Chapter 17

Chapter 17

B ranches whip across my face, scratching my cheeks. I stumble over a gnarled root, catch myself in time, but it costs me precious seconds. The eyelets on the hiking boots keep snagging on ferns, and I can feel myself leaving a telltale trail through the greenery leading from the forest to the lake. I don't turn around until I reach the shore. The trees are so thick that I can't see anything anyway.

I can still hear the alarm from here. Beep-beep-beep. Echoing as loudly as my thundering heart. My idea of hiding behind the waterfall until Brendan wanders into the forest suddenly strikes me as idiotic. What if he finds me back there and flips out? In a moment of blind desperation, I dunk the bells on my wrists into the water, and then tuck my sweatshirt over them. At least I still remembered to do that! I glance to my left and right, not sure what to do next. Grey's probably still busy with that dead mouse, but he'll smell me, and Brendan will know to take advantage of that. Where should I go? This is the most terrified I've ever been in my life, except for the time I spent in the box and the moment Brendan pressed that cloth against my face. Tears spring to my eyes.

Running straight into the creek is most likely my only option, because of Grey. Once Grey loses my scent, Brendan will figure out which direction I must have gone, but hopefully I'll have enough of a head start.

I wade through the shallow water as quickly as I can, toward the spot where the water has worn the sharply angled creek bed into the ground. Icy water laps around my calves, soaking my socks and the hem of my jeans. Doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I can dry my stuff later if I can just get out of here. I jump from one large rock to the next, across the transition from the lake to the creek.

Clenching my jaw, more from cold than fear, I try to keep my balance on the slippery stones, but it's practically impossible. It's not the moist, grey-green moss or the thick algae blanketing the rocks—it's just the fact that I can't tell which of them are stuck firmly into the creek bed and which are loose, ready to roll away as soon as I step clumsily onto them. Keeping my balance requires both hands, and I can already tell I'm moving much too slowly. Brendan doesn't have to cover his tracks, and I picture him hastening alongside the creek, bounding toward me like a wolf, like a hunter... grabbing me, shouting at me... or worse...

I stop, breathless. Something's different. The air is still. The splashing water is so loud it nearly tears me apart inside. Brendan's shut the alarm off. He's inside the camper!

Oh, God, not already! I don't think I've made it three hundred feet yet. Panicked, I clamber over a couple of boulders and onto the shore, and against all reason, I continue along the embankment, through the jungle of tall grass, ferns, and weeds separating the forest and the creek. Waist-high stinging nettles brush my hands, making my fingers burn, so I veer closer to the creek as I run, slipping on wet roots and the old, damp leaves of the few birch trees.

"Louisa!" Brendan's voice thunders through the trees like he's trying to slam me to the ground with it. "Come back!"

I stop, frozen in terror. Where is he? I glance back over my shoulder, but I don't see him anywhere. I'm not good at judging distances, but I think I probably have almost a quarter-mile head start now.

I listen for a few seconds, catching my breath.

"Louisa! Come! Back! Now!"

Hearing his enraged voice is enough to kill my hopes. Like I never really had a chance. In the distance, I hear Grey howling, which I've never heard him do. Can he sense that I'm leaving him forever? Maybe it's that mournful, accusatory sound that drives me onward. I start running again, but slower so that I can keep going longer. I'm just now starting to realize how steeply the ground drops off. I hear Brendan yelling again. Louisa! Louisa! Louisa! Raw and wild. Louisa! Completely out of his mind. He shouts things I don't understand, because he's so furious he's confusing his words, barely getting them out. Is he already having a flashback?

After a while, he stops, leaving behind the same eerie silence as before, after the alarm stopped beeping. Since Brendan isn't shouting anymore, I can't tell if he's coming this way or going in a different direction. I don't know which is worse: hearing him, or hearing only the silent forest. He could pop up behind me at any second—I know how quietly he can move when he wants to. Like a predatory cat, lulling his prey into a sense of security until the very last second. The thought terrifies me so much that I find myself glancing over my shoulder every ten steps or so, but I don't see anything, don't hear anything. This ragged breathing is giving me a terrible stitch, and pressing both hands against my side it is the only way I can keep running. I comfort myself with the knowledge that, if and when Brendan has his flashback, he probably won't be able to move silently anymore.

Once I've made it another half-mile or so along the shore, I risk venturing into the creek again. The water is breathtakingly cold, probably barely above freezing. My toes are completely numb after a minute or two, but I know I need to keep going for another half-mile at least so that Grey will lose my trail. I lift my feet extra-high with every step, trying to picture the fire I'm going to build tonight. A small, hot fire that will warm me up and dry me off. I imagine it crackling and popping, picture myself curled up beside it like a hedgehog. After a while, I don't even notice the cold anymore. Either I'm too focused on not slipping as I do this stork-running thing, or my feet are frozen solid.

After several minutes, the ground flattens out, and the water stretches out to either side, like an animal that suddenly has more room. Two smaller streams feed into it on my right. The bed is mostly gravel now, with only the occasional smooth boulder dividing the current, rippling the water into white waves. The creek is as broad as our Road to Nowhere back home. I come to a halt—my right side hurts so badly that I can barely breathe—and cast a fleeting glance across the green valley the creek is extending into. Pale late-afternoon light scatters on the surface of the water, giving it a matte silver gleam that seems otherworldly amid the dark conifers towering into the heavens on either side. If I weren't so scared and out of breath, I might even stop and enjoy the view. I grit my teeth and try to start running again, but there's just no way.

I wade to shore, sucking in deep lungfuls of the fresh, moist air, and plunge my burning hands into the water to cool them. The sleeves of the sweatshirt are immediately soaked through. As I push them up, the cable tie full of bells catches my eye. My silencing trick has been working well this whole time, but I don't want to rely on it. I fish the scissors from my pants pocket, and then sit down on a moss-covered stone to cut the band. The cable tie material is tough, though, and although the scissors are sharp, they're fairly small. I keep sawing and filing away at the band, listening tensely for sudden noises as I work, but all I hear besides the rushing water are a couple of birds. Once in a while, a breeze rustles through the treetops and knocks a pine cone to the ground with a muted thud—or occasionally a crack when the pine cone lands on a pile of dead wood. I jump every single time, thinking it's Brendan, and then breathe a sigh of relief a moment later.

I just can't wrap my head around the fact that I've gotten away from him this easily. There's no way, is there? I know I'm free, but the rush of euphoria hasn't hit me yet.

Once I've finally managed to slice through the cable tie, I use a rock to sink the bells into the creek bed. When I straighten up, I spot a path winding into the bushes on the other side of the water.

My heart starts beating wildly. I don't dare get my hopes up that much, right? A trail ! I can barely believe my luck, and immediately I start bounding through the creek like a lunatic, churning the water. Where there's a trail, there will be hikers. Canada may be isolated in parts, but that also makes it a nature-freak paradise.

But when I peer more closely at the line of trampled grass, a thick lump of disappointment forms in my stomach. It's hoof tracks, not footprints. Probably a game trail for deer or caribou.

I keep moving, slowly realizing how alone I actually am if I've gotten away from Brendan. My only companions out here are the wild animals that I assume are already eyeing me from a safe distance, wondering what to make of me. Black bears. Grizzlies. Wolves. Elk. Male elk are supposedly even more dangerous than bears. I squint around, scanning the area, but practically anything could be hiding in the thick vegetation lining both sides of the creek here. I know I should be singing loudly so I won't surprise the bears, but that would obviously make it ten times easier for Brendan to track me.

I'm so absorbed in my surroundings that I don't notice how much stronger the current around my calves has gotten until it's nearly too late. I freeze in place for a moment, and then bound hurriedly to shore. I glance up and down the silvery surface of the water. The creek was perfectly flat this whole time, barely knee-deep, and it hadn't occurred to me that it might change. The ground still isn't sloped too steeply, but I still have to be careful—what if it suddenly drops off and I get swept away by the current? Ethan once told me that even experienced swimmers sometimes drown in mountain creeks. I decide to stay close to the shore, near the willow herb, nettles, and swamp grass.

There's a rushing sound in the distance, and it gets louder with every step I take. The air is heavy with cold moisture that clings to my clothes like a second, clammy skin. I squint, trying to make out what's up ahead, but the dark spruce branches hanging nearly to the ground make it impossible to see more than ten feet in any direction. I follow a bend in the creek, and all at once, it seems to end in mid-air. The rushing swells until it drowns out the sound of birdsong.

The bad feeling in my gut intensifies. It must be a waterfall, and I can't tell how steeply it drops off yet. To be on the safe side, I get out of the water and approach through the forest. It takes forever to get to the spot, but then I discover just how much of a catastrophe this is: the creek drops straight down into a steep ravine. A couple of trees hang drunkenly over the rocks as though staring into the abyss. I'll never get down there, not without breaking every bone in my body.

Cautiously, I walk along the edge. Thirty or forty feet, at least, with sharp rocks poking threateningly out from the side of the grey mountain-monster. I follow the creek with my eyes, watch the water tumble into the depths of the ravine, where it feeds into a large river that winds through the valley.

Exhausted, I grab hold of one of the birches leaning out over the cliff, and clutch a thick, horizontal limb for support. My throat tightens in despair and frustration. I'm not getting any further. But I can't go back, no way, not in a million years. Brendan's somewhere in the forest, searching for me.

Just as I've made up my mind to keep moving along the edge of the cliff until I reach a less-steep place to descend, I jump at the sound of a cracking twig. My hands tense around the tree limb. That wasn't a pine cone falling on dead wood. Heart racing, I turn around. And turn to ice.

Brendan's at the edge of the forest, maybe thirty feet away. Against the backdrop of dark spruces, his face is almost ethereally pale. His expression is calm and solemn, but the fire in his eyes singes me. That disconnect between outward composure and inner rage is what terrifies me more than anything. It's as if his two faces are fighting inside him, and there's no telling yet which one has the upper hand.

"Bren..." I gasp for breath, horrified. I want to say something to calm him down, but terror devours the words.

"End of the line!" He comes closer. Stoically. One step. Two steps. "The property ends here, at this ravine. You can run as far as you want along this cliff, you'll never reach the valley."

The information hits me with such force that I nearly black out. He knew from the beginning that I didn't have the slightest chance of escaping in this direction. It's only then that I spot the path behind him and realize just how stupid I was. He's been setting traps in this area for weeks. He knows the whole area and every game trail in it. All he had to do was pick one. I bet he even beat me here, and he's been sitting around waiting for me to arrive. Bile rises in my throat.

"Come here, don't make it any worse for yourself."

That's when I see the chain and the handcuffs in his left hand.

I retreat, clutching the limb of the birch tree, but the ground is loose. A couple of rocks roll away and tumble into the depths of the ravine.

"Watch out!" Brendan exclaims in alarm, and my heart does a terrified leap in my chest. Immediately, I clamber up the tree, which is growing almost horizontally over the ravine.

"One more step and I'll jump!" I warn him, and I'm so desperate I actually believe my own ears.

Brendan stops. "I'm not trying to scare you, Lou," he says, but it sounds mechanical, like a phrase he's memorized in case of emergency. Every muscle in his body is tense. "I'm not going to hurt you. I've told you that a hundred times, and it's not going to change. Not even now." His black T-shirt is so wet with sweat, it looks like he's just emerged from a swimming pool. "Come on, Lou. You know what will happen."

"No!" I shake my head frantically. "I don't want to be chained up like a prisoner again." Were those feelings I had for him ever real? How could I possibly be attracted to someone I'm so deathly afraid of? They must not be real, they must be a product of my own loneliness.

"It was my fault," Brendan says, jolting me back to the present. "I shouldn't have made it so easy for you." I must be giving him a look of confusion, because he hurries on to his next thought. "As soon as I realized that you'd taken my lighter, I knew you were plotting something. I should have reacted immediately." His smile is so tortured, I think it may kill me. "Now it's too late. I'm going to bring you back, and you'll start hating me again."

He may be right, I realize with a pang in my chest. The feelings I have toward him, wherever they are and wherever they've come from, might not survive tonight. I may end up hating him forever after this.

"Why didn't you search me if you were so sure?" I ask defiantly.

He closes his eyes for a moment and shakes his head in impatience, like he doesn't have time for these silly explanations. "I promised you I wouldn't touch you. How could I have?—"

"So you left the cabinet open instead. To test me."

"No." He reaches into his bag and pulls out the small, brown bottle. "That was carelessness. I was pissed off, and I felt a flashback coming on. Anyway, there's nothing else in there that would have helped you get away from me." He gazes at the brown glass as though lost in thought.

"What's that for?" I can't go forward, can't go back. I'm caught in a trap, like one of his rabbits. My throat starts burning. It doesn't matter what I think about him, what I feel for him—I might be about to lose all of it. Then things will go back to the way they were at first.

"I'm going to put you to sleep so that I don't have to drag you back by force. For your sake."

His honesty is like a slap in the face. The good intentions behind it are a punch in the stomach. How can he claim I'm his "light" and then do these things to me?

To buy myself some time, I straddle the tree limb that stretches over the ravine like an extension of the boulder. I'm absolutely positive about one thing: I am not leaving this tree of my own free will.

"I'd rather jump than let you force more of that shit down my throat!" I snap furiously and scoot slightly away, so that I'm over the ravine. I think I may be about to have a nervous breakdown.

"Lou, come down from there, right now!" It's definitely a command, not a request, but I hear a note of fear in it, too.

I slide out a little further, as if to prove to myself that I'm serious. My feet are dangling in the air; the wind whips my hair in every direction. "Go away!" My shoulders are shaking.

"Lou." Brendan's voice drops to a whisper, so tender it makes me want to scream. "I'm not trying to make you suffer. I know how much you miss your brothers. If I'd known how bad this would be for you, I..."

"You'd have kidnapped some other girl?" I shout, cutting him off. "We've been over this."

He shakes his head. "I only ever wanted you, and you know why. Which is also why I don't think you're going to throw yourself off of there. You love life too much."

A flood of tears streams down my face. "You took my life away from me. You stole it."

Brendan stands there, thunderstruck. A look of pure suffering flickers on his face, which makes me remember that drawing of his that I found. I hate myself for empathizing with him, but I guess that's life. None of us can control how we feel about other people. We can lie to ourselves about it, suppress feelings we think are wrong, but at the end of the day, the truth is the truth.

Brendan slips the bottle back into his pocket before stretching a hand toward me, seeming to sense my contradictory emotions. "Don't do this, Lou... please..."

I stare down into the ravine. Raging waves, sharp rocks, nothingness. If I let myself fall, I'll either drown in the river or smash against the ground. Wheezing, I scoot out a bit further. My heart is fluttering in a way that's making me nauseated.

"Lou. I know you never wanted any of this. You're desperate, and you want to prove it to me, even willing to put yourself in danger just to make your point. But you know what? I get it." Brendan takes a couple steps back, and then walks a short distance along the cliff. For one terrifying moment, I think he's preparing to jump. No, don't! I nearly scream, but then I see that he's winding up for a throw. The chain and the handcuffs fly over the edge in a high arc.

"See?" he calls in my direction with a short, rueful laugh.

I'm going back and forth between despair, affection, and fear. I'm not sure which one is strongest. He slides the brown bottle out of his pocket again. It looks as though he's going to toss that as well, but then, abruptly, he sinks to his knees, and the bottle slips from his grasp. He clutches the ground with both hands, clawing at the dirt, digging his fingers into it. He's whispering something, but I can't make it out over the wind whistling in my ears.

But I can guess.

So dark, so dark … in the ground … why did you leave? Don't stop breathing. Don't stop breathing. Keep your hands still. Don't cry. Don't stop breathing...

"Bren?" I hear the high, frightened waver in my voice. Please, don't flip out, not now! "Bren!"

He looks in my direction, but without seeing me. From one minute to the next, he's miles away, or at least his mind is. Panic spreads through my chest. If he loses it now, he may try to pull me out of the tree using force, so he can hit me or choke me or I don't know what. We might both end up going over the cliff.

I wrack my brain desperately. I talked him through it on the night of the thunderstorm, but he was also safely chained up on level ground, not standing near the edge of a ravine. And sometimes the talking didn't even help anyway.

"Bren!" I call loudly. I have to get him to snap out of it before it sucks him in completely. "Bren? It's okay, you're here, with me, you're not anywhere else. Bren... it's me... Lou."

It'd work better if I went over and put my arms around him, but I don't dare come down from the tree, so I simply keep talking. "Bren, I don't know what terrible things happened to you in the past... but that's over now, okay? You're free, you're not locked up, you just have to see it."

He shakes his head vehemently, rocking back and forth.

"Bren... it's okay," I call. "You're not trapped."

"Lies!" he suddenly hisses. The rocking stops. "It's getting dark." He jumps to his feet and strides toward me, his face distorted with hate. Finally, he stops directly in front of the birch tree, barely five feet away. "That was you," he says hoarsely. "It's all your fault. Why did you leave? Why did you leave me alone with him?"

I cling desperately to the tree, praying that he won't try to climb up after me when he's in this state. "It wasn't me," I whisper with my dry throat, not sure if he's hearing me. "That was someone else. Brendan, I saw one of your drawings... you have to get help..."

"You never loved me!" he shouts, clenching his fists. "You went away and left me alone with him. Even though you knew exactly how he is! You knew! I hate you!" His eyes are shining with unshed tears, and every muscle in his body is so cramped, it's like rage and hatred are the only things holding it together.

I'm starting to get a faint idea of what happened to him. His mother must have left him and his father. Was his father the person who did those horrible things to him that he can't find words for?

Brendan braces himself against the trunk of the tree with one foot, and then grips the tree limb with one hand. "Come down from there! Now! I'm not going to let you disappear again!"

"Bren... please..."

"Come! Down! From! There!" he bellows.

I start crying again. I'm frozen in terror.

His expression changes, twists into a hateful sneer. "There you go, crying again. Didn't I tell you to quit sniveling like a little girl?" He kicks out at me as if he's trying to curb-stomp me or something. "I should stick you in a box and bury you underground—then you'd have a reason to cry!"

"Bren..." I whisper, weeping. "It's me, Lou. Lou, the girl you kidnapped. And yeah, I ran away, I wanted to leave you, but I don't hate you. In fact, part of me genuinely likes you."

He stops for a moment, as though having some kind of epiphany.

"Bren! Look at me, please."

The hateful expression vanishes from his face. One of his eyelids twitches.

It seems like I'm doing something right, so I keep talking. He's not going to remember any of this anyway.

"Okay, I admit, the part of me that, that likes you is obviously insane, completely batshit crazy, like those guys in New York City that surf on top of subway trains, but it's true. I don't get it either. It's the part of me that wishes you'd invited me back to your camper for a beer or whatever, and then kissed me. You were right, I shouldn't have run from it."

He stares at me, and I can actually see his eyes clearing up, becoming his again. "Louisa?" he asks, sounding confused, like he's just been beamed here from another planet. "What the hell are you doing up there?"

A flood of relieved tears streams down my face. "Sitting in a tree, being scared to death." It comes out in a wavery whisper.

A faint smile flickers across his tense face. "I was out, wasn't I?"

I nod and feel the tension beginning to drain from my body. "Totally."

"It's too dangerous." He retreats behind the tree, glancing around, and then gestures with the bottle. "Come down here, please..."

I'm still dazed with fear. A gust of wind billows my sweatshirt outward. I clutch the tree tightly with my knees, digging my nails into the flaking bark. "I'm not drinking that!"

"It takes effect almost immediately. I tinkered with it for a long time to get the perfect mixture." Brendan takes another step back, and then another. "It was supposed to be for you, so it won't have as strong an effect on me... I mean, I weigh more than you do."

Now I'm officially lost. "On you?"

Brendan puts the small bottle to his lips and drains it in one go. He grimaces like he's swallowing a raw egg. "I wasn't planning on taking it myself, but I figure it's the only way to get you out of that goddamn tree. I don't know when I'm going to have another attack... what if I decide to try and yank you down from there? Or you get scared of the way I'm acting and lose your balance..." He disappears into the darkness of the forest. I can't hear what he's saying anymore.

Is he trying to trick me into coming down? I stay where I am for a few moments, trying to ignore the frosty wind caressing my soaked pant legs.

"Bren?" My stomach knots like a rope. Brendan's nowhere in sight. No, that wasn't a trick. He couldn't have known I was going to climb the tree. Carefully, I slide back from the ravine until I'm standing on solid ground again. I shiver as I trot after Brendan into the forest, and discover him sitting a safe distance from the cliff. He's leaning back against a tree, ghostly pale. I stop about five feet away, as close as I dare get.

"You shouldn't run, too... dangerous," he slurs when he sees me, wiping his hands across his sweaty face. "Plus I'll find you either way." That stuff must be starting to work already. What the hell did he just drink? His eyelids flutter. "It'll get way too cold at night, you'll freeze to death."

"I have your lighter," I whisper hoarsely, because I can't think of anything better to say.

He smiles weakly. "You'll set the whole forest on fire, and then I'll know where you are anyway... if you survive." He closes his eyes, and his head drops to one side. He seems vulnerable—and looks much younger to me than he ever has.

"Lou?"

"Yeah?" I finally muster the courage to approach him, though my legs nearly give out as I kneel beside him.

"Storm... tonight... stay..." He's breathing more shallowly now. "Don't go... too dangerous..." As he drifts off, his torso tips to one side. I grab him by the shoulders, but he's too heavy, and he ends up collapsing in a strangely contorted heap. I adjust his legs so he'll be more comfortable. If I had the chain now, I'd be able to use it on him instead. Was that why he threw it into the ravine first? Because he already knew he was going to drug himself?

I spend a moment studying Brendan's face more closely than I've ever done. Without the frown lines and the bitter expression, he looks so peaceful, so still. I notice several little details for the first time: the shallow dimple on his chin, the way his eyebrows are slightly thicker near the outer edges. My gaze comes to rest on his unyielding lips, and I find myself wondering whether he's ever kissed a girl, whether he's ever said "I love you" to anyone. Whether there was another girl before me, one who first made him happy, and then left him. My stomach twists a little at the thought. Conflicting emotions well up within me, taking over against my will. I can't let them. I can't look at him and wonder how it would feel to have his arms around me, imagine what it would be like if he came over and, instead of chaining me up, ran his fingers across my cheek. Seeing him lying here, totally defenseless, suddenly makes it easy to picture those things. He made that concoction for me, but then he drank it himself so he wouldn't put me in danger. I'm not sure what that means. Actually, I don't know anything about anything anymore, apart from that I don't want to leave him out here by himself. I dig for my hatred and rage, but find only doubt, pain, and fear. Almost as if in a trance, I brush a stray hair out of his face. I expected it to be rough, but it's as soft as silk.

"Lou..." he murmurs indistinctly.

I jump back, startled, and nearly lose my balance. What the hell am I doing? Sitting here, wasting the golden opportunity he's giving me? Sure, he advised me to stay, but we both know what I'm going to do.

Brendan sighs drowsily. "If you go... Grizzlies... don't stop... singing..."

If I kneel here watching him any longer it'll tear me apart. "See you!" I whisper, forcing myself to stand up, and forcing myself not to burst into tears all over again. "If there's really a storm coming tonight, I'd better get going!"