Rabbit Dark

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Across the cabin’s front room, a kerosene lantern chugged along, doing its best to hold back the darkness the candle didn’t touch. A shadow splashed and ducked across one wall and then the next, and the floorboards strained to soften beneath a pair of heavy work boots.

A tall, slender man was looking for something. He slammed open cabinet doors and old chests, sending clumps of dust flying and several large spiders scurrying. When he heard the back door creak open, he grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter and stood his ground. He knew he was not alone.

Jeanine blinked heavily at the words on the page, and then into the air above. A lazy Tennessee fog was drifting in through the trees, and the late afternoon light was fading into rabbit dark.

She’d been reading too long, she thought, and could suddenly feel the park bench turning colder under her skirt. She shivered. Her mind’s eye would have to visit that creepy cabin another day. “Sorry, old book,” she said aloud as she snapped her paperback shut. “Your horrors will just have to wait.”

The words echoed a little off the empty playground structures and Jeanine was startled to find herself alone. Where were all the kids? The old people? The dogs? The birds?

A stick snapped behind her and she whirled around. No one was there.

Quickly, Jeanine gathered her things, patting her body and her bag. Keys. Phone. Book. Glasses on her head. Her neck prickled for a moment as she stepped across the wood chips and up onto the concrete path. She’d have to take the shorter route through the clump of tea olive bushes, she thought, brushing off the jitters. Seriously, though, that book wasn’t that scary.

Two words fluttered into her brain, landing delicately: He’s there.

“C’mon!” she hissed, slapping back the greedy fingers of her imagination.

As she walked, she pushed against the chilly air, and it clawed at her ears. She tucked her chin into her thin silk collar and balled her hands into fists.

He’s still there.

Jeanine grabbed her keys and pushed one jagged edge between her fingers like a claw.

She was almost running now. Her favorite everyday flats rose above the cement only slightly, but her thighs began to burn and her breath passed through her throat with a whistle. The chill aggravated her asthma. Jeanine struggled to quiet her movements so she could listen.

For him.

She was almost to the tea olives and she hugged her purse to her chest like a shield. “You can do this,” she panted, as she picked up her pace and dug grooves into her right hand with her keys.

Jeanine was flying now, cheeks stinging with cold, chest heaving with flames, legs pumping and pumping toward the parting of the bushes. She was a gazelle, she imagined, while she extended a make-believe hoof toward the darkening sky, leaping and huffing and charging and soaring.

Until she was not.

While her body lunged forward, Jeanine’s small foot snagged on a broken place on the path, wrenching her ankle and dragging her onto the ground. She heard the scream before she realized it was her own, and did not notice her keys skittering and clattering across the cement and under the tangled brush.

There was blood.

She wondered if he could smell it.

She clambered up and pulled the cock-eyed glasses off her forehead, shoving them into her bag. There was no time, she thought.

He’s coming.

Another twig snapped behind her and a strangled sound leaked out of her, unbidden. As she rose from the ground, her heart stuttered like an impatient car blinker, tick tick tick tick tick, and she coughed it down, clearing the dry air from her throat.

Her stride was crooked and staggering now. Her ankle throbbed and could hardly hold her weight. The pain was outrageous, but Jeanine’s fear was stronger.

She could barely see the shadowy shape of her apartment building.

One, two, three, four minutes later, she was clambering over the short brick wall outside the modest complex, and then hobbling up the four flights of steps into the gloom of her covered landing. It was so dark now, and she started to dig blindly in her bag for her keys.

Wait.

She opened her hand. Her palm still hosted ridges and dents from gripping the metal that was no longer there. Where were they?

Her ankle was a house fire.

She’d have to make it all the way back to where she'd fallen, Jeanine thought, and swallowed a sob.

As she turned in the darkness, she felt his hand on her shoulder.

Jeanine’s body jerked away compulsively, forcing her full weight onto her tortured ankle, and she pitched backward into the night. Helpless, she bounced down the steps, one by one by one.

First her back, then her shoulder, then her knee, then the rest of her, end over end.

Until she stopped at the bottom.

There was more blood. It was trickling from her temple, but she would not see it this time. He stood at the top, reaching toward her, her keychain swinging from his fingers.