Her mouth went dry. How was she going to get out of this? She had the confession that she had come for, now she just needed to take her purse with the recorder and get away from here. That was when she realized that her purse was gone. She looked around the room but didn't see it. She began to panic. Without the tape, this was a wasted trip and she had put herself in danger and been hit in the mouth for nothing. She jerked her arm out of his grasp and moved a few steps backwards to a point where she could better see around the room and there, under the table she spotted the shoulder strap of the purse. Her mind raced. Should she retrieve it and chance calling attention to it or wait for an opportunity to get it without him noticing. Her palms became sweaty and she wiped them on her pant legs as she watched him warily, wondering what she should do.
"Now, where in hell am I going to put you until I figure out what to do?" he asked.
The time to get the purse would have to be now, she decided, for goodness knows what he would do next. She looked again towards the purse and then noticed her glasses, lying a little further on. "My glasses,” she murmured, "I need them." She moved towards them expecting at any moment to feel his hands hauling her back, but fortunately he didn't appear to be too concerned with the possibility of her escaping and she was able to pick up the glasses and then, as she moved back towards him, to stoop over and pick up the purse and sling it over her shoulder. She was very relieved that he made no moves to touch her and didn't seem to pay any attention to the purse at all. They stood facing one another for a moment, Eric having moved to a point where he was between her and the door, successfully blocking any hope of escape. Her mind raced trying to think of some way to get out of the predicament she found herself in and coming up with nothing.
Finally, he spoke, "I want you in the basement. Now move."
"Please, Eric, let me go."
"Get moving, or I'll push you down those stairs. And wouldn’t it be a crying shame if you broke your neck? Now hurry up."
She willed her feet to move, hating the fact that she was so very much in his control. "Eric, let me go. I have to get back to the boys. They need me."
"Shut up and get down those stairs. I'm warning you. It wouldn’t take much for me to give you a good shove."
She was filled with dread at the menace in his voice, but she dreaded even more the thought of putting more distance between herself and the kitchen door and she hesitated at the top of the basement stairs. He immediately moved towards her menacingly and she began a slow but steady descent to the basement with Eric close behind her. From years spent living in this house, she knew without looking that there was no escape from this basement except through the door into the kitchen above. She was trembling in fear but knew that it was imperative that she remain calm for although things were progressing quite badly, they could be worse. He had, at least, stopped hitting her and in time Jeanie would find her note and when she didn’t show up there would begin a search. Once someone arrived to look for her, Eric would have a hard time explaining the strange car in the front yard and sooner or later she’d be found. Meanwhile she’d have to make herself as comfortable as possible and wait to be rescued. Once she was freed she could take the tape in her possession to the police and then it would just be a matter of waiting for justice to be served.
At the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed her arm in a vise-like grip and pulled her toward the furnace room. Despite her decision to stay calm she couldn’t stop herself from pleading with him once more, "Eric, please, you can't do this."
"Sweetheart, I've done it." He pushed her into the room and slammed the door shut behind her. She heard him moving about and then his hammer pounding on the door, nailing her inside this makeshift prison.
"Now keep your mouth shut. I've got some thinking to do." His footsteps resounded first on the stairs and then across the kitchen floor.
Emily sank down on the cold, hard cement floor. She, too, had some thinking to do. There were two things that she had to somehow accomplish. First, she had to make sure that Eric didn’t discover the tape she had made, and then she had to find a way to get out of this basement alive. The best thing to do would be to hide the tape somewhere that Eric couldn’t find it. Once she was free, she could always come back to retrieve it. Finding a hiding place in this basement room should be easy. She looked around the room carefully and took stock of all that it contained. Besides the furnace, the room contained some tools along one wall, a cardboard box with some partial rolls of leftover wallpaper and behind the box, a plastic tarp. She wrapped the tape in an envelope that she found in her purse and then deposited the it in the bottom of the cardboard box, under the rolls of wallpaper, then she continued to study the room. The window was very small, about 18 inches wide and 8 inches high. There was definitely no hope of escape there. She could hear Eric walking around upstairs, so she tried to move about as quietly as possible as she searched the gloomy room for some means of escape. The door was fastened securely and didn't give at all as she pushed against it. Two walls were cement, but the other two were wallboard. Perhaps she could go right through the wall. She checked the pile of tools, and among them found her gardening tools, discarded here last fall when she had prepared the flowerbeds for winter. The most promising thing she found was about two feet long with a 'V' shaped cutting edge for digging dandelions. This might be just the thing she would need to break through the wall and free herself, but she would have to bide her time and wait until he was either gone or asleep before she would dare to begin working on the wall. If he were to catch her in the act of breaking out, the beating she had sustained so far would be just a taste of what he would do to her. This was definitely the time for patience. She decided to hide the tool in case he came back and removed anything from the room to keep them out of her hands. With it hidden she would have to just bide her time and wait for the right time to use it. She searched for a hiding place, finally settling on the top of the furnace, away at the back where it was totally invisible. She put it there carefully so as not to disturb the dust and when she was done there was not a sign that she had touched the surface of the furnace and she felt confident that Eric would never guess that she had hidden something there.
She sank back onto the floor with her back against the wall and closed her eyes. Her head was pounding. She reached for her purse and rummaged in it for the Tylenol she had put there the day before. After swallowing two of them, she took the tape recorder, set it up with a new tape and looked for a place to hide it. She realized that sooner or later, Eric would search her purse and if he were to find the recorder he’d know that she had taped him and he’d suspect that there was a tape hidden somewhere and he’d search until he found it and her having come here and put herself in danger would all have been for nothing. She considered for a moment hiding it under her clothes, for that way she would have it with her if he were to take her from the room, but she decided that she already had the information that she had come for and carrying the tape recorder with her increased the chances of him finding it. Again, her eyes combed the room looking for a hiding place. The furnace seemed to provide the best hiding spot she could find especially since Eric had turned it off and was very unlikely to turn it back on before fall. She struggled to her feet again, her head protesting the movement, and wedged the tape recorder between the fire wall and the outside of the furnace, then fastened the microphone to the outside of the door by the hinge, where it was hardly visible, yet was ready to pick up any sounds in the chilly little room.
The tarp, spread out on the floor with a portion rolled to make a pillow, afforded her an opportunity to lie down, which helped her headache to some degree and shade herself as comfortable as possible to wait her chance to escape. Her watch read 11:35 a.m. She had been in the house for just a few minutes less than an hour, yet it was hard to believe that so much could have happened in such a short space of time.
She had been laying on the tarp for only about ten minutes when she heard the pounding of Eric’s f
eet on the basement steps. The sound brought a stab of fear to her heart and she sat up. "Now what?"
He pried the nails loose from the door and strode in, "Give me that," he grabbed her purse that lay on the floor beside her and rummaged through it. "Where are the car keys?"
"They're in my pocket." She pulled them from her jacket pocket just as he pulled her father's Visa from her purse.
"Up to your old tricks." he snarled, "I still owe you for that one."
He threw the purse down and advanced on Emily, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. He took her left hand and checked her fingers, "No rings, I see. You must have thought you were pretty smart, ripping me off like that, but we aren't finished on that score yet."
She grimaced as he bent her fingers backwards. Finally, she cried out, "You're breaking my fingers."
He released her hand and laughed. "Poor baby, my heart breaks for you." He took the keys from her and left the room, nailing the door shut again behind him.
She sat back down on the tarp and rubbed her fingers. They weren’t broken or dislocated but they were certainly hurting. In minutes she heard the front door slam, then all was quiet for about five minutes. She was trying to decide if this was the time to dig through the wall, when she heard the front door again, followed by Eric's footsteps on the floor above her. "He must have hidden the car somewhere near the house," she decided, "Perhaps behind the garage or in the old shed west of the house.”
At 12:45 she heard the doorbell, followed by Eric's footsteps crossing the kitchen floor and the door opening. At 1:10 the door closed again, followed by Eric's footsteps pacing back and forth across the floor. The footsteps stopped. Then suddenly, she heard them bounding down the stairs. The nails were once again pulled from the doorframe and Eric, white faced and shaking with rage, entered the room and pounced on Emily where she cowered on the floor.
"You bitch," he screamed at her. "You sent the cops here after me. What will the neighbors think?" His fists hit her again and again as she tried unsuccessfully to protect her head and face with her arms. "I'll kill you," he shrieked, "So help me, I'll kill you."
Emily rolled away from him and tried to get to her feet in an effort to escape the blows. She was on her knees when Eric grabbed a fistful of hair on each side of her head and began pounding her head into the wall. She heard a crack before she lost consciousness and wondered for a split second if it was her head or the wall that had given way first.
Chapter 25
Consciousness was not something she wanted. The pain would flood over her whenever she began to waken and she would just let the darkness wash over her again and take the pain away. In this manner she drifted in and out of consciousness for a long time. At some point she became aware that she was terribly cold but felt powerless to do anything about it. Still later, she became aware that she was too hot, but again, doing anything about it took more effort than she was able to come up with, so again she let the darkness wash over her. Sometime later her pounding headache roused her and this time the darkness wouldn’t take the pain away. She had no choice but to awake. Something puzzled her. Her eyes wouldn’t open. After some minutes of struggling, she managed to get them open to some degree, although they were mere slits that afforded her very limited vision. All she was able to make out in those first moments was sunlight shining on a spot of floor just in front of her face. For a few moments she marveled on this one spot of sunlight in the otherwise dark room but then she realized that even this took more effort than she had to spare. She sighed, closed her eyes and drifted away to that place where pain could not reach. When she awoke again, the heat was gone. She thought of the small spot of sunlight that had seemed to be the only comfort to be found in this terrible place and forced her eyes open to find it. With a deep sense of despair, she found it was gone and she was alone. She tried to remember where she was and how she came to be here. All she was aware of right now was how horribly her head ached, that there was a terrible ringing in her ears,
and that she was getting cold. But, try as she might, she couldn’t remember how she came to be here in this dark, cold place. She reached out with her right hand, hoping to feel something familiar that would help her remember where she was but the only thing that she became aware of was even more puzzling, for it appeared that she was tightly wrapped in something that felt like heavy plastic. Her thoughts groped desperately through the fog that seemed to have invaded her mind. Why would she be wrapped in plastic? Nothing seemed to make sense. Then she remembered something. She had been lying on something blue. Suddenly, it became clear to her; she was in the basement lying on something blue and plastic. It was there, floating near the edge of her memory – it was a tarp. She was in the furnace room laying on a tarp. She tried to focus on the room. Eric had locked her in here and now she had to get out. She struggled to get up, but found that she could not. Moving was too difficult, so she lay back and attempted to figure out what was going on. What was happening? Eric had beaten her, but he had done that many times before and she had been able to get up afterwards. She needed to know how badly she was injured this time so she decided to check out her body, feeling each part to discern where her injuries were. Her left kneecap hurt and although she couldn’t reach it, she moved it slightly and decided that it was probably just skinned. Her left hand was very sore, and judging by the sharp pain that resulted from her attempt to move it, she was quite sure that something in her hand was broken. Her arms were also sore but, unlike her hand, could be moved without undue pain and therefore she was quite sure weren't broken. Breathing was no problem and there was no pain in her chest, back or stomach. It appeared that the most damage was to her head. This headache was, by far, the worst she had ever experienced. Just trying to move her head the least bit made her feel nauseous. She also believed that she had never been so thirsty in her whole life. There was a strange taste in her mouth, as well. It tasted as though something had crawled in there and died. It took quite a bit of effort to free her right arm from the tarp that was wrapped quite securely around her but she managed and cautiously, felt her face with her fingers. She was shocked to realize that nothing felt familiar. Her eyes were swollen almost shut, her nose was pushed to one side and her lips were swollen and crusty with dried blood. Her jaw, when she tried to move it, refused to work and sent pain shooting through her face. She was sure that it must be broken or dislocated. She knew that she needed to get out of this basement and get medical attention and water and she needed to get out soon and find help before her strength failed her completely, for even now she realized that it would be easy to just lay back, close her eyes and wait for death to take her away from this pain. After a tremendous struggle, wrestling with the tarp, she gained her feet and leaned against the wall, waiting for the dizziness she was feeling to pass. She peered through the slits where her eyes were almost hidden and gasped in horror. This was not the furnace room where she had been. This was a shed, empty except for a pile of rotting lumber and some old rusted paint cans; and it was not the shed that she was familiar with, that stood behind the house where she had been held captive in the basement. This shed she had never seen before.
"This isn't the basement!" she thought, "Where am I?"
She looked around. Nothing was familiar but the tarp that she had been wrapped in. She slowly and carefully made her way to the door, pushed it open and then stepped out. The sun was low in the sky and she estimated that darkness was only about an hour away. In the dim light that the evening sky provided, she was able to look around at this strange place where she found herself. She was standing outside a dilapidated machine shed beside an old barn that had already collapsed on one side and threatened at any minute to complete the job. Hope rose in Emily as she spotted an old house less than a hundred yards away. Perhaps someone there could help her. She stumbled out into the weedy yard and made her way to the house, arriving exhausted and bathed in perspiration. After resting for a few minutes on the back step, she knocked on the door. When
there was no answer she pounded with what was left of her strength, then finally turned the knob and pushed the door open. It was obvious that no one had lived here for many years. Despair threatened to engulf her. She sat on an overturned washtub that lay on the old porch by the kitchen door and sobbed. As darkness fell, her sobs subsided and the flow of tears dried up. They were replaced with anger when she thought about the reason she was in this predicament. She knew that Eric had been the only person in the basement with her so it was obvious that Eric had to have been the one who had done this to her. The anger that washed over her somehow gave her strength. "He must have thought that I was dead," she decided, "And dumped me here where he figured it would be unlikely that anyone would find my body."
She got to her feet, stumbled away from the dark house and turned towards the road. "Surely someone will come along and help me," she thought. By the time she reached the road, her strength was nearly gone. "Please, God," she whispered, "Help me."
She wasn’t sure which way to turn, and hesitated at the side of the road for a moment then turned left and forced herself to take one step after another down the dark, deserted road. It seemed as though she had been walking for a long time and must have covered a considerable distance, when she stopped and looked back. From the outline of the buildings against the night sky, she realized that she hadn't gone more than 50 yards. Tears blinded her and she stumbled. "I can't do this." She sank down onto the road to rest for a few minutes and then aware that she had to keep going, began to struggle to get to her feet once again. Her body didn’t seem to co-operate and she was soon shedding tears of frustration as she tried again and again to get to her feet only to lose her balance and fall again onto the road. She was still struggling unsuccessfully when she heard a vehicle approaching and turned her head to peer into two bright lights coming straight towards her. She couldn't get out of the way. All she could do was put up her hand to shield her eyes from the blinding light.
Leaving Sharpstone Page 21