Chapter 29: The Boat

The river was the symbol of freedom I needed to pull out the very last strength I had.

I was tempted to wash my clothes or even take a bath, but I knew that if I did, I would most likely freeze to death. Therefore, I chose to only wash my hands and drink some water.

After that, I washed my face too, mostly to sharpen my senses and wake up from my chronic state of half-consciousness.

I felt like a zombie, and I constantly looked around me because I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye. Something that was about to attack me.

One time I was even sure I’d stepped on a snake and screamed and kicked like mad to get it off, until I fell and found out that it was just a branch.

“Focus, Skylar,” I mumbled to myself. I tried to remember what Jared said about the boat, but he never gave me a precise location, and even if he did, I probably wouldn’t find that place anyway.

I kept squinting around in the bright sunlight and tried to figure out if the bats that swarmed above my head were real or not. They probably weren’t, but I still flailed my arms to make them go away.

Then I felt embarrassed for acting like an insane person, fighting invisible creatures, and shouting so loudly that I scared a couple of swans, until I found out that I indeed ~was~ going insane.

Those swans were real, right? Or maybe not. Why would there be swans on a river? A lake yes, but not on a river. Or perhaps…

“FOCUS!” I yelled at myself and started searching for the boat. I’d given up on trying to tell time without a watch, and since everything I did went so slowly, minutes felt like hours.

Then I tried to think rationally and found that according to the sun’s position in the sky, it was probably close to midday.

Now and then, I stopped to splash water on my face to sharpen my senses.

The rest of the time I went looking for bears or possible danger, and to search for the boat, or at least something that could take me across to the other side without having to swim.

And I say try because the river was way too wide and deep, and probably a lot stronger than the few currents that were visible on the surface.

Not that I would have the strength to keep my head above the water anyway. Not to mention the temperature.

If only there was a bridge.

After an eternity and a half, I spotted an old wooden boat lying upside down on top and in between rocks of various sizes. It was partially hidden by leaves and a large bush, and it looked like it had been there for a while.

I had no idea if it would float, though. I didn’t know if that was the boat Jared had been talking about, but it wasn’t like there were plenty of boats to choose from.

Neither did I have the energy to search any further. I had to spend the little energy I had left on the most crucial things, like finding my way back to civilization.

Unfortunately, the only things I’d seen on the other side of the river so far were the same kinds of trees, stones, sand, and dirt as there was on my side, so would it really solve anything?

It was relatively easy to turn the boat around. However, pushing it down to the river was a completely different challenge.

A challenge I knew I could have done fairly easily if I were my normal self since the boat only was about twice my length. Now I felt so weak that I barely managed to move it a couple of inches. This was hopeless.

An overwhelming sense of defeat made me sink to my knees with a loud cry. I hid my face in my hands in an attempt to stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks, but they fell anyway.

Then I had the sneaking feeling of being watched again and held my breath while I scanned my surroundings for any threats. Nothing. I wiped my eyes and looked again, and there it was.

Another bear, and it was heading toward me. But for some reason I hesitated for a moment. Was this another hallucination? I didn’t know.

Still, did I really want to risk my life ~believing~ it was a hallucination when it wasn’t? Definitely not! I got up with renewed strength and tried to pull the boat instead of pushing it, which turned out to be easier.

And barely a minute later, the boat was floating on the river, and I praised the Lord that the bear had been busier staring at me than attacking me.

Unfortunately, the bear turned out to be a much smaller problem than the one I was facing now.

The current.

I struggled to climb into the boat before it floated away. It had already failed the purpose of keeping me dry, because my clothes were soaked from my waist down. But that wasn’t my only problem.

I had no oars. There was literally nothing I could use to paddle. And now the boat drifted aimlessly down the river with a mind of its own, and all I could do was to hang on.

I used my time emptying my shoes of water and wringing my socks and jeans. I studied my feet, which in addition to having cuts from running barefoot a few days ago, also had blisters and open wounds.

No wonder it hurt to walk. Nevertheless, I forced myself to ignore it and put my socks and shoes back on and clenched my jaw hard not to cry again. I was tired of that. It didn’t help anything anyway.

Then I noticed that the boat was floating faster. And faster…

“Oh, no. Please don’t let it be what I think it is,” I mumbled, and desperately tried to find a way to get the boat to the other side before I reached the cliff.

I couldn’t see how steep it was, so I had no idea if the old boat would survive the waterfall, small or big, without breaking or even sinking. All I could do was to pray.

“Please, God. I know you’ve given me more life than Taffy, even though I’m not a cat. But I’ve survived falling off a cliff, being attacked by a bear, and almost killed by a man and two werewolves.

“Not to mention whatever it was that tried to consume me in that house. It was definitely not one of ~your~ creations. But please…I haven’t gotten this far only to drown in a river. Please, God. Help me.”

I kept saying my prayers while the boat went faster and faster, like a runaway roller coaster. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I didn’t even know where I could get a proper grip to keep myself from being flung out of the boat, so I ended up clinging onto the stern like my life depended on it, which in reality it did.

No matter how much I prayed or how hard I wished to find a way out of the situation, the inevitable happened, and the boat tipped over the edge and rushed down through raging water masses and large rocks.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, but the roar of the rapids swallowed my sound. Before I knew it, I was thrown out of the boat and into the water.

The instant shock from the temperature made me gasp while I was under water, which caused me to inhale some of it.

I started coughing and struggled to keep my head above the surface to keep from swallowing more, but it was so hard to keep myself afloat that for a moment I thought I wouldn’t make it.

I was lucky, though. The narrow, violent rapids ended in an open and much calmer area. Unfortunately, Jared’s large sweater was so heavy that it kept pulling me down, and swimming was almost impossible.

Eventually my limbs weakened until I couldn’t move anymore, and I was swallowed by the ice-cold glove that would be my forever resting place.

I felt a pair of strong arms with big hands that grabbed my leg and waist. I was almost certain that it was death closing its grip around me, until I realized that the arms were pulling me out of the water.

I was barely conscious, so it might as well have been another dream. Or maybe that was how it felt in the afterlife?

Sounds of men shouting and my chest being repeatedly compressed felt so far away that it couldn’t possibly be reality.

Then I started coughing up water, and someone moved me to lie on my side so I could get rid of everything that kept me from breathing. I’d been resuscitated, and I was still alive. Then why did I wish I was dead?

“Good girl,” I heard. “You’re safe now.”

I didn’t understand what the words meant. I knew it was English, but somehow the words didn’t reach the part of my brain that could make me understand the meaning behind them.

When I heard other men start talking in the background, I screamed and crawled backward away from them.

“Hey, hey! Calm down. I said you’re safe,” the man said, but I didn’t dare to even look at him.

I just continued screaming, believing they were hallucinations of two-headed monsters with intestines hanging out of their bodies.

I didn’t understand the words, but I recognized the feeling of being trapped and was absolutely sure I would be eaten alive.

“What’s the matter with her?” someone asked in a hushed voice, and I finally opened my eyes and found that they weren’t monsters. Five men, looking like they’d been fishing, surrounded me.

I was terrified and wanted to get away from them, but my body wouldn’t listen anymore. My limbs were so limp and powerless that I ended up sobbing in panic instead.

“She’s in shock,” the man in front of me said. He smiled, but in my mind, it transformed into the maw of the bear the second it was about to swallow my head.

I tried to tell him to go away, but nothing of what I said was comprehensible, and I was shivering so badly that I couldn’t even hold out my arm to stop him when he sat down on his knees in front of me.

“Hey, you. We’re only trying to help. What’s your name?”

I couldn’t answer, and eventually he understood. Or perhaps he thought I didn’t speak English. Either way, he took his time to just sit with me until I’d calmed down a bit.

His friends were talking quietly in the background, and I was glad they kept their distance. If not, I would never have trusted him enough to let him sit down next to me.

After a few minutes of just sitting there, side by side, he took off his jacket, wrapped it around my shoulders, and pulled me into a safe embrace.

“Shh…You’re safe now,” he whispered and stroked my back while I sobbed against his chest.

I desperately wished it was Jared, but the only thing that was left from him was his sweater, the silver knife, and my broken heart.

I was shaking and twitching against the stranger’s chest, but I didn’t really know if it was from the cold or from the chaos of emotions I had inside. I wanted so badly to believe him. I just couldn’t.

No matter how calming his voice was or how kind his eyes were, I’d experienced too much the past few weeks to ever trust a human again.

“We’ll carry you back to our camp now, where you’ll get dry clothes and food. You’re probably hungry, aren’t you?”

I nodded but didn’t dare to meet his eyes. I was so cold that my teeth hurt from chattering, and I had no control over my muscles. Everything hurt.

“And then we’ll take you to the hospital. You really don’t look well. How long have you been out here?”

I just stared at the ground. I honestly had no idea.

“Well… You are safe now,” he repeated when I didn’t say anything. “And we’ll help you get in contact with your family. Where are you from?”

“N-not sure,” I stuttered, hoarse from crying, and my jaw was locked and hurting from the cold. “I think… m-maybe Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

The man sounded surprised and scratched his forehead before he helped me up. Then another man approached us, and I panicked again.

“No. It’s okay. This is Jeff, my buddy. And I’m Kevin. We’re going to take you to our camp now, just like I told you.”

He held my hand and used his body language to show that I could trust that they wouldn’t harm me, yet I wasn’t able to relax.

However, after a few moments when they made sure not to scare me, they lifted me up and carried me between them to a camp not far from the riverbank.

A part of me was about to fall asleep from the rhythm and steady swaying of their movements when they walked, but the other part was still on high alert.

When they finally put me down on a soft blanket, I found myself in some kind of middle stage in a world I didn’t understand anymore.

I was so apathetic that I didn’t care when they helped me get changed, and I didn’t even flinch when the man examined my many wounds and bruises.

Especially the one on the back of my head and behind my ear concerned him, together with the large bruise on my ribs.

It turned out that Kevin was a doctor and that they were a group of friends who came there on weekends and holidays to fish.

Slowly, my body temperature rose thanks to the bonfire, dry clothes, and thick blankets. After eating my first proper meal in a long time, I fell asleep.

I slept so deeply that I barely noticed that they carried me through the woods on a provisional stretcher made with two branches, a rope, and a blanket, put me in a car, and drove away.

A couple of days later, I woke up in the hospital with my parents at my side.