Secret Memories

by J. S. Donovan

  Lazlo bared his teeth. The gunman didn’t even flinch. He aimed the gun at the golden retriever. Kelly squeezed her dog. He growled lightly.

  The gunman commanded with his baritone voice. “Put the dog in the bathroom.”

  Lazlo snapped at him. Kelly brushed her hand over the back of his neck. “Shh. Come with Mommy.”

  She rose slowly, keeping her eyes on Angela as she headed toward the bathroom. The gunman followed a few paces behind.

  Thomas took a step forward. The woman’s finger slid over the trigger, halting Thomas’s advance. She spoke up. “We only want the car.”

  “Okay,” Thomas said agreeably. “Whatever you need. The keys are in my pocket. I’m going to take them out.”

  The woman nodded. Thomas fished out the keys. He put them on the floor and gently kicked them. They slid across the hardwood and bumped against the toes of the woman’s boot. Kelly returned, tears streaming down her face as the gunman followed her. Lazlo’s barks sounded from the sealed bathroom door.

  Angela stood petrified this whole time. It was like she was invisible to the gunman, and that seemed like the best place to be.

  The woman scooped up the keys and pocketed them. She looked to her partner. “You want to tie them up?”

  The man shrugged. “Sure.”

  The blood left Thomas’s face. “The car is yours. We won’t stop you.”

  The woman ignored him. “Gather up by the couch.”

  Angela’s heart thumped as the woman herded them to the center of the room. The man propped his gun against the far wall, unzipped his backpack, and removed a packet of zip ties.

  Angela stood by her mother. Kelly gently squeezed her hand but kept her keen eyes on the intruders. Thomas’s face went from stark white to red. “We gave you what you wanted.”

  The man approached her father. “Hands,” he commanded.

  Reluctantly, Thomas presented his hands. As the man started to wrap two interconnected zip ties around his wrists, Thomas slammed his forehead into the man’s nose. There was a nasty snapping noise. The man pulled out a knife and slashed at Thomas. The blade cut open his arm. Nevertheless, Thomas punched back. The shadowy figure stepped out of the way of the blow and stuck Thomas in the belly.

  He fell against the Christmas tree, knocking it over, but managed to stay standing.

  “Thomas!” Kelly screamed and rushed to his aid.

  The woman aimed the rifle at her. “Take one more step and I’ll blow off that pretty face of yours.”

  Thomas pushed himself into the man, trying to get the knife from his hand. He held his wrist in place, but the killer drew out a second blade from a sheath in the back of the belt. The moment Thomas freed the killer of one blade, the second swiped across his neck. Thomas grabbed his throat, unsure what just happened. He staggered backwards and collapsed to the ground next to Angela.

  The room was silent apart from the crackling of the fireplace and the bays of Lazlo.

  The woman kept the gun on Kelly. “Get rid of that ring of yours. You won’t be needed it anymore.”

  The male killer walked over to Angela. His knives dripped red.

  Crying, Kelly tossed her ring into the fire.

  “Zip tie the girl,” Carmela commanded.

  Kelly grabbed the zip tie and did as the woman said. When she finished, she was commanded to do the same for herself.

  “Hands bound, Kelly held Angela close to her chest. “Please.”

  The woman drew out her own knife. What happened next, Angela’s mind didn’t want to remember. Her mother was dead. They gagged Angela and carried her out to the snow. They put her in the trunk of their car and slammed it shut.

  The flashback ended.

  The stranger’s rifle thundered. Angela dropped prone, glass raining down on her from the shattered window. “Block the windows!”

  Keeping low, Hitch ran for the shelf by the busted window. He pushed his body against it. It moved across the floor and sealed up the broken window. Angela got up. Another rifle blast sounded, blasting around through the shelf.

  Hitch and her split up. They closed the window curtains and pushed the table against the front door.

  Glass shattered in the bedroom.

  Angela and Hitch darted that way.

  The doorknob to the bedroom twisted and the barrel of a rifle slipped through the gap.

  Hitch slammed his body against the door, forcefully closing it against the rifle. It blasted a hole in the floor. Hitch grabbed the hot barrel, keeping the shooter from pulling it back in.

  “Chair!” he commanded with a grimace.

  Angela grabbed a chair from where the table had been. The barrel was yanked from Hitch’s grip and out of the closing door. The door slammed shut the rest of the way. Angela jammed the chair under the knob. The gunman banged on the other side but couldn’t get in. Hitch let out a sigh of relief. The moment didn’t last. The rifle blast tore through the doorknob and destroyed the upper wooden slat of the chair’s back.

  Another window shattered.

  Billowing dusty curtains revealed the Carmela standing within the swirl of flurries.

  She fired off a blast.

  Angela tackled Hitch out of the way. They rolled away from another blast that tore a hole in the floor. Angela rolled to her back and shot at the woman in the window. The masked lady’s head lurched back. Staggering, she dropped her rifle and brushed two fingers below the eye hole of her mask. She examined the blood on her fingertips. A red tear trickled from the left eye hole. She sank below the window and out of sight.

  The bedroom door started to open again. Angela fired off another round through the face of the opening door. The wood split. The gunman behind it retreated. Angela pulled the trigger a third time.

  Empty.

  Hitch held the door closed with his back. “Get the gun!”

  Angela didn’t understand immediately, but then she lunged to the window where Carmela had been shot. Angela leaned over the windowsill and looked at the lifeless body lying in the snow. Blood leaked from the black mask and stained the snow beneath. Feeling her world spin, she picked up the rifle. Nestling it against her shoulder, she headed around the back of the cabin. Her heart was raging. Her vision blurred. She was burning up and yet was being bombarded with the cold. She was on autopilot.

  She reached the window at the side wall of the cabin. She glanced through the frosted glass. Across the room, she could see the other shattered window that the man had climbed through. She scanned the room, looking first to the door where the gunman was meant to be. Empty. Angela’s skin crawled. The man wasn’t there. She ran back to Carmela’s body and yelled into the cabin. “He’s gone!”

  Hitch quickly got to his feet. “Where?”

  “The snow,” Angela replied. “We need to go after him!”

  Without waiting for his response, Angela got moving. She wasn’t going to let him feed any more doubt and fear than she already had. She was in the mood to hunt. She sprinted around the front of the cabin, feeling the heavy rifle in her hand, and dashed deeper into the woods.

  She followed the boot prints that led from the shattered cabin window. Her nose leaked. The wind whirled. Trees bent and swayed in the tough wind. She sniffled and kept her eyes darting between every tree. The boot prints were her guide. Soon, the cabin vanished behind her. She glanced back, not seeing Frank. She wasn’t going to wait for him. She slid down a small hill and neared a frozen stream. The footsteps trailed into a deep thicket of woods. Angela kept her eyes peeled as she made her way across the icy water. There was a loud boom and the rifle bullet split the ice.

  Angela dived for cover behind a broken tree trunk, sitting down, her back against the trunk. She glanced over the dead bark, eyeing the cluster of trees up ahead.

  There was a flicker of light followed quickly by another blast. Bark exploded into jagged shards around Angela. She fired at where the muzzle flash had been. The shooter fired back. The snow was heavy. She couldn’t see that far ahead.r />
  She fired off two blasts in the general direction of the shooter. She listened to the wind and waited for the shooter to return her blast with his own.

  It was suddenly quiet. Cautiously, Angela eased her way out from behind the trunk and took cover beside a large, leafless tree. No deafening blast. She thought she should be happy she wasn’t being shot at, but she was terrified. She weaved between the various trees, keeping track of the boot prints. Near a rifle-punched tree, she saw a mound of snow. Angela approached cautiously. Peeking out of the mound was the back of a winter coat and a dart rifle.

  “Get up,” Angela demanded, aiming her gun at the mound. She noticed that there were boot prints leading from the mound, meaning… she stepped on the coat, realizing it was just that--a coat in a pile of snow and branches to make it look like a body.

  She twisted back to the swinging wooden stock of a rifle. It hit the barrel of her own. She blasted a hole in the ground right before the gun flew from her hands. The masked man, wearing a long-sleeved shirt because his jacket had been removed, used the rifle like a club. He swung it at Angela again. It cut the air by her face, missing her by inches. The man swung it again, this time vertically.

  Angela moved out of the way. “Who are you!?”

  The man didn’t reply. He kept swinging. They danced like that for a few more seconds until Angela slammed her back into a tree.

  “Why did you do it? Tell me!” Angela demanded.

  The shotgun stock slammed against the side of the tree and hit with great force. It sent a pulse of energy up the man’s arm. Angela used that opportunity to slip by him and dive for her own rifle. Her belly hit the snow-covered dirt and her fingers brushed against the cold firearm. She was about to grab it when she felt the man dive on her back. Angela gasped as his weight cut off her airflow. She thought for sure he’d bludgeon her head in, but instead she heard the sharp sound of a knife leaving a sheath.

  Angela reached desperately for the gun. She remembered how her father had died. She remembered how her mother had died. It was the same knife. It had to be. She could almost reach the gun.

  The back of her winter coat was slit open and an icy breeze flooded in. The man spoke with his deep voice. “You killed my lover, little butterfly.”

  He grabbed the two flaps of her coat and shirt and tore them open, revealing the pale skin of her carved back to the cold, dark world. Angela screamed as her fingers desperately started to pull the rifle to her, centimeters at a time. She froze as the ice-cold tip of the knife pressed against her scarred back.

  “Remember this?” the man asked, taking pleasure in his victory.

  As the point pierced her skin, Angela recalled the pain from all those years ago.

  “Frank!” she called out as the man traced the butterfly with his knife.

  “Shut up.” The man took the back of Angela’s head with his massive hand and pressed her face into the snow. It got into her nose and eyes and was so cold it burned. Her scream was muffled. Her legs kicked rapidly. Her hands kept pulling the gun closer. The rifle was almost in a place where she could use it.

  Holding her like that with one hand, the man returned the knife to her back. “Thank you for participating in Carmela’s and my little game. You got the closest out of all of them.”

  He continued to cut along the shallow wound, nearly having completed the right wing, when Angela heard a shout. The cutting stopped. Her face was no longer being pushed into the cold snow. The man’s heavy weight disappeared. Angela grabbed the rifle and twisted back.

  Frank had tackled the masked man and started beating on him. “You killed Iris, you son of a bitch!”

  Angela took aim. The man pushed Frank off and scrambled to his feet. Angela pulled the trigger. The gun was empty.

  The man went zigzagging into the woods.

  Dropping her weapon, Angela snatch up the dart rifle and fired off the dart. Her obscured vision and bleeding shoulder caused her to miss.

  Frank pulled the gun from her hand and fired. It stuck the man in the back of the arm, before he vanished from view.

  The slash in the back of Angela’s coat let all the cold in. The cut on her back stung like crazy. She fell to her knees.

  “We need to go after him.” Her voice was slurred. She toppled over, landing in the snow. The effect of the dart hit her suddenly.

  “He’ll freeze to death out here,” Frank declared. “You will too if we don’t leave.”

  “No!” Angela protested. “Finish this!”

  Frank set his jaw and looked intently into Angela’s eyes. “I won’t let another woman die.”

  Blood spilling from the butterfly wound and onto the snow, Angela’s eyes fell slowly shut as she fainted in the heart of the wintery woods.