by D. N. Hoxa
We were on a highway somewhere. No signs that I could see. Just a straight wide road with nothing on either side.
“Where are we going?” I said when he started the engine again.
“Anywhere you want,” Adrian said, and tried to smile, but his eyes twitched weirdly. His fist went to his temple, and it almost looked like he wanted to hit himself.
“Headache?”
“Yeah,” he said, flinching. “It’s been really bad ever since I asked you to run away with me.”
He opened the glove compartment, took out a bottle of pills, and popped two into his mouth.
And so we were on the way. To where, I had no idea. There wasn’t anything on either side of the road for miles while I tried to think of a place I could tell him to take me. Somewhere I knew there were a lot of people.
It was probably past midnight by then, but the morning was close. I had hope. I just needed to be patient and act at the right moment.
We drove for more than three hours, and Adrian didn’t let us stop anywhere. Except for once when I said I needed to pee, and he came with me. He waited for me right behind the tree, and I had no chance. At all. He claimed he was keeping me safe. I smiled as much as I could but kept my mouth shut.
“Where are we going to sleep?” I asked a few minutes before dawn.
“In the car,” Adrian said. “It’s not safe to go anywhere for now.”
“I can’t sleep in the car.”
Maybe he heard the panic in my voice. Maybe he didn’t.
“Just for the night, Willow. We’ll be far enough tomorrow. We can sleep anywhere you want tomorrow.”
What the hell was I supposed to say to that? Nothing. I nodded with a forced smile and turned my head the other way. Then he touched my hand. I jumped and jerked both hands away.
His eyes grew wide. I wanted to say something, to reassure him that he’d just surprised me when he touched me, but I couldn’t. As much as I wanted, needed to hug him, I didn’t want him to touch me.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“No, it’s…”
I couldn’t continue.
“I understand, Willow. You have every right to be freaked out. But we’ll be fine.”
We would, I thought. You’ll be in jail with your brothers, and I’ll be back home soon.
He stopped the car at the side of the road, then went out to find the best place to spend the morning. I searched the car for a phone until he came back, but I found nothing. He probably had the phone in his pocket. When he drove us into the woods, between large trees in complete darkness, my heart pounded and my body shook.
“Nobody will see us here for a few hours,” Adrian said.
It was getting harder to breathe. And pretend.
“Are you okay, Willow?”
It was no wonder he noticed.
“I don’t…I don’t know if I can sleep here. Maybe if we drove and found a hotel—”
“I’m tired, Willow. I’m dizzy. I’m not going to drive like that with you in the car,” Adrian said. “We’ll be fine, I promise you.”
My mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. The darkness around us seemed to want to swallow me whole. How was I going to get out of this?
“You can sleep in the back. It’s not much, but you’ll be able to lie down,” Adrian said.
I moved before he even finished speaking. I needed to think. I needed to breathe. I turned my back to the windshield and covered my head with my arms.
“Willow, I’m really sorry. I promise you, you’ll be all right.”
The tears I’d held all night long fell in silence. All I could think about was how to get away. That Adrian was sitting behind me didn’t matter. That I thought I loved him—do I love him still?—didn’t matter. That he broke me and I’d never, ever be the same again didn’t matter either. All that mattered was that I get away.
I heard the second his breathing slowed down. I didn’t move for another eternity. Outside, the light of dawn slipped through the trees and branches, and I could at least see.
Adrian was asleep. The road was a good run away, but I could make it. I could make it to the road, and if I was lucky, a car would pass by. I’d stop whoever it was and ask them to help me. To call 911.
It took me forever to gather the courage to sit up. When I did and he didn’t move, I was a little relieved. Maybe he was a heavy sleeper. Maybe I could get out of the car and start running, and he would still be asleep. My hands were sweaty. My heart pounded in my chest. I didn’t allow myself to look at him before I very slowly pulled the handle, and the door opened. Good thing his car was new and it didn’t make any noise.
I stayed like that for a few more seconds until I was sure he hadn’t moved. He was still sleeping.
Climbing out of the car without making a sound was the hardest, slowest thing I’d done in my life. My heart stayed in my throat, beating like mad, and my body didn’t even feel like mine. When I finally stepped outside and the dead leaves below my feet crackled, my legs almost gave. I was so close. All I had to do now was bring the door as close to the car as I could without closing it and run.
I did. And Adrian didn’t wake up.
My legs were heavy. I wasn’t a fast runner, but I was usually faster than I was that day. For some reason, the air around me seemed to want to stop me. But I saw the road, and I pushed forward with everything I had, tripped and fell a couple times, looked behind me every few seconds, and then I was on it. It was almost daylight outside.
And a car was coming my way.
Tears of joy slipped from my eyes. This was it. I was done. I started forward, running faster now, and I didn’t look back. I started waving with both arms at the car to stop, and it did. A man was alone in it, and I ran to his window, knocked on it until he opened it.
“I need help,” I said. “Can you please call 911? I was kidnapped.”
But the man wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were pinned to the windshield.
“Sir?” He looked no older than George. “Sir, can I please borrow your phone?”
His head turned to me, slowly. And when I saw his face, I almost peed myself. It was white. His eyes were black. Almost lifeless. Otherworldly.
“Can you help me?” I whispered, before he pushed the door open, and threw me to the side. He moved like he was starring in a slow motion movie. I took a step back when he climbed out of the car.
I started running when I saw the rifle in his hand.
On the other side of the road, another car was coming. I started waving at it with both hands again, calling for help at the top of my voice, and he stopped.
Please, please, please don’t let this one be the same…
He was. He stopped the car and came out with a tire iron in his hand. He was young, maybe my age, but his face was white, and his eyes dark, too. And he started walking towards me. I turned around, but before I could start to run, I saw the other man with the rifle, walking to me.
I looked back. Tire iron. Rifle. Tire iron. Rifle.
Tire iron.
I started at the man with the tire iron in his hand. I somehow felt like I’d have a better chance with him. I didn’t consider that the other could just shoot me while I wasn’t looking.
The cracking sound shook me to my bones. It sounded like he’d pulled the trigger, but when I turned around, the man was on the ground, and Adrian was behind him with his own tire iron.
I froze, but I wasn’t sure if it was from relief or more terror.
“Willow, run!” Adrian shouted.
I had just a second to register him running towards me, and then I felt the man behind me, so close that if I turned around, I’d be right in front of him. He touched my arm, but I moved before his fingers could wrap securely around it. I started to run towards Adrian, who, when he passed me, told me to grab the rifle.
What was I going to do with the rifle?
I didn’t know, but I took it anyway, then ran to the other side of the road, away from the man
who was dripping blood from the back of his head. Half his cap had turned black with blood.
Adrian was fighting the other, both with tire irons in their hands.
But the man…he looked like he was possessed, and for the shortest moment, I wondered if Adrian had really told me the truth.
It was too ridiculous to wonder, so I concentrated on their movements instead. Adrian was faster. Before long, the other was on his back, and Adrian sat on his stomach, dropped the tire iron, and hit him with his fists on his jaw, over and over again. Until the man stopped moving.
Adrian’s shoulders moved fast as he breathed heavily. He stayed there, sitting on the man’s stomach for a long second, before he stood up and ran to me, his face splattered with blood, his hands covered in it.
“Are you okay?” he said, and I began to laugh while I cried.
“I’m perfect!” I hissed.
He grabbed my face in his hands, probably made my cheeks red with blood, too, and he scanned my face. When he was satisfied that I wasn’t hurt, he grabbed the rifle from my hand, intertwined his fingers with mine, and started running.
He took us back to the car, and threw me inside like I was a sack of potatoes, but I wasn’t complaining.
He put the rifle on the backseat and drove out of the woods.
“What-what was wrong with them?” I cried as I looked at the two bodies across from each other in the middle of the road.
“Don’t look,” Adrian said. “Keep your eyes forward.”
But I couldn’t. I looked at them until I couldn’t see them anymore.
“Oh, God,” I breathed, over and over again, as if that word was going to save me.
“It was him,” Adrian mumbled. He drove like a mad man.
“Him?”
“The Devil.” Yet somehow, that didn’t seem worthy of a good laugh anymore.
“We need to call the police,” I said.
“You think the police will believe you when you tell them about those men?”
“Of course they will! It’s the truth!”
“You obviously didn’t believe me when I told you last night. And you know me,” he said.
“I don’t know you,” I hissed. I thought I did, but I didn’t. “And I need to take a shower. I smell like blood.”
I cried harder. My hands were now red, same as my face, because I’d tried to wipe the blood off my cheeks.
“You need to calm down, Willow,” Adrian said.
“I need a fucking shower!” I shouted.
“Okay!”
“Just take me to a hotel.”
“Willow, freaking out right now isn’t going to help you.”
“And what is?” I laughed hysterically. “I have the right to freak out after that! Stop telling me to calm down!”
He did. He stopped speaking and looking at me altogether.
And finally, we were in a town somewhere. People drove and walked around us. The sun was up and shining. I’d completely lost track of time, and the view was blurry in front of me. I didn’t see the hotel sign Adrian showed me, until he parked the car in front of it.
“Wait here until I get the key. I’ll come get you,” he said, and I nodded. “Don’t try to run away again, Willow. Please, just stay in the car.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.” Not after I’d seen the faces of those men. Adrian opened the door to step out, but I stopped him. “Did you kill them?”
He shivered. “I don’t know.”
I had no idea what the acceptable answer would be, but I didn’t think about it. He came back five minutes later. He opened the door and took my hand in his. When we entered the hotel, he put his arm around my shoulders and his hand on my head as if he was hiding me from people. I didn’t have it in me to protest, but I didn’t even know if I wanted to.
The room was small, but the bathroom looked clean. I shut the door in Adrian’s face as fast as I could. My clothes on the floor, dirty, even bloody, I sat in the shower and cried.
What if he had really told me the truth? What if he’d really made a deal with the Devil, and George had really asked him to kill me?
When he knocked on the door, I jumped. “Do you want to order something to eat?”
“No.” My stomach growled but I didn’t want to eat.
I stood up then and washed myself with the cheap shampoos of the hotel. I didn’t have time to sit and cry like a baby. I needed to clear my head and think about this.
When I came out of the bathroom, I found him in front of the window. I kept my head down until I lay down on the bed and hid it under the covers. Adrian didn’t say anything. I couldn’t even hear him breathing.
Soon, sleep took me.
Adrian woke me up at noon. He stood three steps away from me, touched my foot just a little, and whispered my name. As if he was afraid of what I would do. I felt like a jerk, and I ran to the bathroom without a word.
I was still in the bathroom when lunch arrived, and I hurried out as if the food would run away if I didn’t. I was starving.
The waiter had already set all the plates on the small table by the window. I couldn’t wait for him to get out already. The steak looked heavenly.
He put the food wherever he could, because there wasn’t much space, and then turned to leave. His eyes met mine. He was a nice looking man. Younger than me. Blond hair and blue eyes. Eyes that turned black right there, in front of my face while I watched.
“Oh, my God…” I whispered.
My body froze as I watched him step slowly back and take one of the knives he’d put on the table. He didn’t pay any attention to Adrian. As if he wasn’t even there. He didn’t even look away from me when Adrian took the sheet from the bed and wrapped the waiter with it from the neck down. He dragged him back and threw him on the bed before he tied the sheet around the wooden frame.
The waiter kept trying to move, but he couldn’t. He never looked away from me. Not once while I stood there and cried. Remembered how blue his eyes were just now. Before they transformed into two black spheres.
“We have to go, Willow,” Adrian was saying as he took hold of my shoulders and shook me back to the present. “We have to leave, right now. And you need to cover your face.”
“What?”
“Your face. You need to cover it. No one can see your face.”
“What’s wrong with my face?” I said, crying, as if that wasn’t the most ridiculous question to ask at that moment.
“He recognized you,” Adrian said, pointing at the waiter still tied up to the bed by sheets. “He was fine before he saw you, Willow.”
He was right. I’d seen the blue of his eyes. He’d been normal, right up to the second he saw my face. He recognized me.
Adrian grabbed the plates and threw all the food in a plastic bag. He grabbed my hand and dragged me, because I still couldn’t move or look away from the dead face of the waiter. He’d torn the light blue sheets with the knife that was still in his hand, but by the time he freed himself, we’d be long gone.
Adrian tried every door in the hallway until one of them opened. He walked in and dragged me with him, before he started to go through the small drawer next to the bed and the suitcase under it. Who knew whose room it was, but he took off my robe and dressed me with a shirt and a pair of shorts. The shorts were a size too small, but it didn’t matter. The shirt was big enough to fall all the way to my thighs. Then he put a cap on my head, a white one. And finally, he took out a scarf from the dresser, a bright yellow one, and put it under my eyes. Tied it behind my head.
I could hardly breathe.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his hands framing my almost completely covered face.
I wasn’t. I fell against his shoulders and hugged him with all the strength I had left, my body vibrating against his.
“It’s going to be okay, Willow. Nobody’s going to hurt you,” he said, and for the first time since all of this madness began, I believed him.
I stayed behind him li
ke he said and kept my head down. I saw nothing but the back of his feet as he walked, his hand tightly around mine. I didn’t even breathe until he opened the car door for me, and I climbed in. I took the scarf off and filled my lungs with air.
Adrian drove even faster than before. My mind wasn’t my own, because I couldn’t catch any thoughts that were mine. Only blue eyes turning black, George’s face, my mother’s…
“Stop,” I said.
“What?”
“Stop the car.”
He did. I barely made it to open the door before I heaved. Nothing came out but water and spit, but it felt like my soul left me through my throat and mouth.
Adrian pushed a bottle of water in my hand. It was warm, but better than nothing.
“You need to eat,” he said and put the plastic bag on my lap. I almost threw up that water I drank when I saw the combination of meat, mashed potatoes, and rice with vegetables thrown in together.
“I can’t.”
“You have to,” he said. “Just a bite.”
“We need to go back,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Go back?”
“To my mother,” I said, nodding.
“Willow, we can’t—”
“He wanted you to kill me,” I hissed. “I’m not going to leave my mother with a man like that.”
Adrian flinched. “I understand that, but first, we need to make sure nobody’s following us. We need to get you to safety first.”
“You don’t understand. My mother is going to come looking for me when she sees the place after your brothers…” He flinched again. “I need to warn her. I need her to get away from him.”
I’d loved that man. I’d loved how he loved my mother. It was so hard to believe that he’d actually wanted me killed, but what was the alternative? I could distrust words, but not my own eyes.
“So you believe me,” Adrian said.
I started to cry again. “Yes.”
“Then believe me when I tell you that you need to think about Willow first. Your mother isn’t in danger. George loves her. He wouldn’t hurt her. We need to get you safe first.”