I bit down hard upon the inside of my lip as he stalked the trees before picking a slightly lopsided one to execute with swift, violent whips of the saw, looking like a furious violinist. However, it wasn’t those mad saws that stoked my fear when I watched, it was what his movements revealed on his lower neck, a tattoo I had seen before. A tattoo I remember I saw on Dee’s neck. It was a cow’s skull with eerie burning green eyes.
I watched the unnamed man toss his tree into the back of his truck like it was a deer carcass, nod and drive away without a word. A cold wind whipped down the farm and up my jacket before I walked back to the cabin. That cow skull tattoo seared on my mind.
The cold the wind had shot upon my bare skin got much worse when I turned back to see the cabin door wide open, flapping in the wind. I sprinted as fast as I could to the door and looked in to see by bed empty again, no sign of Jo.
The nights grew long. I could barely sleep. Every sound outside my door made me assume that the man with the tattoo was coming back to finish the job. I barely got out from underneath my blanket anymore. Barely ate or changed movies, just laid in fear. Maybe I was getting cabin fever?
After a few nights of this, I could barely function anymore and to make matters worse, a snow storm had moved in. As a child I would have looked out the window and watched the fat flakes of snow sift down from the heavens and stick to the ground with wonder, but now I just felt even more trapped. I could see the snow drift stacking up against the door of the cabin out the front window.
I checked the door again to see how high it had reached, but only focused on it for a second because something else in the horizon caught my eye – the little dark dot of a human figure walking up the snowy road that led to the cabin. Just a little dot of a black jacket, hat and snow pants bracing against the wind and staggering through the high snow. My eyes remained as it got closer and closer.
I thought about running, but remained as the face of the person in the snow started to come into focus, now just about 10 yards from the door.
It was Trevor.
