He rubbed his chin quickly.
“What happened?”
“I went for a walk–”
“God damn it, Perry!” he exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, I just thought I would go up to that ridge there.” I turned and pointed at the ridge but he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him rather roughly. My fists clenched in surprise.
“Ow!” I cried. I opened up my palm. The holes from the crow’s talons stung and looked nasty. He loosened his grip on my wrist but didn’t let go and peered down at my hands.
“Ah, jeez. You’re a f**king mess.”
“You can let go now.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to need to leash you to me from now on.”
My shoulders sank. There went my freedom. Maybe I did need a babysitter. I always thought it would be the other way around.
“Look. Dex. I am sorry. But this isn’t about you. It’s my problem. I took the tumble. That crow attacked me.”
“Crow?” he repeated, his tone perking up.
And here was the can of worms.
“Yes. Some crow attacked me out of nowhere, that’s what these are from.” I pointed to my hands and wrists.
“And what the f**k is this?” He picked a piece of bloody snakeskin off my shirt and held it up.
“That…that was a snake. Bird shot it.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Unbelievable. I leave you alone for two hours and you fall off a cliff, get attacked by a crow and a snake explodes all over you.”
“Pretty much.”
He grimaced but seemed to be calming down. “Well I hate to say I told you so but…I so f**king told you so. You wanna listen to me next time?”
I glared at him. “It depends, Dex. You’re not normally the voice of reason here.”
“Neither of us are,” he said and finally let go of my wrist. “You better wash up.”
We walked to the house. I smiled awkwardly at Will and Maximus as I went up the front steps.
“My Lord,” Maximus said, shaking his head as he looked me over. Neither of them looked very impressed. I tried to brush it off.
I shrugged. “I’m a klutz, what can I say?”
I walked past them and straight up the stairs before they could see how it was so much more than that.
I entered my room and quickly shut the door behind me and made a beeline for the bathroom.
I looked in the mirror and gasped. I had a huge gash across my left cheekbone, with trails of blood and dirt streaking off of it. There were twigs and dust in my hair and my tank top was absolutely ruined with snake guts, blood and caked earth. No wonder everyone had been looking at me like that, I looked far worse than I actually was. In fact, I looked like I walked away from some sort of murder.
And it could have happened. There was no way I could pass that crow and snake off as just mere animals. They had to have been under the power of someone else. Maybe that’s what Bird wasn’t saying – maybe what we were dealing with here was witchcraft. Perhaps some evil shaman, or something to that extent, was trying to get me and Dex away from the ranch. But even if that was the case, why would they be harassing the Lancasters to begin with? The stones, the dead sheep, the birds, the fox, the snake…it was all so scattered and disjointed without a real pattern. What if it really was all just a bunch of coincidences?
But I knew in my heart they weren’t. I just couldn’t figure it out yet. I hoped I would be able to by the time the weekend was over.
As I pondered that, I stripped out of my clothes, a pile of dirt collecting on the clean floor, and ran the shower until it was abrasively hot. The steam fogged up the window and I stepped in. The water was painful on my scratches and I winced at the sting, but after a few moments it faded into a happy numbness, as the murky water swirled down the drain.
It was Saturday. We only had two more days to capture everything we needed, but it no longer felt like the show was the only goal of the weekend. Even if we did get more strange happenings and scenarios on camera, even if we compiled some interesting interviews with Bird, Maximus and whoever, and walked away with a fairly solid body of work…I didn’t want to walk away. I couldn’t. I felt as involved with the “case” as the Lancasters were. We were just the eyes, sent here to film it all, but we couldn’t do anything about it in the end. We weren’t shamans. We weren’t exorcists. We weren’t even ghost hunters. We were exploitive journalists (and that was pushing it) who would go on our happy way and leave the Lancasters to deal with a problem they might not ever solve. It suddenly felt so…pointless. Why did Will want us there when we couldn’t do a thing to help?
My brain felt stuck on that question as I reluctantly turned off the hot taps and wrung my hair out in the tub. It felt warm at first in my sore hands but quickly turned cold as the beads of water moved down my arms.
I stopped and froze. I had that dreadful feeling that I was no longer alone in the bathroom.
I couldn’t see anything through the white shower curtain, though I was certain I’d see a Ma Bates figure rushing towards me with a raised butcher knife. I listened hard, trying to steady my breath as quietly as I could.
“I can smell blood on you,” Sarah’s voice echoed across the bathroom. It wasn’t particularly sinister or accusing but it was creepy as hell. How did she get in here without me hearing her? And what the hell, I was in the shower, hadn’t she heard of a little privacy?
I didn’t know what to say, so I pulled back part of the curtain and stuck my head out to get a look at her.
There was no one there. The door to the bathroom was closed.
Total mindfuck.
I stepped out of the shower and quickly wrapped a towel around me. It was a bit too small and barely covered my rack but it would have to do. I looked around the tub for her but I was alone in the room. The clothes on the floor looked undisturbed. The window was open only a crack and a hot, sweet-smelling breeze was blowing through in mild bursts. Did I really hear Sarah? Or was I imagining things? I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, trying to get the clarity I had back on that open mesa.
A knock at the door.
I yelped despite myself, my wet hair flinging water droplets around the room.
“It’s Dex,” I heard him mumble from the other side. The handle jiggled.
Heart in my throat, I cautiously opened it. Indeed, Dex was standing outside the door, a first aid kit in his hand. He looked wary of me until his eyes drifted onto my chest and legs, on display courtesy of the bathmat-sized towel.