Episode 67

The mysterious driver had stopped the car in the middle of nowhere, or so it seemed.  Gail didn’t ask who it was, and didn’t try to find out.  If it was a trap, she figured, what worse could happen, really?  What could really be worse than her previous imprisonment?

“Thank you,” she whispered as she stepped out into the early morning.  It had recently rained, and the road was slippery.  She could smell the scent of fresh rain and wet moss and soggy ground on the air.  Mist swirled around the forest, and the clouds overhead cast the land in shadow.  As the car drove slowly away, she looked around at the silence she could almost feel.  It smothered her footsteps as she walked further up the hill.  She looked down at her feet and saw a drop of blood.  There was another drop a few feet from it, and her eyes followed the trail up to the side of the road.  She gulped and stared, not sure if she wanted to know what she would find.  Thunder rumbled in the distance.

What happened here?

Braving herself, she looked around, and then walked toward the roadside.   There was a ditch…a body…

Gail gasped and skidded down the slope and cried, “Connor!”

A bolt lighting up the sky, she tried to turn him over.   With a heave, she managed to get him on his side.  There were scrapes and bruises all over his body, and one eye was turning black.

“Connor?”

He opened his one good eye.  “…Gail?”

“I’ve got to get you out of here…” She looked around.

“Gail, where is—”  Connor coughed.

“Come on, let me help you up—we’ve got to get out of here as fast as we can.”

“Where is Miah?”  His cracked voice was barely audible, and Gail bit her lip.

“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure they brought her back.”

“Where? I have to—” He tried to sit up— “I have to bring her home—”

“Connor—”

“Promise me.”

“I can’t…”

“Gail, you don’t realize what’s happening.”

“Wait until we get to the car. Tell me there.”

With a sigh, he barely nodded his head.

Gail dragged him as carefully as she could to the top of the slope where the car stood waiting.  The driver, dressed all in black, lifted Connor into the back seat, and in her exhaustion Gail didn’t catch the driver’s face, but slipped silently into the seat beside Connor.

The rest of the drive was a blur; Gail didn’t remember any of it, except Connor mumbling Miah’s name in his sleep.