by E. Earle
I was back in hell.
Dark figures surrounded me, their faces a mixture contortion of pale flesh. Fingers ran over me, prodding me and lifting. I tried to raise my hands to peel their webbed fingerprints from my body as I felt myself being lifted, but my arms were wrapped tight within the sleeping bag.
A voice I remembered spoke in my ear. I couldn’t make out the words, but the low hum of it distracted me from the high pitched wails from outside.
“Don’t leave me!” my throat managed to gasp as a blinding light stunned my pupils shut.
A voice answered, but it wasn’t the one I was looking for.
And then I heard it.
I’m always with you.
Chapter Seven
Voices continued to surround me for the next few days. Coldness set into my limbs for what seemed like forever, until it turned to a scorching heat that ran through my veins like ash. Everything hurt; sounds, sensations and light.
When bulbs flickered out and people said goodnight, the only thing that kept me from dreams of tidal waves and shards of rock was a furry presence around my neck and shoulder. An incessant purring drowned out all of the echoes of people shouting and screaming.
Safe is not a word that I accustomed to myself anymore, but when I opened my eyes to a square room of grey, the orange glow at my bedside was all the protection I needed from the demons that waited for me in my sleep.
My lungs convulsed each time I awoke in that room- expecting a tidal wave to wash me away any minute. It was only after panting and looking down at the drip in my arm when I realised where I was.
They made me stay in the hospital for two weeks. Brynn banned Ben from staying the night, but the ginger cat always found a way in through the window, despite my business partner’s wishes.
Brynn had called my sister and parents to my dismay. When I woke the next time, my mother was sitting at my bedside with tears in her eyes.
“Oh Ellena,” she said, “What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”
I’m not sure I said anything back or even had a chance to before she and my stepdad were crushing my fragile bones into a hug.
My sister brought my chubby little nephew along, and even though nurses said he couldn’t sit on the bed, I held him tightly on my lap, the muscles in my face painfully contracting into a smile.
My family didn’t speak about what had happened. I guessed they had probably spoken to Brynn. He too was at the hospital, recovering from severe hypothermia, but discharged himself after a week.
I was made to stay in longer and I was too weak to even argue.
I lay back on my pillow, allowing others to look after me, talk at me, and gawk at me as my body slowly recovered. My eyelids would fall after people talking too long, and when I would open them again, I would find my mother sitting at my bedside doing a crossword.
She was my eternal protector.
“Mum?”
Her eyes flashed to mine immediately and she reached out to take my hand. “Yes love? Are you ok? Do you need the toilet?”
I shook my head. “No mum.”
“Water?”
I sighed inwardly and smiled at her. “I saw Granddad,” I told her.
She stared at me for a few seconds before a sad smile broke her strong exterior. “Oh love…” Her voice was thick with tears, and it clogged up my own throat to hear them.
I slept peacefully that night, knowing Ben was under the covers and my mother was at my side. If she knew he was there, she pretended otherwise, and when I opened them the next morning, Ben was gone.
People say that when you go through something traumatic, your memory sometimes comes back in spits and spatters. Mine was unaffected, and as soon as I had opened my eyes for the first time since Pirate’s Peak- I remembered everything.
I had been too weak to speak properly, but eventually I had learnt that Jack and Jessica had called the police as soon as they managed to wrestle their way out of the toilets.
“No hard feelings,” Jack said shrugging as I bashfully apologised. “Brynn found it hilarious.”
My face must have given away more than I intended because the young couple soon exchanged glances. “He’s fine, you know,” Jessica told me. “He just wants you to be ok.”
But I already knew. Brynn had come in every night since I had first been admitted, despite being a patient himself at first. We didn’t say much- we didn’t have to. We knew what the other was thinking, and the only thing that mattered was that we were there in each other’s company.
Safe.
“I know he’s here,” Brynn sighed at last, leaning back in a pale green armchair.
My eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Who?”
Brynn narrowed his eyes at me. “You know who.”
Ben flicked his tail beneath the covers, not moving a muscle. I shrugged, and flicked a page of my book over, the words smudges of black before me.
Brynn smiled and shook his head, and that was the only conversation we had that night.
I learnt in the days after that my heart had stopped, and I had to be brought back. My mother cried as the doctors calmly explained this to me, and told me how lucky I was.
I felt numb with the knowledge, knowing that I was racking up quite a tally of hospital visits in the past year or so, and tried to reassure my mother that it was going to be all right. For some reason that made her cry more.
Brynn had left me in the shack to swim back to the shore- the only alternative to saving both of us. The coastguard and rescue air ambulance had been called and I had been airlifted out of that place and taken straight to the hospital.
Listening to it all was an overload of information and sometimes I wished that people just wouldn’t tell me the details. I preferred the dark I remembered whilst all this was going on. I didn’t need to know about ambulances, blood procedures or hearts stopping.
By the second week, I was fidgeting to get out of the hospital, and Ben was too, considering he had been caught by one of the nurses eating another patient’s breakfast leftovers.
“You were told this last time,” a nurse said with her hands on her hips. “You can’t bring animals into a hospital!”
I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
It was my sister who insisted on picking me up to take me back to Craggy’s. Brynn had reassured me that the place would be empty for my arrival. Last time I had come out of hospital, there had been a party- not the best thing for a patient coming out of care.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, glancing at the happily gurgling Rowan in the back of the car in the mirror.
“Fine,” I lied. The hospital hadn’t wanted to release me, but even they admitted that there wasn’t much else they could do. All I needed was rest and food. I was wrapped in a blanket, wearing a jumper with my dressing gown on top. Despite the many layers, I knew I looked gaunt. I was intending on eating as much cake as possible when I got home.
Ben had stayed with Brynn, knowing I was coming back. Brynn had wanted to pick me up but understood when my family was concerned. My family were a pushy bunch and they liked things doing their way. It made me sigh, smile and roll my eyes all at once.
“Why don’t you come back home, Ellena?” She ploughed on quickly before I could even open my mouth. “You’ve got your family there- you can stay with me, see Rowan more. Nan’s been asking about you, plus you could probably get a job back at the museum or something- you always said you loved that job.”
“Kayleigh, don’t.”
Gritting her teeth, she flicked on the radio to fill the silence between us.
My parents weren’t happy on me returning, insisting that I should come back to Australia with them for a few months. It was tempting to say the least- it had done wonders for me when I was getting over the aftermath of being shot, but I refused.
“I’m sorry,” I had told them. “But I’m not running away from things this time.”
“It’s not running away if you’re constantly i
n danger,” my dad said to me, losing his temper. “It’s about being smart!”
“Ellena,” my mother said, her voice taking on that coaxing soothing tone, “You’re not a cat- you don’t have nine lives.”
I nearly smiled then, thinking of the times I had escaped. “Yeah? Could have fooled me.”
Brynn was waiting for me outside of Craggy’s when we pulled up onto the drive. Kayleigh had a knowing smile on her face as she turned to me.
“He likes you, you know,” she stated, a smug look on her face.
“I’d hope so- he did save my life,” I quipped, wrapping the blanket tighter around me. The wind wasn’t strong, but it was freezing outside. The last thing I wanted to do was to be exposed to cold ever again.
“You ok?” Brynn asked, opening the car door for me.
I looked at him, knowing I didn’t have to even lie. He saw it all in my eyes and solemnly nodded.
His hair had gotten longer, a week’s worth of stubble making his cheekbones look sharper. He was wearing a white fisherman’s jumper, small holes around the neck and faded jeans. An instant comforting scent of mint, man and beach filled my senses as he put an arm around me and guided me towards Craggy’s.
“Don’t you worry,” he said quietly. “Maybe a rum and coke will sort you out.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, holding onto his arm tightly as I nearly slipped on a stone. “No more rum.”
His dark eyes crinkled slightly in a smile as he nodded. “Good old English tea then?”
I nodded. “And cake.”
My folks stayed with us at Craggy’s and at first Brynn didn’t seem to know how to be around my dad at all. I think Andy liked him but he was doing the usual fatherly threatening thing- not that it even mattered. Brynn had already saved my life a couple of times now, and that definitely counted on some parent brownie points.
My mother seemed to be uncomfortable staying at Craggy’s- I think it was the fact that it once belonged to my biological father. It appeared to wear off after a couple of days when it became abundantly clear that this place belonged to the people of Craggy’s- and not any landlord from the past.
The police came to interview Brynn and I a few times in the days that followed my return to home. It made me feel uneasy to relive it all again, but I recounted every detail I could remember.
They sat in the front lounge with us by the fire, two men, one middle aged, the other in his late twenties. They sat in their bright yellow coats, eating bacon and cheese bread rolls whilst Brynn and I tucked into a pizza. Brynn was encouraging me to eat more, and I was having no difficultly in doing so, considering the amount of cakes and muffins that had been brought to Craggy’s from the village to wish me well.
“Have you found them yet?” I asked through a mouthful of cheesy dough.
Brynn was quiet, seeing something in the policemen’s faces that I didn’t.
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” the older of the two said, wiping bacon grease from his hands with a napkin. “It’s probably not the best time to say, considering we’re eating.”
“We’ve been searching the area for the two women who you say abducted you,” the younger police officer said.
I frowned in confusion. “What are they doing even still hanging around?” I asked. “I would have thought they were long gone by now-”
“Ellena,” Brynn hushed me by gently putting a hand on my knee. “I don’t think that’s what they mean.”
I stared into his face and it slowly dawned on me. “Oh…”
“We’ve been searching the coastline and we found a body,” the younger policeman said.
The dough suddenly went cold in my mouth. Blankets fell from my body as I leapt up and ran to the bathroom, just in time to throw up my supper. My knees were shaking by the time I returned, Brynn’s face a dark mixture of concern for me and anger at the young police officer.
The officer’s face was red, probably from a mild tongue lashing from his superior. “You couldn’t wait until she had finished her pizza?” I overheard as I walked in.
“It’s ok,” I said, sitting back down into my armchair. “I was bound to puke whenever you told me.”
Brynn took a deep breath. “Do you know who it is?”
P.C Williams, the middle aged greying officer nodded. “The body has been formally identified as Gabriella Gessati.”
My stomach heaved again and I sat back as the world turned. “But she was wearing a lifejacket…”
P.C Williams shrugged. “A night that cold, it doesn’t matter. Once the body is exposed to that sort of temperature for a prolonged period of time, death can be inevitable.”
I glanced at Brynn and then just realised at how lucky we were to survive. Swallowing uncomfortably, I turned back to the officers. “What about Olivia? Her niece?”
They shifted uncomfortably. “We haven’t found the other individual I am afraid,” the younger, P.C Graham stated, his words coming out slowly in case he was saying the wrong thing. “If she’s alive, we’ll find her and if not…”
“We’ll still find her,” the other policeman finished.
That night I dreamt of Olivia, her face an image of frozen marble perfection, sinking down to the bottom of the sea, her skin being slowly eaten away by tiny creatures. I woke, drenched in sweat, my bedroom door open with my mother standing there.
I don’t know how, but she always knew when I couldn’t sleep right. She stayed in my room with me, dabbing lavender oil on my pillow and spoke to me until I fell asleep again, Ben curled up at the bottom of our feet.
When I woke, there was a cup of tea on my bedside with a fresh vase of flowers.
My mother was literally a soothing balm to my fractured soul as I spent each day thereafter slowly mending. My dad and I went on drives around the country, visiting English Heritage and National Trust sites, going on long walks and talking about the future.
I gained back some much need weight, and soon I was looking fit enough to be properly exposed to the outside world. I started appearing more at the bar at Craggy’s much to the locals’ delight. My family were welcomed like they had been living there for years, and it filled my heart with warmth to see everyone smiling for once.
I caught Brynn staring at me sometimes, and I would just smile back. We hadn’t spoken in depth about what had happened between us at Pirates Peak and I wasn’t sure when would be the best time.
It was a chance crossover at the stairs when we finally spoke.
“Brynn,” I said, stopping him as he was hauling up some old items my mother insisted to be put into the loft. They were just old decorative items from the old bedrooms after we had redecorated and hadn’t bothered to throw. My mother had taken it upon herself to spin a web of ideas on how to make the place more stylish and I was wondering how much it was going to cost me.
“Are you ok?” he asked, turning around, a look of concern on his face. He always looked that way now when he was facing me, as if scared the world would open up and I would fall.
“I just…” I took a shaking breath and looked at my hands. “I just wanted to say…” When I gazed back up, he had put down the junk and was striding up to me. Before I could open my mouth, he had encased me in a hug, his warmth encircling me in a fiery capsule of safety.
I relaxed and breathed in his scent, his jumper smelling slightly of smoke and oil, allowing my arms to go up and hug him back.
“Do you know why I was angry when we went surfing that day?” he said.
I blinked in surprise. “No, why?”
“Because I hate and love the sea.” He said. “My dad was the one who taught me how to surf. He was obsessed with going out every day- if it wasn’t his board it was his boat.”
Confusion whirled in my head as to why he was telling me all of this, but knowing that he rarely spoke about his dad made me shut my mouth.
“When I saw you getting dragged out by the currant… When that wave came up, it was just like…” He took a breath and st
opped talking. He stepped back a little and looked at me. “I hate that I can’t control it. I hate it can take people away from me.”
I wanted to ask more questions- he had never revealed the details of his dad’s death, but now didn’t seem the right time to push him.
I could see the thoughts pass over his face, and just like that he was closed off from me. He gave me a small nod and smile before turning, picking up the junk, and with a wink walked away.
My sister stayed in my room with me for the next three nights at my mother’s insistence due to my continuing nightmares. I had no recollection in screaming, but apparently that was what happened. Brynn’s white face would be one of the first I would see, his features haunted and torn that he couldn’t pull me out of the depths of my mind.
He hated that he couldn’t help me and would take to having a late night whisky after lock up on his own. After feeling exhausted every morning, Ben and I would take a walk down the lane to the local shop to pick up the paper. They always delivered- but we needed to get out of Craggy’s every so often.
We started driving to the museum- a place my dad was absolutely in love with. My family threw themselves in getting acquainted with Brynn’s Uncle John and started pointed out colours they thought would go better inside the building.
I rolled my eyes at Brynn every time we went down and he just shook his head. He had had an advance training session in my family- it was usually their way or no way.
“I really think you should have a gift shop,” my mother was saying to me as I accepted an apple from her.
“A gift shop would be a good idea,” I said through a mouthful of cookie. Craggy’s would open to the public in less than an hour and Ben and I wanted to escape to the museum again without anyone this time.
Ben purred on the bar as I stroked his coat, my mother shaking her head disapprovingly at him. “You really shouldn’t have animals on the bar, Ellena,” she chided.