In the Woods Read online

  She didn’t know if it would come back, or if it would leave her alone now, but for the moment, she was safe.

  As safe as someone in her position could be.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The remainder of the night passed slowly.

  Cass slumped back down at the base of the tree, her arms still chained above her head. Her chin dropped to her chest, and it was in that position that she drifted in and out of consciousness. Her dreams were filled with a massive black bear sniffing around her, while the voices of dead women shouted at the animal to leave her alone.

  Sometimes, she thought perhaps she wasn’t dreaming at all, and she was awake, but she wasn’t completely sure she could tell the difference anymore. She thought she heard herself speaking out loud, but then wondered if it was her voice at all, or if she was hearing things.

  When the sun finally rose, Cass understood somewhere deep inside her that she wouldn’t survive another night. Everything felt wrong. Her heartrate was galloping, even though she’d been sitting in the same place hour after hour, and then it would seem to stop altogether, before setting off at a sprint again. She had that strange hot-cold of having a fever, her skin prickling with goosebumps, while her blood was lava in her veins, and she couldn’t control her shivering.

  The sunlight felt too bright against her eyes, like shards of glass piercing her corneas. She turned her face away, wishing she could hide her eyes behind her hands.

  Even though she’d managed to frighten the bear away, she could tell just by looking that the animal had dragged the body even farther from the tree. Her heart sank, and a strangely reluctant but accepting certainty that she was going to die here settled inside her. There was no chance she’d be able to reach the key now, not while she was still attached to the chain.

  The knife! What had she done with the knife?

  Frantic, she looked around. In her disorientation, she hadn’t thought to put it back in the tree. She’d dropped it on the ground. She couldn’t even remember the blade slipping from her fingers, but it clearly had.

  She sat staring down at the blade, the thought of going through the effort of picking it back up seeming too great. She’d sunk into a stupor, but she needed to shake herself out of it. This might be her last day on this earth, and she could either sit here and die, or she could do something to try to survive.

  The knife. She had to make use of the knife.

  Cass looked between the blade and her hand. There was one way she’d be able to reach the key. She could cut her way out of the chains, and she didn’t mean that she’d be attempting to hack her way through any metal. The knife had already proven how sharp it was when it had sliced the Magician’s throat upon impact, gliding into his skin and bone and cartilage as easily as a knife into butter. There was a fleshy part of her hand, where the bottom of her thumb met her wrist. If she cut that part off, would it be enough for her to pull her hand free from the chain? Or would she end up chickening out halfway through, and bleeding to death? Maybe bleeding to death would be a preferable way of going than dying of thirst.

  She should forget this whole idea, and cut her wrists instead.

  “No way, girl!” a female voice called out. “I don’t want to hear you talking like that.”

  Feeling like just looking over was a massive effort, she let her head fall to the right. Instinctively, she’d known who the voice belonged to. Twenty-year-old Anna Whittle. The woman who’d come before her. The one who had smelled so good, but didn’t smell so good anymore.

  Sure enough, there she was, standing above her grave, her wavy blonde hair falling around her shoulders, and her skin looking as soft as the Magician had described. She might have been dead a couple of weeks now, but she certainly didn’t look it.

  “You didn’t hear me talking,” Cass replied, her voice dull. “I hadn’t said a word. You’re just picking the thoughts out of my head.”

  That was because the woman had come out of her head. All of them had—or at least this version of them. She’d made it all up using the information the Magician had given her when they’d first arrived.

  “She’s not wrong,” the cheerleader Becky Dawson called out.

  Cassandra bet Becky and Anna would have been friends in real life. They both had that same look about them. Or maybe they’d have pretended to be friends, only they’d have both wanted to be the most popular girl so would always be trying to undermine each other. What did people call that these days? Frenemies.

  Cass shook her head and pressed her dried, cracked lips together. She bet her lips resembled the bark of the tree now, rough and splintered.

  “Maybe I deserve this,” she said, and something flickered in her mind. “Maybe I was asking for it.”

  “No one deserves this kind of death,” Anna replied. “No one, no matter how bad they think they are.”

  A new voice spoke up—a young voice—and Cass knew it belonged to the cute eighteen-year-old called Keely Smith. “You’re not bad, Cass. What happened was an accident.”

  Cass shook her head. Keely wasn’t talking about what had happened with the Magician. She was referencing a whole other dark part of Cass’s life, a part that was even more terrible than what she was suffering through now.

  “Shut up. You don’t know anything about it.”

  “Then how do we know to talk to you about it?” Though she was only a year or two older than Cass, Maria Moore spoke to her as though Cass were one of her children, calm and gentle, coaxing the words out of her.

  “I never talk about it to anyone,” Cass admitted, unable to look at any of them. They were all standing around her now, each of the dead women beside their unmarked graves, gazing down at her with sympathy and compassion in their dead eyes. “How could I? If I admitted what I’d done, no one would ever be able to look me in the eye again.”

  “You don’t let people look you in the eye anyway,” said the first woman, Sonja Holland. “You’re the one who does that. Your guilt has permeated every part of your life. Even when you serve people in the coffee shop, you keep your head down and won’t make eye contact, terrified they’ll somehow recognize you for who you are, or read the truth of what you did in your eyes.”

  She shook her head again, sad and desperate. “I can’t help that. I can’t do anything to change what happened. Believe me, I would if I could. I’ve wished it a million times over. I’ve wished every day that it had been me instead of him.”

  Susie Banks, law student and number three called out. “You can’t change what happened, but you can change how you feel about it.”

  Cass sniffed dryly. “No, I can’t.”

  “You can forgive yourself,” suggested Meaghan Brunner—the screamer who’d wet herself, and his number four.

  Cass pressed her lips together. “I can’t do that.”

  Anna Whittle’s voice came again. “Then why are you fighting so hard to get free? If you’re not going to allow yourself to live once you get out of this, why bother?”

  That sank in. She hadn’t been living all these years, merely existing. She’d convinced herself that once someone found out about her past, they wouldn’t want to know her anymore, so she’d gone through life keeping everyone at an arm’s length. If her own parents couldn’t forgive her, how could she expect anyone else to?

  “If you can’t do it for yourself,” Anna said, “then do it for all of us. Someone needs to be able to tell our families what happened to us.”

  “You can leave out the gruesome detail, though,” Becky Dawson called out. “I don’t want everyone to know that I peed myself in my last moments. Tell them I fought, like Sonja did.”

  Cass gave a weak smile. “I promise I won’t tell anyone you peed yourself.” She thought back to the bugs she’d eaten. “There will be things I won’t want to tell people about either.”

  Marie’s soft voice replied. “Do it, then. Cut yourself free and go and tell our stories, and then forgive yourself for what happened to your brother, and go on and fi
nally live your life.”

  Cass blinked back tears. “I’m not sure I can.”

  “You don’t have to be sure,” Marie replied. “You just have to try.”

  Cass squeezed her eyes shut and nodded.

  Yes, I have to try.

  When she opened her eyes again, she turned her gaze to the knife.

  The blade was filthy. She didn’t even want to think about what kind of bacteria must be crawling all over it. It wasn’t as though she could sterilize it out here. She didn’t even have any water to wash off the old blood. How ironic would it be if she managed to cut her way out of these damned chains, only to contract septicemia and die out here in the woods anyway? But at least she’d die free, and not chained to this fucking tree.

  Still, the idea of willingly cutting into her own flesh made her dizzy with fear. She didn’t like pain, and this was going to hurt like a motherfucker. She was also going to lose blood, and there was a chance that blood loss would make her lose consciousness. She couldn’t let that happen. If she passed out before she got her hand free, there was a good chance it would kill her.

  Cass let out a thin whine of fear. Was there any other way? Any other choice she could make that would save her from butchering herself? But she’d been here for days now, and she’d tried everything. Her body literally felt as though it was eating away at herself, and her ability to both stay awake and to string a coherent thought together was fading by the hour. The Magician’s bag was only a couple of feet past the body. She knew for sure that there was a bottle of water inside, and there was a good chance he’d brought some kind of sustenance with him as well. The bag was so close, taunting her with its contents. If she could get free, they might save her life.

  But, as she’d discovered over the past few days, it was the getting free bit that was the hard part.

  Cass lowered her head and barked out a dry sob. Her tears had dried up a long time ago.

  What if the bear smelled the fresh blood and came back? If she passed out while she was bleeding, it might decide she was a meal. But if she didn’t do what she needed, the bear would probably come back and make a meal of her anyway.

  “You can do this,” Maria encouraged, her tone kind and gentle. Cass could tell she’d been a mother. “But make sure you plan for it.”

  “She’s right,” Sonja agreed. “You need to work fast. You can’t hesitate.”

  “Find something to wrap your hand in the moment you’re free as well,” said Susie. “It’s going to bleed like a bitch, and you need to stop the blood flow as quickly as possible, or you will pass out.”

  “And you mustn’t pass out,” added Anna. “That’s really important. If you pass out, you’re dead. Do you understand?”

  She tried to swallow hard but couldn’t. She nodded instead. “I understand.”

  Becky the cheerleader chimed in. “Now, what are you going to use to wrap your hand once you’ve got it free of the chain?”

  Cass looked around, as though expecting to find a selection of bandages on the ground. But, of course, there was nothing. All she had were the clothes she was standing in.

  “I’m... I’m not sure. I guess I’ll have to use my t-shirt.”

  She stared down at the front of the t-shirt, wondering how she was going to take it off considering she had both her hands chained to the tree.

  You’ve got a knife, dummy. Cut the front.

  Ugh, of course. She felt like her brain wasn’t working properly, as though her thoughts simply weren’t connecting as they normally did. At times, she felt like there was just emptiness inside her head, as though she was drifting, disconnected from everything.

  Trembling, she used her feet to pick up the knife and pass it up to her hands. Then she slowly stood, needing for the bottom of her t-shirt to be closer to her hands.

  She caught hold of her t-shirt with the hand not holding the knife and dragged it out, toward the tree. The position was awkward with both her hands chained, but she didn’t want the knife slipping and end up stabbing herself in the stomach. The material of the t-shirt was filthy, too, but she guessed it didn’t matter too much. If she had some water to wash the knife, she’d be a little more concerned about the cleanliness of the material she’d be wrapping the wound up in, but since the knife was going to be creating the wound, and it was even more disgusting, she didn’t think it mattered.

  She managed to pierce the t-shirt with the tip of the knife, and then cut along the bottom. The blade was still sharp—something she figured was a good thing considering what she was about to do—and sliced the material easily. She was left with a strip of material, and when she released the rest of the t-shirt, it pinged back against her body, revealing her now concave stomach.

  “I never thought I’d suit crop-tops,” she muttered to herself, suppressing a smile. She turned back to the waiting women. “Now what?”

  “You have to be careful not to cut any nerves or tendons,” Maria said. “You need that hand to get the key to the padlock out of his jacket pocket. If you cut too deep, you won’t have use of it, and it’ll be useless. You’re still going to need to drag him closer to reach into the pocket.”

  Cass battered her head with her hands. “Stop talking. This is too much.”

  She wasn’t a surgeon. She had no idea where nerves and tendons were in her hand. But surely if she made sure she only cut on the fleshy side, even if she lost the ability to use her thumb, she’d still be able to use her fingers? She remembered how hard it had been to try to pull the body with use of only her toes. Would one hand, possibly without the use of her thumb, be enough? She wasn’t even one hundred percent sure she’d be able to reach him—after all, one of her hands was still going to be chained—and she was sure she didn’t have it in her to cut both hands free. She’d pass out if she tried.

  Her brain felt like a rock, rattling around inside her skull, and her bones seemed to have been filled with lead. The smallest movements were like running a marathon. The idea of cutting up one of her hands to get free felt like an impossible task, but it was the only option open to her.

  She put the strip of material between her teeth, both to free up her hands, and also to have something to bite down on to contain the pain.

  Her fingers felt fat and swollen, like over-stuffed sausages, and for a moment, she worried she wasn’t going to be able to hold the knife at all. The position was awkward, too. Her wrists were joined, so she was going to have to hold the knife at the very edge of the handle, where the handle met the blade, in order to have any control over the position of the sharp edge.

  “You have to do it,” Becky shouted out.

  Eighteen-year-old Keely joined in, the younger girl sounding as excited as she was fearful. “Do it, or you’re going to die.”

  Cass nodded, her eyes burning with tears she was unable to shed.

  Placing the sharp edge of the blade to the point where the metal of the chains binding her wrists met the swell of the base of her thumb, Cass sucked in a long breath, held it, and cut.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Red specks of blood bloomed around the filthy metal and ballooned to trickle down the blade.

  Cass’s stomach swam with nausea, and her surroundings spun in a slow, dizzying circle. The pain wasn’t more than a sting for the moment, blending in with all the other discomfort she was suffering, but she thought she was partly in shock, and that the pain would hit her soon. She didn’t want to look at what she was doing, but she had to make sure she was cutting in the right direction. Now wasn’t a time to make mistakes.

  The knife sank deeper, vanishing into her flesh.

  The pain suddenly hit her, blinding white, rocking her backward. Her immediate reaction was to pull away and stop what she was doing, but that would have been the exact opposite of what she needed to do. She was bleeding more heavily now, and if she simply stopped without doing what was needed to free herself, she’d die.

  Cass pressed the blade deeper and harder, and cried out at the pai
n.

  The nausea grew too great, and she leaned to one side and retched, though of course her stomach was completely empty, and she had nothing to vomit. Her eyes streamed, her throat burning. She whimpered but forced herself to straighten and focus on what she was doing. The knife was only a centimeter into her flesh. She needed to cut away at least four times that amount if she was going to make any difference.

  She gritted her teeth and sliced. Blood poured down her wrist, slicking the chains. The blood is good, she told herself. It would help when it came to pulling her hand out of the chain. But cutting off the flap of flesh and skin meant she was then going to have to drag the metal over the top of the wound, and she didn’t want to think about how much that was going to hurt. She was barely holding on as it was.

  Two centimeters in.

  Her thumb suddenly fell limp.

  Panic shot through her. She must have cut one of the tendons, something she’d been hoping to avoid.

  Her breath left her lungs in short, fast gasps. She didn’t want to keep going.

  “You have to,” Anna called out to her. “It’s the only way.”

  “Think of the bag,” Susie reminded her. “You know there’s a bottle of water inside it.”

  Keely shouted her encouragement. “Just a little more, and then you’ll be free.”

  She didn’t know if a little more was going to be enough. But, God, did she want that water. Just the thought stirred a desperate need inside of her greater than anything she’d ever experienced before—perhaps even greater than the pain she was in, and her need to be free, though the two came hand in hand.

  It’s only pain and blood. It doesn’t mean anything. Pretend it isn’t even you. That it doesn’t even belong to you.

  Her grip around the knife had become slippery and slick with blood. She tightened her hold, knowing to drop it would be suicidal.

  Keep going. Just keep going.

  She cut deeper.

  Her vision tunneled, the edges turning black.