She drifted in.
And this time she did scream. She was restrained, a makeshift zip-tie handcuff attached to her wrist, another looped around the bedpost. She pulled and pulled, thrashing on the bed, kicking off the covers. It was the first time she realized she was wearing a man’s button-down shirt and nothing else. Where were her clothes?
The man in the mask appeared in the doorway, the light behind him making him loom like a god. He came swiftly to her side, his big hands pulling the covers back up, smoothing her hair. He could cradle her whole head in his palm. The man was a giant.
“Where am I?” she croaked, confused and horrified at his gentle touch. “Who are you?”
“My name is…” He hesitated, sighed. “Silas. And you’re in my cabin in the woods.” She let that information sink in, trying to get the world to make some sense.
“Why am I tied up?” She pulled at the zip tie again, whimpering.
“You were walking in your sleep,” he explained. “You went outside in your bare feet. It’s snowing.”
She didn’t remember that at all.
“Who am I?” she whispered, reaching up to touch her throbbing head. There was a thick bandage there.
The man was quiet. Then he said, “I was hoping you could tell me.” She didn’t remember that either.
Silas couldn’t deny his relief-she was getting better, eating now, getting up to use the bathroom-but she still couldn’t remember her name or what had happened. He prompted her as much as he could, knowing head injuries could cause amnesia, that memory could recur any time, triggered by anything.
“You found me in the snow?” she mused, sipping the tea he’d made. It was good to see her sitting up, although she didn’t do it for long and she still slept a great deal. Her head hurt her and although the wound was healing nicely, the bruises on her forehead were growing a deeper, angry purple by the day. He had taken the zip-tie handcuffs off since she seemed more lucid, but he didn’t go far, never out of sight of the house.
“There was an accident,” he reminded her.
“And you didn’t take me to the hospital because…”
He nodded toward the window. The snow had drifted against the pane, a good four feet high. He had to use snowshoes everywhere now. He’d plowed out the driveway, but the cabin wasn’t built near any real pavement or labeled roads, and the way out couldn’t be called anything more than a path—room enough for one vehicle in and out. It was ten miles by car to anything resembling civilization.
“But how did I get all the way out here?” she mused, rubbing her bandaged head. She repeated that action often, as if her wound was a lamp and a genie might appear to tell her the answers she sought.
“There were two men in the car.” He treaded this road carefully. He didn’t know her relationship to his brother. “Do you remember them?”
She shook her head, frowning into her tea. “I remember snow. Shoveling snow. I remember a squirrel at our bird feeder. I chased him away. We feed the cardinals and blue jays that stay in the winter…”
“Who is ‘we’?” he prompted gently. This was promising-more than she’d ever shared.
Again, she sighed, looking over at him with a helpless shrug. “I don’t know.” He stood and took her tray. She’d graduated from soup to sandwiches and he was pleased to see she’d eaten almost all of it.
“The men… they were dead?” she asked again.
He nodded, waiting. She seemed to be considering this information as if for the first time, although they’d gone over it a dozen times at least.
“Will you call the police?” She put her tea on the night table, pulling the covers up high.
“Take me to a hospital?”
“When the snow stops,” he agreed. He turned to take the tray out and her voice halted him.
“Why won’t you take off the mask?”
Her words made him cringe. She’d asked him this question before and he’d given his answer, trying to assuage her fears, but he found it hard to address the issue repeatedly. It was like piercing an old wound with an ice pick every few hours.
“It’s for your own good.” He hesitated, hand on the doorknob, balancing the tray. When he glanced back at her, he saw the hurt in her eyes and wished things could be different. “Trust me, you don’t want me to take it off.”
She usually argued with him, gave some sort of protest, but this time she didn’t. Instead, she turned to look out the window. Snow was falling again and the world was white.
He shut the door behind him and when he went in later to check on her, she was sleeping, her tea cup empty, covers twisted around her waist. He pulled them up to her chin and, not for the first time, wondered what in the hell he was going to do about her.
She woke screaming again.
She couldn’t remember the dream, she just knew it terrified her. Silas stumbled in, feeling his way to the bed.
“Bad dream,” she whispered.
He sat on the edge. “Do you remember?”
“No.” It was hard to explain to someone how you could be so afraid of something you couldn’t recall, but that overwhelming sense of terror wouldn’t leave her limbs-they trembled under the blankets.
“Are you cold? Do you want me to put more wood in the stove?” He adjusted her covers in the darkness.
“No.” She shivered. He started to stand and she grabbed his arm. “Please. Stay for a while?”
His weight made the little bed creak as he sat. She didn’t let go, gripping the thick expanse of his forearm. They stayed that way for a few moments, quiet, their breath the only sound in the room.
“Would you talk to me?” she whispered, swallowing past her fear.
He shifted on the bed. “What about?”
“Anything.” Her hand slid down, finding its way into his.
Silas cleared his throat, squeezing her hand gently, and she waited, her heart still trying to find a normal beat. Just his presence helped, but the calming sound of his voice was better.
“I saw a wolf today,” he said finally. “She was really something.”
“You did?” She half-sat, already interested. “How do you know it was a ‘she’?”
“Females are smaller than males,” he explained. “I wish you could have seen her. I was out back getting wood and I looked up and there she was, right at the top of the hill.”
“Were you scared?”
“No.”
She smiled in the darkness. “Are you ever scared, Silas?”
“Yeah,” he admitted softly. His other hand moved over hers, petting her skin.
“Was she a gray wolf?”
“Black,” he corrected. “Beautiful. She reminded me of you.” She felt warm at his words. “What did you do?”
“I just watched her.”
She tried to imagine it, face to face with such a wild animal. She’d seen her fair share of deer and coyotes, even a bobcat once, but never a wolf. “Aren’t you worried about her coming back and attacking us?”
“No. My father always said, anyone who’s afraid of the wolf shouldn’t live in the forest.” She frowned, something flashing into consciousness. It was brief, fleeting, a cross between déjà vu and the sense that something was right at the tip of her tongue, if she could just remember…
“You’re safe here,” Silas assured her.