Haven Hill: Chapter 4

By the author of The Widow in the Woods

“Let’s just go,” Ariel pleaded.

“We can’t,” Kate whispered. “My Jeep keys are inside.”

They stood together for another moment, and Kate summoned her strength. “Ariel, I want you to go hide behind the Jeep. No matter what happens, no matter what you hear, don’t come in until I tell you that it’s ok. If I’m not out in five minutes, run down the trail to the road and go to Mr. Slocum’s house.”

“That’s miles away!” Ariel argued. “I want to help you.”

“Promise me!” Kate ordered harshly.

In case the atmosphere wasn’t creepy enough, the skies chose that moment to open up with a downpour to go along with all the thunder and lightning.

Reluctantly, her daughter nodded her agreement and retreated behind the Jeep. Kate turned all of her concentration toward clearing the house. She drew the Glock from its holster and racked the slide, putting a round in the chamber.

Over the past three years, Kate had taken an abundance of classes and courses. Marksmanship, knife fighting, and Krav Maga. Ariel took many of the courses with her, but some had a minimum age she had not yet reached.

One of the courses was on clearing structures. She never really thought she’d need it, but it had been included with a three-day tactical shooting course she had taken near Las Vegas when Ariel was away with her grandparents. Before she threw the door back, she took a deep breath to calm herself and try to control the adrenaline pounding through her veins. It sure was different to clear a house for real than to do a simulation of it from the safety of a top-of-the-line shoot house.

She shoved the door to the cabin all the way back as she entered.

One room at a time, with her back against a wall, she checked each room for signs of an intruder. Breathing slowly to calm her racing pulse, she looked In the closets, under the beds, and throughout the great room. She locked every window as she went. Instead of clearing the basement, which seemed terrifying, she placed a Molly bar in the brackets that encased the basement door, making it impossible (she hoped) to open from the inside.

She located her keys on the hook beside the door, right where she’d left them, and she began to second-guess herself. Was she crazy? Paranoid? Cowardly? She put the keys in her pocket.

She went back outside where Ariel waited, trembling. Relief was visible on her face when she saw Kate.

“It’s ok. There’s nobody there, and nothing looks like it was touched,” Kate assured her. “Do you think I didn’t lock the door properly? I don’t get it.”

“You pulled on the knob after you locked it, Mom. It was locked.”

“There’s got to be an explanation for this,” Kate mused.

“I don’t care what the explanation is – I want to go!”

Kate nodded and went back inside for her bag with Ariel close behind her. “Grab whatever you can get quickly and go out to the Jeep. I’m right behind you.”

She checked that all the windows were closed and locked, and then put a chair under the knob of the back door. She threw a box of ammo for the Glock into her overnight bag.

She came out the front with a bag over her shoulder and her keys in hand. She clicked the button to unlock the doors of the Jeep.

A feeling of dread bubbled up, and she pushed it to the back of her mind. She was letting her imagination run away with itself.

They hurried through the deluge of pouring rain to throw their bags into the back, then rapidly locked themselves in and strapped on their seatbelts.

Kate was soaked to the skin, and water streamed down her face from her wet hair. She pushed her hair back and wiped the rainwater from her eyes. Breathing a sigh of relief, Kate turned the key in the ignition.

All she got was a “click.”

The engine wouldn’t turn over.

The Jeep wouldn’t start.

The feeling of dread was replaced by one of burgeoning panic, which she took great pains to hide.

They were trapped at the cabin.

…

Once back inside, Kate had two jobs: strategize how to deal with this situation and calm her daughter down before her tears turned into outright hysteria.

The drumming of the heavy rain on the metal roof drowned out any chance of a quiet conversation.

“This could still all be coincidental,” she argued weakly. “I’m sure everything will be just fine.”

Ariel turned her tear-streaked face to her mother. “It’s him. I know it’s him.”

“That’s impossible,” Kate soothed her. “He’s in jail for a long, long time.”

“Then he must have gotten out!” The pitch of Ariel’s voice went higher with each word.

“The prosecutor promised to call us if he’s released. Let’s do some of those breathing exercises you learned in therapy,” Kate suggested. “I could use some settling down, myself. I’ll do it with you, and then we’ll both be calmer.”

It took some persuasion but finally Ariel sat on the purple armchair and closed her eyes, inhaling and exhaling to counts of five.

“Okay, now tell me something you can hear,” Kate led her through the calming ritual with a voice that was far more at ease than she felt.

“The birds, the creek, the windchimes,” Ariel replied, her voice shaking.

“What can you feel?”

“The velvet on the arms of the chair. The soft, squishy blanket you made.”

“What can you see?”

Ariel opened her eyes, her lashes thickened by tears. “I see the trees outside the window. I see our woodstove inside.

“What can you smell?”

“My armpits are stinky.” Ariel gave her mom a tremulous smile as she gathered all her mental resources to calm down.

Kate smiled back, relieved that Ariel’s sense of humor was returning. “Okay, we have to figure out what to do.”

Ariel suggested, “Why don’t we walk to Mr. Slocum’s house?”

“I think that’s our best bet. We can’t call for help, and we can’t drive for help – it’s the only –“

The room lit up as a lightning bolt flashed outside the windows. It was quickly followed by a noisy clap of thunder that made both of them jump.

“I guess we have to wait until tomorrow,” Kate said reluctantly, looking out the window.  “It’s not safe to hike through the woods in this storm.”

The wind was picking up, and the rain had become torrential. If the pine needles were wet from the rain, it would be slippery and dangerous to head down the steep trail. And beneath that would be mud, making the trek even more treacherous. Add the quickly increasing darkness, and leaving could be more dangerous than staying. They wouldn’t get very far if one of them sprained an ankle or broke a leg.

She summoned up a broad smile and turned to Ariel. “Let’s get this house barricaded. We’re spending the night.”

…

Rapidly, Kate formulated a plan. She had a gun and lots of ammo. She needed to make the little cabin difficult to breach, and she was going to have to figure out what to do about that basement. Whoever had been inside her home wasn’t getting back in.

First things first, they needed to get their overnight stuff from the Jeep. Having a book to read would help Ariel pass the time more calmly.

“Okay, girlie girl. From this point on, we do not separate for any reason. We’re going to go out to the Jeep and get our stuff back in. You’re going to have to carry both bags, though, okay?”

Kate picked up her pistol and a flashlight to lead the way. When she opened the door, she carefully scanned the area around the cabin. If anyone was out there, she couldn’t see them.

She and Ariel raced across the wet gravel to the Jeep, where Kate turned her back to the vehicle, sweeping the vicinity. Ariel grabbed the bags and slammed the liftgate shut.

They hurried back inside, breathless more from fear than exertion.

Once in, Kate began pushing furniture against the doors to form a barricade. Ariel jumped in to help. Soon, the television armoire was against the front door, and the Hoosier cabinet was against the back.

In the kitchen, Kate opened the large bottom drawer and got out a hammer and a handful of nails. She put a cutting board on the floor and sat down.

“What are you doing?” asked Ariel.

“I’m making caltrops.”

“What are caltrops? Are they related to Cyclops?” Ariel tried to keep her voice light and humorous.

Kate flashed her an appreciative smile. “Well, they’re better if they are welded together, but I think I can MacGyver something here. They have sharp points and are put together so a pointy side is always up. They won’t keep anyone out, but if they come in through the windows, we’ll sure hear them.”

It took a few tries, but soon Kate had figured out how to bend the long nails around one another to create some makeshift caltrops. She made a half dozen to go in front of each window in the cabin, then placed them carefully where someone stepping down from climbing through would almost certainly impale themselves painfully.

Next, she closed the doors to both bedrooms. In a challenging course she had traveled to rural Croatia to attend, she learned that the smaller the area she had to protect, the better off they’d be. Since the bedroom doors opened inward, they would be challenging to barricade as she had the exterior doors. Kate revisited the hardware drawer to see if there were any potential solutions. She found it in a little packet she’d purchased to secure the door to the back porch. Four hook and eye closures remained. They weren’t very sturdy, but they might be enough to slow someone down.

Kate quickly installed the hooks and eyes to each bedroom door and frame, then latched them closed. She hung a set of bear bells on each hook just to add a little more “early warning” to the situation.

She sat down on the sofa and thought.

What the heck was she going to do about that basement?

“I guess I should clear the basement?” she said, as more of a question than a declaration.

“No. NO. Absolutely not. It’s not safe,” Ariel began to get wound up again.

“But what if someone’s down there?”

“Well, they can stay down there. They’re locked in, and we’d hear them if they broke out those windows,” Ariel replied.

Kate got up and walked into the kitchen, staring at the door. The Molly bar was pretty secure, but someone strong and really determined could get through that door. She wanted to have a plan if they did.

She slid the dining table to the basement door and flipped it on its side to create more of a barricade. Then, they shoved all four chairs in front of the table. If someone was getting in, it wouldn’t be done quietly.

If someone is trying to get in through that door, thought Kate, I’ll just shoot through it. 

No matter the situation, Kate had always felt better with a plan. It didn’t even have to be the best plan in the world – it just meant that she could react faster to whatever emergency was looming. Seconds counted in a crisis.

“Why don’t you read your book?” she suggested to Ariel, who immediately draped her lanky limbs on the couch. She went back through to make sure all the blackout blinds were closed so that nobody could see in from the outside. She turned off all the lights but a reading lamp in between the couch and the chair, selected a novel from the bookcase for herself, and sat in the oversized armchair.

She fervently hoped that she had blown this whole thing out of proportion, and whatever reason that door had been open was completely innocent and non-threatening. Boy, was she going to feel silly when she figured out what it was that had caused her panic.

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t convince herself that everything was not related – the open refrigerator, the missing ravioli, the unlocked door, and the Jeep that had picked the most inconvenient moment ever to take a crap in her driveway.

She knew that everything was not, in fact, all right.

It was going to be a very long night, and she doubted she’d sleep a wink.

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About Daisy

Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites.  1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2)  The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.

Daisy is the best-selling author of 5 traditionally published books, 12 self-published books, and runs a small digital publishing company with PDF guides, printables, and courses at SelfRelianceand Survival.com You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Gab, MeWe, Parler, Instagram, and Twitter.