Part 2
I live a lifetime staring into those inverted eyes.
It’s like staring into a blob of tar burning without gravity. There’s a flame there, but there’s no urgency to it; it’s like a pair of flickers glowing behind stained and sooted glass. It’s not the white and blue flame of a torch cutting through me, it’s the steady flame of a wick telling me that it will smolder across the world if that’s what it takes to burn through me as well.
That lifetime ends, and my wendigo and I are running again. I’ve seen him, but he’s seen my tower, and I know where he’s running. He’s closer than my horizon, so I know I don’t have time. I have to turn around, I have to take three steps, I have to close the door and barricade it; I don’t have time.
Still, I have to try. I’m already pushing off the ground as I turn for the door. It looks a mile away, but my body surges across the distance in only two steps, passing through the open arch with my third.
My binoculars are in my left hand, and the door is on my right. I grab the edge of the door with my right hand, and as soon as I’m past it, I throw it closed behind me, pressing hard from the soles of my feet to launch my body against the solid steel. I hear the latch set, and I reach up with my hand to turn the deadbolt.
“I must already be dead.”
The words flash through my mind. With everything that Dianne told me, there’s no way that I was able to get back inside, there’s no way that I got that door closed, there’s no way that I’m still alive.
Maybe that’s what hell is; an eternity of trying to protect yourself from the thing that already killed you. Maybe that’s what I am now; just the memory of a dead guy who tried to save himself.
If that’s what I am, I may as well get started.
I think that I could barricade the door. I could knock over the refrigerator and shove it in front of the door. Then I could do the same with the washing machine. Then, if I still had time, I could shove the freezer from out in the garage in front of the door, too, along with that straight-piped Pontiac my grandpa always reminisced about.
“You live in a tower, Rapunzel,” flashes through my mind, “you don’t own anything heavy.”
I have a rifle, a bolt action .308 with a scope. I can drop deer, elk, bear if I have to with that rifle. It’s not going to help. I remember that, Dianne’s words repeating over and over in my head, growing clearer and clearer with every pass. The rifle is useless, death is its natural state, making it more dead won’t make it less dangerous.
“You’re real brave now,” my handset chirps, Joel’s voice is responding to my lack of trust, “But you tell me how brave you feel when you’re naked and a black bear is drooling while he stares at you from a nearby tree. Over.” I reach for the CB radio to turn it off, stretching to keep a hand on the door. I end up pushing it off the back of the table, but the illuminated display goes dark as the battery pack falls out of its slot. I slam my back into the door again, digging my feet into the floor and pleading with the concept of hope for an option.
I can’t kill it. If I’m going to survive this, I’m going to have to take away its weapons. It’s faster than a bad thought, it’s stronger than the rock and the hard place, it’s hungrier than famine. I’m going to die, I won’t survive this, but if I’m going to try, then I’m going to have to try to take it apart.
I try to plan, but I can’t focus; my mind is racing through a dozen questions at once. Joel’s words, “You’re real brave now …” and some other stuff after that. My mind thinks that it might just be something Joel knows how to do, then my mind tells me that’s stupid. My mind thinks that might have been Joel that I saw through my binoculars, then my mind tells me that’s stupid. My mind thinks that I need to get back to that whole “taking apart a wendigo” thing I was just thinking about.
There’s a machete on the side of my alice pack.
I almost realize that when the world explodes.
Part 3
My eyes are on the alice pack as my vision starts to spin. I feel my shins fold over my feet as the door explodes inward. My ear presses into my knee as my doubled body flips through the room. My eyes are still on the alice pack.
Maybe, if I just could have gotten to that machete.
The alice pack is upside down and behind me as my back crashes into the table top. There are no legs underneath; it’s hinged to the inside of the wall to save space when not in use. Some of my ribs crack as my tumbling mess puts it to use.
My thighs crush into my chest for a fraction of a moment before bouncing off my lungs and springing back out on my hips. The backs of my legs shatter window glass on their way to colliding with the inside of a shutter, and then the whole mess of me falls straight down, onto my head, before plopping out sideways and neatly tucking in like a baseboard at the bottom of the wall.
The alice pack is gone, and I’m staring at the doorway. The door is still slamming open, a broad cannon shot of light punching it in. My mind must be failing; I’m hopeful that I’m only fighting against the light. I’ve never done that before. I don’t know what would make me think I could do it now.
The door bounces off the inside wall and starts to close again, and that’s when I see him; my wendigo. He sneaks in through the latch side of the doorway, like he’s ducking in behind a server when he’s not supposed to be in the kitchen. He’s rotating as he comes through the door, grabbing it with his hand and slamming it shut while he slides his body out of the way in a single, elegantly vicious movement.
One of the vegetable cans I had been stacking rolls in front of the door as he slams, and it bends in the bottom corner of the door as it latches. The triangular beam that shoots across the floor is my only remaining light. For an instant, I think to try and shoo it away, like it’s a fly trying to land on my face. I think it’s going to tell him right where I am.
He grabs the book shelf that sits just to the right of the door instead. It’s a three shelf thing that stands about hip high. It’s meant to stay out of the way of one of the windows so I’d have a better view. It’s made from leftover plywood that was brought up to finish the inside of the tower, and it has no back. My wendigo sets it in front of the door and holds it down as he tries to jam it into place with kicks.
He goes back for the books. I say books, but what I really mean is binders, like the three ring ones from school. They’re the same thing as the course material I had to study, left at my tower so I could be free to forget what I’d learned. There’s five of them, and they’re all lightly filled. He grabs them by the spines and shoves them in the gap of the door jam in five places.
I feel my chest trying to pull in air, but I don’t know if I’m breathing. I’m trying to understand why he would do that, why he would jam the doors. I’m trying to think of a reason that makes sense, one that makes it okay, because the only reason I can think of is that he doesn’t want me escaping.
If he thinks I can escape, that’s because he thinks this is going to take a while.
My triangular beam is still pointing across the floor, so I can still see as he cuts across the room to the left side of the door. He rips the bedding off the mattress and throws it behind him, back where the bookshelf had been, then he covers the bedding with the mattress.
He tries to pull the bedframe off the floor, but it’s hinged to the wall just like the table. He stumbles with it for a step, then he rips it loose from the hinges. He stabs the foot of the frame into the corner where the bookshelf and the door meet, then he jams the head of the frame into a beam under the roof.
My throat is burning. I think he’s going to use that to hang me.
He tears into my cupboards, shoving everything into those shelves by the door, before ripping the cupboards down and jamming them in front of the bookshelf.
A strange thing is thought in my mind; he can’t see me. It’s not a helpful thought. I know he’s still going to find me. It’s a room on top of a tower; I’m either going to be right where he’s looking, or I’m going to be in the other spot.
He grabs the mattress and props it up in front of the shelving pile, and then he grabs the bedding that was underneath. He stands with his back to the pile and sits down. He presses his feet into the floor, and shoves his back into the mattress. He grabs one of my pillow cases and shoves a can in it before something catches his eye.
He locks eyes with me. He stops. His head cocks to the side like a puppy looking at a water fountain.
We are thoroughly confused.