“How can I help?” Linda winced. It hurt to speak.
“I’m okay,” Charity said as her face drained of its last hints of color.
The forest moaned. The limbs at its perimeter stirred as if in a breeze, like the creaking moan of the manor’s floors, and the ground under their bodies throbbed like the floor that had pounded their first night during dinner.
“Are you okay?” Sabrina asked. “Linda, I’m talking to you.”
“Oh!” She ran her hand down her body. “I don’t think anything’s broken.” She took stock of her ache, but it consumed her entirely, impossible to categorize. “I heard a crack, but—” When she checked her pocket, something sliced into her finger. “Ouch!” She pulled free her hand and wiped away a line of blood.
“Do you have the goddamn knife in your pocket?” Sabrina said.
Linda reached back in, more carefully now, and pulled out the giant acorn she had pocketed their first day. It was cracked in several places.
Linda peeled at the acorn’s shell, tossing the remains. Inside the acorn, a tangle of pink roots wriggled like worms. There was something nestled even further in. Linda tore at the roots. They were juicy, like veins torn from a body. In their center, sat a single eye as large as a golf ball, the roots attached like optic nerves. Linda screamed as she realized what she held. She dropped the eye. In the grass, its pupil moved until it found an opening. It gaped at the women staring back at it.
Wordlessly, Sabrina and Linda scooped Charity up and carried her through the yard, moving as fast as they could. This time, they didn’t give a damn if Deja saw. There were uglier things afoot. Finally they reached the inside of the manor, and within its relative safety, they slumped against a wall. Linda held back the impulse to vomit; she wasn’t the one who needed medical attention.
When they returned to themselves, their fear not resolved so much as pushed deep into their bellies, they snuck into the bathroom, where Sabrina disinfected Charity’s ankle.
“If we can’t get out of here right now, I’ll have to splint this without proper tools.”
Charity nodded. “I understand.”
“I don’t.” Linda scrubbed her hands, struggling not to inspect her reflection in the mirror. “What the fuck is going on here?”
“We can’t think about that.” Sabrina frowned at the protrusion of bone. “Our first step should be trying to get out of here. Get you to a hospital, where they can operate and re-set the bone in a proper medical setting. For now, you aren’t to put weight on it. Ordinarily, I would try to make you a set of crutches from old branches, but—”
“I understand,” Charity repeated.
Sabrina chewed her lip. “The motorcycle,” she said. “Where did they put Brendan’s motorcycle?”
• • •
Carrying Charity, they crept along the manor wall until they rounded the corner of the building. The old barn beckoned, its cracking white paint out of its element beside the manor’s stained glass and woodwork. It was a massive barn, with big rolling doors and enough space to hold a motorcycle.
The barn doors slid easily along their track. Charity let out a happy gasp.
“Is it…?” Sabrina said, panting, as she peered inside.
The motorcycle had been parked in the middle of the otherwise empty area. It was covered with a tan blanket and sprinkled with hay, like Deja had tried to camouflage it. Linda scoffed. How stupid did she assume the contestants were? Linda yanked the blanket off the bike, and Sabrina ran her hand down the one seat.
Charity’s smile faded. “Shit.”
Sabrina reached into the saddlebag and grabbed the keys. “Someone was ready for a quick getaway,” she said. “My guess is Deja.” Something else rattled near her hand: a bottle of pills. “Doxycycline.”
“Antibiotics?” Linda asked.
Sabrina passed a pill to Charity.
“What was wrong with him?” Charity asked as she dry-swallowed.
Sabrina read the bottle: “Twice daily for treatment of chlamydia.”
Linda eyed the one seat. “Obviously, you two should go,” she said, her heart sinking even as she understood it was the only choice.
“If you think I’m going without you, you’re mad,” Charity said.
Linda crossed her arms and tried not to let her voice betray her disappointment. “You’ll come back for me.”
Charity slammed her fist into the dirt. “I’ll do no such thing.”
Linda chewed her lip. “I can’t go with you. I…can’t drive.”
After her father died, after her mother blamed her, after everything, Linda wasn’t allowed by her foster parents to learn. Unlike her peers, she relied on the kindness of men, who wanted to get into her pants, to attend school dances, football games, after-school hijinks. As soon as she could, she moved to a city big enough to have buses—uncommon in Texas—and rarely left the comfort of the city until her husband moved her to the suburbs, after which, he drove them everywhere they needed to go.
Sabrina massaged her temple. “Listen. There’s still an impassable mudslide, so this is going to be a rough ride down the mountain, okay? And you’re telling me you’re going to make me go just because I’m the only one who knows how to drive and is uninjured enough. And you’re making me to go alone because you two don’t want to be separated?”
“That’s a perfect analysis of the situation,” said Linda. She peered down at the crestfallen Charity, the old barn’s spectral light streaked across her skin.
“I’m not going to stand here and argue,” Sabrina said. “I value my life.” She spoke as though she thought Linda and Charity were children. “I’m leaving. There’s no second chance for you. I’ll bring help, but who knows—” Sabrina choked on the words. “Who knows what could happen between now and then.”
Linda slid into the dirt beside Charity and took her hand.
“We’re staying,” Linda said.
“You’re staying.” Sabrina huffed. “Give me one of the bags there.”
As Linda pushed an old potato sack through the dirt, dust billowed.
