Preview of The Patient's Secret by Loreth Anne White
Preview of The Patient's Secret by Loreth Anne White
HOW IT ENDS
It's best not to resist the change the "Death" tarot card brings. Resisting will make transition difficult. And painful. Instead one should let go, embrace the necessary change, see it as a fresh start. The Death card is a sign that you need to draw a line through the past in order to move forward. It says: Release what no longer serves you.
-Artist's statement. Death. 36 x 48. Oil on canvas.
It's darker in the woods than she thought it would be. The old-growth trees sway and twist in the wind. Rain drives over the canopy in waves. The cliff trail is narrow, slippery with mud. Mist sifts across her path, bouncing back the weak beam of her headlamp.
She runs deeper into the forest and fear rises in her belly. She should have searched properly for her phone before exiting her studio. She shouldn't have gone out at this hour. But she was forced into the night, into the teeth of the summer storm, by the voices that have begun in her head again. She's desperate to outrun them. On another level she knows she will never flee them. Not now. The Monster is not out there circling her. It's not someone else. It's inside her head. It is her.
I ... stabbed ... got ... blood on me ... couldn't stab again... too young to die . . . pleading . . . not to kill . . . heard the gurgling ... once it started, it couldn't stop. It had to be finished.
A silent scream swells in her chest. The sound comes alive. It pierces her ears. Tears sting her eyes. She pushes harder, faster, craving escape. Her breath rasps in her throat. Her chest heaves. Sweat dampens her T-shirt beneath her waterproof running jacket.
An image slices through her brain-the gaping, leaf shaped wounds. The gouge in the eye socket. Blood ... so much blood. Splattered and spattered and sprayed over the walls, across the ceiling, on the lampshades, the television screen, the exercise bike. The hallway carpet saturated and sticky with it. She can smell it again. Hot. Meaty.
I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry ... I was another person. I don't even recognize that person. It's like it wasn't real, it wasn't me.
She sees the glint of the blade. She hears screams. She moves her legs even faster.
I killed ... I killed ... I killed. I didn't want to
Lightning cracks above the canopy and thunder booms. She stumbles in fright, almost going down. Shaken, she stops, bends over, and places her hands on her hips. She sucks in big gulps of air. Her heart slams against her rib cage. Her exhalations explode in ghostly puffs in the beam of her headlamp. Thunder grumbles again and rolls out over the ocean. She can't see the sea, but she can sense it, a surging, empty blackness below the cliffs through the trees to her right. And now that she is still, beneath the drumming noise of the rain, she can hear waves churning and clattering the pebbles at the base of the crumbling sandstone cliffs.
Things have gone so wrong.
She had a plan, but it flipped on her. She doesn't know what to do now, or how to even be. Or what her purpose is. Something moves among the trees. She tenses, flicks her gaze toward the shapes in the forest to her right. As she moves, her beam shivers in the mist, and shadows dart and lunge. She swallows, peering hard into the darkness between the trunks and ferns.
Lightning flickers again. The thunder crash is almost instant. The storm is directly overhead. Rain pummels down harder, and the wind swishes through the treetops with the sound of a rushing river. In her peripheral vision she glimpses a hooded figure in the trees. Then he's gone.
Her pulse quickens. Her mouth goes dry. Panic licks in her belly.
She needs to get out of these woods. She glances back along the trail on which she has come. It would take longer to go back than to continue forward. If she presses onward, within minutes she will pop out into an open expanse on the grassy bluffs. She'll be clear of the woods. Beyond the grassy area lies a parking lot, and behind the lot is a street with lights. It'll be brighter. Safer. She can run home along the roads, under the lights.
She begins to run again. Lightning flares. She moves faster, stumbling over roots, sliding in mud. Pinecones, small branches tear loose from the trees, and the debris bombs down. A flying cone narrowly misses her head. She ducks. Her abrupt movement makes shadows leap and scurry. She stops again. Panting, she spins around and sees the hooded figure once more, lurking between the trees. His face is in blackness, as though masked. Fog thickens, and he's gone. A claw of fear grabs her throat.
She takes off fast now, legs powering her forward, her sneakers slipping. She stumbles. Windmilling her arms, she manages to right herself, then tries to go even faster.
Another bolt of lightning. For a second the trail ahead is starkly illuminated. She sees the hooded figure again. Now with a flashlight in his hand as well as a bright headlamp on his head. A faceless Cyclops. Her body freezes. Her brain is paralyzed. She can't breathe, can't move. He comes toward her, closer, closer. Her beam hits the reflective strips on his pants and jacket. The light dances back making the strips gleam like silver blades, like a skeleton costume at Halloween.
I ... stabbed ... got ... blood on me. She has no cell phone. No weapon.
He suddenly moves quickly toward her. She ducks off the trail into dense undergrowth between the trees. She crashes through brambles and berry scrub, tripping and falling over logs and rocks and roots, her arms flailing, branches snapping back across her face.
He comes into the bushes after her, his two beams of light punching powerful tunnels through the mist, illuminating trunks and leaves and making the rain shimmer silver. Thunder cracks again. She whimpers. Tears burn her eyes. Another branch whips back and slices across her cheek. Rain-or blood-wets her face. She can hear him. Coming. Like a big animal crashing through brush, getting closer. She hears his breathing. She falls again, scrambles on hands and knees through the mud, cutting her palms on brambles and thorns.
She whimpers again as she crawls under a low branch. She switches off her headlamp and tries to be still. But the lights come closer. She sees the search beams illuminating the ground. He's almost upon her and she can't take it.
She screams, bolts up out of her hiding place, and staggers forward like a wounded deer. Suddenly she's out of the trees and there is black emptiness before her. She's reached the edge of the forest. The cliffs. The ocean. She spins around, but he's right there. She's trapped.
"What . . . what do you want?" she gasps, her voice hoarse.
He raises his hand with the flashlight, like a weapon to strike her. He's saying something, but she hears only a mounting roar of noise inside her head. He lunges for her and grabs her arm.
She screams, struggles, and squirms out of his grasp. She's now right at the cliff edge. Panting. He crouches in front of her, swaying, primed for her to dart, ready to dive to block her flight. She feels loose stones beneath her feet. She's right on the crumbling edge of the sandstone cliff.
He yells, but his words are snatched by the roar of the wind in the trees and the sound of waves below the cliffs. He lunges for her again, and she scratches and claws at his face, his neck, screaming. Her fingers catch fabric, and his cap and hood come off. In another flash of lightning she sees his face.
Everything in her brain stalls.
You?
But the moment of shock costs her. Her assailant's hand goes high into the air, and he brings his flashlight down hard across her temple. She staggers, momentarily blinded, and she feels his push against her chest as the ground simultaneously gives out under her legs.
She hurtles backward into air. Arms windmilling, she realizes she's going over the cliff. A scream surges from her chest as she falls and spins and spirals downward in the lashing rain and driving wind. Lightning pulses. A growl of thunder swallows her cries.
Her shoulder slams into a rock. She bounces off it. Her head smashes into another rock lower down. Her body cartwheels out into the void again, and farther down, she crashes her ribs and face into a ledge. She feels her neck crack, her back break. When her skull strikes the next jagged rock on her fall down toward the pebble beach far below, her world mercifully goes blank.
The voices-finally-go silent.
Excerpted from The Patient’s Secret by Loreth Anne White with permission from the publisher, Montlake. Copyright © 2022 by Cheakamus House Publishing. All rights reserved.
Preview of The Patient's Secret by Loreth Anne White
