Upon my return, I find the cabin untouched by the other Death Dealers. The closest any of them get is an injured female thirty yards from the front porch. Having grown too arrogant about my skills, I underestimate hers. The dying woman scratches my cheek and nearly gouges out my left eye before I put her down.
I blame my sloppiness on Odessa. The impaled woman reveals my new companion’s future. How soon before Odessa loses her ability to speak? The process is different for everyone, but I doubt she’ll last any longer than Mary or the other people I brought to the cabin.
Before walking inside, I give the woods one more scan. How many Death Dealers still exist? I rarely check the highway anymore. I don’t know what drew me this time around. I’d promised myself to stop bringing people here since Mary. Now with Odessa, I don’t know what to do with her.
Once in the basement, I move slowly. Energy swirls around me, biting at my flesh. Too many lives ended here, and some of them never left. I smell the burn of their power in the air. They challenge me, hungering death even after facing theirs.
I open the closet to find Odessa slumped to the side. Her green eyes stare blankly upward. When I snap my fingers in front of her flushed face, she doesn’t react.
Kneeling in front of her, I suspect a trick. She’s breathing too fast, and her hands wrap around her throat as if she’s choking. I reach out and poke her between the eyes. Odessa doesn’t blink or show any other reaction. She’s lost in her head, and I glance around at the angry energy. When I left Odessa down here, I’d forgotten how the voices like to play.
I say her name, but nothing registers in her gaze. She’s lost wherever her mind retreated to find solace.
Picking her up, I carry Odessa to the living room. When I place her on the couch, I notice her oozing leg wound. I sigh at how quickly she deteriorates. Mary took longer to get this far gone.
Leaving her on the couch, I clean and dress her wound. Eventually, her gaze finds me, but I don’t know how much she sees. I tell her the medicine will heal the wound and kill any infection. Odessa doesn’t react, but I sense she understands.
I switch on the TV set and wonder if anything will be visible today. I flip through one static filled channel after another until finding an old movie.
Odessa and I sit across from each other with her on the couch and me in an uncomfortable green chair. I don’t watch the movie. She doesn’t either. I wait for her to return from the hiding place in her mind.
“I killed a man,” she says long after the movie is over and the sun is gone.
“I’ve killed many men.”
“Don’t leave me in there again.”
“We’ll see.”
Odessa’s shell-shocked expression shifts into something more alert, nearly menacing. She’s awake now. Fully back with me in the cabin and no longer in her head.
“Whose house is this?”
“He said his name was Tom Hallward. I met him sometime after I arrived in the Lost Highway. I’d seen him in the woods. He eventually invited me into his home to look at his trophies.”
Odessa examines her bandaged leg. Her gaze reveals relief at knowing she’ll heal.
“He tortured women in his basement,” I continue. “He also had a woman in your room. He’d become lonely with his life here and wanted a companion. Someone he could talk with like he couldn’t with his trophies.”
“What happened to him?”
“He wanted me to share this cabin and help hunt the other Death Dealers. He promised to share his trophies with me.”
Odessa watches me and waits for an answer. She needs things spelled out because she is trapped in the old way of thinking. I wonder if that’ll slow her descent into madness.
“I don’t share, so I waited until Tom told me everything he knew, and then I snapped his neck right over there,” I say, pointing to the kitchen table. “When I released the trophy from your room, she ran out of the cabin. It was just after sundown, and I assume the wolves ate her.”
Odessa glances at the window where the world hides behind a curtain of darkness.
“Wolves? Is that what you hunted earlier?”
“Wolves only come out at night here. They’ll eat anything. Never go into the darkness unless you wish to be torn apart by wild animals.”
Odessa glances around the room and considers her next question. I haven’t spoken this long to someone since Mary. She had a million questions, and none of the answers helped her in the long run.
“Why couldn’t you leave me locked in the room? Why that coffin?”
“Anyone can take you from the room. I did you a favor.”
“I could have suffocated in the coffin.”
“It’s a closet, and you didn’t suffocate.”
“Would you have cared if I did?” she challenges.
“I don’t know.”
Odessa’s anger fizzles. I don’t know what she expects me to say or promise her. Now she only stares at her hands resting in her lap.