Still, there was enough light to see that she was having a shot of tequila with Patty at the bar. She swiped to the next image. Now, she and Patty were dancing in the center of the dance floor, a crush of people around them, some with their hands lifted above their heads. She stared at the photo. She had no recollection of dancing last night.
She swiped to the next photo and saw that she and Patty were back at the bar and downing another shot. She was sweaty and laughing. Patty was bent over and appeared to be in hysterics. The bartender, a good-looking man with dark hair and a masculine face, was looking at them in amusement.
She swiped to the next photo, and this time it was just her, alone, standing at the bar. Patty was nowhere in sight. Looking at herself, she could see her insecurities stamped on her face, but then she always was uncomfortable when she was alone. Her face looked grim. Her arms were folded in front of her. She was looking off to her left, which is where the restrooms were. The crowd was noticeably thinner. The night was winding down.
Swipe.
Patty was back, this time with a man. Just as she herself was leaning against the bar for support, Patty was leaning against this stranger for the same reason. Her arm was draped over his neck. He was big, younger than them, muscular. He looked sober, but they looked wasted. Cheryl switched to the next photo and this time they were outside in the parking lot with the man. They were standing beside Patty’s white Jetta, which was next to an illumined streetlamp that cast light down upon them, and Cheryl was smoking. The man was kissing Patty’s neck. His hands gripped her ass. Cheryl looked over at the image of herself and saw that her finger was raised, as if she was wagging it at them, even though she was laughing.
Swipe.
Patty was in the car with him, her hand waving out the open window as she drove away from Cheryl, who was still beneath the streetlamp, holding onto it to steady herself while she looked over her shoulder. For the first time, she was facing the camera. Though her lips were parted, her expression was otherwise blank.
Her heart quickened. She flicked her finger across the screen again and this time, she was unprepared for what she saw. She was lying on the pavement. Blood was spattered like a net across her face. There was a dazed look in her eyes, as if whatever happened to her had just happened. A man’s boot―large, dirty and old to the point that it looked worn out―covered her mouth and mashed her face to one side.
She was too upset to look at the other photos, but she knew she had to, if only to see the story they told and how it might inform how she might get out of this now. She flicked through them. She saw herself in the back of a truck bed, her hands and feet tied behind her with rope, a ball gag strapped around her head and shoved into her mouth, Duct tape over her eyes to seal them shut.
Another photo, this one brightly lit. At this point, he obviously felt safe enough to use the flash. She was in the forest now, flat on her back, the ball gag still in her mouth, but now the tape was off her eyes and with them wide open and exposed, they reflected pure terror.
She went through the rest of the photos and in each one, her face and body seemed to expose more blood and bruises. He was actively beating her when he took the photos. By the last set, she was on her stomach, her head was turned to her right, her eyes were closed, the ball gag was removed from her sagging mouth, and water shined brightly on her face, which was smeared with dirt.
She was unconscious.
But right now, she was alive, perhaps only for a moment, because behind her was movement in the woods.
CHA
PTER FIVE
Before she died the first time, some nine years ago when she was a junior at the University of Maine studying English, Cheryl Dunning was another person.
She saw the world through different eyes. She’d had her share of ups and downs like anyone else, but certainly nothing life shattering. Nothing that would make her question the world and redefine who she was, which is what did happen to her.
Until the day her life ended, she was like many of her friends―reasonably happy. And sometimes, when she wrote something she liked, read something she loved or met a boy she thought was cute, she was unreasonably unhappy.
Instead of having one friend, as she now had in Patty, Cheryl had many friends. She was popular. She was considered pretty. Some in the English program admired her writing. They said she had skill and talent. “One day, I can see you writing novels,” a few of her more secure fellow writing students would say. “You’ve got a way with dialogue.” Her writing teachers agreed.
And Cheryl Dunning saw a future for herself.
It was at her friend Diane’s dinner party, which consisted of Domino’s pizza, red wine and beer spread out on a table lit with stubby green candles, that she met Mark Rand.
He seemed nice. He was tall, black hair, blue eyes―her type, right down to the cleft in his chin. He played baseball, which would have turned her off if he didn’t come off so well. Like her, he was a reader. Like her, Fitzgerald was his favorite author. Like her, he thought that Kerouac was full of shit and overrated. They disagreed when it came to “Ulysses,” which he admired but which she thought was over-written tripe, but that he had his own point of view just made him more interesting to her.
Before he raped her and cut her throat and left her to die behind Diane’s apartment complex, where a neighbor heard their struggle and was smart enough to question it, she found herself enjoying his company and his charm.
She flirted with him. He flirted with her. They stole a kiss outside Diane’s bathroom. He pressed close to her and she could feel him against her leg. She wasn’t about to have sex with him, but making out was an option. When they left the party an hour later, each was a little drunk on beer and more than a little high on their mutual attraction.
“I want to fuck you,” he said when they stepped outside.
He said it so directly, it made her laugh.
“Kidding,” he said.
“You’re hilarious.”
“But I do find you attractive.”
She smiled.
“And I’d love it if you gave me a blow job.”
She didn’t answer because she wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol talking or his attempt at humor. She just went with it and pretended she didn’t hear him. Boys and their blow jobs. She liked him, but she had strict rules when it came to sleeping with someone, and she never broke them. They’d make out. That’s as far as it would go. If they decided they’d like to see each other again, they’d take it from there.
Maybe after the fifth date, if there is one.
Diane’s apartment house was on a quiet street that backed up against woods. It was the beginning of autumn and it still was reasonably warm. It was dark, so they went just inside the woods and found a tall pine tree to lean against.
At first, he was gentle. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the mouth. He whispered in her ear, told her how beautiful she was, and she began to enjoy herself. It was awhile before he put his tongue in her mouth, but the way he did it was so sexy, she decided she didn’t mind and leaned into it, kissing him back hard.
It was a mistake.
His hand dropped between her legs and he started to feel her. She nudged his hand aside and said in his ear, “Just this. This is nice. Just this. OK?”
“What about this?” He took her hand and placed it on his erection. “What about that? You can’t ignore it now. You made that happen.” She could smell the wine on his breath. It hadn’t bothered her before, but now it smelled rotten, probably because of the edge in his voice.
“Mark,” she said. “Come on. We’re just getting to know―”
She could recall the first blow that struck the side of her head, but when the second came, there was nothing but blackness. In retrospect, she liked to think that her body protected her from remembering the violence of what happened next.
Three days later, in her private room at Eastern Maine Medical Center, she woke from her coma. Two days
later, she was told that she had died from a severe loss of blood. Her doctor said that she had been raped, her throat cut. The police wanted to talk to her, but the doctor held them off for another day so she could continue to regain her strength.
When they did come, they let her know that Mark Rand was in jail and that the judge had refused bail. Because she was ruled dead for those two minutes before they were able to revive her, Rand was being held for second-degree murder, rape, and a host of other charges.
When she left the hospital, she dropped out of school and went to live with her parents.
Six weeks later, she learned she was pregnant with his child.
An abortion was scheduled for the following week. But it didn’t happen. Whether it was because her body had been through so much physical abuse and was still healing, or because news of the pregnancy had caused her great emotional stress, Cheryl Dunning miscarried in the shower.
When she began to hemorrhage, she was taken to the hospital again, where she remained for four additional days before leaving the place a harder, wiser, different person.
CHAP
TER SIX
The movement was off to her left.
She looked over and all she could see was a vast landscape of woods, some of which were so thick, she couldn’t see beyond the trees, especially the fir and spruce trees, which grew into each other in such a way, it was as if they were conspiring against her. Whoever brought her here was likely just beyond them, watching her and waiting for her to make her move.
She got her feet under herself and stood. The pain was there, drumming for attention, but what was happening to her now snuffed it. Her own survival trumped everything.
She stood still and listened. It was quiet, not silent. Leaves fell to the forest floor from the surrounding maples, oaks, elms and birches. Birds flew above her, navigating seamlessly through the maze of foliage as if doing so was nothing to them. She could hear the sound of her own breath, the cool breeze at her back, and the undeniable sound of the occasional footstep as it rested softly on the wet pine needles that worked to betray it.
Even in these boots with their thick high heels, Cheryl Dunning didn’t question whether she could run, but whether she could outrun him―whoever he was. She didn’t question whether she had fight within her, because she did, but whether it was enough if he had something that could drop her, like a gun. She didn’t think about the pain that threatened to consume her if she allowed it to, because if she did, she knew he would win. All she thought about was how best to get through this. She wasn’t a fool. She knew the odds were against her. But if she listened to her gut, she sensed that if he had wanted to kill her, he already would have done so.
For whatever reason, he wanted her alive. At least for the moment. She assumed it was because he wanted to toy with her before he killed her.
Before he tries to kill me.
It was the only thing that made sense. Otherwise, why would he have strapped the phone to her hand? Why had he stopped beating her when a few more kicks to her chest, legs, stomach and head would have ended her life? He wanted her alive for a reason, and as far as she was concerned that reason was because he was here to hunt. She was his game. On some twisted level she’d never comprehend or understand, he wanted her to live because with her alive, she was his to play with until he grew tired of the game and he could finish her forever.
She needed to think. Strategize. She looked around her, but all she saw was forest. There was no sound of traffic, which meant he had planted her deep into the woods, which also made sense. When he killed her―if, for instance, he planned to shoot her―it was unlikely that anyone would hear the shot or the passing of her own life. And even if they did, the shot would be ignored. Right now, after all, it was hunting season.
Again, movement to her left. A gentle press of a footstep that was meant to go unnoticed, but the sound of which carried with it the weight of danger.
She wanted to call out to him, make a deal with him and end this, but those were the thoughts of a fool, and after what she’d been through in her life, Cheryl Dunning was no fool.
After being murdered and raped and losing a child she never meant to carry defined who she was today. Even with the faint ring of the scar that carved around her throat, which caused many to stare but not to question because most in this town knew what once happened to her, she was tougher than people knew. Beneath the smiling, agreeable facade she brought with her to work each morning because she needed a job in order to create an existence for herself, she was cynical, untrusting and deeply sad for all that was lost to her the night Mark Rand literally stole away her life, and also how she viewed life now.
Rand was sent to prison for his crimes, but because of what he did to her, Cheryl also was sent to a prison of her own.
She wanted to trust people again. She wanted to be rid of the hate that lived within her. In spite of her fears to the contrary, one day she did want to be open to a potential relationship. She did want to get married, have children, have that normal life other people took for granted, but the risks, she felt, were too high.
Regardless of what her therapist and Patty said to her, it was safer to shut people out. It was safer to be that smiling secretary who worked hard and nodded politely at her boss’s whims, but who went home alone at night, terrified that someone might jump her when she hurried from her car and into her apartment.
Now, inexplicably, nine years after the event with Rand, here she was again, on the cusp of being undone by some unknown man.
The movement in the woods drew closer. She couldn’t just hear it now―she could feel it. A part of her knew that was intentional. He wanted her to know that he was close. He wanted her to run now. He was ready for his game to begin and she had no choice but to begin it for him.
There was a trail in front of her and behind her. A wild of woods was to her right and to her left. Obviously, she couldn’t go left―he was there, waiting for her to emerge. Choosing the path would be easier, but she would be exposed, which could end in a quick death if he had a gun. But if she could cut through the snare of woods off to her right, she might be able to get ahead of him and conceal herself as she ran into the deep they provided.
And so that’s what Cheryl Dunning did. She ran. And the moment she ran, she heard a burst of activity behind her. Trees bent. Branches snapped. Then his voice: “That’s a girl! You run now! You run, whore!” He clapped his hands, the sound of which licked at her back as she pushed through the woods, the twigs flicking across her face and her outstretched hands like merciless whips.
“Make it fun for me,” he said. “Come on now, Cheryl. Don’t disappoint!”
CHAPTE
R SEVEN
Patty Jennings woke that morning alone.
She was flat on her back, the covers were pulled close to her face, and she was sore, unusually so.
She looked to her right and wondered what time he left. Or if, in fact, he had left. He might be in the living room or in the kitchen, but she doubted it. During the few times in her life that she’d taken home a man, they usually just left, which Patty didn’t mind. She preferred it when they left. No awkward good-byes that way. No lies that they’d see each other again. No being set up for disappointment.
She laid there for a minute and tried to remember the night before. She and Cheryl went to The Grind. It was her thirtieth birthday, she remembered coaxing Cheryl to do shots with her, and then she met―what was his name? Jake? Jack? She couldn’t remember. Whatever his name was, she met him when she came out of the bathroom and while he was younger than she, she couldn’t help noticing that he was awfully good looking and built.
Though her head was still foggy from not enough sleep and too much alcohol, what she also remembered is that he was a powerhouse last night. Young or not, he was so good in bed, so masculine for his age and in control, that she let him have his way with her, which he did. And did again. Was there a third time? She thought back, remembered there was a
nd couldn’t help a smile.
“Finally,” she said aloud, “I’ve lived up to my reputation. Good for me.”
She swung the covers off her, used the bathroom, thought of giving Cheryl a call to apologize for leaving her last night, but decided she’d do it after she made coffee and fully woke up.
What was it? Saturday? She looked at the time on the clock next to her bed and saw that it was just past nine. Knowing Cheryl, she’d still be in bed. Always the late sleeper, but not today. Today, Patty wanted to take her to lunch because she felt guilty for ending the night without her. She decided to call her in an hour and see if she was interested.
If she’s not, I’ll bring lunch to her.
She went into the kitchen, which was so bright with sunlight, it hurt. She made her way to the coffee machine and found a note waiting for her there. She didn’t have her glasses, but the idea that he’d left her a note was kind of sweet. She went into the living room, reached for her glasses on a side table, put them on and read.
“Last night was fun,” it said. “Very hot. I’ve left something for you. Go to this Web address: http://on.fb.me/kCZNl3 Hope to see you out again soon so you can let me know what you think of it. ―Jack. P.S., When you took my load, I knew I found the right one.”
She stared at the last sentence in surprise. Had she done that? She never did that. How messed up had she been last night? Had they even used condoms?
She went into her bedroom, turned on the computer sitting on her secretary, and while she waited for it to start up, she looked for evidence of condoms around the bed and in the bed, but there weren’t any. She checked the bathroom. Nothing, not even used wrappers in the waste basket. Could he have flushed them? She knew better than that. What man cleaned up after himself, especially after sex?
She wasn’t concerned about a potential pregnancy because Patty Jennings was unable to conceive children. What frightened her was the potential of contracting an STD.
You Only Die Twice Page 2