A Vulnerable Broken Mind
Page 11
Morrison then went back into the SUV for a second and pulled out a huge flashlight. He pointed it to the left of the truck and a turned it on. In the distance was a dock of some kind. He then panned the light up to reveal Hunt’s black SUV sitting on top of it. While the dock was a vague shape, the SUV shone brightly in the light.
“There’s only one dock on this side of the river and one man owns it,” Morrison explained. “That man is Ralph Hunt.”
“No one else uses it?” John asked.
“He doesn’t allow anyone to use it. The rest of us have to take off from where we are right now,” Morrison responded. He walked up to the trailer and hit a button from his side. The trailer began to raise from one side, tipping the boat’s rear to the water. Once it was high enough, Morrison hit another switch and the boat released and slid into the water.
John couldn’t help but stare at the contraption in amazement. But his amazement didn’t last long, as Morrison walked to his side. “It’s time,” he said. This statement brought John back to reality. “Now, there’s a few things we have to go over to make sure that this goes smoothly.”
John could only nod his head. His nerves rose, even before Morrison began to go over the details.
“The house is about a ten minute boat ride from here,” Morrison explained. “When we approach the house, I’ll drop you off and wait in the distance for you to come out.” John nodded at this. “If you at any point want to turn back, let me know.” He walked back to the front of the SUV on the passenger’s side. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out something.
Morrison walked back up to John, handing him a pistol. “Take this, it’s fully loaded.” John hesitated to take the gun; he had only used a gun once in his life. “Believe me, you’re going to need this,” Morrison said grimly. John slowly took the gun out of Morrison’s hand. “I’m going to be honest with you, you might have to use that. If you do use it, don’t be afraid to kill the person you shoot.”
John then looked at the gun. He had never killed anybody in his entire life. While he was angry and wanted Amber back, he still hoped the gun would not come into play. He didn’t know if he would have the nerve to actually pull the trigger when the time came to do so.
Morrison put a hand on John’s shoulder. John then looked into his eyes. “Don’t be afraid,” Morrison said. “They are responsible for all of your misery. They deserve to die more deaths than just one.” All John could do was nod once more because he couldn’t find any words to say. “Let’s get on the boat.”
Both John and Morrison got into the boat. John wasn’t a man that got seasick but he was already feeling sick. He didn’t feel any better as Morrison started the engine to the boat. The boat was small; it had only two seats and was barely wide enough for John and Morrison to fit in. This ride was not going to be comfortable from any perspective.
Chapter 9: The Death He Requested For
“Open your eyes,” a soft and soothing voice said. Amber opened her eyes and was greeted by the little girl. They were standing in a hallway that was brightly lit with blue walls to the left and right. To the left, were three doors. One door was at the very end of the hall.
The hall was at least thirty feet long and had a red and black rug that ran through the entire length of the hallway.
After looking around, Amber realized that she was clothed. She looked down to see a red dress and black shoes covering her body. “Where are we?” She asked.
“We’re in the house that you have been trapped in tonight,” the little girl explained.
Amber looked around the place. It was way too pleasant to be the hell she had been stuck in for so many hours. She knew the horror that hid behind its walls.
“Follow me,” The girl said and she walked down the hall and towards the door at the end. When they got there, she opened the door which appeared to lead to a set of stairs. The girl indicated for Amber to go through. Amber walked through the door and down the stairs. A door was open at the bottom. There was no light in the stairwell itself but the light coming from the door helped her see.
As they went down, a faint whimper could be heard. A woman was crying from the room below. The further they went down, the louder it became. The sound, while not loud, was damaging to Amber’s heart.
Once she was at the bottom of the stairs, she turned left to walk into the room. The small room sent shivers up her body. She stopped at the doorway and looked in. She knew the room as soon as she laid eyes on it and she hated it. It was the room where those men had trapped her.
She closed her eyes and almost every bit of pain and misery she had experienced flashed through her brain in that one second. She almost went into tears just thinking about it. Her mental pain from all of it felt equal to her physical pain.
She felt a little nudge on her back from the little girl. “It’s okay, nothing will happen to you now,” she said softly.
Amber stepped slowly into the room. When she walked in, she was greeted by more whimpering. She looked to her right towards the sound and stared at a young, slim, brunette woman. Like Amber had been, she was on her knees, blindfolded, chained and completely stripped of clothing. Had it not been for her hair, Amber might have thought it was herself that she was staring at.
As Amber looked at her, the little girl walked around to stand next to the woman. “This is Mary Stanton,” she explained.
“Why is she here?” Amber asked trying to keep from crying at the sight.
“She was here for the same reason you’ve been here,” the girl replied. The girl looked and sounded young but spoke as if she were an adult. “She’s here to be a slave for them. She moved to town with her husband and daughter. Nothing was the same after that. He captured both her and her daughter, Jennifer.”
“How long has she been here…Carol?” Amber asked, finally remembering the little girl’s name.
“She was here a total of two months,” Carol replied. “We’re here on her fourth day.” Once she said that, they heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Both Mary and Amber went stiff and stayed silent. The steps got closer and soon someone entered the room. Amber went wide eyed and white and backed up into the nearest corner as the man wearing the blue-haired clown mask entered the room.
“Don’t worry,” Carol said immediately. “He can’t see or touch you right now.” This did not eliminate Amber’s fear of him.
It was at this moment that she realized that he was not alone. Holding him by the right hand was a little girl. With a strong resemblance and long brown hair like Mary; Amber knew that it was Mary’s daughter, Jennifer. She was also blindfolded. She couldn’t have been any older than five.
Amber had never seen such a horrifying sight in her life. She had to watch as this little girl was brought into the same room where her mother was being raped and tortured. This man didn’t care how far he went.
“Say hello to mommy, Jennifer,” the man said harshly. Mary began to whimper again. “I told you…” he said, now talking to Mary.”…if you continued to defy me, I would make you cooperate some way and somehow. It wasn’t very hard to find your little girl at her preschool. She’s just as beautiful as you. However, I wonder if she’s more cooperative, though,” he said with a little laugh.
“NO,” Mary shouted. “You leave her alone, you bastard!”
“If you want me to leave her alone, then you are going to do what I say,” the man shouted. “Or else, little Jennifer is going to be turned into a woman very early.”
“NO,” Mary shouted again and Jennifer had her head down and was crying her eyes out.
“Then do what I say! Do you understand?” The man shouted.
Mary broke into tears but had no choice but to answer. “Yes,” she responded. “Just leave my daughter alone.”
“Good girl.” He then reached to grab Mary’s blindfold and pulled it off with force. “Look at me, bitch.” Mary put her head up to look into the eyes of the man in the clown mask. “Now, look at your daughter.”
“Mommy,” Jennifer gasped.
“Shut up bitch,” the man shouted but not at Mary; he shouted at Jennifer. He then turned to Mary again. “I warn you now, whore, if you disobey me once, I won’t take it out on you. I’ll take it out on her. I suggest you think about that. You better rest up because you’re in for a long night.”
He then placed the blindfold over the now speechless and distraught Mary. He grabbed Jennifer roughly by the arm and dragged her out of the room. Mary was left to cry and suffer through her tragic decision, alone.
Suddenly, the scene began to change. They remained in the room but Mary was no longer chained. She looked almost, if not completely dead. She lay motionless on the floor.
Her body had been ravaged and ripped apart. Gashes were all over her body and on her left shoulder down to her chest was a horrible burn that looked fresh. All of the skin had nearly been burned off on that part of her body.
Amber felt horrible for Mary. She wanted to kneel down to console her but knew that she couldn’t. “Oh my God, he did all of this to her?” She asked.
“This is his version of fun,” Carol replied. “Mary did whatever he wanted to protect her daughter. Little did she know that he didn’t live up to his word.”
Amber looked at Carol in disbelief. “What’s happened to her?”
Carol then put her head down. She clearly did not want to answer. This alone told Amber the answer and her eyes welled up with tears. “How did she die?” She asked.
Carol began to cry as well. “She died from a disease that he gave to her,” Amber wanted to throw up. “The entire time that Mary suffered to save her, she was actually dying upstairs and she had no idea that it was happening.”
“How old was she?” Amber asked, barely able to get the words out.
“She was only a couple days away from her sixth birthday.” Carol replied in a very low tone. Amber felt sorrow and sympathy for Mary and a great deal of hate for the man that put her through all of this.
Many people consider hate to be too strong of a word to use, but when you mean it with every fiber of your being you don’t feel negative towards yourself for thinking it. But should you feel bad for wishing death upon that person? Amber didn’t think so. In fact, she wanted to burn the skin off of his body, to see how he liked it.
The scene changed yet again. This time though, the environment changed too. Soon, Amber found herself in what appeared to be a hall of jail cells; a dimly lit place with five older cells on one side. The hall of cells were old and rotted. The yellowish concrete walls and ceiling were cracked and the cells doors were rusted. To Amber’s left, was a red door that stood out brightly, a great contrast from the dreadful looking hallway.
“Where are we now?” Amber asked.
“We’re still in the same house,” Carol replied and Amber stared in disbelief. “These are left over cells from the late nineteenth century, a time of slavery. These cells were the only reason he wanted to build his house here. These cells were meant for slaves that were being punished for breaking the rules. Some were set free to continue to work, while others were left here to die. In many ways, he uses these cells the same way the slave owners did.”
“No one knew that this was here?” Amber asked.
“Everyone thought that he demolished it when he built the house,” Carol answered. “Since he and his friend were the only ones ever in the house, he was able to lie about it and get away with it.”
They heard a noise. Another person was crying. It was not a woman this time; it was a man crying from one of the cells. Amber listened intently to hear where it was coming from, it was coming from the very first cell.
Amber walked to it very slowly with Carol following. She looked inside of the cell and in the corner sat a young man, curled up and crying. He looked like he had been in the cell for a long while as his clothes looked dirty and worn. He was a thin, blond haired man, and had a small beard.
“Who is he?” Amber asked.
Carol looked into the cell as well. “That’s Mary’s husband, Tony. When he discovered that Mary and Jennifer were missing, he went to every length he could to try and find them but when he finally found out who took them he was captured as well. They imprisoned him in this cell. They made him watch videos of his wife and daughter’s torture. He was driven mad.”
As she said that, the red door opened. Walking through the door was the man in the clown mask. In his right hand was a long, thick rope. He walked over to the cell and stared into it. “Here’s the rope you ordered, Stanton. You better be clean about it. I’m not cleaning up any blood you leave behind,” the man said cruelly.
Amber stared sadly. “He hung himself?”
Carol merely nodded. Amber wished for the environment to change again. She did not think that she could bear seeing someone do that to himself. The environment remained the same and Amber didn’t like it.
The man in the clown mask stepped out for a second but came back in quickly with a chair in hand. He unlocked the door and placed the chair in the cell and quickly closed the door. “I thought you might need that,” he said in an almost humorous tone. He clearly enjoyed the thought of one of his prisoners hanging themselves.
He left the room, leaving Stanton to himself and Amber and Carol to watch him.
Stanton grabbed the chair and set it under a part of the ceiling that had a huge hole in it and a pipe running across it. Stanton wasn’t even taking his time. In a way, she understood how he felt.
He tied the rope to one of the bars on the cell door and threw the rest of the rope around the pipe. He then stood on the chair to tie the rope into a noose.
He had remained expressionless and silent but as he tied the noose, a look of anger flashed across his face. “I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY,” he shouted. “HUNT, YOU BASTARD! YOU’VE MURDERED ME!”
He then wrapped the noose around his neck. “I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE! YOU MURDERER!” He stepped off of the chair and hung from the noose. His voice might have left the room but it didn’t leave Amber’s head. Amber turned around; she couldn’t look any longer as his body convulsed and went still.
“Mary could hear every word from upstairs,” Carol said. “They haunt her to this day. She hears them when she’s awake, when she sleeps, and whenever she looks at his picture.”
Amber looked at Carol, who looked very sad. “That’s why you can’t give up,” she told Amber. “You have to believe that he’ll be there for you.”
Amber wanted to believe but the sight of someone hanging themselves cast doubt within her. “What if he gives up too?” She asked trying not to cry.
Carol then looked at her with the utmost seriousness. “He won’t. You must believe that he won’t. He will save you.”
All Amber could do was stare at Carol. She then gave a little nod but wasn’t entirely convinced in her mind nor in her heart. She wanted desperately to believe that John would be there but she felt like a barricade was blocking her belief. It was like a brick wall that was too tough to penetrate.
Carol apparently saw this doubt as she grabbed Amber by the hand. Her soothing touch actually stopped Amber’s sadness for a second. “Please believe, for both our sakes.”
Amber was very confused by this statement and was about to ask why when the world began to fade away. Carol began to disappear as well. Amber was lifted out of the environment and felt herself waking up.
Her senses returned to the real world and she felt worse than ever. She felt sick and felt extremely lightheaded. She opened her eyes and was surprised that a blindfold was not placed over them. However, her mouth was gagged with a piece of cloth and she couldn’t move her body.
She was lying on a queen sized bed with a steel bed frame. Both hands and feet were tied to each side, spreading her arms and legs. She was still nude, which added to her humiliation.
Her back and legs had been bandaged. She could feel th
e padding that they placed on her back. While it reduced the pain, she could still feel the sting from what they had done to her.
She was in a small bedroom with wood walls and a big wood dresser. Next to the bed, was a wooden nightstand and white lamp with a big red rose painted on it. Above Amber, was a big hand-painted picture of a beach and ocean; a pleasant looking place for an unpleasant experience.
She tried to move and break the ropes but her energy wasn’t there. The lack of food and water was beginning to catch up with her as she not only felt both hungry and thirsty, but her strength was entirely depleted. All she could do was lie there and stare around the room.
Apparently her little scuffle caused noise as she soon heard footsteps coming towards the room. She lifted her head as far as she could to see who was coming in. To her horror, the man in the blue-haired clown mask came into view.
“Well, look who’s finally awake,” he said. “You’ve been asleep for a couple hours now. It’s almost time for the sun to come up. If you stay awake long enough, you might be able to see it.” He walked up to the bed and sat next to Amber. “You’re probably thinking about screaming, but you’re in place where no one can hear it. In fact, I could kill you right now and no one would be able to find your body.
“Just keep that in perspective if you have any ideas about trying to scream or escape. In fact, you can try to escape but I know that I’ll always be able to find you. You wouldn’t be able to get out of here, even if you tried.”
He then began to pet Amber’s head as if she were some kind of animal. His words were like daggers to her confidence, stabbing her with each word. It crumpled up her confidence like a piece of paper and was torn to pieces. Was this all she was now? Was she nothing more than his pet?
While petting her, he reached into one of his pockets and pulled out something. He looked at it in great detail and then reached to the nightstand to set whatever it was on top of it. They were two items that Amber held very close to her. She nearly broke down as John’s wedding ring and hers were set on top of the night stand.