My Alaskan mountain man

The flood gates are opened

As I lay and think, trying my best to remember what happened to me since climbing off the bus I hear hushed talking coming from the other room. It’s hard to hear at first, but as I focus my attention on the voices I can hear bits and pieces, depending on who’s talking. The Sheriffs voice is difficult to hear because he has a hushed tone and he also has a thick Alaskan twang. However, Doctor Willows voice is clear and concise and I can hear some of what she is saying when she speaks even though she is speaking in a whispered tone.

Robins voice, well I can hear every word he speaks. He has one of those deep voices that reverberates through the wooden walls, even though he is speaking softly. He has a nice comforting tone to his deep voice. It reminds me of when we were young children, before our parents died. My father would always be up before sunrise and he would make his morning coffee and hum quietly to himself, and although he did it quietly, his deep voice would travel through the walls of the house and wake us all gently with his tune. I don’t know if he did it so we would all wake up early with a lovely tune or if he thought he was humming so quietly that none of us could hear him.

Either way, it was the best way to be woken in the morning. Even now, I still wake up before sunrise and hum my dads tune to myself and I think, that’s why I’m still an early bird.

Callie always calls me the annoying go getter! Thinking on it now, Callie doesn’t have the same love of waking up early like I do. Maybe the early mornings remind her of dad too, and instead of making her feel happy, it makes her sad.

At first it’s comforting listening to the others talk in the other room. It helps to distract me from the boredom of being restricted to bed.

Robin plans to go out and check on the livestock and something about butchering a pig.

Willow plans to make some kind of stew that can be left to cook while she tends to me. I hear her asking the Sheriff if he would try getting the radio to work seeing as the snow has let up a little.

It sounds like there’s a lot to do around here for everyone, except me. I drift off into my own inner thoughts as the voices drone on with their conversation, that is, until I hear my name mentioned by Robin.

I prick my ears and listen closely.

Robin says, “ Doc, do you think she’ll ever remember what happened to her? Maybe she’s just saying she can’t remember.”

Willow replies, “like I told her earlier, it’s normal to have memory loss after a traumatic event. I mean, being r***d and tortured and shot with an arrow and dropped in the wilderness, left for dead naked and injured. It’s traumatic Robin, god knows it may be for the best that she doesn’t remember what has happened to her. These memories are best left alone until she can speak to someone qualified enough to help her deal with what’s happened to her. As an MD I am able to do what I can with medicine to heal the body, but I know nothing about how to heal the mind. It’s probably best she continues thinking like she does, that it was just an accident of some sort.”

Sheriff now in an annoyed tone and louder then before, “but we’ll never catch the sons a bitches that done this to her if she can’t give me any details. For all we know it could be one of our own townsmen that’s done this to her and maybe there’re others, or have been others that we never knew about. You know what happens to a carcass in these forests. They get picked clean by the wild animals and the chances of finding a body or dismembered skeleton in these dense forests is slim to none!”

Willow, “ shh, hush now Henry, she’ll hear us. Go fix the radio would you.”

I am stunned, I have words zooming through my head at a hundred miles an hour,

“r**e!”

“Torture!”

“Shot!”

“Left for dead!”

“Carcass!”

All of a sudden something switches in my head and I get a rush of memories come back to me. It all plays out in my mind as clear as day.

Barry!

That’s his name. Callie’s boyfriend, the one who picked us up from the bus station. The fancy car that he drove us to the helicopter pad in, which took us up into the wilderness to the hunting lodge. Oh, how in awe we were with the grandeur of it all, Callie truly believed this was it, this was our new life. Happy families, me and her with Barry the millionaire. I remember how we thought we were going to have the best time of our lives. Dinner parties in the evening and learning to shoot a gun and hunt in the day, wildlife watching and drinking by the grand fireplace in the lounge.

The first evening was like this.

It was exciting, Callie wore her sexy black cocktail dress to dinner, she wanted to show Barry what he’d been missing during their time apart since they met up five months before in the strip club in San Francisco. She’d met Barry on the second night of her starting her job there as a waitress.

She’d left Chicago and wanted to make her own way, saying she relied too much on me, financially

and emotionally. It was the first time we’d ever been apart. Before that we’d always lived together, had the same friends, which weren’t that many, went to the same places, we were close.

So close people we would meet would think we were twins, but I’m actually two years younger then her. We’re close as we are because we’d grown up in the foster system. We were of the lucky few that weren’t ever separated. I suppose it seems less daunting to people to foster two girls then say a girl and a boy, or two boys. Boys seem to get a hard wrap in foster care.

That job, I told her nothing good would come from that job at the strip club, how I wish I was wrong right now.

Callie met Barry there and they dated for a couple of weeks and because I was in Chicago trying to get myself through a part time book keeping course and trying to work and make ends meat, I hadn’t had time to meet him before our trip to Alaska.

It was a surprise when Callie called me up and said, “pack your bags, your catching a bus to me and we’re heading to Alaska together. Barry is paying an all expenses paid holiday for the two of us. I think this is it, I think he’s going to propose to me at a lodge in the mountains. I’ve just seen photos of the place, it’s gorgeous!”

At first I told her it was madness and that even if he was going to propose, she shouldn’t get married so soon after meeting him. They hardly new each other, and she had the worst track record with men.

I also told her I couldn’t make the Alaska trip, I had too many things going on with my classes and my job. But she insisted and said I had to be there for the proposal, and so I agreed.

It was fun at first, seeing Callie for the first time in months, she looked so good, so happy, practically beaming.

Then when we got to Alaska, and we got off the bus at the station, Barry came to fetch us in a fancy car. He drove us to a helipad and we took a helicopter the rest of the way. He was charismatic and funny and seemed to really like Callie. I was actually thinking, maybe Callie was right, maybe this was it for her and I was actually happy for her. We got to the lodge, ooed and ahhed at the beauty of it.

We dressed and had our first evening dinner. There were others there, two members of Barry’s family I was told. His cousin and his uncle.

The memory of those two men and what happened on the second night of our trip brings me to the verge of being sick to my stomach. Thinking of them and what they did, I remember one of them offering us a pill, told us it was ecstasy and stupidly Callie took hers straight away and then played the guilt trip card on me. Telling me, I never let my hair down and have fun, she eventually convinced me to take it.

I was so stupid, why did I take that pill?

After that it’s a bit of a haze, although I remember bits, one was when a came round a little and saw two of them roughly having their way with Callie and I remember trying to pull them away and trying to fight them off of her, I remember another one of them putting a needle in my arm and the next thing I remember is being in the back of a truck being hauled out and told they were about to hunt Callie and I like animals.

I remember screaming at Callie to run. The tears are streaming down my face now at the thought of Callie, what has happened to Callie? Is she dead? Has her carcass been picked clean by wild animals?

I lean forward and violently vomit down the side of the bed. The exertion of this movement causes me to cry out in a strange, pained, whelping vomit noise. I can’t hold back the tears that are streaming down my face like a flood gate has been released. It’s as if I knew in the back of my mind that Callie may be gone forever and I’ve only just let myself know the truth.

With all the noise of my crying, whelping and vomiting and now whaling, Doctor Willow comes running into the room with the force of a hurricane.

Hot on her heals comes Robin with a gravely concerned look on his face. As Willow comes toward me, Robin rushes past her and nearly topples her to get to me.

“What’s wrong?” He shouts in panic, “is it your wound?” He turns to Doctor Willow, “Doc do something, give her something, is she okay?”

He turns back to me with wide eyes and grabs my hand. The touch of his warm, callus hand but gentle grip brings me back from my grief stricken whaling episode. I look at him and cry out, “Callie! My sister Callie, she’s on the mountain”

Robin looks at me baffled. I cry out again, “Callie, Callie was with me, they brought us here to die, we have to find her... please!” I beg, “please!”