Blood Red Winter: A Thriller

by J. Conrad

  I checked the front door and it was definitely locked. Before going inside, though, I wanted to check the windows. I shined the light on the nearest window, walking over to examine it. The frame was the same as usual, glass intact. I pushed up on it and it didn’t budge, so it was still locked from inside. Keeping the beam out in front of me, I trudged through the grass to go around back again, when something crashed down on my skull like iron.

  I staggered, my equilibrium thrown off as I stumbled forward. I grabbed out at nothing. The bone deep pain throbbed in a sharp, piercing wave all the way to my teeth. Dropping the flashlight and pistol, I gasped and tried to break my fall with my hands. I couldn’t gain control of my body, but managed to roll on my back to protect my head from another blow. Blocking with my arms, I pushed with my legs and tried to scoot away from whoever had struck me.

  The ground was moving beneath me like a tilt-a-whirl. I was going to throw up. A man was standing over me, but I could barely see him. He had something in his hands. A crow bar? A crow bar that he was going to use to bash my face in.

  I slid myself backward on the ground a few more inches and my stomach dived like I was falling out of a plane. The vague silhouette of the man blurred into two, then four. His image wouldn’t stay still. He lifted his weapon and heaved, bringing it down full force with another bone-splitting blow. A brief burst of violent pain shattered my vision.

  * * * * *

  If only the ground would stop moving. I moaned, squinting as I was assaulted by the worst headache of my life. Something sticky and wet trickled down my face. I tried to open my eyes. The surface on which I lay was unsteady, jostling me. It wouldn’t remain static, like the image of the man before he knocked me unconscious. I could remember that, barely.

  The melodic hum of a running car engine vibrated my body as I stretched out my hand. I felt short, coarse carpet over the shape of a wheel well. I could move my legs, only couldn’t stretch out all the way. My tailbone screamed, but it wasn’t that bad compared to my head. For some reason my hands and feet weren’t tied. I smelled gasoline and leather, the terror of the tight space consuming me – the terror of being a prisoner.

  Oh God. God, no.

  I groped the pockets of my coat and rifled through each one, scooping my hands inside and tearing around madly. I searched every crevice of every pocket. Furtively, I padded the pockets of my jeans, but my phone was gone.

  I groaned and turned on my side, lifting my torso slightly as I vomited out the meager contents of my stomach. When nothing else would come up, I shuddered and collapsed onto my side again. The smell of fresh vomit enveloped the trunk of the car and in a couple seconds I was dry heaving. It wasn’t hot, but my body broke out in a cold sweat, leaving me shaking. Putting my palms down on the carpet, I tried to think of it as something that wasn’t moving, something to be a stable point. The dizziness wouldn’t let up for me to get my bearings.

  The car engine droned on, the bobbing from the tires over the road magnifying the sick, hot, stuffy feeling. I forced myself onto my back and pushed up on the hatch with my hands, the cords in my neck bulging as I strained. With my heart pounding and my mind racing, I wanted to scream. I wanted to pound the inside with my fists, to yell for help, but a voice in the back of my head told me that no one would hear me.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, gritting my teeth and stifling the cry in my throat. I had to focus. I had to think. Thrashing around in here would let him know I was awake, and I didn’t want that. Better for him to think I was still unconscious. Better to lie quietly in the smell of my puke.

  The car would eventually stop, and the car stopping was the worst thing that could possibly happen, but also a chance for escape. A deluded chance, but it was all there was. I felt the vehicle make a right turn. I felt it slowing, felt a jerk as the brakes were applied. But when the car finally pulled to a complete halt, and the driver killed the engine, I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight to come up with a plan. My heart hammered in a wild rabbit panic, knowing that the trunk was going to open. The hatch would come up and he’d be there. I had a concussion, a half-healed broken tailbone, and no weapon.

  I heard the driver-side door swing open and slam shut. Booted feet walked slowly across gravel and stopped behind the rear bumper. A few noises I couldn’t place, then a zipper. A coat being zipped? A duffle bag being opened? I heard the man sniff and clear his throat, then he lapsed into a fit of coughing. This flicker of hope added a little fuel to the flame of my adrenaline – to ignite the fight instead of flight. It sounded like he was sick or had some kind of breathing problem.

  Stabs of pain rippled through my pelvis as I twisted my body around to wriggle my coat off. I lay on my right side and wadded the jacket into a loose ball, gripping it with my shaking hands. The trunk opened and I saw the man standing there in a black ski mask, the crow bar in his right hand. When he saw me awake, he raised the weapon, and I threw the balled-up jacket in his face.

  It was enough – just enough to make him miss my head, grazing my ear instead, before the heavy bar thudded onto the trunk bed. A searing, burning pain consumed the left side of my head. It felt like my ear had been torn off.

  My terror and racing pulse silenced my scream. I shot out of the trunk like I was possessed by devil and threw myself on top of him, getting my arm around his neck and squeezing. He pounded my back with the crow bar. I gasped as the wind was knocked out of me, but I held on. I heard him wheeze. He assaulted the right side of my back with the iron over and over, and a sharp crack in my ribs made me nearly let go. So I made myself constrict him harder, calling up every last bit of strength my body possessed.

  The ground beneath us dipped and wheeled and I was seeing double again. The man’s legs wobbled. He stumbled and slumped to the ground, releasing the crow bar and dropping to his knees on the gravel driveway. The merciless assault of iron against my back had ceased, but he thrashed around, struggling wildly and pushing forward against me.

  My legs came out from under me and I fell backward onto my tailbone, crying out as I was forced to let go. Seeing his chance, my attacker turned around and lit into my face with his fists. He hit my jaw and whipped my head to the right. He hit my eye straight on, making a knife-like pain shoot into my head, and for a second I couldn’t see at all.

  I put up my hands and rolled out of the way, kicking him in the face with my work boot. I heard his teeth crack together and he grunted. As I staggered to my feet, he pulled something from his pocket – something small – and blasted me with an eye full of chemical spray.

  I yelled and reflexively threw my hands up, lashing out at thin air. I couldn’t see anything through the fiery pain of the mace. Tears gushed down my cheeks and I blinked and squinted, trying to see him. I had to see. My double vision turned to a blur of watery gray.

  The murderer loomed over me, locking his hands around my throat and constricting my windpipe with his shaking fingers. My lungs ached and my eyes bulged in their sockets as I floundered, thrashing out with my legs at nothing. I couldn’t breathe and the pain in my chest became worse. My windpipe was being crushed. I started trembling, the cloudy silhouette of the man beginning to fade away as my vision dimmed even more. If I didn’t find a way through this, I would pass out and he’d strangle me until I died.

  Finally, forcing my weak, quivering arms to obey, I reached up and pushed my thumbs into his eyes. I felt a warm squish and the man howled. He released my neck, screaming and falling sideways over me. Gulping in deep breaths, I shuddered and coughed. I was finally able to breath again.

  I shoved hard against the man’s chest and he toppled back, his head landing in the gravel. I rolled away from him and groped my way along the driveway for the crow bar. I couldn’t see it. I felt dry grass and knew I had gone too far, so I crawled to the left, finding the rocky path again. The car stopped me when I banged into it with my shoulder. Turning again, but still on my hands and knees, I ran my fingers along the rocks, and at last I made contact with the co
ld metal.

  Grabbing the bar tightly, I lurched forward to the blur on the ground that was the man. He was bent in the fetal position, coughing and moaning softly with his hands over his face. My arms faltered, barely able to hold on to my weapon as I raised it and aimed. I swung, making the crow bar collide with the skull under the ski mask in a satisfying crack. With a slight roll of his head, the man stopped moving. He lay there in silence. He was maybe even dead, if I’d hit him just right.

  Still straining for breath, I dropped the crow bar and started to run for the road, but hesitated. Teetering in an unsteady directional change, I realized I couldn’t not know. I had to know, and the police had to know, and I had to be able to tell them what they needed to know.

  I staggered back to where my unconscious attacker lay and knelt down. The rocks ground into my knees but I barely felt them. My vision was starting to clear a little, though it was still double and the ground was unsteady beneath me. I grabbed the top of the ski mask and yanked it off.

  The man’s head was hanging sideways, so I turned it upright. Blinking, I stared hard at the person in front of me. I concentrated, trying to make my eyes bring the image into focus. He was maybe in his late fifties, with dark hair, maybe brown or gray, that was starting to thin on top. He had a narrow nose and sunken eyes with dark circles underneath. I lifted one lid to see the color of his eyes, but his irises were rolled back and I couldn’t see well enough in this dark anyway. It was worth a try. I studied his features again, a face that looked drawn and sickly. He was older now, but I knew that face. I knew it.

  I searched the man’s clothing for my cell phone, or his, but didn’t find either. I didn’t find a wallet or anything else with ID. Next, I searched the entire car and still came up empty handed. There was a pack of zip ties in the passenger seat, but besides that the entire car, including the trunk, was pretty clean and empty. It seemed like a miracle that he hadn’t bound my hands and feet.

  After confirming that he was still unconscious, I followed the driveway to the rural road and tried to run. Because of my injuries, I couldn’t tear off full speed in a stricken panic, and it was nearly impossible to keep my footing with this degree of vertigo. The ground was a swing, and it was swinging me, to and fro, left and right. A pine tree up ahead turned into two, then four and I stumbled. I cursed, panting for breath, and looked behind me, seeing nothing. I dreaded to see headlights, yet at the same time wanted to see them if they belonged to someone besides the person I’d just walked away from. I picked up the pace again, forcing one foot in front of the other, setting my jaw against the pain in my tailbone, my head, and my back. I concentrated on the sound of my feet on the shoulder of the narrow road. I smelled pine and cedar trees, and there were woods and fields on both sides.

  There were no lights or houses here, nothing to tell me where I was. I only knew I had to keep going. I would eventually run into a main thoroughfare and could find a gas station, but my stamina was already fading after jogging the short distance. The throbbing in my head threatened to make me black out and the weakness wormed its way into my limbs, making me stumble again.

  My boot lace caught on something and I tripped. Falling flat on my stomach on the hard asphalt, I groaned as the agony threatened to tear me apart. I couldn’t figure out why my back and ribs hurt so much, but it must have something to do with the crow bar. My arms trembling, I cursed and thrust myself up. My hands were raw and stinging from trying to break my fall. I retied my left boot lace and checked the right one, pushing myself into a dragging run again.

  A white sign came into view up ahead and I leaned forward as I ran, trying to make my legs go faster. Concentrating to see despite my distorted vision in the darkness of the country, I made out that the sign read 219, but I had no idea where that was. If it was a Georgetown road I didn’t know about it. Maybe a mile ahead, I could faintly detect some light. I thought I heard sounds from a busier street. Just a little bit farther. I had to keep going.

  Taking rasping breaths and clutching the stitch in my side, I made it to the intersection. I glanced around for the street sign, but only saw another one indicating 219. This new, unmarked road was four lanes and there was a lamp post not far away. Not a busy thoroughfare as I’d hoped, but busier than where I’d come from. This was probably a ranch to market road.

  A few cars passed as I trudged out into the weak light. My legs going buttery and shuddering beneath me, I started waving my arms, coughing as I tried to call for help. I didn’t think I could walk anymore. I wouldn’t last until I found a gas station or a store.

  None of the cars slowed down. I shouted at the broken white line in the asphalt, begging the universe to make someone hear me and stop. Then the ground rolled around me like a blanket, my vision dancing in double and an invisible force spinning me around on a wheel. My eyes fluttered back. My head weighed a thousand pounds and rolled to the side. I grasped at empty air as my body went slack and crumpled to the pebbly shoulder by the cedar trees.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Twelve Years Earlier

  Months after Mary’s funeral, and eons after I had hidden her memory away deep beneath the cellar floor of my mind, I received a post card. I removed it from the mail slot outside the main building of my modest Austin apartment complex. There was no name or address belonging to the sender. The card was postmarked from Illinois and was not addressed to me specifically, it had only that of my apartment building and unit number.

  It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, and I took the rest of my mail and went to sit on the bench in front of the office. I turned over the other side of the post card to find a strange poem, handwritten in ink.

  When rising from the bed of death,

  O’erwhelmed with guilt and fear,

  I see my Maker face to face,

  O how shall I appear?

  If yet, while pardon may be found,

  And mercy may be sought,

  My heart with inward horror shrinks,

  And trembles at the thought.

  I read it many times, trying to understand what it meant. The haunting words in their flowing script dazzled my vision on that bright day, but I couldn’t understand what they had to do with me. There must be some mistake, especially since the card wasn’t made out to me. I frowned, checking again for an address or a sender’s name but there were none.

  I had never understood religious things. Maybe someone had intended for the poem to inspire a friend to go to church. Besides, I didn’t know anyone from Illinois. But with a tightness in my chest and a cold finger stroking my soul, something about it forced me to drag Mary out of the cellar one last time.

  Probably a year and a half ago, when we were sixteen, Mary and I went canoeing at Town Lake. It was a glorious summer day, bright and full of promise. Mary sat before me in the canoe, and we pushed off from the bank, laughing and digging our oars into the water. We spent three hours counting turtles on their island logs, paddling under the Congress Avenue bridge and back again, slipping through occasional water plants and feeling the wind in our faces.

  As we neared the landing sight, Mary turned to me, smiling and heaving out a long sigh. “I’m exhausted, Trent. But this was so much fun. I’m glad you talked me into it,” she said.

  “I thought you’d like it,” I said. I had a good time too. She had sat right in front of me the whole time, and seeing her hair in the sunlight and her backside in those shorts was killing me. It really was.

  “What do you want to do when we get back?” she asked. We had left from my house that afternoon and planned on going back before dinner.

  “I don’t know. Eat. Maybe take a nap,” I said, laughing.

  She agreed. “Great idea.”

  We were burning hot but not sweating much, and stopped for sugary drinks at a small building just uphill from the launch. My car was an ugly, blue two-door Saturn with two hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. Dad bought it for me for five hundred bucks as a reward for keeping my grades up an
d passing my driving examine.

  Mary didn’t seem to mind me driving her back to my folks’ house in my beater car. She sat in the passenger seat with her legs crossed, sometimes looking out the window and sometimes mentioning something or other to me. The car had no A/C, and being out of the direct wind we were both sweating now. Mary took a hair band from her pocket and pulled her blonde mane back, working her fingers to tie up the hair. It didn’t seem possible that anyone who was sweaty, sunburned, and windblown, with her hair in a messy bun, could look so damned good. I only kept my eyes off her because I had to watch the road.

  Back at my parents house around 4 p.m., we had a quick snack and retreated to my room, where we didn’t nap at all. We made out for an hour. We hadn’t “done the deed” yet, and I was sure I would certainly die if she didn’t let me soon. Patience was a virtue, I told myself, and there was no way I was going to mess this up.

  After our fun of barely keeping our clothes on, Mary pulled away and sat up to face me on the bed. She folded her legs crosswise. She was still wearing her tight pink tank top and black shorts, and her bare feet were just as tan as her legs, with her toe nails painted red. Mary looked across at me with her tousled blonde hair coming loose from the bun now and half in her face. We had been kissing like the world was going to end tomorrow. She was flushed, her soft skin glowing.

  I had told her something. It had slipped out unintentionally, but it was the truth. There was nothing wrong in telling the truth.

  “Do you mean it, Trent?” she asked, giving me a crooked smile and narrowing her eyes. She placed her palms on the mattress, leaning forward.