Depravity (23 page)

4

Judging from the thick dust covering every surface, nobody had entered this shed for a long time. Her two companions had struck gold with this spot. Not that hiding had been in their initial plan.

Katie Overton leaned against the far wall, her hands still pressed hard against her guts. The beating she received from the old bastard still fresh in her mind. That hadn’t been part of the initial plan either. Her gaze stayed on the dust covered floor boards, where they hadn’t moved since stumbling in here a few minutes ago. God, this really did hurt. How could that be? She was an Overton, for crying out loud, receiving pain was one thing they all did well.

Not one word had been uttered since Maddie open the door and held it open while Katie stumbled inside. Neither of them had offered to help her. She didn’t hold that against them, she probably would have felt the same way if she’d have been in their shoes.

Speaking of shoes, the dull floorboards acquired a splash of colour when a pair of bright red walking boots disturbed the dust. She didn’t need to shift her gaze to understand that her younger sister demanded her attention. What was the point of even moving? The conversation, the accusations and sense of betrayal would inevitably follow the path that Katie had already run through her head a dozen times already.

“You said we would be protected,” accused Pamela.

She heard the hurt in those words. It was almost as if she had been the one who’d suffered from the grimy paws of Greg James. To her knowledge, her younger sister had been one of the lucky ones in her family, apart from being an infrequent target from Terry Bakersfield and his gang of two tosspots that is. Young Terry did enjoy having a go at Pamela.

She followed those boots, the boots she once owned, onto the legs, body and finally the hard faced features belonging to the most serious sister on the whole fucking planet. “Do the dead talk? No, scratch that. Of course they do, otherwise we three wouldn’t be here in the first place. I mean, I should be dead myself, Pamela. Those bastards were all ready to kill me.” She pushed her left fist harder into her stomach, God, that did hurt. “And yet, here I am, looking at you two miserable bastards, wondering why I’m about to face the twenty questions game.”

“He almost killed you.” replied her sister.

“Did you believe the images they showed us earlier on, Pamela?” she asked quietly. Katie glanced over at Maddie, who was doing her best to blend into the background. “What about you?”

Her best friend stayed silent for a moment before the girl bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“Of course you did, Maddie. We believed because, deep down in our hearts, we’ve always known it to be true.” Katie slowly got to her feet. She removed her hands then attempted to fill her lungs. It did feel like something in there was out of place. 

Pamela hadn’t moved, she stood there, her face still displaying condescension. Katie had enough of this. “Don’t you fucking judge me, little sister! You glare at me as though everything wrong in this world is my fucking fault. What, you expected Greg’s fist to bounce of me? Oh wait, what about if that fucker shot me instead? Bullets are not going to bounce off us, you know. This isn’t some cartoon, Pamela.”

Her sister now looked like she’d beaten up herself now. “I just, I just.”

Katie took her hands. “You’re just terrified, honey. We all are.” She wrapped her arms around Pamela and hugged her tight. “This has to be done. We don’t have any other choice.” She pulled her back. “You do understand that?”

Tears ran down Pamela’s cheeks. “Oh God, yeah. How could we have been so blind?”

Katie sighed. It wasn’t as simple as that and they all knew that. It was a simple thing to look back at the half-truths and total lies the town elders, parents and teacher told them while they were growing up, and see them as they really were, but from what they were told last night, they could have told them any old crap and they would have believed it.

The town owned them from birth to death. They were cattle for the hidden owners, each one marked and branded. Each one conditioned to perform their allotted tasks. Free will was something they thought they possessed but in reality, their lives followed a path already laid down before conception.

Her teachers told Katie that the Richmond Point Hospice at the edge of the town took in people with terminal diseases. When their patients died, all their possessions were donated to the town. Her parents told her the hotel owners stole the gear from their guests and sold it to the shops. There were many other story variations but Katie, like the others before her, never thought to question any of them. The hotel and its stories slipped to the back of her memory and stayed there until she started work.

She had stood in the Jack’s living room, dressed in her smartest clothes, feeling so proud of herself, looking at the three assembled adults, Jack, his wife and her mother. This was to be her first ever job. Her new boss stood up and walked up to Katie. He was such an imposing figure, twice her size, with thick muscles stretching his suit material. She used to have such a crush on this man a few years ago, a crush she’d shared with many other girls in town. Katie used to fantasise about this handsome man sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her across the field behind her house and laying her beneath a large tree before kneeling beside her and… Katie had felt the colour rise in her cheeks, as the man stopped directly in front of her. He took her hand, shook it and welcomed her to the café. Looking back to that moment, if she could have stopped time, she would have halted it right there. His warm hand pressed against hers while she gazed into those beautiful eyes while he smiled that heart melting smile.

Jack’s other hand found her left breast. He leaned forward while squeezing her hand and her breast. The two other women were now beside Katie, their hands trailing up her bare legs and sliding under her blouse. Tears ran down her cheeks. She tried to flinch from their touch only to feel a hard slap across her cheek. Katie had no idea who had done that, she was in total shock, what was going on?

The café owner grabbed her shoulders and pulled the sobbing girl’s body hard against his. The man’s teeth nibbled Katie’s ear while she felt those hands pulling down her skirt and panties.

The man’s teeth gripped Katie’s teeth while his big hands travelled down her back until they reached her bottom. He gripped the flesh and pulled her hips closer. Katie knew what he was about to do next and it terrified her. She sobbed when she felt his solid penis brush against her clitoris. The man then let go of her ear, he drew back and glared at the girl.

“I can do this anytime I choose, Katie. You belong to me now.”

The man had then told her to get dressed before explaining she would be working in a public environment, meaning possible contact with people who don’t live in the town. His demeanour changed once more. Jack nodded at the two women who both dropped to their knees; they both wrapped their fingers around his shaft and gently massaged it. She looked on in horrified silence, not believing this was happening to her. While her mother and Jack’s wife took turns in putting that monster in their mouths, the man told her that the hotel is town business only, and she was not to breathe a word to any stranger or the consequences for her would be dire.

Katie kissed the top of her sister’s head. “There was nothing we could do, Pamela.”

The pain in her stomach had finally begun to ease off. Even so, if nothing else happened to her tonight, she’d still need a few days of bed-rest to recover from what that old bastard had done to her body.

The only respite was she had the feeling that the monster who’d done this to her was unlikely to be doing it again, meaning he’d now be residing in the place where their visitor had come from.

Katie knew their weekly girl’s night in would be a little different, thanks to Maddie managing to swipe a full bottle of scotch from out of her father’s drinks cabinet. He and the rest of the town elders were having an impromptu meeting at the school. Not that Katie or her friends had any idea what it could be about, nor did they care. It just meant the chances of interruption would be cut down to almost nothing. After the last few days, none of them wanted any of those bastards to break up their chill out time.

Maddie had brought her collection of LP’s to play on Pamela’s record player. She had even brought a couple of CD’s too. Not that any of the girls possessed a CD player as far as Katie knew, there were only two in town and both of those were under lock and key. It would be a while before those trickled down.

Their friend had also brought along something else but none of them found out until half of that bottle was gone and Katie had lost her favourite red walking boots and her watch to Pamela in their card game.

Both Maddie and Pamela helped her over to the only chair in the shed and made her sit down. Katie so wished they were back in her tiny bedroom, sipping scotch from their chipped cups and listening to the Bay City Rollers blasting out from the record player, when she’d been happier, before those veils of ignorance were lifted. Katie then felt guilty for wishing away the hurtful truth of their situation.

“Are you going to be able to do this?” asked Maddie.

“I don't have any choice, do I? None of us do.” Katie lifted her top. The ugly dark patches of bruising over her stomach made her want to weep. Greg James might be out of the picture but the others were still around and each and every one of them had hurt her in some way. Those bastards had hurt all of them in the past.

“Yeah well, it looks like Maddie's plan of lying in wait for them wins after all,” muttered Pamela. “There's no chance of doing hit and run now, not with you in that state. You'll just slow us down. I'm not going to split up either, so if any of you were thinking of that idea, you can forget it.”

Pamela joined Maddie by the shed door, who had opened it a crack to peek outside. It must show testament to their resolve that none of them had opted for the safer option of going home after the beating Katie just received. After all, the very ideas of three girls, who'd spent their whole lives playing the victim, were contemplating taking on all those psychos up in the main building.

The knives the girls carried wouldn't fair too well against those guns. Like that was the underestimation of the decade. She silently wished they'd been given a bit more time to find something a little deadlier than her own weapon. For crying out loud, the knife she used, the knife now in her sock, was last used to peel carrots and potatoes for dinner two nights ago. Then again, if they had been given more time, perhaps none of them would have opted for this insane mission, despite the ordeals
they'd all endured. Katie glanced at her watch, not believing it had only been a couple of hours since the three of them had been 'visited'.

Katie had only just realised something was seriously wrong when the playing cards slipped out of Maddie's fingers and fell onto the carpet. The single thought that swirled around Katie's mind at the time wasn't concern over her best friend, it was her friend only had a pair, meaning that Katie wasn't going to lose her beloved electronic calculator.

As the Bay City Rollers said goodbye to their baby, her bedroom walls crumbled away, leaving the three girls inside a dark brick built cavern.

She felt her fingers squeeze the cards in her hand when a naked man appeared on one of the walls. Thick rusted metal clamps held his arms tight against the bricks. Katie shook her head in denial, not wanting to believe this was happening. It had to be a dream or nightmare! Katie had given that dishy man a free bun only this morning. The man's eyes snapped open and he let out a heart-wrenching scream that sent every hair on her back standing upright.

Katie choked back her own scream when she took her eyes off his pained face and looked down his naked body to discover another woman on the floor, under the man, methodically cutting through his left ankle with a hacksaw.

The man's shrieks faded away, leaving that woman sawing through the man's leg to the tune of Abba. She looked at her sister who, in turn, was gaping at Maddie. The girl lifted her head but the face did not belong to Katie's best friend.

“Those playing cards once belonged to me, you know.”

Katie found herself staring at a twenty-something man with intense blue eyes and a thin moustache.

“Not that I need them anymore, with me being dead, you see.”

Maddie's head turned around and Katie saw another naked figure wearing that man's face shackled to that wall. There was no sign of that female torturer here, but just by the state of that man's bloodied body, she knew he'd received the same fate.

Katie turned away and looked down at the carpet, not wanting to watch any more of this horror. The gesture was pointless as the image continued to pummel her anyway. Katie watched a beautiful teen red-head holding hands with a boy of a similar age. The pair of them were playing in the snow. The girl wore Katie's red boots. The next image showed a large man jointing a blood-stained torso. The red boots were piled up in the corner of the room on top of the clothes worn by the couple.

The horror didn't stop there. Every single item of clothing she'd worn and every item in her possession once belonged to another murdered individual and Katie was forced to witness the fate of all the  ones who checked into that hotel.

Her bedroom had reformed but the images never stopped assaulting her mind. She had no idea how long the torment lasted. Her first coherent thought when they did finally stop was lifting her head, finding a playing card stuck to her cheek and that she'd pissed herself.