"go ahead and scream. no one can hear you."
with a sigh, francine put the book down. she was ready to give up.
if she was going to find a way to relax in the cabin through the week, it was going to be by doing something other than reading a good book.
or going outside for a walk in the woods, at least until the howling blizzard that had been raging since she arrived on sunday night, finally stopped.
for the thirty-third time she wondered how she could have forgotten to bring the suitcase she had packed which included the books she had taken out of the library, for the express purpose of reading them in the cabin .
she had gone to the library and asked the librarian for some really long books to read. the librarian had started to recommend ‘the anatomy of melancholy” by robert burton, but francine had interrupted her and told her she only wanted to read books by women. the librarian had then recommended “atlas shrugged’ and “the fountainhead” by ayn rand, but francine had already read both books twice. they were her favorite books.
in the end she had taken “the tale of genji” by lady murasaki, “the making of americans” by gertrude stein, a historical romance called “the sun is my undoing” by marguerite steen (which the librarian had especially recommended) and “miss mackintosh, my darling,” by marguerite young.
all to no purpose, as the suitcase with them all in it had somehow been left behind.
the owner of the cabin, or maybe another renter or caretaker, had left some books behind.
one of the books was a well worn paperback of “how to win friends and influence people,” by dale carnegie. another was “think and grow rich,” by napoleon hill.
all the others were cheaply printed novels labeled as “horror’.
but the “horror” all seemed to be the same in every book.
the horror of a young woman being kidnapped by a creepy guy, and then being slowly tortured and murdered and dismembered by the creepy guy, in order to pay for the sin of all womankind in not having sex with the creepy guy.
none of the books were exactly masterpieces of distinguished prose, or likely to win the nobel prize for literature any time soon.
francine decided to look around the cabin one more time, to see if she could find some paper to write something on herself. she had already searched twice, but the cabin was pretty cluttered, so she decided to really look this time, even under some of the gross looking debris.
outside, the wind began to literally howl, louder than ever. at least the cabin had proved tight so far, with no snow actually coming in under the windows or doors.
actually windows or door, singular. one of the first things francine had noticed was that there was only one door. it looked like there were no fire codes up here on the mountaintop.
there was a pile of junk on and under a table in a corner. the table had held a lamp that francine had moved to the center of the room on the first night. she had only taken a quick poke through the junk. now she decided to drag it all out into the room and take a closer look at it.
she had a pair of rubber gloves and she put them on and spread the stuff on the floor. it seemed to be mostly rags, a few bottles and broken dishes, all of it dusty but not grossly dirty or scummy. she felt something a little heavier under a rag and pulled it out. it was white - a piece of a dish or bowl ? she looked a little closer. it was a bone.
it didn’t look like a bone you would see on a plate from eating turkey or chicken. it was - who knew what it was? she wasn’t a med student.
aha! what looked like a couple of school notebooks! just what she was looking for, if they were not filled up. she took one and blew the dust off it. she opened it - the pages were a little stuck together but opened easy enough. there was writing, in medium sized capital letters -
“go ahead and scream,” francine read. “no one can hear you.”
suddenly there was a knocking on the door, just loud enough to hear over the wind…
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