“I’m not a child, Yoler,” said Simon. “I want to go.”
She never protested. She nodded her head and said with defeat, “You can take my place. I was going to go with Dicko.”
Simon nodded. “Thanks. I just don’t want people thinking I’m useless.”
“Nobody thinks you’re useless, Simes. You’ve gone through the hardest thing an adult could go through.” Yoler placed her hand gently on his cheek. Their eyes locked and Yoler continued, “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. I mean … with Imelda gone, you’ve lost your entire family.”
Simon created a thin smile and said, “This is not you trying to cheer me up, is it?”
Yoler smiled, revealing some of the stains on her front teeth, and removed her hand from Simon’s cheek. “My friends used to say that I don’t have a filter.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning … I sometimes say things without thinking.”
“I’m not offended.” Simon said, and stroked her arm. “You mean well and you have a good heart, Yoler. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Ah, thanks, Simes.”
“I mean it.” Simon smiled and could see that the young twenty-six-year-old female was blushing a little. “Dicko is a very lucky man.”
“We’re not an item, you know,” she laughed. “It’s just gland to gland combat.”
“It’s okay.” Simon laughed gently and held his hands up. “You don’t have to explain.”
Yoler leaned forwards and kissed Simon on the cheek. “I’ll see you down there.”
She shut the bedroom door and left Simon alone.
He moved closer to the window, placed his hands on the window ledge, and gazed outside. He thought about the time he and his family went to Salou, in April. When his wife booked the holiday, they knew it was a risk. They had never been to Spain in April before.
They went for just the week and that was long enough. The weather was quite cold, there were very few tourists, and the hotel they were at seemed to be housing a lot of Spanish senior citizens. The holiday was all-inclusive, so at breakfast, lunch and dinner times, they would go down to the restaurant with the kids. The problem with this was that some of the senior citizens that were there didn’t seem to like the fact that there were also tourists in the hotel, and they were very rude, pushing and shoving in the queues.
When they flew back to England, Simon told his wife that they were never going back at that time of the year again.
He chuckled and shook his head. “My worst holiday. Yet, I’d give everything to experience that week again with you guys.”
Chapter Three
Lisa and Jemma Newton remained sitting when one by one the four men stepped inside. The first man to step in appeared to be the leader of the rabble. He was bald, lean, and had intense blue eyes to suggest he was someone not to mess with. The second person to step in was a skinny man, slightly taller than the leader, and was wearing a long grey cardigan. Person number three was a slightly overweight but muscular individual with ginger hair, wearing a Chelsea football top. The final and fourth man was smart looking and had black hair.
The leader turned and told his three pals to sit on the couch that was opposite the two girls. They did as they were told and the leader remained on his feet.
Lisa Newton shook with fear, but she asked the intimidating man, “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Hando released a wide smile and looked around the living room part of the caravan. “Now there’s a question. What do I want? Everything, that’s what I want.”
Lisa shook and said, “I don’t understand.”
“We could be dead tomorrow, sisters,” he addressed mother and daughter. “And I’m … we’re gonna make sure that we have as much fun as we can.”
“Have you come to rob us?” Jemma asked the leader. The fourteen-year-old quavered as she waited for an answer.
“We don’t have anything for you,” Lisa snarled, and her anger, because of this intrusion, seemed to be stronger than her fear.
“Is that right?” Hando leered at Lisa and added, “We’ll see about that.”
He took a step closer and crouched down, looking at her daughter, Jemma.
“Hey, honey,” he smiled at Jemma, who refused to look at him. “How are you holding up?”
“Leave her alone!” Lisa growled.
Ignoring the mother, Hando continued, “You’ve done well to get this far.”
“I said, leave her alone.”
“Am I talking to you?” Hando turned and flashed the mother a hard glare.
He turned to face Jemma once more, but before he could open his mouth Lisa jumped on top of him and scratched his face. The pair of them rolled around on the floor like kids fighting in a playground, whilst Hando’s three friends sat and stared in shock. They had never seen anyone attack Hando before. Now here he was rolling around on the floor with some woman.
Lisa pulled out her knife, but it was knocked away with a powerful slap from the bald man. Lisa screamed out as Hando pulled back on her hair, and stood to his feet, still clutching onto Lisa’s hair. He had lost his smile and seemed annoyed that this woman had the nerve to attack him and also pull a knife on him. It was unthinkable, it was inconceivable … it was fucking disrespectful!
He threw her onto the couch where her daughter sat and inspected his face in the mirror above it. He had a few scratches on his cheeks, but they were just superficial wounds. He turned and picked up the knife, placing it in his own pocket.
He turned and pointed at Dirty Ian and Wazza and told them to pin the mother down onto the floor. They stood to their feet and grabbed the woman, making Jemma cry, and threw her to the floor.
“Now,” Hando began, “take her to the nearest bedroom, strip her and tie her up.”
Dirty Ian and Wazza dragged the screaming mother to the nearest room and took a few hits as they were doing this. Hando then clicked his fingers at the man they called Q, real name McHugh, and told him to sit next to the girl. The smartly dressed man did as he was told, and then Hando told him to pull out his knife and place it against her throat.
“If she tries to leave, cut her open,” said Hando with no emotion in his tone. He then walked away, heading to the bedroom.
Jemma sat shivering, tears streaming down her face. Minutes passed, voices were raised, and she sat there for twenty-seven long minutes. She hummed a tune in her head, trying to drown out the muffled screams coming from her mum and the excited shrieks being made by the three men, and prayed for the ordeal to be over.
She then heard words, softly spoken words, coming from the man that was sitting next to her. The man holding the knife whispered in Jemma’s ear, “I’m sorry about this. This is not me. What they’re doing … it’s not what I’m about.”
“Please…” Jemma began, but the man shushed her.
“Just stay still, don’t move, and don’t say anything until we’ve left. Understand?”
Jemma nodded.
After nearly half an hour, the hollering from the bedroom had finally died down and Jemma could hear the bedroom door being opened. Hando was the first to leave. He fastened his belt, sat down on the couch opposite Jemma, and began to put his boots on. He looked at his right fist and inspected it for any cuts or bruises.
Q knew right away that Hando had hit the woman, probably knocked her out, and this was confirmed when he said to Jemma, “Your mum’s fine. She’s … sleeping at the moment.” He then began to giggle and they could see that Dirty Ian and Wazza were now leaving the room, doing up their trousers.
“How is she?” Hando giggled and looked over to his two comrades.
“Sleeping like a baby,” Dirty Ian cackled. “That was some punch you gave her at the end. We untied her also, like you said.”
“Of course.” Hando nodded and smiled. “I don’t want her to think that we’re complete animals.”
Hando looked at Q and nodded over to young Jemma. “Did she behave?”
Q
said, unable to hide the disgust on his face, “Of course.”
Hando then clicked his fingers at Q, telling him to move. Q did as he was told and was replaced with Hando, now sitting next to the petrified Jemma Newton.
Hando could see the fourteen-year-old was shivering with fear and this made him smile. “I need you to listen to me, okay?”
Jemma never verbally responded; she shivered with fright and couldn’t find words.
Hando tried again. “Okay?”
“Yes,” she cried.
“Good.” Hando cleared his throat and pulled a knife out of his pocket, the knife that Lisa used to attack him. “What your mother did to me was very disrespectful, so I had to teach her a lesson. You understand, don’t you?”
Nothing.
“Don’t you?”
“Y-yes,” Jemma stammered, tears now streaming down her face.
“Good. The trouble is … I feel that the punishment that we gave her wasn’t enough.”
“Please, don’t rape me!” the girl cried and became inconsolable.
“I’m not going to do that,” Hando tried to appease her. “We’re not child molesters. Give us some credit, for Christ’s sake.”
“We’ve kept your mum alive. But to really hurt your mum, I need to do something that will most definitely even things up.”
“I don’t understand,” Jemma sobbed.
Hando smiled at the girl’s innocence and ran his fingers over her hair, making her shiver. He clasped the knife tight and rammed the blade into the young girl’s side. She yelped and turned to look at her attacker with wide eyes and jolted when he plunged the blade into her twice more.
She grasped his shirt, but Hando shushed her, stared into her eyes, and could see the teenager was slipping away. He wiped the blade on her hair, stood up, and watched as she slowly sat back and stopped breathing.
“Right, brothers,” Hando announced and clapped his hands together as if what he had done was nothing out of the ordinary. “Gather what we can and then we can check out the rest of the caravans.”
“Are we staying here?” Dirty Ian asked.
“Nah.” Hando looked around and twisted his face. “We’ll keep walking. We can do better than this.”
*
She put her hands over her ears to drown out her mum’s sobbing and the men’s yells. They were clearly having a good time, and her mum was clearly in some distress. She knew what was happening, but what about Jemma? Where was she?
Grace Newton felt terrible for hiding under the bed once she heard their voices, after the door being kicked in, but what was she supposed to do? She was a young woman and the intruders were grown men. She guessed that there were three or four of them from what she could make out from the voices.
But what was going to happen afterwards? She already knew, or at least she thought she already knew.
Her mum and sister were going to die for sure.
Then what? They search the caravans, including theirs, for supplies.
She’d be found and that would be the end of her. She had to get out. Fear was keeping her still, but she had to get out. There was nothing she could do for her mum and little sister. Nothing!
The eighteen-year-old crawled from underneath the bed, tears streaming down her face, and walked over to the window and opened it as quietly as she could. She could hear the voice of a male from the living room, and looked back, muttered an apology to her mother and sister, and then climbed out.
She ran as fast as she could and never looked back.
Chapter Four
Simon Washington could feel the pain in the back of his mouth once again. It was becoming more frequent. Everybody was outside, chatting and relaxing near the vegetable patches, including young David Willis, and he winced when the sharp pain hit him once more.
He rubbed the side of his mouth and moaned, “I’m getting sick of this.”
“Are you okay?” Helen asked him.
He nodded and smiled at Helen, went inside, and went through the kitchen drawers. He knew there was one somewhere. He had seen it weeks ago.
His eyes widened when he went through the third drawer. “Bingo.”
He picked up the pair of pliers and decided to do this in private. He went through the living room, went through the door that led upstairs, and reached the first floor. He entered the bathroom and gazed into the shaving mirror.
“Alright, here goes.”
He blew a big breath out and touched the sensitive tooth, just to make sure it was the right one, before putting the pliers into his mouth.
Satisfied that the pliers had now a decent grip on the infected tooth, Simon winced and began to pull the tool to the side and then to the other side. He did this a couple of times, but the tooth wasn’t for moving. He took the pliers out of his mouth.
“I can’t do it.” He shook his head. “Maybe I need to get drunk for this.”
He puffed out a hard breath and decided to try once more.
It wasn’t happening.
“Fuck.” He threw the pliers on the floor and gave his tooth a wiggle with his thumb and finger. It wasn’t budging at all.
“Yeah,” he sighed to himself. “I’m definitely gonna have to get drunk for this.”
*
“So what’s the plan then?” Donald Brownstone asked Yoler.
“The plan?” Yoler queried.
“What pish is happening today?”
“Pish?” Yoler scratched her head in confusion. “Isn’t that a Scottish word?”
Little David, Helen and Dicko were sitting on the grass, in silence, not even listening to the chatter between Donald and Yoler.
Yoler began, “Well, originally, me and Dicky Boy were going to check out this industrial estate, but Simes wants to go.”
“Is that wise?” Donald began to laugh.
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” Another chuckle came out of Donald’s mouth. “He was about as much use as a concrete trampoline before, you dig what I’m sayin’? And now, a month after losing his daughter…”
“What are you trying to say?” Yoler stood up straight with her hands on her hips.
“He’s probably not ready to go out there, not yet.”
“He wants to go. Oh, that reminds me. I haven’t told Dicky Boy yet.” Yoler whistled over at Dicko to get his attention, making him snap out of his daydreaming.
“What do you think I am?” Dicko said with a smile. “A bloody sheepdog?”
Yoler laughed. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“I’m not your slave, Yoler,” snickered Dicko, and began to stand to his feet.
“You do as I say, if you want to feel these tits again,” she said with a smirk. She then held her hand up to Helen, apologising for the lewd talk in front of her son. Helen never responded.
“Anyway, what is it?” Dicko asked and walked over to the pretty dark haired Yoler Sanders.
“Change of plan.” Yoler ran her fingers through her hair. “Simes is taking my place for this run. What do you think?”
Dicko shrugged his shoulders. “As long as he doesn’t run out on me again, if the going gets tough.”
“I’m sure that won’t happen.”
Dicko walked away from Yoler and left her with Donald, Helen and young David. He went inside the house and grabbed himself a cup of water, and then began to snack on a bowl of chopped apples that Helen had prepared earlier.
Dicko filled the cup up and looked in the cupboard, below the sink, and smiled when he saw half a bottle of concentrated juice. He put some diluting juice in the water, to give it some taste, and a wave of sadness hit him when he did this. Imelda hated drinking the water from the pond, even though it was filtered, and would have to use diluting juice before any of it touched her lips.
Dicko could feel his eyes filling up when he thought of Imelda.
She was so brave, right to the end.
Chapter Five
Lisa Newton had spent many minutes sobbing into her pillow.
The ordeal that she had to endure was something that she thought would never happen to her.
Why did they do it? What was the point?
The only positive out of this was that they allowed her to live after it.
Was all of this because she had scratched the leader’s face? She wasn’t sure.
Her sobbing came to a sudden halt when she realised that she had two daughters in the caravan. What had happened to them? Did those monsters touch them?
She placed her feet on the carpet of the bedroom and cried out when a shooting pain was felt in her groin. Bastards. Her anger began to boil when she thought about the things they had done to her. Dirty, filthy bastards.
She was half-naked and bent over to put her black trousers on, but quickly changed her mind when she could feel the men’s seed running down her thighs. She sobbed as she hobbled to the toilet and sat down with her head in her hands as she urinated.
Once she was finished, she shuffled her feet towards the bedroom again. She was worried for her daughters, but never called out. She wasn’t entirely sure if the men had left, despite the caravan being deathly silent, and needed to get dressed before she did anything.
She picked up her trousers from the floor and checked to see if they had been ripped. They were pulled off her when she was thrown on to the bed and her knickers had been ripped off.
The flashbacks flitted through her mind, and she began to sob when she could see the face of the man they called Hando. He was on top of her, inside her, calling her names. Once he was finished, the skinny man had his turn, and while all this was happening, the other guy that was called Wazza, was standing over her, playing with himself with his right hand and rubbing her breast with his left.
She shook her head, mentally reprimanding herself for dwelling on what had just happened, when she didn’t even know where her daughters were and if they were okay.
Lisa put her trainers on and staggered out of the bedroom, heading for the living room. She could feel the breeze swirling around, caressing her face, and could see that the main door was open. She went over to shut it. After she did this, she turned around and her knees buckled.
Ghostland (Book 2): Ghostland 2 Page 2