CHAPTER TWENTY
Dex kept his word and after he had at least six hours of solid sleep, he stayed awake while I went to sleep. By that point my mind and body were exhausted, not only from the day, and the constant fear that the creature was lurking somewhere in the woods, but from the turmoil my heart kept spitting out at me.
When daybreak finally rolled around, another hazy grey morning in the mountains, Dex had gently shaken me awake. There was no time to sleep in. We had to get moving while we could.
We packed up and left our log home behind, heading back the way we came to find the river again. I couldn’t quite keep up with him; every single bone in my body ached, from my shins all the way up to the bruise on my cheekbone. I had taken a hell of a beating yesterday and it was all finally coming down on me. With no adrenaline to keep the pain at bay, it was almost distracting at times.
Dex helped me when he could and soon we reached the roaring blue river. I went as fast as I could, wincing every couple of steps, telling myself that as soon as we got back to the cabin, I’d be stuffing myself full of Advil and any leftover bourbon. The small first aid kit we had packed had everything except bloody painkillers.
We had been walking for about two hours, taking more breaks than we should have, when the clouds overhead thickened and a slight breeze picked up. Seconds later as I finished off a glass of icy river water, a light snow began to fall. It was beautiful, the way the delicate flakes danced on their descent but I knew sooner or later it would start to trip up our journey back.
“We have to keep moving,” Dex said and brought out the space blankets to wrap around our shoulders like a cape. We were dressed warmly but at this point there was no such thing as being too careful.
He shot me a glance as I winced my way around a slippery rock bed.
“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked.
I waved him away and put on a brave face. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m serious. I could actually carry you the whole way. Remember? I’m Hulk now.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you going to let this thing go to your head?”
He tried not to grin but he failed. He let out a laugh. “Oh, it’s already gone to my head.”
“I can tell,” I said. I straightened up and tried to ignore the burn in my bones as my boots slipped on the fresh snow.
He studied me for a bit, pursing his lips. Then he said, “All right, but if I see any more painful looks from you, you’re going on my back. Got it?”
I knew better than to argue with him. I just nodded, focusing my attention forward and keeping my facial expressions at bay.
Why are you being so nice to me? I thought to myself even though I knew the answer. The answer hurt too.
The more we walked, the more I was able to take my mind off the pain. Nothing was damaged, really; I just had to suck it up. But after a few hours we came to something we couldn’t quite get past.
“Ah, shit,” Dex swore. He brought out the map and looked it over.
The river banks had been slowly but surely tapering off until there was nothing left. The river decided to cut right through a mountain, bordering by towering cliffs. There was no way we could follow it directly anymore unless we felt like taking another dip.
“Now what?”
“I’m thinking,” was his answer. He put the map down and looked up at the cliffs. The only choice we had without going off course again was to go straight up but that was ludicrous. Even if Dex was stronger and I was on his back, he wasn’t Spiderman. Or a spider monkey for that matter. >
“Don’t worry,” he commented without looking at me. “We’ll try and find our way where it’s less steep.”
Once again, could he hear me? I decided it didn’t really matter. He was right when he said we were always on the same page. At least, we were most of the time.
It didn’t take us too long, maybe ten minutes of picking our way through the forest again, before we were able to hit the mountain slope. It was about as difficult as a steep hike, hard on the knees and the lungs, but not impossible, even though I was occasionally grinding my teeth in pain. I kept imagining lying in a bathtub at home, soaking in a pile of Epsom salts and relaxing with a glass of wine and I worked toward that thought.
The funny thing was, when I had that mental image, it was of the bathroom back at my parents’ house. It hit me like a blow to the gut, the fact that I wouldn’t be returning to that place. I couldn’t even think about my entire life prior to this without feeling a bit sick at the way things were left.
Then I was reminded of the bathroom I had now. At Dex’s. The thing was, when I really thought about it, I didn’t want to actually move out. Logically, it made no sense for me to stay if I was so hell bent on returning our relationship to normal – living with him would be too hard if we were just friends, the friends I said I wanted us to be.
But I told him I was moving out. That was the original plan and I had to stick to it now.
I guess I had been mulling all of this drama over in a daze of sorts because before I knew it, the climb had softened its intensity and was leveling out. We were much higher and the snow was really coming down.
Dex paused, catching his breath, and looked around us. My eyes followed. Everything was grey and white, like we had climbed up into a cloud. Scratch that. We had climbed up into a cloud. The white mist blew past us, almost tangible, like something you could hold in your hands, dumping snow on our heads and shoulders.
“Is this it?” I asked.
He kept his head raised high in the air, sussing out the situation. “I guess we either plateau for a bit or go down again. I think we’ve been walking in a straight line, which means we will eventually meet the river again. We’re just way ahead of the path, that’s all.”
“You think we’ve been walking in a straight line?” I scoffed.
“I don’t see a river to follow and I don’t have a compass, do you?” he answered, still eyeing the hazy landscape around us. “So yeah, I think. I’ve been keeping track, don’t worry. I guess we’re caught in some low crest that’s not on the map.”
“Will we still make it back before it gets dark?” I asked, swallowing the dull panic in my stomach.
“I promised you we’d make it,” he said, finally bringing his eyes to meet mine. “I meant it.”
You know those times when someone just takes your breath away out of the blue? When you see them day after day, and then one day you just see them. Like a layer has been stripped away, leaving the core exposed. This was one of those times. I don’t know if it was the stark and moody backdrop behind him but I suddenly saw Dex Foray so clearly. He seemed taller, even though he wasn’t, and just rippling with determination. It had settled in his dark brows, causing shadows to be cast on his eyes. Only occasionally could you pick out the rich brown of his irises, otherwise it was just a feeling you got from looking at him, not an image. His jaw was wide and tense, and maybe his cheekbones were sharper because of the stress we’d been under but it was accented by the dark facial hair that hugged all the right places. It all wrapped together under a package of black messy hair and taut, tanned skin, a man of virility and strength, and most surprising of all, of heart. This wasn’t the Dex I used to see. No, I finally saw Dex as the man he was.
What a strange, strange place to have an epiphany.
“What is it?” he asked, the wind whipping the map in his hands.
“Nothing,” I answered robotically, still caught in his gaze.
His frown deepened. “Are you worried?”
Yes, I thought. But about the wrong thing.
‘No.” My tongue felt too big for my mouth.
“All right. Let’s keep going then.”
I watched him take the lead, his black on black form fading as he walked. Then I shook the crap out of my head, the loose thoughts that weren’t going anywhere. I followed closely behind him, my feet being careful on the snow-slick rocks. Up here there were no trees, just boulders, loose shale, and a powder-fine grey dirt that stuck to my boots. Everywhere I looked, we were surrounded by a white mist of quickly drifting particles.
We’d been walking for a bit on uneven but slowly descending terrain when things suddenly took a turn for the worse.
For one, the land started sloping upward again, presenting us with a trail of ragged rock that seemed to spear out of the earth like teeth. For two, though the air was growing lighter and the clouds seemed to be passing farther above our heads, the ground beneath our feet had snow coming up to the tops of our boots. I could feel the icy chunks trickling down into my socks.
And then, as we were picking our way across the dangers, trying to find our footing on a ground that only grew steeper and slicker, we heard a terrible scream.
I had no idea what direction it came from, except that it was human and it was a human in utmost agony, a torturous pain that struck fear in the deepest recesses of my being.
Dex stopped dead in his tracks, almost falling back onto me. He leaned forward, hands grasping to the nearest rock and we both paused, waiting, listening, wondering.
The scream came again. It almost sounded like it was yelling “help” and it was loud enough that I couldn’t tell if it had come up from the valley, bouncing off the mountains, or was coming from somewhere nearby.
“Mitch?” I whispered. I couldn’t pick it out but it was certainly male. A male screaming for his dear life, a male who was getting ripped apart. And we now knew by what.
“All signs point to yes,” Dex said, his voice low. He adjusted his lean on the rock and we kept still for another minute, waiting to hear something else.
But it never came. To tell you the truth, it was enough for me. His scream nearly made me pee my pants, a fright that caused some sort of chill that began below my lungs and bled outward in a slow paralysis.
“What should we do?” I eked out.
“Keep going,” was Dex’s bleak answer.
He straightened up as much as he could on the slope without losing his balance and started going forward again. I followed right behind at a 45 degree angle, trying to avoid the rocks and snow that was inevitably pushed toward me. My fingers fumbled as I tried to gain traction on the ground, feeling lame and unfeeling in my gloves. My chest heaved underneath my coat, the cold air jarring my throat, the occasional breeze icing my nose and eyelashes.
“I think this is it,” I heard Dex say from above me. I paused and raised my head. He was quite a bit ahead of me but it looked like he was standing straight up on flat ground. “I can see the river!”
He sounded excited and that was enough for me to push through the next steps, hand above foot, rock and snow falling away from me as I climbed.
I was just reaching for the final boulder to get extra traction that would propel me to the top, when Dex walked a few steps away. He stopped.
Looked stunned.
And then disappeared entirely.
I had to blink hard. But he was gone.
And it took hearing his own scream to make it all real.
My heart seized from the sound and the next thing I knew I was screaming too, pushing off with my legs until I was off the cliff face and on flat earth. I looked around me wildly, spotting the surrounding mountains that had emerged from the mist, the river and the valley below but not Dex. In the narrow crest we had found ourselves on, Dex suddenly ceased to exist.
“Dex!” I screamed from the bottom of my lungs, the word ripping out my throat.
I ran to where I had last seen him and found the truth too late.
The edge was too sharp, too near and I was standing right on it. My world began to slide beneath my feet, my balance thrown off.
I fought to run, to scramble back to the earth that wasn’t moving. I threw my body forward and to the left, trying to go for the most stable looking part of the cliff face.
I made it for a few seconds as my fingers tried to wrap around the edge of a jagged black rock, my feet scrambling wildly below me as they fought hard for something solid beneath them. There was nothing, the ground kept moving, a slide of rock and snow, a symphony of falling objects that was deafening to my ears as I held on for dear life, the world beneath me disappearing in a blink of an eye.
I managed to haul myself up as much as I could by my arms and pecs, my muscles screaming for me to stop. But I couldn’t. I was almost there. I was almost safe. I was almost still.
I swung my legs up and around, my boots catching on a side of snow and earth that hadn’t crumbled away. I leaned on my legs, hoping they had the strength to pull me up and I pushed away from the black rock, my gloves sticking to the snowy crevasses and being pulled off.
For one moment I had made it. I was hanging sideways but I wasn’t moving. I was staying put. It took that extra push to get myself from a horizontal position to a vertical one and what I should have done was put my trust in the rock that wasn’t moving.
But all my power, all my weight, went to my legs. And there was that horrifying instant, that first slip of earth beneath you, when you realized you made the wrong choice.
The ground fell away and there was nothing I could grab to save me from it. I felt my body fall, being swept downward in that brutally loud avalanche. I was bumped and thrown, not freefalling but dragged, like Mother Nature herself had reached out from the ground with stony fingers and pulled me down toward her belly.
I don’t remember ever coming to a stop.