Vincent Zandri - The remains

It worked. I had light. Not a strong light, but enough of a dull yellow glow for me to see my way through the darkness.

I took off.

Trekking through the thick growth, the rain poured down even harder than before. It came down with such force, it penetrated the tree cover, raindrops shooting and scooting between the now illuminated leaves like a spray of bright yellow paint. The rain smacked against my face, stinging the laceration on my nose. For the first time since having been dropped into the woods, I felt like I had to come to grips with my exhaustion.

I was dead tired. Tired and wired. I was living a very bad dream and all was as much surreal as it was the real deal. Branches slapped and jabbed at my face. It was as if the trees had eyes and saw me coming. But I didn’t feel the pain and sting anymore. I felt only the urgent need to get to Michael.

I knew then that Whalen was going to kill us. That it was only a matter of time. I didn’t want to die alone. Not at the hands of the devil. I wanted to die alongside Michael; wanted to die in his arms, the two of us married once more.

He’s a thin man. Not short, not tall. But wiry and strong. He’s dressed in filthy khakis, work boots, a white t-shirt that’s turned filthy gray, and a green baseball hat with the words ‘Christian Brothers Academy’ sewn across its brim. His face is gaunt and covered in black stubble. He’s holding a pistol. He doesn’t say a word when he grabs hold of my hair and pulls me in toward him.

When Molly comes at him, her hands and fingers held out before her like claws, he cocks back that pistol, hits her over the head with the butt. She falls like a rock beside me on the floor.

I want to scream, but the pain in my head is too great. The man grabs hold of my hair with one hand and tries to caress it with the other. It’s the first time a man other than my father has touched my hair and I become immediately nauseous.

I feel him shiver, his body quake.

“ Two little kittens,” he chants. “Two little kittens have lost their mittens and they begin to cry. You naughty kittens. Now you shall have no pie.”

“ I’m sorry,” I plead, tears streaming down my face. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“ And they begin to cry,” he repeats. “Cry, cry, cry.”

He drags me downstairs, then goes back up after Molly. I want to run but I’m afraid he’ll kill her.

Molly is groggy by the time she is laid out on the warped floor beside me. Without a word about his intentions, Whalen is kneeling over us. He’s tearing off these extra long pieces of duct tape, wrapping them around my right wrist and Molly’s left wrist so that we’re joined together. When he’s finished, he yanks us up onto our feet.

“ Little kittens have lost their mittens,” he chants, “Run away little kittens so I can catch you. Cry, cry, cry.”

Molly is more awake now. But she’s not saying anything.

The man presses his forearm against his eyes.

“ I’m counting little kittens,” he sings.

“ Run,” Molly insists. “Anyway we can, as fast we can.”

I broke through the tree-line, the trembling beam of flashlight lighting the way. I spotted the stream. It ran fast and wide on its way to the pool and beyond that the cliff. I scanned the beam of dull flashlight over the surface of the stream, searched for a way to get across without being dragged under by the storm-fed white water. I looked for that old bridge of boulders that Molly and I had used-the one with one rock succeeding another. At the same time I looked for the lightning struck tree that might have fallen across the stream’s width. I found neither.

My hand was broken, my ribs stinging and my face split down the center. If I tried to swim, I’d drown. I moved my way upstream for maybe thirty feet, then downstream until I came to the edge of the pool.

No way across the open water. No way across. No rocks, no felled tree, no shallow land bridge. The house in the woods was located on the opposite side of the stream. Michael was held hostage in the basement of that house.

I made my way back upstream and stood on the edge of the bank, feeling the oily mist on my face, feeling the stream’s white force. I had to think like Molly. What would Molly do if she were in my boots? I knew exactly what she would do. I stuffed the flashlight into my jeans, teetered on the edge of the white water and gulped down my dread.

I jumped.

We skip and hop our way down the porch stairs, onto a narrow path that leads out into the woods. Molly has regained some of her strength. Groggily, she pulls me along.

“ Come on,” she says in a muted but screaming voice. “We can make it out of here if we try.”

But I’m slowing her down. I’m so scared I can hardly move. We’re identical Siamese twins, joined at the wrists. I’m crying, tripping, struggling to keep up.

Together we fall along the path.

Molly screams, “Get up! Get up!”

I cry, try to lift myself, but we fall again. I try again to raise myself up and this time it works. We raise ourselves up together. We hobble along the path until we hear the sound of the stream.

“ All we have to do is get across that stream,” she exclaims. “Then we try for home.”

We keep moving, playing the man’s strange game of cat and mouse. All the while the sound of rushing stream water gets louder, more forceful. When we come to its edge, Molly asks me if I’m ready. Ready to jump in, that is.

She would pull me in if isn’t for the gunshot.

The ice cold whitewater dragged me downstream in a direct path for the drowning pool. I held out my hands for anything I could latch onto. Body twisting and turning in the water, I grabbed onto a rock with both hands and arms. For maybe a second or two I managed to stop my downstream progress toward the pool. But it didn’t take long for the smooth, moss-covered rock to betray me. As the frigid water pulled at my body and the rock slipped out of my hands, I felt my body once more being carried away.

My head and body were pulled underneath the water’s surface. I swallowed the water and felt myself drowning. Until my head would once more reemerge, only to be sucked under again. Deeper this time, the water filling my lungs, choking me.

But instead of panic, an explosion of anger erupted inside of me. It built up and up until nothing mattered anymore. Not my pain, not the cold, not exhaustion, not the suffocating sensation of drowning. Not fear. There was only the need to beat the stream, to beat my fear, to put an end to Whalen. To get to Michael.

Despite the pull of the rushing water I yanked the flashlight from out of my pants and flicked it on. I ducked under the stream’s surface and righted myself so that my chest and legs were parallel with the streambed. I shined the light in the direction of the opposite bank. An instant passed before I located a felled tree that had been completely submerged by heavy water.

As I came upon the tree, I took aim at one of its thick branches. With my good hand, I grabbed hold of the branch, grasping it as tightly as I could. It worked. Pulling myself up and out of the stream, I spit out the water that filled my mouth and lungs. Then I sucked in a deep breath of sweet oxygen. Pulling myself in toward the tree, I planted my right foot in the secure place where the branch met the tree’s thick trunk. With my last breath, I heaved my torso up and over the stream bank.

I stood frozen, water-soaked and afraid. But I was also proud of myself. Confident. It must have been the way Molly felt so many times in her life. I swore I had to be smiling. I could feel the muscles in my jaws constricting, tightening. A smile, despite everything that had happened to me in the woods.