The Shadow in the Dark Chapter Twenty Six

I ran straight into Martin’s arms without a second thought. 

How very female of me. 

 

“Ashlee – my God, look at you. Are you all right?”

 

I didn’t realize how cold I was until Martin’s arms closed around me. It wasn’t sudden or theatrical—just there, solid and warm, his coat rough against my cheek, his hands steady on my back as if they had always known exactly where to go. My body reacted before my mind could object. I leaned into him, hard, my fingers knotting in the fabric at his shoulders, breath hitching as something inside me finally gave way.

 

For a moment, I let myself be held. Oh, but it felt so good to be held by a man. To be subject to his strength and his protection. Isn’t that what we all truly wanted? To be owned?

 

The woods were still behind us, dark and impenetrable, but Martin stood between me and them, broad-shouldered, familiar. The smell of him - soap, road dust, his old world cologne, something faintly metallic - anchored me more effectively than any grounding technique I could remember. My shaking slowed. My heart stopped trying to tear its way out of my chest. And that, more than anything else, troubled me, because this wasn’t who I was supposed to be. I was Ashlee Ellis. FBI. Tough. Controlled. I didn’t collapse into anyone’s arms after a bad situation. I debriefed. I compartmentalized. I took command. Yet here I was, clinging to my boyfriend like a frightened girl who’d wandered too far from home.

 

I pulled back slightly, just enough to look at him.

 

Martin’s face was drawn tight with worry, eyes scanning me as if counting injuries, confirming I was real. He cupped my face gently, thumbs brushing dirt and dried tears from my cheeks, and I felt another flicker of shame at how badly I wanted that touch to continue. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said quietly. “For days.”

 

The words landed wrong.

 

“What?” I asked.

 

“Ever since you called me,” he went on, completely certain. “From the service station. After the crash.”

 

My stomach tightened. “I didn’t call you,” I said automatically.

 

He frowned, not angry—confused. “Ash, you did. You were shaken. You said you’d crashed the car and didn’t know where you were. You told me Massachusetts, somewhere rural. A service station. You kept apologizing.”

 

That wasn’t how I remembered it.

 

The image in my head was clear and stubborn: the harsh fluorescent lights of the service station, the payphone sticky and cold under my fingers. Me standing there, heart racing, trying to remember his number and coming up with nothing. Panic mounting as the silence stretched. Walking away without dialling. “I went to the phone,” I said slowly. “But I couldn’t remember your number. I remember that. I remember leaving.”

 

Martin shook his head. “You called me, Ashlee. We talked for nearly five minutes.”

 

The ground seemed to tilt.

 

“Then how do I not remember it?” I asked.

 

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, clearly choosing his words. “You were concussed. The crash was bad. Memory gaps aren’t exactly…”

 

“No,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “That’s not….”

 

I stopped myself. Took a breath. My thoughts were starting to skid, slipping toward something darker, something I didn’t want to name too quickly. He reached for me again, tentative this time, as if sensing the shift. “I traced the area from what you told me. I’ve been driving back roads, asking questions. I found that service station. When I saw your car abandoned near the woods…”

 

“You found my car?” My pulse spiked.

 

“Yes. That’s how I knew you were close.” He hesitated. “Ash… how else would I know where to look?”

 

The question echoed in my head long after he finished speaking. Because the answer that rose up was not comforting. A thought surfaced - unwanted, insistent, icy with recognition. This feels staged. Not fake, not harmless, but constructed. Like a puzzle designed to unsettle me. Like something out of ‘The Magus’, or that film, ‘The Game’. A narrative where every reassurance was also a manipulation, every rescuer potentially another actor.

 

I looked at Martin again, really looked this time.

 

The concern in his eyes seemed genuine. The way his hands trembled just slightly as they rested on my arms. The exhaustion etched into his face. If this was an act, it was an extraordinarily good one.

 

And yet.

 

If I was being tested – watched - broken down to see how I would react… who better to use than the person I trusted most? I thought back to our first chance meeting in that bar, so many months ago. No, it couldn’t possibly have been staged. Elijah can’t possibly have that sort of reach, I’m being paranoid. But…

 

The idea made my skin prickle.

 

“Do you think this is all… connected?” I asked carefully.

 

“To what?” he said.

 

I almost told him. Almost said the word game. Almost asked him outright if he was part of it.

 

But I didn’t.

 

Instead, I let him pull me close again, because some part of me needed the protection, needed the illusion of safety even as another part stood rigid and watchful inside my own head. I rested my cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, steady and real. You’re FBI, I told myself. You don’t surrender your judgment. But I stayed where I was, held and uncertain, wondering whether the arms around me were a refuge, or just another move in a game I didn’t remember agreeing to play.

 

I felt a sense of calm, pressed against Martin’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and trying to convince myself it meant safety. I had known him for months - long enough for routines to form, for familiarity to dull suspicion. We had met by seeming chance when I had randomly walked into a Singles bar in Springfield, then dated sporadically, before falling into something gentle and careful. Romantic, yes, but restrained. Unconsummated.

 

That word floated up, unwanted.

 

I was still a virgin. I knew that the same way I knew my name, yet I couldn’t explain why. The idea of sex filled me with a strange double sensation - hunger and dread braided together so tightly I couldn’t separate them. I wanted closeness, wanted to be known, and at the same time something in me recoiled, went rigid, as if stepping over an invisible line would shatter me.

 

Martin’s hand moved slowly through my hair, smoothing it down my back, his fingers brushing the white ribbon that kept it tied. The gesture was tender. Protective.

 

It made my skin prickle.

 

“I need to tell you something,” I said, pulling back just enough to breathe.

 

He nodded, attentive, encouraging. “Okay. I’m here.”

 

“There were men,” I said. “At the house. Wearing masks. Pig masks.” Saying it out loud made it sound unreal, theatrical, but the memory refused to soften. “They had machetes. They followed me into the woods. They were hunting me, Martin. I barely got away.”

 

His brow furrowed. “Pig masks?”

 

“Yes,” I said sharply. “And they’re close by. They have to be. We can’t stay here. We need to leave - now.” I grabbed his jacket, urgency surging. “Please. Just get in the car and drive. Anywhere. Before they come out of the trees.”

 

For a moment, I thought he would agree. I saw calculation flicker across his face, but it didn’t resolve the way I expected. Instead, he gently but firmly took my hands away from him. “Stay here,” he said.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m going to take a look.”

 

“No,” I said immediately. “That’s a terrible idea.”

 

He had already turned away, heading toward his car. I followed him, panic rising, every nerve screaming that this was wrong. He opened the driver’s door, leaned inside, and when he straightened again there was a handgun in his hand.

 

I stopped short.

 

The world narrowed.

 

“You have a gun?” I asked.

 

He glanced at it briefly, as if it were nothing more than a tool. “Yes.”

 

I stared at him. “Since when?” Martin had never struck me as the sort of man who would carry a handgun in his car. 

 

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is you’re safe now.”

 

I shook my head, the movement sharp. “Martin, you don’t understand. These men are dangerous. You can’t just go looking for them.”

 

“I’m not letting them come back for you,” he said calmly. “I’ll deal with it.”

 

The phrase chilled me. “Give me the gun,” I said.

 

He looked at me then, surprised. “No.”

 

“I’m trained,” I insisted, stepping closer. “I’m FBI. I know how to handle a weapon. You don’t.”

 

He actually laughed. Not cruelly - but dismissively, the way you laugh at a child who has misunderstood something important. “No, Ash,” he said. “You’re shaken. You’re not thinking clearly.”

 

Anger flared hot and sudden. “I am thinking clearly. This is my job. You’re the one taking unnecessary risks.”

 

He shifted the gun out of reach as I moved toward it. “It’s not safe for you.”

 

That did it. “Not safe?” I snapped. “You don’t get to say that. I carry a badge. I’ve been trained for—”

 

He cut me off with a raised hand. “Enough.”

 

The word landed heavy, final. For the first time since I’d known him, I saw something hard in his expression—not unkind, but absolute. A certainty that had no room for argument. “You’re scared,” he said, slowly, as if explaining something simple. “You’ve been through a shock. I get that. But you’re not handling a gun right now.”

 

I stared at him, stunned. “You don’t believe me.”

 

“I believe you think you’re FBI,” he said carefully.

 

The carefulness hurt more than outright denial. I would have shown him my badge, but of course I had lost it. 

 

“I am,” I said. I expected him to defer then. To apologize. To recalibrate.

 

He didn’t.

 

Instead, he stepped closer and placed his hands on my shoulders, firm but not rough, grounding me like an anchor. “Listen to me,” he said. “Right now, your job is to stay here. My job is to make sure nothing hurts you.”

 

The words should have been comforting.

 

They weren’t.

 

They stripped something away.

 

I realized then that he wasn’t protecting me as an equal. He was managing me. Containing me. The way you handle something fragile - or volatile. I pulled free of his grip, heart pounding with a new kind of fear. “You’re treating me like I don’t know myself,” I said.

 

He sighed, a patient sound. “I’m treating you like someone who’s been through too much.”

 

“And if you’re wrong?” I asked quietly. “If this is real?”

 

His jaw tightened. “Then I’ll handle it.”

 

I watched him turn back toward the trees, gun in hand, and a terrible thought rooted itself deep in my chest.

 

If this was a game…

 

If I was being tested, manipulated, unmade…

 

Then the most dangerous part of it might not be the masked men in the woods.

 

It might be the person who insisted he knew what was best for me, and refused to let me decide for myself.

 

I didn’t stay on the road. I had the sense that if this as a game, then this as one of those moments where I was supposed to make a crucial decision. Do I stay by the car, alone, defenceless, unarmed, or do I follow the boyfriend who carries the only weapon, but who blindly heads towards the hidden danger? I could imagine a video game timer counting down as I decided whether to press the x button or to the circle button on my hand controller. 

 

I followed him.

 

I told myself I was doing it because I didn’t trust him to be careful, because he was walking into a situation he didn’t understand. That was the FBI part of me talking - alert, analytical, responsible. But beneath that was something more primitive: fear of being left alone again, of standing on the edge of the trees listening for footsteps that might never come, or might.

 

Martin didn’t tell me to stay back. He didn’t tell me to come with him either. He just moved forward, handgun low at his side, posture relaxed in a way that made my skin crawl. Too relaxed. Like a man walking his dog, not someone entering woods where masked men with machetes had hunted his girlfriend less than an hour ago.

 

“Martin,” I hissed. “Slow down.”

 

He glanced back, mildly annoyed. “I’ve got it under control.”

 

That phrase again. Control. 

 

The woods swallowed us quickly. The road vanished behind a screen of trees and brush, and the air changed - cooler, heavier, smelling of wet leaves and rot. My shoes sank slightly into the forest floor with each step. I scanned constantly, left and right, every snapped twig sending a spark of adrenaline through me.

 

Martin, meanwhile, moved with infuriating calm. He stopped frequently, crouching to inspect the ground, brushing aside leaves with the toe of his boot. He pointed out things as if giving a demonstration. “See?” he said once, gesturing at the dirt. “No fresh tracks. Nothing heavy. No signs of a group moving through here.”

 

“They don’t stomp,” I said, as I crossed my arms. “They were careful.”

 

He hummed noncommittally and kept moving.

 

He checked trees for scuffed bark, snapped branches, anything that might suggest passage. He paused near a cluster of ferns, nudged them aside, shook his head. He even walked a rough semicircle, widening his search pattern, methodical and patient.

 

Too patient.

 

I watched his back as he moved - confident, upright, unhurried. The gun stayed steady in his hand, finger nowhere near the trigger, like he’d handled it before. That realization settled uncomfortably in my gut. “You’re very comfortable with that gun,” I said.

 

He didn’t look at me. “I’m being careful.”

 

“That’s not what I said.”

 

He sighed. “Ashlee, please. Let me do this.”

 

Let me. As if this were a chore I was interfering with. As if my presence was a liability. Anger flared, sharp and bright, cutting through my fear. He still hadn’t given me the gun. Hadn’t even let me touch it. Not even to check the safety. He didn’t respect my training, my experience  - my identity. Or maybe he didn’t believe in it at all.

 

We went deeper. Or maybe only a little deeper - it was hard to tell. The woods felt different from the inside, more labyrinth than space. Every direction looked the same. I recognized nothing. None the land marks seemed familiar from when I had been running in panic. That frightened me more than I wanted to admit.

 

Martin came to a stop near a shallow dip in the ground. He crouched again, studied the leaves, then straightened. “Nothing here, either,” he said. “No signs of anyone.”

 

I shook my head. “They were here. I know they were.”

 

He turned to face me fully now, expression gentle in a way that felt rehearsed. “I believe you were scared.”

 

“That’s not the same thing,” I snapped.

 

“No,” he agreed calmly. “It isn’t.”

 

We stood there, the woods quiet around us, too quiet. No voices. No footsteps. No masked men emerging from behind trees. A crack formed in my certainty. What if he’s right? a small voice asked. What if there’s nothing here now?

 

And then – worse - another thought followed.

 

What if there never was?

 

The idea made me feel dizzy. I leaned against a tree without meaning to, pressing my palm to the bark, grounding myself the way I had before. My mind drifted, unbidden, back to the service station. The payphone. The smell of oil and coffee. My hand hovering over the keypad. Had I really not remembered his number? I had lost my mobile phone, but did I have some other record of his number in my handbag? I had been so sure. That memory had felt solid, undeniable. But now, standing here, with Martin insisting - calmly, confidently - that I had called him, the edges of it began to blur.

 

Could I have dialled without realizing it? Did I have a scrap of paper, still – a torn piece of a beer mat, perhaps, where he had scribbled his number down that first night we had met in the Singles bar in Springfield? Could panic have erased those minutes from my memory? Could I be wrong?

 

The possibility terrified me.

 

Because if Martin was telling the truth—if he really had come because I asked him to - then the world was still intact. Ordinary. Manageable.

 

But if he wasn’t…

 

If this was a game, something elaborate and cruel and perfectly resourced, then it meant the reach of it extended far beyond masked men in the woods. It meant it could reach into my memories, my relationships, my sense of self.

 

I wanted – desperately - to believe him.

 

Martin stepped closer, lowering the gun slightly. “See?” he said softly. “There’s nothing here. You’re safe.”

 

He placed a hand at the small of my back, guiding me as if I might wander off otherwise. The gesture was protective.

 

And infuriating.

 

“I don’t need you to shepherd me,” I said.

 

He smiled thinly. “I know you don’t think you do.”

 

There it was again. That careful phrasing. That quiet dismissal.

 

“I can look after myself,” I said.

 

“I know,” he replied, in the same tone you use when humouring someone.

 

I felt suddenly very tired. We stood in the woods, surrounded by nothing - no proof of danger, no evidence of safety either. Just Martin’s confidence pressing down on me, and my own doubts folding inward, collapsing under their own weight. I wanted to trust him because the alternative was to believe that everything I thought I knew about my life, my memories, and myself could be manipulated. And I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to face that yet.

 

I felt ridiculous standing there with Martin in the trees, the damp earth pressing cold through the thin soles of my shoes, because there was no way to pretend the clothes didn’t matter. They were the first thing anyone would see. They were the thing he was seeing now.

 

The dress was wrong in every possible way. Childish. Infantile. Powder blue, too careful, too innocent. The skirt flared out from my hips in a way that made me acutely aware of my own body, not because it flattered me, but because it infantilised me - turned me into a shape, a prop, something decorative. The netted petticoat beneath it rustled softly when I shifted my weight, an absurd, prim little sound in the middle of the woods. The sash was tied into a perfect bow at the front, still immaculate despite everything, as if mocking the state I was in. Pearl buttons marched neatly down the fabric, untouched by mud, untouched by fear.

 

My socks - white, absurdly white - were splattered brown up to the calves now, the folds no longer crisp. The Mary Janes were worse: glossy once, now dulled and streaked, the toes caked with mud. They clicked faintly when I moved, a polite, childish sound that seemed to announce me, betray me. Even my hair felt like an accusation. The ribbon bow was still there, stubbornly intact, holding most of it back, while loose strands clung to my face and neck where I’d been sweating, where I’d run.

 

I could feel Martin looking at me. Not leering, not openly judgmental - worse than that. Assessing. Taking stock. His gaze flicked down and back up again, quick but thorough, like he was filing something away. Each time his eyes returned to my face, I felt myself shrink a little, as if the clothes were doing their work without anyone needing to say a word.

 

This is what they want, I thought. What Rosemary wants.

 

The realization made my stomach knot. The outfit wasn’t just inconvenient or inappropriate. It was a message. A reminder of smallness. Of dependency. Of being dressed rather than dressing myself. Standing there in the woods, surrounded by mud and branches and the evidence of my own fear, I felt stripped of something essential - not dignity exactly, but authority. Credibility.

 

Martin spoke about something practical - where we might go next, how far the road was - but I barely heard him. I was too busy watching his face, reading the subtle shifts in it, the way his tone softened when he addressed me, the way you might speak to someone fragile without quite meaning to. It infuriated me. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

 

“I know,” I said, too quickly, my voice sharper than I intended – quavering, slightly. “I know how this looks.”

 

He paused, eyebrows lifting slightly. “How what looks?”

 

I gestured helplessly at myself, the dress, the shoes, the ridiculous bow. “This. All of this. I didn’t choose it.”

 

There it was. The thing I’d been circling. Saying it out loud made my face burn.

 

“I was made to wear it,” I continued, forcing the words through, needing them to land properly. “I don’t have anything else. Someone – Rosemary - is doing this deliberately. Ever since the crash. Ever since my car went off the road.” I heard myself rushing, stacking explanations on top of each other, terrified of the silence that might follow. “She’s playing some kind of psychological game with me. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. She dressed me like this on purpose. To… to make me feel small. To make other people see me this way.”

 

Martin watched me with an expression that might have been concern, might have been patience. He nodded once, slowly. “If you say so,” he said. The words were mild. Too mild. They landed like a dismissal. I could tell - instinctively, painfully - that he didn’t quite believe me. Or rather, that he believed I believed it, which felt worse. Like humouring a story rather than accepting a fact.

 

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I need you to understand. I’m not - this isn’t me. I’m capable. I was driving alone. I handle my own affairs. I don’t dress like a child.” I hated how desperate I sounded, how each sentence seemed to undermine the one before it. “I don’t need someone choosing my clothes for me.”

 

He gave a small, noncommittal smile. “Alright.”

 

Alright. The way you say it when you don’t want to argue. I felt something collapse inside my chest. The harder I tried to assert myself, the more I could see his impression of me settling into place: stranded, shaken, dressed absurdly, insisting on elaborate explanations. A woman who needed help whether she admitted it or not. The woods seemed to close in a little then, branches hemming us in, the hem of my dress brushing damp leaves. I stood there in my childish finery, mud-stained and humiliated, acutely aware that whatever I said next would only deepen the gap between who I knew myself to be and who Martin now saw standing in front of him.

 

Martin crouched near the edge of the clearing, pushing aside ferns with a stick, as if the ground itself might confess something if he looked at it hard enough. I stayed where I was, rooted in place, my skirt brushing my knees every time I shifted, the bow at my chest an unwanted focal point.

 

“There’d be tracks,” he said after a moment, not looking at me. “Broken branches. Something. I can’t see anything.”

 

“There were,” I said. “I saw them.”

 

“You saw shadows,” he replied calmly. Too calmly. “That happens when you’re frightened.”

 

I laughed once, short and sharp. “I wasn’t imagining it. They were there. Men. With pig masks.”

 

He straightened and finally faced me again. His eyes went, as they had before, briefly downward - taking in the dress, the socks, the ridiculous shoes - before returning to my face. I hated that flicker of habit. Hated that I noticed it every time.

 

“Ashlee,” he said, gently now, “I’ve walked through woods for many years. There’s no sign anyone else has been through here tonight.”

 

“That doesn’t mean they weren’t here,” I snapped. “It just means you don’t see what I saw. We might not be looking in the right place.” I realised how shrill and desperate my voice seemed to sound. 

 

He exhaled, slow. “Or it means there’s nothing to see.”

 

The words hit harder than I expected. I felt heat rise up my neck, under the pristine white collar that suddenly felt like a restraint. “You think I made it up,” I said.

 

“I think you’re under a lot of stress.”

 

“That’s not the same thing.”

 

“It can be,” he said.

 

I took a step toward him, and the Mary Janes clicked treacherously against a stone, the sound absurdly loud. I clenched my hands into fists, feeling the smoothness of the dress fabric under my fingers, how unsuited it was to anger. “You keep talking to me like this,” I said, “like I’m fragile. Like I don’t know what I saw.”

 

“I’m talking to you like someone who ran through the woods in party clothes,” he replied before he could stop himself.

 

There it was. Out in the open at last.

 

I stared at him. “Those clothes were not my choice. I told you.”

 

“I know,” he said quickly. “You did.”

 

“And you don’t believe me.”

 

He hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second. That was enough. “I believe you feel controlled,” he said carefully. “I believe you feel threatened. But masked men? Out here?” He gestured around us. “For what reason?”

 

“That’s what I’m trying to understand,” I said, my voice rising despite myself. “You think I’d choose to look like this? You think I’d run around dressed like a doll if I had any other option?”

 

He didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted again, betraying him. I followed it down to myself: the flared skirt, the muddy socks, the bow that still sat perfectly centred on my waist. I suddenly wanted to tear it all off, to stand there in my underwear if it meant being taken seriously. “You’re not listening,” I said. “This is part of it. The clothes. The isolation. The crash. All of it. Someone is stripping things away from me one piece at a time, and you’re standing here telling me I imagined the most frightening part.”

 

Martin’s jaw tightened. “I’m telling you there’s no evidence.”

 

“Because you’re looking for the wrong kind,” I shot back. “You’re looking for footprints and broken twigs. I’m telling you this is about making me doubt myself.”

 

Silence stretched between us. A bird took off somewhere nearby, startled by the raised voices. I was suddenly acutely aware of how I must look to him now - flushed, dishevelled, childish clothes spattered with mud, insisting on invisible men in the trees.

 

“I need you to trust me,” I said finally, the words coming out lower, strained. “Not because I look like this. Not because you think I’m shaken. But because I know my own mind.”

 

Martin rubbed a hand over his face. When he looked back at me, there was sympathy there. And something else. Pity, maybe. Or resignation. “I want to help you,” he said. “But right now, all I see is someone who’s been frightened badly and pushed into a corner.”

 

The ground seemed to tilt under me.

 

“That’s not all I am,” I said.

 

“I know,” he replied.

 

But the way he said it - patient, unconvinced - told me that whatever I was trying to prove, the dress had already spoken first.