The Understorey

I struggled through the falling snow to my truck and put it in neutral to push back onto the road without waking my mom or sister. The next thing I knew Matt was beside me helping me push her onto the road. I hopped into the cab, waved my thank you, and watched Matt hug his arms through my rear view. Poor Matt. I could only imagine what he was thinking but there was one thing I knew for certain. His eyes were the most worried I’d ever seen them. It instantly aged him.



The four and a half hour drive to Blackwater Falls left room for me to imagine the worst scenarios possible. I made a mental checklist of all the things I was going to need if I was forced to go out into the woods to find Jules. I prayed that he was keeping her at the cabin but feared that since the police had already been there I would find the same thing they did, nothing.



The pang of hurt settled inside my chest at the thought of what Jesse might have done to Jules while I was out and I found my foot laying harder on the gas. I absently placed my hand over the place on my chest I knew Julia was hurting the worst.



The roads were barely visible through the thick fog of snow tossing and turning around me. It wasn’t sticking and that was very good news to me. I hadn’t even needed to wait long for my windshield to defrost. My heart, on the other hand was another story, frozen solid knowing Jules was so close yet so very far away from me.



Four hours passed sluggishly before I found myself at the obscure turn off that was the Thomas’ private drive to their small vacation home but in Jesse’s case it was more his own private hideaway from the law.



I was lucky to find it at all, not only because of the weather, but also because I’d only been there twice before. I turned onto the drive and slowly snaked the truck through two miles of blizzard. The truck slipped and skidded a few times in a dangerous ice dance but when I finally reached the cabin my earlier prediction struck home. It was dark, not a single light on.



I hid the truck in an alcove of trees I was confident wouldn’t hinder a hasty retreat and slipped out. I circled the cabin with my bat in hand looking for any signs of their whereabouts. I found Jesse’s car parked in the back next to the firewood. I was hoping since the police had come and left at that point that Jesse would feel comfortable coming back to the cabin but it was a false hope, just one I was so wishing was true.



I walked through his screened porch and shook the snow from my boots and body. I pressed my ear against the door and heard nothing. I checked the handle and it was unlocked. I hesitated, thinking it was a trap, but saw no smoke coming from the chimney and was fairly sure he wouldn’t have been inside without one, the cold was that bitter.



I stepped inside and the cabin felt as icy cold as it was outside. If they had been there it had to have been hours before because the fireplace was completely void of any warmth. I could tell there had been a recent fire though, no more than a day old, probably less gauging the time frame he was working under.



My jaw throbbed as the pain medication wore off but I did notice my strength was returning with more potency as the pain grew worse. It was worth the trade off. I needed all the strength I could assemble. God only knew how long it was going to take for me to find Jules and then I was probably going to have to fight Jesse once I came upon them.



I circled the entire living room searching, begging for a clue of any kind that could lead me to my Jules but it was too dark. I wasn’t about to turn on a light near any windows just in case he was nearby and watching for me.



My back against the wall, I scaled the one nearest the master bedroom and opened the door to the room but didn’t step in, waiting for the possibility that he could be hiding with Jules in the room. I glanced around the room, I threw open the closet doors, peered underneath the bed but no one was there.



I turned to leave the room and noticed I hadn’t checked the bathroom, no windows in there. I approached this door as I had the master’s and waited before entering. When I stepped inside, I flipped on the light, nearly vomiting from the scene before me. It was covered in blood, lots and lots of sickeningly rusted blood. It was clotted and had been there for hours.



Obviously, the police hadn’t had a warrant to enter the Thomas home or they’d have corded off the room as evidence, or maybe Jesse came after they had.



The shower was enclosed in glass and the bleeder had taken a quick shower, rinsing off the blood from their body but not bothering to rinse it from the tile floor. I noticed two hand prints belonging to the same person imprinted on the glass door. I could tell by their size that they belonged to Jesse and I almost burst into tears. My knees began to buckle and I had to support myself against the door to keep from bathing in the blood pooled on the floor. Julia.



I staggered from the room and fell onto my knees at the foot of the Thomas’ bed. I pulled myself up against the mattress and headed back to the living room. I lost control and could barely keep myself up. I leaned against the fireplace and used the bat I brought to balance myself.



Watery eyes scanned the room, desperately seeking something, anything that would help me find Jules but I found nothing but more blood pooled in random areas of the living area. No matter, I wasn’t giving up. Until she was in my hands, I was never giving up. Never.



All at once it came to me. I knew where Jesse was. I was so disgusted with myself that I hadn’t thought of it earlier, it could have spared Jules any torture she had most probably already received. She wasn’t dead because the soreness at my chest still pulsed, a perversely good sign.



When Jesse was younger, after he had brought me to the cabin the two times he had invited me, he told me he discovered a place he could be alone and by alone he meant a place he could take girls when his parents were around.



He said it was a small cave underneath a small group of falls near his cabin. He told me it was perfect because the water made it impossible for anyone to find him there. I practically sprinted to my truck and with my bat in hand, I stuffed a couple of plastic cuffs I stole from my Uncle Danny into my coat pocket along with a flashlight and began my trudge through the snow, three feet thick in some spots, to the river.



I followed the river until I met the first fall of water and steadily worked my way to its base. I edged myself down, trying to see if it was possible to hold a cave but it was too small and I could see the rock through running water when I held my flashlight to it.



Trying very hard not to get wet, knowing it would kill me within a few minutes in this cold, I patiently edged myself back to the trees lining the river and continued to follow it. I walked for at least a quarter of a mile without seeing any kind of waterfall. I contemplated turning around and following the river in the opposite direction of the Thomas cabin. I began to turn but instinctively decided to go just a few more yards in the direction I had been traveling.



I could see, around a bend, several yards ahead a break in the river and a set of waterfalls slightly larger than the first one I had found. I had a gut wrenching feeling those were it and intuitively turned off my flashlight. I used the trees as a physical guide and avoided any place I could see the reflection of stars to avoid getting wet. My toes and fingers felt like they would fall completely off at any moment but it was a pathetic sting in comparison to the ache I felt for needing to find Jules.



Please, I prayed. Please let her be alright! My head pounded at the possibility that she could just be on the other side of the wall of that water. It was everything in my power not to dive into the water and snatch her way. I found restraining myself when I felt the excruciating need to find her drained me of precious energy so I shifted my focus to preserving all I had to fight.



Every crunch of snow beneath my boot grated my nerves. I was certain the rushing water drowned out any noise on both sides but I still hated that Jesse could have any warning whatsoever. I wanted the crack of my bat against his back to be the only way for him to be aware of my presence.



The waterfall was tall, probably sixty feet high, and the surrounding edges of the erupting water was frozen, seemingly instantaneously, a swollen cloud of powdered water in perfect stillness. In between the frame of solid water, rushed liquid, racing as fast as it could to avoid the fate of its brother frigid in time.



I edged myself down the embankment heading toward the end of the fall before realizing too late that there was no way to avoid getting wet. The water seeped into my clothing at an alarming rate. I knew that if they weren’t at this fall that I’d have to find a dry place soon to avoid hypothermia.



A few feet before the edge, I heard voices, someone talking, but it seemed too long and drawn out to be a conversation. My heart jumped into my throat before I realized that it wasn’t someone talking, it was someone’s yelling dulled by the raging water. Jules.



I wanted to shout out but the wire holding my jaw tight prohibited it. I threw myself through the water, rolled over my shoulder onto a damp poorly lit cave, and sat up against my heels to witness the most horrific sight my eyes have ever taken in.



Jules.



My beautiful Jules, her hair darkly saturated and matted down from what could only be a lot of blood, her blood. She sat with her legs crossed on the floor and her hands tied behind her back. Her mouth was bound with a piece of cloth that tied behind her head. I could tell it was way too tight because her cheeks bulged around it and her skin looked chafed. The cloth, at one time, was of a light color but its original hue was lost in the soaked red that ringed her beautiful head.



The tragic sight sent a shivering pulse of rage through my entire body. My hands gripped my bat with blistering mania. He was going to be stopped, by me, and at that very moment. I stood. Jules could barely register an audible scream. She begged me to stop, feverishly trying to warn me, but I couldn’t hear her over the ferocious wrath pulsing in my ears, eyes, face, and body. I swung the bat above my head focusing my aim at the top of his skull but stopped myself right before giving the deadly blow he deserved.



I hadn’t noticed before, because his body was turned in such a way that it blocked my view, but in his left hand was a gun and it was aimed at Jules’ head.



“Stop!” I mumbled.



“Put your bat down,” he said calmly.



I placed the bat slowly on the ground and rose with my hands where he could see them. He signaled for me to kick the bat to the opposite corner of the cave and I complied. I noticed he had two cuts across his arms, one looked particularly deep, and that he had bound it with strips of a cloth but it did little to stop the heavy bleeding. I realized then that the blood in his parents’ bathroom wasn’t Jules’. It was his. I was very proud of Jules. She must have caught him off guard enough to do some damage but I felt a twist of agony for the price she had paid for it. It was evident in her eyes but even more apparent in the ‘E’ he had carved on the left part of her chest just below the collar bone.



I fingered my chest where I felt the same pounding burn. It was deep enough to have soaked a thick trail of blood down her shirt and into her jeans. I’m so sorry, I mouthed. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting tears and shook her head slightly.



“Good,” he said, never breaking his frightening gaze on Jules.



Her eyes stayed with mine. She silently pleaded with me to cooperate. She had a few hours practice with Jesse and somehow knew this was it for her soon.