I’m left speechless for a moment as I try to figure out why Silas is pressing me on this issue. My reasons for not fighting back more against him are complicated. He doesn’t need to know the full truth behind my motivations for accepting this life for the near-term, but I can safely go into a little more detail.
“I need you,” I reluctantly admit. “I didn’t last a week in the outside world. I couldn’t protect my brother.” I quickly clear my throat, dismissing the emotion that wants to rise up within me at mentioning him out loud. “You can make me stronger. You can teach me the skills to defend myself and survive.”
Silas lifts our connected hands between us, shoving my bandaged wrist within inches of my face. “You want to learn from the man who did this to you? The man who’s tortured your mind and soul?” He drops our hands and fully engages me with his intense stare. “The man who took your brother’s life?”
A numbing sensation spreads throughout my body as I feel the grief and doubt hidden within me emerge to the surface. I remain completely still while my eyes dart away from Silas, unable to hold his gaze any longer. Tears trickle down my cheeks that make me question whether I’m strong enough to go forward on this path.
“You were right before,” I concede with what little voice I manage to muster through the tightness in my throat. “I am broken, and I have so much fucking darkness inside me that I can actually stand to be around you despite who you are and what you’ve done.”
I rip my hand away, abandoning my effort to connect with the more human side of Silas, a side that might not exist after all, and make my way to the far side of the bed. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Silas remaining completely still on the other side of the room, though I feel his eyes watching me as I slip under the sheets and lie down on my side facing away from him toward the window and empty wall instead.
Pressure builds in my chest to the point that I know I’ll break out into heavy sobs if I don’t rid myself of it, and the last thing I need right now is to show my weakness by falling apart completely in front of Silas again. With a few deep breaths, I manage to calm the flood of emotion within me until only numbness remains.
The rustling of clothes across the room causes me to shiver as I think about how disturbing it is to be within feet of a strange man undressing himself to come to bed with me. When the light goes out and darkness fills the bedroom, my mind tricks me into thinking for the briefest moment that I’m back in the dark room where Silas left me before, but the thought passes harmlessly.
A brief cold breeze from the sheets being pulled back causes goosebumps to break out across my skin just before the mattress compresses next to me. At any moment Silas will press his body up against mine and reach his arm around to my stomach, keeping me within his grasp for another night, but the contact I’m expecting never comes. I feel him settle into position next to me, but not touching me and then everything becomes completely still and silent.
It’s only now that I realize I’m not handcuffed to the bedframe. Granted, my wrists aren’t in the best shape to physically attach me to this bed, but Silas could have handcuffed my ankles instead.
I don’t let myself think about it for too long. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he’s testing me. Maybe he just doesn’t give a shit anymore.
Despite the warm body next to me, I feel completely alone in this room. It’s a feeling I should be used to by now, but it’s difficult to fully accept it.
Exhaustion consumes me, ready to steal me away from the conscious world. My eyelids become heavy, and this fact helps me to shed the final tears onto my pillow before they close and don’t bother to reopen.
16
It’s disconcerting to go five days with barely a word from the man who holds your life in his hands. Silas and I exist together in this house, but in these days since he temporarily flipped some sort of internal switch after he threw me in the dark room for hours on end, we’ve hardly engaged in conversation at all. We go through the motions of each day together, but he avoids my gaze and maintains his signature indifferent expression that gives me no insight into what he’s thinking.
It’s driving me absolutely fucking crazy.
The lack of verbal interaction between us isn’t the only frustration I’ve had to deal with. Silas has refused to reengage in my training or let me help with anything around the house or outside, citing some poor excuse about my resting and allowing my wrists and knees to heal first. He was probably right that I needed a recovery day to help rejuvenate my mind and body, but I don’t know how much longer I can take sitting in place or lying in bed alone with my thoughts.
I need interaction, and I’m willing to do just about anything to get it.
Silas hasn’t handcuffed me to the bed at night or tried to keep his arm around me like he did before. I’ve technically had free reign of the house, but I haven’t dared to take advantage of it yet.
As I lie alone in bed working a spring-based hand strengthener with my left hand and watching the continuous deluge of heavy rain come down outside, a crazy, but mostly harmless thought comes to mind.
After abandoning the hand strengthener and slipping out from under the sheets, I tread quietly in my bare feet across the wooden floor of the bedroom and down the hall to the entryway of the house. The sound of the faucet turning on in the kitchen signals that Silas is nearby, but not in line my line of sight. It’s the perfect opportunity to enact my spur-of-the-moment plan.
I quickly, but quietly turn and unlatch the locks on the thick wooden front door until I’ve opened it enough to get through. The moment I step outside into the chilled rain, I begin to regret not changing out of my thin grey shorts and tank top, but it’s too late to turn back now.
Once the door clicks shut behind me and I step fully into the sheets of rain pouring down from the sky, I raise my arms from my sides and smile. I can’t remember the last time I willingly threw myself into the rain. The more I think about it, the less I’m sure I’ve ever done something like this. I would have always used an umbrella or run through the rain as quickly as possible to get back inside. Why would I have done anything different back then?
I don’t like contemplating my life before, so I bring my mind back to the here and now, bounding forward onto the wet stone path that leads from the front door to the garage. Rounding the corner of the house, I pick up speed and practically run the rain-splattered path between the house and the detached garage until I’m in the backyard.
I slow down as I take the next steps forward between the fruit trees, fully aware that I’m now visible from the kitchen window, but this is all part of my plan. I’m drawing Silas out, forcing a reaction from him, no matter the consequences.
Amidst the constant sound of raindrops impacting the leaves and ground around me, I hear a different pattern emerge, the rapid crescendo of footsteps in the wet grass approaching me from behind. Before I can even fully turn around, Silas’ thick arms grab me around the midsection and lift my feet off of the ground.
“Where the hell are you going?” he demands angrily.
“Running away,” I manage to squeak out through the constriction he’s causing in my chest. Turning my head just enough to see his concerned and livid expression, it becomes clear that my sarcasm didn’t come through to him. “Look at me. You really think I’d run away like this?”
It takes a moment, but Silas finally loosens his hold of me, allowing my feet to find the ground again. He doesn’t fully let go of me, though, keeping his arms around my waist while stepping back to inspect me.
As I glance down at my drenched body, I realize the rain has caused the thin material of my grey shorts and tank top to stick perfectly to my skin, leaving nothing to the imagination as my nipples blatantly poke out under my shirt. I suddenly become very aware of the hands connected at the back of my waist, holding me in place, but also providing me strange comfort.
When I look up at Silas again, I realize his navy blue t-shirt is sticking to his chest just as mine is, the w
et fabric conforming to every line of muscle, and I can’t deny the rush of desire that flows through me at seeing the male form like this. When my eyes finally meet his gaze, I can see the hungry look in his expression, but I also see his restraint. I’m perfectly vulnerable to him in this moment as I’ve been countless times before, but he makes no move to take advantage of me.
It’s a dangerous line to cross, but I’m going to tread over it just a little bit. I take a step closer to Silas, forcing his hands behind me to compensate by enveloping my back completely. He gives in to my need and pulls me against his chest. I release a deep breath as he holds me and provides warmth to my chilled body and comfort to my broken soul. In this moment, it doesn’t matter that he’s the primary reason why I’ve fallen apart recently. I need this support in any way I can get it, even if that means drawing it out from a monster.
“Ash.”
The sound of my name rips me from my relaxed state, and I quickly become aware that the rain has stopped and that I don’t know how much time has passed since Silas began holding me.
“I need you to go in the house,” he demands with urgency, though his voice remains calm.
“Why? I just—” From the direction of the front of the house, the discernable sound of a car door shutting draws my attention and causes my heart to race. “Are you expecting someone?”
Silas shakes his head as he urges me toward the back door into the kitchen. “I’ll deal with this, but I need you to stay inside.”
I want to do nothing more than to protest, to insist that I can help in some way, but I know I’m not ready for that. I’d only be a hindrance right now. “I won’t leave the house,” I confirm.
We’ve only made it a few steps inside the kitchen when Silas rushes past me into the dining room. I follow as he runs down the hall past the living room to the mystery door at the end of that hall, adjacent to the dark room. I’m surprised when he moves a piece of the doorframe to reveal a hidden numbered panel.
After keying in a code, the door unlocks and pops open, revealing the metal door hidden behind the wood-door exterior. Silas swings the door open, and a bright white LED light turns on automatically inside to reveal a small arsenal in the room: a line of various rifles standing upright in a rack against the far wall and multi-tiered shelving on each side covered in handguns, ammo boxes, and even some grenades. A particularly long rifle with a large scope is featured prominently on the far wall as if it were a piece of art to be admired and appreciated.
Silas grabs a handgun and checks the magazine before sticking it in the back waistband of his jeans. He quickly selects a black rifle and extra magazine before bolting out of the small room, almost knocking me over as he pushes past me and closes the door behind him.
“Stay here,” Silas yells over his shoulder as he runs back down the hall. “Find somewhere to hide.”
As he disappears around the corner, I’m left alone in the hall with my heart racing and countless terrifying thoughts flowing through me. I hate this feeling of helplessness. The weight of the inevitability of the attack is too much for me to bear again after living under that pressure for several months back at my family’s house on the southern Massachusetts coast. Silas has to overcome whatever it is outside our doorstep right now, because I’ll have nowhere to run and no way to defend myself if he doesn’t succeed.
As much as I should heed Silas’ advice and hide, I need to know what’s going on outside, so I run in my bare feet back toward the entryway of the house and turn the corner to enter the bathroom in the other hallway.
Opening the door to enter this space causes a much stronger reaction within me than I was expecting. I haven’t been in here since the beginning, back when I was forced to strip down for a bath in front of Silas and tell him the story behind my disfigured left hand because I thought he held Jake alive in this house somewhere. I haven’t dared to come back to this place where my heart was ripped out of my chest at seeing my brother’s final resting place within the dirt.
I try desperately to push away the sickening feeling rising within me to focus on the fact that there’s an imminent threat nearby and that this room provides the safest vantage point for me to see and listen to what’s going on outside.
After throwing the curtain to the side, I open the bottom of the window and peer out toward the driveway gate that Silas is approaching with hurried steps.
“Who are you?” he calls out before taking a position at the fence to the left of the gate. “What do you want?”
“We need help,” a woman’s voice yells back. “We had a run-in with the militia, and my husband was injured.”
Silas doesn’t seem moved at all by the woman’s story. He pulls the rifle against his chest, reaffirming his grip on it. “You’re far from the main road. How did you find this place?”
“The militia is all over the main road. We had to get away from them.” There’s a long moment of silence before the woman’s voice turns desperate. “Please. He’s bleeding, and I can’t make it stop.”
Silas remains right where he is, showing no sign that he has any intention of helping these people, but I’m surprised when a moment later, he steps forward and inputs the code in the keypad panel next to the driveway gate to let it open.
As it slowly moves to the side, he sets the rifle standing up behind a nearby tree and then moves a few feet to the side of it, standing anxiously with his hands hanging loosely at his sides as he waits for the gate to open.
The front end of a red pickup truck becomes visible as the gate retracts to the side completely. A woman with long blond hair steps forward with her hands held out in front of her, clearly showing she’s unarmed.
“Thank you. Thank you,” she says appreciatively as she takes a few more steps into the driveway. “My husband’s in the truck. Please, you need to help him.”
From this angle I can barely make out the figure of someone hunched over to the side in the cab of the truck. Silas makes no effort to engage the woman or move closer to the vehicle. He’s just standing there, his head turning the slightest bit to look between the woman and the person in the cab.
Before I can even blink again, Silas suddenly grabs the handgun behind his back and draws it on the woman just as she does exactly the same, pulling something from behind her waist. Gunfire echoes in the surrounding air as he gets three shots off directly in her midsection before she can even bring her gun all the way forward.
He dives to the side behind the tree and grabs the rifle as the woman screams and crumbles to the ground. As he readies the weapon with his back against the tree, the door of the red truck swings open, and a man comes barreling out with his own menacing rifle trained forward looking for its target. The moment he crosses the threshold of the fence line, Silas swings himself around the tree and fires a burst into the approaching man’s chest. It puts an end to his assault, but doesn’t stop him from releasing a wild spray of bullets from his own gun before he tumbles to the ground.
Silas quickly reaffirms his firing position with the rifle as he strides toward the man and kicks his rifle away. The man is clearly still alive, as he seems to gasp for breath and reaches helplessly for the weapon that’s no longer nearby. Silas towers over him, aiming the vicious barrel at his dying body for a long moment. A sickening feeling washes over me as I realize Silas is deciding what to do next: whether to put the man out of his misery or watch the life slowly drain out of him.
My grim thoughts are interrupted as I see the woman’s arm suddenly move. The handgun she pulled is within inches of her grasp where she lies on the gravel.
“Silas!” I scream through the small opening in the window just as the woman’s fingers grip on to the gun.
She raises the weapon toward him just as his body and the rifle turn together and he fires a final burst into her chest, causing her hand and the gun to fall harmlessly to the ground. Silas steps forward to kick the handgun away before he looks back toward the house, his eyes scanning briefly until he clearly
spots me watching from the bathroom window.
I gasp as his eyes meet mine. Even at this distance, I can see the blind rage in his eyes and the savage fury in his expression. It’s almost impossible to reconcile this version of him with the man who was holding me supportively against his chest only minutes before.
Then I remember the humiliation and violence I previously endured in this bathroom and the way that Silas treated me in the first days after he took me, and suddenly this ruthless version of him isn’t so unfamiliar.
Silas returns to his position over the dying man with his gun still ready to fire, but he almost immediately lowers his weapon, since it appears his decision about whether to put the man out of his misery has already been made for him. He sets the rifle aside and gathers the weapons he kicked away from the attempted intruders. When he grabs the lifeless arms of the man and begins dragging him across the gravel outside of the fence line, I divert my eyes from the window, not sure that I can stomach watching any more of this.
It’s not like this is the first time I’ve watched Silas take a life. I was right in the thick of it when he killed those two men who attacked me outside of the physical therapy office, but I don’t remember feeling sick like this afterward. I must have been in too much shock to feel much of anything in the moments after they were killed. Maybe it’s different when I’m a distant observer of Silas’ brutality instead of being distracted by experiencing my worst nightmare all over again within feet of the victims as their lifeless bodies hit the ground.
It takes a few deep breaths before I manage to control the nauseating feelings, but I manage to overcome them and get back on my feet. I close the window and pull the curtain across it without daring to look outside again.
Relief washes over me as I step out of the bathroom and close the door, physically removing myself from the place that holds even more horrifying memories for me now. Knowing that Silas will be outside for at least a while longer, I take advantage of the opportunity to quickly wash up in the shower and put on some dry clothes.
Falling Ash Page 13