The Escape. Part 23

She could feel the rage crash over him. She slid her feet underneath herself and bucked Fletcher off before he could grab her. His fist slammed into the earth a half inch from her ear, and Avery crab walked away and got to her feet. Fletcher dove for her, his hand grazing her ponytail, grabbing a fistful of hair.

"Adam had to die! Adam had to die! They made me do it. I had to!"

Twenty-nine.

Avery took off running. Each time her foot hit the ground, pain exploded in her ankle, sending shock waves through her body. Fletcher killed Adam. And now Fletcher was going to kill her. She could hear him running behind her, sloppily, stomping though mounds of dried brush and leaves that she skirted.

"Avery!" Fletcher's voice was nearly unrecognizable, a shrill tear through the silent forest. "Avery, get back here!"

Her heart was hammering; she felt like she was breathing in broken gla.s.s. The grove of trees opened on a meadow, streaks of yellow sunlight breaking through the graying sky. She teetered on the edge. There was no place to hide in the meadow. She paused, her blood rus.h.i.+ng.

There was no sound.

She didn't hear Fletcher stomping through the gra.s.s. She didn't hear him yelling for her.

Maybe he stopped. Maybe he gave up.

She folded over, hands on knees, greedily sucking in air through lungs that felt desperate.

"Avery!" Fletcher's voice echoed. It bounced in front of her and behind her, came from all sides.

"Where is he?" she whispered to herself.

The silence was more terrifying than fighting Fletcher. He could be anywhere. Avery hugged the tree line, doing her best to stay hidden behind the brush and trees. She picked her steps carefully but was sure the thundering power of her heart would give away her location. Her heart pounding in her ears was all she could hear. She was sure that Fletcher could hear it too.

The whispers stopped abruptly. As if a switch had been flipped. Fletcher was deep in the forest, alone, wrapped in the desolate silence. He didn't know where Avery was. Why would she leave him?

"Avery?"

He took a few steps and her name echoed back to him again and again. She didn't respond. Fletcher couldn't remember which direction he was going or which way he had come. And he couldn't remember where Adam was.

Adam.

The memory-grabbing Adam, landing the first blow-came cras.h.i.+ng back and Fletcher doubled over, the weight of it like a swift punch in the gut.

"Hey, Fletch, you've got to see this, man."

Fletch hiked up the slope to where Adam was standing. He was already winded from running, and now his calves were burning and cramping.

"What is it?"

Adam grinned and gave him a shove. Fletcher tripped over his feet and a hunk of dead wood and rolled down into the gully.

"Dude, I'm sorry... I didn't mean to-" There was a look on Adam's face that Fletcher couldn't identify.

Fletch slid a few more inches and then landed on something hard at the bottom of the pit. It poked at the bare skin on his back. He frowned and tried to push himself up, away from what was jabbing him.

It was a skull. An animal with a mouth full of teeth and sun-bleached incisors. Its eye sockets stared up at Fletcher. He screamed, his feet unable to gain traction to move him away. He rose a few inches and slid back down, the hideous skull grinning at him, staring at him.

He could hear Adam laughing, the sound echoing through the forest and filling his ears. But something cut through the sound. A whisper, the faintest whisper. He felt himself start to tremble.

"Who's there?" he asked, his voice small and breathy.

Adam looked down on Fletcher, hands on hips, grinning. "Dude, who are you talking to?"

Fletcher looked around him. There were more bones. Each one was sun-bleached and bare.

"Dude, you're crazy. Come on." Adam lay on the ground, swinging an arm toward Fletcher. Fletcher tried to reach for Adam's hand, but his sneakers slipped and he went down again. Again, Adam laughed. Again, the skull was in front of him, mouth gaping, eyes scrutinizing. Then it whispered in his ear: "He's making fun of you, Fletcher. He hates you. Make him quiet. Make him quiet like Susan. They're both coming to get you."

"Stop s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. I don't want to be here all day," Adam said.

Fletcher remembered reaching for Adam. He remembered their fingers touching. He remembered what the skull whispered to him. Adam pulled him up and they were face-to-face.

The first blow made him shake. He remembered the fire in his arm, the way it shot out even though he couldn't remember thinking he should strike. He thought his hand was broken. He remembered the sickening sound of bone hitting bone, the way Adam's head shot back from his neck.

He remembered the whispers cheering him on.

"Dammit!" Avery muttered, feeling the tears at the edges of her eyes. If Fletcher didn't catch her, she would die in the woods. She was too far away from the Cascade trail they had come down. Everything looked the same-tall trees, dead bushes, mountains of pine needles. She had no idea which direction to turn.

Why is Fletcher doing this?

She dropped her head in her hands and pulled her knees up to her chest, Adam's knife poking into her thigh.

He was going to kill me.

There was a meadow in front of him. It was like a mirage from one of those old cartoons, a lush oasis in the middle of the desert. But he didn't know where Avery was. The whispers told him he had to find her; they throbbed with the needling pain behind his eyes.

Find her, find her, find her...

"No." He said it out loud, trying to shake the whisper from his head. "No." He was halfway lucid now, somewhere on the edge between his waking self and the other self, the one that came back after Dr. Palmer tried to push it down.

"Schizophrenia, Fletcher. It's called schizophrenia."

He remembered being strapped down in the hospital, his mother brus.h.i.+ng the hair from his forehead as her mouth rolled around the word. He remembered that someone had attacked Susan. That his mother whispered when she thought he was asleep: "He's my son, and I'm not going to leave him here."

"You're picking one child over the other. He's dangerous. He can't be in the same house as Susan," his father whispered in response.

"He's just a little boy. He didn't know what he was doing."

"You're insane. He attacked Susan. We have to protect our daughter."

"I'm going to protect my son." His mother-strong, defiant.

Avery held her breath. She could see Fletcher. She prayed he didn't see her. He was murmuring things, flicking at his ear with those same awkward movements. She watched him brush the hair from his forehead, matted with sweat, and look around. She watched as he pivoted so that his body was facing her hiding spot. Avery didn't dare look up at him.

"Avery?" Fletcher's voice was tremulous and soft. Haunting. "Avery, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

He took a step toward her, leaves crackling under his sneakers. Avery dug her teeth into her bottom lip, sure that her body was betraying her: blood pulsing, heart beating, breath whoos.h.i.+ng through her barely parted lips. Fletcher must have heard her. She clenched her teeth as she started to tremble. Her thighs were aching as she hunched down.

Fletcher took another step.

Avery's muscles cramped.

She let the cry die in her chest, but her knee couldn't hold, brus.h.i.+ng against a branch.

Fletcher's eyes cut right to her. His lips began to move, a wide, slow smile spreading across his lips. "Hi, Avery."

"Please, Fletcher. Please don't hurt me. I want to help you."

He c.o.c.ked his head, the silence between them weighted and eerie. "I would never want to hurt you."

The whispers broke in, the chorus going from a gentle murmur to a brain-bas.h.i.+ng thunder. Fletcher pressed his palms against his ears and pinched his eyes closed.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

Avery's body took over. She sprang up to run. Pain, like a live wire, shot up from her ankle and she crumbled. Avery heard herself squeal as she went down, while Fletcher's hand closed around her other ankle. Avery clawed at the ground, her nails breaking in the dirt. Fletcher yanked her closer, stepping hard on the small of her back. Heat broke within her, the pain rolling from her low back around to her belly, stabbing and nauseating. Avery kicked and flopped like a fish out of water and Fletcher toppled, landing behind her with a loud oof.

Avery was up and running again.

She could hear Fletcher behind her, stomping through the waist-high gra.s.ses as she cut across the meadow. He was yelling for her in that same primitive, throaty voice that she barely recognized. She flung a look over her shoulder. This Fletcher, the one who tailed her with his teeth bared and his eyes narrowed, was someone she didn't know. This Fletcher terrified her.

Avery reached the lip of forest on the other side of the meadow, and recognition hit her: this was the part of the forest she and her mother had walked in. She knew there was a burned-out tree and she vaulted for it, sliding at the same time a clap of thunder shook the sky. She dipped into the tree just as the sky opened up. Silver-gray rain came down in torrents.

Fletcher called out to her again, but his voice was sucked away by the sheeting rain. Avery could see him standing a few feet in front of her, head upturned as the water splashed onto his forehead and over his cheeks.

"Get back here, Avery! Get back here!"

Avery glanced up at the rain and back down at her orange search-and-rescue jacket. It was made to be seen. She slid out of it, trembling against the bone-soaking rain, and balled it up, rolling it as carefully as she could down the gentle slope she had come up. It stopped at the base of a giant redwood ten feet away, one of the sleeves trailing like a beacon. She prayed that Fletcher would see it.

She had to be here.

Get her, get her, get her, the whispers chanted. Can't you do anything right?

Fletcher looked up, unsure when the rain had started.

Where was he? What was he doing?

He blinked, pus.h.i.+ng his feet through the dirt as it turned to mud.

"Avery?"

His mind raced. They were hiking. They had come out here to find Adam. No, Adam was dead. He remembered that.

Clues.

They had come out looking for clues to jog his memory.

And now Avery was lost.

A sob lodged in his throat. How did Avery get lost? He called her name again, fear fluttering inside him. "Avery, are you out here?"

What if she had fallen or slipped? The rain was already pooling at his feet, the mud making a sucking sound as he tried to walk. She could be stuck or hurt. Blood thundered in his ears, the only thing he could hear over the rush of rain. There was water in his eyes, rolling over his cheeks. He wasn't sure if it was raindrops or tears.

"Avery?"

He turned again and saw a slice of bright orange behind a tree. Her search-and-rescue jacket.

"Avery!" Fletcher rushed toward her, grinning like a madman, so glad that he had found her. Only it wasn't her. It was just her coat. Fletcher's chest constricted.

"Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d." What had happened to Avery?

He whirled when he heard her grunt.

Avery didn't have any other choice.

She fished Adam's knife from her pocket, folded out the blade, and gripped the handle in her palm. She knew where she was. She remembered the formation of the trees, the burned-out stump-she remembered that just a few feet from her, there was a road. They always stopped at the burned-out tree because her mother hated the road. "It's like an ugly slice right through heaven," she would say as they picnicked under the trees.

The only thing between Avery and the safety of the road was Fletcher.

Avery grunted and Fletcher turned, relief cras.h.i.+ng over him. He saw her emerge from the safety of a burned-out stump. He ran for her, thankful. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to kiss her. He hadn't realized how worried he had been. He ran to her, and her eyes widened in terror. What had happened? Why was she scared?

He closed the distance between them, but suddenly there was a severe pain in his thigh. It felt like his kneecap went slack, his hips sliding.