Left for Dead: A gripping psychological thriller (11 page)

Poor Alain Dufort. I wonder what befell him. The snake referred to in the journal? I think of his family who has suffered all these years not knowing where he is.

Close by is a pair of trekking boots still in good shape. I pick them up and shake out three tiny metatarsals. Would it be so wrong? I can hear my mother warning me of superstitions about walking in a dead man’s shoes. I try them on. A tight fit but better than nothing. I feel a surge of hope. Tomorrow I will wear these boots and walk myself right out of here.

*

A few hours before dark, the wolf returns. I am hot from the fever and taking in air through the tent flap when I see him. He circles the camp three times then drops into a patch of tall grass. I’m pleased he’s back. I watch him sleep. I long to touch the velour of his muzzle, feel his cool, damp nose against my palm. We are kindred spirits, with our various disabilities.

*

I wake before daybreak and lie listening to the wolf run in his sleep. A bashing fist of a headache lobs at the base of my skull. I look at the boots and push them away.

29

A thorough leaden fatigue has conquered my muscles and joints. The tiniest act is an effort. I know I should move on, that I must find food, that I need to get help, but all I can do is lie here in Alain Dufort’s sleeping bag and stare at the billowing ceiling.

Outside it’s raining. I listen to the patter and think of my little brother and older sister, and wonder what they are doing now. I think of how we once played a game of Monopoly that lasted an entire Labor Day weekend. I think of my mother’s basement and the steamer trunk filled with my childhood things, the Barbie dolls I didn’t really like, the drug store crossword magazines I devoured, the dress-up clothes three sizes too big. The collection of who I was meant to be. I wish I could go back and open the chest and see what else was inside.

I turn over, run my finger along the seam where the condensation has collected, lick. I have a feeling today is my birthday. September twenty-fourth. If I’m right, I am now thirty-two. Last year my mother had come down from Ithaca and met Matthew for the first time. We went to a Chinese restaurant and ate Szechuan chicken, and pork and chive dumplings. The owner put a candle in a barbeque pork bun and sang Happy Birthday in falsetto.

*

The days and nights bleed into one another and I sleep more and more. I am disappearing. In an effort to preserve its existence my body is consuming itself cell by cell. It emits a strange earthy odor like wild tarragon.

The wolf, too, is suffering. He’s barely more than a loose bag of bones. He has taken to sneaking off for hours at a time. I watch him drag himself into the woods, his peculiar, crooked gait more pronounced than ever. I don’t know where he goes but he usually returns chewing. Bark, I think. Whatever it is, it’s not food because his ribs are protruding worse than mine.

Last night I dreamt I ate him.

Perhaps he dreams of eating me.

I blink at Alain Dufort’s things—his boots, his journal, his Walkman—and think how easy it would be to unpick those shoelaces from the eyelets and tie them around my neck. What a blessed release it would be.

I reach up and touch my sunken cheek.

30

A storm bears down in the night and I am shocked awake by flying debris hitting the tent. The tent shakes so violently I’m afraid the fabric will split. I watch helpless as a corner comes loose from its moorings. If I don’t secure it, the whole thing will collapse.

Dragging my bad leg behind me, I hurry outside into the howling wind. It’s difficult to stay standing as I fight my way through the cold raw hail to the back of the tent. The rear guy line snakes wildly in the air, the metal peg nowhere to be seen. I need a rock or some other heavy object to weigh it down, but before I can find anything, the other rear corner comes loose, then the two front ones. The tent lifts off the ground and levitates before me. It shoots upward, spiraling and spitting out contents then snags high in a tree. I stand watching it. Icy needles rattle my skull.

The wolf is barking and the push and shove of the wind finally gets me moving. I stagger down the hill and turn left and try to keep moving forward.
Shelter. Find shelter.
But in the darkness I’m as good as blind and suddenly I am felled by something I do not see.

*

When I rouse, I feel calm. There’s a soft silence. At first, I think I am deaf, that my body is shutting down one sense at a time. But when I open my eyes I see snow float in feathers above me. Everything is shrouded in white, the tops of the pines, the forest floor, the spikes on the thorns, me.

I stay there, not wanting to move. I am dreaming a beautiful dream. Nature has come to take me away.

Then a sound arrives. A gentle sound. It means something, but I don’t want to think, all I want is the snow. But the noise takes shape, trickles into the shells of my ears. Trickling? Not trickling, gushing.
Water.

I lift myself up and stumble toward the sound. Trees thin out. The air feels full, fresh, wet. I look down. I’m standing on the precipice of an enormous, roaring waterfall. It thrashes into the boulders below. These boulders sit in white rapids that belong to a reptilian monster of a river—deep and treacherous and wide. A mile down the waterway, the bridge and sheer cliffs of the gorge.

I call for the wolf. But he’s nowhere to be seen. I call again. A flash of gray zigzags through the trees and the wolf steps from the forest’s edge. He pauses there, his paws sunken in the snow.

Turning from him, I limp toward the bridge through the mantle of white. The wolf trails me, the shush of his footfalls behind me a comfort. Halfway I stop to lick stamps of snow from my palm then continue along the bluff. My energy is failing and I’m barely able to remain upright, but I keep going until I reach the gorge.

We stand looking. The bridge is impassable. The first ten feet of planks have rotted away. The next twenty-foot stretch hangs in midair like a ladder.

In the crags and cracks of the sheer gorge cliffs, tendrils of green spill out and host a bright pink flower. A black-winged falcon wheels through the gully.

I turn to thank the wolf, face the cliff, and jump.

Return

31

I fall through the misted air and plunge into the frigid water below. Tossed over and over, I am a tiny leaf, grasping at anything—rocks, branches, the water itself. But I’m too fast-moving. My head goes under and I can’t raise it up again and I’m dragged down deep until I’m bouncing like a baby and I try to claw my way back up and my blood is turning to ice and my lungs are filling with silt and then, all at once, the washing machine stops and there’s daylight and oxygen and I am sucking in air and coughing out water.

I raise my head. I have been spat out into a tributary and there’s an embankment to my left. Paddling forward, I keep going until I feel pebbles underfoot then haul myself on to dry land and collapse on the cold, snowy stones.

My ragged breath ghosts the air as I lift my arm and look at my shattered wrist. I can’t feel a thing. But the rest of my body could have been smacked by a truck.

*

I come to on the frozen stones. It’s sleeting. I need to move. I squint through the curtain of icy rain and look for a road or some other pathway. To my left I see something. Set back in the woods about fifty yards sits a single-story cabin. Out of its corrugated tin roof juts a chimney chugging smoke.

*

I force myself to my knees then to my feet.
My clothes are heavy and wet and dragging me down. Pushing
through the pain, I heave myself up the bank and hobble away from the cabin toward the forest. Shielded by the trees, I circle back and crouch behind a bramble bush and pause, shivering, to study the house.

A hip-high stone fence made from chunks of large bronze river stone is dissected by a small wooden gate that opens out onto a pathway leading up to a porch. On the porch in the corner is a lone high-backed rattan chair, with a box for a footrest. By the door, under a clean single window, sits a pair of large brown leather work boots.

I don’t open the gate. Instead I approach the rear of the cabin, where t
wo back windows are lit with soft light. I drop back into the shadows. Stacked neatly under the shelter of the eaves is firewood cut in precise single-foot lengths. Nearby, a small generator hums and peppers the air with diesel.

The yard is a decent size, and
over the way there’s a wire-fenced pen with goats and sheep, and an adjoining pigpen and chicken coup. Next to that is a garden with rows of carrot tops, broccoli, string beans, and beets. A barn, not much bigger than the cabin itself, is located at the end of the yard.

A wave of exhaustion hits me. Inside my drenched clothes, my body shudders and jerks. I lift my eyes to the barn and stumble toward it. Avoiding the front shutter doors, I see a side entrance and go there to peer through the gaps in the wood, but it’s too dark to see inside. I lift the latch, push open the door, and
stand there listening.

I inch forward, close the door behind me, and wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark. The barn looks smaller from the inside and is filled with all manner of things. But everything is orderly and in its place. Above a work bench, tools hang from nails on the wall. In the vise an axe waits to be sharpened. On the side opposite there are sacks of animal feed, and garden equipment including a shovel, hoe, and rake. A rough-sawn staircase leads to a loft.

In the middle of the barn, taking up most of the space, a vehicle hides beneath a khaki-colored cover. I approach it and let my hand linger on the roof. I picture the mint Capri, Kermit the Frog, the trunk with all of the things.

I throw back the cover. A black VW Beetle, front tires flat, rear ones on blocks. The hood is missing, the engine long gone. I let out a breath and circle the vehicle and release the axe from the vise, then limp past four barrels labeled
Hawkins Oil Refinery
, and haul my body up the steps to the loft. I lie on my side and face the gaps in the wall, clutching the axe. Dust stirs on a splinter of light.
 

32

When I wake up there’s a shotgun pointed in my face.

“I use it, don’t think I won’t.”

I squint at the elderly, small-boned Asian woman through the fuzz of my vision, shotgun snug on her shoulder.

“You a junkie?” she demands.

“I was kidnapped.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s the truth, ma’am.”

But as soon as I say it, I am wondering to myself, is it? I’ve been in the wilderness for so long I might have made the whole thing up. What if I got lost? What if I’m delirious? Then I remember about the ten things, the baby.

“From a gas station in Oregon.”

The woman finally looks like she might believe me.

“Please,” I say, shuddering. “I’m so cold.”

She lowers her gun.

“I don’t like this,” she says, looking over her shoulder. “You make problem for me.”

“I won’t, please—”

Before I can finish, a coughing fit grips me and I throw up at least three liters of water. The woman reaches down and puts the back of her hand against my forehead and murmurs something I don’t understand.

*

I sleep a dreamless, blissful sleep for what seems like an eternity. Warm and sound and soft. Like I’m drifting on a marshmallow. When I open my eyes, I find myself on a lumpy sofa swaddled in a green woolen blanket. Directly opposite, a fire glows in the grate. A large black headless bearskin partially covers the wooden floor, and in the corner, on top of a small table, there’s a tiny shrine comprised of a miniature brass Buddha, a clutch of smoking incense sticks, and a burning pillar candle. On the wall above the shrine hangs a framed photograph of a white man in military uniform.

“You been in forest long time?” It’s the Asian woman. She’s at the
beige Formica table
playing a game of solitaire. She glances at me when I don’t answer. “Cat eat your tongue?”

“Where am I? Which state?” I ask.

She lifts the old-fashioned tortoiseshell pipe to her lips and puffs. I can smell the harsh tobacco from here.

“Washington.”

The woman knocks the ash from the pipe into a saucer and gets to her feet. She takes two steps into the adjacent kitchen area and opens a cupboard to retrieve a plate.

“Must eat. Nothing left of you.”

She reaches inside an old-fashioned pull-handled fridge to take out what looks like cheese and bread. I sit up and see that my foot has been dressed in a clean white bandage, my broken wrist, too.

“Very bad,” says the woman, glancing at my foot. “Will try medicine.”

“Medicine?”

She points to her chest. “I make medicine. For foot. Maybe get better, maybe not.”

She puts a tray on my lap. On the plate there’s a generous hunk of crusty bread and a wedge of cheese.

“Homemade. My goat, Betty, she give good milk.”

The woman returns to her card game and relights her pipe.

I raise the sandwich to my mouth and chew. Food. Real food. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I ate anything that resembles a sandwich.

The woman lifts her eyes from her cards. “Slow down or you sick up again.”

I do my best to be more measured but end up demolishing the sandwich more quickly than is probably wise.

“What’s your name please, ma’am?” I say when I come up for air.