The remains

The Woods
Chapter 48

The cell phone woke me from out of a drug-induced sleep. I raised myself up, scraping away the wet pine needles that were stuck to my right cheek. I opened my eyes onto a darkness broken only by a tiny flashing red light embedded inside the plastic phone casing. Climbing onto my knees, I reached out for the phone, opened it, and held it up to my ear.

I was wet and shivering. I was also dizzy, out of balance. Out of instinct, I pressed the phone to my ear, listened for a voice. But then it dawned on me that there would be no voice.

Setting the phone flat in the palm of my hand, I peered down at the light radiant screen. Opening and closing my eyes, I tried hard to focus.

Do you luv Michael little kitten?

I thumbed in an answer. Pounded it in.

Do not hurt him.

It took forever to type in the letters, my eyes straining to focus in the light rain and through the haze of the sedation.

Another text came through.

Cry, cry, cry little kitten.

No choice but to play the game. That meant telling the truth.

I luv Michael.

I awaited Whalen’s reply. It came quickly, as though the text had been prepared well ahead of time as a quick text.

Flashlight is at your feet. Pick it up and turn it on little kitten.

From down on my knees, I reached out with my free hand, probing the wet mix of pine needles, leaves and raw earth with bear fingers until I located the heavy flashlight. The light not only provided me with a means of vision, it also revealed the truth: Whalen had dropped me inside a patch of thick woods. The monster had drugged me, hauled me out to some remote area and dropped my unconscious body inside it. Somewhere wild, somewhere dense with cover. Somewhere cold.

Another text.

Go to pictures little kitten.

I thumbed the menu key. A second screen appeared, this one offering eight options. The first for recent calls, the second for personal phone book, the third for games. And so on. I fingered the number 6 on the keypad. A picture appeared. A man who had been bound with silver duct tape. A man of medium build forced down on his knees. Like me, he seemed to be kneeling inside a thick patch of woods, while a bright white light shined on him, as if coming from a set of headlights. In the picture I could see that the man’s hair was dark, thick. He was bare-chested. The mustached face had been covered with separate strips of duct tape, one covering the eyes, the other covering the mouth, leaving only an exposed nose through which to breathe.

The tape acted like a mask. But I didn’t need to view the entire face to recognize Michael.

I wiped the beaded rainwater from the small screen, moving on to the next picture. Michael was still down on his knees. Only this time, he wasn’t inside a patch of woods. He was inside a building or a house. Down inside a basement. He was down on his knees on a hard-packed gravel and dirt floor. Surrounding him were stone and cinder block walls. He was bathed in harsh white light, just like in the previous picture. Probably from an exposed light bulb. I knew that basement, knew what had happened there. To Molly and me.

I dropped the phone, fell to my knees, and coughed up bile. The acidic bile filled my mouth, burned my throat. Spitting it out, I inhaled deeply of the cool wet air. I was afraid to pick the phone back up; afraid of what came next. I’d already seen enough.

But then I had no choice but to pick the phone back up. No choice but to keep on looking. It seemed to take every ounce of my will, but I thumbed to the next picture and drew my eyes to the screen.

This time I saw myself. Rather, not only myself, but Michael and I seated on the couch in my apartment, sipping wine. The picture appeared to have been snapped from directly outside the apartment window.

I depressed the keypad, moved on to the next picture. And the next, and the next…

Me, knapsack in one hand, one of Franny’s canvases in the other, moving toward my Cabriolet inside an empty downtown Broadway parking garage; me running for the Cabriolet; me jumping behind the wheel… Me standing on the porch of my parents’ home, staring out onto the woods and Mount Desolation beyond them… Me holding the black and white photo of Molly and me in my hand as I sat down onto the porch, pressed my back up against the clapboard wall… Me in bed, my eyes wide open in alarm, Michael asleep beside me…

I guess I wasn’t nuts after all. Whalen had been following me all along.

More photos appeared. Black and white images.

Molly and I when we were no more than three, running in the backyard behind our farmhouse. A color shot of Molly and me waiting for the school bus in our St. Catherine’s elementary school white and blue checkered uniform skirts. Molly and I as pre-teens playing one of our nightly games of flashlight tag in the tall grass behind our home on a hot summer’s night. Molly in her bed asleep; me undressing in my bedroom, both photos no doubt having been shot from outside our windows where Whalen must have perched himself on the porch overhang.

All those years ago…