Escape (Chronicles of Hart) (22 page)

As the car sped towards him the tires screeched to a halt. Hart stepped around the vehicle to the driver’s door, pulling it open he looked to the guard, “I’m driving,” he demanded, stepping back briefly as the guard scurried to the passenger side while leaving the car in park. Hart was furious and it was time to take matters into his own hands, even if he had to burn the house to the ground with Grace in it. Climbing into the low driver seat, Hart reached under to adjust it, pulling himself forward over the wheel like a man who didn’t believe in tomorrow.  He switched to drive and pressed his heavy foot to the gas while the guard scrambled to close the side door. They sped into the dark early morning recklessly. Hart flicked the radio to a sports talk show calming the guard by giving the illusion that he was listening for updates on his missed game as he drove. No point in riling the poor man up just yet. Chances were he would be dead before they ever got back into the car again. This time he was taking Grace down with him.

***

The SUV turned slowly rattling under the hood. A back tire had popped a mile back and the wheel well scraped on the ground leaving deep gouges in the pavement as the car rolled forward sparking onto the dark lawn, pulling up the drive towards the mansion. Grace couldn’t help but notice how dilapidated it looked. As the headlights passed over it she could see that singed stone ringed the lower windows, indications of the fire her father had tried to start. The rocks crumbled on the driveway and the lawn left unmaintained resembled patches of field. Tall grass and brambles mingled to create a hazardous path. Parts of the driveway were cracked and overgrown as the tire well caught, revving the engine up to near maximum before they popped out of the divot with a startling jolt. Grace looked to Ethan her mouth agape as more of the sprawling mansion came in to view.

“What happened
,” she asked slowly as her eyes rolled wide in her head, looking over his shoulder in horror. In fact the house looked like it would fit in just right for Halloween this year; the gaping holes where the upper windows had once been gave the house a jack-o-lantern look. Like it was waiting to be lit from the inside, rotting like a pumpkin that had been left on the step a week too long.

“I don’t live here anymore,” he answered simply. A haunted look passed his face as he turned to the mansion before them. The house had held nothing but bad memories for Ethan after Grace had left. It had been a reminder that he had once had a family and a friend and after his father and Grace had left it had become a hollow place filled with memories that he was not ready to face. Not even the family butler, Jerry, had liked the place after that. They had moved together and maintained the house from a distance, letting it fall into disrepair after the fire had consumed a whole wing of the second story.

“Not since before the fire, it wasn’t the same without you and my dad anyway.” He leaned out the broken window of the SUV, looking up at his father’s old office window. It had always glowed with a warm yellow light, late into the night. He had often doubted that the light was ever turned off. After his dad had gone, Ethan left the light on until it had finally burnt out and he had been too afraid to go back in after that. Too many memories of his father that he hadn’t been ready to face were hidden behind those doors. Some nights back in college he would drive by the mansion before going home to the little house he and Jerry had bought, just to see his father’s office glowing in the dim lights of dusk. It had been a comfort then, now seeing the hollow cask where the window had once gleamed left a gaping hole in his heart. He wished he had gone in there one last time before the fire had consumed it whole.

“I’m sorry
.” Grace had almost forgotten that Ethan’s father had been killed the day she was kidnapped. She had been dragged into the same van as his bleeding body and was taken with him when they dumped his lifeless body. Ethan probably didn’t even know where his father’s body was. He had likely been buried with an empty casket like the one at her funeral. Her father had let her watch the video of her funeral afterwards. Ethan’s tears had haunted her for years. He lost his father and his best friend on the same day. She couldn’t imagine the pain he had felt as a thirteen year old boy. She had watched him weep. They had both been buried in the same cemetery a year and a half after their disappearance, neither of the bodies had been found but at that point they had both been presumed dead. In her case it was a well thought out hoax that had left her sitting on a shelf away from her own life for ten years gathering dust. Ethan’s father had not been so lucky.

The car stopped before the massive front steps, decaying and growing weeds in the massive cracks that lined their previously elegant state. The other vehicle pulled up behind them, idling loudly in the circular drive. The passenger window was missing and a rear view mirror hung uselessly at its side. The spatter of broken glass and debris from the vehicle had left a patchwork of indents along the front, exposing metal under the otherwise shiny black paint. It looked like a firework etched into the front hood. “Wait
,” King had instructed as the other men exited their cars and approached. King stepped out and instructed them to stay on the main level while they were inside; watching for a rescue team that was waiting in reserve and ready to go when they placed the call.

Turning with a wave, Platt tugged on the rear door of the broken vehicle. Kicking against the front door as it finally gave way with a loud pop falling off of its hinges on to the cracked pavement of the round driveway. He escorted Ethan and Grace out through the broken metal and glass of the fallen door and up to the crumbling first step. Grace took the steps quickly, waiting for them all at the top. Even hidden in shadows her hair shone bright orange like a beacon leading the way. Grace was still weary of the other agent and stayed close beside Ethan and King. Avoiding Platt’s concerned stares she watched them wearily from the top of the steps. Looking out across the moon lit lawn the driveway looked as though it was filled with the aftermath of a derby. Car pieces pinged as they hit the pavement, falling loosely from the vehicles in the light breeze. The night lit up behind them, full of stars on the lightless property. Grace turned to see the familiar stars huddling over the mayhem of the unmaintained land, it chilled her. She tugged Chung’s damp coat closer again wrapping the front edges past themselves until it was tight. She turned back to Ethan who was now atop the front stoop beside her.

Ethan reached for a key hidden under a fake piece of flagstone. It was the only thing on the steps that looked clean and maintained. The plastic was slightly melted at the edges, giving it away as a fake. He twisted the key in the lock with a little force and then he pushed the door open after pausing for a long breath of the fresh air outside.

The acrid stench of decay and burnt wood welcomed them to the once immaculate mansion, rolling out like a welcome mat over the front steps. Grace walked in through her memories; reaching for the wall inside the door fumbling in the dark she tried the switch for the lights. Flipping it expectantly she waited. Looking at her hand in confusion, she tried again, switching it off and then on again. She looked up to the ceiling wondering if the bulbs needed replaced. She tried the next switch before Ethan caught on to what she was doing.

“Sorry, I haven’t paid that bill in years,” Ethan answered, embarrassed when nothing happened again.

The house that Grace remembered was covered in years of disrepair. Wallpaper peeled from the walls while water damage from the fire had warped the once shiny hardwood floors. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked to the dark walls, seeing broken pictures melting in their frames filled with shards of broken glass. In the dim moonlight trailing through the door it looked like she was in hell. To Grace it felt like she really had died. The house reflected all the pain she had felt locked alone in the tower. The only thing she had feared for all these years was not failure to escape or her own death, but that nothing would be there if she ever did find her way past the prisons walls.

Emotions welled up within her as she looked from the foyer to the kitchen, gloomy and barely visible in the dim light of the moon shining over her. She remembered Jerry scolding her for taking too many cookies, always joking and smiling. She remembered whenever her father’s maid would drop her off for a particularly long stay she would come in to the kitchen and have tea with Jerry. Grace was always invited to sit with them and it made her feel so welcome and at home. When this was all over she didn’t know where she would go or what she would do. It wasn’t something she had ever thought of before now. She had always just focused on the escape itself, not the aftermath or the rest of her life after that. For now Grace just knew she had to get herself free from her father.

King chuckled and pulled a small flashlight from his belt. Flipping a switch it cast a bright blue tinge across the room pulling the damage into sharp relief. Platt clicked a button on his phone, lighting the grand foyer even brighter, above them the chandelier twinkled through the dust, dim and foreboding. Ethan led them to the stairs taking caution to test each step for rot before Grace had reached it. Several steps gave way under his weight leaving him tugging on the frail railing for support as King and Peters tugged him back out again, carefully stepping over the hole as they kept pace with him. Slowly they made their way to the second floor. It was even more depressing than the foyer. Grace looked down the hallway, trying to picture it as she remembered. The memories welled up inside her again and a tear escaped and rolled down her cheek onto the rough floor beneath her. It was like seeing her favourite place gutted from the inside out. The harsh blue lights cast about leaving sharp shadows. It gave Grace the impression of a nightmare. Piles of boxes lined the halls clumsily stacked. Doors sat open leading to rooms she had never been allowed to see. The order was missing and Grace could feel the world spinning beneath her. She reached to Ethan for support, catching a dusty pile of boxes instead. They tumbled to the floor at her feet. She looked down in a daze, memories spilling forward as though the dam in her mind had finally broken spilling forth the things she had suppressed to survive her incarceration.

Her old trinket box had exploded at her feet, spilling all the silly rocks and beads she and Ethan had collected in the woods behind the house. She stared at the scattered pile mesmerised. She had forgotten all the little things that had kept them busy, running around the mansion like children on a pirate adventure or a dinosaur expedition. They had roamed this house like it was a playground, racing the halls for pleasure. She understood now why most of the doors were kept closed. Not to keep them out but rather to give them a future of exploration as they were opened one at a time. She smiled at the thought of Jerry, a perpetual child, keeping their minds filled with wonder while their families abandoned them. Grace felt a jab of respect for him, he was truly greater than she had given him credit for and she had always held him in the highest regards. She could almost see a shadow of herself beneath all the debris, happy. She smiled into the clutter at her feet, reaching for a shiny rock that she remembered pulling from the pond out back under the willow tree.

A hand pulled at her arm, she looked up into King’s dark eyes, “You alright Grace?” he asked snapping her back into the dim reality. She nodded, pulling herself together blinking at the blue of the hallway as her eyes refocused on the scene before her. She stepped over the debris of the tumbled box and caught up to Ethan, glancing back at King with disappointment. She could have looked through those things for hours, she hoped she would get the chance to see her treasures again when this was all over. Looking at her hand she smiled at the shiny rock. Tucking it into one of Chung’s many coat pockets for later, just in case she didn’t get a chance to come back.

Ethan fumbled through the cluttered hallway to the spare room where Grace had stayed on nights when her father was away. It was practically her home away from home. Most of her things had been kept here because of the frequency of her trips to the Evans’ estate. He pushed at the door clearing the rubbish that had gathered behind it enough to wedge the door open. The room was filled with boxes and furniture surrounding her four post bed, made up just the way she had left it with her teddy sitting on the pillow in the middle. Grace wondered for a moment if anyone had even been in here since her disappearance. Judging by the piles of boxes and mismatched furniture smelling of wet charred wood she guessed someone had; by the looks of it only very recently and only for the storage of damaged things from the fire. Ethan tried to clear a path for her.
He
hadn’t been in this room since the day Grace had disappeared. Jerry had eventually taken to using it as storage, giving him an excuse to stay clear as Grace’s things had gathered dust in her absence. Sometimes he would stand at her door, hand on the doorknob fighting with himself to open it. Just to see if she would be there, sitting in her bed like nothing had happened. Sometimes he hoped that it would be true but he never did open the door until today. Wafting through the air with the stench of the storage and dust were memories of sneaking into Grace’s room and sleeping in her bed when there was a thunderstorm. They would pull back the curtains at the window and sleep with their heads at the foot of the bed watching the lightning and giving the shapes names. Now the curtains were drawn and the windows boarded over. The furniture was lazily draped with old sheets to stave off the impending doom of the thick layer of dust that had all but seeped into every nook and cranny of the room.