“I needed to talk to you,” said Nora.
“You haven’t said words in like ten minutes.”
“Eight,” Nora clarified, confirming on her watch. “And that was because I didn’t want to be overheard. You remember what happened last night, right?”
“The stair thing or the knife thing?”
“Knife.”
“Yeah, I remember the knife thing.”
Nora shook her head. His tone was too blasé. How was she more freaked out by his almost murder than he was?
“Charlie, someone wants to kill you.”
“Right, we established that.”
“Do you have any idea why someone might want to kill you, Charlie? Anybody you could’ve pissed off back home that might have followed us here? Any newfound family members you’ve hit on?”
“Got nothing for you, sis. Anyone who wanted me dead back home would’ve just killed me there to save the gas money. And I’ll have you know I’ve been on my best behavior up here.”
“Okay.” Nora clenched her jaw. “What do we do about this? I mean, we’re trapped here, in a town where someone we haven’t identified wants you dead for reasons we don’t know. That’s not good, Charlie, you get that, right?”
“I’m not dumb,” said Charlie. “I know it’s bad. But what are our options here?”
“Exactly,” said Nora.
“You’ve lost me again.”
“I brought you out here so we can figure out our next steps. We need to strategize. To be one step ahead of whoever had that knife. To figure out who it was so we know who to trust. Or better yet, to get the fuck out of here. So, let’s plan.”
“Right. Great. Good thinking,” said Charlie. “So…any ideas?”
Nora just glared at that. This was the way things had always been. Well, almost always. Back when they were kids, Nora and Charlie had been inseparable. On the first day of kindergarten, when she found out she’d been placed in a different class than her brother, Nora cried for so long that the school relented and allowed them to be together, even though it made the class numbers uneven. Charlie was her best friend. He looked after her. If anyone so much as looked at her funny, they would have to answer to Charlie Bird. Which usually involved language officially deemed “not schoolyard appropriate” in parent-teacher meetings. Then their parents died, and everything changed. They changed. When Nora needed her brother most, he just kind of stopped. Stopped sticking up for her, stopped trying hard in school, stopped taking anything seriously, stopped being Charlie. Instead all he wanted to do was have fun. High school was a nightmare. There wasn’t a single party that Charlie Bird didn’t attend, assuming he wasn’t throwing it himself. While Nora, still swallowed by a boundless well of fear, retreated deeper into herself, only emerging to save Charlie from Charlie. Now she had to save him from Death too, and she’d already done that like five times now.
“We need a car,” Nora said, falling back into her usual rolewithout further resistance. “If not mine, someone else’s. Maybe we can borrow one. Or maybe we find out when Charles is heading out on his next supply run and go with him. But we need to get out of here. Failing that, we need a phone charger. My phone’s dead, but if I can get it charged, then we can call for help. If we’re dealing with a murderer, then we need the police. The FBI. Whatever they have up here. Mounties? Or is that just in cartoons? Anyway, whatever, that’s the best I’ve got.”
“Well, I guess we don’t need my plan, then,” said Charlie. “Too bad, it was a real good one too. Oh well. Hey, what’s that?”
He pointed off the path and into the thick web of trees beyond.
“Can you seriously not focus on one thing for more than two seconds?” Nora said, but followed his gesture into the thicket with her eyes, to what looked like some kind of man-made structure in a clearing forty or so feet away. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. What now?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Charlie. Before he even had time to take a step towards the structure, Nora had her fingers wrapped tight around his jacket collar.
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. Are you serious? You’re literally on the verge of being killed at any moment and you want to go explore the creepy abandoned building in the middle of the woods? Charlie, can you please use your brain for a sec?”
“It isn’t abandoned,” Charlie said, as if that were the main issue. “Look, there’s smoke coming out of the chimney.”
Nora found the stone chimney through the trees, slender coils of gray smoke escaping its mouth and disappearing into the treetops high, high above. Any saliva in Nora’s mouth vanished.
“Fuck,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
She took Charlie by the wrist again and started dragging. It felt like walking an unruly puppy. The wind had picked up now, tree branches creaking like breaking bones high above. Then another sound snuck into Nora’s brain from just above them, buzzing there, familiar but impossible to pin down. It was rhythmic, back and forth, back and forth. Then the buzzing stopped, and the creaking, and the wind rushing, and any other sound, and suddenly she knew exactly what she was hearing. She could see how this would end. It was all right there in her mind’s eye. But it was too late. The saw had stopped cutting, the heavy branch plummeting towards Charlie’s oblivious head. There was no time to warn him.
Nora felt the warmth from where her hand wrapped around his wrist. Her own wrist still pulsed from its growing collection of injuries; her strength, already questionable under normal circumstances, was dulled by the pain. And yet, without fully thinking about it, without time to inhale and collect herself, Nora yanked. Hard. Hard enough to throw off their collective balance and send them both to the leafy ground just as the fat branch hit the earth, bouncing once and then coming to rest at their feet with a thunderous thud.
The sound of retreating footfalls followed, echoing through the forest, louder and more assured than the little critters who had been rummaging in the leaves. Someone, almost certainly the same someone who had just sent a tree branch down on them, was fleeing the scene.
