Left for Dead: A gripping psychological thriller (4 page)

“Say yes, Amelia, and you live.”

I’m crying hard now. It’s so difficult to breathe with this rag on my face, and I know what I’m in for, what he wants, I can hear it in his voice, smell it coming out his pores. He kneels down and gets close.

“Say it.”

“Oh God.”

“Do you want to live?”

“Yes, I want to live.”

He does it right there with his knees in the water.

11

I wake up warm. Through the tiny squares of the mask I see flames from a campfire. I don’t know how long it’s been since the river, an hour or two maybe, but it must be late. It burns between my legs. I think about the act of war committed against my body. I should feel some emotion but I only feel numb.

“Hungry, Amelia?”

He is somewhere to my left. There’s the clash of metal on metal as if he’s eating from a can. When I don’t reply, he tries again, softens his voice like a concerned friend.

“Come on, Amelia, you’ve got to eat.”

There’s a clunk as he puts down the can. He shifts toward me and pulls me up to a sitting position with his powerful hands.

“Here you go,” he says. “Give this a try.”

I feel something cold on my lips. Spam. I eat even though I want to throw up because I don’t want to give him an excuse to exert his power again. He puts the neck of a water bottle to my lips and I gulp that down too.

“Tastes okay, doesn’t it?” he says, spooning in more Spam. “A fraction down home but it hits the spot, wouldn’t you say, Amelia?”

He leans back on his heels, waiting for an answer, so I nod.

“Good for you, Amelia Kellaway,” he says.

He resumes feeding me as if I’m a child. I can see him through the cloth. His face is lit by the fire and set in a pleasant paternal expression. He has an incisor snaggletooth and a scar on his chin. He has changed into a dark green and crimson checkered flannel shirt, creases ironed to perfection, brilliant white crew neck T-shirt beneath it.

Abruptly, he stops. He lowers the fork and stares at me. He comes close, so close, in fact, that I can smell the pork on his breath. He waves a hand in front of my face.

I shut my eyes and tell myself to be still. I can’t let him know I can see him. It’s the one advantage I have.

He wipes the knuckles of his hand against his jaw as he thinks.

“Okay,” he says, sitting back, satisfied.

I rearrange my legs to let out some tension and he moves to the other side of the fire and stokes the embers with a stick, throws on more wood. Then he is out of my line of sight, going to the car, popping the trunk.

For one God awful minute, I think he’s going to make me sleep in there. But then he’s back by my side with that blanket, kneeling down to slip a zip tie around my ankle, securing it to his own so we are Siamese twins. My skin itches at the thought of being next to him all night long or that he may touch me again, accidentally or otherwise. To my relief, he keeps his distance and lies on his back with his arm under his head.

“Would you look at those stars,” he says.

He pulls the blanket up so that it covers our shoulders. I catch the scent of leather polish and salt and freshly laundered clothes.

“Sleep tight, Amelia.”

*

I feel a tug on my leg. It’s Matthew rousing me for one of our rare Sunday morning brunches at that sweet little diner near Central Park, the one with the best eggs Benedict and freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, and a great window seat where you can watch little kids skip their way to the zoo. But when I open my eyes, I see the porous weave of the cloth, and remember exactly where I am.

It’s daylight. The forest is alive with morning sounds. I see his outline, half-turned from me, putting the zip tie he’s taken from our ankles into his jacket pocket. He stands, stretches, and looks over his shoulder.

“Morning,” he says.

He kicks the ashes of the dead fire with his boot.

“You like coffee? Of course you like coffee. Who doesn’t like coffee?”

I pretend I’m asleep while he retrieves a large bottle of water and tips some into a metal container then puts the container on the small gas cooker to boil. He opens a cooler, gets out two plastic mugs, and spoons in some instant coffee, pouring in hot water last.

He looms over me.

“Sit up.” I don’t move. “Quit fooling, Amelia. I know you’re awake. You’ve got coffee coming.”

I give in and try to raise myself up but it’s difficult with the zip ties on my wrists so he helps me to a sitting position and guides the mug into my hands.

“Don’t burn yourself.”

I think about throwing it in his face. Then what? Run again? Make him angrier than before? So I go with it and take a sip. It’s piping hot and way too strong.

He makes oatmeal in the metal container and feeds me again.

“Do your hands hurt? Your wrists?”

I nod.

“It needs be one or the other.” He sounds apologetic as he removes the wrist ties but secures my ankles.

After he’s done, he stands up and rubs the back of his neck.

“Okay,” he says, blowing out a breath. Like, okay, there’s work to be done. Okay, what can I do to her next?

Okay turns out to mean performing the mundane duties of cleaning the breakfast bowls and coffee mugs then returning to the trunk to pull out a shovel and two brown tarps. He lays one tarp flat on the ground between two trees, and hooks three tartan bungee cords through the other tarp’s aluminum grommets and secures it to the tree like some sort of lean-to shelter. He retrieves something else. A sleeping bag and two pillows.

Oh God. I’ve seen enough true crime documentaries to know how this goes. He’s in this for the long haul. He carries on, busies himself gathering wood, setting up the supplies, digging a latrine, and I lie down on my side and close my eyes because I don’t know what else to do. I can tell by his light-footedness that he’s happy and I wouldn’t be surprised if he started humming or whistling to himself. I try to think of a plan, some sort of plan, to regain some control, but I seem to be in this strange state of shock, a stunned paralysis of the mind where everything will not compute properly, as if I’m a survivor of a plane wreck, walking around in circles in my own mind.

12

When he shakes me awake again, it’s dark. I’ve slept for the entire day. He tries to give me a polystyrene cup of instant noodles but I push them away.

“Come on, now, Amelia.”

“I don’t want any,” I say.

He pauses and puts the noodles on the ground. I feel him come close and I flinch because it makes me think of yesterday when he touched me and I’m not sure I can survive a second time. His forearms brush against my ears and I brace myself and wonder if he’s about to push my head down into his lap. I think to myself that I’m going to bite that sorry thing off but he unties the knot of the mask instead, releasing the cloth from my face, taking great care to arrange the hair around my shoulders.

It’s a shock to see him, unfiltered and larger than life, so close, looking at me with his caper green eyes, jaw rotating while his molars crush what’s left of his food. All I can think of is Kevin Costner in his older years. A man’s man. A broad-shouldered man’s man in a tavern with a misted mug of beer in his big fist, shooting the breeze with the burnished-skinned old-timers, recounting a day of felling trees or hunting or building a barn from scratch. A man’s man who, for some reason, wanted me or someone like me—a proxy for a mother or sister or aunt he blamed for some deep-seated wrong done.

Slowly, he strokes his chin as he studies me. Then, quite suddenly, he says—

“You have pretty earlobes, Amelia Kellaway. Very pretty earlobes. I like the fact they’re not pierced.”

He picks up the noodles and holds them out. “I know things must be strange for you and what-not, but it’s important you eat, Amelia. Just a few forkfuls, would you do that for me?”

I hear his words but I’m still in shock that he’s removed the mask.

“Amelia?”

I nod my head.

A smile breaks out on his lips. “That’s the spirit.”

He reaches around and runs a strand of my hair through his forefinger and thumb. I wonder if he has a “type” and whether I fit it. I wonder if any woman in her late twenties around five-seven with medium length-brown hair is enough to turn his head and cause him to strap his leg into the moonboot and pull the flat tire routine. I wonder if I am simply one of a number, and if I am, what happened to the others.

He moves to the other side of the fire and lounges against a tree trunk, one shoulder against it, watching me. I pick up the noodles and bring the tiny plastic fork to my lips. I attempt to still my shaking hand and wonder whether this is the moment I should beg for my life.

“I need the bathroom,” I say.

He looks at me and pauses. “You bet.”

He removes the ankle ties and pulls me to my feet and walks me to the edge of the campsite and points to the hole in the ground he dug earlier.

I’m free and this is my big chance to run but I just stand there.

“Go on,” he says.

I squat over the makeshift latrine, balancing my right foot on one side, my left on the other, and deliver the whole shebang. It all comes out, everything, and I’m mortified by the noise and the smell. I glance up and he’s turned his face away, averting his eyes. I need to wipe myself and he gives me a roll of toilet paper then turns his back again.

“It won’t always be like this,” he says.

*

He has a large bag of Honeycrisp apples. He has already eaten two and is on to his third. He offered me one, but I told him my stomach hurt, and after the latrine, he doesn’t push the issue.

“You don’t say much, do you?” he says, chomping.

He’s emanating a syrupy aroma and I know I will never be able to eat my mom’s apple pie again.

He pulls my backpack toward him, opens it, and begins rifling through. I feel instantly violated with him going through my things like that, pulling out my tees and sweats and underpants and sports bras. He finds my copy of
Anna Karenina
, the one that I thought would double as entertainment and a bug killer.

“Tolstoy,” he says, spitting out a black pip. “I’m impressed. Although I prefer Steinbeck myself, but then I guess I’ve always been a patriot.”

He puts down
Anna
and continues searching. He finds my wallet and opens it.

“So you weren’t fooling about being a lawyer,” he says, studying my business card. “Manhattan, no less. Your parents must be proud, Amelia.”

I wince and he sees it.

“I touched a nerve.” He stares me. “Issues with your folks? I understand. My mother was no better than a street whore herself.”

He returns the card and pulls out the photo of Matthew that I was planning on using in a farewell-to-ex-fire-lighting ceremony somewhere along the trek.

“And who’s this? Hubby?” He studies the photo again. “No, not hubby. He’s a stopgap, a fly-by-nighter, Amelia. I know his type. I can tell just by looking at him that he’s not for you.”

As he’s returning it to the wallet, he finds the other photograph. Veined and crumpled. Me as a two-year-old on my father’s knee taken out the back of our house, the house later foreclosed on by the bank after he left.

“Oh, this is sweet.”

“Put it back,” I say.

He stares at me. “You were close to your pop.”

“I said put it back.”

“You’re right. I apologize, Amelia,” he says, returning the photograph. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

He hurls the apple core into the brush and takes out his own wallet.

“Since were sharing—”

He shows me a photograph of a boy about six standing next to a black BMX.

“That’s Noah,” he says, face darkening. “He’s older now, thirteen. I get emails sometimes. He’s stayed strong, despite his mother’s lies. She was never my wife, just a waitress, a nobody. You look like her but I won’t hold that against you.”

He touches the photo. “I wear my heart on my sleeve, I know that, but when it comes to Noah I can’t help it. I sure miss him a lot.”

He takes a final look then returns the photo to his wallet and falls silent, staring morosely into the fire.

Finally, he lifts his head and looks at me.

“I’m sorry, Amelia. About before, about what occurred at the river, it won’t happen again.”

He’s so earnest I almost believe him.

13

Rightly or wrongly, his words have given me hope. If he says he won’t touch me again, maybe there is a scrap of humanity in there. Maybe I can reason with him. Maybe I can gain his trust.

So when he asks me if I want to go fishing I say, “Yes, sir,” and try for a smile. He nods, happy, and says, “That’s just swell.”

He laces up my boots and we set off, my wrist secured to his, weaving through the towering pines, between narrow openings, up and down the undulating terrain. All around there’s the shriek of unseen birds, the shuffle of hurried, retreating steps. The vastness of the place is overwhelming. I know that if I was to zoom out, then zoom out again, we would be nothing, mere arthropods in the undergrowth. I want to reach out and touch everything—the bark, the soil, the sticky pungent sap. Scrape the ground until I fill my fingernails. Roll the fallen leaves against my cheeks. I glimpse myself as I was meant to be—the trekker, fresh-faced and eager, at one with nature.

“Turn left here.”

We go into deeper, thicker woods, and I begin to worry I’ve miscalculated his intentions and I’m actually walking to my death. We carry on and follow a path between the trees and I keep my eyes out for landmarks, any sign of a road that I can return to later, but it all looks the same.

He takes me past thickets, up to a ridge, then we circle back down to emerge on the other side to face a lake as smooth as glass.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says, laying the fishing rod on the ground.

I can’t deny it. It’s more than beautiful. The picture book lake is bordered with elegant maples dripping fall-ripened leaves into the water. Water lilies float in clusters on top. But the most spectacular thing is the water itself—it is the most dazzling shade of crystal blue I have ever seen.