David stood where he was without looking at her. And apart from the shoulders rising and falling, the only noticeable reaction to the rejection was a hard look on his face.
“Come on now David, let’s go upstairs,” she said again and gave him a pleading look. “It is the only thing we can do at the moment.”
David closed his eyes momentarily, opened his mouth as to say something and then slowly let go of the doorknob. Then he turned around and faced the old lady again. His voice was terse, almost on the verge of being accusatory.
“Like I mentioned, this is not something that we’ve made up. What we’ve told you is the truth, and I expect you to contact the police and inform them about what has happened.”
The old lady didn’t reply, only gave him an imperceptible nod. And as they were making their way toward the opening leading into the interior of the house and the staircase up to their room, she followed them with her eyes.
The first thing Mary did when they entered their room was to run into the bathroom. She had been busting to wee for the last ten minutes, but given the enormity of what had happened, she had been able to suppress it. But it was no longer impossible to ignore it, and if she had to wait any longer, she would wet her pants.
When she finished, she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. She was hoping that what they had seen in the park would turn out to be a bad dream the next time she opened them again.
She was unable to sleep, but the twenty minutes of rest that she managed to get re-energised her weary body. She had opened her eyes at regular intervals and looked over at David who was standing a few feet back from the big window in the dormer, looking down at the street below through the thin lace curtains. He had been standing there since they returned to their room, and she suspected he wouldn’t move until he saw the police cars pull up outside. His hands were held together behind his back, and he was leaning forward slightly. Mary didn’t think he’d turned his head away from that window once.
She closed her eyes again and started thinking about what would happen when the police arrived. She doubted that she and David would be able to continue on their journey to Billings, given the magnitude of what had happened here. The next few days would in all likelihood be spent in the presence of police investigators, recounting in minute details what they had discovered behind that building in the park. And once that was taken care of, it would be time for them to head back to Seattle again. Then in half a year’s time or so, there would be a lengthy trial to attend. The thought of it all made her feel depressed, and she wished that she had just peed in the forest. If she had done that, then none of this would have happened.
She let out a deep sigh and started thinking about how to organise the practical things, such as sorting out accommodation for the next couple of days - she definitely didn’t want to spend any more time here in Minden - and letting David’s parents know that they wouldn’t be coming to visit them after all. They would of course be disappointed, but they would understand. This wasn’t exactly some cheap excuse that she and David had come up with in order to avoid visiting them.
She was about to turn over onto her side when she heard David utter a loud swear word. She winced and threw her eyes opened. David was not one to use profanities, and she instinctively knew that something was very wrong. She quickly propped herself up on her elbows and stared at him.
“What is it?” She asked, a faint tremor in her voice.
David had taken a step aside and was now looking furtively out the window, as if to avoid the gaze of someone standing outside looking in.
He shushed her without moving his eyes and lifted a hand to indicate that she should keep quiet. Then he uttered another swear word, but not nearly as loud as the first time.
Mary pushed her legs over the side of the bed and rushed over to him, where she stopped a few feet behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders.
“What is it?” she whispered.
David took another step away from the window. Then he looked at her over his shoulder.
“It’s the guy from the church in the park. He’s outside on the sidewalk with the old lady.”
Mary felt like she had just been slapped across the cheek and covered her mouth with her hand.
“And not only that,” David said without really having paid any attention to her reaction. “The old lady was pointing up at our window. She was letting him know where to find us.”
“Oh my god!” Mary whispered and immediately regretted having taken the lord’s name in vain. She sucked in a lungful of air and felt her pulse start to race along.
“She is one of them,” she said. “The old lady is a devil worshipper, and she knew about the dead people in the park.”
David turned around and looked at her. His face was completely drained of colour, and the corners of his mouth were twitching nervously.
“We have to leave right away.” The words came flying out of his mouth at breakneck speed. Then he rushed over to the door.
“Come on, get moving,” he hissed and waved his hand frantically at her. But she wasn’t moving. She was standing absolutely still, staring at the window.
“Come on dammit! We have to leave right now. If they catch us up here, we’re as good as dead.” David raised his voice, and that seemed to bring Mary out of her momentary shock. She started running toward the open door, and David had to throw himself forward and grab her arm.
“Slow down.”
When he was sure he had her attention, he continued.
“We have to be very careful. We can’t let them see us, and that means we can’t use the entrance door,” his voice just barely above a whisper. “If we do, they’ll come after us. We have to sneak out at the back. Hopefully they’ll think we’re still in our room.”
He shut the door as quietly as he could and started walking toward the staircase. Mary grabbed hold of the back of his jacket, and clutched the heavy fabric tightly in her hands. Her mind was blank, and she had no problems relinquishing the decision making process to David. If she had been forced to deal with this situation on her own, she would most likely have panicked and stormed out of the entrance door and straight into their arms.
When they arrived at the staircase, David stopped and listened.
“I can’t hear anything,” he whispered over his shoulder. “How about you?”
Mary shook her head.
“No, me neither.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. She could hear something, and it sounded very loud, at least to her own ears. It was her heart. She could hear each beat just as clearly as she could hear David’s voice. Nor did she have any difficulties hearing her own breath, which sounded like a strong wind gushing through the corridor.
“Ok, let’s go,” David whispered. And they started on their descent toward the ground floor. They were walking very slowly, meticulously shifting their weight from one foot to the other. But despite their graceful motions, the treads squeaked each time they put their feet down. And Mary winced when she heard the high pitched sound it made, certain it could be heard all over the house. It was as if the staircase was calling out to everyone within earshot that two new victims were ready to be apprehended.
She tried to make herself as small as possible behind David’s back. Bracing herself for the moment when the old lady would come rushing out from behind the staircase and stick an ominous looking gun or rifle in their faces and squeeze the trigger.
How could she have been so stupid and told the old woman about what they had seen? Why couldn’t she just have listened to David and kept her trap shut? The moment she had opened her mouth, their situation had gone from relatively bad to absolutely atrocious. And it was all her fault. She had gotten them in this situation. If she hadn’t confided in the old lady, they wouldn’t be running away like two thieves in the night.
They kept inching their way forward, but no one came racing through the opening in the wall up ahead, nor did anyone jump out from behind the staircase.
Nor were there any sounds coming from anywhere else in the house. Everything was quiet, almost too quiet. She prayed that the old lady and the man she had brought with her were still outside at the front of the building, and she prayed that they would remain there long enough for the two of them to slip away undetected. She promised herself that she would do anything to get David and their unborn child out of this town alive.
When they reached the bottom of the staircase, David walked over to the wall that ran parallel to it. It was less than five feet away and went all the way up to the opening giving onto the reception area. He cast a quick glance toward it, and then turned his head and looked the other way. After a few seconds, he indicated that they should start moving in that direction and started walking, Mary following a few feet behind him.
There had to be a door at the back that would take them out to the backyard. And if there was, they would find it and escape from this place. Where they would go afterwards, she didn’t know. But for the time being that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered at the moment was to get away from the old lady and the man from the park.
There was a closed door at the end of the corridor and they stopped in front of it. There were doors on either side of it, one leading to the left and the other to the right, but those were of no interest to them. There was only one door that mattered, the one that would take them to the back of the house. It had to be where the old lady’s living quarters was located. That was of course if she lived here, and not somewhere else. But Mary was certain that she did.
David placed his hand gently on the doorknob and took a deep breath. Then he looked Mary in the eye, as if awaiting her confirmation. And after a couple of tense seconds, she nodded, telling him to do so.
She felt a big hard lump form in her stomach, and could feel the sweat trickle down her forehead and into her eyes. This would either be the moment they managed to flee, or the moment they’d get discovered and caught. David twisted the knob and pushed open the door about a quarter of an inch. Then he closed his eyes, exhaled and quickly entered the room. Mary’s eyes were glued to the back of his head, wanting to find out straight away if he had encountered any occupants in there or not. And she felt an enormous relief sweep over her, when he turned around after doing an initial scan of the room and motioned for her to step inside. She hurried through the open door and stopped beside David as he pushed the door shut. They had managed to get past the first hurdle.
They were inside a modest sized living room. It was considerably darker in there than it had been in the corridor, and Mary had to spend a few moments adjusting her eyes to the reduced light. She did a quick scan of the room, and saw there was a couch on her right hand side pushed up against the exterior wall. A low rectangular table was placed in front of it, and positioned in the wall above it was a large window with the curtains pulled shut, explaining the lack of light in the room.
There was a TV sitting on a white cabinet to her left, a few yards in front of the door they had just entered through, and a row of bookcases, half filled with books of varying sizes at the other end of the room. A few pictures were hanging in frames on the wall, and Mary recognised the old lady in a couple of them as she walked closer, or rather a younger version of the old lady. In one of the pictures, a man was standing next to her with a restrained smile on his face. Mary assumed it was the old lady’s husband. The thought that she might be married made her uneasy, because it meant that there was a good chance that her husband could be somewhere inside the apartment at this very moment.
There was an opening in the wall on the left, just before it joined up with the end wall, and David started walking toward it. Mary quickly threw out her hand and grabbed him. Then she pointed at the picture of the old lady and the man standing next to her.
“I think she is married,” she whispered.
David cast a quick glance at the picture. Then he lowered his eyebrows and gave Mary an inquisitive look.
“Ok, and so what?”
“Well what if he’s here inside the apartment?”
David turned back to the picture again and studied it. Then a few seconds later, he turned toward the opening in the wall and nodded his head slowly.
“Well if he is, we’ll just have to deal with him when we encounter him,” he said. “We can’t very well stay here, you know that.”
He looked around the room for a few moments and found what he was looking for on the table in front of the couch. Then he walked over to it and grabbed one of the thin metal candleholders that were sitting there. He wrapped his fingers around the narrow top section and swung it carefully back and forth to test the weight with his hand.
Mary gave him a shocked look, and he deliberately averted her gaze.
“In case we need to defend ourselves,” he said. Then he started walking toward the opening.
When he got there, he eased his head through it and turned toward the right. After having established that the coast was clear, he kept making his way further into the apartment. Mary was right on his heels and felt the adrenaline rush into her body when she saw the laundry door less than eight yards away. There was a rectangular window positioned in the top half section of the door, and she could see the backyard on the other side through the thin lace curtain. All they had to do now was to slip out that door and create as much distance between themselves and the house as possible. They looked at each other and Mary could see the relief on David’s face. It was their ticket out of here.
From then on, everything happened very quickly. They began moving toward the door, and when they were halfway there, the old lady rushed out from the bedroom on the right hand side. David stopped dead in his tracks and Mary managed to walk straight into him, bumping her nose on his right shoulder blade. But she was too shocked to notice the pain. The only thing she could think about was that they had been discovered, and would soon receive the same fate as the people hanging on the crosses in the park.
The old lady glared at them with undisguised hatred. In her hand was a big kitchen knife, which she was waving back and forth with slow, ominous movements.
“Where the hell do you two think you’re going,” she hissed.
Mary involuntarily took a step backward and stared at the old woman open mouthed.
“If you think you can get away from here, you must be living in cuckoo land,” she continued, the words shooting out of her mouth like machine gun fire. “If there is one thing people in this town hate more than anything, it’s Christians. You signed your own death sentence when you decided to come here.”
She took a step toward them and started swinging the knife a little faster.
“I’ve already told the high priest where to find you. He’s gone to get some more parishioners, and when they arrive they’ll sort the two of you out.”
She let out an evil laugh and spit at their feet. Then she pointed the knife at Mary.
“Who the hell do you think you are you little slut? Coming to our town with that disgusting thing hanging around your neck. Did you really expect us to just turn the other cheek?”
Mary’s hand automatically wrapped itself around the gold crucifix at the end of her necklace. And then everything started to come together. The hostile stares and the unfriendliness they had encountered. It all made sense now. She had thought it was because they were out-of-towners, and because of David’s long hair and the hippie glasses he wore. But that hadn’t been the case at all. It had been her necklace. It was the crucifix that identified her as a Christian that had caused their anger. They had immediately identified her as an enemy, an enemy worth killing and crucifying.
She wondered if everything had been planned, the car that wouldn’t start and the mechanics directing them toward the B&B. Had the initial plan been to apprehend them at some stage during the night when they were asleep? Had their discovery of the dead bodies in the park just sped up an inevitable process?
“You are completely mad,” Mary said in a shaky voice. “You’re butc
hering people that have caused you no harm whatsoever.”
She looked at the old lady and knew she was looking at the devil himself. He had morphed into a human shape, and was doing his utmost to destroy her soul. To try to instil as much doubt as possible, and ultimately get her to question her own faith. Would he eventually try to offer her a ticket out of here if she renounced her god and her believes?
She didn’t have time to think any more about it, because the old woman lunged forward and tried to thrust the knife she was holding in her hand into David’s midsection. She was screaming madly as she did so, trying to distract him for a fraction of a second so the blade could do its job.
Mary started screaming too, and the only thing she could think of was that David had been seriously injured. That the horrible knife had cut through his clothes and the skin underneath it, before entering his stomach where it had caused all kinds of irreparable damage.
She backed up a few more steps without realising what she was doing and hit the wall. Her hands were cupped over her face, and she was screaming ‘No!’ at the top of her lungs, her eyes glued on David.
But he didn’t hunch over, nor did he cry out in pain or collapse to the floor. Somehow he had managed to get hold of the old lady’s arm and was slamming it against the opposite wall. The old woman was cursing at him and hitting him on the shoulder with her free hand, but it didn’t seem to faze him noticeably.
Then she heard a loud clang and saw the knife fall to the floor. She stared at it wide eyed, and it took her a second or two to realise that there wasn’t any blood on it. The screams coming out of her mouth turned into gasps. Did that mean that the old lady hadn’t been able to stab David?
She raised her eyes and saw David and the old lady grappling less than a yard away from her. Mary was surprised by the tenacity of the old woman. Watching her was like watching a trapped animal trying to get away from a powerful predator. She was pulling at David’s hair and scratching his cheeks. Then she heard David utter another swear word when the old lady kicked his shin, and saw him trying to shield it by moving farther away. And for a terrifying moment, Mary was convinced that he would fall over and end up on the floor.
The Bad Country Page 6