Page 54 of Monsters Like Us
We head to the van. As he turns the key and the engine coughs back to life, I tell him about the clothing I took for us. He doesn’t speak, but his hand finds mine on the console. I squeeze once. He squeezes back, a question and an answer rolled into one.
We roll through the small town, and I take in a bar with fogged windows, a church with a plastic skeleton politely seated on the steps, and a hardware store with a single fluorescent tube stuttering itself slowly to death. We keep driving, trees swallowing us again. Miles go by in dark breaths.
“Ted had a place,” I say finally, my voice as small as the glove compartment. “An old hunting cabin. My mom used to call it Dead Pine—because the trees there look like black matchsticks against the sky. Nobody goes that far out unless they have to. Very rustic. No neighbors. A road you almost miss even when you’re on it.”
Micah glances over. I see the calculation in his eyes. He taps the steering wheel once, thoughtfully. I hear his thoughts without him saying a word.Remote. No eyes. Good.
“Ashwood Hollow,” I add, because the name rises up anyway, the one the kids at school used whenever they dared each other to drive the ridge at night. “Locals call the stretch that. Feels like the woods breathe differently there.”
He nods. His thumb strokes once over my knuckles like a thank you.
We stop once more at a hardware store that’s closing. The kid at the register is too busy texting to care that we’re buying a couple of lanterns, two thermal blankets, a small hatchet, duct tape, a can opener, and a pack of bungee cords. Before we go to the register, I snag a box of matches and a folding pocketknife hanging by the door. Cash leaves my hands. The kid mumbles “Happy Halloween” without looking up.
The road to Ashwood Hollow is more a memory than amap. My stomach drops when we pass a rusted gate that leans wrong, images of Ted haunting me. I push through it, telling Micah to turn. He does, watching me with eyes that see too much. I give him a reassuring smile and squeeze his hand. He’ll replace every bad memory I have of Ted.
Gravel rumbles under the tires. Branches scratch the side of the van like fingernails. The sky feels lower. The trees lean in. The world becomes narrower.
“Up there,” I say, pointing at a cut in the trees that looks like a mistake. He takes it. The van creeps along the narrow lane. We pass three dead pines, standing like black matchsticks. The cabin hunkers behind them, small and sullen, its roofline dipped, its porch slouched. Someone nailed a tin star to the door a lifetime ago. It hangs crooked, tapping against the wood in the wind.
Micah parks behind a screen of scrubs so the van isn’t visible from what little road there is. He kills the lights. The night swallows us whole.
For a second, neither of us moves. It’s not fear. It’s that awful, aching emptiness after you stop running and your body hasn’t figured it out yet.
“Come on,” I whisper.
He opens his door, and the cold climbs in like a cat. He comes around to my side before I can step down and lifts me. It’s ridiculous. It’s perfect. I protest on principle; he ignores me. We are who we are.
The porch complains under his boots. The lock is a joke: rusted and flimsy. Micah sets me on my feet and works at it with the pocketknife and the patience he never shows anyone but me. The latch gives with a sigh.
Inside, it smells like cedar, dust, and mice who moved on.
We share the same breath as he leads me deeper into the room. He squeezes my hand, his voice low. “Stay here.”
“I can?—”
His index finger presses against my lips. “Stay. Here.”
He turns and heads out to grab our things. When the door bangs shut behind him, I look around the small space and smile. It isn’t much, but it’s safe. It’s not concrete, a mad scientist’s lab, and chains.
Micah comes back inside, his arms full of clothing and bags with our purchases. He dumps them on an old, wooden table in the small kitchen. His eyes meet mine in the darkness before he fishes one of the lanterns from the bag. He strikes a match, and the room comes into focus.
It’s a square consisting of a small bed, an old TV with a DVD player, a woodstove with a belly of ash, and a couch that’s seen better days.
I peel the scarf away from my throat. He pulls the gauze and the first aid kit from the bag and gestures to my wrists. I hold them out. His hands are careful and warm. He cleans my wounds, then wraps me like I’m something he can keep from coming apart.
“You’re safe,” I tell him, because I need him to hear it even if he doesn’t need to. “We’re safe tonight.”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. We can communicate without words.
He ties off the gauze, lifts my bandaged hands, and presses his mouth to the inside of each wrist like a seal.
I gesture at his arm. “I need to clean that up.”
He nods, stripping his sweatshirt over his head. I try not to admire the planes of muscle that rise over his arms, chest, and abs like indentations in a mountain. He notices, a smirk playing on his face. I roll my eyes, then focus on his wound, wincing as I clean it. “I hope you don’t need stitches.”
“I don’t.” I meet his dark eyes. “I just need you.”
As I wrap his wound, a thought nearly makes me smile.It’s absurd that wrapping him like a wounded animal makes me feel steadier.
