Almost Gone

by Ophelia Night

  In the food preparation section there was a big wooden block where the chopping and carving knives were stored. They were all in their place, their handles jutting out from the block, waiting to be used.

  Cassie inspected all the knives pushed into that wooden block. She picked out what she hoped was the deadliest weapon of them all—a medium-length one with a hard, shiny silver blade that tapered to a wicked point. Its beveled edge was lethally sharp.

  She imagined grabbing it and stabbing it into somebody, point first. Or using that razor edge to slice across flesh, opening a deep gash in her attacker’s throat.

  Holding the knife, she felt as if she was at a crossroads. Would she be able to use it?

  Cassie shook her head. Tempting as it was to have the protection that knife offered, it was too deadly a weapon and that meant she might freeze instead of using it, because its ability to seriously hurt or kill terrified her. There was also the possibility that it could be taken from her. Then she might end up being the victim, and Pierre could truthfully say he had used it in self-defense.

  She needed something less lethal, that would still be an effective deterrent. Pepper spray would have been ideal, but she was sure there was none in the chateau. Would plain pepper work?

  Cassie rejected this idea, too. It wouldn’t be practical to use. Then the solution came to her.

  Insecticide. She needed a can of powerful bug spray. The poison would temporarily blind or choke Pierre, it would be easy to use, and the can itself could also be used as a self-defense weapon if she smacked it into his face.

  In a chateau that was hundreds of years old, there must surely be plenty of bugs, and therefore, spray. She guessed it would be kept in the scullery or broom cupboard.

  Cassie waited another few minutes for the maid to leave, and then looked in the scullery, where she found an almost-full can of a toxic-looking insecticide used for cockroaches and other kitchen pests.

  She sprayed a test squirt into the air, waited a few seconds, then fanned it toward her. The fumes were choking and eye-watering.

  “Come and get me, Pierre,” she whispered, clutching the can with her finger tight on the nozzle. “See how well it goes for you.”

  Despite the bravado of her words, her feeling of terror hadn’t budged. In fact, it had worsened. Preparing her defense was forcing her to acknowledge the reality of what she guessed he was planning.

  She took the spray up to her bedroom and hid it under her pillow. Then she closed her bedroom door and went in search of the children.

  She searched fruitlessly for nearly half an hour, getting more and more worried about where they were and what disaster they might have caused, before the shriek of a car’s engine alerted her, and she rushed to the garage.

  Marc had stolen the keys from the dish in the hallway and had unlocked the Peugeot. He’d managed to get the car started, and was perched on the edge of the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel tightly, with his foot flat on the accelerator. The engine was howling in protest and the air was thick with fumes.

  Antoinette had brought Ella along to watch the spectacle, and was standing outside the garage, screaming with laughter.

  “Stop it now!” Cassie shouted, but over the roar of the car, nobody heard her.

  She dashed into the garage, coughing as she breathed in the cloud of choking fumes. She wrenched at the door handle and pulled it open, wondering why it felt sticky to the touch.

  “Out, now!” she ordered.

  Marc grabbed the wheel tightly, shouting in protest. Looking inside, Cassie saw to her horror that he’d brought a cup of cocoa and a honey sandwich into the car with him. The cocoa had, predictably, spilled all over the passenger seat. Marc’s face and hands, together with the car’s steering wheel, the indicator stick, and most of the knobs on the dashboard, were smeared in honey.

  Cassie suddenly wondered how complicit Antoinette might have been in all of this. She could imagine her handing Marc the cocoa and sandwich, and suggesting that he go for a drive.

  “Out,” Cassie yelled. The garage air was thick with fumes. She grabbed Marc’s arm and hauled him out of the car, before reaching in and turning off the ignition. The key was sticky, too. Every possible surface was thick with honey.

  “Marc, what the hell is this? You know you’re not allowed to go into the garage,” she screamed, dragging him outside where the air was, thankfully, clearer. She turned on Antoinette, not caring that the older girl could see exactly how furious she was.

  “You were watching the whole time! Why did you let him do that?”

  Antoinette just shrugged rudely and spread her arms. The gesture, and in fact her entire demeanor, indicated nothing but contempt for Cassie.

  Ella turned away, as if she couldn’t be bothered to continue with her manipulative behavior now that Cassie was trying to enforce discipline. So, Cassie decided, Ella didn’t really like her. She just capitalized on her weakness, and the fact Cassie was putty in her hands.

  Her brain felt overloaded. She could almost feel the neurons burning out, one by one.

  “Inside,” she snapped. How was she going to make the children realize how destructive, how downright dangerous, this had been? If Marc had gotten the car in gear, he could have run Ella over.

  “I don’t want to go inside,” Marc began, and Cassie yelled at him with all her might, bending down so that her mouth was only inches from his ear.

  “You are going! Now!”

  She marched them inside. Marc dragged his feet in sulky silence, Ella kicking the gravel and whining. Antoinette was still giggling, as if she found the entire situation, including Cassie’s loss of control, too hilariously funny for words.

  “Come with me,” she said, and headed upstairs, but at the top of the staircase she turned toward the guest wing. She hustled Marc in front of her, with Ella whimpering behind, and slamming her hands on the doors as she passed. Cassie could hear Antoinette’s silvery laughter bringing up the rear.

  She punched the door open, stomped into the bedroom, and pointed through the glass sliding door to the empty podium on the balcony where the statue had been.

  “Which one of you pushed that statue off there? Tell me. Now. Because I was walking underneath the balcony when it fell, and it came within inches of killing me.”

  She scanned their faces. Ella mutinous, Marc defiant, Antoinette smug.

  She expected it would take a while for anyone to confess, and that she might have to watch their body language for signs of guilt. But Marc shouted out immediately, as if he was proud of what he’d done.

  “It was me! I was hiding there, because we were playing hide and seek. It looked wobbly so I pushed it. I’m so strong! Look, I can make the other one fall, too.”

  He rushed toward the glass doors as Antoinette squealed with mirth.

  Cassie dived after him, remembering that Pierre had said a crew would be replacing the statue during the course of the afternoon, which meant there could well be people underneath.

  “No,” she shouted. “It’s dangerous, and you could hurt someone.”

  “I don’t care!” Marc yelled. He kicked her shins, his toes hammering her painfully in his efforts to make her let go, and as she struggled with the insubordinate youngster, his fingers still sticky with honey, Cassie felt herself consumed by a raw, violent rage.

  She dragged him away from the door. He screamed in anger, his face crimson, and his grasping hands left giant smears on the glass.

  “You have to stop acting like this! You have to start listening,” she shrieked at him.

  “I won’t, I won’t,” he shouted back.

  Before she could think about the consequences of her actions, Cassie picked the young boy up bodily and hauled him across the room to the large mahogany wardrobe. She opened the door, forced him inside, and banged it shut, leaning against it for good measure.

  “Now stay in there and think about what you have done!” she yelled.

  For a moment there was
a shocked silence, as everyone took in what had just happened.

  Then Marc began screaming, terrified and hysterical.

  “Let me out! Let me out!”

  He hammered on the door, fists drumming against the wood, but Cassie only pushed back against it harder. She was breathing fast, her heart pounding and adrenaline surging through her. She was not letting him out; she was not.

  Marc started to cry.

  “I’m scared of the dark. Please let me out, please!”

  Clenching her teeth, Cassie stood firm against the door. She could hear the raw fear in his tone and knew how scared he must be, but her anger was more powerful than the inner voice which was telling her she was being unfair to him.

  Ella started sobbing.

  “He’s scared in there! Marc’s scared!”

  “I was scared when that statue crashed down behind me. Marc needs to learn to think before he acts,” Cassie shouted. “And not deliberately do things when he knows they’re naughty and destructive.”

  Marc’s crying had quieted down. His sobs were forlorn now.

  “I’m so scared,” he whimpered. “Please let me out.”

  Antoinette marched up to Cassie, contempt in her eyes.

  “Let him out,” she demanded. “You’re being cruel.”

  “I’m being cruel?” Cassie raised her eyebrows, a fresh wave of anger surging inside her. “Maybe you should be pointing that finger at yourself, not me.”

  Antoinette was furious at being defied. She stepped forward with her face set in a scowl and tried to physically push Cassie away from the door.

  Cassie did what her fingers had been itching to do the whole day. She lifted her hand and slapped Antoinette hard across her face.

  Antoinette recoiled, dropping to her knees and doubling over, cradling her face in her hands, whimpering in agonized tones.

  “Ow, ow, ow.”

  Ella ran over and knelt beside her, sobbing as she helped Antoinette rub her face. From inside the wardrobe, Marc’s cries had become nothing more than hoarse, desperate whispers.

  “Let me out. Please, please let me out.”

  Listening to the fear in his voice, Cassie found that memories were surging inside her. She was having flashbacks to a forgotten experience, one she’d buried deeply.

  She suddenly had the weird feeling that she was on the inside of that closet. She knew exactly how it felt in there. How the tiny sliver of light narrowed and then disappeared completely as the door was closed, leaving her in oppressive, airless darkness. How the cupboard space suddenly seemed too small to contain herself and her panic, but no matter how loudly she screamed, she hadn’t thought it would reach outside that solid door.

  She knew her father was standing outside that door because she could hear him shouting, even though she couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. It didn’t matter. He was angry and she had been bad, and that was why he had dragged her upstairs and shoved her into that big, dark cupboard and bolted the door closed.

  He’d gone away, Cassie remembered. She’d waited in there for what felt like hours, until her throat was raw from screaming and her heels were bruised from kicking the door, in her desperation to force it open. It was airless and hot, and every breath she took felt like a struggle.

  Her father hadn’t let her out. Eventually, it had been Jacqui who came upstairs and freed her.

  Suddenly unable to continue with the punishment, Cassie moved away from the wardrobe and opened the door.

  Marc was lying prone on the floor, just as she had done. He crawled out, blinking in the light, and Cassie remembered how light it had been after the suffocating darkness. It had been painful, and she could hardly open her eyes for a while.

  Marc’s face was swollen and wet with tears and he seemed more subdued than she’d ever believed he could be.

  As he stumbled past Cassie he muttered something that she couldn’t quite make out.

  Antoinette scrambled to her feet and tried to put her arms around him but Marc pushed her away and trailed out of the room, turning in the direction of his bedroom.

  Antoinette and the still-sobbing Ella followed him silently out.

  In her terror and trauma, Cassie remembered she’d pushed her sister away, too.

  She’d pushed her hard, and Jacqui had screamed as she’d fallen, down into the dark.

  Cassie shook her head violently. She was confusing memories with dreams again. That hadn’t happened. She’d pushed Jacqui, but it had only been a weak, gentle shove. She hadn’t been standing on the brink of a ravine. She hadn’t tried to save herself, her red-nailed hands clutching at empty air as she’d fallen.

  Cassie closed the cupboard door and as she did so, she found her earlier rage had evaporated. Instead, she was filled with guilt.

  She tried to tell herself that her actions had been justified, that these children had been running so wild that they had needed a serious dose of discipline. That no harm would come to Marc from a few minutes spent inside a cupboard and that Antoinette had more than deserved that slap.

  It didn’t stop her from acknowledging what she felt inside, even though she cringed away from the reality.

  She’d behaved in exactly the same way as her abusive father.

  She had spent years trying to escape him and turn her back on him. She had firmly believed that she was a better person and in any case had been the victim, not the oppressor. None of it had helped her.

  She had to face the truth, which was that she had ended up becoming him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  After they had left the room, Cassie expected the children to run wild through the house in defiance. She was surprised when they meekly walked back to their rooms. They were so quiet and compliant that she guessed the incident had traumatized everyone.

  She headed downstairs and searched the scullery for cleaning materials. Then she tried her best to fix up the car, wiping every surface and getting as much of the spilled cocoa off the leather seat as she could. She was glad of the activity, as it gave her an escape route from her shattered emotions.

  She’d crossed the line with the children. She’d become their abuser instead of their protector.

  She tried her best to replay the incident in her mind so that she could get some perspective on it, and decide how unacceptable her behavior really had been, and whether she could somehow make amends for it. Thinking back, she found she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened in that guest room.

  She couldn’t recall all the details. How had the situation escalated? What had Marc said that she had reacted that way? She supposed she had taken them up to that bedroom to discipline them about what had happened in the car. When she tried to remember, she went back to being small and helpless, locked in the closet herself.

  Then when she tried again, she found herself on the brink of that ravine, trapped in the nightmare of fighting her sister.

  Cassie wondered if her mind was deliberately erasing memories to protect her from the overload of stress. She hoped the details would come back to her when she was better able to cope with them.

  Meanwhile, she felt as if her thoughts were being tugged in a hundred different directions. She kept thinking of the phrase “torn apart by wild horses.” That was exactly what she felt was happening to her sanity. There were too many uncontrollable worries, she had no support structure, and her biggest fear was that the worst was still to come.

  She kept wanting to cry, and thinking she had been crying, but when she lifted a hand to her eyes she could feel they were dry. Outwardly she was showing nothing, but inside she was falling apart.

  Checking the time on her phone, she realized it was late afternoon. The hours had slipped by as if she’d been in a dream. Seeing Marnie was not here, it was her responsibility to make sure that there was supper ready and get the children bathed and into their pajamas, assuming they were willing to speak to her. Gathering her thoughts into a semblance of normality, she headed downstairs.

&n
bsp; The kitchen was empty. The maid who’d been washing up earlier had obviously knocked off for the day. Thanks to Marnie’s unexpected disappearance, no plans for supper had been made.

  Cassie checked the fridge, the freezer, and the enormous pantry. There was plenty of food of all kinds, including a six-pack of slimmer’s shakes in the pantry which looked out of place compared to the other contents. She guessed they had been Margot’s, and would now never be used.

  As she took stock of what was available, a few dinner options occurred to her. Then she thought—why not ask the children? Perhaps she could mend her relationship with them and absolve some of the gnawing guilt she was feeling if she opened up the lines of communication herself.

  She called them all into Antoinette’s room.

  They filed in obediently and stared up at her in silence. Cassie was struck again by the change in their behavior since she’d completely lost the plot.

  “I want to tell you all that I’m sorry for shouting earlier,” she said. “I lost my temper and behaved very badly. So I have to say I’m sorry. I was angry but I shouldn’t have said and done what I did. It’s not OK to do that ever, but if it happens, it’s important to apologize afterwards. I know now that if I’m in the same situation again I must control my anger and not let it control me. That’s what I’ve learned from this.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Antoinette said in a small voice. “I didn’t try to stop Marc; in fact, I told him he should do it.”

  “And I’m sorry,” Marc said, scuffling his feet on the tiles. “I know I was naughty. I was very bad.”

  To Cassie’s surprise he sounded genuinely ashamed, rather than proud of his behavior.

  Ella hugged her in silence, clinging to her legs.

  “I thought I would ask you what we should have for supper,” Cassie said. “Marnie’s not here so I’ve got a couple of choices in mind. We could either have ham and cheese omelets, or we could have a beef and mushroom pie—there’s one in the freezer—or we could have pancakes with sugar and cinnamon.”

  “I’d like pancakes,” Ella said tentatively, and there was a chorus of “Me, too,” from Antoinette and Marc.