“Who was that?”
They were driving back from town, Alice asleep in the back seat. Kane had felt paranoid about going, but Mac needed to get the last things from her mom’s house and a couple of supplies at the store if she was going to stay at the cabin that much longer. The lease was up on her mom’s apartment, so the last scraps and boxes were packed into the trunk. She would eventually need to go back home, but she wasn’t ready to deal with that just yet.
“Rodney, the guy from the shop. He said my mom is looking for me, showed up at his house and was asking questions about the car.”
“Your mom? But your mom—”
“Is dead. Been dead for a bit now, so I don’t know who this woman is, but I’m guessing it’s either your Valia or the scary woman.”
“The scary woman?” Kane laughed, “What, she doesn’t have a name?”
“I never stuck around to find out.”
Mac thought back to her mom’s apartment complex, the woman banging against the door of the woman that had disappeared next door. Before she had died, Mac remembered her mom telling her about calling into the landlord. She hadn’t seen her neighbor in a while and the pets probably needed to be fed. Mac hadn’t heard more about it until she had come to clean things out at her mom’s place. She told Kane about the giant pile of seeds they had found in the apartment instead of a dead woman.
A little later she had passed an older woman that had smiled at her and gone on her way. Mac had only been there a minute, so she didn’t recognize anyone, but while it wasn’t uncommon for the older people in the complex to stay cooped up like her mom, this lady looked out of place.
“I didn’t really think much of it. I was coming back from the laundry room, had a basketful of my mom’s clothes that I needed to wash before I headed to Good Will, and I heard this horrible banging down the hall. When I looked around the corner, the smiling woman was beating her fists against the door.”
“So, she’s angry? What’s that have to do with you?”
“It wasn’t anger, Kane. I’ve seen enough white trash people get angry. She was strong and fast in a way that she shouldn’t have been.”
“Ok, so superhuman lady.”
He got still, his animations melting away for a moment before he painted a jovial face back on.
Mac started again.
“And then she bent down and ate a seed off the floor. It was nerve-racking to pass her in the hall after that.”
“Five second rule a problem for you?”
He was trying to deflect with humor, but Mac could tell something had shaken him a little.
“She didn’t eat it with her mouth.”
“What?!” Kane laughed.
“She…I think she ate it with her eye.”
Kane was silent, trying to fake a smile to not upset Mac who was very clearly disturbed.
“I’m not joking, Kane. I couldn’t super tell everything that was happening, I didn’t want to watch, but I swear she took out her eye and a tongue slipped from behind it and lapped up the seed from her hand.”
Mac shuddered. The sickening memory overcoming her again. She had done and seen some pretty harrowing things, but she had never seen that.
“So, eyeball lady is coming after you now? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. And I don’t know it was her, but Rodney’s description seems to match what I remember.”
“So, again. Why would this woman be coming after you?”
“I don’t think she’s coming after me. I think she’s coming after Alice.”
“What? Why Alice? Nobody has come looking for us in a long while. I think we are safe.”
“Because even your story about that lady from church—”
“Valia.”
“Right, Valia. That alone should worry you.”
“But why would Valia go to your friend’s house? How would she have even made that connection.”
“What if someone saw us at the store? What if they recognized you?”
“Did you recognize me?”
“No, but…”
“See? If we were back in Georgia, sure, but up here, I think we’re fine.”
He didn’t seem fine though. Mac could tell the weight of it was starting to sink in. She could see the man running scenarios in his head of where they could go next, of how it would affect Alice.
“Plus,” he said, mostly reassuring himself, “we stayed in the car. Only you went in, and you aren’t on the run or anything. I only got out for two seconds to help you load the car since Alice was starting to fall asleep.”
Kane glanced back in the rearview mirror at Alice, her sweet little face slanted into her shoulder, the drive having rocked her unconscious. He brought his eyes back to the road and had to swerve out of the way of a car coming the other way on the narrow road, someone driving far too fast over the hill.
“Jesus. Slow down.”
He checked the rearview mirror again to see Alice still asleep, her head flopped the other direction with the little swerve.
“Kane. I’m serious. You ran for a reason. You’re hiding for a reason. Maybe someone figured out the link.”
“But how? We’ve been alone. Nothing has happened to me or her.”
“But things have happened out there. You’ve heard the stories. I saw the newspaper clippings you’ve kept. I don’t think it matters where she is.”
“My daughter is not some monster,” Kane whispered, checking the mirror that Alice was still asleep and not just faking.
“I didn’t say that Kane, and you know it.”
“I know—”
He looked at his daughter again, and in the darkness of the forest behind them, he caught the headlights for a car coming up quickly. He couldn’t tell what car, but it was riding his ass and the lights flooded the inside of the car Rodney had given them.
“Jesus, who the hell?” Mac asked.
“I don’t know what this guy’s problem is.”
The road was too narrow, and the shoulder was too soft for them to pull over and let the car pass. The driver didn’t back off and instead laid on the horn, the shock of which woke Alice with a startle.
“What?”
“It’s okay, baby. Someone is just being a bad driver. Everything’s okay.”
“Okay,” she said sleepily before sinking back into her car seat.
It was a few miles of the car honking and flashing it’s brights at them, but Kane was eventually able to pull off into the main entrance of the cabin area as the truck flew by them, spraying gravel their way, the little metal clinks echoed as they hit the door.
“Psycho!” he whispered to not wake Alice again.
He hadn’t recognized the car, and he wasn’t able to get a good look at the driver or license number during his effort to pull off the main road.
“Breathe.”
Mac felt unsettled, but Kane getting worked up would just work up all of them, and Mac wasn’t in the mood. She was too concerned about how unconcerned Kane was trying to be with the possibility of someone trying to find them. Especially if they were pretending to be related to Mac. She trusted Rodney to keep their secret safe, but she was more suspicious of the world now. Kane’s story about the lady from the church had scared her. The smiling woman had scared her. They were pulling into the driveway finally, and the glow from the cabin helped calm her slightly.
“Mac. We are okay. We’ve been out here five years without so much as an incident before you showed up. No one will find us”
She nodded, tucking her hands in the pockets of her jacket as she stepped out of the car. Back up on the ridge she heard a car spitting up gravel and wondered if that person was still out there driving around. Probably some hillbilly teenager.
She opened the back door, and Alice was already unharnessed and sliding her feet out onto the ground.
“Thanks Mac!”
The unbothered little girl was skipping up the stairs, toy in hand as her father strolled behind her, a laugh shinning in his eyes as he turned back to nod at her.
“Come on. It’s cold.”
For a brief moment, Mac felt happy, and that happiness scared her more than the threat of any woman chasing them down.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, staring at her contemplatively, the look on his face showing he was getting concerned about her shivers.
“The worst part of that story. About the woman.”
“I think the eyeball tongue was the worst part, based on what I heard.”
She shot him a serious look that made him recoil his playfulness.
“It was her smile.”
He held still, suppressing a reaction to what she had told him. She watched him scan her face with a seriousness she hadn’t seen before. It was a brief moment, and he shook it off almost immediately before smiling and taking her hand to lead her inside, but she could see that something she had said had scared him. She just wasn’t sure what.