I grabbed hold of his hand and kissed it. I felt my lips on his hand. I smelled his skin, listened to his breaths. He averted his eyes and stared at the dirt floor.
Not three feet away, Whalen’s body occupied a trench meant for me. An open grave. His head was bleeding. Not a muscle in his body moved. Now I knew for certain that the monster was finally dead.
Cry, cry, cry…
But what if he wasn’t dead? What if he was alive still?
Behind me, Michael’s body hung upside-down from the ceiling, a blood pool directly below him staining the dirt floor, soaking it.
I wanted to go to him. Franny somehow knew this.
“No, Rebecca. NO! NO! NO!”
He put his arm around me, lifting me up off my feet. As I burst into tears, he carried me across the floor, up the stairs, out of the house and into the woods.
Chapter 71
A gray dawn erupted over Mount Desolation as we moved fast through the forest. We took no chances. By the time we made it to the stream bank, we hit the water running. Franny held onto me, wrapped his arms around me, keeping both our heads and shoulders just barely above water, feet kicking beneath him against the current.
As I held onto him with all the strength I had left in me, Franny pumped and pumped. But the drag of the storm-driven white water was too powerful, too relentless. Almost immediately it began to drag us downstream. I didn’t care. I wanted to drown. Still I held on, my arms wrapped around his shoulders and neck, fingernails digging into his skin. But how I managed to hang onto him without being swept away I did not know.
The frigid, white water was a shock to my body.
But I didn’t scream.
We were pulled under. But I didn’t panic, even when I swallowed water into my lungs. The water pulled us down. It poured over our heads. It filled our mouths. Until suddenly we reemerged gasping for breath, the water flowing out of our nostrils and mouths like blood from stab wounds.
I knew that if the stream were any wider, it would have consumed us entirely.
But the stream was not wide. I knew that without the heavy rain, the stream would not run full with heavy white water. But now it ran swift and heavy because of the torrential rains. Despite its pull, momentum was on our side. As the opposite bank approached, we swam and kicked. The cold water injected new life into our veins. It washed away the blood and the dirt that came from the devil’s basement.
When Franny reached out with his free hand and located a handhold along the opposite bank, I knew for sure we would survive. Pulling me in toward him, he wrenched my forearm from off his neck. At the same time, I was able to locate a thick tree root that stuck out of the bank. I gripped the root with both hands while my legs and feet continued their downstream trek, twisting my body sideways until parallel with the bank.
Now side by side in the stream, holding to the bank, I somehow managed a breath. With drenched bodies and faces, we gazed at one another for the briefest of moments before thrusting our bodies up and out of the fast water onto the safety of the solid earth.
Chapter 72
We emerge from out of the house in the woods arm in arm.
I’m still crying. But Molly is not. I know she’s convinced that the monster is dead. Even I believe he’s dead.
Molly is a rock.
She shushes me, tells me it’s going to be okay. She leads me through the woods, to the sound of water running brusquely over rocks.
When we come to the stream bank, she sets me down. She makes like a cup with her right hand, reaches into the stream and brings a handful of the water to my mouth.
“ Drink,” she says.
I do as she tells me.
The crystal clear water is cold, life renewing. It tastes pure, sweet.
In my mind I see him, what he tried to do to us. I’m sure he’s dead, but I’m frightened he’ll come back for us. But I say nothing about it. So long as Molly is with me, I can bear anything.
“ Don’t worry,” she insists. “The monster is dead now.”
She tells me to lie back. She dips her hand in the water once more, then brings the wet hand to my face. I can smell her hands. She runs her fingers through my hair, over my eyes and lips. She washes my neck and arms. She touches me softly, bathes my body and my legs. Finally, she washes my feet with the cold stream water. When she is done, she sets her own feet into the stream and washes her own body. I watch her wash her hair with the water until it is dripping wet.
When we are washed we sit on the bank in silence, allowing ourselves to dry in the cool air. Although we are shivering from the cold we don’t feel it. We feel only the recent memory of that afternoon. We feel a pain like we have never felt before and never will again. We never talk about saying anything to our parents about the attacks. It’s already implied that we’ll remain silent about exploring dark woods our father forbade us to enter.
As the sun begins to set, Molly takes my hand and leads me to the place in the rocky stream where we can easily cross.
She kisses me on the forehead.
“ I am you,” she says. “And you are me.”
Together, we head for home through the trees.
Chapter 73
For a time that seemed forever, we ran in a downhill direction toward the fields of tall grass. There was no talking. Not that Franny would have said anything anyway. But there was simply no breath left in our lungs. In my lungs anyway.
On the outside was the vision of the fields and my parents’ house looking small and isolated in the distance. But on the inside my heart beat, pulse soared, blood pumped through wiry veins while the misty cool air of a new morning burned up lung tissue.
We didn’t head for my parents’ house. Instead I followed Franny through the fields, limping up a gentle incline until eventually I spotted the Scaramuzzi farm. By this time, the day was warming and I was having trouble breathing and keeping my balance. Then as though a car crashed into me, my chest constricted, the center cramped in tight pain, a shooting jolt of lightening in my left arm.
When I collapsed, Franny stopped.
He came to me, bent down and lifted me up in his arms. He carried me like that all the rest of the way.
When finally we made it to his house, he set me gently down onto the porch.
Although I couldn’t really see her, I heard Caroline Scaramuzzi gasp. She wasted no time dialing 911. I was in and out of consciousness as she spoke with the emergency people, as I mumbled the words “Michael… inside house… in woods… Michael.”
I wasn’t scared. I was no longer in pain. I was caught up in a semi-conscious state I’d never before experienced. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was dying. Dying wasn’t so bad. Dying meant that I would see Molly before the day was out. As the life began to seep out of my earthly body, I knew without a doubt that I wouldn’t die. Not really.
Before long, I was flying.
Chapter 74
A helicopter was called in to transport me from Brunswick Hills to the Albany Medical Center. After being lifted off the porch floor of the Scaramuzzi house, I found myself floating far above the valley. I was lying on my back, a translucent oxygen mask covering my face. When I turned my head to the left I could see the deep blue/green water of the Hudson River; the way it snaked itself from north to south between the cities of Troy and Albany. There was the loud- whump-whump-whump noise of the chopper blades-a sound I felt deep inside my chest.
When I turned my head I looked for Michael, as if everything that had transpired over the past dozen hours was an elaborate nightmare. But instead I spotted Caroline Scaramuzzi. She was strapped into a seat that folded out of the aircraft’s sidewall. From where I lie belted to a collapsible gurney, I could see that she was dressed in her usual blue jeans, thick fisherman’s sweater and green Crocs.