by Anna Lewis
Aaron
As I walked away from what seemed like the only way to free Chantelle I felt really guilty, but I didn’t want to sleep with Shelley for anything. I just couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t. The ten million dollars that she’d asked for was bad enough, but when she started trying to seduce me it just made me feel sick.
And when my private investigator, Rick Heath – a man who really knew what he was talking about – indicated to me that I shouldn’t, then I knew it was time to walk away. He was right when he said that the ten million would never be enough for Shelley and that she would always want more from me, but it still didn’t sit quite right with me.
I was trying not to focus too hard on that part, instead I was concentrating all of my energies on coming up with a new plan, a better one to free Chantelle, and the more I thought about it, the easier it became.
Shelley had made a huge mistake in revealing her identity to me. She forgot how obsessed I was with her back then, how I made it my business to know everything about her so that I could be the best boyfriend in the whole damn world. Unluckily – or luckily in this case – I still had most of that information, which meant I had the upper hand, and it was unlikely that she was even aware of it. I doubted that she had remembered all of our whispered conversations in bed when she revealed some of her biggest secrets to me, but I had.
For a start, I knew exactly where she had Chantelle. She had her at her grandmother’s home, the place she’d always told me was her sanctuary. I remembered her discussing the amazing attic where she’d spent most of her summers while her parents were too busy with their career’s for her, and I also recalled her telling me about the spooky basement which she was convinced was haunted.
Her grandmother passed away a few years before we got together, leaving Shelley the house, but she couldn’t bear to live in it and she couldn’t bear to sell it either.
It was empty and abandoned, and it was where she was holding Chantelle. I was certain of it. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
“Rick?” I asked into the phone, chewing anxiously on my nails. “I know where she is.”
“And what do you want to do about that?” he enquired without even missing a beat. This man might have been expensive, but he was totally worth it. He was up for anything that I needed him to do, which was perfect in this horrible and bizarre situation.
“I want to go and get her.” He knew that of course, he just wanted me to confirm it.
“Okay, but we need to be smart about this. You need to know that your ex might be expecting you now.” There he was with that level head all over again. It was likely that he’d done more to save Chantelle’s life than me! “She might even be planning for this exact situation now.”
“So what do you suggest?” I said. I tugged painfully on the ends of my hair, feeling that annoying frustration build up inside of me again. Every second was torturous.
“I say we go there to wherever you think she is… I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yes,” I nodded enthusiastically, glad that he was understanding this so well – I knew it had to be a little out of the ordinary, even for him in his line of work. “Of course.”
“Okay, so we watch her. Track her movements, see what it is that she’s up to, see what times she leaves your girl alone, then we call the police and we go in and get her.”
“The police?” I said. I didn’t want to involve them if possible – I knew that they weren’t taking too kindly to me taking things into my own hands.
“Yes, we need this crazy chick locked up before she can do anything else like this. Do you really want to be watching over your shoulder forever?”
“No,” I admitted dejectedly. “Okay, so are you ready to go today?”
“I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
As I grabbed my belongings and I got packed up, my heart was racing with anticipation. I felt like this truly was my one and only shot to outsmart Shelley and to get Chantelle back. If this failed then she would know that I was well and truly after her, and this little game that she was playing could end up with Chantelle dead.
***
Chantelle
I didn’t see Shelley for a few days after she told me that Aaron refused to pay my ransom, and I started to believe that her intention was to just leave me here to die. I’d served my purpose – or not, since it hadn’t gotten her what she wanted – so to keep me away from Jon, she was just going to leave me to starve. To die.
I was going to die down here with no one even wanting to help me. How did that make me feel? What did that say about my life?
I became desperate to escape, trying everything that I could to get out of that damn room, but as I grew weaker and more hopeless, it became increasingly clear to me that I was stuck forever.
I cried, I wept. I lost all hope and I felt myself shrink in on myself, becoming a shell of the person that I once was. I wasn’t brave when facing death at all. I was a pathetic and sniveling mess.
In the end, I started to talk to Aaron out loud, imagining that he was in front of me, slowly going insane.
“Why did you leave me here?” I asked him again, but the opaque image of him remained as frustratingly silent as always. I knew what I was doing, I knew what this meant for my mental state, but I didn’t even care. I needed my closure, and this felt like the only way I was going to get that now. “Why didn’t you save me, even if you don’t like me in that way? I thought that you were nice – how could you leave me to die? It makes no sense.” I sighed loudly, wondering how long it would take for this misery to finally be over. “I guess my judgment has always been off. I didn’t know that Jon was going to turn out to be the man that he is, and I thought that you were so much better.”
It was obvious that I’d fully given up on life, which was of course the moment that the door finally swung open once more. It was bright, too bright for me to see, and even though I knew that it was only going to be one person, my madness couldn’t stop hope from flooding through my heart.
“Aaron?” I asked pathetically. “Aaron is that you?”
I heard footsteps approach me.
***
Aaron
“Come on,” I insisted to Rick for what felt like the hundredth time. “No one has gone in or out for two days. It has to be safe for us to go in.” Being so tantalizingly close was killing me, and I didn’t know how much longer I could take it for. She was there, within reaching distance, and we were doing nothing about it.
“What if Shelley is in there, just waiting for you?” he asked, but I couldn’t take that. Shelley was rash and impatient. I just couldn’t picture her planning and waiting for anything. If she was in there, knowing that we were out here, surely she would have stormed out now for some sort of epic showdown.
“She isn’t. I know it.” I tugged on his arm, forcing him to look at me. “Chantelle is in there, scared and alone. If no one has been in she’s probably starving to death too. We need to go in there now before it’s too late.”
After a few moments pondering, he conceded. “Okay, just… let’s just do this carefully, alright?”
“I’ll go in, and you keep watch,” I said. I was excited now, glad to finally be taking some positive action. “I’ll be fine inside.”
“Okay,” said Rick. He didn’t like this, I could tell, and I was also aware that this was out of his area of expertise, but I would pay him handsomely for it. He would be rewarded for his loyalty for sure.
We crept toward the house carefully, both shooting anxious looks everywhere as we approached it. It was a rundown building in the middle of a shabby woodlands area, but I imagined that when Shelley’s grandmother lived there and took care of the place, it looked amazing. But right now, it was the scene from a horror movie, and I wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.
“Stay here,” I whispered as we got to the door. “I won’t be long.”
I gulped down the ball of fear that sat firmly in my th
roat, realizing that this would have been a good time to have some sort of weapon with me. I’d never carried anything to protect myself before, but then again I’d never found myself in a situation like this either.
A gun would have just made me feel a little more confident about this.
I held onto the door handle, watching my trembling hand. I sucked in a few deep breaths, trying to calm down my racing heart and my crazy emotions.
Then I turned the handle, slowly and carefully, and I pushed the door open.
I waited for a while, just listening intently to see if anything was about to happen, and when I was sure that it was nothing, I took my first step inside.
The entire building was filled with grime and dust, and there was a dank smell to the place that made me feel a bit nauseated. But I wasn’t here to focus on the housekeeping, I needed to get to Chantelle, to save her, and to get the hell out of here before things took a turn for the worst.
But where to go?
I knew that the choices were the attic and the basement, and it quickly became obvious to me that she would be downstairs rather than up. She wouldn’t want her happy memories tainted, especially if she was trying to cause some torment.
“Hello?” I called up the stairs, just in case. “Are you there? Chantelle?”
When I got no reply from Chantelle or Shelley, I knew that there was nothing left for it, so I raced down the stairs, and I shoved the furniture out of the way of the door. She was here – it as growing increasingly obvious with every passing second.
So I pushed the door open with excitement, and I raced in…
Just to find the room completely and utterly empty.
“What?” I gasped to myself as I stared at everything in sight. How had I got it so wrong? Maybe I didn’t know Shelley as well as I thought I did after all – a long time had passed since she was in my life.
But then I spotted the blindfold and the rope and I knew that Chantelle had been here at some point, she just wasn’t anymore.
So where the hell was she now? And how was I going to find her? Shelley had to know that I was on my way, surely that was why she’d left.
So again, I did not know where on earth Charlotte was.
That helpless feeling I’d had when she’d first been kidnapped descended on me again.
***
Chantelle
As the shadow moved closer to me, it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t Aaron, but then again it wasn’t Shelley either.
“It’s me.” It was Jon. He grinned that shit-eating smile at me. “I have come to rescue you.”
“No,” I said, mustering up all of the energy that I had left to shake my head at him. “No, you aren’t. You’re a part of this, she told me.” Had she told me? I wasn’t totally sure, but I said it anyway, wanting him to know that I knew he wasn’t totally innocent. He had to be involved in this, I was convinced of it.
He handed me a bottle of water, and I really tried to resist it, but my body was screaming out for it, so in the end I had to give in. If it was poison, it would only kill me quicker anyway, which would be a blessing in disguise.
As the cool liquid slid down my throat, making me no better than before, Jon continued to talk.
“I had nothing to do with this, I didn’t even know that Shelley was crazy,” he said in a voice that sounded kind of truthful, which was hard to accept. “As soon as I got it out of her what she was up to, I sent her on her way.”
“You didn’t call the police?” I asked sarcastically.
“Of course not,” he said, sounding genuinely shocked. “If I had, they would have taken you away from me too.”
I glanced up at him, trying to work out what that meant, but my mind was too addled to really make sense of it all. I could tell that it wasn’t good for me, but I’d been locked away from the world for far too long to really understand.
“How do you know that she won’t come back?” I croaked, feeling the pit of fear flood through my body at the prospect of even seeing her again.
“Trust me, I have enough information on that crazy bitch to keep her away forever. Now come on, get up so that I can get you the hell out of here.”
I really wanted to refuse, to make him go and leave me on my own, but he wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. He tucked his hands under my armpits and he dragged me into a sitting position. Then he carried me outside, acting all caring like he was really just trying to help me, but the warning bells were ringing inside of me. This wasn’t going to be the end of it – I could sense it. For all I knew he was just rising my hopes to take me to another location to where she would be waiting for me.
If I had any strength in my body, I would fight him off and make a run for it, but I had nothing so I simply allowed him to carry me along. I was being pathetic all over again, but I was too ill and hurt to resist.
He lay me on the back seat of his car, sending me that horrible smirk all over again.
“Don’t you worry,” he announced to me. “I’ll get you to safety soon enough.”
As his car rumbled along the ground, my body kept trying to settle down and to switch off, but I couldn’t let it. I was desperately trying to look out of the window, to work out where we were going, but my eyes kept flickering shut.
Occasionally, I would hear another car go past in the opposite direction, and I wanted to sit up and cry out for help, but I just couldn’t make that happen. I was too weak.
Eventually, despite all of my protests, my body shut down anyway and the blackness engulfed me.
***
For the next few days, my eyes only opened occasionally as my body finally regained some of the strength that it had lost down in that basement. As soon as I was ready to sit up, Jon was by my side with a bowl of soup, encouraging me to eat. I didn’t want to take anything from him, but now that I’d been given this second chance at life, I didn’t want to die either, so I complied.
It took a while, but eventually I managed to stand up, which was when I first braved a mention of leaving. Since there really didn’t seem to be any sign of Shelley, it seemed like for the first time ever Jon was telling me the truth, and although I didn’t really want to trust him, he hadn’t done anything to make me doubt him so far.
“So… I feel much better now. I think I might like to go home.” I said it in a quiet voice, and I flinched afterwards, expecting his red hot temper to flare, but instead he turned to face me with a cold, stoic expression.
“You can’t go,” he insisted calmly. “I’ve finally gotten you back after losing you, and I can’t let you leave again.”
“What?” I gasped, stunned at his admission. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Well, I mean… I did save you, so you do owe me.” He shrugged his shoulders casually. “And since we are obviously meant to be, and I had to send Shelley away because of you, it makes sense… right?”
Of course it didn’t make any sense, but that was Jon’s twisted logic all over. Maybe Shelley had been right about one thing, maybe Jon was obsessed with me. Maybe the whole thing had been a lie, and it was all some kind of twisted plot to get me back to him all along.
Whatever it was, I felt incredibly sick.
“What are you saying?” I gulped down and started to shake. This was all becoming a little too much for me.
He grabbed my face a little too hard and he stared deeply into my eyes. “I’m saying that you’re mine, and that you always will be, do you understand?”
This time I had no choice, all I could do was nod and agree, even if it damn near killed me.
***
The days that followed were the worst of my life. This was even more torturous than being in the basement. Jon was behaving like we hadn’t even broken up, like I hadn’t ever run away, and he was making me act like the doting little housewife, looking after his every need.
I hated it, every damn second of it, and I was constantly planning my escape, but so far I hadn’t been left alone.
/> The only thing that I’d managed to avoid so far was him coming anywhere near me in the bedroom. I had to lie next to him, to kiss him and act like I loved him, but so far my excuses had kept him off of me. I didn’t know how much longer I could do that for, so I knew that I needed to take action and I needed to do so soon.
As I stared at my reflection in the mirror, barely recognizing myself under the cuts and bruises that inflicted my face, I eventually developed a plan – one that I really hoped would work.
Luckily, I remembered that he kept a stash of sleeping pills in the bathroom that he’d been prescribed years before. He still took them occasionally, so even if they were bad, they hadn’t killed him yet, which meant that I didn’t feel guilty for slipping a few into his night time whiskey.
Once he was out, and I was really sure of that, I rushed out of the door and flew down the street, just needing to get away. As far away from this house as possible. It was like history repeating itself all over again, only this time I was far more desperate to get away.
It was only when I got far enough away to take a break and take stock of my situation that I realized I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t go home because he would find me there, and I couldn’t go anywhere else either.
Maybe it was time to take the plunge and to try and make things up with my parents.
I pondered upon that idea as I walked into the nearest café to ask to use their phone, but as soon as the waitress saw me, she dropped the mug that she was holding in shock.
“Oh my God,” she cried in a southern accent. “It’s you… you’re the girl that got kidnapped.”
“What?” I gasped, how the hell did she know that? I flicked my eyes everywhere expecting Jon and Shelley to pop out of the woodwork at any moment, but somehow they didn’t.
“You’ve been all over the news. Come on, sit down,” she ushered me into a seat. “Have you just escaped?” I nodded numbly. “I’ll get you something to eat and drink and I’ll call the police…”
Everything started to buzz past me in a haze. I knew that events were transpiring, but I couldn’t focus on any of them. I gave a statement to the police, told them everything I could recall, and while one officer went off to arrest Jon and to find out what had happened to Shelley, the other took me home. He tried to take me to the hospital, but I refused. Most of my injuries had healed anyway, and I didn’t want any invasive treatment when I felt so bad. I just wanted to rest.