers. They locked gazes for a beat and then Fletcher launched himself forward, going after the knife.

Avery snatched it and shoved it in her pocket, but that didn’t deter Fletcher. He jumped on top of her, clawing at her arms, pulling on the pockets of her jeans.

“Stop! Stop!”

Avery struggled, adrenaline blocking out the pain she knew she should have felt as she tried to peel Fletcher off her.

“You’re going to kill me! They tried to warn me!” Fletcher was yelling in her face, so close that little bits of spit hit Avery’s cheeks.

“Fletcher, stop, it’s me! It’s Avery! I’m your friend!”

Fletcher growled down at her and stopped moving, blinking as though recognizing her for the first time. Avery panted, her heart pounding against her rib cage. “We’re friends.”

Fletcher sat back on his haunches, still on top of Avery. He seemed to be thinking, considering what she was saying. Tears flooded her eyes.

“Is this what you did to Adam? Did you—did you do it?”

She could feel the rage crash over him. She slid her feet underneath herself and bucked Fletcher off before he could grab her. His fist slammed into the earth a half inch from her ear, and Avery crab walked away and got to her feet. Fletcher dove for her, his hand grazing her ponytail, grabbing a fistful of hair.

“Adam had to die! Adam had to die! They made me do it. I had to!”

Avery took off running. Each time her foot hit the ground, pain exploded in her ankle, sending shock waves through her body. Fletcher killed Adam. And now Fletcher was going to kill her. She could hear him running behind her, sloppily, stomping though mounds of dried brush and leaves that she skirted.

“Avery!” Fletcher’s voice was nearly unrecognizable, a shrill tear through the silent forest. “Avery, get back here!”

Her heart was hammering; she felt like she was breathing in broken glass. The grove of trees opened on a meadow, streaks of yellow sunlight breaking through the graying sky. She teetered on the edge. There was no place to hide in the meadow. She paused, her blood rushing.

There was no sound.

She didn’t hear Fletcher stomping through the grass. She didn’t hear him yelling for her.

Maybe
he
stopped. Maybe he gave up.

She folded over, hands on knees, greedily sucking in air through lungs that felt desperate.

“Avery!” Fletcher’s voice echoed. It bounced in front of her and behind her, came from all sides.

“Where is he?” she whispered to herself.

The silence was more terrifying than fighting Fletcher. He could be anywhere. Avery hugged the tree line, doing her best to stay hidden behind the brush and trees. She picked her steps carefully but was sure the thundering power of her heart would give away her location. Her heart pounding in her ears was all she could hear. She was sure that Fletcher could hear it too.

• • •

The whispers stopped abruptly. As if a switch had been flipped. Fletcher was deep in the forest, alone, wrapped in the desolate silence. He didn’t know where Avery was. Why would she leave him?

“Avery?”

He took a few steps and her name echoed back to him again and again. She didn’t respond. Fletcher couldn’t remember which direction he was going or which way he had come. And he couldn’t remember where Adam was.

Adam.

The memory—grabbing Adam, landing the first blow—came crashing back and Fletcher doubled over, the weight of it like a swift punch in the gut.

“Hey, Fletch, you’ve got to see this, man.”

Fletch
hiked
up
the
slope
to
where
Adam
was
standing. He was already winded from running, and now his calves were burning and
cramping.

“What is it?”

Adam
grinned
and
gave
him
a
shove. Fletcher tripped over his feet and a hunk of dead wood and rolled down into the gully.

“Dude, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to—” There was a look on Adam’s face that Fletcher couldn’t identify.

Fletch
slid
a
few
more
inches
and
then
landed
on
something
hard
at
the
bottom
of
the
pit. It poked at the bare skin on his back. He frowned and tried to push himself up, away from what was jabbing him.

It
was
a
skull. An animal with a mouth full of teeth and sun-bleached incisors. Its eye sockets stared up at Fletcher. He screamed, his feet unable to gain traction to move him away. He rose a few inches and slid back down, the hideous skull grinning at him, staring at him.

He
could
hear
Adam
laughing, the sound echoing through the forest and filling his ears. But something cut through the sound. A whisper, the faintest whisper. He felt himself start to tremble.

“Who’s there?” he asked, his voice small and breathy.

Adam
looked
down
on
Fletcher, hands on hips, grinning. “Dude, who are you talking to?”

Fletcher
looked
around
him. There were more bones. Each one was sun-bleached and bare.

“Dude, you’re crazy. Come on.” Adam lay on the ground, swinging an arm toward Fletcher. Fletcher tried to reach for Adam’s hand, but his sneakers slipped and he went down again. Again, Adam laughed. Again, the skull was in front of him, mouth gaping, eyes scrutinizing. Then it whispered in his ear: “He’s making fun of you, Fletcher. He hates you. Make him quiet. Make him quiet like Susan. They’re both coming to get you.”

“Stop screwing around. I don’t want to be here all day,” Adam said.

Fletcher remembered reaching for Adam. He remembered their fingers touching. He remembered what the skull whispered to him. Adam pulled him up and they were face-to-face.

The first blow made him shake. He remembered the fire in his arm, the way it shot out even though he couldn’t remember thinking he should strike. He thought his hand was broken. He remembered the sickening sound of bone hitting bone, the way Adam’s head shot back from his neck.

He remembered the whispers cheering him on.

• • •

“Dammit!” Avery muttered, feeling the tears at the edges of her eyes. If Fletcher didn’t catch her, she would die in the woods. She was too far away from the Cascade trail they had come down. Everything looked the same—tall trees, dead bushes, mountains of pine needles. She had no idea which direction to turn.

Why
is
Fletcher
doing
this?

She dropped her head in her hands and pulled her knees up to her chest, Adam’s knife poking into her thigh.

He
was
going
to
kill
me
.

• • •

There was a meadow in front of him. It was like a mirage from one of those old cartoons, a lush oasis in the middle of the desert. But he didn’t know where Avery was. The whispers told him he had to find her; they throbbed with the needling pain behind his eyes.

Find
her, find her, find her…

“No.” He said it out loud, trying to shake the whisper from his head. “No.” He was halfway lucid now, somewhere on the edge between his waking self and the other self, the one that came back after Dr. Palmer tried to push it down.

“Schizophrenia, Fletcher. It’s called schizophrenia.”

He remembered being strapped down in the hospital, his mother brushing the hair from his forehead as her mouth rolled around the word. He remembered that someone had attacked Susan. That his mother whispered when she thought he was asleep: “He’s my son, and I’m not going to leave him here.”

“You’re picking one child over the other. He’s dangerous. He can’t be in the same house as Susan,” his father whispered in response.

“He’s just a little boy. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“You’re insane. He attacked Susan. We have to protect our daughter.”

“I’m going to protect my son.” His mother—strong, defiant.

• • •

Avery held her breath. She could see Fletcher. She prayed he didn’t see her. He was murmuring things, flicking at his ear with those same awkward movements. She watched him brush the hair from his forehead, matted with sweat, and look around. She watched as he pivoted so that his body was facing her hiding spot. Avery didn’t dare look up at him.

“Avery?” Fletcher’s voice was tremulous and soft. Haunting. “Avery, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He took a step toward her, leaves crackling under his sneakers. Avery dug her teeth into her bottom lip, sure that her body was betraying her: blood pulsing, heart beating, breath whooshing through her barely parted lips. Fletcher must have heard her. She clenched her teeth as she started to tremble. Her thighs were aching as she hunched down.

Fletcher took another step.

Avery’s muscles cramped.

She let the cry die in her chest, but her knee couldn’t hold, brushing against a branch.

Fletcher’s eyes cut right to her. His lips began to move, a wide, slow smile spreading across his lips. “Hi, Avery.”

“Please, Fletcher. Please don’t hurt me. I want to help you.”

He cocked his head, the silence between them weighted and eerie. “I would never want to hurt you.”

• • •

The whispers broke in, the chorus going from a gentle murmur to a brain-bashing thunder. Fletcher pressed his palms against his ears and pinched his eyes closed.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

• • •

Avery’s body took over. She sprang up to run. Pain, like a live wire, shot up from her ankle and she crumbled. Avery heard herself squeal as she went down, while Fletcher’s hand closed around her other ankle. Avery clawed at the ground, her nails breaking in the dirt. Fletcher yanked her closer, stepping hard on the small of her back. Heat broke within her, the pain rolling from her low back around to her belly, stabbing and nauseating. Avery kicked and flopped like a fish out of water and Fletcher toppled, landing behind her with a loud
oof
.

Avery was up and running again.

She could hear Fletcher behind her, stomping through the waist-high grasses as she cut across the meadow. He was yelling for her in that same primitive, throaty voice that she barely recognized. She flung a look over her shoulder. This Fletcher, the one who tailed her with his teeth bared and his eyes narrowed, was someone she didn’t know. This Fletcher terrified her.

Avery reached the lip of forest on the other side of the meadow, and recognition hit her: this was the part of the forest she and her mother had walked in. She knew there was a burned-out tree and she vaulted for it, sliding at the same time a clap of thunder shook the sky. She dipped into the tree just as the sky opened up. Silver-gray rain came down in torrents.

Fletcher called out to her again, but his voice was sucked away by the sheeting rain. Avery could see him standing a few feet in front of her, head upturned as the water splashed onto his forehead and over his cheeks.

“Get back here, Avery! Get back here!”

Avery glanced up at the rain and back down at her orange search-and-rescue jacket. It was made to be seen. She slid out of it, trembling against the bone-soaking rain, and balled it up, rolling it as carefully as she could down the gentle slope she had come up. It stopped at the base of a giant redwood ten feet away, one of the sleeves trailing like a beacon. She prayed that Fletcher would see it.

• • •

She had to be here.

Get
her, get her, get her,
the whispers chanted.
Can’t you do anything right?

Fletcher looked up, unsure when the rain had started.

Where was he? What was he doing?

He blinked, pushing his feet through the dirt as it turned to mud.

“Avery?”

His mind raced. They were hiking. They had come out here to find Adam. No, Adam was dead. He remembered that.

Clues.

They had come out looking for clues to jog his memory.

And now Avery was lost.

A sob lodged in his throat.
How
did
Avery
get
lost?
He called her name again, fear fluttering inside him. “Avery, are you out here?”

What if she had fallen or slipped? The rain was already pooling at his feet, the mud making a sucking sound as he tried to walk. She could be stuck or hurt. Blood thundered in his ears, the only thing he could hear over the rush of rain. There was water in his eyes, rolling over his cheeks. He wasn’t sure if it was raindrops or tears.

“Avery?”

He turned again and saw a slice of bright orange behind a tree. Her search-and-rescue jacket.

“
Avery
!
” Fletcher rushed toward her, grinning like a madman, so glad that he had found her. Only it wasn’t her. It was just her coat. Fletcher’s chest constricted.

“Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.” What had happened to Avery?

He whirled when he heard her grunt.

• • •

Avery didn’t have any other choice.

She fished Adam’s knife from her pocket, folded out the blade, and gripped the handle in her palm. She knew where she was. She remembered the formation of the trees, the burned-out stump—she remembered that just a few feet from her, there was a road. They always stopped at the burned-out tree because her mother hated the road. “It’s like an ugly slice right through heaven,” she would say as they picnicked under the trees.

The only thing between Avery and the safety of the road was Fletcher.