Page 90 of Good Half Gone

Yanking down my pants, I almost groan in relief.

“You guys have a pretty great setup back here. My gran would make herself right at home. She loves to camp.”

I chat through the longest pee of my life. When I come out from behind the rock I clear my throat.

“A little looser this time, please.”

I’m surprised by both the agility and gentleness with which he ties the knots. His face is unreadable. I’m allowed to sit on one of the chairs. Arthur puts a bowl in my hands. I stare at the beans and globs of gray meat and thank him. I drink it, eyeing him over the rim of the bowl. He’s sweating like a pig in cellophane, glancing every few minutes at a spot in the trees. I chew without tasting, grateful for the warm-up.

When I’m done, Dalton collects my bowl and offers me a bottle of water.

“I can’t open it,” I say. “Can you please…”

He won’t look at me as he screws off the lid; he studies the fire instead, putting the open bottle between my tied hands.

“Who taught you how to cook?”

He stares at me before wiping his face on the crook of his arm. “My grandma.”

“Mine did too,” I say. “All it takes is one good gran to save a kid. In my case, two, because it was me and my twin sister. Where is everyone?” I speak to Dalton, since he’s the boss. He’s bent over his bowl with the same dead expression on his face.

“Some of them are in the old chapel. Some of them are dead.” He goes back to eating.

I didn’t know there was an old chapel. Maybe that’s why Jackie led us in the opposite direction. She might have known the chapel would be a hotspot. I wonder if they got caught or were still hiding in the shed.

“I’ve come to collect the little flower.” Marshal is wearing a filthy undershirt and jeans. He winks at me. Dalton nods, not lifting his head from the bowl.

“Off we go,” Marshal sings. He grabs my upper arm, digging his fingers into my flesh. I don’t flinch. He looks disappointed. He doesn’t speak as he drags me through the trees until we reach a small clearing. It’s a pretty place to die.

He shoves me left, and I see an RV. He manhandles me up the stairs, reaching around me to turn the handle, purposefully brushing my breast with his arm in the process. I jump away from his touch, but he’s right behind me, laughing when I have nowhere to go. The RV smells stale like mold and piss. He pushes me through the tiny kitchen area, past the cracked leather seats, to a yellowing wood panel door. My jaw muscles shiver, clanging my teeth together. Marshal has me face him so he can untie my wrists. “You have ten minutes to take a shower,” he says. “A minute over and I’ll come in there and drag you out myself.” I’m pushed inside a tiny bathroom: sink, toilet, shower.

I’m locked in. I rattle the handle and shove at the panel with my shoulder.

“I fuckin’ warned you!” Marshal pounds on the other side of the door with his fist. The space I’m in is impossibly small. I am trapped. I cry, silent streaming tears that are heavy, and they drip like rain to the cracked linoleum floor. I turn on the water, biting the insides of my cheeks as I think. A hand towel is folded on the counter like someone left it for me. What looks like a beige button-down and a pair of sweatpants are folded underneath it.

I think of the Polaroid photos of Piper, half-naked and sexually posed. I’ll kill them, strip their skin from their bones and—what? They are stronger, they are many.

I open every drawer, look under the little sink, in the closet… There are things: a bar of unwrapped blue soap, a half roll of toilet paper,a waterlogged book with the cover torn off, and some goopy stuff that looks like spilled bodywash. Someone resides here. The water is lukewarm. I hold my cut hand under the stream, crying out when the water hits it.

I don’t know how many minutes I’ve used, and I don’t want Marshal to make good on his threat. I get into the shower still wearing my underwear, the flimsy cotton the only protection I have. I never stop shivering, not even when I quickly dry off with the hand towel and pull on the clothes left for me. In the mirror a bloodless face stares back at me. The shirt is miles too big. I stare at FFOH above my breast pocket. It takes me a few seconds to see it: HOFF. I groan, clenching the material in my fist. Kyra Hoff’s face is burned into my memory; I am wearing her missing husband’s shirt.

When Marshal finds me dressed and ready, he is surly. He snaps his fingers three times before prodding me out of the RV and through the woods. I can hear the crash of the waves, and as the wind surges, the trees creak and moan around us like they’re about to give.

We walk a trail until we reach a scarred old barn. Not a barn—I see the crooked steeple and the cross. As we get closer, a flash of lightning illuminates the building, and I see the roots of a fallen tree. What’s left of the front of the chapel is so dilapidated it shivers in the wind. Surely he wasn’t taking me to the sodden church rubble. I look back at Marshal, whose footfalls have slowed. He spits and points to the left of the building with his flashlight. I squint through the rain and see a path through the trees. My shoes sink into fresh mulch as we walk, the smell of cedar burning in my nostrils. I can only see as far as Marshal allows with his beam of light, but it’s clear someone laid this mulch recently. I lose count of the beer cans—crushed, crumpled, and dented, they mar the mulch with the frequency of a city highway. I could take my chances and run, but he’d catch me pretty fast,and then what?They’re not going to kill you yet, they just let you shower. The thought is so silly—is so asinine, I laugh out loud. If Marshal hears, he doesn’t say anything.

On either side of the path, blackberry bushes weave walls between the woods and us. We walk for a few more minutes before he calls for me to stop. I turn around, blank-faced as a mannequin. I will not be shot in the back. Instead of pointing the gun, he’s pointing the flashlight—not at me, past me.

“There,” he says flatly. My eyes follow the direction of the beam to a space between the trees. A small gazebo sits nestled in the brush; it looks to be in relatively good shape compared to the chapel, but just as frightening. Broken bottles and beer cans litter the base of a tree, a clear hangout spot.

I spin around to confront Marshal, fists clenched, ready to fight. I will not go in there with him. Running toward or away from the gazebo makes me a shooting target, but I could crawl into the blackberry bushes, slip through the branches easier than he could. Let’s see who could wriggle through thorns faster.

“What do you mean? What’s there?” I look between him and the gazebo. The seconds tick by achingly slow; I am all too aware of my ragged breathing and the throbbing ache in my hand.

Instead of answering me, he turns his back and walks away—quickly, like he’s running from something.

He is leaving me here? My choices are to go where he told me to go, or head back the way I came—where Marshal is surely waiting for me with the gun. An impossible choice; I’ve been set up to fail. A noise, a voice… There is someone in the gazebo; I hear them walking around, theclomp clomp clompof boots. There is a trap in every direction, ill intent meant to degrade and denigrate women. I hate them, I hate that my sister felt what I am feeling now—helpless and trapped, her fate sealed by the lowest form of coward.

“Iris.”

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