The Unclaimed Victim

by D. M. Pulley

  “Do you know where we are?” Brother Wenger asked in a soft voice, backing her into the room.

  She didn’t have to pretend to be terrified. He had the hungry look of a predator pinning down his prey.

  “This is where they kept prisoners during the Civil War. This whole place was once a hospital. They treated Lincoln’s soldiers upstairs and kept his prisoners right here.”

  There was no window, no bed. Just a round drain in the dirt floor. Metal shackles hung from the far wall.

  “I’ve been watching you, Hattie. You mock your sisters at prayer. You mock Brother Milton. You mock me. I can see the devil looking through your eyes.” He smiled at her and brushed her cheek gently with the back of his hand. “You are not a true Christian, are you?”

  Her blood froze in her veins. Mary Alice. If Wenger knew the truth about her, the poor girl’s fate rested in his hands. The terrified look on her face pleased him.

  “It’s okay. Mary Alice did the right thing bringing you to us. We will help you, Hattie. We will help you believe. We will release you from the beast. But first, you need to remove all of your false notions of God. You need to be born again in the light of Jesus to accept Him fully into your heart.” He put his hands on her shoulders and gave them a squeeze. Then his fingers drifted to the buttons of her dress.

  Here we go, she thought and let the fear already twisting its way through her veins show in her widening eyes.

  He chuckled, thrilling at her reaction as he unhooked one button after another. “I’m not going to hurt you, Sister. I am bound by my faith, but we are all exposed in the eyes of God. We must all cast aside our armor and lie naked before Him to fully receive His salvation.”

  She didn’t fight as his fingers guided her dress off her shoulders and onto the floor. Each touch sent a shudder through her, and she let her eyes well up with tears, remembering the first time she’d been helpless at the hands of a man. Her fear fed his enjoyment just as she intended. He smiled as he gazed over the terrain of her body. She willed herself to blush.

  Wenger lowered himself to his knees and pulled one stocking down her leg. She was truly naked without her knife. “There is no shame in showing yourself to God. He sees through all the lies you might tell me or tell yourself. Only He sees the real you.”

  His finger traced her scars and paused at the marks on her belly. “You’ve been through quite a lot, haven’t you?” There was no hiding the truth from the bare lightbulb hanging in the corridor behind him. She wasn’t the virgin she was pretending to be. Ethel bit her lip and braced herself for him to lash out and punish her for what someone else had taken before he’d had the chance. He removed her second stocking as gently as the first.

  He stood up, blocking the light in the hall completely, swallowing her in his shadow. “Do not be afraid, Hattie. We are all sinners before God in thought and word and deed. We must all be born again into the body of Christ, but first we must leave our sinful ways behind us. First we must repent.”

  The clammy cold air fondled her bare skin as he spoke. She began to shiver.

  “Adam’s sin is imputed to the whole of mankind,” he continued, bent on delivering a sermon he’d obviously spent some time perfecting in his own mind. “We will all die in body and in spirit, separated from God for all eternity, unless we take Jesus into our hearts. For He will be resurrected, and He will call the saved to His side. If I don’t help you find Him in your heart, you will be condemned to eternal suffering and will spend your days on earth as a beast. You must open your heart and mind. Let me help you, Hattie.”

  He gazed at her with the same lust she’d seen in the eyes of her clients. She suspected that if she pressed herself against him, she’d find him hard with anticipation.

  “Moses spent forty years in the desert until he found his way. I’m going to help you find your way home to the Lord, Sister. I don’t think it will take forty years, but we shall see.” He smiled again.

  His plan started to take shape in her mind as he stepped into the doorway. Terror shot up her spine. No.

  “Anyone who watched you at dinner can see you don’t know your prayers, Hattie. If I had to guess, I’d say you’ve never even read the Bible.”

  She didn’t protest or argue. Her eyes were too busy darting around the tiny room as Wenger stood there blocking the exit. Her clothes were gathered in his left arm. This isn’t happening. I can’t let this happen. He outweighed her by more than fifty pounds. His eyes seemed to read hers and challenged her to charge.

  “Let us begin your journey to salvation, dear Hattie.” His voice rose with a frightening fervor. “We will start from the beginning. Genesis, chapter one, verse one. To understand the power of God, you must first imagine the world without God.”

  Does anyone even know I’m here? He took a step outside the room as her eyes widened in protest.

  “In the beginning . . . it was dark.”

  A scream escaped her throat as he shut the door.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ethel pushed against the door to her prison cell with all her strength. Her hands fumbled in the blackness for the handle, but there wasn’t one. The dead bolt slid home with the metallic ring of a death knell. She pounded on the wood with her fists until she was sure they were bleeding.

  “Let me outta here!” she shrieked. Vow of silence be damned.

  The sliver of light below the door went out.

  She yelled for all she was worth. “Come back! . . . Please! . . . You can’t just keep me in here like a prisoner! This isn’t Christian, Goddammit! . . . Help! Mary Alice? Somebody?”

  After tortured minutes of pounding and screaming, her voice was cracked and her fists were raw. She fell to her knees and stared into the darkness. The dirt floor was cold under her bare shins. She shivered in the dank basement air. What the hell was I thinking? I just stood there like an idiot while the son of a bitch stripped me.

  It had never occurred to her that he’d go to the trouble of getting her naked and just leave her to rot. She’d never considered he’d just turn away from a willing victim. Quivering lips and wide eyes had never failed her before.

  If he’d gotten down to business, she would’ve had a chance. With him fully distracted by her body, she could lie there and wait for the perfect moment to pounce. Thumbs in the eyes or a stiff punch in the throat would’ve at least been options. If he wasn’t too mean, she might’ve just waited it out to see if he fell asleep. But this.

  She should’ve begged to hear more of his Jesus talk instead.

  Ethel pulled herself to her feet and felt the walls all the way around her cell. Large blocks of stone stacked and set in mortar surrounded her, far too heavy and thick to move. Two paces to the side. Three paces deep. The room was barely large enough to lie down. It was a tomb. It smelled of moss and dirt, the air was thick with it. She couldn’t breathe. Oh, God, I’m going to die in here. I can’t breathe. There’s not enough air.

  She backed into the door as a wave of panic crashed over her. Her fingers traced the seams, searching for a latch, a hinge, a handle. There was nothing but rough-hewn wood. She pressed her nose to the joint between the door and jamb and breathed in slightly fresher air from the corridor. Her eye strained to see through it into the world outside, but there was nothing but black.

  He’s coming back, she told herself. He said this was just the beginning.

  She shuddered to think what might come next and curled up into a ball next to the door. Hugging her knees in a vain attempt to stay warm, she sat there rocking back and forth, dreaming up a plan to escape.

  Mary Alice will have to fend for herself. I ain’t no saint and there is no way in hell I’m letting that rat bastard play his games with me. The second that door opens again, I’m gettin’ the hell out of here.

  Her options were limited. Wenger was far bigger and stronger, and in a tight space like this, she wouldn’t have a chance. What she needed was a weapon. Her knife was safely tucked away in her mattress. What a dummy!
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  Ethel let go of her knees and stood up again. Eyes wide in the dark, she forced herself to picture the room the way it had looked in the light. There had been nothing in there but the chains hanging from the walls. With her arms held out in front to protect her face, she inched her way to the far wall and began to feel around for the shackles. They weren’t where she remembered them. Her hands swept the stone side to side. Dust fell to the floor with the dappled sound of rain. A nest of cobwebs tangled in her fingers, and she shook them from her hand. They were here. I saw them, she told herself as the panic of blindness rose back up again. She squeezed her eyes shut, raising her arms to the next row of stone.

  Cold metal slammed into her fingers. A creak and rattle followed as the thick steel links clamored against the stone. Her fingers grabbed at them, the rough burrs digging into her skin as she pulled with all her might. The chains didn’t budge. She traced the clinking metal up to the wall and down to wrist cuffs, searching for a weakness. She tugged and pulled and tested, hoping for something to give. The wrist cuffs were too stiff with rust to move. Her hands hurt too much to continue yanking on them, so she drew back a chain from the wall and hurled it against the stones.

  Clank.

  More dust rained down onto the dirt floor. Loose mortar and sand puffed into her mouth as she reared back and threw the chain against the wall again.

  Clank.

  The metal links wouldn’t budge. The crumbled mortar crunched under her feet. She felt through the rubble, hoping to find a sharp fragment of stone, fantasizing about shoving it right through Wenger’s throat.

  She knew how that story would end. Blood spurting up from the severed arteries, the bulging eyes, the gurgling breath as his lungs flooded, the sirens, the screams, the running, the cops. She’d spent two years in the workhouse for manslaughter. Am I ready to go back?

  She sat back on her bare ass and thought about it. Odds were good she wouldn’t even find her way out of the maze of the building without being caught by someone. What would they do to me then? They could kill me down here. They could beat and torture me. They could just leave me here to starve, and no one would ever know.

  As she rocked herself back and forth, the fact that Mary Alice feared being shunned more than anything else worried her. Does she know about these rooms? Has she ever been down here? Would she even know where to look for me?

  The seconds stretched into hours as Ethel sat there listening to her own breathing. The dust and dirt caked her mouth as a nagging thirst set in. Tiny cuts lined her throat from screaming. Bizarre colors and fleeting images pulsed in the dark. She’d shake them from her field of vision only to have them return a moment later. Waves of nausea came one after another as restless shakes tremored up and down her bones. Whether it was the cold or the urgent screams of her liver for more booze, she couldn’t quite tell anymore. The last time she’d dried out, she’d had fits of nightmares as the things she’d buried with booze came back to haunt her.

  The photograph of the dead girl flashed in the dark. The arms and legs missing. She’d had the thought that the stumps looked as though they’d been chewed by wild dogs, as the detective pummeled her with questions.

  Do you know this woman?

  The head had been lopped off. How the hell was she supposed to tell, she wondered, trying like hell not to let the picture bother her. Assuring herself it was no one she knew.

  Any of your friends go missing?

  An image of Wenger with a knife loomed its shadow over her along with the way the guts of that pig had spilled out of its body. She hugged her knees to her chest. They couldn’t even identify seven of the victims. They were nobodies that no one missed. No one would report her missing either.

  Please, God. She found herself praying inside her head. She tried to stop herself, determined not to give that bastard Wenger the sick satisfaction. Get me out of here.

  “Shh.” A whisper in the dark jolted Ethel out of her thoughts.

  “Hello?” she whispered back in a hoarse voice.

  “Shh,” the voice said again.

  “Who’s there?” she hissed and snapped her head toward the empty black space behind her where the door should be. “Hello? Can you hear me? Help!”

  “Shh,” the voice came from over her other shoulder.

  She jerked away from it and banged her arm into the stone wall. “Ow!”

  “Shh,” it said again, only this time it seemed to come from right in front of her.

  She swung her arms wildly into the darkness, desperate to clock the shit out of whoever was hissing at her. “Stop it!” she rasped.

  “Shhh.”

  Ethel leapt up and turned side to side, certain she’d make contact with something or someone. But she was alone. Her foot grazed something cold and hard on the ground. She knelt down to feel it with her hands. It was the floor drain. A round metal grate the size of a small dinner plate covered the hole.

  “Shh,” it said.

  “What?” Ethel pressed her ear to the grate, then spoke down into the hole. “Is someone there?”

  The sound of running water answered her. Shhhhhh.

  Ethel slapped herself in the head for being afraid of the dark. She listened again as water rushed past the hole in the ground and then stopped. Someone was taking a shower or using the toilet, she realized and recoiled a bit from the sound. But the air wafting up from the pipe wasn’t any more foul than the stink of the cellar. She laced her fingers through the drain slots and pulled up on the grate. It lifted freely. The round slotted plate weighed about fifteen pounds, she guessed, pulling it onto her lap and testing its heft with both hands.

  It would do the job nicely.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ethel crouched by the door, clutching the metal plate in her hand, waiting for her chance to escape her purgatory. Her fingers went numb. Her arms ached. After what could have been an hour, she let the plate rest on her legs and her head loll back against the wall.

  The hole in the center of the floor shushed her with the distant sound of rushing water. She blinked her eyes to reassure herself that they still existed, to remind her whether they were open or closed. She rubbed her invisible hands together and set them on the dirt floor gritty with disintegrated mortar. The hard masonry wall behind her dug into the knobs of her spine. She rocked her head back and forth on the uneven stone behind it as the chill in her bones worked its way deep into the marrow.

  How long does he plan to keep me here?

  She imagined driving the steel plate through his skull, crunching through that smug smile of his, breaking his teeth. The rough pitted edges of the drain cover dug into her thighs as it balanced there, waiting.

  Afraid to let her mind wander, she recounted every minute she’d spent with the Harmony Mission, searching for a clue. Do they know where I am? Have others here been locked away for hours and hours too? The lash marks down Mary Alice’s back worried her skin. She rubbed her shaking arms to reassure it.

  Wenger saw from the start that she wasn’t one of them. Ethel rifled through the faces of the spinster women in her mind and wondered if any of them suspected the same. Mary Alice had been crazy to try to smuggle an old whore like her inside. Is she down here too or in some other torture chamber in this rat’s maze?

  Ethel closed her eyes and pictured the poor girl tied to a bed somewhere on the fourth floor while Wenger or Bertram or Milton grunted on top of her. She gaped into the darkness and found herself hoping, praying even, that Mary Alice would be all right. She never should have accepted the fool’s offer. She should’ve just stayed on her corner and in the pub down the street. She deserved to be cold and alone. At least she’d be drunk and Mary Alice would be safe. All the poor girl had wanted to do was help.

  No one ever tried to help her. Not really. Not even when she was nine months pregnant. Ma Pratchett still wanted her cut, same as always. The perverts that had picked her out of the line with her swollen belly sent a shiver of revulsion through her all over again as she cu
rled up into herself on the floor, cradling the heavy plate in her arms. The fiends itching to hurt their own mothers slapped her around. The infantile begged to be babied and diapered and shat in her bed. Some demanded to suckle. None of the beasts that took her upstairs offered to help.

  The day she went into her labor, Ma Pratchett dropped her on the doorstep of the orphanage where all the girls delivered their bastards. A sniff of sickly sweet ether and she woke up the next day empty with a scar across her belly. The doctor had taken the baby out along with the offending organ responsible. None of Ma’s girls came back to the brothel intact. The doctors always had a medical reason for taking pieces out. A complication, a hemorrhage, something to write on their form. But the girls knew the truth. They were unfit mothers in the eyes of the hospital, and orphans cost too much. So did illegal abortions.

  Ethel felt the vertical scar running from her navel to her quick. She didn’t even know if it had been a boy or a girl. Not that it mattered. After they took the baby, she wouldn’t stop bleeding. They kept her two weeks in a bed with twenty other nameless girls rotating in and out. All of them had the same sad story. None of them looked each other in the eye.

  She couldn’t let Mary Alice end up like that.

  The memory twisted in her. Ethel swallowed a wad of dried spit and wished like hell for a stiff drink. Bourbon was her favorite, but any booze would do. Even the swill the hobos down in the Run drank until they went blind would be better than sitting there in the dark with nothing but her nightmares to keep her company. A hard drink and a laugh would fix almost anything for a little while, and that’s all that mattered. Just a little while.

  If we’re going to hell anyway, might as well go happy! The room would roar with drunken laughter at the toast, clink glasses, and stagger around overjoyed to be damned. She laid her throbbing head on the dirt floor and tried to imagine the faces of her so-called friends. Slow Tony, Mabel, One-Armed Willie, Flo, Rose. They’d all gone. Tony and Willie had hopped trains heading out of town. Mabel got sent up to Mansfield.