by Amy Cross
When she reached the front of the house, she peered through one of the windows and saw the kitchen. The place had obviously been tidied and cleaned, but not renovated. Everything looked more or less the same as it had done all those years ago, even down to the hideous green and white tiles on the floor. It was hard for her to believe she could feel nostalgic for a place where so many bad things had happened, but there was a part of her that felt a faint tug, as if in some weird, messed-up way she felt as if she was finally home.
Feeling a few spots of rain starting to fall, she realized she had to get inside. Looking around, she spotted a rock nearby. Perfect for breaking windows.
***
The rock landed on the living room carpet, with pieces of glass falling all around. Pushing the rest of the glass out of the frame with her backpack, Ophelia climbed through, and she immediately recognized the fusty smell of the place. Nothing had changed, although the smell seemed more concentrated now.
She stood for a moment, soaking in the memories.
She'd sworn never to return to the farm, but now...
“Why can't you be nicer to me?” she remembered Renton asking her one day, with an amused, pleading tone to his voice. “We know each other by now, don't we? We're friend.” He'd touched the side of her face with his oily hands, brushing her hair aside so he could see her better. “I think we're going to get on really well as soon as you stop being silly. When's that gonna be, eh? When are you gonna start being nice?”
She also remembered the clanking chains he'd forced her to wear.
Taking a few steps forward, she saw some faint depressions in the carpet, where the old green armchair used to stand. His “telly chair”, as he'd described it once. She remembered hiding behind that chair, which seemed silly now. There was no way he wouldn't have found her, but she'd been desperate, and also young. She remembered the moment as if it had happened yesterday, or as if it was happening right now, or even as if it was about to happen all over again. Heading over to the corner, she looked down at the exact spot where she'd cowered and sobbed, and then she turned to look at the door, and she remembered him standing there, laughing at her pathetic attempt to hide.
“Come on,” he'd said, “let's not waste our time. Maybe I was wrong to let you come downstairs today. I thought you were getting old enough to be trusted, but obviously I was wrong. Shame.”
He'd pulled the chair away.
“You're not ready.” She remembered those words in particular. “You're not ready.” Ready for what? She'd never understood, not as a child, but now it was obvious enough. He'd never touched her, not in that way, but he'd mentioned the possibility enough times. He was always waiting for the right moment. “You're not ready,” or “When you're ready,” or “I hope you're ready soon.” He'd had a plan in mind for her, steering her to some destination that he refused to share. She figured that, if he'd lived and if she'd stayed, she'd have been “ready” by now. That she'd managed to get away was thanks to one fortuitous moment that had dropped into her lap all those years ago, after many years of planning.
The carpet hadn't been changed. In the corner, where she'd once hidden, there was a faint stain. Not enough for most people to notice, but she remembered when she'd caused it.
She'd been so scared, and so young.
Later, though, she'd been older, and she'd finally managed to stand her ground.
Pulling up the left sleeve of her jacket, she stared at the thick scar on her arm. For a moment, she remembered how the broken chair leg had dug into her flesh, and how Renton had tried to use it to pin her against the wall.
And she remembered the knife in her hand, and how easily it had slid into his chest, and the shocked look on his face, which had been the moment when he'd felt the tip of the blade piercing his heart. She'd held the knife firmly, too scared to let go, until finally she'd felt him starting to fall and she'd let go.
She remembered the faint gurgle that had come from his lips, and then the sigh, and then finally silence.
Even today, the house was still silent.
Making her way through to the next room, she looked down at the floor, at the exact spot where he fell all those years ago. At least the carpet in this room had been taken away, probably because of all the blood. She took a few steps forward, her mind filled with the terror of that moment. She remembered cowering in the corner, too scared to move, watching as he died and then staying put, waiting to see if he was really gone. She'd expected him to suddenly jump up, to defeat death itself, so she'd stayed in place for the rest of the day and then the night, watching his dead body, until finally the next morning she'd dared to run.
How much of the story, she wondered, had the police managed to work out? Clearly not enough, since she knew they'd never managed to connect the remote farmhouse and its owner to little Becky Bridger.
“Come on, Becky,” she remembered Renton saying one time as he placed a plate of fish fingers next to her bed. “Crying won't get you anywhere.”
Hearing a creaking sound above, she looked up at the ceiling. It was tempting to believe that someone was up there, that she'd just heard a foot pressing against the boards, but she told herself she was too smart to let her mind start playing tricks on her. Still, she knew she had to go up there, to see the room where she'd spent most of her time. Heading through to the hallway, she looked up the stairs for a moment, just to make sure there were no more creaks or hints of movement, and then she made her way up. By the time she reached the landing, she was having to force herself to remember that ghosts didn't exist.
It was so tempting to imagine Renton's spirit watching her, pale-skinned and bloodied, ready to rattle the windows and appear in the corner of her field of vision.
But no, she told herself, ghosts didn't exist. And even if they did, they should be ignored.
Heading over to the closest door, she looked through and saw that the bed was still in place. She had no idea why the police would have left it, but clearly they'd never considered the possibility that it was evidence. Perhaps, she told herself, they'd found Renton's body and simply assumed he'd been killed during a break-in. The room was mostly bare now, save for the bed and a plug socket over in the corner. She remembered the bear-shaped lamp that had been plugged into that socket, a strange concession to childhood in a house owned by a monster. Taking a step forward, she thought back to all the things that had happened to her in the room, all the times she'd been chained there, usually alone and sobbing but sometimes with Renton next to her.
She was tempted for a moment to relive those memories in detail, but finally she told herself they were best left in the past. It hadn't been easy to put them aside after leaving the house, and she felt no need to go rooting through them now.
“If you were going to go crazy,” she whispered to herself, “you should have done it a few years ago. You've missed that boat now.”
Still, she could almost see Renton on the bed, and she remembered how it had squeaked whenever she'd climbed onto it, and whenever Renton had climbed on.
Behind her, she heard another faint creak.
Just the house, settling.
Then another.
Closer.
This time she froze.
Still staring at the bed, she felt the hairs starting to stand up on the back of her neck. She knew it would be easy to imagine things, maybe even to lose her mind, but she was suddenly convinced that someone was in the house with her, standing in the doorway. After a moment, she heard another creak, and then a faint shuffling sound.
A weapon.
She hadn't brought a weapon. She always prided herself on keeping her defenses up, but this time...
“Stupid,” she whispered to herself.
Another creak on the floorboards.
“Ghosts aren't real,” she said quietly, moving her lips but not actually making a sound.
Another creak.
She turned, and to her horror she saw a figure standing just a few meters away. Before s
he could get a look at his face, however, a bright flash filled her field of vision and she took a step back, covering her eyes.
“Alright there?” a familiar voice asked cheerily.
After blinking a couple of times to get rid of the flash artifacts, she turned and saw to her horror that Joe Lewis was staring at her with a broad grin, and holding a camera in his hands.
“Sorry if that blinded you a bit,” he continued, “but I wanted to get a real reaction shot, you know? Not something posed. The moment little Becky Bridger comes back to the house where she was...” He paused. “Well, we can get to the details later, can't we? The point is, I reckon I just got the front page photo right there.” He looked down at the camera and brought up the photo on the display screen. “God, yeah, that's the one.” He turned it around for her to see. “Not bad, eh? Who needs professional photographers these days+”
“What are you doing here?” she stammered, her heart racing as she took another step back, toward the corner next to the bed.
“What do you think?” he replied. “I'm covering the story of the century. Do you realize how many bloody papers this is gonna sell when people hear that Becky Bridger's turned up alive and well? You're gonna be the story of the year. I mean, Jesus Christ, it's like a bloody miracle!”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” she told him, trying not to panic.
“Don't try pulling that one,” he replied. “I know all about it. I've been putting the pieces together for a while, and then I got a handy little tip-off, and it all started to make sense. I always knew, right from when I first saw you, that you seemed familiar, and then when I made the connection with the Becky Bridger case, my eyes nearly popped out on stalks.” He smiled. “I know everything. Well, pretty much everything. I know you were kidnapped and I know you ended up here, and I'm pretty sure he kept hold of you for quite a while, but then the whole Ophelia business -”
“Get out of my way,” she told him, hurrying to the door and trying to push past, only for him to grab her arm.
“Listen -”
“Don't touch me,” she hissed, slipping free and heading to the top of the stairs.
“I know about Andrew Renton,” Lewis added.
Stopping, she paused for a moment before turning to him.
“I know what he did,” he continued. “He snatched a happy little girl from near her family's home, and he brought her here to this remote farmhouse, and he chained her up or tied her up, something like that, and it's not hard to imagine the kinda stuff he did to her after that.”
“He didn't touch me,” she replied. “Not like that.”
“Pull the other one.”
“It was different.”
“Well...” He paused. “Obviously you've suppressed those memories. I did some digging and I found out he was in trouble with the police a long while back 'cause of some photos on his computer, so I've got an idea of the kind of guy he was. The things he was interested in, the friends he might've had. Seems like he was quite the deviant, someone to be avoided at all costs, and leopards don't change their spots.” He paused. “I'm guessing here, but I'm thinking he held you in this house for almost ten years, yeah?”
Silence fell between them for a moment.
“Well,” he continued, “I think ten years is probably about right. Based on how long they reckon his body had been rotting away here before a couple of hikers found it a while back.”
“Hikers?” she asked.
“That's how he was found.”
She paused for a moment. “Almost,” she said finally.
“Almost what?”
“Almost ten years.”
“Okay. And if I was to guess about the kind of things he did to you -”
“He wanted me to marry him when I was old enough,” she replied. “He didn't touch me, he said he was saving that for our wedding night.”
“Sounds like a complete nutter.”
“He -” She was about to tell him the truth, but at the last moment she held back.
“Huh.” He paused again. “And all that time, the papers were full of stories about poor little Becky Bridger, the angelic girl who was snatched from her adoring parents. Every few months the cops'd claim to have a new lead and they'd bugger off to interview someone new, or to dig up a patch of wasteland. The whole thing was a bloody farce, really. You know your mum and dad were actually suspects for a while, don't you?”
She nodded.
“You know how it goes. People started coming up with conspiracy theories about your parents flogging you into slavery, or accidentally killing you and then ditching your body. You should check out some of the forums online, there's some really complicated ideas being bandied about. Funny, though... No-one ever suggested that you'd spent ten years tied up in some nutter's farmhouse and then you ran away to live on the streets of London.”
“I was here all along,” she replied.
“And then somehow you escaped from Renton?”
“Somehow.”
“How'd you do it?”
She paused. “Luck.”
“So why didn't you go to the police, tell them who you were, and go back to your family?”
“Because by then it had been so long, and I thought...” Pausing, she stared into space for a moment. “I wanted to be someone else. I didn't want to have to think about what happened, or tell people.”
“So you decided to live on the streets of London and call yourself Ophelia?”
She nodded again.
“So did you...” He watched her for a moment. “This might be a difficult question, but I've got to ask it. When you got away from this place, did you kill Andrew Renton?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you did. I also think no-one would blame you. A frightened little girl...”
“I wasn't a little girl by the time I did it,” she replied. Rolling up her sleeve again, she showed him the scar.
“He did that to you?”
“Right before I stabbed him in the heart.”
“And was that self-defense? When you stabbed him, I mean.”
“Sure,” she replied. “In the grand scheme of things, at least.”
He smiled. “This is gonna blow people away.”
“No, it's not.”
“When the world finds out that you -”
“The world isn't going to find out,” she said firmly.
“Are you kidding? This is gonna be the biggest news story this country has seen since... Hell, since forever! People are gonna be letting their cereal get soggy while they read the front pages!”
She shook her head.
“Look, I understand your reluctance -”
“You're not going to tell anyone about me.”
“Well, you can't exactly stop me.”
“I ran away,” she replied. “Running away is a legitimate choice, and I don't want to go back. I don't want people finding out who I am, and I don't want to be Becky Bridger again.”
“You want to be Ophelia, some scabby kid living on the streets?”
“All the bad things that happened in this house happened to Becky Bridger,” she continued. “Not to Ophelia.”
“And you can divide things up in your head, can you? The whole thing's as easy as that?”
“It took a bit of work.”
“Well, I admire you,” he replied. “It's amazing that you're not a gibbering wreck in a corner somewhere, but... Look, this story is going to get out, whether you like it or not, so I really think the best way would be if you cooperate, yeah? Work with me, we'll do an interview, I can coach you for the media scrum.”
She shook her head.
“Becky -”
“Don't call me that.”
“It's your name.”
“Why did you tell Laura?” she asked.
“Your cop friend? I didn't tell her anything.”
“You phoned her and pretended to be Renton.”
“That wasn't me. That was a friend o
f mine.”
“Don't lie to me.”
“I'm not the one who lies,” he replied, stepping toward her. “I realize this is a shock, but -”
“You're not going anywhere,” she told him, blocking him from getting to the stairs. “Not until I'm certain you won't tell anyone about me.”
“What are you gonna do, put a steak knife in me too?”
He waited for her to reply.
“Would you do that?” he asked. “Could you? If you thought it was the only way to keep your secret? In your twisted mind, would that count as self-defense too? Maybe we should test you, see just how damaged you really are.”
Again, he waited, but again she simply stared at him.
“Your eyes are crazy,” he told her finally. “No-one could go through what you've been through without coming out all messed-up the other end. I'm sure this Ophelia stuff helps you to stay kinda sane, but still, the look in your eyes is... Well, it's not something I've ever seen before. You really are thinking about trying to kill me, aren't you? Or you're wondering whether you could go through with it, and what you'd do next. After all, you've already left one dead body in this house and then run off, maybe you could do it again. Pick another name, third time lucky.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out.
“But there's something you don't know,” he added. “There's a bigger picture. That's what happens when two people meet and their needs are aligned.”
“Our needs aren't aligned,” she replied.
“I'm not talking about you,” he continued. A moment later, a car door could be heard being slammed shut outside.
“Who's that?” she asked, with a hint of fear in her voice.
“I think you know.”
“Laura?”
He shook his head.
“The police?”
“Nope.”
“Then...” She paused, as a sense of horror began to crawl up through her gut. “It's not... Andrew Renton is dead.”
“He is.”
“Then who -”
Hearing the front door opening, she looked down the stairs.
“Getting clearer now?” Lewis asked with a smile.
She turned to him, before running down the stairs and stopping in the hallway as she saw a figure pushing the door shut. As soon as the figure turned to her, she felt a rush of fear.