“Now listen. Here’s what Charity needs to be comfortable.” Sabrina rattled off the instructions for Charity’s care, while Linda nodded at each new task Sabrina mentioned. Sabrina reached into the saddlebag and pulled out a clicker: the key to the gate. She started the bike and flipped on the handlebar speakers. “She’s a maniac, maniac…” the music blared. “Out of my way, Thelma and Louise,” Sabrina said.
“Be safe,” Linda said.
“Enjoy freedom,” Charity said.
“You two are ridiculous.” Sabrina inched forward, then stopped. “But you need to be the safe ones.” As she drove out of the barn, through the yard, Linda helped Charity forward and through the barn doors, where they watched Sabrina disappear onto the drive. After a few minutes, the gates opened for her.
Linda shivered. “What have we done?” She imagined herself in the seat beside Sabrina, then shivered again as she realized what that would mean: leaving a wounded Charity to her own devices.
“What do we do now?” Charity asked.
Linda pursed her lips, settling into her new script. “Survive,” she said.
Chapter Forty-Three
Linda
Their survival plan was to hide. They would lock themselves inside a bedroom, bar the door with heavy furniture, and whittle the days away until Sabrina or the production team sent help.
The irony that they could feel safe trapped inside a haunted house didn’t escape them. The house’s quakes and moans were less terrifying than the trees, or rabid creatures, or Deja’s secrets. Whatever her true intentions were, Linda didn’t care to find out. As they slipped on their backpacks, Linda led Charity back along the shaded outer wall of the manor. At the front door, Linda surveyed their surroundings. No signs of Deja or Marion.
From the other bedrooms, Linda gathered the medical supplies Sabrina had prescribed. In their bedroom, Linda pushed an antique vanity against the door. Its mirror reflected a dirtied mess, her face and body covered in a thin layer of filth. She cleaned her hands and went to work sanitizing Charity’s wound.
The blood around the break had dried. Charity winced as Linda rubbed the old blood away. Her bone still stuck out from the skin. It was grotesque, but Linda had seen death close up, and a little bone didn’t bother her. When Charity yelped, Linda offered her arm, letting Charity bite on the flesh. Charity squeezed Linda’s bicep as Linda finished. After Linda had covered it in a torn and tied cloth, Linda crawled into bed beside her.
“I need to rest,” Charity said. “Sabrina willed it.”
“You’re right.” Linda kissed her. “Doctor’s orders.”
Their kiss deepened until Charity pulled away and snatched a clean cloth from the nightstand. She wet it with water from a bottle. Charity removed Linda’s jacket, then her shirt, her shorts, telling her when to move, so Charity could reach without moving her injured leg. The pop of the button on Linda’s shorts was harsh against Linda’s skin, and Charity cleaned first the indentation it left pressed into her fat. She wiped Linda’s arms, smoothing the hair in its proper direction, then the shoulders. Linda ached underneath in both ways: the good and the bad. Charity washed her belly and her legs, pausing at her knees so Linda could suppress her tickled giggling. All this she did sitting with legs outstretched, propped against the back of the bed board, while Linda moved only when Charity told her to.
After Linda was clean, Charity ran her finger down Linda’s body. Linda trembled not from cold but from the softness of Charity’s touch.
“Kneel over my face,” Charity demanded. “I want a distraction.”
Linda straddled Charity’s chest, her foot passing accidentally over the bone that stuck free. As Linda winced, Charity let out a strangled moan.
“I’m sorry,” Linda said, frantic.
“No, it felt… good. Touch me there. It’s like you’re touching me inside. Somewhere no one ever has before.”
“Are you sure?” Linda said.
“I’m sure.” Charity reached around and cupped Linda’s ass in her hands, pulling her forward. Linda inched on her knees until her cunt was positioned at Charity’s mouth. She leaned forward, her fingers caressing the tip of the break as Charity’s tongue swept along the crease between Linda’s legs. Linda gasped as her whole body jumped. She gave herself to Charity without regret.
• • •
Afterward, they rested, spent and sore with the day’s demands. Time passed, and they woke only to peer for a moment out the window as though they might judge the passing of the hours by the amount of light that shone or failed to shine through the pastel curtains. The truth was they were encased in the fogs of several states: the state of new love, of fear with no end, of surviving near-death, the state of reality having been crushed beneath their fleeing feet. The house’s moans grew more frenzied, and the bed shook as the floor below it shuddered. Charity’s moans harmonized with the rest. By the time Linda woke enough to hone in on the sounds, she realized Charity was unwell.
When she inspected the ankle beneath the blankets, the smell that met her was fierce and terrible. The wound was fighting infection. Linda poured two more pills out from the bottle and fed them to Charity, then went to the window and yanked it open, gulping the fresh air.
Below, Deja marched toward the woods, a body dragging behind her.
Linda’s stomach dropped. Deja knew everything, and learning what she knew was the only way out.
Linda kissed Charity on both cheeks, tucked her in, and slid a knife into the pocket of her own jacket. The jacket smelled like shit from its constant wear, stained now with the memory of the acorn that had lived inside. She ventured through the halls, the foyer, out the front door, and into the yard. She marched with a fresh determination into the forest, following the path she saw Deja travel.
This time, Linda walked more carefully, tottering on tiptoes across any hint of root. With each rustle of the leaves or creaking of a limb, she paused. She followed any hints of footsteps and listened, over and over, until finally, she heard: a haunting whistle. Deja’s voice. She followed the sound until she arrived at the edge of a clearing, like the one they passed on their attempted escape.
Deja held a giant blade. With grim determination, she slashed at a tree. A pile of stripped bark gathered as she slid the knife into the tree’s core and hummed. Beside her lay the body of Becca, covered in grime, her face contorted and frozen at the moment of death. Behind Deja, another tree had been de-barked. It bore a wound down the center that had been stitched shut with black string.
The stitched-up tree was changing: its remaining bark was fading like a leaf in autumn, brown to orange to tan. The ridges in the bark smoothed to resemble folds in fatty flesh. The change moved from trunk to crown, and the tree shivered in one fluid motion before it shook like a frightened animal in danger.
Deja sliced a final time into the unstitched tree. The bark opened with a hiss. Deja stuck her hands inside the crack and pushed it open wide. The tree parted at her command. Linda covered her mouth. Deja bent, took her knife, and pricked Becca’s skin from head to toe, a hundred little piercings until she looked like she’d sweated blood. Then, Deja hoisted the body over her shoulder, smearing blood all over, and pressed the dying woman into the fissure. Deja pushed at the tree’s wound. The tree moaned as it closed. Deja reached into her clothes, pulled out a needle and thick black thread, and sewed.
As the horror caught up with Linda, she forgot herself in the forest’s dark truth. She screamed, then turned and ran as fast as she could.
She felt something at her back. She fell into the dirt, the weight of a woman on top of her. Deja had caught her and taken her down.
Chapter Forty-Four
Linda
Linda woke, tied to a tree with a camera’s charging cord. Deja was finishing sewing shut the wound she had inflicted on the tree. Her belt was strung with tools: knife, walkie talkie, coiled cords, and a spool of thick black thread, and they bobbed as Deja moved against the bark. Deja hummed a song that wormed its way inside Linda, lulling and beautiful, like the woods.
“What are you doing?” Linda whispered.
Deja turned to face her. “Making sure I have a life outside this place when all is said and done.” She sighed. “Cleaning up other people’s messes, like I’ve always done.”
