Woods

He opened his eyes slowly and looked around, squinting hard. Treetops were all he could see; treetops and the snowflakes pouring from the sky. As he sat up in the snow, his head felt heavy, his vision blurry, he pressed his hand to the back of his head where a sharp pain stung him. He was bleeding, he looked around and found the wooden branch that smacked him in the head not too long ago, a smack he had no memory of, let alone of the reasons behind it.

He got up, cleaned the snow off his clothes and looked around, nothing but the snow and trees. Everything was hazy, he couldn’t remember how he got here or why, he couldn’t even remember who he was. He searched his pockets and found a wallet with nothing in it but a few paper bills and a photo of a woman and a little girl. Their faces were familiar to him, he knew them but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t remember who they were to him. He kept going through his pockets but all he could find other than the wallet was a piece of paper that said: “turn right 3 kms after the old gas station, follow the path to the cabin”, and a black dry ink pen. He stared at the paper for a few seconds before deciding that it’s best to find that cabin, standing out there in the snow would do him no good either way.

He could see a faint trail of footsteps that he left in the snow, it was snowing now, but luckily it was still light enough that it didn’t completely cover the trail that he was now following. He could also see another set of footprints, those must have been left by his attacker; he needed to stay on guard. Following the trail of footprints, it only took him a few minutes to get to the cabin, which was fortunate because the snow was getting heavier and it was getting harder and harder to follow the trail of footprints. He stopped short of the cabin and hid behind a large oak tree to watch the cabin from afar to make sure he wasn’t walking into an ambush. The cabin stood on a small wooden platform, making it so you would have to climb a short staircase to get to the front door, which was open. The cabin had four windows; two to each side, but no windows on the front. The cabin itself was old, its wood rotten at several places, he could see a window was open in the eastern wall of the cabin, he could hear a faint noise coming out of the wide-open front door. It was now snowing rather heavily; it’s time he went inside the cabin.

The stairs creaked loudly under his weight as he stepped on them, he went inside and saw that the cabin had only two rooms; the one he stood in which was a sort of living room/kitchen hybrid; to the right of the door was an old, dirty couch that used to be green sometime in the past, opposite to it was a tv set loudly playing a music video that was the source of the noise he heard, to the left stood a table that hasn’t aged any better than the rest of the furniture, right next to it was a gas stove and a cabinet that was nailed to the wall above the stove. He continued into the next room and found it completely empty save for an old bed that had no mattress on it, and a wooden chair that was tipped over with some ropes wrapped around the wooden armrests in one corner. On his right the open window he noticed earlier.

He closed the window to stop the chilling gusts from coming into the room before kneeling down to examine the ropes, they were cut using a rusty nail protruding out an electrical outlet in the wall, thankfully they didn’t seem too thick, which must have made the already gruelling task easier, and they were covered in blood that has just recently dried, next to them was a piece of duct tape, exactly the right size to fully cover someone’s mouth. He could also see markings on the walls, left by photographs that were no longer there.

He went outside the cabin and walked around it while scouring the tree line until he found what he was searching for; short wooden poles hammered into the ground and linked by metal chains, they put them there to mark the path when it’s covered by snow. The Man followed the winding path down the mountain for a few minutes that felt like an eternity under the heavy snow falling from the sky before he could see taillights glowing in the distance. He stood in his tracks for a few seconds before approaching it cautiously, making sure to stay hidden behind the tree line until he finally reached the abandoned truck. The driver’s side door was open and the car was empty, the hood was smashed against a tree and smoke was coming out of it, he went inside and found the key in the ignition, he turned it,  and nothing happened, the car was dead. He sat there thinking, he needed to get out of there but there is no telling how long it would take him to walk down the mountain, and the snow was getting heavier by the minute. He got out of the car and started laboriously hiking back to the cabin. He knew he made the right decision when he reached the cabin panting heavily; exhausted.

He went inside the cabin, closed the door behind him, and sat down on the couch shaking. He was rubbing his hands together trying to get the warmth to circulate but it proved fruitless; it was too cold inside the cabin. He could feel a cold breeze of air coming from the bedroom, he went inside and closed the open window, taking care not to slip on the patches of snow scattered around it. He went back out to the living room and sat on the couch, thinking, trying to piece together what had happened to him. 

Although he had no idea how or why he got there, he knew he was in the cabin at some point, he got out of there and made a run for it into the woods, where he was attacked by someone, or someones, and that’s how he lost his memory, but why was he then left there in the snow? Whoever attacked him then made their way back to the cabin, took the truck and went down the mountain path, where they shortly lost control of it and hit the tree so they abandoned the car, whether or not they made it down the mountain was unknown to him.

He heard a loud creak and quickly turned his gaze to its source, across from him, right outside the window on his left he could see a face looking at him from behind the glass. The man jumped out of his seat and ran for the door, he shuddered as he walked out into the icy wind, he went around the cabin and could see a small figure running, trying to make it to the trees. He yelled “Stop, wait!” at the top of his lung as he started to chase the figure but to no avail, as the howling wind muffled his voice, even to his own ears. He could barely run in the snow or see the runner through the blaze and the trees, and even if this wasn’t the case, he still hadn’t recovered from the hit to the back of his head, and it only took him a few seconds of sprinting before he tripped and found himself tumbling to the ground, and for the second time this night, he found himself lying on the ground amid the trees, he let out a muffled scream of frustration and got up and started walking back to the cabin. Something was gnawing on his mind, he had only seen the face for half a second, but he knew it was familiar, he had seen it before.

 When he was back inside the cabin he reached into his pocket and pulled out the wallet, he took out the picture and looked at the face that was just watching him from the window moments ago, now smiling in the picture he had in his wallet, it was the same woman, he was sure of it, but who was she? As he stood there contemplating the situation. Suddenly, a loud ringing echoed through the empty cabin.

Until this moment the man hadn’t noticed the old green phone nestled between the couch and the adjacent wall, he walked around the couch and stood there looking at the phone for a couple of seconds before bending down and picking it up. “Where the hell were you?” the soft, irritated voice of a man greeted him on the other side “ I tried to call earlier but the line was occupied, who the hell were you calling?” The Caller continued. “I wasn’t, who is this?” The man replied. “What are you talking about? Is this a joke?” The caller said, angrily. And again the man replied: “Who is this? Are you the one who brought me here?” There was silence on the other end of the line “Are you with this woman? Who are you?” He heard a click as The Caller hung up.

He threw the phone across the room as hard as he could, furious and frustrated.he paced the room back and forth for a few minutes, before looking out the window, the blizzard was subsiding. It was time to leave. He walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out to face four guns aimed at his head and torso, and the cops holding them taking cover behind their cars’ doors, yelling at him to get on the ground and put his hands on his head.

Thirty minutes later he was leaning against the wall next to the stove, two nervous deputies standing guard by the table, watching him closely, on the opposite side of the room The Woman sat on the couch, wearing an old leather jacket given to her by the third deputy who was now sitting right next to her on the couch, they all sat in silence, waiting for the sheriff who was now exiting the bedroom door.

The sheriff walked out of the bedroom and went right to The Man “Show me your wrists” he said. The Man turned around and the sheriff pulled back his jacket and shirt sleeves revealing The Man’s clean wrists. The sheriff turned to the woman who had already pulled back her sleeves. “These are rope markings!” exclaimed the deputy, looking at the swollen, red wrists of the woman. “And the cuts and scratches from the nail you used to cut the ropes,” The sheriff said to the woman “Just like you said” she nodded silently “And then what happened?” Asked the sheriff

The woman took a deep breath and continued telling her story “After I cut the ropes, I escaped out the bedroom window, he was sitting right here on the couch when I passed by that window, and he must have seen me then, he started chasing me out into the woods, and even though I had a head start, I knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun him, so I hid in the bushes, armed with a thick branch I found lying about, and when he passed me, I hit him in the head with it as hard as I could. Next, I searched his pockets for the truck keys and came back to the cabin, I made sure to find the inheritance renunciation papers he had forced me to sign”

“The ones stating that you disclaim your late husband’s inheritance and leave it all to his family?”  The sheriff interjected. “That’s correct” she replied, before continuing “I then took the car down the mountain, but only managed to get so far away before I lost control and crashed into a tree, it was then that I remembered there was a phone in the cabin, I had heard him speak to someone on it several times during the day, so I went back up the mountain on foot to try and call for help, but I saw that he had woken up and was going back inside the cabin, so I hid outside for a few minutes until I saw him go out and down the road where I had just come from and I went inside and called 911”

“But then he came back, right?” Asked the sheriff “He did” she replied “I heard the floor creak under his weight and barely made it into the bedroom and out the window before he could see me. I stayed out there, hidden, for so long, hoping that he would leave again, or help would arrive, but he never did, and it never did, so I decided to try and walk down, but I stupidly passed by the same window again, and again, he saw me and ran after me, but for some reason, he couldn’t keep up, and I circled back, found the guiding poles by the path and followed them down until I ran into you.” As she finished the story the sheriff turned to the man “well that’s all I need to hear righ..What the hell are you smiling at?” He asked The Man, who indeed had a wide smile on his face as he looked at the sheriff and said: “I’m starting to remember.” The sheriff, taken back by his unexpected demeanour, replied: “well, you’ll have plenty of time to remember it all, you’re under arrest for kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.”

And as the deputies led The Man out of the cabin and read him his rights, he kept the same smile of relief on his face and just calmly said “It’s okay, I’m remembering it all now”