by Laura Greene
Melody turns to see a sinister smile as Max draws in on her. She runs, but he snatches her by the arm. His hands are rough, uncaring and his grip is tight, it stops her in her tracks.
Her father, with newfound strength, bangs at the door, trying to knock it down. He runs into it, and the door bounces him back. He is just too weak.
“Help!” Melody shouts. Hoping someone, anyone will hear her. But given her impeccable timing, planning her trip to Deacon House when it was mostly empty, she does not suspect anyone else is upstairs.
Max grabs her by the waist, wraps his arms tightly around her and squeezes his hand over her mouth. With muffled noises, she fights him, wriggling under his grip, but he tightens his hold and squeezes even harder. “Underground, here we are.” Max says triumphantly. He whispers in her ear, “No one will hear you scream.”
Now, Melody is scared for her life. She sees a dark hollowness in Max’s stare that sends a chill down her spine. He will kill me.
Her father sees it too and yells from the cell. “Quiet old man! This room is sound-proofed. You’ll get your turn.” He turns to Melody and throws her on the ground, “Melody Harker.” Walking towards her with hunched shoulders, tightly bulging through his shirt, he unbuttons the top two buttons on his shirt and cracks his knuckles.
She barely catches her fall with her arms. The cement is hard and cold. “How do you know my name?” She says, scurrying to turn and face him again.
“What, you think I am stupid?” His face is angry and hungry for blood. The veins on his neck are growing and Melody can see them pulsate. It’s incredibly repulsive, but she can’t turn away. “Bill Harker is your father. You show up here. You do the math.”
She shuffles on the ground, letting him talk. “If you already knew who I was, why didn’t you kill me sooner?” When she reaches the wall, she speedily shuffles on all fours and looks around. Suddenly, she grabs the lamp from the table beside her and swings desperately. Luckily, she makes contact.
“Argh! I’ll get you for that Harker!” Max falls to the side, holding the side of his head. Blood trickles in between his fingers.
“Run, Melody. Run!” Her father, Bill, shouts from inside his cell.
Melody hurries to her feet and takes off, running.
“Not so fast.” Max snaps at her foot, trips her, then catches her leg as she flies into the ground. His athleticism is overpowering. She will have to use her wits.
Max pulls her leg, dragging her towards him.
“No! Melody get up!” Her father cries.
But Melody does not get up. She lies on the ground, still. When Max drags her to him, he takes his other arm to grab her free leg and that’s when Melody kicks at his face, forcefully, sending him flying into the wall. He holds his face in agony. She knew those hiking boots would come in handy at some point.
This time, Melody races up the stairs to the door, drops the lamp beside her. She needs to escape and get help. To her discouragement, the door is locked. How? She wonders, violently shaking at the door. She needs to get out and this is the only way out.
Then she hears evil laughter behind her, and all the blood drains from her face. He is close enough; she can almost feel his smile on the nape of her neck. But it’s the sound of his voice that makes her shudder.
“I thought you might try to get away.” Max says as he wipes a trickle of blood off his face.
“How did you…” Melody is facing Max while feeling for an opening in the door with her hands behind her back.
“When you thought I was delaying answering your question, I was locking the door in case you tried a stunt like this.” Closing in on her, he asks, “Now, are you going to come quietly, or am I going to have to rough you up a bit?”
He is relentless. Melody can tell that he is not going to let her get out of here alive. She chooses reluctantly, to fight.
The fiercely intense pounding of his fist like a jolt of electricity to her lungs sends Melody’s body lunging forward. For a moment, she forgets how to breathe.
He is merciless; he is ruthless, but Melody will not have her life end like this. She dodges his next punch and runs across the hallway towards the stairs, with her hands over her stomach, doubled over. This is far from over, she thinks. I just need to tire him out.
He swings again, but his punch lands on the wall behind her. Max is furious. He growls in anger and Melody smiles. She has found his weakness. The angrier Max gets, the more careless he is.
“Blinded by your anger, Yellow Belly?” Melody tries to make her voice sound normal, but her lungs are on fire, and she is gasping for air.
“You just worry about breathing,” Max jabs back, breathing heavily himself.
He is right, she thinks. If she can just buy herself a little more time, she can breathe normally again. Melody fakes left like she’s racing for the stairs, then she runs towards the door.
Max falls for it, which buys Melody enough time to run and pick up the lamp from the ground. He may be strong, but she is smarter.
“The lamp didn’t save you before, what makes you think it will help you now?”
“This.” Straight away, Melody takes a deep breath, she leaps into the air and smashes a light right above her and Max. It is pitch black, but all she needs to hear is the loud scream Max gives.
Unsuspecting of what Melody would do, Max looked up as she took off into the air and shards of glass came slicing down at his face and cutting a wedge of skin in his cheek.
“My face!” He cries, holding his face in excruciating pain. “I’ll get you for this, Harker.”
Barely, does Melody miss his arm waving in front of him, as she runs past Max and only looks back when she gets to some light at the top of the stairs.
That took a lot of energy out of Melody. She had to give it her all or he would have cornered her again. Her lungs throb and it hurts even to breathe.
“Aarrgghh!” The sound of an enraged Max vibrates on the walls of the hallway. It’s too dim and Melody can’t tell where it’s coming from, that is, until Max is just a split second away from her midriff. He charges like a bull and sends Melody flying onto the ground.
A loud bang follows as she slams her back hard into the ground and the air she was gathering is knocked out of her. It’s going to take longer for her to recover this time if Max will even let her.
“That stunt you just pulled is going to cost me plastic surgery.” Max grinds through gritted teeth. “There’s no way I’m letting you go this time.”
The muscles around his mouth tense. It is a horrific sight to behold. Melody squints her eyes and gasps. He is hideous. There is flesh gouged out of his cheek. It is hanging limp from his face like an extra layer of flesh in a zombie movie.
Automatically, her stomach wants to vomit in disgust, but he stops her when he plants his body and sits on her stomach. “I’m not letting you go this time.”
His body is heavy, he has her legs pinned on the ground under him – she can’t move.
“I can’t breathe.”
“No, I haven’t even warmed up yet. You will die here.”
Melody can tell he is serious. It’s now or never. Her body is close enough to the edge of the staircase. If she can just swing her body and roll over the first stair, she may be able to unbalance Max and send him tumbling down the stairwell.
With both hands extended in front of him, and grim, bloodshot eyes bulging out of the sockets, he chokes her. Her neck is slender, it fits like a glove under his veinous, bony hands.
The pressure is sudden and the pain, shocking. She tries to roll and squirm under him, but she cannot shake him off. He presses on her neck even harder and locks his legs in place. She is his victim and the struggle that ensued, he has won.
Melody lets out a squeal as her throat constricts. She plants her nails deep into his upper arms, scratching and ripping at the skin. A liquid runs down her fingers, onto her hand and down her arm. She knows it is blood and it belongs to Max. Her nails have penetrated past
the skin barrier, she can feel flesh now. It is her final attempt to stop him.
He can feel the blood leaving his body, but he is not disturbed by it. Strangely, like an animal fixated on its prey, he looks satisfied to see her suffer.
She feels asphyxiation settling in. Her hands fall at her side as the strength drains from her body. The blood pressure building in her brain and upper respiratory system causes the blood vessels to burst around her eyes and she can tell she is about to breathe her last.
She came in search of the truth and now she is going to die without learning the truth. Her family, her dad, her friend Brad, little Rebecca, she won’t get to say goodbye to any of them.
With heavy eyelids, a dense drowsiness of sleep weighs in on her and she can’t fight it. Slowly, her body fades and she closes her eyes; powerlessly, she is yielding to the long sleep.
Chapter 5
Max has Melody pinned on the ground. He is choking her, and she is almost out of breath. He can feel her tense struggles under him become limper and more relaxed. He would have spared her life a little while longer had she not aggravated him and ruined his face. Now, he has to make her pay.
“This is it, Harker,” he concludes. “You got what was coming to you.”
“No, you’ll get what is coming to you.” A deep, polished voice says.
Suddenly, Max’s body is thrusted down the staircase, almost pulling Melody’s faint body and plunging down with her. Melody hears the voice.
“Will?” Max reveals its identity. It is Will Deacon who comes to her rescue. Quickly, he checks her pulse to make sure she is still breathing, then sets her in the recovery position, a short distance away from the staircase. He whispers to her, “I’m here, Melody. You’re safe now.”
Then, at once, Melody hears loud banging and sporadic shouts as Max yells, “No!” and “Stop!” She has to open her eyes, which are still heavy with sleep after she lost a lot of oxygen.
It takes unusual effort on her part, to open her eyes. She looks and she cannot see anything, but she is hearing everything.
“I’m your brother!” Max cries. Whatever is going on is heating up.
The sound is coming from down the steps. Melody curls her knees up to her body and rolls onto her hands and knees. She hobbles to the edge of the staircase, careful to stay low to the ground in case she loses her balance.
To her unbelief, Will and Max are fighting, violently, at the bottom of the staircase. This is no brotherly toy fighting; they are throwing forceful punches at each other.
“What are you going to do? Defend her?” Max asks. “Don’t you know blood is thicker than water?”
“Blood?!” Will scoffs. “You have some nerve. I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago.”
He swings a powerful left hook and narrowly misses.
Max ducks. His body moves swiftly, bouncing from place to place. Melody watches closely his arms swaying and his footwork softly treading in a triangular motion. She knows exactly what style of fighting this is. It combines Brazilian or Angolan dance with fighting and it’s quite mesmerizing to watch. Max was trained in Carpuera, she acknowledges. She is certain Will knows this and she just hopes he can be a match for Max.
Her bigger concern is getting to her father. She needs to release him from the cell to a safe place and get him medical attention. But how? She’s not sure if Will is really on her side. If she risks going down to the basement now, she could easily get mixed up in the braul.
Melody pauses to think while watching the two men. Her throat feels bruised, but she can at least suck in air again. For a moment, she really thought she was a goner. Even though she’s not ready to walk yet, her legs are gaining strength.
The fight continues below. It’s so close, she can’t take her eyes away. Max slides his legs under Will in a helicopter motion, this swipes Will off his feet and onto the ground.
At once, he gets back up and raises his arms in a fighting stance. He seems to prefer boxing – a common fighting sport of choice in Scotland – over Carpuera. Dancing his feet towards his opponent, Will pretends to swing right and slips a left jab. It hits Max square in his jaw.
Max rubs his jaw and continues dancing like an Angolan man. He has already lost some blood, the cut on his face looks vicious, but it’s not deep enough to aggravate too many blood vessels.
Now, Max flips on one side in a circular motion and strikes Will in the stomach with his foot. Will tries to block it with his hands, but he is a moment too late. He slides along the floor from the hard blow, feeling every ounce of the impact.
But Will is not a stranger to fighting. Again, he pulls himself straight and closes in on his brother.
She’s not sure who to root for. Neither brother has proven they can be trusted. It seems they both have skeletons in their closets, and it’s not yet clear if either of them is actually there to help and not deceive her.
It’s Will’s turn to show off some fancy footwork. He rushes towards Max, takes to the wall, steps one… two… then dives and hooks Max from behind with the sleeper hold.
Max immediately responds by strategically shoving his brother into the wall behind them. First, Will keeps the hold strong, but after slamming into the wall a second time, he releases Max.
Caressing her neck, Melody can’t help but think, About time Max got a taste of his own medicine.
Both men fall to the ground. They lock legs and arms and engage in a rumble and tumble. Melody can hear the punches being delivered and the grunts from both men, but she is not clear on who is delivering what punch. Everything is engaged, from knee to elbow to fist. They roll on the ground until they reach the opening in the wall where the wires are exposed.
It is Max who sees the wires first and takes advantage of them. He releases a hand from his brother’s hold, grabs a wire and wraps it around his brother’s neck.
“Will!” Melody cries, realizing maybe she is wishing one of the brothers will have an upper hand over the other after all. Seeing Will rush in to help her and whisper that she was safe wrought old feelings for him again that she had been trying to get over. It frustrates her, but the heart wants what the heart wants, she thinks.
She watches closely as Will resists his brother’s cunning. He manages to squeeze one arm between the wire and his neck. He pushes against his brother with his legs and draws more slack on the wire with his other hand.
Max dodges some of the kicks, but some of them catch him in the stomach. In the chest and finally in the ribs.
It’s hard to watch. The wire, which was tightly wound in the wall, starts to release sparks. Oh, no! Melody can see where this is going. She shouts, “Will! The wire!” as she points at the wall behind him.
Immediately, Will turns and understands Melody’s warning. He takes Max’s head, knocks it into the wall once, twice and he falls to the ground unconscious.
Just as Melody thought, a fire breaks out. It begins inside the wall, but it soon grows and catches onto the plaster on the wall.
Will drags his brother’s body away from imminent danger near the drywall and lays him on the other side of the room. He quickly races to the cells, unlocks the door for Melody’s father to escape with her.
“Quick! Come with me!” He takes Melody’s father by the arm, swings it over his shoulder and walks him out of the basement and up the stairs.
Melody’s father treads along, walking as fast as he can.
At the top of the staircase, Will hinges his arm around Melody’s waist and helps her down the hallway. “This way, I’ve got to get you out of here now.”
“Thank you, son.” Her father responds, and it makes Melody wonder if she has misjudged Will.
They exit the basement hallway and hurry out the back door into the courtyard Melody entered from earlier.
“Hurry! Go!” Will says as he turns around to re-enter the house.
“What about…?”
“My brother, I have to save him.” Will anticipates her question and replie
s, then he disappears into the house.
Melody is troubled by Will’s bravery. She saw how quickly the fire was growing, she is not sure he’ll make it to Max in time.
“Miss Winter!” Rebecca comes rushing to Melody. She is the bright spot on a day that Melody could not have fathomed. Melody holds Rebecca in a tight embrace.
“This way!” Tam directs them away from the house, towards the woods.
That is when she hears it. The house suddenly caves. “No!” Melody cries as she turns and sees the roof is giving in.
She releases Rebecca to run into the house, but Tam stops her, “Rebecca needs you now.”
Chapter 6
It’s a tragic sight: the house is caving in, and the fire is embellishing. Outside, Melody stands destitute of love and home: her father, Rebecca and Tam also with her.