CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The night enveloped Rebecca's car as she drove along the serpentine road that snaked through the country lanes on the edge of Cedarburg. Trees crowded both sides of the narrow lane. She’d rolled the window down to help her breathe, because night was the night it would all change.
She checked the clock on the dashboard. Almost eleven.
For months, she'd been wrestling with her fears under the guidance of a new, innovative psychotherapist. Each session had pushed her boundaries and left her drained yet strangely hopeful.
But tonight was different. There would be no cozy therapist’s office or sweet coffee.
Tonight was a special session, out in the field – quite literally.
Her therapist had termed it the ultimate cure.
Rebecca had thrown question after question at him in a futile attempt to quench her nerves, but he’d assured her it was all above board, if a little experimental.
Exposure therapy, he’d called it, and it was the one phobia treatment she was yet to try.
Her hands gripped the steering wheel as she thought about what might lie ahead, and she had to admit that a part of her was excited to try something new.
God knows she’d tried everything else, from medication to hypnosis and back again.
Nothing worked.
Maybe this would.
The GPS told her to turn onto an unmarked dirt path. She hesitated. Every instinct she had screamed at her to turn around, to go home, to forget the whole thing. But she was tired. Tired of being afraid. Tired of letting fear run her life.
She turned.
And continued on.
The deeper she drove into the woods, the more she felt like she was entering another world, a place where the rules of reality no longer applied. The woods closed in around her, and finally, the pathway opened into a clearing.
Rebecca saw it then.
An old, dilapidated shack.
No windows. Just wooden panels, a beaten-up door, and a wilting roof, all ineptly cobbled together. There was one other car parked outside – the only sign of another living soul in this forsaken place.
Rebecca pulled up twenty feet away and killed the engine.
Her hands stayed locked on the steering wheel.
She could still leave. She could drive back to town, tell him she'd changed her mind, go back on the medication.
Maybe she could try mindfulness training, cognitive behavioral therapy, beta-blockers, anything.
But she'd come this far.
The therapist’s methods might have been unconventional, but they had a spark of madness to them, one that hinted at results where traditional treatments had failed. When the clock ticked over to eleven, she opened the door and stepped out into the night.
The ground beneath her feet was hard as iron, covered in a brittle crust of frozen leaves. Each step to the cabin felt like a mile, and breathing became a struggle against the knot of fear in her stomach. She reached the rough and weathered cabin door.
Hesitantly, she raised her hand to knock, but before her knuckles could make contact, the door creaked open.
‘Rebecca. Come in.’
The therapist’s soothing voice, only it was distorted by the acoustics of the cabin.
‘Good to see you.’ Rebecca stepped inside, over the threshold, into a world that seemed a million miles removed from the one she knew. The therapist moved to a chair in the corner. At the center of the room was a steel table that gleamed like a diamond against the decrepit interior.
Then the smell hit her. It took her brain a second to place it.
And when it did, the memories came flooding back.
She was seven years old again, trapped in her childhood bedroom. Smoke filled her lungs. Flames climbed the walls. Her parents screaming from somewhere downstairs. The smell of gasoline soaking into the carpet, into the curtains, into everything.
Because she could smell pure gasoline.
‘I need to leave.’ Rebecca's voice came out strangled. ‘I can't do this.’
‘Stop.’ The therapist stood. ‘This is part of the process.’
But Rebecca wasn't listening. The past wasn't past anymore. It was here. Now. She could feel the heat on her skin, hear the crackling of the fire, smell the gasoline spreading across the floor.
She spun around, darting towards the door, her only thought to escape this shack and rid the stench of gasoline off her clothes.
But as he reached for her handle, the therapist was suddenly there. His hand clamped around her wrist with an iron grip.
Rebecca's panic skyrocketed. She pulled and twisted, trying to wrench her arm free, but his hold was unyielding.
'Let me go!' Rebecca yanked her arm back, but his grip didn't loosen.
She swung at him with her free hand, her fist connecting with something solid.
The therapist grunted in pain but didn't let go, and so Rebecca unleashed a relentless assault; hands flailing, feet kicking, every ounce of her being consumed by a desperate need for freedom.
She spiraled into a chaotic frenzy, and the next thing she knew, she had no feeling in her knuckles and blood running down her forearms.
But the therapist, unfazed by her resistance, clutched his hands on Rebecca’s neck and wrestled her to the cold floor.
There was a maniacal look in his eyes, one that told Rebecca that all of their sessions and late-night talks had been part of a larger plan, one that had no intention of rehabilitating her.
Her wrist was suddenly clasped by cold metal – the unmistakable click of handcuffs chaining her to something immovable.
Rebecca screamed at a volume she didn’t know she had in her; deafening cries that penetrated the rotten old wood and bolted through the night.
It was a desperate cry that would surely go unanswered in this remote shack, but she screamed until her lungs gave out, fueled by the overwhelming instinct to survive.
And then she saw the cigarette lighter in the therapist’s hand.
He was hanging onto the door frame, bruised and breathless, and time seemed to slow as he brought the lighter closer to the gasoline-soaked floor.
Flames spread across the floor in every direction, racing toward the walls. Heat slammed into Rebecca's face. Smoke filled her lungs.
The therapist stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the firelight. He watched her for a moment, then stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
She was seven years old again.
Except this time, there was no one coming to save her.