Oily and rich, the smells of gasoline permeated the rubber-lined car windows. A small, clenched white fist collided with the window again, producing nothing but a dull thud that could, undoubtedly, not be heard outside the '78 Mustang. In the falling dark, the lanky, stooping figure of a long haired man tossed the black, plastic container carelessly aside, drawing something small from his pocket. It was too much to bear, in short, panicked motions, the hand flew to the little peg-lock on the door, jerking it upwards. In frustration, its thin fingers fumbled with the door's silver handle, finally managing to fling it wide on its hinges, sending it flying.
As the dark haired woman spilled from the stale, cigarette smoke saturated, peeling leather passenger's seat, an imperceptible scream passed her lips. The cool blue door slammed against the side of the car, rebounding and swinging in a full arc. The tall man stood, unmoving, not even so much as flinching at the sounds behind him, a metallic clicking filling the quiet night air, humming in the murdered silence. The woman struggled to her feet, regaining herself, she charged at him, "Stop, damn it, Sawyer!"
She plowed powerfully into his muscular figure, knocking him backwards onto the gasoline sodden grass. The lighter jumped from his hand, landing several feet away on the wooden steps to the large cabin with a hollow plunk. Lying spread-eagled in the grass, Sawyer's chest sucked in and out, "Get..." he paused to catch his breath, feeling disoriented from the fall, "the hell..." he squirmed beneath her, flexing his arms and forcing her away, "off me, Kate!"
Now it was Kate's turn to be dizzy, pinned uncomfortably on the ground. He had pounced just as soon as he'd thrown her aside, holding her shoulders to the ground with large, broad hands. She sent her feet at him instantly, but he dodged, still pressing her down into the grass, "I told you why I gotta do this, sweetcheeks," he snarled through his teeth, "you ain't gonna stop me. I'm lettin' you travel with me as a favor. Thanks to you, I don't got a safe place to live, so I got things to do." He let go of her shoulders, bouncing into a standing position and diving after the little black lighter before she could catch his legs.
He flicked the lid open, clicking the little gear repeatedly until, at last, a leaping flame sprung into life. He chanced a quick look over his shoulder, she was running towards him again, feet making soft thudding noises, the ground hardly seeming to notice her there. Pulling his arm back, he threw the lighter at the towering, square log cabin, watching in horrified, yet gleeful satisfaction as the lighter fell and lit the gasoline that dripped from every inch of the wood, devouring the building in a matter of seconds.
The thudding behind him stopped, and a huge gasp came from Kate's direction. The flames were running down the porch now, dancing over the grass towards them. Sawyer leaped back, grabbing Kate and falling against the side of the old, scuffed car. "You idiot!" she seethed, pummeling him with furious hands.
"Hey!" he caught her right hand, chest and arms stinging from the surprisingly heavy blows, "I told you why we had to do this!"
Kate glanced back at the fire, collecting herself as the wood gave a loud, sighing creak. The crackling heat of the burning house washed against her skin, and she became suddenly aware of the sealed wound on her arm as the thin flesh blistered excruciatingly, "Where do we have to live now?" She asked, her voice more sorrowful than anything else, "Where are we going?"
"I told you, girl," he tried to growl again, but his voice weakened and lost itself in his throat, "I have things to do."
Steadying herself with the still-open car door, Kate found her way, incoherently, back onto the leather seat, the cold, trapped feeling of earlier banished by the raging, groaning fire. Seconds later, he'd taken his own place in the car, leaning against the steering wheel, looking exhausted.
"You want me to drive?" Kate asked, shutting her door and nervously peeking back over the top of the seat, watching the cabin burn, black curls of smoke spinning viciously upwards from the highest flames, "We didn't leave anything in there, did we?"
"No, and no again," he said, irritated, stuffing the keys in the ignition and angrily starting the car after a few stalling, choking sounds, "Sht," he muttered inwardly, shaking sweaty hairs from his eyes.
"You need a new car, too," Kate said, trying to catch his attention now. The car was the only thing he'd seemed to care about since they'd come home.
There was just a disgusted sigh from the driver's seat, and suddenly the car was hurtling through the grass toward the nearest road at a nauseating speed. Kate held fast to the the leather, her flesh sticking to it as her palms began to sweat. The lumberyard, the log cabin in its middle, and the edge of the forest were all disappearing fast. There was a bang that could be heard over even the rushing of the wind past Sawyer's open window. The roof of the two-story cabin was beginning to give way, slowly crushing in on itself.
"Sit down," he barked, reaching for her leg with one hand, wheel on the other, casting fleeting glances from her to the open, grassy land ahead. The car swerved dangerously as he pushed her back into the seat. He grabbed the wheel again, glaring briefly at her.
"It's really stupid to light a fire in a lumberyard, by a forest," she said in slight amusement, turning her head to stare at the fire again, though the worry in her voice was evident.
"Deserted lumberyard," he corrected uncomfortably, "What, you a pyro or somethin'?" He asked gruffly when she continued to fixate on the orange glow. He stared forward, intent on getting as far away from the fire as he could.
"It really is," she said again, as though she expected him to look over his shoulder, too, "they'll find us, now."
"Hell, sugar, they'da' found us if I hadn't burned it," he said defensively, "I killed two birds with one stone."
"Yeah, I'm sure you did," Kate said, quirking a brow, still staring, "I still don't get how you're planning to pay--"
"Stop, right there," he said fiercely, hunching over the wheel, "there's the road."
"So we're going back to your house," Kate said, determined, "It'll be safe there, it doesn't matter."
"Look, girl, I spent two hours there gettin' my stuff before we came here!" He half yelled, glancing down at his feet, "just 'cause you made yourself cozy don't mean I gotta take you back."
"I'm not the one who's wanted," he said after a pause, "not here."
Kate looked away from the fire sorely, voice shaking a little, "Yeah, well, they wouldn't come looking there."
"I'm doin' you a favor. You should be thankful I like you enough to do that," he said sternly, disguising the praise within distrustful walls of words.
Eyes still down, Kate bit her lip, failing to avoid the painful thoughts creeping back into her mind. She wouldn't be alive if it weren't for him, she thought with a pang. He'd carried her back, after... She shivered, though she felt nothing of the night's cold air. He'd carried her back. With a broken leg. She shook herself, feeling as though her body had torn in two. "They're gonna find us anyway," she repeated flatly.
"No, god damn it, they aren't!" The frustration edging in his voice had become his trademark. He wasn't much different here than he'd been, back on the island... A huge shattering sound broke the tension in the car, stinging their ears, "Sht!"
The clear, smooth windshield was suddenly covered in long, spider-like cracks, each one extending to its own corner of the large, rectangular glass. A tiny, barely present tinkling sound followed the explosion of the breaking plate. Miniscule droplets of, razor sharp rain were falling through the gaping hole in the car, their only shelter. No. That was glass. Kate winced as one of the deadly raindrops bit her skin, and in an instant, all sense of direction disappeared.
---------
The mattress was hard, lumpy, and not the sort anyone would want to sleep on. The boy was not sleeping, as the bed's composition suggested. He seldom slept here, and even dared to think that the splintering hardwood floor would provide a better bed. At least it had a rug, he thought, acknowledging the tattered gray and beige cloth. The thought entertained him. Pale hair flying, he lazily allowed his body to roll from the mattress. He hit the floor with a loud, hollow noise.
His nerves jangled -- where was Mr. Molsbee? Surely downstairs enjoying supper with his wife, who, the youth thought with amusement, was more interested in her husband's well-paying job and position of power than his looks or demeanor. Like he, she was trapped in the hand-built log prison, though she had been here for a much longer time. He smirked, still pricking his ears for the sound of approaching footsteps.
Perhaps, he mused, returning to his thoughts, his relationship with the tall, slender blonde woman was the reason his daily docking of pay and meals, on grounds of "bad behavior" never seemed to stick. Perhaps that was also why Mr. Molsbee's constant threats of 'I'll throw you out' often meant nothing. There were... other punishments, of course.
His eyes wandered aimlessly about the tiny, lopsided bedroom. There were no windows, just the "bed", the rug, a poorly sanded door (judging by the number of splinters it had managed to award the boy with), and those homely, crooked walls. In the day, light could be seen filtering through the spaces between the logs. But not now: It was blackest night. When it rained, and probably when it snowed -- though he'd not been at the lumberyard long enough to see the latter -- the room grew draftier than usual, and had once flooded.
That was no matter, though. There was only one earthly possession for him to guard. With a mingling sense of rebellion and jealousy, the fifteen-year-old realized that not every room of the house was so poorly built and so scantily furnished. Why, even the cabin's foyer, one of its smallest rooms, had a regal, oaken mirror, and a fancy table inside. He folded his arms, wedging them between the floor and the back of his neck. It was Saturday night, certainly he would find something to do.
A scything pain shot through the whole of his body -- the day's earlier plans had been balked by Molsbee; now that the right time for them had passed, they would have to wait. A sickly feeling of disappointment surged within the young man. He cringed, even his repeated excuse that he had been doing nothing more than getting a drink of water had failed to pacify his supervisor. A muffled sound echoed throughout the room. The boy's entire body tensed, becoming a buzzing circuit, crackling with the instinct to crawl under the bed. To hide from an attacker.
He shook his head, freeing his arms and sitting up, cementing himself where he was. Do not be afraid. The noise came again, but this time more clear and precisely. It sounded like knocking on wood -- but it seemed to come not from the door, rather, from the outside wall. The sound was too hard and rough to be that of a fist. Realization dawned on the boy -- a rock. So he had indeed been saved, not only from the cage, but from the prospect of another lonely, sleepless night.
Had it been a weekday, things would have worked out the same way. He still would have snuck out. Still would not sleep when he returned. Still would have to work on the following day after school. Delicately, he rose to his feet, walking soundlessly to the door, astonished at the floor's atypical silence. The little brass knob turned without protest, the door swung out. Not a sound.
His feet guided his body around the hallway corner, out of the corridor, and into the foyer. The floor moaned slightly under his weight, and he withdrew, peeking cautiously around the door frame and into the huge, polished dining room. The sound of clattering porcelain greeted his ears. Molsbee and his wife sat on opposite ends of the table. The woman, Rachel, was facing him, and he stood on his toes to get a glimpse at her over the ugly, balding skull of his boss. Her expression of intense disgust melted into a radiant smile, and she nodded in the boy's direction.
Molsbee did not seem to notice -- he continued to drone on and on about wood, and taking his truck in to town. Softly, the boy slithered to the house's front door, fingers closing around the knob. This one was silver, more ornate than his own. Intricate patterns of leaves and roses were engraved in the tarnishing metal. It was cold to the touch -- and the boy elicited a barely stifled gasp as the door opened, with a tremendous creak, into the dark evening. It was even colder outside than the doorknob had been, he thought, the sending undulating waves of chills through his body. The raking voice made itself apparent, elevating from the low, dull mumbling, "What the hell? Damn' door's open again."
"Must be drafty," came the sweet, southern, bell-like voice, followed by the screaming of compressed wood. The boy bellied up against the rough log siding, pressing hard against it, letting it rip his bare arms as he inched down the length of the cabin's front. Slinking around the jutting corner of the box-like structure, still in the shadows of the roof's overhang, the boy cowered, just as the heavy, screeching steps fell to the end of the porch's front half. The sound came again, and for one, dread-filled moment, the wiry, blonde boy feared he would be discovered. But as the footsteps faded, the boy's pulse slowed to a steady pace. The echoes of the crying wood no longer beating in his blood.
"James," the whisper was hardly that, its owner trying much too hard to be heard, "James!"
The boy stole from the shadowed corner in which he'd hid, the scrapes on his arms stinging freshly in the still, freezing air. Springing gleefully over the porch's wooden railing, he found himself beside a boy about his height, "hey, man," he breathed.
The boy smelled like cheap cologne and after shave, and appeared to be about a year older than the tan, blonde youth, though they stood level with one another. It seemed to be a new fashion at the high school to bathe in 'men's perfume', James thought distastefully. The other boy's pale, ivory skin contrasted to the chin-length, jet black hair that swept over his eyes. The graceful point of his chin lifted, "we're going somewhere cool, tonight," he said in a lazy, drawling, yet, at the same time, deep and abrasive voice.
"Uh," James faltered, "just not the lake, Connor," he tried to maintain his voice.
"We're not going to the lake," the raven-haired boy rumbled, the southern
influence in his accent showing just vaguely, a glint of clever, fox-like green appearing through the fringe of straight hair.
Inside the tan Volkswagen Rabbit, the steed that saved James on most nights, a few lighthearted giggles floated from the back seat. The car sped towards the road as James cast a grinning glance over his shoulder. The two, auburn haired girls on the seat shot him flirtatious glances, batting long, mascara-blackened lashes.
The blonde boy flopped back with a sigh, looking a little flustered, he jerked a thumb in a backwards direction, "Who are they?"
"The Gunn sisters," Connor murmured mystically, saying the name reverently.
"Oh, okay," James murmured, dropping his voice, "just some random girls you picked up at school."
The air outside the car was thickened with a white, chill fog as the vehicle came to a rolling stop. It was all but impossible to see. The opaque, milky droplets in the air curled in little, snakelike tongues around the four warm bodies as they stepped outside, "where are we?" James coughed hazily.
"You'll see," said the sly, wolfish voice again, "hey man, how long've we been friends?"
"I dunno, couple months," the boy shrugged, brushing the question away.
"That's why you should trust me."
Connor stopped abruptly, and, to his shame and embarrassment, James crashed headlong into him, unaware of the change in movement, "hey, where are...?"
"Boo!" Connor's voice was a cold, arrogant bark. An orange-tinted light flashed on, illuminating each exquisite detail of his face, casting pools of shadow under his nose, hair, and eyes, "guess what?"
"Wh-what?" James asked aloud, clearing his throat to hide the uncertainty he was feeling.
"Do you seriously not know, man?"
"What're you talking about?"
Connor let the hand that held the light fall, limp, to his side, he spread his arms wide, "Aw, hell, man. You gotta be kidding, right?" He paused, looking through the fog at the younger boy's face, as though he hoped to detect something in it, "It's Halloween."
James stumbled backward onto something oblong, smooth, and rocky, noticing, for the first time now, the wet squishing sound of dead, fallen leaves beneath his sneakers. Had he lost all sense of time? How long since school had started? He peered about in the fog, but there was nothing to see, save the slow swirling of the white shade.
Connor's dark figure broke through the fog again, there was the sound of something falling to the earth, nestling itself in the leaves. The light. It must have been the light. For now, a stream of the flashlight's warm glow was cast through the fog, cutting a clear path in it. "And to celebrate it, you know where we are, man?"
The blonde boy uttered a tiny scream, his eyes growing wide. An odd, little-known feeling of heat rushed to his face. Only for a moment. With a painful shift in his senses, he felt the all-too-familiar rage taking control of his body. In a split-second, the dark, heavy-lidded boy was on his back, on the ground, in the leaves, with the flashlight. His eyes fluttered and closed. It wasn't enough.
Raising a fist, James brought it down on the boy's stomach with a torn wrath, uncaring when the boy's body registered no response. Out cold. Again, he kicked his shins. And once more, he raised a fist to him. A sharp pain stung James' cheek. One of the brown-haired girls from the back of the car stood before him, hand held high. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she opened her mouth just a bit, "You... bastard."
The boy dropped his fist, heaving himself back to full height. Turning on a heel, he fumbled his way through the fog. The road would be somewhere close. From there, he hitched a ride back to the cabin, where, as he'd known there would be, forty lashes from Molsbee's belt awaited him. And for the rest of his school year, and his working career at the Molsbee cabin, he was never again rescued from the dreary, lonely nights in the cold, wooden chamber. It had taken several months for the welts from the latest beating to heal.
It had only taken, however, a matter of hours for the batteries in the flashlight dropped in the cemetery to die and leave the area in its original swirling blankness. It had only taken a matter of hours for the gravestone of Mrs. Dawn Ford, Beloved Mother, to fall once into dark, its smooth, granite face gleaming in the wet, foggy moonlight.
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"And, that, children, is why we wear our seat belts," The long, drawling southern voice welcomed Kate back into consciousness. There was a furious wind on her face, and she thought, for some inexplicable reason, she felt dirt and -- what was that? A leaf? A leaf blowing against her face? She forced her eyes open.
It was a spectacular view of the stars, no streetlights around to dull their brilliance, no doubt about that, but there were downsides to driving without a windshield, "Uuhh..." she spluttered groggily.
"Yeah, rock broke the windshield," Sawyer said, noting her confused expression, "I'll get it fixed when we get to the town. It's not too far, if memory serves. There are hotels. Just hope no one steals my car overnight..." his voice trailed off, "and your head?"
Kate lifted a trembling hand to her forehead. Indeed, there was a swollen, tender spot there, "What...?"
"Bumped your head after I swerved when the shield broke," he said, casting her a rueful glance, "sorry."
"Yeah, that's fine," Kate said sleepily, turning to watch the wind ruffling his hair. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright, "Sawyer?"
"What, princess?" he asked coolly, not conveying even the slightest bit of concern.
"The cabin!" She asked, panicked.
"Yeah, I burned it," Sawyer said matter-of-factly, as though he was speaking to a child.
A look of worry settled over Kate's face. She gazed through the open front of the car to the black asphalt, "Why'd you have to do that, Sawyer?" she whispered softly.
"I don't see why you care so much," he started, "I already told you, it's got..." his face fell, "bad associations for me."
For a moment, just a brief moment, for the first time since they'd returned from the island, Kate could see the man who'd held her and promised to take care of her. The man who had problems. Not just past events, under the rug swept. All at once, she became aware of the small cut on her arm where the falling glass had sliced her skin.
"Because..." she began, hardly wanting to say the words, afraid of his reaction to her not having said anything before now. She had been looking back at the fire for an awfully long time before the windshield had broken. It would be out of control now. It would have ravaged everything. She shuddered. "Because, Sawyer..." she began again, almost laughing at the irony of the words. It was common sense. Maybe he'd meant to do it. But now he'd be pinned for destroying wildlife, "you didn't just set the cabin on fire. You set the entire forest on fire, too."