Harrowing (28 page)

I slipped my shoes off too. But the sand was icy.

We tripped across the silken sand for a while, the golden grains gently massaging our soles while a light breeze laden with smells of moss and algae wafted over us.

“My feet are frozen,” I said. “I don’t know how you can do it.”

I put my shoes back on.

“Maybe during the day...”

“God. I should come out here more often. And it’s just a hop skip and a jump away from my home.”

Lindsay smiled at me.

“Will you come out here and take a walk here with me more often too?”

I grinned.

“Sure thing. I’ll bring Romeo.”

Then we saw it in the distance. At first it was just an amber glow. But as we drew nearer, we realized someone was building a bonfire on the sand. It was merely a few twigs, crackling and just starting to catch on, as if the builder had barely begun to kindle the flames within the last few minutes, strategically placed next to a humungous pile of logs that apparently had been built up a while back, who knew for what reason. But as we approached, the flames caught on quickly and started to leap up high into the velvety night.

“That’s weird,” said Lindsay. “That’s
so
far out. Isn’t it forbidden?”

She glanced around.

“How come none of the neighbours have noticed this and reported this to the police?”

I opened my purse and glanced at my mobile.

“Well, it’s after two in the morning. That could have something to do with it.”

We continued walking.

“We should go,” I said uneasily. I had the same sensation I’d had in that alleyway with Eli, so many years before.

“Yes. We should,” Lindsay agreed.

But we kept walking. For some reason, we just couldn’t stop. Call it the imp of the perverse, or morbid curiosity. We simply had to find out what that bonfire was all about.

As we neared it, we saw that same figure dressed in black, ensconced within a black balaclava, standing next to the fire and feeding papers and strips of wood to it.

And he turned and saw us too.

The acrid smell of smoke and barbecue filled our nostrils. It reminded me of homey Sunday afternoons, my parents cooking up a storm in our back yard when I was a kid. Bits of charred wood began to float past us in the air as we neared the bonfire. The heat on our skin was comforting, then asphyxiating.

We were so close we could almost touch it with our fingers. The menacing black figure approached us.

“Annasuya Rose. Welcome,” he said, his voice thickly muffled by the wool.

I froze. How did he know who I was?

“It’s... it’s like... like he was just waiting for you?” Lindsay stammered out, hysterical.

She reached for my hand.

“Annie? What say you we run?” she said.

I groped about for her hand. But as we were about to turn around, the figure stepped close to me. I stopped still, petrified. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t.

“Don’t you want to know who I am?” he said.

I shook my head, finally found just enough will to start backing away.

“Nooo. I think I just want you to leave me alone,” I replied.

He hopped nimbly next to me and seized me by the shoulders.

“Let me go. Don’t you think I’ve already had enough with Bruno?”

I wiggled my shoulders under his oppressive hold. He refused to let me go.

“What happened with Bruno would never have happened to you, Annasuya Rose, if you were more careful.” His voice resonated hollowly through the thick wool like those cavernous alien voices in sci-fi movies. “Look at you. Walking about in a deserted neighbourhood in the middle of the night. Going out for takeaway when it’s almost midnight. Wearing a skimpy dress. Going to work in a short skirt. No wonder these sorts of things happen to you.”

My blood ran chill. How did he know all these things about me?

How did he know what I was wearing the day Bruno raped me?

“Who are you?” I cried as suspicions began to mount inside my head.
“Who are you?”

I reached for his balaclava. He ducked away deftly and deflected my advances with skill. I thought of Rudolph Verenich, or perhaps one of his students.

“I gave you the chance to find that out earlier.” He spat into the sand beside us with a growl. “But you disdained it. Now it’s too late.”

A sudden jolt of adrenaline made me duck out of his hands without warning and pelt away from him. Behind me I heard a scuffle, but I didn’t bother to turn around and find out what was happening.

Until Lindsay cried out. A cry filled with terror.

I whirled about. Our attacker had Lindsay firmly gripped in his powerful arms and was swinging her up off her feet.

I remembered the man who had attacked me when I was pregnant. This couldn’t be the same man now. My attackers, the bastards who had killed Eli, were in jail.

But this mysterious individual was doing the same thing to us.

And I couldn’t let him do to Lindsay what those monsters had done to Eli and me, so long ago.

I turned to go back. The attacker ground his fist over Lindsay’s nose and mouth and to my horror, I saw her crumple into his arms, senseless. Seizing her by the shoulders, he began to drag her away across the sand at lightning speed. I had no idea how he was able to move that quickly. He tugged Lindsay around behind the bonfire and when I got there, they had both disappeared.

I crept around the bonfire but there was no one there.

He must have pulled her away through the darkness on the other side. But where did they go?

There was a pile of wood stacked nearby. Loose logs, long boards of timber and construction lumber, crates, pallets. I assumed that was what our attacker had been using to build up the bonfire. I circled about the pile, trying to bore my eyes through the darkness and see if perhaps Lindsay happened to be lying on the ground. Concealed, perhaps, behind some of those loads of logs.

The light of the flames flickered across the timber, creating eerie shadows, shades with menacing forms. I thought I saw the form of something clawed approaching me and I jumped. But it was only my imagination playing tricks on me. These were just meaningless shapes. There was nothing and nobody behind them.

And I was nowhere closer to finding Lindsay.

I returned to the starting point. Our masked attacker was there, alone. Feeding firewood to the flames.

“Don’t you know making a bonfire here is illegal?” I cried, inanely, at a loss for anything brighter to say that could make him feel threatened. “I could call the police right now and report you for this fire.”

He lunged for me and grabbed at my purse. I snatched it behind me.

“You’ll do no such thing, Annasuya,” he cried.

“Where’s Lindsay? Where’s my friend? What did you do to her?” My voice sounded shrill in my ears.

The masked man only made a snorting noise, then began edging away from me around the bonfire. Unconsciously, I stepped closer to him, following him, letting him lead me on. Before I knew it we were on the other side again. The dark side. The side where the light from the street lamps couldn’t reach.

“Do you want to know where your friend is? Do you?” The man’s voice continued to sound like Darth Vader to me.

I nodded, wordless.

He bent down and began fingering one of the wooden crates. It was one of the larger crates, wide and long enough to house a person.

Long enough to house a person.

I gaped at him in horror, hardly believing he would dare to do such a thing.

He pulled at the side of the crate, yanking out nails and revealing Lindsay’s peacefully slumbering face. Wispy blond curls flowing. The sequins of her black, sequinned dress, glinting faintly in the light from the bonfire.

“Get her out of there!” I shrieked.

“No.” The man grabbed my wrist and pulled me close. “You get her out.”

I glared at him, then knelt and started wrenching away at the side of the crate. With the efforts of both of us, it clunked down at last to the ground. I reached over and started shaking Lindsay. Behind me, the man snagged some piece of wood and crashed it down against the back of my neck.

I froze, stunned for an instant. Before I could react, the man grasped my legs and tossed me into the crate on top of Lindsay. I leaned back and threw up my arms instinctively, cursing myself for having played such a fool, but already the man was starting to ram the side of the crate over me. He seized a hold of something, probably a hammer, and began pounding nails into the side. I pushed stubbornly against the hard wooden board, but the nails held too firmly.

I flayed my arms inside the cramped space and battered against the wood with my heels, tried to squeeze my fingers through the minute openings that remained and shove upwards.

“Wait!” I cried out when barely a sliver of open space remained, as a sudden idea occurred to me.

The attacker stopped for a minute. Raised his head and stared at me.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’ve already told you, Annasuya Rose. To keep you out of trouble. And to punish you for your indecent and offensive behaviour.”

He dropped down and continued pounding.

“Wait,” I cried again.

The man looked at me, but this time he didn’t stop working.

“How are you going to punish me? By keeping me in here? How long?”

The man grunted.

“Forever.” He snarled at me.

The thick wool muffled his voice, making me wonder if I’d heard right.

But I was sure I had.

I pressed upwards with my hands against the swollen wood. It refused to budge.

“Okay. I understand your point of view. You think I’ve done wrong. But I can correct myself. If you’d give me a chance, I can be better.” I heaved a deep breath. “I can be a good girl.”

The man grunted again.

“No you can’t. I’ve already given you too many chances.”

He placed one last slab of wood over the opening.

“Wait,” I cried out, desperate. “Wait, please. Before you shut me in here, I... I...”

My mind raced ahead at a hundred and fifty, trying to think of something. Anything at all.

“I want to know who you are,” I gasped out.

The man stopped still and studied me. I wondered if my ploy wasn’t going to work. If it was too late.

But at last he reached up and snagged a hold of the top of his balaclava. He tugged at it, then pulled it off.

I was staring straight into the boyish, awkwardly grinning face of Hugh.

*

Only darkness surrounded us now.

Vaguely, I could still see the flames dancing against the wood through the minuscule cracks between the slabs.

Hugh continued to work away close by. I could hear him piling more wood onto the flames.

His footsteps drew nearer.

I realized if we were going to get out of this, I needed for Lindsay to be awake. I couldn’t do this by myself.

“Linds,” I whispered, pounding against her with my elbows. “Lindsay, wake up. I need your help.”

Lindsay stirred. Muttered as if murmuring in her sleep.

“Lindsay,” I called, loudly. “Lindsay, wake up. Help me.”

Lindsay stirred some more. Encouraged, I began gouging my fists into her flesh.

“Hey,” Lindsay mumbled. “Hey, what’re ya doin’ ta me? Who are you? Fhtop it...”

“Lindsay!” I screamed.

Lindsay’s eyes popped open a crack.

“All vright, all vright, hold yer horses,” she muttered. “I’m comin’.”

She tried to lift up her arms to stretch. Her eyes opened wider when she discovered she couldn’t move her arms.

“What the...” she yelped.

Then she stared hard at me.

“Why are you so close to me, Annie?” Her voice was filled with indignation. “Why don’t you move your face a little further away? I know we’re besties but this is a bit ridiculous. Come on, man. Give a girl some space.”

I wiggled a bit.

“Well, I would if I could,” I replied, peevishly.

Lindsay came fully awake and started glancing about.

“Where are we? What happened?” she cried at last.

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re trapped together in a box.”

“Trapped together in a...”

Lindsay’s eyes started bulging out of her face.

“Why the hell did I ever get messed up with you and your... well, your goddamn messes?” she exclaimed. “What happened? How did this happen? Who did this?”

I quickly brought her up to date.

“And now this... this crazy all-out-of-his-head nutty absolutely scummy schizophrenic sleazebag you call Hugh is going to kill us or something?” she shrieked when I finished.

I nodded.

She shoved against me.

“Well, then we’d better try and stop him. Don’t you think?”

“I’d love it if you could enlighten me as to how we can do that.”

Lindsay’s eyeballs rolled about.

“Do you have your purse here? Do
I
have
my
purse here?”

“I think I probably dropped my purse outside. And I didn’t notice, but you probably dropped yours too.”

Lindsay sighed, defeated.

“Then what can we use?”

I glanced about. It was hard to move my head. I kept bumping into Lindsay.

“Our brains,” I replied.

“Well, mine’s at the bottom of the lake, I think.”

Footsteps scuffled in the sand just outside the crate next to us. A minute later Hugh seized a hold of the crate and started dragging it towards the bonfire. The heat became unbearable.

“What’s he doing?” Lindsay shrieked. “Oh my God, what’s he doing?”

I felt hot air prickling along the back of my neck. The wood was smouldering against my hands. I could scarcely breathe.

“If he’s doing what I think he’s doing, we’re not getting out of this alive,” Lindsay yelled. “Hey, you! You shithead out there. You, Hugh. Can you hear me?”

If Hugh could hear us, he wasn’t letting on.

“You bloody hell get us out of here, Hugh!” Lindsay screamed.

There was no reply.

“You don’t want to be a murderer, do you, Hugh?”

Hugh drew the crate up almost touching the flames. I knew at any minute the wood would catch.

“It’s time you paid for your sins, Annasuya Rose. Both you and your friend.” His voice still came through muffled by the thick wood, as if that Darth Vader quality simply wouldn’t leave him anymore, and already formed a part of his essence. “You need to be cleansed and purified by fire.”

Smoke started seeping in through the cracks and we both started to cough.

“We’re gonna burn.” Tears began trickling from Lindsay’s eyes.