The Last Time She Saw Him (26 page)

CHAPTER 20

A
high-pitched scream rings in my ears and the pressure in my lungs builds until I am sure every part of my body will imminently explode.

I gasp for precious air and seize upon my first breath as though I am entering the world for the very first time. I flick open my eyes and find myself on the floor, soaked to the bone and lying next to the cast-iron pot still filled with freezing-cold water.

The hopelessness of my situation comes back to me as I hear an angry buzz start up between Alice and Leslie, who are huddled just outside the door of the shack exchanging heated and worried words.

“They’re at the house. I saw them,” Leslie cries. “I was running after the boy, and I saw the lights of a car. It pulled into the driveway of the main house.”

“Are you sure?” Alice asks.

“Yes, I saw the lights. I told you. Someone is at the house!”

“If it’s the police, they’ll see the gravel tracks of the tires heading back this way. We don’t have much time.”

Alice pulls out the small mirror from her pocket and shoves it under my nose, just as she did with Tucker.

“I was just finishing with her before you interrupted me. Let me be sure she’s dead.”

My bruised lungs have to take one more beating, and I hold my breath and force myself to lay perfectly still until Alice is satisfied.

“No fog on the mirror. Praise God. She’s dead,” Alice says. She tucks the mirror back into her waist pocket and grabs Leslie by the arm. The two hurry outside to search the horizon for the newly arrived vehicle.

When they are completely out of sight, I greedily gulp in air as fast as I can. It sears my throat and lungs as it goes down, but I continue until my breathing stabilizes. My time alone is limited to probably seconds, minutes if I’m lucky. I scan the room for anything I can possibly use as a weapon when my eyes catch on a glint of something shining in the dim light. Teetering on the edge of the table directly above me is one of Alice’s silver knitting needles. I lift up my bound feet and thump the base of the table, jarring it just enough so the knitting needle begins to roll. It travels slowly at first until it builds momentum. It skitters across the wooden surface and falls off the table’s lip and lands with precision directly in the palm of my uninjured hand.

“Oh my God, what is that?” Alice squeals from the doorway. She waves her hands busily around her head like she is batting away a swarm of pesky bugs.

“It looked like a bird,” Leslie answers.

Alice shudders and then shakes her long grey-blond hair loose from its tightly wound braid.

“Disgusting creatures out here in the woods. I can’t wait to get out of here. Now answer me. Why didn’t you kill the boy when you had the chance?”

“I’m sorry. I saw the car pull into the main house and I panicked. I ran back here to tell you because I got scared.”

“Was the car still parked in the driveway when you ran back to tell me?”

“I think so.”

Alice tears her fingers through her thick swarm of hair, leaving it wild and unruly like a crazed Medusa.

“Go back to the guesthouse and shoot them both,” Alice says. “There’s no time for the ceremony. Kill the baby and the boy.”

A cutting shiver runs through me. I feel the knitting needle, cold and smooth in my hand. I curl it around my fingers and make a tight fist.

“I don’t want to hurt a baby. Punishment is one thing, but I don’t want to kill him. I can’t do that,” she says softly and looks away from Alice’s laser-focused gaze. “I don’t want to hurt Logan either. I have morals, you know.”

Alice barrels over to Leslie’s side and swats her niece hard across the face with a fat, open hand.

“Give me the gun.”

Leslie whimpers like a dog that knows it is about to be beaten and hands Alice the weapon.

“Go in the corner and get down on your knees with your head against the wall,” Alice commands.

“Please!” Leslie cries out.

“Before I pull the trigger, I want you to remember how I was the only family that would take your white-trash ass in. Are you ready? One . . . two . . .”

“Stop! I’ll do it. Give me the gun. I’ll kill the kids.”

“There. That’s better,” Alice answers, now content, and drops the gun to the side of her plump hip.

Now back in line, Leslie reaches out her obedient hand for the weapon.

“There are two gas cans in the shed. Bring one to me and take the other one with you to the guesthouse. Once you kill the boy and the baby, put their bodies in the trunk of the car. Douse the guesthouse with the gasoline and set it on fire. We don’t have time to wipe the entire place down for our fingerprints now, so light it up. I’ll have to write the suicide note myself on the computer at the main house. We’ll leave it there, along with Julia’s body, before we leave.”

“Won’t the fire bring more people around? Why don’t we just leave the bodies somewhere further back in the woods?” Leslie asks.

“Shut up. I know what I’m doing here.”

The plan settled, Leslie hustles to the shed and Alice begins to comb through the room, looking for any items of value to save before she torches the place. She sifts through the desk and retrieves a Bible and a still unfinished letter to Cahill.

“For you, Father, I do this for you,” Alice prays.

I struggle to calculate how I can bring down Alice with just a plastic knitting needle as my only defense, when my focus is abruptly interrupted by a whirring sound of something flapping nervously above my head.

Alice finishes collecting her valuables and goes outside to put them in Leslie’s car. I quickly open my eyes to pinpoint the sound and realize I am no longer alone in the shack. Hovering in the corner of the ceiling is a bat, small and brown, with long pointy ears, a piglike nose, and tiny eyes that stare back at me with rapt intensity. It must have been the bat that collided with Alice earlier, and it retreated inside the shack to flee from her assault.
A bat out of hell
, I think to myself.

Leslie runs up the porch carrying a large red gas can, which she drops to the floor as soon as she makes it inside. “Alice . . .” she pants.

“Don’t you fall apart on me now,” Alice says from the doorway. “It’s not my fault you can’t handle your workload. When I was a girl, I did whatever I was told by my mother and didn’t break a sweat. If I didn’t, I’d get locked down in the basement for days with nothing to eat and only my Bible. You would’ve trapped and killed that boy by now if you hadn’t slipped up and let Julia steal the ax from you.”

“No, just listen. I don’t see the car at the main house anymore,” Leslie answers. “Whoever was knocking on the door is gone.”

“I knew it,” Alice says. “God will protect the righteous who honor His name. Now, go back to the guesthouse and take care of the children. Then set it on fire when you’re done.”

Leslie heads toward the door with the gun, leaving me alone with the monster.

I clutch the knitting needle, now prone and warm in my hand, and wait for Alice to approach.

“Water to fire, fire to water. Praise you, Lord, I am your daughter,” Alice chants and opens the top of the gas can.

The noxious smell of the gasoline quickly fills the room and begins to burn my throat.

Alice moves to a desk in the corner. She scatters a stack of papers on the floor and douses them with the gasoline. My feet are still bound so I can’t stand up or run, but if Alice just gets close enough, I can reach her.

Alice’s backside twitches in her loose dress as she moves from side to side, crisscrossing the floor as she covers it with fuel.

“
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,”
Alice begins to sing in a quavering voice. “
Praise Him, all creatures, here below
.”

She takes two more steps in my direction.

“
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host
.”

I grasp the knitting needle as tightly as I can until my hand shakes.

“
Praise Father, Son
. . .”

Alice stands over me now, so close I can see the dark, wet fabric under her armpits.

“
And Holy Ghost
.”

“ALICE!” I scream and rear up from the floor.

Alice freezes in surprise and drops the can, spilling the remainder of the gas, which flows across the floor. She stares at me in disbelief as though I’ve risen from the dead, and her thin lips form a startled O expression.

A howl of fury and vengeance boils up from inside of me and explodes. I rear my arm back and set it flying toward Alice. She tries to scramble backward, but my arm is coming down too fast. I plunge the knitting needle as hard as I can toward Alice’s face. The knitting needle connects, slices into the center of Alice’s right eye, and makes a wet sucking sound as it plunges in.

“Selfish bitch!” Alice howls as she falls to her knees.

Alice’s hands grope at her face as she tries to pluck out the knitting needle.

“You little whore,” she cries. Alice’s equilibrium shattered, she folds in half and begins to vomit.

Alice lets out one last mighty wretch and then rights herself. She pulls at the knitting needle with both hands and lets out a long, painful moan as she extracts it from her now-ballooning eye, which is streaked with bright stripes of crimson.

“I’m going to get you good this time,” Alice screams and tears into the kitchen. She reaches inside her knitting bag and yanks out a hatchet.

I latch my hands on the stubborn knot around my feet, pull the rope loose from my swollen ankles, and limp in a fast, stilted gait toward the door.

Alice’s long hair is loose and spills around her face as she looms toward me with the weapon.

“Get ready for hell,” she howls. A sick grin spreads across her face as she lifts the hatchet with both hands above her head, and I brace for impact.

A building crescendo of wings flaps together faster and faster and distracts Alice for a split second. I look towards the commotion and see the bat, now highly agitated, its angry eyes glaring directly at Alice as if it wants payback for her earlier beating. The bat lets out an otherworldly high-pitched squeal and swoops down at Alice with breakneck speed and nose-dives into her thick nest of hair. Alice shrieks and tries to swat the bat away with her free hand, but the more she moves, the deeper the bat burrows in.

“You hideous creature of the devil,” Alice screams.

She begins to run around in circles to free herself, but the bat holds on tight like it is prepared to scalp its adversary.

“Help!” Alice begs me.

She snatches pieces of her hair out in clumps and lurches in my direction, waving the hatchet wildly in her right hand.

Halfway across the room, her foot catches on something and she starts to tip backward as if she is slipping on a patch of ice. Alice scrambles to grab the table to steady herself, but her feet kick out from under her before she can reach it and she starts to topple to the floor. The bat releases its grasp finally and ascends back to its safe perch in the corner of the room, its work finally done. Alice falls face first and lands with a hard thud against the wooden floorboards. The object that tripped Alice rolls across the room until it comes to a sudden stop.

I look down at my feet and see Alice’s knitting needle, the magic silver bullet that brought down the terrible giant.

The sharp throbbing from my broken hand reawakens my senses and I realize I might have less than ten seconds to run before Alice gets up to finish me off. Ten seconds if I’m lucky. I race blindly across the room until my fingers close around the doorknob to the safe haven of outside and turn to face my attacker. But Alice is motionless, pressed face down against the warped, wooden floor, which is now tattooed with a stain of blood pooling from her torso.

Alice wrestles to her side, the hatchet protruding from the center of her chest. Her long, yellow-silver hair is soaked in red dripping tips that cling to her neck and shoulders. She slowly turns her sweat-laden head toward me and offers one last look of cold, hard evil.

“You selfish girl . . . you ruined everything.”

“Go to hell, Alice.”

Alice’s eyes turn to slits and then she blinks heavily as she tries to focus. She opens her mouth as if to curse me to damnation one last time, but something passes across her face and the light drains from her eyes.

The momentary quiet of death is interrupted as the shack door bursts open.

“Police! Put down your weapon,” Navarro yells from the dim doorway, his gun drawn.

“Navarro, it’s me, Julia,” I scream.

Navarro pans the room, his gun still pointed in front of him. Once he checks the entire space, he bends over Alice to feel for a pulse.

“She’s dead. Who’s this woman? What happened, Julia? Jesus Christ, are you all right?”

“Her name is Alice. She’s one of Cahill’s parishioners. She kidnapped Will. Her niece, Leslie, is heading to the guesthouse. Leslie’s got a gun. She’s going there to kill Logan and Will.”

“Where is the guesthouse? Come on,” Navarro says as he grabs my hand and we hurry out of the shack toward his car.

“The guesthouse is on the other side of the hill from here. We’ll take this road a half-mile past the cherry orchard and it’ll be on our right. I’m coming with you.”

“Stay here. Wait for Russell. He should be here in a few minutes.”

Navarro ducks into his police car and secures the door locks right before I can try and make my way into the passenger seat.

“You can’t do this. You can’t leave without me,” I cry and pound my fist against the window.

Navarro starts the engine and barrels down the road toward the guesthouse, and I follow in his vehicle’s direction.

I feel my calf muscles tighten as I sprint up the steep hill and ignore the searing pain in my ankles, still raw from the friction of the rope. As I reach the top of the hill, the moon breaks free from a passing cloud and casts a soft light on the scene below. I can see the guesthouse now. Leslie is stalking the place, going from window to window to try and catch sight of Logan and Will.