The land of dead flowers: (A serial killer thriller)
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“Oh, come on!”
“Dylan, why are you so quiet?” the woman asked.
“Huh?” the man sounded lost.
“As usual. Flying somewhere.” The woman didn’t sound happy.
“Mom, please,” Alman begged.
“Son.”
“Momma.”
“Okay! I don’t want to talk about it. She can stay for now, but we’ll see. We’ll see.”
The conversation seemed finished and Inga closed the door. She stood beside it for a few minutes rethinking about locking it, but then dropped that idea and went to bed. She pulled a blanket to her chin and lay with her eyes open, listening to sounds from the hallway. The room was absolutely dark. There was not a single lamp outside. Even the moon hid behind the clouds, so it wouldn’t disturb people who were trying to sleep. The TV in the room down the hall kept playing, and Inga heard quiet voices again, talking or arguing.
Inga was grateful for her rescue but felt bad. Because of her this nice guy was arguing with his parents, with his mother. The sense of guilt went away though and was replaced with euphoria. She had been kidnapped and sold for sex, but she escaped and avoided the shared fate of the other people who would never leave that damn house. The thought darkened her extended sensation of happiness, but Inga believed she could find the house of terror and end its existence for good. Eagle, Drake, and their gang, including Bitch, would pay for what they did to her. Of course, they would escape the pain and humiliation they caused their slaves, but at least they would be behind bars if fate wished (like Inga believed in fate anymore) and maybe get their share of torture. She wanted them to suffer, even though before she had been kidnapped, she couldn’t imagine wishing something like that on her worst enemy.
Inga searched the darkness, trying to think about what was going to happen next. She thought how she would enter the sheriff’s office tomorrow and tell him about all the terrible things that happened in that old, forgotten motel. She thought how the sheriff would go there with his deputies and arrest the scumbags. She thought about the phone call to her mom and hearing her voice—first disbelief, and then crazy happiness. Inga pictured the white fence and her house that she had hated so much just a few weeks ago. She couldn’t wait to see it again. She dreamed about entering the house, about getting into her bed and hugging her favorite brown bear. She wanted to look outside her window and see the old oak tree with the swing on its branch that hadn’t been used for years. Her dad had made it when she and her sister were little girls, and her mom didn’t want to take it down. When her husband of twenty-eight years died, she wanted to keep everything he had made.
A few weeks ago Inga wanted to leave all of it. She was attracted to the lights of the movie capital of America. She wanted a taste of the bright life. She had tried it, only it was different than she had imagined. Like something she had heard on the news and thought it could never happen to her.
Inga believed that she could forget all of it. Maybe some of the girls would need therapy or time in the hospital, putting their lives together, but not her. She was strong and she could get over it. She could start her life anew. She would lick her soul’s scars like a cat, close her eyes on those that stayed on her body, and just live. Like a girl of twenty-three, finishing college. New friends, new work, and her old city that seemed so attractive now.
She closed her eyes. The sounds outside her door began to fade, and silence swallowed the house along with the darkness. Inga started to sink slowly into sleep, like an apprehensive swimmer diving into cold water, periodically jumping out of it to draw a choking breath. She was afraid to wake up and learn that everything was just a dream, born from her exhausted mind. The weariness was strong, and Inga slowly but surely let it take her to a place of forgotten fear, to a place of pink elephants and purple bunnies.
Chapter 4
Screams. Somebody was screaming. Screams of pain. Agony. A woman’s voice. Some woman was screaming in deadly agony.
Inga’s eyes opened. Deadly silence and darkness. No sounds, not even a clock ticking or the roar of a faraway car. Nothing. Where was she? What was happening? Faces of her torturers appeared in front of her, but the memory of the last few hours pushed its way back into her thoughts. She was not in the house of terror. She escaped and was saved. She was in the house of a family that let her stay for one night and nothing threatened her life here.
Inga pushed the blanket away, put her legs down, and walked to the light switch, holding on the wall. She found it, flipped it up, and closed her eyes against the brightness of the light.
When her eyes adapted, she saw the table, two chairs, the bed, and the picture on the wall. She wasn’t dreaming. She was really saved and she was in the house of a kind man named Alman. Then who was screaming? It seemed that somebody was screaming here. Nightmare? Did she have a nightmare?
“Of course I was dreaming. It was a nightmare.”
Inga sighed with relief but it wasn’t a real relief. How long would she continue to wake up like this? Trying to figure out where she was? She didn’t want to think about it now. She turned the light off and went back to bed. The air in the room became colder, but the blanket saved her heat and it immediately warmed her shaking body.
She probably had a dream about the house of terror and about some girl who wasn’t lucky. She was very, very unlucky. That girl would never leave that house.
Inga was very unlucky once. She remembered that skinny guy with hollow cheeks and a big nose very well. He looked shy and harmless before tying her to the bed. Inga was sure she would not survive another encounter like that. She was sure that she would die from the pain, from the inability to fight back, desperation, humiliation, the simple realization that her life was insignificant. From the simple realization that from the time she entered that house, she had ceased to be considered a human being.
“Enough!”
Inga hit the bed with her fists, turned onto her stomach, and pressed her face against the damp, musty pillow. Forget, forget, forget. It was all left behind. No, not behind. It had never happened, never happened, never happened!
Inga repeated this phrase until it became muffled, crumbled, and faded as she returned to sleep.
“The scream was in this house,” Inga mumbled before drifting off completely. “Somebody screamed here.”
The voice of waterfalls