Darlene grins. ‘All the better to see you with, my dear.’
‘What are you doing?’ Carl asks. The icy trickle is a flood now, filling his insides. Buddy is concentrating on the altar and Darlene is behind Carl. They are both distracted. Of course they are. They have the attention spans of kittens. Carl calculates the distance between himself and the door. He could get to it within a second. Another second or two to get an arrow. Then what? He can’t run because then everything will be ruined. He pictures what he needs to do: press the sharp tip of an arrow against Darlene’s throat, tell Buddy to drop his gun, take back control. Or he could simply run. Get the fuck out of here.
He hesitates. All this planning. He can’t abandon it now. Can’t abandon Abigail.
‘What big ears you have,’ says Buddy, taking a step towards Carl, prodding the air with the barrel of the revolver.
From behind Carl, Darlene laughs again. ‘All the better to hear you with, my dear.’
Carl is paralysed by indecision. The door. The gun. He waits for Abigail to tell him what to do, to advise him, but she is silent. With a shudder, he realises he can no longer feel her presence.
‘What big teeth you have,’ says Buddy.
The door. He’s going to go for the door. He braces himself, inches closer. Behind him, Darlene is breathing heavily. She sounds excited. Panting like the wolf in the story.
‘All the better to eat you with.’
They both laugh like this is hilarious.
He’s going to do it. On the count of three. He’s going to run. But . . . the plan. The ritual. He can’t let Abigail down.
Except he must. Survival comes first.
One.
‘What big claws you have,’ says Buddy, his back fully to Carl now, facing the altar.
I’m sorry, Abigail, Carl says in his head. Another time. We’ll do it another time.
Two.
Wait. Claws? That’s not . . .
‘All the better,’ says Darlene, and her voice is right in Carl’s ear, her breath on his neck. When did she get so close?
She slides the knife into his back.
‘All the better to kill you with.’
Carl lies on the dirty wooden floor of the cabin, gazing up at them. He can’t move. He’s vaguely aware of his blood seeping out of him, pooling around him. He turns his head and sees Abigail’s picture, the glass of the frame smashed to pieces, lying in the path of his blood. Two faces look down at him. A fox and a goat. Nikki and Greg. His friends. His family. He smiles, not feeling the blood on his lips. They’re all so young. They have their whole lives ahead of them.
Then he remembers. This isn’t Greg and Nikki. It’s Buddy and Darlene. Behind them, in the doorway, he sees another face. A woman’s face. Abigail? Has she come for him? Come to take him away? Oh, such relief. She hasn’t abandoned him, hasn’t fled this place. She’s been waiting, waiting to welcome him to the next life, to take his hand and lead him into the woods, her woods, the place he protected for her, and they will roam and dance and laugh and be together forever.
He takes one last look at Abigail’s broken portrait and closes his eyes. He hears Buddy say something about burning this place down, but that doesn’t matter now.
He waits.
Waits for Abigail to stretch out her hand.
He’s still waiting when the last breath leaves his lungs.
Chapter 45
Frankie’s throat was sore, her voice hoarse, from pleading with Carl to let them out. Ryan’s too, despite the bottled water Carl had dropped into the basement.
Finally, realising it was futile, that they should save their energy, Frankie stopped yelling. She touched Ryan’s arm and he fell quiet too.
All was silent above them.
Frankie tried to picture what it was like up there. They had been led into the house, through the room with the altar in the corner and into another room. That’s where the hatch was. If Carl was in the first room with the door shut, he probably couldn’t hear them, or they were muffled enough to make ignoring them easy.
Ryan sat back on the ground, his arms wrapped around his knees.
‘We’re gonna die down here,’ he said. He turned his face towards the remains of Everett Miller. ‘Like him.’
Frankie, who had sat down too, scooted over to him. ‘Don’t say that. We’re going to get out of here. We’re going to live long, wonderful lives. We’ll be grateful to be alive. We won’t take it for granted. And that will give us an edge over all our friends and peers. Because we’ll have been given a second chance.’