She looked around the room and spotted a door, presumably a closet or bathroom. It would be foolish to corner herself that way, but she had no choice.
She hurried over to it, pulled the door open and felt ahead of herself; wire hangers jangled loudly.
Flinching at the sound, she stepped inside.
She closed her eyes and listened carefully, but she was still breathing too loudly. Even the swallowing sound she made, to moisten her dry mouth, seemed deafeningly loud in the still of the stale closet.
She tried to stifle her breathing, by putting her hand over her mouth, yet the more she suppressed the urge to gulp in the dank air, the louder the sound seemed to get.
Then, suddenly, she felt a freezing cold draught blow on her right ear, followed by a short, sharp whisper, “R a c h e l!”
Somebody was in the wardrobe with her!
She screamed, and literally fell out of the door, crashing to the floor, where she scrambled backwards until her back was pressed up against a bedside cabinet.
Eyes wide with terror, she turned to look at the swinging wardrobe door.
How did he get in there? Oh, God save me! Save me!
Rachel was so intent in detecting movement from the closet, that she didn’t register the footsteps in the corridor outside.
It was only when the door flung open that she looked up to see Jason’s profile; his face tinged moonlight eerie, his lips creased into an evil leer.
“So here you are,” he said.
Rachel looked at him and then back at the closet in sheer bewilderment.
“I am fucking freezing,” he said, loudly, “my ears are hurting, and my fucking fingers have gone numb, and all because you decided to go for a walk in the woods.”
He crossed over to her and yanked her by the hair, out of her daze, and dragged her across the room.
“Ow!” She wailed. “Jay, please no!”
“Too late, you had your chance.”
“Please, Jay!” She cried as he dragged her out of the room, and up the corridor.
“No, too late. As much as it’s going to be a waste, it has to be done. You’re a reject, and there’s no way they’re going to take you back now, and if I don’t deal with it, they won’t take me back either.”
She was squirming behind him, trying desperately to relieve the strain on the roots of her hair, as her body was dragged over the cold wooden floor. “Jay, p...please…please, please Jay. I promise I won’t tell anybody. I promise!”
He shook his head, “No can do, babe. You see, if it’s not me, it will be them, and if I don’t do it, then they will do the both of us. There really is no other way.”
They had reached the banister once more.
Jason paused, giving Rachel the opportunity to struggle against him. He yanked her head forcefully forward and said with a snarl, “Don’t piss me off, because I am likely to throw you off this fucking balcony right now and that, believe me, will hurt.”
Her eyes welled with tears. She was in excruciating pain, both emotionally and physically, and the man who had purported to love her was casually talking about killing her, about ending her life. How was that even possible? Could all this really be happening?
He is going to kill you like he killed Keri.
“What is it with me and these fucking rejects,” he asked himself, as he struggled with her to the top of the stairs, while considering his next move.
Then he stopped abruptly.
“What the fuck….”
Rachel followed his gaze down the corridor, to the window, where, against the moonlit backdrop, they saw what looked like the silhouette of a man.
It stood perfectly still, watching them.
“HELP ME!” was Rachel’s instinctive reaction. “PLEASE! He wants to kill me!”
Nothing.
“This is between me and her,” Jason growled.
“Please...help me,” Rachel begged through sobs, but the figure did not react.
Just watched.
Jason gave it a few seconds and then smiled.
“Wise move.”
He then turned back to the stairs and recoiled in shock when he saw that the shadow had moved, and was now standing before him; pale face and blue eyes, shimmering in the darkness.
Rachel pulled herself free and watched with bemusement; Jason appeared to be terrified of the empty space in front of him.
She seized the opportunity, and tried to rush around him, but failed to evade his outstretched arm.
He grabbed her and yanked her back.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he hissed
Rachel lashed out by scraping her nails down his cheek causing him to shriek, but his grip remained firm.
“Not this time, you bitch!”
He turned, caught her by the throat, and began choking the life from her, as she desperately tried to prize open the vice-like hold.
He was enraged, and through gritted teeth, seethed, “I’ve just about had enough of you…”
He squeezed hard, transferring his rage into his grasp, slowly starving her brain of oxygen and enjoying every moment of it.
Her head pulsed, veins throbbed, and the pressure built as her legs began to buckle.
Jason, still grinning maniacally, enjoying the release of his frustrations. This bitch had humiliated him, and it was time she disappeared.
He began to tremble from the intoxicating deliciousness of her finally being disabled, finally submitting to his will.
Okay, so the light was faint, and he couldn’t see every nuance of her dying expression, but his brain filled in the gaps as he felt her body sag over the wooden balcony railing.
It creaked in protestation at the combined weight that was being pressed against it and began to bow under the strain.
Creak…
…Rachel’s arms gave up the fight and slowly slipped to her sides.
Creak...
Her eyes bulged, her spluttering slowed.
Snap!
They were falling.
Jason’s expression changed from homicidal strain to incredulous wonder, as they waltzed in mid-air for a few seconds, before crashing onto, and collapsing the wooden telephone desk beneath them.
There was a loud, sickening smack as Jason’s head smashed against the marble floor and, like an eggshell, cracked open, spilling it contents.
The bodies lay motionless; Jason’s back arched over the debris of the wooden table and Rachel’s body, slumped over him.
The house became deathly quiet once more, with just the occasional creak from the trees outside, as they swayed in a breeze that blew open the front door, and caressed Rachel’s hair as a grieving mother would her dead child.
75 RESURRECTION
The sound of someone calling her name was so sharp and so loud it made her bolt upward, screaming.
Eyes wide open, she searched the room, not recognising where she was. Then, slowly, the memories returned and she became aware of her sticky hands.
She looked down and realised that she was lying on someone, she was lying on Jason and the stickiness in her hands was his blood!
She fell backwards, and became aware of a pain in her neck and the small of her back.
She cried out, and lay still for few seconds before, slowly, crawling to her feet.
Eventually, after steadying her sway, she looked down at the outline of Jason’s unmoving body. She could just about see that his eyes were still open, and that blood had dribbled from his mouth to pool with that leaked from his head and was now oozing towards the open door.
She straightened her back and grimaced. She was cold, numb, and in pain, but she was alive.
Somehow she had managed to land on Jason. He had broken her fall, and now he was dead.
She noticed, on the floor nearby, the gleaming metal innards of the telephone that had been smashed in the fall.
She followed the wire to the receiver and shuddered when it led her under Jason’s arm.
Lo
oking away from him, and with a quivering grimace, she pulled out what was left of the receiver and gingerly placed it to her ear. She wasn’t surprised to find that there was no dial tone.
Despondently, she let the telephone’s hacked-off limb slip from her hands and clatter loudly to the floor.
She looked down; Jason’s dead eyes stared back at her, prompting her to back away as bile slid up her throat.
She ran out into the fresh air, where she vomited, for the second time that evening, into the virgin white snow.
After a few minutes, her head began to clear but she felt awful. Her mind was a frozen lake. Underneath it was an ecosystem of thoughts as surreal as they had been terrifying.
What happened to me?
She looked at her blood-stained hands, crouched down and vacantly wash them in the snow, leaving behind dark inky smudges.
As she did this, a breeze blew up out of nowhere and shook the snow from the surrounding trees. It whistled through branches and brought with it a sound, a whisper…
“…r a c h el…..”
She looked up as the branches rustled off each other.
“…r a c h el…..”
She looked at the front door. For a terrifying moment, she thought Jason had survived the fall.
“…r a c h el…..”
She looked around, the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere; the sky, the driveway, the forest, but there was nobody there.
“…r a c h el…..”
She looked at the house. Only this time, her attention was drawn to the hedge that led to the rear of the building. That’s when she noticed them; footprints.
They led from the front door to the rear of the house. They were faint, partially filled in by freshly fallen snow, but they were distinctive.
Somebody else was, or had been, here.
Inexplicably, she carefully followed the trail to the back of the building, where the moon continued to shine brightly. It gleamed on the snow, almost turning night into day.
She passed a frozen pond, a dusted white hedge, and beyond that, a frozen lake, surrounded by a snow clad forest.
The footprints led her to a mound of dirt covered with a thin layer of snow. All around it was a crisscross pattern of muddy footprints and a shovel.
Something was buried here.
She hesitated a few moments; looked at the shovel, at the mud and then at the shovel again.
Is this where Jason buried Keri?
Was this her grave? Or was this the grave of somebody else? Maybe another of Jason’s victims.
Without thinking, she picked up the shovel and started digging, as deep and as fast as her energy reserves would allow.
It took some effort, as the earth had frozen over, but eventually, she hit something solid, which sent shivers through her.
She tapped the surface a few more times and realised that it was a plank of wood.
She hesitated, afraid of what she might find beneath, and then promptly dropped the spade and to her knees.
She tugged at the wood and yelped, when a deathly white face appeared to her.
She jolted, slipped and fell backward.
“Oh my God,” she uttered, as she sat in the snow, while the freeze grew through her veins, like roots from a tree.
She was exhausted. Paralysed by the horrors of the evening, and this was the last straw.
Rachel broke down and sobbed.
She remained that way for a few minutes, until the breeze returned. This time, it blew snow dust across the frozen lake towards her.
“….r a c h e l….”
She looked up as the chill played with her hair, but she knew she was alone. There was nobody else out here in this Godforsaken winter hell. Nobody, but she and the corpse in the hideous makeshift grave.
She turned to it once more, and that is when she noticed the long hair; it was a woman.
She scrambled to her feet to take a closer look. So close that she set off a landslide of soil that fell onto the body’s pallid face, and that’s when she recognised her, “Oh no!” She cried, “It can’t be!”
She fell to her knees once more, and leant over the grave. She clasped the lapels of the woman’s coat, and pulled her up with whatever strength she could muster.
After several weary attempts, she half lifted, half dragged the body out of its burial place, and onto her knees.
There, with clumsy, numb fingers, she released the bound hands and laid the head back, using her legs as a pillow.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” she chanted, as she settled on the mud pile, and cleaned the freshly dug earth from Ashley’s grey face.
“Oh my God, Ashley! Ashley!” she screamed as if she could wake her. “Ashley!” she cried, as fresh tears found their way to her eyes. “What did he do to you? Oh no, oh no,” she chanted, stopping only to put her ear to her friend’s mouth; nothing.
“Ashley!” She felt her friend’s blood-drained face, not knowing what to do.
“NO!” she whined. “Oh no. please, no!”
She put fingers to Ashley’s throat, searching for a pulse, but she knew that this was futile because her hands were so cold, numb.
Tears welled in her eyes as she looked around, and then up at the star-spangled sky.
It was hopeless.
They were alone.
“HELP US! Somebody, please HELP US!” Her voice echoed around her, but there was no reply.
She pulled Ashley’s limp body close, subconsciously trying to keep her warm as she sobbed, helplessly.
That’s when she noticed them.
They emerged from the woods like dancing fireflies; flashlights, about a dozen of them, were walking towards her.
At first, she thought she was hallucinating, but as they drew nearer, the stillness of the night amplified their voices.
She started laughing, such was her joy.
“We’re saved, Ashley. We’re saved,” she said, caressing her friend’s face. Then she yelled out, “Over here! Over here! We’re over here!”
Flashlight beams homed in on them, dazzling her eyes.
She started laughing, excitedly, but paused when she heard Ashley murmur something.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you, God!” She said, while fixing Ashley’s hair around her face, as if the woman was going to come to and complain that she looked a mess.
Their saviours were only a several feet away now, a whole crowd of them. No less than ten, maybe fifteen, police officers had been sent to save them.
She squinted into the bobbing lights, grinning like a deranged person.
They were close now, talking animatedly, and glad that they had found them.
“Thank God,” she said to the first of the men who arrived by her side.
She squinted, and held up a hand to fend off the glare of the lights as the chatter grew louder.
Then, the group parted, and out of them a single light appeared. Rachel was suddenly overwhelmed with dread because, despite her state, there was no mistaking him. There was no mistaking his towering seven-foot frame.
He loomed over her, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
“No, no, no!” She cried.
“We meet again, Rachel,” he said, in an unmistakable cultivated voice that snatched Rachel’s hopes and drowned them under the ice of the lake.
It wasn’t the police or the rescue services that had found them, but the sect. Jason’s comrades had set out to ensure that he had accomplished his mission, and that he had not failed them.
Turns out that he had, but this was no comfort to Rachel, who knew that where Jason had failed, they would not. With that in mind, she pulled Ashley close and apologised to her friend, as she surrendered them to their fate.
She was exhausted and way outnumbered.
But, that’s when she heard it.
The beat was so faint, Rachel thought she had imagined it, but she hadn’t.
The sound echoed around the lake and it caused the group to stir.
Suddenly, so
meone yelled and pointed at a powerful spotlight that slashed across the night sky like a laser beam.
The murmuring of the congregation shifted in pitch.
Lurch said, “Calm down everybody, calm down.”
“It’s coming this way!” somebody cried.
“Remain calm,” Lurch insisted.
Somebody wailed and Rachel looked up to see a flashlight scarper back towards the forest, this was closely followed by another and then another.
The searchlight, less than a mile away now, skimmed the tree tops and eventually found the house behind her, while the loud whistling engine and beating blades scared the rest of the group off, into the night.
The only person to linger was Lurch. He stared, in stupefied fear, at the sky, as the helicopter’s powerful beam licked across the pond, the lake, and then over them.
Lurch’s eyes darted from the flying machine to the nearby shovel and, for a terrifying moment, Rachel thought he was going to have the last word. However, when their eyes met, she saw in them the same resignation she had experienced moments before.
It was over, and Lurch knew it.
He turned and followed the rest of his cohorts into the night.
The Jet Ranger helicopter was carrying four passengers: the pilot, Rupert Harrison, D.S. Mark Warner and one of his officers. Its engines were reassuringly loud as it landed in a blizzard of snow that sparkled like glitter.
As if sensing Rupert’s arrival, Ashley finally opened her eyes to see her future husband, her friend and a sky full of twinkling stars.
76 POWERLESS
It was with a lump in his throat that Rupert fell to his knees, took his fiancé in his arms and vowed never to let go.
That was until Mark intervened, insisting that they get Ashley into the helicopter and to hospital as soon as possible.
Rupert removed his jacket, and wrapped it around his fiancé before carrying her over to the chopper, and strapping her into a seat.
The officer, known as Bass, did the same for Rachel.
“Okay, Rupert,” Mark shouted over the drone of the helicopter’s engine, “Bass and I will wait here. You go with the girls.”
Rupert climbed inside as the two men backed away from the rotating blades, and waited as the engine sound increased and the chopper began to climb, resurrecting another snow blizzard.
Unspeakable Page 44