A chill runs through me. Maybe Old Caleb is actually one of my followers. Maybe he’s a psychotic stalker, a man whose own striking similarities to my husband have convinced him of his entitlement to me, and who has designed this whole thing as some elaborate form of cosplay.
Even before this thought is fully formed, though, I throw it out. This, what’s happening here, would take too much work, too muchplanning,for one person to pull off. No. This is a multiperson job. These people, whoever they are, are cunning. They’re cunning, and angry, and dangerous. They’re—
“Hell-ooo? The wood?”
Mary is staring at me, waving a hand in front of my face—a distinctly modern gesture, I think suspiciously, before realizing I have no real evidence for that argument.
This time, I ignore the carvings on the doorframe. I open the door and step quickly onto the porch, shutting it behind me. The wood is stacked in the same place on the front porch as we stack it at home. I drop into a crouch and begin loading up an armful. When I’ve managed to stack six pieces in my arms, I stand up and look out, for the second time today, at the craggy mountain peaks backlit by the fading light.
This is my property. This is my land. These are my mountains.
And yet: This is not my house or my family. These are not my chickens. This is not my nightgown.
Something is lodged painfully in my throat. A rock, or maybe a memory. I try to swallow, but I can’t. My headache flares, and I wince. It feels like my brain has been carved up with a butcher’s knife.
I take a deep, shaky breath. With the wood balanced in the crook of one elbow, my free hand travels to my stomach instinctively, looking for a place to rest, to comfort, and then it freezes.
Mary.
Something horrible is happening here. This place,these people,it’s—
I look out across the fields. The sun is nearly gone now. It’ll be dark soon.
In an instant, the phrase takes on new weight:Dark soon. Dark.
As in: impossible to see.
Go.
In a breath I’m gone. By the time I register the sound of the wood clattering to the porch I’m already down the stairs, sprinting across the frostbitten grass, running, running, running,faster now, quieter now, forget the driveway and just get to thewoods—
Behind me a door slaps open, someone criesMama,the barn is a blur of red alongside me, and then it’s behind me, and I’m flying toward the tree line.
“Mama!”
I don’t look back. I reach the trees and then—yes—I’m in the trees, crashing wildly through the leaves, my heart thrashing to the rhythm of my pumping legs, the ghostly blur of birch trees flying past, and then the world goes white.
For the righteous one may fall seven times, and he will get up again. But the wicked will be made to stumble bycalamity—
One second I am running, and the next I am on the ground, writhing, trying to understand.
Whatis—?
Whyis—?
I see the pain before I feel it: a steel trap, clamped around my ankle. Metal teeth sunken fully into flesh.
No,I think distantly.That can’t be right.
And then the nerve signals finally reach my brain, and a terrible noise pours from my mouth, a high wailing keen.
I’m on my side, trying and failing to pry open the steel maw with my own two shaking hands, when I see, in the distance: OldCaleb jogging across the fields toward me. I scream, or try to, and then my eyes roll back in my head.
My God,forgiveme—
And then Old Caleb is here, on one knee. He presses something, and the trap springs open. “Relax, woman,” he shouts over my screams of pain. “Calm down.”
“My ankle,” I scream. “My ankle, myankle—”
