“Back? There is no back!” Charity shook her head over and over. “Didn’t you just see what happened? One wrong step, and that tree was going to juice me!”
Linda placed two hands on either side of Charity’s face, stilling her. It was all she could do, her voice frozen in her mouth as she drifted away from herself, letting Sabrina’s words drift across her skin, a dream. A nightmare.
“And what’s the other option?” Sabrina paced. “We’re going to carry you all the way to the nearest town? Across mudslides and down mountains? Turn a two-day journey into two weeks? On the amount of supplies we brought?” Sabrina threw up her hands. “Mission aborted. We’re going back.”
“No!” Charity pushed Linda away as she tried to stand, but as the ankle took weight, it folded beneath her with a loud pop. She screeched. Linda fell back onto the ground, and there she remained, dust coating her clothes.
“And you’ve just completed the break.” Sabrina ripped a strip of fabric from her shirt and bent back down, wrapping it around the wound. “You’re going to need surgery, which I can’t provide. You’re going to need antibiotics. And you’re going to need crutches, which I can make for you, but we need to get back to the manor before you go into shock or pass out. This is not some sprain, Charity.”
“Your bone,” Linda said. It was all she could say. She wanted to absorb Charity’s pain, but had no room. Despair had settled within her, again after all these years. Down the mountain, a clear trail led to land cleared of trees. A road, made from concrete, manufactured to keep the natural world away. An end to the journey.
“We have to carry her back.” Sabrina snapped in Linda’s face. Linda jerked back to life. The end was gone. This journey was endless. “Can you handle that?”
“Fuck.” Charity cried. “I fucked it all up.”
“Nonsense.” Linda wanted to console her, but the words—she was choking on their absence. Her heart hammered as she tried. This woman she had come to know, to love, was crying, and Linda should console her. She swallowed a breath. The words scratched her throat. “It’s not your fault.” Linda patted Charity on the back, the gesture stiff and false. Charity let out another wracking sob.
Standing, Sabrina examined the woods with her hands on her hips.
“I’m a phony,” Charity said. “I lied to everyone here. Now I’m paying for being a goddamn fake.”
“No.” And it was true. Linda broke open. She leaned in, gathered Charity in her arms, and absorbed her cries into the fabric of her shirt. As she pulled back, she kissed each wet spot from Charity’s face. “We’re going to get back. We’re going to get the hell out of this place, one way or another.”
Or another. Linda imagined her father’s dead face, the face of the creature in the curio shop, the face of her ex-husband, the face of Deja, the final closing of her eyes.
“We’re just going to have to go right back the way we came.” Sabrina hefted her back over her shoulders. “We’ll carry her. We’ll walk as gently as we can. The trees didn’t seem to notice us until Charity stepped on one of their roots.” She gestured at the women huddled in a heap. “Let’s do this.” She slid one arm under Charity’s, and Linda repeated the movement. “On three,” Sabrina said, then counted, and on the third beat, they stood. Charity yelped as her ankle adjusted to the new orientation of her body, then went silent. Her face turned green with pain. She was gorgeous even when she was ugly.
“It’s going to be okay,” Linda whispered as she and Sabrina ambled as a five-legged beast. Once they reached the edge of the forest, they stopped, frozen, and peered back the way they’d come.
The ground was roots as far as the eye could see.
Chapter Forty-One
Sabrina
Her number one goal was to escape the manor, to leave the experience in one piece.
The half of her who had emerged inside the manor’s confines, the woman who promised the cameras she’d do whatever it took to survive until the bitter end, to make no friends, to win the man’s heart at any cost, that part stared out at the path that led to freedom, her legs itching to run and never look back.
But the other half, the one who daily risked her health to care for other people, the half who had come to call these women friends, couldn’t leave Charity wounded, to die in the grass, bleeding out, with no supplies. She had never given up on a patient. She was not about to start now.
“So much for that plan.” Linda regarded the roots, but Sabrina’s focus centered on a blurry chaos of rope a mile in the distance.
“The ropes course,” she said. Charity groaned as her body sunk between them. “It’s the only way.”
• • •
The rope was a Giant’s Ladder, which was exactly what it sounded like: a series of ropes and wooden rungs spaced one average-size person apart. A teamwork exercise from Hell, the kind of activity twisted camp counselors required unruly teenagers to do. It dangled from two tree limbs that led to a platform at the top. There was no other way up.
“I’ve seen these on the show,” Sabrina said. Her sister had forced her to watch every episode of every season, then every spin-off and copycat. “You have to work together to get up them.”
“And usually with two pairs of working legs,” Charity said, slumping between them.
“We’ve got two pairs of working legs.” Sabrina used all her strength to adjust Charity’s body weight against hers, a proof of capability to soothe the wounded. “We’ll make do.”
They stood at the bottom of the ladder, considering their first move, Sabrina’s hands shaking as she counted down the seconds until something weird happened. Together, they formulated a plan. Linda and Sabrina lifted Charity, their hands cupping her by the pits, high enough to grab hold of the first rung. She pulled herself up and straddled it, swaying back and forth as she clutched the rope.
“I don’t have that upper body strength,” Linda admitted. “I’ll need to be pulled up there.”
Sabrina had built her body to keep its strength hidden beneath her curves, a careful balance of obsessive weight-lifting, dance-style aerobics, and macro-counting that resulted in a thorough knowledge of the muscles beneath her skin and the careful ability to control them. She knelt, allowing Linda to climb onto her shoulders. As Sabrina stood, hands clamped around Linda’s ankles, Linda wobbled forward, forcing Sabrina to step forward and adjust her footing.
“Grab her!” she cried out, and Linda’s outstretched fingers wrapped with Charity’s. Clinging to the ropes, Charity pulled while Linda lifted herself. Once she hung high enough, Linda swung her legs over. They faced one another across the ladder, veering back and forth with the force of Linda’s arrival.
“My turn,” Sabrina said.
Linda and Charity broke eye contact, reached two hands down, and pulled her up. Her torso aching, Sabrina held one arm out, finding her balance.
“Goddamn third wheel,” Sabrina muttered. “Now…” She chewed her nail, examining the possibilities. “Linda, I think you have to stand first.”
Sabrina was surprised at how easily Linda followed her instructions when once they had been rivals. If Linda had known what thoughts moved through Sabrina, what revelations she had found in the walls of the manor, she might not agree so readily to put her life into Sabrina’s hands. But Linda seized hold of the rope at her side with both hands. The ladder tottered wildly beneath them. Sabrina ducked and wrapped her arms around the rung, twisting to stay upright as Linda steadied herself into a standing position.
“Shit, I should have gone on the outside.” Sabrina eyed Charity’s twisted leg dangling into the open air. “We’ll have to make do.” Sabrina scooted her body until she was as close to Linda as possible, then moved her knees to the beam, crossing her ankles over one another. “Step on my back.”
Linda obliged.
“Hold to the beam above you.” Sabrina scooted forward, grasped the rope, and rose, lifting Linda high enough to pull up.
Once Linda arrived at the next rung, she clutched it as Sabrina instructed Charity to do the same. Then they lifted Sabrina and waited for the swinging to stop before attempting the next climb.
