Page 54 of Cabin Fever
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – ESCAPE AND AFTERMATH
Kat
The woods are an animal with a thousand glass eyes, all staring, all waiting for me to stop running.
I trip over a frozen rut, go down on both knees, and the pain is white-hot, clean, like a needle. The trees shudder in the wind, branches spidering overhead, scraping the gray sky for answers. I want to scream, but my throat is clogged with snot and my own useless pride. All I can manage is a whimper as I scramble to my feet, hands and jeans already caked with mud.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just know I need to get as far from the cabin as possible, from the dark-lit rooms that smell like Talon’s sweat and the ghost of last night’s betrayal. I can feel his eyes on me, even though I left him standing in the embers, beer in hand, mouth set in a line so thin you could slice bread with it.
My vision is a mess—tears, wind, the sharp sting of cold air. Everything blurs into a smudge of motion, bare branches andthe flash of my own white hands as I crash through the brush. I slam my thigh into a sapling so hard I see stars, but I don’t stop. My lungs are burning, my hair is a halo of snags and debris, and my boots leave clumsy tracks in the rotten snow.
I’m nobody, I think. I’m a fuck-up, a cliché, the girl who thought she mattered when she never did. The pain in my chest is worse than the ache between my legs, worse than the raw skin on my knees. I want to find a cliff and jump off it, but all I find is more trees, more air, more cold.
At some point, I lose track of time. The world narrows to the sound of my breathing and the slap of twigs against my cheeks. My pulse is so loud it drowns out everything else, and I don’t notice the smell of woodsmoke until I’m practically on top of the hermit’s hut.
Erasmus’s place is even smaller than I remember. The porch sags, and the roof is a patchwork of tin and tar paper, but the chimney is pumping out fat blue ribbons of smoke. I stagger up the steps, legs wobbling, and collapse against the door.
For a long time, nothing happens. I think I might actually die here, freeze solid, and they’ll find my corpse in the spring, one of those “tragic local news stories” that never makes it out of the region. I start to laugh at that, a mad, broken giggle, when the door jerks open and I nearly tumble inside.
Erasmus doesn’t say a word. He just looks at me, one gray eyebrow raised, face set in lines so deep they look like dried riverbeds. He’s wearing the same checked shirt as last time, the sleeves rolled, a scarf twisted tight around his neck. His eyes scan me from head to toe, taking in the state of my face, my clothes, the scrapes on my hands.
“Inside,” he says, and it’s not a question.
I trip over the threshold, knees giving out again, and he half-catches me, steering me toward the battered armchair by the stove. The cabin resembles a hobbit hole: tiny, cluttered, every surface covered with books or tin mugs or little carved animals. The heat from the woodstove is so intense it makes me dizzy, and I bury my hands in the wool blanket thrown over the chair, trying not to shiver.
Erasmus moves around the room like a man used to caring for stray creatures. He stirs the fire, pours water from a kettle into a chipped mug, then adds a big spoonful of honey and a sprig of something green. He hands it to me, and the mug is so hot it nearly burns my fingers.
I stare into the steam, eyes burning, until I realize Erasmus is crouched beside the chair, close enough that I can smell the smoke trapped in his beard.
“You found out the truth, then,” he says, and his voice is as flat and cold as the forest outside.
I don’t answer, but my face must tell the whole story. He nods, as if he’s seen this scene a hundred times before.
“I told you,” he says. “Some come here to lose what’s chasing them. Some come to get lost on purpose.”
I sip the tea. It tastes like pine needles and heartbreak.
Erasmus stands, stretching with a groan, and grabs a tin of antiseptic from a shelf. He pulls up a little wooden stool and takes my right hand in his, flipping it over to examine the cut across my palm.
“You’re not the first, you know,” he says, voice low. “Talon McKnight invites a girl up here every year, like clockwork. Some last a week. Some last longer. But they all leave, sooner or later, never to come back. A lot of them leave with tears in their eyes.”
The words sting, but they also make sense in a way nothing else has. I nod, staring at the floor, trying not to cry again.
“He never hits them,” Erasmus says, as if that’s something. “He never hurts them, not physically. But he uses ‘em up, just the same. Then they vanish, and he moves on.”
He smears ointment on my hand, wraps it in a strip of old bandana, and ties it off with a neat square knot.
“You’re a smart girl,” he says, meeting my eyes. “You know what you have to do now.”
I shake my head, a slow, shuddering motion. “I don’t know anything,” I say, and my voice cracks. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Erasmus watches me for a long moment, the lines in his face softening just a little.
“Sometimes,” he says, “you have to get lost before you find your way out.”
He stands, walks to the mantle, and picks up a small wooden fox, ears alert, tail curled around its haunches. The eyes are painted black, two pinpricks of knowing. He presses it into my palm, closing my fingers around it.
“I carved that for you when you first showed up,” he says. “Thought you’d need it.”
