by Barbra Novac
Jimmy put his hand on her head and pushed down, forcing her bend her knees so that he could push her forward into the back of the car.
“Don't try that again or even I won't be of any help to you,” he told her with a sorry tone to his voice. He jumped into the front seat of the car, sitting in stony silence. The rope cut into her hands, even tighter than before, and she felt as though she couldn't move. Pins and needles worked through her arms, spreading to her shoulder blades. The hip she lay on ached, and saliva dripped out of the corner of her mouth, the rag too full of it already to hold anymore. Petrol taste and fumes nauseated her, and all she could imagine was that she had lost her one chance to get away. Now she would have to wait for them to act.
Exhausted, Marianne let herself fall asleep, finally and completely, not caring what happened to her at all. The dreamless sleep soothed a little, no doubt due to her profound exhaustion and her lack of concern. She lay helpless, breathing around the cloth in her mouth, against the leather of the seat.
She woke when she felt the engine spark to life. In the front seat, she could see the back of Jimmy's head. Alone in the car and because it was Jimmy who drove and because of exhaustion, Marianne felt strangely safe, as if her safety existed as an inevitable part of a long future. She sank back into her sleep, watching trees and clouds and realizing the lighter blue in the sky heralded the onset of dawn.
* * *
When Marianne woke again, the car was empty except for her. An ache in the lower part of her spine dragged her back to consciousness as well as the sound of a bird singing. Opening her eyes confirmed the arrival of day, and indeed, maybe even midmorning.
Lifting her head cautiously, she confirmed what she suspected. Her body ached with bruises and stiffness everywhere. However, where solitude burdened her before, now she felt grateful, and wonders of wonders, well rested. The possibility of escape broke through her mental clouds. She'd had a rest, and exhaustion no longer deterred her survival.
Pushing with her tongue, she forced a little space around the side of her gag and gulped the fresh air. She lifted her body with her stomach muscles, and rose to a sitting position, bracing her feet on the floor of the car as she did so, getting a good look around her. She immediately identified the back of The Pink Pussycat at the storeroom door, the same door through which she had made her departure by truck. She knew that to be a hundred years ago now. In the heat of the sunlight, escape appeared possible. No more truck and no one around to dampen her chance to get away.
How did I survive that night? I didn't wake up with a gun pointed at my head.
Marianne started to work on the bonds at her wrists and her ankles. Jimmy had tied her well after she'd escaped the first time. Struggling against them proved impossible. The tight ropes forced her to give it up in desperation and think of some other escape plan.
As Marianne struggled in the back of the car, she heard a tap at the window. She jumped in response but automatically turned her head in the direction of the window.
There, against the window to her right, stood the doctor.
Marianne's heart soared. They could share the responsibility of her salvation.
She had a friend.
She cried out to him, “Doctor! Help me!” Her gag muffled the words, and she heard them only as moans and frantic grunts.
Through the thick pane of glass, the doctor called to her, “Can you unlock the door to let me in?”
Bracing herself against the armrest, Marianne maneuvered her body to flick the switch. As if the car worked with them, the electric locks kicked in and sprang every door free. The doctor grabbed at the handle and opened the door. Marianne kept her back toward him, expecting he would untie her immediately. He tore the gag from her mouth first, and Marianne drew a deep breath and filled her lungs with the sweet air. He fell to the rest of his task right away, and loosed her bonds and freed her hands.
As she reached down to work on her feet, tears welled up in her eyes, and she started to cry, relieved and overwhelmed. Her words ran into each other in the spilling of emotion.
“Be careful. Joe and Don and Jimmy, and I don't know how many others, want to kill me. They're here somewhere. They'll kill you for freeing me.”
“Calm yourself, Marianne. They will not bother you anymore. Untie your feet, and I'll help you out of here.”
“Where are the police?” She smiled, then, for the first time since she had awakened in that place the day before. The worry and the terror had gone from her at last.
“Don't worry, you're safe. The men who want to hurt you aren't here, and the police will be here soon, I suspect. You have nothing to do but get out of here, and then I can get you home.”
Marianne struggled with the ties on her feet.
The doctor seemed agitated. “Please hurry. We don't have much time. We have to get you out of here.”
Marianne didn't question his urgency or the mystery of his words; she basked in the sunshine of friendship. Somehow she'd escaped, and soon this nightmare would end.
With her legs untied, she could to step out of the car. The doctor placed his hand firmly on her arm and said, “I will examine you when you get back to your home. For now, you must let me guide you. You'll see some unpleasant things that I can explain to you later, but you have to get out of here as fast as possible, and that means walking through the ugliness.” He looked at her with the cool, pallid eyes she had grown to know so well. “Can you be very brave, Marianne?”
“Can we leave by the back gate? I don't want to go in there.”
“There's something I want you to see first. Trust me, Marianne.”
Without answering, Marianne let him take her arm and guide her toward the door of Joe's storeroom. They entered through the same door through which she'd left the night before. For Marianne, it was a slightly apprehensive moment, but she trusted the doctor and the way he held her arm so firmly.
Almost at the other end of the storeroom, she stopped in her tracks.
There at her feet, arms outstretched toward the door of the storeroom, lay Jimmy. Although he reached up for the door, he slumped unmoving against it. The blood seeping out of his back leaked through his shirt. Marianne couldn't see his face, but in order to get in through the door, they'd have to move the body.
Marianne gasped and turned her face to hide in the chest of the doctor who stood behind her. Pushing on the door caused Jimmy to roll over, showing his dead face.
“I can do nothing for this man,” he said. “But I am surprised at your shock. I would have thought after what you witnessed earlier in the evening that you would expect that the life of this kind of man would end in this violent manner. It's astonishing that you have any sort of feeling for him at all.”
Marianne agreed in her heart, but seeing the dead body of a man who'd been a friend deeply distressed her. His mouth held a strange grimace, and he had a horrified stare in his eyes. This image, Marianne knew, she would never forget, the kind of image that would haunt her dreams. Jimmy cared for Joe, but that loyalty came from self-preservation, and she understood it. All through his behavior toward her, she knew that somehow he thought of her as a friend. To see her friend in this way, lying at the base of the door, blood all over his belly, horrified her.
“Allow me,” the doctor said simply. He took her hand and navigated her through the maze, encouraging her to step over the limbs and torso of her dead friend. Marianne had seen so many things in her time with Joe, but she'd never seen dead bodies. That he had spared her. People vanished, and she had questioned, on one occasion the disappearance of a man that Joe had told her no longer worked for him. However, Joe had always spared her. And she'd let him.
Closing her eyes as she stepped over the body, Marianne made her way through the back door of the storeroom. She paused, wanting to look back at her friend.
“Marianne.” She could hear the voice behind her. “There will be time to mourn the things that you see later, at a safe distance. If the authorities fin
d you here, they may suspect you of these crimes. We must keep moving to keep you safe.”
Marianne moved on from Jimmy's body and shuffled around a large shelf that extended into the main part of the room. Up ahead, the door to the main bar stood.
Then she saw the bodies of Joe and Don. They both lay on their backs, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling close to the other exit of the storeroom.
“Oh, dear God! Who could have done this?” cried Marianne.
“Just keep moving.” The doctor's voice, calm behind her, reassured her. “As long as they do not blame you for this, then everything will be for the best.”
Marianne felt hysteria rising inside her. It horrified her to see Jimmy killed, but now Joe. She didn't love Joe any more, but that didn't mean she wanted to see him hurt. Definitely not killed.
She felt vulnerable, weak, and very confused. She couldn't help wondering why her life had been spared through this series of killings. And why was she brought in to see this carnage?
She turned away in her horror. A great pool of blood extended out from Joe and Don, thick and red, like in a bad film. Marianne could see the blood, but tried not to internalize the meaning of it. She stepped over the bodies and found her way to the door. Turning the knob, she stepped out into the blackness of the huge main bar area of The Pink Pussycat Club.
Once in the darkness of the club, she moved to turn a light on. The switch made no difference, and without natural light, the room seemed like a cave. The main door looked bolted closed.
God, I want to get out of here. “Why did you bring me here?”
All alone, Marianne wanted an answer to what he'd just put her through. Heading instinctively toward the door, desperate to get out into the daylight. She became aware that the doctor wasn't going to answer and wasn't behind her anymore. Terrified the killer hadn't left the room, she turned abruptly, filled with fear again.
With a little sunlight from the storeroom behind him, Marianne could see the doctor standing by the door, a gun in his hand pointed firmly in Marianne's direction.
Marianne froze. “What's this? We need to get out of here.” The full weight of what she saw crept up slowly.
“Marianne, we will not be going out the front door. Do forgive me, but I can't take the chance that you will be seen.”
As if she'd been in a deep, dark fog and had suddenly moved into the brightness of the middle of the day, it all started to become clear to Marianne.
“You killed them,” she said. “And now you mean to kill me.”
“Yes. I killed them. And, yes, I am afraid that I do mean to kill you. I didn't want to initially, but you disappointed me the other day, and I realized that I had lost the control that I had over you, a control that I felt essential to the successful outcome I wanted.”
“Then Joe's superior…is you. The partner he talked about earlier? You told him about my movements, my sex life, and the other details. You've spied on me. You're the one who lied and told him I'd become a threat. And you brought me in here to kill me like the others.”
“Well deduced.”
“I believe I am the stupidest person in all of Sydney, Doctor.”
“I think that you may be, Marianne.”
“And now I will be killed for my stupidity.”
“You will die because you know too much about me and because you saw too much last night. Now you must die here, among the refuse of Joe's wretched corpse and his filthy business. I preferred to kill you at the beach, where so many of the souls we tried to save have died. I would have fed you to the ocean, and you'd float beautiful there forever, never growing old and never feeling any pain. But too much has happened here in this place. I am concerned now that someone heard the earlier shootings. I have to get out of Sydney fast. I can't take you with me anymore, and I can't risk leaving you alive, of course.”
A silence fell over the room. Marianne stared at him. The light coming in the door behind him surrounded him like a halo but hid his features in shadow. The rest of his body barely discernable in the half-light, the gun protruded from his lower waist as if everything poured into the barrel. Every dream or vision or thing inside him, culminated in this moment.
He leaned back into the door, kicking hard at the dead body of Joe. The door opened and more light bled into the room, so now she could see his body and his face more clearly.
Marianne looked at his physical deterioration. Weak and listless, his body slowly giving in under the exhaustion of what he'd done. His pale eyes held no sign of his motivations. They looked the same as if he were tending a wound on her head or telling her not to trust Peter.
Peter.
Peter's reputation remained intact. Her Peter, honest after all. Peter really did love her as he said he did.
“I would have preferred to have you as a companion, Marianne. You have a fine mind. It impressed me from the start. We could have escaped together. I will live on an island for the rest of my days. I have books and all that I will need to live the life of my dreams. I would have delighted in your good company if not for the foolish habit women have of falling in love. Tell me, women's intellect so outweighs men's. Their suffering makes them stronger. They connect to their intuitive knowing and have the natural order on their side. Why, then, do they throw it all away to attach themselves to the foolishness of men? I have never understood this, and it's at the heart of my frustration my whole life. Even in this moment, when your life may be lost, your mind wanders to him. It makes you happy. With death upon you, celebration is in order because your man is not the betrayer you thought.”
Even under the circumstances, Marianne blushed. “Now you want to ridicule me before killing me. That's a little beneath you, I think?”
“I highlight the ridiculous in you, and you blame me for imposing ridicule? You should have seen me practice medicine. I could repair the self-imposed wounds on women, and they would return to sickly lifestyles that perpetuated their illness. I spoke with so many women who had desperate mental illness, caused by various evils inflicted by the men they loved. However, they went back, or chose another man as soon as I could heal them. They are sheep. My efforts to heal were as futile as the physician who stitches up a young soldier only to send him back to the front line. In my youth, all my hope for the future lay in the promise of the minds of women. Now, in my older age, I hate them more for their acquiescence than I hate the men for their stupidity.
“The last woman in whom I put my faith is you, Marianne, and you ran from one fool into the arms of another in the short time that I knew you. In killing you, I will put an end to my hope for the human race. I will leave here and live in isolation until this angry disease takes my body, never seeing another living soul. And you will die perfect, free from your own self-sabotage.”
Marianne knew that he was mad, but the underlying truth of his words stung her. Fundamentally, he had her pegged. Faced with her own death, her joy came from discovering Peter to be blameless. She had no defense for this and couldn't fathom a reason.
Then sanity forced its way into her. Somehow, Marianne knew she would have to shake off this moment and live to get away from him. Her brain kicked into high gear, and she weighed many factors instantly.
Joe had kept a gun behind the bar. The doctor had a gun pointed at her still, but if she flew for the bar, it was unlikely that his shot would hit its mark. Plus, he would have fired the gun, making a loud noise. At this time of the day, the shot would add to any suspicion already aroused by the previous shots, and The Pink Pussycat could be crawling with police before they had a chance to leave.
As he walked toward her, the gun pointed firmly at her belly, Marianne decided she felt incredibly brave.
The bullet struck her in the leg as she ran to the left side of the bar. She fell behind the bar, and for a second, she could not see him. Crawling around the bar, her mind raced to come up with the best possible plan to grab Joe's gun and somehow get her out of there safely.
“Now you have made me reckle
ss,” he whispered in his smooth, unresponsive voice.
He kept talking all the while as he made his way around the bar. Marianne couldn't see him, but she could hear that voice, that reasonable tone, those lucid words coming from his direction. It seemed like a nightmare now, his gentleness and passivity, as if beneath it lurked a kind of evil too hideous to contemplate.
She hid behind the bar, edging her way soundlessly to the area beneath the till, opposite the source of the softly spoken voice.
“Again, the thorn in my side is called Marianne. Just as it was since that fateful night Joe came home and found that you had gone. How I cursed his stupidity for treating you so badly. We had a problem the minute you left, and I had to take the apartment next to yours to keep an eye on you.
“Here at the end, when everyone is gone, you and I remain. You with your fine mind and I with my wits could have easily controlled this operation and helped so many people. But your stubborn refusal to do as Joe said has denied both of us the pleasure of success.
“Like a woman, you betrayed me and my plans for greatness by running to the next fool of a man. Like him, I saw the greatness in you too, but I wanted it for higher things. He only wanted it to gratify himself. And yet you followed him and his sleazy friends into debauchery instead of listening to my wise advice.”
He'd reached the end of the bar, and Marianne saw the gun come around the corner before his body followed. The throbbing pain in her leg spread to her belly, and blood seeped into her jeans. She wondered how much blood loss could occur from a bullet wound to the leg. She slid herself back against the bar and farther around to her left, under the hole in the counter that acted as an entrance to the bar. In just a few seconds, she would have her hand on that gun. As the doctor moved around the other end, she traveled in the opposite direction; they acted as two hands of a deadly clock that marked all the time she had left.