Always Darkest (2 page)

He got into his silver Mustang knowing full well where he intended to go.
 
The clock on the dashboard glowed showing him it was almost
midnight
so he had to hurry if he was going to make it to the liquor store before it closed.
 
Justin wasn’t ever much of a drinker, preferring just to be in full control at all times, but that was in his other life.
 
He had never even finished an entire beer.
 
His father was a loser drunk and he promised himself he would never be like that.
 
Things change. He sat there for a moment rubbing his left hand. He did that every time he thought about his old man.
 
His father broke it when he was sixteen.
 

John Parker had come home one night, drunker than a skunk.
 
The bartender had cut him off early that night, and that was enough to set him off. John didn’t take his frustration out on the bartender who was a man that matched him in size.
 
No, John Parker directed his rage at his family.
 
Emily Parker had just gotten home from her job at a call center where she made just enough to support her family.
 
They might have gotten ahead a little but John drank anything that might have been left over every month without fail.
 
He never did hold a job for more than a month. It was kind of hard to do when he spent most mornings puking his guts out into the toilet.
 
She was busy fixing dinner for her and Justin when John walked through the door slurring his speech.
 

Justin was sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework and he cringed when his father slammed the door.
 
John stumbled across their tiny living room and caught himself on the kitchen table.

“What are you looking at boy?” his father said as he leaned on the table.
 
His face was inches from Justin and he could smell the sour mix of beer and cigarettes on his father's
breath
.
 
It smelled like rotten fruit and it made Justin nauseous.
 
He just looked back down at his algebra book and continued to do his homework.
 

He felt the smack on the side of his face before he had a chance to react.
 
“I’m talking to you!
 
You think you’re too good to talk to your dad?”
 
He raised his hand to strike Justin again and Emily’s voice stopped him.

“Don’t you ever touch
him!
”
 
Emily shouted.
 
She had turned around and was holding the big kitchen knife she was using to cut vegetables.
 

Time seemed to slow down for Justin and the next few moments were burned into his memory for eternity.
 
John stepped back and didn’t hit him.
 
Instead he turned his rage onto Emily.
 
He ran at her and she managed to cut him on the cheek, but he got the knife away and began hitting Emily in the face over and over, slurring every profane name for a woman Justin had ever heard as he continued to pound on her.
 
Emily screamed for him to stop.
 

Justin jumped up from the table and tackled his father from behind.
 
John threw him across the room and grabbed Emily by her red hair, yanking it so that her neck was bared and she was looking straight up at her husband.
 
Justin saw his father grab the knife and he hold it to his mother’s throat.
 
“I should have killed you a long time ago,” he slurred into her face.

Justin had landed hard on his left hand and pain shot through it.
 
He saw John with the knife and his mom looking terrified. He pulled himself up from the linoleum floor and grabbed the iron skillet his mom had set out to cook in and swung it as hard as he could at his father. John dropped the knife and let loose of his mother’s hair.
 
Blood ran from the side of his face and he looked up at Justin with the strangest look.
 
He looked like a puppy that had just been scolded.
 
He didn’t say anything as he used the kitchen counter to pull himself up and stumbled out of the kitchen and made his way through the front door.

Justin called and ambulance for his mother and himself.
 
John never came back and things were good after that.
 
Justin worked hard and made something out of
himself
.
 
His mom told him all the time how proud she was of him.
 
She remarried a few years later to a nice doctor who was widowed with two kids. She would help him if he asked, but it just didn’t seem right to Justin.
 
He was a grown man.
 
Bending over as he drove he opened his glove box to make sure the thirty-eight revolver was still there.

He thought about all of this as he made his way through the crisp October night to the state liquor store.
 
He had on a country music station and some song about drinking started playing.
 
“Everything has just gone to hell and it is not fair!” he shouted to himself.
 
He was just about a mile away from his destination, when the van came barreling around the curve on his side of the road.
 
Justin was so caught up in his grief, anger and self pity that he didn’t even try to make evasive maneuvers.
 
The van hit him head on and Justin was thrown through the windshield.
 
I’m not ready to die.
 
Please don’t let me die.

Justin landed on the soft grass on the side of the road.
 
He slept right through the slight tremor that pulsed through eastern
Kentucky
.
 
Most people slept through it.
 
Not enough to notice really.
 
A slight vibration of the earth that would later be classified as a 2.1 on the Richter scale, it wouldn’t even have made the news if it wasn’t odd for earthquakes to happen in
Kentucky
.

Chapter Three

Willa woke up early in the morning as she always did and made herself a glass of tea.
 
When the tea was ready she would go outside to sit on the porch of her small cottage and watch the sunrise.
 
In eighty-seven years she never tired of seeing the sunrise.
 
While the tea brewed she took a moment to tidy her grey hair into a neat bun at the top of her head.
 
Still in her nightgown she walked onto her porch holding her cup of tea, enjoying its warmth.

She noticed a large dent in her bed of red geraniums. As she wandered closer to inspect she saw that it was a girl. Willa put down her cup and looked at the girl.
 
Her hands were tied and black streaks ran down her face where Willa knew tears had been shed.
 
The bound girl was completely naked from the waist up and it was hard to tell where one bruise ended and the other began.
 
She wasn’t dead as she could see the rise and fall of her chest.
 
Willa thought she had seen it all up until this point apparently she had not.

It didn’t take her medical skills to be able to determine what happened to this poor girl.
 
Willa made her way into her little cottage as fast as she could.
 
She wet some rags, grabbed a blanket and her big knife from the counter.

Her knees popped and crackled as she sat down next to the girl.
 
She covered her nakedness with the blanket. Gingerly she began to wipe the blood off the girl’s face, a beautiful face despite the bruises.

Slowly Tori opened her eyes.
 
She saw the old woman and screamed.

“Calm down child.
 
It’s okay.
 
I am here now.
 
Whoever hurt you is long gone and I’ll be Creator damned if anyone will hurt you while you are under my care.” Willa said.

Tori let her screaming melt into quiet sobs as the old woman continued to clean her face.
 
She was grateful for the blanket as she remembered every single second of last night’s horror.

“Your face is clean now dear, now do you think you can sit up?”

“I think so.”

Willa assisted Tori to a sitting position.
 
Every movement hurt.
 

“I’m going cut your bonds, don’t be frightened.”
 
Willa said using a soothing tone.
 
She cut the bonds from Tori’s hands and Tori brought them around the front of her body and inspected them.
 
Blood oozed from the deep gashes worn by the ropes.
 
Looking at them tears welled up in Tori’s eyes anew.

Tori looked at the old woman and the cottage not quite sure what to make of it. “Who are you?
 
Where am I?” she asked.

“I am Willa and you are in my front yard.”
 
Willa said.
 
“And who are you?”

“Victoria Clover but everyone calls me Tori.”

“Well Tori if you can stand we can go inside my cottage and I can get you properly cleaned up.”

“I think I can stand.”
 
Tori said as she slowly pushed up to her feet.

“Come with me,” said the old woman as she gently guided Tori into her home.

Tori did as she was told.
 

The inside of the cottage was very homey.
 
The downstairs was one big room with a huge fireplace at the back of the room with a plush couch directly in front of it.
 
There were also several chairs scattered about the room and rugs covered most of the floor. Half of the space was taken up by a large kitchen. Tori noticed the back two walls were lined with shelves and various herbs in jars all lined up in neat little rows.

Willa went to a cabinet at the back and got some fresh white towels and laid them on the floor. She rolled up several other towels and made a crude pillow. “You lay down here dear, and I’m going to clean you up.”

Tori complied.
 
She felt too shocked to know what to do and was glad to have someone else in charge.
 
She had no idea.
 
She had no idea about anything.
 
She laid back and let the old woman work.

Willa worked with amazing skill. Tori watched as she mixed a poultice for her wounds.
 
The herbal mixture smelled sweet and felt cool as Willa applied it to her wounds.
 
Then Willa carefully bandaged her wrists and applied several stitches to the wound at the base of her skull telling her the scarring would be minimal.
 
After Willa had finished bandaging her she left Willa alone and went up the stairs returning a few moments later with a clean dress that she helped Tori to get changed into.

“Go sit down at the table and I will make some tea for you child.
 
This will take away some of your pain.” Willa said.

“Yes ma’am.”

Willa went over and lit the gas burner on the stove to start the tea kettle. In just a few minutes she brought over a steaming cup for Tori and one for herself.
 
“Now tell me, what happened to you?”

Tori sipped from her glass and the warm liquid did seem to be making at least her physical pain seem a little distant even though it tasted bitter.

“I wasn’t raped.” Tori blurted out.
 
“He tried but I waited till he had himself exposed and I kicked him in nuts and ran away. I fell and…”
  
Tori began to cry again.

Willa reached across and grabbed Tori’s hand in her own.
 
“There, there child, let it out.
 
You were smart to kick him in the nuggets.
 
I only wish I had him here in my cottage, I’d cut his nuts off for you.
 
I would.”
 
Tori began to snicker a little despite
herself
.
 
It was something about the way the old woman said it.
 
Willa seemed happy to be making her feel better and continued, “I’d even make a dandy pair of ear rings out of them for you.
 
Man could do a thing like that though probably has such tiny ones.”
 
Willa made a show of putting her thumb and finger close together and squinting through the space.
 
Then she put it up to her ear. “No body would be able to see them from more than two feet a way though.”

Tori lost it then.
 
She laughed so loud she sounded a little bit hysterical.
 
She thought she was dying only last night and here she was sitting and laughing with some old woman at a rustic looking kitchen table.

After several minutes Tori finally caught her breath.
 
“I need to call my sister.
 
Do you have a phone I might be able to use?”

“A phone?”
Willa asked.

“I need to call my sister and let her know what happened and I need to call the police and make a report.
 
I appreciate all that you have done for me, but I really need to let my sister know what happened.”