Victorian Getaway

The terrain was rugged, and Andy put the truck into 4-wheel drive, rolling through ruts and weaving around deep potholes. We gained elevation, and the road wasn’t paved now.

“A ‘for sale’ sign.” I winked. He hates it when I search for renovation jobs and land.

“You just finished a project that took twice as long and cost more. It’s probably just land.”

The road ended at a deep gully. The view was spectacular, and we sat holding hands, watching eagles soaring above.

“Is that someone over there?” He raised the binoculars.

“Yeah. A backpacker.”

A sturdy fellow in blue jeans and a tan Carhartt work coat. Shocked, I saw he was watching us through a scope. “He’s watching us.” Andy shrugged.

I kept looking for the property for sale. Andy’s body language was clearly negative.

He pulled over, and I took a few steps onto a trail to the left through scrub brush. He joined me, and together we walked until the landscape shifted from rugged brush to a wildflower meadow. At the far side stood a worn-out Victorian house. An enormous For Sale sign was nailed to its eave, with an out-of-state phone number.

“No!” Andy yelled, grabbing me. “Too remote. I have to drive to work every day.”

I kissed him. “A vacation home, Babe.” Suddenly, my hackles raised, and I pulled away, looking around.

“What?” he asked.

“It felt like someone was watching us.” I caught a glint of light. “There. See that glint?”

“Yes, someone must be in the woods, like us.”

“Smart ass!” I hit his arm. He grinned.

For seven months, I watched the house listing. Finally, using my savings, I made an offer and negotiated a steal of a deal.

Andy helped me fix up the property. We went every weekend throughout the summer, tackling the place bit by bit. On an early weekend when my girlfriends were planning to stay with me, he and I drove up to do some prep work.

Andy chopped wood and stacked it neatly under the front porch. We built a small fire pit 10 feet away and arranged four oversized vinyl rocking chairs around it. I searched and was ecstatic when I found an antique wicker loveseat. I painted it bright white, added new pink and mint green cushions, and set it in a corner of the large porch. We set up a beautiful fountain near the porch that we could plug in when we spent time there. I covered the fountain and the wicker with a tarp to keep them fresh and clean.

“Good job. I hate the road, and we’ll NEVER come here in winter.”

“Maybe the county could grade the road?” He laughed.

I spotted a man watching me from the bushes. My heart hitched for a second, and he vanished. I walked out to the shed, where Andy was organizing yard and woodworking tools. “I saw a guy in the bushes,” I told him quietly.

“Show me.” Andy, a collegiate football star, stalked toward the bushes, a rake in hand. A sudden rustle, and the man rushed out, leaping over my roses. “What the fuck? Maybe you shouldn’t come up here without me.”

I was nervous, but I didn’t want to cancel the weekend with Mandy and Gemma. “Wait until I come back, and I’ll bring all of you up here and stay out of your way.” Andy and his buddies were going to Vegas. They bought tickets to The Blue Man Group and to a famous magician. I hate Vegas with its constant lights and noise, shoulder-to-shoulder crowds.

“Oh, come on. I planned a girls-only weekend while you’re away. It’ll be fine.”

Later, after we finished for the day, we sat on the porch with our snacks and iced tea, listening to the birds singing. In the mid-afternoon, we cleaned up the kitchen and headed home. The sky was bright blue, with fluffy cotton-puff clouds as we wound our way downward, weaving around potholes and bumps on the unpaved road.

“Look out! A snake! Don’t hit it!” I screeched. As he swerved, I spotted a man behind a tree. “Andy, slowly look left. Someone’s spying.” He braked and jumped out.

“Hey, you! What the hell do you want?”

“Andy, he might have a gun! Get in.” Andy advanced, but the man ran.

“Fucker! Stay away from here!” he shouted. "The shotgun is in the small closet under the stairs. Shells are on the shelf,” he cautioned me.

“Let’s get off the mountain before dark, Honey.” I tried to sound calm, but the stress knocked me into deep sleep on the way home.

A week later, back at home, I gave my hunk of a husband a sloppy kiss and watched him speed off in his Mustang. He honked and gunned it as I grinned at his boyish glee.

That evening, knowing the sun would set at 5:45 pm, I rounded up my besties, Gemma and Mandy, and we headed from the city to our mountain weekend getaway.

As we pulled up to the cabin, a man was peering in the side window. I revved the truck, and he ran. Carhartt jacket guy again. Do they all wear those clothes in the mountains? As we climbed the porch stairs, I was startled by a scuttle beneath the wooden slats. I peered down and saw eyes watching me, and my heart leaped into my throat. Then I realized it was an opossum. Damn, I have to get an exterminator. No, they might kill the poor thing. Andy will have to seal the area to prevent anything from nesting under there. She wasn’t there when we stacked the wood!

The Internet didn’t work way out here, so Andy had hooked up an old DVD player. We had a library of videos we left here for the weekends.

I laid out all the fixings from the grocery bags so each could decide what they wanted on their pizza. They admired the new pizza maker I had brought for this first girls’ weekend. We planned to make 3 individual pizzas. In the back-porch fridge was a new container of fresh mozzarella, which I had put there the week before while prepping the house. Shivers ran up my spine as I reached for the handle to open the fridge. I felt someone or something was watching me. I turned, and a man in a sleeveless shirt with red hair was staring through the porch window. He ducked when he saw me. I screamed, and my friends ran to my side.

“A man. There,” I pointed. Mandy was our brave one; super athletic her entire life, she was head of the PE department at the high school. She shoved the door open and pounded down the back steps. I had no doubt she could catch a cheetah, she was so fast. Frozen in fright, I listened to her make the rounds, poking in the bushes with a rake.

“Come on out!” Mandy called, waving the rake.

“Did you see him?” She shook her head.

“I’m not hungry now,” I moaned.

“Let’s have drinks. Where’s the tequila? I’ll make margaritas, and we can eat pizza with a movie,” Gemma said, stroking my hair. “Maybe you imagined it. Mandy didn’t see anyone.”

As I sipped the drink, licking salt from my lips, I convinced myself that I had imagined it all. I leaned toward the window, looking at the dark backyard. Shadows skittered and in a lightning flash, I saw him creeping forward. I froze, staring outside, but saw only blackness. Then sounds on the roof. I froze.

“What is it?” Mandy asked. She opened the back door and peered right to left. Bright eyes skittered away. “Raccoon.”

“Something’s on the roof.” I looked up.

“It’s raccoons. Just saw two of them out back,” Mandy said.

“I’ll be right back. I want to wipe off this runny mascara.” I climbed the stairs to my bathroom, skipping the ones I knew were creaky. I hated creaky stairs, and they were difficult to fix without a major redo.

I grabbed eye pads and wiped away the smears. Creak. I jumped. “How long are you going to be?” Gemma appeared in the doorway.

“Damn, you scared me! I’ll be right out.”

“You’re jumpy, aren’t you?” Gemma hugged my shoulders. “Let me redo your makeup.” She gently cleansed my face, applied softening creams, and then foundation. “Close your eyes. I’ll do smudged eyes.” She worked for minutes, added mascara, then painted my lips with a lipliner brush. The mirror showed smoky, smudged eyes, long lashes, and deep red lips. “If only Andy were here,” Gemma sighed dramatically.

Then she screamed. I followed her gaze, and a shadowed face peered in, fingers gripping the upstairs window casing. “I knew I heard something on the roof!” I snapped the blinds shut and gripped the sink. Footsteps ran overhead.

“What the hell are you two doing up there? I made all the pizzas, so if you don’t like them, it’s on you for being gone so long.” I heard the attic stairs snap open and heavy feet climbing down.

“He’s in the house,” I whispered.

A low chuckle from the doorway. We turned and screamed. Broad shoulders filled the doorway. Wisps of his red hair stood up from his head, and the backs of his hands were hairy. He grabbed the top of the door, and his biceps bulged like small melons. Gemma slammed the bathroom door. He tried getting open and then we heard the steps creaking.

“Mandy’s downstairs alone.” We rushed down, grabbing an umbrella and Andy’s bat.

“Mandy, where are you?”

“Don’t you have a large outdoor torch?” Gemma yelled. I ran to the shed and found Mandy hanging by one wrist, unconscious, with blood oozing from her split lip. We lifted her gently down and waited. Moaning, she came to. We helped her up and got inside the house. I sponged her lip, iced her wrist, and then bandaged it.

Peering out the window, I saw the redhead pop up from the ditch he had dug. Now his face was painted in camouflage. He marched toward the front door, Andy’s baseball bat in his hand. His work boot slammed into the front door, jarring it. When it didn’t give, he threw a large rock through the window, reached in, and unbolted the door.

Mandy led us in a sprint out the back door, to the shed, and barricaded us in. No lights or power in the shed, and we didn’t have cell phones for flashlights.

I struck a match, and Mandy saw a sledgehammer, which she picked up with her good hand. I struck another match and found a garden spade.

As I struck a third match, I screamed. The redhead leered at me through the shed’s window. He smashed his elbow into it, and the glass cracked. Mandy found a piece of wood and leaned on it against the window as he continued trying to break in. Then, silence, and we gulped deep breaths.

Footsteps. The shed knob rattled. We gripped each other as he burst through the flimsy old door, biceps bulging, and grabbed Mandy. Her legs kicked and kicked, trying to hit vulnerable spots on him, but nothing fazed him. He threw the sledgehammer down and tossed her into the grass. He turned to me.

Backing away, I ran my hands across the worktable, searching for another good weapon. Spade in my non-dominant hand, clippers in my right hand.

This guy was monstrous.

He turned his head left and right, as if shaking something off. I rushed him, but he felt me coming and stopped me dead with a knee to my solar plexus. I crumpled, and he lifted me by the nape of my neck in one hand. He twisted the spade from me, breaking my wrist. Bending down, nose to nose with me, he grinned, yellow teeth and chewing tobacco in his cheeks. His fingers dug into my chin, and I saw my opening. I head-butted him; his head rocked back. I fought off the stars behind my eyes from the blow and waited. As his head came forward, I slammed the heel of my good hand into his nose. Blood splattered me, but he wasn’t knocked out, only fazed for a second. He had me pinned with his knees, and behind him, I saw Gemma, creeping toward us.

Then his enormous, freckled hands came for my throat, and he was choking the life out of me. I kicked and fought, but I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t breathe; I was dying.

Suddenly, I was free. Gemma stood behind him, twisting the spade into his ribs. Her other hand repeatedly struck him with the sledgehammer. She hit him again and again, then swung her arm around and connected with his temple, dropping him to his knees.

He was stunned for a minute, then rose. He walked out of the shed and disappeared into the night.

Mandy only had bruised ribs. We all scurried into the house. Weirdly, I felt it important to soak the fire pit, so no embers remained, spraying it with the hose. The three of us huddled in the front room. It was two a.m. I checked my phone, stupidly, but it was still in SOS mode.

“FUCK!” I screamed and burst into tears.

“I have to pee,” said Gemma.

“We all go together,” Mandy replied. “No one moves alone now.”

“Let’s leave.” I looked at them. “Let’s get in my truck and drive out, now.” I saw them considering it.

“Have you ever driven this road in the dark? No lights, and no moon tonight either. Potholes, deer, moose. I don’t know. This house seems safer right now, even with Big Red Ghoul out there.” Mandy watched me.

“My wrist hurts so bad.” I moaned in pain. We climbed the stairs together. Gemma relieved herself while Mandy, the PE teacher, showed Gemma how to bandage my wrist with a splint.

Gemma froze. “Something is moving downstairs.” I looked around my bedroom and only saw a light hairbrush, a hand mirror, and a toilet plunger. Not much in the way of weapons.

“What are you doing?” I asked Mandy. She was rifling through my closet and came out with three wire hangers.

“Weapons. It’s all we have with the plunger.”

Creak. Creak.

I was shaking. “He’s coming. And now he doesn’t care if we hear him.”

“After this, you are buying a satellite phone,” Mandy said.

Creak, thud. Closer, and closer. Then, he burst through the door that Mandy stood behind. She had bent her clothes-hanger into an oval, waiting quietly. I rushed him, and when he bent to grab me, Mandy caught his neck in the hangar and jerked backward, pulling him on top of her. Gemma rushed forward and hit his nose and mouth with the plunger, pressing down and jerking back. Suction set, Mandy continued twisting the hangar to tighten it around his neck. I ran down the stairs and loaded the shotgun, my hands shaking so bad that I kept dropping the shells.

When I returned, he was flailing, trying to breathe.

I shot him in the chest, and we watched as his breathing stopped.

We sat, huddled in the house until dawn, the attacker’s blood pooling around us. Andy had not flown to Vegas. An overwhelming sense of dread had filled him, and he found us sitting in hardened blood, the attacker dead. Our girls’ weekend had twisted into a nightmare we would never forget.

Copyright © 5.22.26 by Andrea O. Corwin

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