“He kept the babies. They were her favorite. They were the reason she started this place. She couldn’t have kids. This was her chance to be surrounded by them. To keep them ‘alive’, he stored the extra staff in a closet. He would feed pieces of the staff to the babies. He was studying how to amputate limbs without killing the victim through practice and perfecting his theories. He was perfect for this world, as so few of us are, but Pinky was perfect.”
“Why?” Dolph finally breaks my monologue. “Why would someone do something like this?”
“You never really fall out of love with your first,” is all I offer him to help him understand what is happening here.
“You don’t kidnap her and keep her in a closet.”
“You don’t turn her into a flesh-eating monster and feed her coworkers and friends to her either. But hey, what do I know about romance and love? You’ve seen Law and me.”
“You’re telling me you think she is still here?”
“I’m telling you she is still here. That’s the real reason he was trying to find the fort,” I tell him, sending him an even stare to further accent my words. “How many are left of the staff? That I don’t know.”
“I guess we are about to find out,” Dolph mutters, more to himself than to me.
He’s right. We are. If the notebook is correct, Pinky has kept his pet and her food in this back room.
He was worried the screaming would upset the babies. He didn’t want them to hear what he was doing to the staff in order to keep the babies ‘alive’. In his mind, they were still human, and it was now his duty to protect them and his true love.
“You sure you want to do this?” I ask, repeating the same question Marxx held for me.
“No, but I understand you’re tired of me just watching your back,” Dolph answers.
There is no heat to his reply. There is a smirk on his lips similar to the one he wore when we started this little tour of depravity. He’s just trying to use my anger to bolster my nerves. I did mention I’m just that predictable, right?
Rolling my eyes, I open the door that has stood like a barrier to protect us. I never was really good at just walking away and letting barriers do their job. I don’t need to kill her. There is nothing that is forcing me to do this but my sense of self. It’s the very same thing that seems to always drag me right back into the fire. When the ashes are nothing but cooling embers, this is when I always have to throw oil to the flames just to watch it all burn brighter around me.
This fire is a room filled with plastic tarps and buzzing flies. There is more blood on the walls around us than on the white sheets of plastic under our feet. It soars high in an almost black arch of patterns. What were once puddles on the sheets are now congealed into gel-like, shoe stealing spots. The smell brings up what little I have had to eat to burn my throat. Not even Dolph is immune to the gagging stench around us. He covers his face with the bandana the men keep in their back pockets. I’m not sure how much of the odor the thin fabric blocks, but he clutches it to his face with desperation etched around his eyes.
Like the guys had done with the map, I let my eyes roam the road-like patterns of where bodies have been dragged through the massacre scene. The heaviest of the lines leads to one door hidden behind a standing mattress. Swallowing past my fear and rolling acid-filled stomach, I walk to where the mattress stands like a giant beacon of a hint.
This rectangle of cloth is just as blood-soaked as the walls around it. When it falls from my push, the perfect outline of where it had stood during the bloodletting is almost shocking. The noise heard after the fall is even more shocking.
“Hello?”
It’s a small voice. Something destroyed by fear and pain to the point of being unrecognizable as either male or female. Dolph and I exchange looks when hearing it. I know he, just like myself, is wondering how many more nightmares we are about to add to our already amassed fortunes of them.
“Hello?” it calls again.
One deep breath to steady my shaking hand before I open the door. One last breath of clotted blood and bowels before I face what is calling to me from behind yet another barrier I am about to ignore. One last second before my sense of self will scar me again. Tossing the oil to the flames, I can almost hear what’s left of my sanity begging for help.
Chapter 11
The closet’s walls have been lined with small crib mattresses. Thin lines of inner material are escaping from the lengths of a few. Someone has tried to claw their way past the man-made barrier of walls.
The someone, or one of the many who were once stashed in this converted closet turned hostage room, is staring at us from the furthest corners with arms wrapped tight against jean-clad legs. The state of her long, black hair and the bruised, delicate features scream of hints about the possible abuse she has endured. The way she watches us, gives even more information.
“Look at me,” Dolph whispers to her.
He shines the light from his flashlight against the gaunt and bruised face of hers. Being in the dark for so long, she almost whimpers from the pain the focused beam causes her. It’s her eyes Dolph wanted to be sure of. He wanted to be sure her eyes didn’t glow like a wild beast’s and lack any life, like the statues remodeled from demonic visions.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
I kneel down to her, as she tries to scurry even deeper against the thin mattress blocking her escape. Her eyes are wide and wild as she watches Dolph and I. Her clothes bear testimony to the many things she has survived. Mentally, she’s little more than a beast being driven by instinct to survive. Her mind is trying to prepare for fight or flight, and I don’t really have the energy to deal with either.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her, trying to keep this as peaceful as possible.
I guess when you have been locked in a closet while listening to your friends being prepared for cannibalistic dinner, there is nothing about peace left in your dictionary. She charges at me, almost flying through the air with the force of her attack. There is no time to do anything but to brace for it. With a slow exhale I prepare myself for what every part of me knows is coming.
There is no plan of skill with her attack. All she sees is me between her and the door to her freedom. It’s not even me she wants to fight. I’m just the one who happens to be in her way at this moment. If I didn’t understand this, I would just shoot her. What’s one more soul to my book of the damned?
Instead, I roll her with my weight, as another fight flashes in my mind. With her thrashing body pinning me, Carol’s face flickers between the woman’s above me and the pictures of my mind. It paralyzes me as I am torn in time between the day in the hallway and the little girl who has died as many times, as many nights, as there has been since we left the burning high school. I can’t fight. I can’t breathe. My body is locked by my mind and both have given up. As this woman tries to defy her believed future, fighting to survive, I have surrendered.
Dolph has placed his arm around the throat of the woman. He is trying to use her need for oxygen as a motivator for her to release her hands from my throat, but she’s not relenting. Her long, dark hair has become a curtain around her and I. I can see Dolph through waves of her stringy curls, and whatever he is seeing on my face, is setting him higher to desperation.
“We aren’t going to hurt you!” Dolph is shouting, as he wrestles with the woman.
Every tug he places upon her only tightens her grip around my throat. He is at a loss as how to get her off me without further hurting me, or worse. Personally, I’ve had enough.
Whatever cloud had settled around me, paralyzing me, has lifted. A much darker cloud, my anger, replaces it. Using my elbow like a wake-up call, I collide it across her cheekbone. The sudden blow rocks her. Stunned, her grip loosens for that pivotal second Dolph needed to peel her from me. I’m not waiting for the peeling.
I thrust my palms into her chest. My added force helps Dolph lift her from me with enough speed to land th
e woman on her back. Dolph, not wanting a repeat of any sudden impulses, follows her body down. He pins her with his legs on her shoulders. He doesn’t really sit on her. He uses his weight as a warning of what may happen if she doesn’t stop her attacks.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Dolph says again, hoping to reach through whatever barrier of crazy in which the woman is clinging.
Her wild eyes jerk to me before looking back to the man above her.
“She might hurt you, yes,” Dolph answers her silently asked question. “So, don’t do that again.”
The sound of our commotion has reached the group outside. Lawless, Rhett, and Marxx rush into the room and stare at me and the other woman on our backs. Only Rhett smiles.
“Making new friends?” Rhett asks us, hinting to where his mind normally stays.
Sending him my one finger answer, I stand. Once again, I am blood-covered, but at least this time it’s not mine. Well, not completely. Pinky’s parting gift has seeped through the bandana Lawless tied around my leg. Just once I’d like to make it back to wherever it is we are staying without having to listen to Paula’s scolding, or to be the subject of her cold eyes.
“How did you miss a woman being kept prisoner in a closet, oh smart-assed one?” I ask Rhett.
He shrugs before saying, “I already have enough crazy women. I guess I wasn’t looking for another.”
“I’m sure Aimes will be happy to hear that,” I reply.
I’m buying myself time to collect myself and the ghosts who are still draped over me like familiar quilts. They have wrapped themselves around my mind and I am filled with their familiar emotions just as long-worn quilts contain scents that stroke our memories. Carol was not the last I have killed. She was not even the most inhumane, but she is the one who follows me down every dark hallway of my life.
“Who is this?” Lawless asks.
Dolph and I both shrug. We never had time to really exchange pleasantries with her. Bruises, yes. Hellos, no.
“Leigh.”
The same small voice I had heard from behind the door speaks again. There is no confusion this time as to whom it belongs. It’s still just as small and just as soft, but the eyes boring into me are neither.
“How long have you been in there?” Dolph asks Leigh.
“There isn’t exactly a calendar or a clock,” she replies. When no one shrinks from her attempt to be cocky, she admits, “There were four of us. The first two he took quickly. Rita, he took his time with. He would cut pieces from her before burning the wound closed. Then he just never brought her back.”
The emotions are easy to read on her face and in how she instantly braces her body to move if she needs to. Dolph releases her. Either he doesn’t see her or is refusing to see her shift of mood. Dolph is not G.R.I.T., though. They have read her language to perfection. Already, they have spread out like a net of preparation, just waiting for her next move to ensnare her.
Seeming to be completely unaware of what the men around him are doing, or even what the woman below him is capable of, Dolph asks her, “Did you used to work here?”
Leigh slides to a sitting position. She is very aware of the men standing around her. It’s almost cute how she is no longer glaring at me, but at Dolph, who is nothing more than a tiny bundle of nerves and second thoughts.
“No,” is all she offers.
She stands with such slow ease; it almost looks like a perfected dance move. The way her eyes bounce to each man around her, says nothing of the graceful world of dance. She’s poised for something a little different, a little more violent.
Wetting her lips with her tongue, she asks, “You said you wouldn’t hurt me?”
“Wrong,” I answered for the room. “He said he wouldn’t hurt you. The rest of us are a bit different with our thoughts.”
“Meaning?” Leigh asks.
She still is not glancing towards me. Her eyes are still for the men around her who pretend to be almost bored with the tapping of their fingers on their belts or a slight tilt of their head. I’m not insulted. I’m amused with how it seems to be Marxx who is the one giving her the biggest case of the jitters.
“Meaning we haven’t figured out what to do with you, yet,” Marxx answers her.
“More worried about what Pinky was going to do with her,” I say, and Marxx looks towards me with a questioning look. “Pinky wasn’t feeding her friends to just the babies. There’s more.”
There is only one door left to this room. It holds no barriers or any style of a lock. The stains that once seeped from under the room’s door are now dried and dark; the only memory left of whom to which they once belonged. Unlike a purple door at a gym long ago, which held the first truths to what my future would become, I know what secrets are waiting behind this door.
Chapter 12
I’m not a fan of words or long explanations. If someone has to explain something to you, it’s because you didn’t want to understand it. People pretend to be blind or dumb, but in truth, we all see more than we ever really want to know. We just ignore it. I apply the same lackluster for conversations now.
The men just watch me. They too have grown used to my show and not tell routine. It’s a lot like that special hour set aside in elementary school, but with more middle fingers and eye-rolling as its main theme.
I swallow down the fear I am hiding. I don’t let it weaken my legs or place shivers along my skin. I ignore the burning of my leg and the warmth my blood is lending to the cloth tied around it. It’s unsettling how many different temperatures blood can hold. The blood around me is dried and cold. Its color is reflecting the fact of how lifeless it now sits with the darkest of the shades. It’s as if when life is leaving the substance, so does the brightly colored hues. I wonder how many shades she will be wearing.
I don’t know why I paused in front of the door. I don’t know why I let these few moments slip from me because I know once the motion forward is stopped, your mind starts. All the possible worst situations begin to play out in front of your mental eyes, while your body stalls with the fear it provides for you. I know this. I have seen this cost people their lives or the lives of those around them. So why am I falling into the same deathtrap?
“Hells?” Law’s voice sneaks into my mental cage.
I can feel the heat of him before he touches my shoulder. It lends me some sense of self; some feeling of strength my mind had stolen from me. My hand moves in the same mindless fashion I had thought I had trained my body to do before it betrayed me. I can almost feel my mind being swallowed by the white noise of serenity when it understands, once again, I’m not going to heed its warnings despite the blaring colors it’s displaying them in before me.
The dead have a smell. It’s a twist between dread and mourning. The undead, they have a smell, too. It finds me like a lost memory when the door opens. The crossover between the two states of her body is a bouquet of rot and murder. Neither smell does anything to help my slipping courage.
The woman sitting before me is no longer the sultry beauty of her photos. As she stares at me, I can see into the very darkness that has become her mind. There is a moment of confusion across her bloodstained face, but it fades quickly to the stalking perfection of what she has become. She is waiting for me. Like the spider to the fly, she is waiting for me to enter into her little cavern of slaughter. Who am I to disappoint her?
The chain around her neck begins to vibrate like the tail of a rattlesnake with her cautious movements. She matches my every move like a waltz. I step forward. She glides backward. I shift to the left. She rotates to the right. She is as much testing me as I am testing the chain and collar keeping her secured to the wall behind her. Neither one of us is holding a lot of trust for the other.
Lawless inhales behind me. He isn’t in shock or even shocked. Mildly surprised at best.
“Meet Pinky’s first real love,” I tell the room behind me.
Rhett is the only one who moves towards me. His curiosity is somethi
ng between morbid and amused. This same twisted sense of curiosity is what allows him to be the man we need him to be. Even as he kneels down and throws some discarded trash from the room at her, who am I to knock it now?
The woman who once directed this place is watching us. Her glazed eyes roll from me to Rhett and rests only for a few moments on Lawless. Her fingers drum on the stained carpeted floor, telling of the person Pinky had dissolved her into. She appears almost bored, but I know differently. The Risen are better hunters than their human counterparts might have ever been. They have no emotions to slow or deter their motives. She’s not bored. She’s waiting. She knows well the length of her chain and the logic of the three of us to her one. Her little finger game is meant to distract us; to pull our eyes to something other than herself so when she does attack, she might have a small edge over us. She might have had it too if she had been behind door number one instead of door number two. Door number one has a score to settle.
I didn’t sense Leigh rushing towards us. I saw Rhett’s casual sidestep. With a shoulder block turned into a whole-body shove, he pushes me. Our height difference alone with such a move is enough to rock me off balance, but add a deliberate shove, and it’s all Lawless can do to keep me from ending up back on the floor. Before my feet have the time to catch me Lawless already has me behind him, as the two men brace for whatever brand of crazy Leigh is exposing to the room.
Where Leigh found the slim replica of a knife, I don’t know. Its blade is no longer than my finger, but she charges forward with it as if it’s a weapon of mass destruction. There is no hesitation, no fear as she rushes the chained remnants of a woman.
My instinct is to rush in with her, to not let her face this moment alone. Law’s is to block me. Rhett just watches it all with the same smirk as always, as Marxx stands silent and cold beside him. They both form a wall in front of Lawless, as if doubting his ability to really keep my self-destruction at bay. That’s not Law’s fault. That’s mine.
The Risen Series | Book 5 | Defiance Page 9