by Cora Clark
I didn’t know why I was so upset, maybe it was because of Markus mentioning my mum. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I called another cab, and I wished I never left the house in the first place.
Chapter Nineteen
Small town rumours
Hayden came back a little later that day. He had no idea I had gone out, but I told him anyway. I didn’t want to keep any secrets from him.
“You do understand it might not be safe for you to leave the house, right?” he said as we cuddled up on the couch with a bag of crisps and glasses of cola.
“Why wouldn’t it be safe?” I asked, genuinely wondering.
“They might come back.”
“Who?”
“The men you keep talking about. The ones your father saw, who brought the girls.”
I scoffed. “Why would they come back now? That would be stupid.”
“To find you.”
I looked at him. “What?”
He didn’t meet my gaze. “Yeah. You are back. The girls were found. Now they are worried, and maybe they think you know more than what you do.”
I shook my head. “No. They wouldn’t. But regardless, I don’t think I have much more business to do in town, I’d rather stay here.”
He kissed the top of my head and pulled me closer. “Good. I like having you here.”
I smiled and popped some more crisps in my mouth. “I like being here.”
Hayden reached for the remote and paused the movie we were watching. I giggled as he moved the bag from the couch and pulled me close. He kissed my mouth, then my neck, and his hand moved down to my breasts.
I moaned as he removed my shirt, my bra, and then his own. I felt his chest with the palm of my hands as he kissed me all over, moving down between my legs. I closed my eyes and let go of everything as I felt my pulse throb and pleasure rising within my body.
He worked his tongue for a while, making me cum multiple times before he stopped, and then lay down behind me on the couch, holding me in his big, strong arms.
I pushed play on the movie and enjoyed every minute of us laying there. I loved him. There was no doubt about it. And I was pretty sure he loved me just as much.
“You wanna know something?” he asked.
“What?”
“I never actually thought I would meet a woman in my life. I thought I would die here, alone.”
I turned my head to look at him. “Really? Didn’t you want to meet someone?”
He shrugged. “I did. But I never felt like I had anything in common with anyone. It was just easier not to go on dates.”
I sighed. “I never really went on dates either. I focused on work.”
“Maybe we were just waiting, both of us, to meet again.”
I giggled. “That sounds so corny.”
“But maybe it’s true.”
I kissed his cheek. “Maybe.”
“Not to change the subject or anything,” Hayden started, “But you know what they say about your mum, knowing about what happened, it’s just rumour. Nothing to worry about.”
I turned back around and looked at the TV screen. “I know it’s just rumours, but it hurt to hear it nonetheless. My dad was obviously an asshole, but she wasn’t.”
“I know she wasn’t. I am only saying that you shouldn’t listen to it.”
“That’s not the point though, Hayden. I don’t want them saying things like that behind my back. It isn’t true.”
“Do you not remember what it was like living here as a teenager?”
I scoffed. “I do. It was terrible. Rumours are what people thrive on in Roseberg.”
“It really is. And none of them matter. People just like to talk.”
“That makes me wonder even more why you stayed.”
Hayden placed his chin on my shoulder and sighed. “Like I said, I just didn’t want to move someplace else. Not because I liked it here, but because I am a coward.”
“You are not a coward.” I rolled over on my back and pulled his face to mine. “Don’t call yourself a coward.”
He smiled and kissed my nose. “Okay, I won’t.”
“Let’s go to bed, I am getting tired.”
Hayden nodded and helped me up from the couch. Before heading upstairs, he told me he loved me.
Chapter Twenty
Not Safe
A few days later the police called to let me know the yellow tape had been removed from the house, and I was allowed back in. I didn’t want to move back in, of course, but I decided to head over there to pick up a few more things. Hayden offered to come with me, but I wanted some time to myself.
I finished up my lunch while Hayden was working in his office and peered out the window. It wasn’t snowing that day, but the snow lay thick on the ground. I looked over at the lake, frozen beyond belief. You could go ice skating on it with no concerns whatsoever of it possibly breaking the ice.
I put on my coat, scarf, and boots, and headed outside. I sprinted down the hill and then to the house, not wanting to freeze to death before I got there. It really was that cold, my feet were already starting to go numb by the time I put the key in the lock.
I opened the door and was met by an utter disaster. Footprints all over the wooden floors, random objects left on the table, and marks on the walls from the tape. I sighed and took off my coat, hanging it on the coat hanger next to the door.
“You would have hated this, Mum,” I said to myself as I walked inside with my boots still on. I went into the kitchen and filled a plastic bag with food from the cupboard, then placing it on the table for me to pick up before I left.
Next was the bedroom. I walked upstairs and grabbed the box with the photos and random stuff from my childhood. Although I might have not been ready to go through it just yet, I wanted to bring it with me back to London.
I peered into my parent’s room but decided not to go through their stuff. There wasn’t much left there anyway but being in the room made me think of my father, and it sent chills down my spine. I wondered if he was still alive, and the thought scared me.
He would be seeing this incident in the papers, or online, and panic once he saw my name in the reports. His daughter was back, and she finally brought the case to light. Her losing her memory only worked for a few years.
I sighed and walked back downstairs, stopping in front of the cellar door. Without thinking, I dropped the box on the floor and opened the door.
With the lights on I walked down there. Everything had been moved to the walls of the cellar, to give a better view and path down to the hatch, which stood wide open. I felt sick but still moved to it, then down the staircase.
The room where I had found the girls had been somewhat cleaned, but I still covered my mouth with my sleeve as the smell of mould and faeces still lingered. I felt a tear escape my eye before I turned back around.
“You didn’t help us, Octavia.”
“You killed us!”
I let out a whimper before getting back up and slamming the hatch shut. I never wanted to spend another second down there. I turned to walk back up from the cellar but got met by a blunt object hitting me in the head.
My world spun as I crashed to the floor, my hands flying up to my head where I had gotten hit. I saw the blurry shape of a man dressed in a black coat. He leaned forward and grabbed my shirt, pulling me up. He said something, but my tears and the punch to my head caused my vision to fail. I saw nothing but shadows of colour as another shape came down the stairs.
A cloth covered my mouth as the man pushed me against him, then moving me, forcing me to walk up the stairs. My nostrils stung from the strong smell of something chemical, and I tried moving my head from side to side to avoid it.
Two sets of strong hands now held onto me as they pushed me out the front door, then into the back of a black van. My vision slowly came back, but my head was still spinning, and my muscles weakened. I tried to crawl towards the doors of the van before they slammed shut, but I couldn’t even hold my own
weight anymore. Whatever was on the cloth had made me weak.
I felt the van starting to move, and I used all strength I had left to hold myself up enough to peer out the back window. I saw a man run in the snow after the van. Just a shadow. The house became smaller and smaller as we moved farther away.
I strained my eyes, and now saw the man running, it was Hayden.
Fear rose within me and I opened my mouth to yell, but nothing came out. Instead, I plummeted down to the floor and felt my eyelids close. My throat closed up and it was hard to breathe. I grabbed my neck with my weak hands, then rolled over to the side, knowing it would be easier to breathe that way.
I lay there helpless and scared as the van kept moving, shaking me as we hit speedbumps and gravel. I opened my mouth again, this time to let out a whimper, but I couldn’t get any sound to leave my vocal cords.
I felt my cheeks getting drenched in tears as I relaxed my body and almost welcomed the darkness surrounding me.
Chapter Twenty-one
Where is Robert?
Everything from that point on was a blur. I vaguely remembered getting picked up off the floor of the van and brought inside. It was a house. I saw the contours of furniture before getting pushed inside a room without any. I got placed on a chair with my hands tied behind my back and around the back of it. My feet got tied at the bottom as well.
I couldn’t feel scared as all my energy went to trying to wake up. My head hung from my neck and my vision blurred everything around me. I was desperate to move, even just my finger, but nothing I tried worked. Eventually, I let myself fall back into the darkness.
I had no idea how long I had been sitting on that chair when I finally woke back up with a clear vision. I eyed the room. White walls, wooden floors. Nothing else.
I felt a gag inside my mouth, and I nearly choked on it as I tried to move it away with my tongue. Something dipped down from my forehead, and I guessed it was blood from the blow I had taken in the cellar.
I forced the tears back as I stared at the closed door. I had to focus on survival. I had to get out of there. Crying wasn’t going to help me, if anything, it would slow me down. I heard voices coming from the rooms around me. They weren’t speaking in English, and after listening for a while longer, I realized it wasn’t Swedish either.
I gathered all my energy to try and stand up, but then noticed I was completely stuck to the chair. I wasn’t going anywhere without it. Panic spread throughout my body as my gaze flickered around the room, trying to find something, anything to help me.
The door flung open, and a man dressed in a white shirt and black pants stepped inside. He smiled as he eyed me, and I recognised him. It was the strange man I had seen as a child.
“Octavia, is it?” he asked in a strong, Russian or Polish accent.
I didn’t respond.
“It’s rude not to answer,” he said as he closed the door again. “I hope you aren’t in too much pain.”
I tried to move the gag with my tongue again, and he seemed to notice. He walked up to me and removed it from my mouth, causing me to let out a deep breath.
“Better?” he asked.
I stared at him. “I know you.”
He laughed and leaned up against the wall, arms crossed. “I thought you forgot? Didn’t you?”
“I am remembering more now.”
“I see. That’s good. See, we are looking for Robert.”
I shook my head. “I have no idea where he is.”
In the blink of an eye, the man moved forward and slapped me across my face. My cheek stung, and I let out a scream.
“You are already lying. I was hoping you would be cooperative, Octavia.”
My eyes narrowed as I looked back at him. All my fear was taken over by anger. “I am not lying! I haven’t seen him for years!”
The man shook his head. “The only reason you are alive right now is because we need information. Do you get it? If you give me nothing, you are dead.”
I swallowed. “Have you searched all of Roseberg?”
He chucked, taking me off guard. I was about to ask him another question when I noticed him pulling out a knife from his pocket. My lips sealed shut, and I pressed my body against the back of the chair.
Without a word, he walked up to me, grabbed my hand, and rested the blade at my fingertip. “Where is Robert?”
My anger sizzled out and got replaced by something else… hopelessness. I felt tears escape my eyes. “Sundsvall. Mum went there,” I stammered, “maybe he went there too.”
This wasn’t enough for the man, so he shoved the tip of the blade under my nail, causing bright red blood to rush out. I screamed, the pain was unbearable.
“Tell me where he is!”
I sobbed and tried to focus on the question while my finger throbbed in pain. “He left before I did. He could have gone to Britain for all I know!”
The blade got pushed back in under my nail. “Stop it!” I yelled in desperation. “Let me think!”
The man smiled as he let go of my hand and took a step back. Blood dripped from the blade of the knife. “So, think!”
I gathered my thoughts as best I could. “Dad said when I was younger that he had always wanted to move to Stockvik, outside of Sundsvall. He grew up there after he moved to Sweden with his Mum when he was a teenager.” I breathed out, catching my breath.
The man seemed to be thinking about what I said. “I believe you are telling the truth.”
I sobbed. “Yes! Yes I am!”
“Is he in Stockvik now?”
I eyed him through the tears. “I don’t know. I think so.”
“Did you tell the police he is there?”
I shook my head. “No! I didn’t tell them anything.”
He seemed to be happy with what he had gotten. He placed the knife back in his pocket and left the room, closing the door behind him. I heard myself whimper and moan in pain, not wanting to look at my finger.
Please let this be it, I don’t want any more of this.
At some point I fell asleep. Confusion and fear drowned me as I jolted awake by the door opening again. The man who had tortured me walked up to me, slapped me across my face, and then revealed his impossibly white teeth in a grin.
“Bored already?” he spat.
I just looked at him, trying to ignore the warmth creeping up my cheek.
“You know, you are a little too old for business. I thought maybe we would just kill you and bury you in the woods. But we don’t want to leave any trace behind us when we leave this fucking town for good. So… we are going to make use of you anyway.”
I swallowed. “What will you do to me?”
He grabbed my cheeks and squeezed them together, causing my teeth to break skin inside my mouth. “Whatever the fuck we want,” he growled, then lowered his face closer to mine and locked his lips with mine. His grip around my jaw was too tight for me to try and break free, so I closed my eyes and let him do what he wanted to.
He laughed as he let go. “Useless,” he mumbled as he walked out of the room and yelled in a different language. Two men I hadn’t seen before entered through the open doorway and proceeded to untie me but making sure my arms were tightly and painfully held behind my back.
I tried to take in my surroundings as they moved me to a different room. I got a glimpse of the kitchen down the hall, but that was all. I was thrown onto a bed and then tied to the bedposts. My arms and legs forming a cross. I hadn’t even noticed my tears before then, but my face was already drenched in them.
I wasn’t going to get out of this alive.
The man walked in and grinned as he saw me tied up. “You forgot her clothes,” he said to the other two men in the room.
“Please, no,” I begged, but they didn’t listen.
I squeezed my eyes shut as they forcefully removed my pants, my shirt, my bra, and my underwear. I didn’t want to see myself laying there naked, exposed.
“What’s wrong?” I heard the man ask. “Hav
en’t you been naked in front of men before?”
I didn’t say anything back, and he didn’t seem to like that. He jumped on top of me, grabbed my jaw, forcing my eyes open, and then spat in my face. “You answer me when I talk o you! Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Good. Here, you can have this,” he said as he got away from me and threw a thin blanket on top of my naked body.
They left the room, locking the door behind them, and I let out a breath, grateful to be alone.
The nightmare had just begun. I knew that much.
Chapter Twenty-two
A living nightmare
I completely lost track of time. I noticed it getting dark outside my window at some point, but I didn’t know if it was my first or second night as a kidnap victim. I lay on the bed, dying to scratch my wrists as they itched terribly from underneath the ropes tying me to the bedpost. I eyed the bluish light shining through the closed blind, wondering where Hayden was, and what he was thinking.
The thought of him looking for me both made me feel hopeful, and terrified at the same time. I hoped to God he wasn’t out there alone, and that he had the protection of the police.
If he was even looking for me at all. I shed tears wondering if he even truly cared. I knew he did, but my situation caused me to doubt everything.
How did I end up there, tied up to the bed? I decided to start a new life in Sweden, and this was what I got?
I simply couldn’t believe it.
I could hear the men chatting outside, staying up late, and opening beer bottles. While I did try to sleep, I knew I wouldn’t, not while I could still hear them. At any moment one of them could walk in and rape me, and I didn’t want to wake up to one of the straddling me, showing me an evil grin as I opened my eyes.
I had plenty of time to think about my situation, why I was there, and of how much I hated my father. I had watched and read stories where someone came to hate one of their parents for various reasons, and I never believed it. I thought that was crazy. How could you ever start hating your parents? No matter what they did?