Blood Games

    ‘We need to look after our cuts, too,’ Abilene said.

    ‘I’ve got a first aid kit in my suitcase,’ Cora said.

    ‘Is it settled, then?’ Vivian asked.

    ‘I don’t hear any objections,’ Cora said. ‘So I guess we’ll go back the way we came.’

    ‘And let’s be quick about it,’ Finley said. ‘Before we get got.’ They started hiking away from the cabin, heading for the north end of the lake. As she walked along, Abilene inspected her cut. The short slit, caked with a thread of thickened blood, was no longer leaking. The edge of her hand was stained as if she’d rubbed it against a rusty sheet of metal. It felt stiff and sore. The patch of blood on her skirt was tacky when it touched her thigh. Lifting the skirt, she saw a ruddy stain on her skin.

    Now that she was away from Batty, she found it hard to believe that they had actually entered the cabin at all, much less cut themselves with the maniac’s knife and drunk their own blood.

    ‘That was about the craziest damn thing we’ve ever done,’ she said.

    Cora smiled back at her. ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.’

    ‘Speak for yourself,’ Finley said. ‘It never seemed like a good idea to me.’

    ‘You didn’t have to go along with it,’ Abilene said.

    ‘Didn’t want to be the party-pooper. Besides, it might’ve ruined the spell. Such as it was.’ After a few moments, she said, ‘Hey, if it turns out the old bat was full of shit, does Vivian get her shoes back?’

    ‘That’s only fair,’ Vivian said. ‘Will you collect the refund for me?’

    Abilene smiled, surprised to find Vivian joining in the banter. Cora abruptly halted and turned around, frowning.

    ‘What?’ Vivian asked.

    ‘This talk of going back makes me think. While we were there, we should’ve asked Batty where to find the car keys.’

    ‘Oh, let’s go back right away,’ Finley said.

    ‘She’d want somebody else’s shoes,’ Vivian said.

    ‘He, it.’

    ‘He/she/it’s got Viv’s,’ Abilene pointed out. ‘We’d have to give up something else.’

    ‘Like our duds,’ Finley said. ‘Old Batty could sure use a decent wardrobe.’

    ‘Yours,’ Abilene told her. ‘The fit’d be just right.’

    ‘Gimme a break.’

    ‘Maybe arrange a trade,’ Vivian said. ‘Fin’d look great in that vest, wouldn’t she?’

    ‘You got blood on your polo shirt,’ Finley pointed out. ‘Never gonna come out.’

    ‘So?’

    Finley shrugged. ‘Just hoping to ruin this giddy mood of yours. You’re really annoying when you’re cheerful.’

    We’re all acting incredibly cheerful, Abilene realized. It seemed strange until she thought about it. They’d just gone through some bizarre, rather harrowing experiences, and come out of them unscathed. It was the nervous, heady feeling of exhilaration that comes from knowing the crisis is over and everything is okay once again.

    Like after an earthquake.

    But the crisis isn’t over, she reminded herself. Everything isn’t okay. We’re safe from Batty, but Helen’s still missing.

    Maybe we will find her at the lodge.

    Following the others as they continued their journey around the end of the lake, Abilene thought how great it would be if Batty had been right about Helen’s location.

    There all the time. Never was abducted.

    It was what Abilene had really hoped all along.

    But don’t count on it, she warned herself. Helen might be anywhere. You can’t rely on the hocus-pocus of some freaky old hermit.

    You can’t rely on it, but you can’t discount it, either.

    Abilene considered herself to have an open mind. Maybe too open. Harris sometimes accused her of being gullible. But she couldn’t help what she believed.

    Among other things, she accepted the possibility that mysterious forces might be at work in the universe. There was plenty of circumstantial evidence to support the notion of God, for instance. The same with such matters as telepathy, visitors from outer space, reincarnation, ghosts, and various forms of fortune-telling. Some of these things were undoubtedly hogwash. But she suspected that not all of them were.

    So why not a Batty able to ‘see’ where Helen is?

    Maybe hogwash. But maybe not.

    Batty’d had no control over just where the drop of blood would land when it fell from that awful pendulum. But it had struck the map almost exactly in the location of the lodge.

    Even if Batty somehow knew that’s where we’d come from, Abilene thought, why did the blood fall at that particular place?

    Maybe just coincidence.

    Coincidence. A nice catch-all for cynics. It could be used to explain away a whole array of mysteries.

    Maybe that's the real hogwash, Abilene thought. Maybe there’s no such thing as coincidence. Nothing is accidental, nothing random. Maybe everything is part of a pattern.

    In some ways that seemed to make a lot more sense than the idea that events were ruled by chance.

    Chance could obviously play a part in things. But as certain as Abilene felt that chance was a factor, she was even more certain that it was a minor player. A wild card.

    Cause and effect ran the game.