Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

She swallowed, pointed up, tried to make the words come out as he closed in on her.

“The trees, William,” she said, but her voice was so small and far away, it had dried up in her throat, and half of her was still under the Christmas tree, staring at the name on the stocking.

Then his fists were on her, and she didn’t remember any more.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mattie woke coughing, a cough that became a choke, and she’d swallowed enough blood in her time to know her mouth was filled with it. Her head bumped along the ground, snow in her hair and seeping down her neck and under her coat. She’d lost her hat. A cruel hand clamped around her ankle, yanking her along on her back like she was a sled being pulled by its string.

William halted, looked back over his shoulder at her, his eyes full of contempt. He released her leg, letting it drop to the ground. Mattie cried out.

“Get up, you useless little bitch. Now that you’re awake you can walk yourself home.”

Mattie stared up at him, then past him to the trees overhead. There were no more animals. William must have dragged her out of the creature’s territory.

Or maybe it just hasn’t finished marking all the trees. Maybe it’s trying to mark every one in the forest.

“Get up, I said.” He kicked her in the ribs, and she rolled to one side, every bit of her aching. “Sun’s going down in a couple of hours and I’m not carrying you home.”

Mattie spit a mouthful of blood into the snow. It looked shockingly red—like a bull-flag, like lipstick, like a stop sign.

Red means stop, she thought. Red means I can’t go on anymore.

But she tried to rise up anyway, tried to push her rubbery legs into place. She couldn’t manage it and fell back into the snow again.

William grabbed the front of her coat and pulled her up so that her feet dangled somewhere near his knees. His face pressed very close to hers, all his bright burning anger gone now, replaced with ice.

Mattie would rather have had the burn. The ice always hurt more.

“You listen to me now, Martha. You only got what you deserved, and since you deserved it, you will walk home on your own two feet. If you don’t keep up with me I will not return for you. If you are not home by bedtime it will go worse for you when you do arrive. You are my vessel to do with as I please. Do you understand? Now walk.”

He dropped her and there wasn’t a chance in the world she’d catch herself, as broken and disoriented as she was. Mattie crumpled to the ground.

She felt like she had no bones anymore, and everything around her spun in all directions at once. That’s when she noticed she could only see out of one eye.

Mattie carefully probed the area with her fingers. Her left eye was a swollen mass, so tender to the touch that she cried out.

“I said walk,” William said.

Mattie looked up at him, pushed vaguely into the snow to help herself stand, but only managed to make little snow piles on either side of her body. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. They made her swollen eye sting.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t stand up. Please help me. Please.”

She reached for him, her hand trembling.

He glared down at her for so long that she thought he might relent. Then he spun on his heel and strode away.

“Wait,” Mattie said, but her voice wouldn’t get loud enough for him to hear. It was only a tiny thing that whispered.

She touched her neck, whimpered at the slight pressure. He must have choked me, she thought. I don’t remember.

William was disappearing quickly. He seemed very distant to her already, his brown coat and trousers blending in with the trees.

Mattie felt the first stirrings of panic.

Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, I don’t know the way home.

She’d never come this far before, never been allowed to. The cabin was down the mountain from where she was, that was all she knew. William had set the pace and the path.

Why, oh why hadn’t she paid more attention? Why had she let her mind wander? She’d never been like that when she was young. When she was young she’d drink in everything around her greedily, tucking every sight away in her mind so she could remember it later.

(They were moving through the dark woods fast, so fast, but what she could see she promised herself to remember. She’d remember so that she could find her way home.)

But where was home? That she couldn’t remember.

Home is the place where they called you Samantha.

Samantha, Mattie remembered. Samantha.

Samantha struggled. Samantha fought back. Samantha ran away.

Yes, she ran away from William but he caught her and put her in the Box. The Box was where bad girls went.

“If I don’t get home soon he’ll put me in the Box,” Mattie said to herself.

She had to stand up. She had to. But how will you find your way home?

Stand up first. Just stand. Then walk. Then worry about how to get where she needed to go.

But it was no good. No matter how she rolled and pushed and struggled, she couldn’t get on her feet. After several minutes she lay in the snow, panting, unable to do anything except gaze up at the too-bright sky and the dark silhouettes of the branches against it.

Trees, she thought. The animals in the trees. William doesn’t know.

(It doesn’t matter because William is going to be safe in the cabin with the warm fire and you’re going to be out with the night and the cold and the creature that strings animals up like decorations)

The creature. She needed to get away, get inside before it found her. It wouldn’t even need to hunt her in the state she