Courtney #2
theirs is rustic and dated, with limp plaid furniture and knotty pine paneling all over the walls. Theirs, however, is twice
as large with a screened-in porch and a second floor instead of a small loft like we have, accessible only by a ladder—which
is great for Cass but not very practical for Elliott or me, who can’t step foot in the loft without hitting our heads on the
low, sloped ceiling.
“Emily?” I say again, as I start to make my way further inside. I listen for them. The first floor is empty, the TV off. There
is a strange odor in the air, which I try to place but can’t. It’s quiet at first, but then, from upstairs, I just barely
make out the sound of something faint and indistinct, like the sagging of a mattress from someone rolling over in bed. I stop,
feeling uncomfortable all of a sudden, imagining my brother Nolan getting out of bed, coming downstairs half asleep in his
boxer shorts and finding me standing in the great room. I think of Mae and how scared she was when she came running back to
our place, but whatever scared her might have happened before she ever got to the cottage.
The wildlife around here is abundant. There have been reports of bear sightings in the woods not far from here. The other
day, when we were out walking, we noticed what we thought were coyote prints in the dirt. If Mae saw something like a coyote
on her way home, it would have scared her—and that means Emily, Nolan and the other kids could still be asleep.
I sink a hand into the pocket of my robe for my phone to try calling Emily, which I should have done first before letting myself into their cottage.
I glance at the phone; the cell signal around here is weak though, miraculously, I have two bars.
I find Emily’s name in my contacts while the signal lasts and click on it, pressing the phone to my ear.
It doesn’t take long, split seconds before I hear it: the sound of a phone coming to me from the adjoining screened-in porch,
the door of which, I see now, is ajar.
Emily’s phone, if not Emily, is out there.
I lower my own phone from my ear. Slowly, I cross the room for the porch, reaching for the handle and pulling the door all
the way open.
It’s as I step through the doorway and onto the porch that I see it. I reel back, though it takes a second for my mind to
make sense of what I’m seeing and for me to realize what it is. The blood is so dark that it blends into the wood paneling
and I have to look twice to realize that what I’m looking at is not knotholes in the wood, but blood. It’s on the bed that
it becomes most evident, where blood streaks the white quilt like paint flicked onto a canvas from the end of an artist’s
brush.
My breath leaves me. Shock holds me in place, some part of me still trying to reconcile what I’m seeing—to make myself believe
that someone has cut themselves with a corkscrew or knife and that they’ve gone to the hospital, leaving quickly, which explains
the open front door—despite the amount of blood on the walls and bed.
The nearest hospital has to be ten or twenty miles away. I wonder if Nolan and Emily would have left for the hospital without
telling us. I wonder if they planned to call on the way, but then Emily forgot her phone and Nolan couldn’t get a signal.
But then I see it through the porch screens, one flapping loose in the wind: Emily and Nolan’s dusty black Volkswagen parked just outside on the drive. The car is still here, which means they haven’t gone anywhere.
They’re still in the cottage.
My throat tightens. It’s hard to breathe as my eyes move around the room. At first glance, the porch is empty, but then I
just barely make out bare feet stretched on the floor, overhanging the end of the bed, and I realize the porch is not empty
like I thought.
My heart starts to beat faster. A hand rises to my mouth as I feel myself shift closer rather than away by instinct, seeing
that the skin on the feet is discolored, the pigment far different than healthy feet. It’s purpling, the skin tone now nearly
the same as the mauve toenail polish, which I know, before I ever see her face, is Emily’s because we went for pedicures together
before we left on the trip and I helped her pick out the polish, which matches mine.
I come slowly around the edge of the bed, thinking unrealistically that I can help her, that I can still save her. “Emily?”
I ask, the word slipping out of me, weightless and insubstantial until I see her and my knees give, and I have to hold on
to the bed frame to keep myself upright.
Emily is dead. The blood beneath her is telling. No one could lose that amount of blood and survive. She’s completely motionless,
lying on the floor of the screened-in porch on the far side of the bed as if caught trying to escape or to hide. There is
no rise and fall of her chest to say that she’s breathing, that she’s still alive. Her face is turned slightly to the side—her
neck not at all angled right—so that I bear witness to the grayness of her face and a cloudy, half-opened eye. One of her
arms is bent at an impossible angle too, the shoulder jutting out of place, and her mouth gapes open from a last breath or
a final scream. Her phone lies just out of reach, a missed call from me on the screen.
I’m frozen in shock, in fear. Though my every instinct tells me to run, to go back to our cottage, lock the door and call the police, I can’t get myself to move.
I hesitate for only seconds. But even that is too much. It’s too late.
Before I can get myself to go, there’s the sudden, very cerebral sensation of not being alone anymore. A movement in my peripheral
vision maybe, or the soft, slow creak of a floorboard.