John quickly dressed in warm boots, heavy clothing and donned a fur‑lined parka for the hike. After filling, then slinging a knapsack over his shoulder, he repeated his order for the child to stay put, slipped on his gloves and headed out into the storm.
The stairway leading off the porch stood hidden deep beneath the snow. The boundaries of the dirt road were no longer discernible. He could see no tracks in the snow, no indication as to what direction the child had travelled. Several inches of snow had fallen between now and the time when he’d first retired for the evening, which was less than two hours ago. And it still fell – whipping with the winds, pummeling out of the sky in embattled whorls – impeding the view despite the five‑cell flashlight he carried.
The going was slow. A man with two good legs would have had trouble getting through the deep drifts, which at times swallowed him up to his waist. Biting cold winds whipped at him from several directions at once. He kept his face down, his hood up, and the all but useless beam of the flashlight scanning the snow in front of him.
The first mesa he would come to stood less than a quarter of a mile away. It was the closest thing that could fit the child’s description of a ‘hill.’ If luck were with him, he would find the woman there. But tonight, he did not feel lucky. The below freezing weather played havoc with his bad leg. Already, the tips of his fingers, lips and nose had begun to go numb. Despite the cane, he slipped twice, getting snow up his sleeves and in his face. Even if the woman were in the vicinity of the closest mesa, he had no guarantee he’d find her. Left in a storm like this, chances were she was dead by now. And like the dirt road, her body would be lost beneath the snow for days to come.
John began to regret leaving Bear behind. When he trudged around to the other side of the mesa, he also regretted leaving his shotgun behind. John hunkered down briefly, extending a gloved hand towards a reddish blotch in the snow. Although his mind initially tried to reject it, he knew what it was. Blood. Fresh blood. And there seemed to be a lot of it.
He pressed on further, coming to the top of a rise. He gazed down at the other side of the hill, unable to see clearly through the blizzard’s blur. But something was there. Just down below. The next few feet of snow he crossed were mottled with large blotches of dark blood. It appeared as if something had been thrashing around, leaving evidence behind that a fight had taken place only moments before; for the imprints were too crisp, too deep, and otherwise would have been buried.
He shone the light to his left, to his right, and saw what appeared to be an article of clothing. He reached for it, shaking it free of the snow, and held it up for a brief inspection: A woman’s lightweight coat.
The collar had been torn off. One sleeve was missing. For the most part, it was beige, the same color as the little girl’s coat. The rest of it, however, was blood red.
He made his way to the woman’s body less than a minute later, just a few yards down the hill from where the coat had been found. Her blouse had been ripped open. What appeared to be claw marks had parted skin and muscle from her throat to her bare stomach. Her arms were slashed all the way down, still oozing blood. Snow covered her feet and lower legs.
John removed his left glove with his teeth, reaching for the woman’s blood-smeared face. She was cool to the touch. He started to reach for a pulse, but instead dropped his hood and leaned his head to her chest, listening to the weak but steady beating of her heart.
Without wasting another moment, he stripped off his parka and flannel shirt and began tearing his over shirt into strips for tourniquets and bandages to slow the worst of the bleeding. Covered from the waist up with only a thin T-shirt, his flesh gathered into goose bumps. He shuddered uncontrollably, and then slipped back into the parka. The woman was a mess, but alive. He had to hurry, not only for her sake, but also for his own. Whatever beast was responsible for her condition was probably still out there and by all indications, close by. He brushed the snow from her bare legs, removed the blanket from his knapsack, and wrapped the woman as best he could, running a length of rope around several times to keep the blanket in place for the trip home.
Finding her had proved to be the easy part. The most difficult part lay directly ahead: getting her to the house through a blinding blizzard, and getting her there alive.
<<>>
Still shivering beneath the blanket, Valerie managed to sit up. Bear barked and ran for the door. She could only hope the dog acted that way because the blond headed man had returned with her mommy. When the door flew open, her heart raced. She wanted to run to him, but barely had the strength to hold her head upright. Her head felt funny, tingly. As if succumbing to a powerful tranquilizer, her eyelids closed, her head tipped to one side and she remained lost to the world for several hours.
<<>>
For John Mills, the night seemed endless. The throbbing pain in his right leg alone proved to be more than enough to keep him awake. He grew optimistic concerning the child. She had no signs of fever or any other malady, and rested soundly enough in the living room with the benign expression that most children wear in their sleep. The woman, however, remained critical.
Using a sewing needle and ordinary household thread, he’d stitched up the more serious gashes, dressing them with a triple antibiotic ointment and gauze. Despite his efforts, it didn’t look good. Her breathing became even shallower. Her coloring had gone from pale white to ghostly gray. Each time he returned to the guest room with more gauze or clean towels, he expected to find the woman dead.
As he stood in the bathroom, lathering and scouring his hands, he stared into the mirror as if the reflection he faced was that of a stranger. Ragged, pale, two days in need of a shave. His blond hair was a disheveled mess, falling in thick, tangled locks an inch or so below his collar. Tonight, he looked every bit his forty-two years. It had been a hellish evening. Watery blood ran down his wrists and along the length of his forearms, dripping from the tips of both elbows and spilling into the porcelain sink. John grabbed the scrub brush, soaped it up, and focused his efforts on the red grime staining cuticle and fingernails. The future seemed as bleak as his weary expression. By daylight, the woman would be dead and her corpse would be left in the guest room until he gathered the gumption to do something about it.
And the girl, what would he do with a motherless child? It would be at least a week before the snow melted enough to get the Land Rover into town. He would turn the little girl over to the local authorities then. But in the meantime...
John searched the medicine chest and pulled a prescription bottle of Norco. He kept a heavy supply of pain medicine around the house; it would help if the woman were to wake in agony – if she awoke at all. What he needed was an antibiotic to start the woman on before an infection set in. And somewhere he had at least five days’ worth of penicillin. The problem would be in getting an unconscious woman to swallow a pill.
Sometime after five o’clock the following morning, John brought a candle, went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of cool tap water. Even now, the picture remained fresh in his mind: pinching the woman’s skin together with fingers and thumb, puncturing living tissue with a needle and pulling cotton thread through the snug holes. He had tried to tell himself that it was no different than sewing closed a Christmas goose once it’s been stuffed for the oven. One thing was certain: If the woman survived, she’d be in desperate need of cosmetic surgery.
At the sound of footsteps, John turned towards the doorway. Wearing the blanket like a hooded cloak, the child stepped into the room.
John rose to his feet. “How are you feeling?”
“Did you...Where’s my mommy?”
“She’s in the guest room, resting. She needs all the rest she can get. So we don’t want to disturb her.”
“We don’t?”
“No. She mustn’t be disturbed. If you’re hungry, I was about to make breakfast.”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“It’s down the hallway, second door to your left.
I’ll show you.”
She walked at his side, not watching where she went, but eyeing his cane. The stone floor felt cold beneath her bare feet. And every few seconds, she’d glance down, trying to find a pattern to the placement of the large, smooth stones.
“How come you have so many candles here?” she asked when they reached the bathroom door.
“It saves on electricity.” He ran a hand along the inside wall, flipped a switch, flooding the bathroom with light. “There’s soap in the dish by the sink. The towel on the far left is for you.” Noting the confusion on her face, John pointed to the white towel he’d previously placed there for her use.
When she came out of the bathroom, she looked up at his face, then down at his cane. “How come you walk with a cane?” she asked as they passed down the hallway.
“I hope you like oatmeal,” he said, ignoring her question. “I’ve no milk.”
“Got any raisins?” she asked. “Mommy always puts raisins in my oatmeal.”
“I might be able to scare up a few.”
“Mommy says raisins have vitamins in them, only you can’t see the vitamins ‘cause they’re real little.”
John went to the kitchen counter and pulled a canister of dried oats from a cupboard. He had several questions to ask of the child and he wanted to go about the task without it appearing to be an interrogation. The poor girl had been through enough.
“I take it you and your mother are travelling alone?”
Valerie nodded, pushing her dark hair from her face with both hands. “The van got stuck. So my mommy got the snow rider machine out of the back. But then it broke, so we had to cover it all up with snow and walk.”
He measured a cup of water into a small saucepan and set it to boil. “A snowmobile? Why did you have to cover it up with snow?”
“’Cause Mommy said so.”
“So you started walking,” John prompted.
“Yeah. We walked real, real far. It was so cold. Then my legs hurted me and Mommy had to carry me.”
“What about your father? Does he have any idea where you and your mother are?”
She shook her head and gazed briefly upward as she spoke. “He’s gone up to Heaven. Mommy says he can see me, but I don’t think so.” She looked at John from the corner of her eyes. “Kimberly Shelter says that once you’re dead, you’re dead. They just put you in the ground and you stay there until the worms eat you down to the bones. I know bones are white. All people have white bones. Don’t matter what color their skin or hair is or if you got brown or blue eyes. Did you know dogs and cats have white bones. But bugs don’t have no white bones. If you step on one they scrunch. And that’s really yucky.”
He looked down at the small child, who was all but hidden under the blanket. Her thoughts were forthcoming, readily spoken. Yet there seemed to be a morbid streak there, one he considered strange for a child her age.
“While we’re waiting for the water to boil, let’s find you something a bit more suitable to wear.”
CHAPTER 4
The guest room had a four-poster bed quite similar to that in the master bedroom, its own private bath, a stone fireplace, and a bookshelf filled with reading material, mostly of high literary quality: works by authors such as Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Thomas Hardy. Like the rest of the house, the floor in here was made of large, smooth stones. It appeared open, spacious, with a high vaulted ceiling and exposed wooden beams overhead. A portrait of John’s deceased wife reigned above the mantle, having sea green eyes that pierced his soul, even when the room lay in gloomy shadows as it did now.
He went to the window and drew open the drapes. A light stirring of dust caught a thin stream of light, scattering then disappearing around him. For the most part, the blizzard was over. Yet the skies remained mostly overcast, dark, leaving the room a lackluster shade of gray. Out of necessity, he turned on the lamp beside the bed, then went into the bathroom and poured a glass of water. Six hours had passed since the woman’s last dose of medicine, so he mixed the powdery contents of one crushed penicillin tablet and two crushed acetaminophen tablets in with the drink.
As he had done every hour on the hour since midnight, John administered water to the unconscious woman with a turkey baster. He felt her forehead and found it mildly warm, but not alarmingly so. Her face was pale, ashen. She had lain in the same position all night, not moving. Yet for the first time since he’d found her, with morning having arrived without further incident, he felt hope that she might survive.
He drew back the quilt to make sure the stitches had held, and his breath caught in his chest at the sight of the injuries. She couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, probably closer to twenty-five, small framed. There were a great many bruises that had not been visible before, much swelling beneath the skin. A few of the injuries didn’t appear to be claw marks, but appeared as if someone had taken a whip to the woman. These were red and inflamed, though likely not life threatening. The stitches seemed to be doing their job. Scabs had formed along the wounds and the bleeding had ceased. John straightened the quilt, added another log to the fire, and left the room, closing the door behind him.
The child stood waiting for him in the hallway, eyes widening the moment she saw his face. “Is Mommy awake?”
“No,” he said, leaning into his cane. “She’s very tired. It may be a few days before your mother wakes.”
“She’s sick, huh?”
“If it were possible, I’d take her to a hospital today. But it’ll probably be a week or two before I can get her there.”
“No!” Valerie said, shaking her head. “Don’t make her go there!” Her eyes went glossy, wild. Her little hands tightened into fists.
He considered the child’s reaction for a moment, drawing his own conclusion that it had something to do with her father’s death. “In a hospital your mother can get the kind of treatment she needs. She’ll have doctors to care for her and the proper medication. We have no choice. And I’m sure she would be much more comfortable there.”
“No,” she said stubbornly.
“I’m afraid the decision isn’t yours to make.”
He turned away and headed down the hallway. He entered the living room when Valerie ran up behind him and stopped suddenly in her tracks.
“I thought you were gonna help my mommy!” she cried, hands still balled into fists. “But you’re mean, just like everybody else!”
He shot a glance over his shoulder then continued into the living room, seemingly unaffected by the child’s outburst. John leaned his cane against the wall and settled into a padded armchair. The child walked right up to him and stared as if she had something else to say – something unpleasant.
“Are you afraid of hospitals?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I’m not apposed to tell.”
“If I don’t know the problem, how am I supposed to fix it?”
“You can’t fix it.”
“What? What can’t be fixed?”
“The problem.”
“Which is...?”
“I’m not apposed to tell.”
“I don’t think you understand the situation here. Your mother was attacked by something. She sustained some rather nasty cuts that require medical attention. I’m not a doctor. I’ve done the best I could, but sooner or later, a doctor must look at those cuts or else she’ll be left with terrible scars.”
“No.”
“Listen to me. The doctors won’t hurt your mother. They’re good people. Of course, they give shots, and those hurt. But that’s for your own good.”
“I’m not ascared of all doctors,” she said and pursed her lips.
“Good.”
“Just the bad ones.”
John suppressed a smile. Like most children, this little waif seemed to have watched too many movies, which was probably where she got her morbid fixation. Good doctors. Bad doctors.
Such an intriguing little creature. He wasn’t at all sure what to make of her.
“Why do you think some doctors are bad?”
“I’m not apposed to tell.”
“Then I won’t be able to help.”
John reached over the arm of the chair, pulling a book from the magazine holder on the floor. He flipped through the pages, not reading, just biding his time, listening to the grandfather clock tick away the seconds. A few minutes passed and he looked over at the girl, who now wore one of his T-shirts and stood by the piano. The clean, white shirt fell well below her knees; the sleeves went past her elbows, nearly to her wrists. If nothing else, she appeared comfortable in her new attire. She also appeared quite bored.
“Little girl.” He paused, waiting until he had her full attention.
Her eyes curled upward, and she crossed her arms sulkily, as if challenging his authority. “Don’t call me little girl. I’m a big girl. I’m Valerie,” she replied.
“Well, Valerie, do you know how to read?”
She nodded slowly with uncertainty.
“Good. I have lots of books. Have you read Treasure Island?”
“No.”
“If you sit by the window, I’m sure you’ll have enough light. Are your hands clean?”
She hesitated a moment, then walked closer, holding both hands up for his inspection.
“They’ll do. But before I get the book, I want your word that you won’t bend the pages. If you get tired of reading, use a bookmark. Do you understand?”
<<>>
He heard the woman's screams halfway across the house and grabbed for his cane. The child was already to the guest room, reaching for the door when John rounded the corner at the top of the hallway. Bear barked, danced in circles around John's feet as if unsure of what to do.
"Out of the way, boy!"
When John got to the room, he was stunned at what he saw. The woman thrashed her head from side to side against the pillow, as if having a seizure. Both of her hands were clenched around fistfuls of quilt. And the child sat calmly on the bed, hand placed against her mother's forehead, gently whispering, "It's okay. It's all over. The monster's all gone. I won't let it hurt you any more."
HIDDEN DOORS, SECRET ROOMS Page 2