The Understorey, Book One of The Leaving Series (45 page)

I didn’t know if he meant Elliott’s initial
or if he literally meant Elliott himself, but I didn’t want to find
out, to be honest. I only wanted Elliott never to come anywhere
near us. He was my everything and didn’t deserve to see me like
this. I looked like death warmed over. My hair was plastered to my
skin from all the blood and the E was bleeding profusely all over
the floor and counter top.

    “Enough,” he said before
tearing me through the bedroom and into the laundry room. He made
me grab my now dry clothes from the dryer and put them back on. My
‘E’ bled through my shirt, soaked into my clothing and dripped into
my jeans.

He pushed me from the laundry room and tossed
me onto the pine planks of the living room. He tied me once more
but didn’t tape my mouth shut, for which I was grateful, but it
didn’t last long because he went into the bedroom and I heard the
tearing of some fabric. He came out with strips of what looked like
a sheet and gagged me by tying it tight behind my ahead and across
my mouth. I could barely breathe.
    “I’ll be back Julia. Just need to take care of
these knife wounds. Can’t very well flee West Virginia if I’m
bleeding a trailed path that leads to my hiding place, can I?
Leaves a nasty trail. I’ll have enough trouble as it is hiding
yours.”
    He turned for his parents’ bathroom, dripping
life over every inch of the floor, painting glassy crimson proof of
the promise of my own impending trail. I turned from my side to my
back and quietly sobbed, praying that I could stop the salt water
flow before he got out of his shower.

Please
, I silently prayed,
Please
God, let my death be a peaceful one.

Chapter
Ten
My Calling

“Let’s go,” Matt said.
I followed him to his car and placed my hand on my chest at the
pain under my left collarbone before signaling to head towards my
house and he revved his engine. I needed him to come with me to
Blackwater Falls but his old Camaro couldn’t make the trek. He had
no chains on his tires and we were going into some crazy weather
and it wasn’t likely to make it up the obscure dirt road to Jesse’s
parents’ cabin.

I needed to get to my truck, not just for the
truck though, for several baseball bats setting underneath my seat
as well.

The car ride to my house felt like an
eternity. We were understandably quiet. The fact that I couldn’t
speak more than one or two words together wasn’t helping much
either. I could also tell Matt didn’t want to cause me any
unnecessary pain or maybe he was taking my ‘no questions asked’
demand a bit too literally. It was probably the fact that he
already knew where we were going and was debating on whether or not
it was worth our friendship to take me back to the hospital and
spare both our lives or even Jesse’s.

Jesse. Jesse, the most deranged person I’ve
ever known of in my entire life and whom I had no idea had it in
him to be so. Jesse, someone I don’t even think Marisa or even
Taylor knew was capable of such monstrosity.

When Matt killed the engine, he sat in the
driver’s seat while I removed my seat belt and began to exit the
car. He didn’t so much as blink and I hesitated at the door’s
handle, sat back again only to nod in realization that Matt had no
intention of coming with me. I didn’t blame him. He did the most he
was willing to do and I could tell he was struggling with the words
to say. I grabbed his shoulder, squeezed, and smiled the best
crooked smile I could through the pain to let him know it was okay
and bolted into the winter’s night.

I struggled through the falling snow to my
truck and put it in neutral to push back onto the road without
waking my mom or sister. The next thing I knew Matt was beside me
helping me push her onto the road. I hopped into the cab, waved my
thank you, and watched Matt hug his arms through my rear view. Poor
Matt. I could only imagine what he was thinking but there was one
thing I knew for certain. His eyes were the most worried I’d ever
seen them. It instantly aged him.

The four and a half hour drive to Blackwater
Falls left room for me to imagine the worst scenarios possible. I
made a mental checklist of all the things I was going to need if I
was forced to go out into the woods to find Jules. I prayed that he
was keeping her at the cabin but feared that since the police had
already been there I would find the same thing they did,
nothing.

The pang of hurt settled inside my chest at
the thought of what Jesse might have done to Jules while I was out
and I found my foot laying harder on the gas. I absently placed my
hand over the place on my chest I knew Julia was hurting the
worst.

The roads were barely visible through the
thick fog of snow tossing and turning around me. It wasn’t sticking
and that was very good news to me. I hadn’t even needed to wait
long for my windshield to defrost. My heart, on the other hand was
another story, frozen solid knowing Jules was so close yet so very
far away from me.

Four hours passed sluggishly before I found
myself at the obscure turn off that was the Thomas’ private drive
to their small vacation home but in Jesse’s case it was more his
own private hideaway from the law.

I was lucky to find it at all, not only
because of the weather, but also because I’d only been there twice
before. I turned onto the drive and slowly snaked the truck through
two miles of blizzard. The truck slipped and skidded a few times in
a dangerous ice dance but when I finally reached the cabin my
earlier prediction struck home. It was dark, not a single light
on.

I hid the truck in an alcove of trees I was
confident wouldn’t hinder a hasty retreat and slipped out. I
circled the cabin with my bat in hand looking for any signs of
their whereabouts. I found Jesse’s car parked in the back next to
the firewood. I was hoping since the police had come and left at
that point that Jesse would feel comfortable coming back to the
cabin but it was a false hope, just one I was so wishing was
true.

I walked through his screened porch and shook
the snow from my boots and body. I pressed my ear against the door
and heard nothing. I checked the handle and it was unlocked. I
hesitated, thinking it was a trap, but saw no smoke coming from the
chimney and was fairly sure he wouldn’t have been inside without
one, the cold was that bitter.

I stepped inside and the cabin felt as icy
cold as it was outside. If they had been there it had to have been
hours before because the fireplace was completely void of any
warmth. I could tell there had been a recent fire though, no more
than a day old, probably less gauging the time frame he was working
under.

My jaw throbbed as the pain medication wore
off but I did notice my strength was returning with more potency as
the pain grew worse. It was worth the trade off. I needed all the
strength I could assemble. God only knew how long it was going to
take for me to find Jules and then I was probably going to have to
fight Jesse once I came upon them.

I circled the entire living room searching,
begging for a clue of any kind that could lead me to my Jules but
it was too dark. I wasn’t about to turn on a light near any windows
just in case he was nearby and watching for me.

My back against the wall, I scaled the one
nearest the master bedroom and opened the door to the room but
didn’t step in, waiting for the possibility that he could be hiding
with Jules in the room. I glanced around the room, I threw open the
closet doors, peered underneath the bed but no one was there.

I turned to leave the room and noticed I
hadn’t checked the bathroom, no windows in there. I approached this
door as I had the master’s and waited before entering. When I
stepped inside, I flipped on the light, nearly vomiting from the
scene before me. It was covered in blood, lots and lots of
sickeningly rusted blood. It was clotted and had been there for
hours.

Obviously, the police hadn’t had a warrant to
enter the Thomas home or they’d have corded off the room as
evidence, or maybe Jesse came after they had.

The shower was enclosed in glass and the
bleeder had taken a quick shower, rinsing off the blood from their
body but not bothering to rinse it from the tile floor. I noticed
two hand prints belonging to the same person imprinted on the glass
door. I could tell by their size that they belonged to Jesse and I
almost burst into tears. My knees began to buckle and I had to
support myself against the door to keep from bathing in the blood
pooled on the floor.
Julia.

    I staggered from the room
and fell onto my knees at the foot of the Thomas’ bed. I pulled
myself up against the mattress and headed back to the living room.
I lost control and could barely keep myself up. I leaned against
the fireplace and used the bat I brought to balance myself.

Watery eyes scanned the room, desperately
seeking something, anything that would help me find Jules but I
found nothing but more blood pooled in random areas of the living
area. No matter, I wasn’t giving up. Until she was in my hands, I
was never giving up. Never.

    All at once it came to me.
I knew where Jesse was. I was so disgusted with myself that I
hadn’t thought of it earlier, it could have spared Jules any
torture she had most probably already received. She wasn’t dead
because the soreness at my chest still pulsed, a perversely good
sign.

When Jesse was younger, after he had brought
me to the cabin the two times he had invited me, he told me he
discovered a place he could be alone and by alone he meant a place
he could take girls when his parents were around.

He said it was a small cave underneath a
small group of falls near his cabin. He told me it was perfect
because the water made it impossible for anyone to find him there.
I practically sprinted to my truck and with my bat in hand, I
stuffed a couple of plastic cuffs I stole from my Uncle Danny into
my coat pocket along with a flashlight and began my trudge through
the snow, three feet thick in some spots, to the river.

I followed the river until I met the first
fall of water and steadily worked my way to its base. I edged
myself down, trying to see if it was possible to hold a cave but it
was too small and I could see the rock through running water when I
held my flashlight to it.

Trying very hard not to get wet, knowing it
would kill me within a few minutes in this cold, I patiently edged
myself back to the trees lining the river and continued to follow
it. I walked for at least a quarter of a mile without seeing any
kind of waterfall. I contemplated turning around and following the
river in the opposite direction of the Thomas cabin. I began to
turn but instinctively decided to go just a few more yards in the
direction I had been traveling.

I could see, around a bend, several yards
ahead a break in the river and a set of waterfalls slightly larger
than the first one I had found. I had a gut wrenching feeling those
were it and intuitively turned off my flashlight. I used the trees
as a physical guide and avoided any place I could see the
reflection of stars to avoid getting wet. My toes and fingers felt
like they would fall completely off at any moment but it was a
pathetic sting in comparison to the ache I felt for needing to find
Jules.

Please,
I prayed.
Please let her be
alright!
My head pounded at the possibility that she could just
be on the other side of the wall of that water. It was everything
in my power not to dive into the water and snatch her way. I found
restraining myself when I felt the excruciating need to find her
drained me of precious energy so I shifted my focus to preserving
all I had to fight.

Every crunch of snow beneath my boot grated
my nerves. I was certain the rushing water drowned out any noise on
both sides but I still hated that Jesse could have any warning
whatsoever. I wanted the crack of my bat against his back to be the
only way for him to be aware of my presence.

The waterfall was tall, probably sixty feet
high, and the surrounding edges of the erupting water was frozen,
seemingly instantaneously, a swollen cloud of powdered water in
perfect stillness. In between the frame of solid water, rushed
liquid, racing as fast as it could to avoid the fate of its brother
frigid in time.

I edged myself down the embankment heading
toward the end of the fall before realizing too late that there was
no way to avoid getting wet. The water seeped into my clothing at
an alarming rate. I knew that if they weren’t at this fall that I’d
have to find a dry place soon to avoid hypothermia.

A few feet before the edge, I heard voices,
someone talking, but it seemed too long and drawn out to be a
conversation. My heart jumped into my throat before I realized that
it wasn’t someone talking, it was someone’s yelling dulled by the
raging water.
Jules
.

I wanted to shout out but the wire holding my
jaw tight prohibited it. I threw myself through the water, rolled
over my shoulder onto a damp poorly lit cave, and sat up against my
heels to witness the most horrific sight my eyes have ever taken
in.

Jules.

My beautiful Jules, her hair darkly saturated
and matted down from what could only be a lot of blood, her blood.
She sat with her legs crossed on the floor and her hands tied
behind her back. Her mouth was bound with a piece of cloth that
tied behind her head. I could tell it was way too tight because her
cheeks bulged around it and her skin looked chafed. The cloth, at
one time, was of a light color but its original hue was lost in the
soaked red that ringed her beautiful head.

The tragic sight sent a shivering pulse of
rage through my entire body. My hands gripped my bat with
blistering mania. He was going to be stopped, by me, and at that
very moment. I stood. Jules could barely register an audible
scream. She begged me to stop, feverishly trying to warn me, but I
couldn’t hear her over the ferocious wrath pulsing in my ears,
eyes, face, and body. I swung the bat above my head focusing my aim
at the top of his skull but stopped myself right before giving the
deadly blow he deserved.