Read Online Left for Dead: A gripping psychological thriller by Deborah Rogers - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Deborah Rogers
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once again am besieged by gloom. I scan for water as I go. Sometimes I think I can hear raging rivers, only to step into total silence a few seconds later. The wilderness plays tricks on you like that, like an auditory mirage. Or maybe it’s just me.
Occasionally, I encounter dribbling ditches and stop and take some into my mouth. But it never feels enough. I worry about disease, especially with the hovering mosquitoes, which most likely means waterborne larvae. And who knows what other organisms and bacteria may be lurking there?
It’s maddening, also, that these little fingers of water never lead anywhere. Downhill or uphill, they just disappear into nothing. There are swimming holes and rivers out here for sure. But they remain hidden in the valleys, or blocked by the walls of green. There’s nothing I can do except play the numbers game and hope one of these creeks eventually leads me to a river, then people, then home.
Early afternoon I round a corner of moss-covered rock and smell the fruit before I see it. Plums. Hundreds of the ruby-skinned orbs lie in the grass, bird-pecked and fermenting. I glance up at the tree. A few less-damaged ones cling to the upper branches but it’s too far up to climb. So I take my chances on the windblown spoils and crouch down to select the largest plum I can find, wiping away the bugs to take a bite. It’s good. Sweet. I eat more, snatching them up, not caring about the syrup seeping through my fingers and forking at my chin. When I’ve devoured as many as I can, I sit back on my heels and lick my sticky hands. I feel better, appeased, and wonder if I should try to eat more, but decide the important thing is to continue on because I need to make the most of what is left of the light. Loading as much fruit as I can carry in the skirt of my dress, I set off.
I walk all through the afternoon. It’s slow going. A profound tiredness seems to have colonized every part of my body and I struggle not to stumble on my feet. I tell myself that I must keep going, that if I don’t find that waterway I will never get out of here.
But less than an hour later, I stop. I look around. No sign of the valley and I’m in dense woods again. A wrong turn somewhere back. Not good.
I blink heavily at my feet and make the decision to nap. Just a short one, I tell myself, then I’ll circle back and see if I can find a hill to get my bearings again.
To my left there’s a cluster of shrubs and I kneel beneath them, rolling the plums from my skirt and corralling them into a pile. Reaching for drifts of pine needles, browned and brittle from the summer, I rake them toward me, and once buried insects disperse in a frenzy.
When I have enough coverage, I smooth down the points until they all run the same way, and lie on my side, settling my head in the nook of my arm. My eyelids droop and I feel myself slip. Something skulks on the edge of my mind. A thought I can’t quite place. An image I can’t really see. Like a song heard only once and not fully remembered. Whatever it is retreats into the shadows, and I trip my way into a dark and dreamless sleep.
20
I wake up when something crawls over my shin. I leap to my feet. A spider the size of a man’s hand is stuck there, an inch below my knee. I give my leg three hard shakes and the thing somersaults and lands upside down on my foot then scutters away beneath a bunch of leaves. I know these things—they build tunnels underground with trapdoors. I think of them all there, lying in wait, beneath the place where I slept.
I dash away before it comes back, glancing around at the failing light in despair. How could I have been so damn stupid to sleep so long? Valuable daylight hours have been lost.
I hurry over the undulating terrain, following the rise and fall of the hills, hoping to find one substantial enough to give me a vantage point across the forest before nightfall. But disappointment waits over every knoll. There’s just more of the same
Occasionally, I encounter dribbling ditches and stop and take some into my mouth. But it never feels enough. I worry about disease, especially with the hovering mosquitoes, which most likely means waterborne larvae. And who knows what other organisms and bacteria may be lurking there?
It’s maddening, also, that these little fingers of water never lead anywhere. Downhill or uphill, they just disappear into nothing. There are swimming holes and rivers out here for sure. But they remain hidden in the valleys, or blocked by the walls of green. There’s nothing I can do except play the numbers game and hope one of these creeks eventually leads me to a river, then people, then home.
Early afternoon I round a corner of moss-covered rock and smell the fruit before I see it. Plums. Hundreds of the ruby-skinned orbs lie in the grass, bird-pecked and fermenting. I glance up at the tree. A few less-damaged ones cling to the upper branches but it’s too far up to climb. So I take my chances on the windblown spoils and crouch down to select the largest plum I can find, wiping away the bugs to take a bite. It’s good. Sweet. I eat more, snatching them up, not caring about the syrup seeping through my fingers and forking at my chin. When I’ve devoured as many as I can, I sit back on my heels and lick my sticky hands. I feel better, appeased, and wonder if I should try to eat more, but decide the important thing is to continue on because I need to make the most of what is left of the light. Loading as much fruit as I can carry in the skirt of my dress, I set off.
I walk all through the afternoon. It’s slow going. A profound tiredness seems to have colonized every part of my body and I struggle not to stumble on my feet. I tell myself that I must keep going, that if I don’t find that waterway I will never get out of here.
But less than an hour later, I stop. I look around. No sign of the valley and I’m in dense woods again. A wrong turn somewhere back. Not good.
I blink heavily at my feet and make the decision to nap. Just a short one, I tell myself, then I’ll circle back and see if I can find a hill to get my bearings again.
To my left there’s a cluster of shrubs and I kneel beneath them, rolling the plums from my skirt and corralling them into a pile. Reaching for drifts of pine needles, browned and brittle from the summer, I rake them toward me, and once buried insects disperse in a frenzy.
When I have enough coverage, I smooth down the points until they all run the same way, and lie on my side, settling my head in the nook of my arm. My eyelids droop and I feel myself slip. Something skulks on the edge of my mind. A thought I can’t quite place. An image I can’t really see. Like a song heard only once and not fully remembered. Whatever it is retreats into the shadows, and I trip my way into a dark and dreamless sleep.
20
I wake up when something crawls over my shin. I leap to my feet. A spider the size of a man’s hand is stuck there, an inch below my knee. I give my leg three hard shakes and the thing somersaults and lands upside down on my foot then scutters away beneath a bunch of leaves. I know these things—they build tunnels underground with trapdoors. I think of them all there, lying in wait, beneath the place where I slept.
I dash away before it comes back, glancing around at the failing light in despair. How could I have been so damn stupid to sleep so long? Valuable daylight hours have been lost.
I hurry over the undulating terrain, following the rise and fall of the hills, hoping to find one substantial enough to give me a vantage point across the forest before nightfall. But disappointment waits over every knoll. There’s just more of the same
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