Rebekka Franck - 03 - Five, Six ... Grab Your Crucifix (13 page)

After a while she ran out of strength and sank down on the pavement. A woman approached her and took her hand. She helped Mette get to a center where they took care of young girls who had been sold as sex-slaves. At the center run by a local church she met hundreds of girls with the same story as hers.

She also met a man whose merciful eyes she would never forget. His name was Anders Granlund and he was also from Denmark.

Chapter 26

My dad was feeling better, a nurse said when I entered his room. He wasn’t awake yet, but they were expecting him to wake up soon.

“Probably will happen tomorrow,” she said just before she left the room. I pulled a chair up next to his bed. He looked so pale lying on the bed breathing through the tubes. I held his hand tight and squeezed it hoping he could feel it, hoping he knew I was there, that he wasn’t alone. I had called my sister earlier and she was on her way, but the heavy snowfall on the south side of Zeeland had stopped her half way. The roads were blocked and she had called me and told me she had to turn around and go back home. I assured her I was taking good care of Dad and hung up. I felt tears piling up behind my eyes when I looked at my father. Suddenly I missed my mother like crazy. I didn’t want to be alone with this. I needed my family around me. I needed us to be happy and laugh. Life was so short. Suddenly people were no longer there.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I mumbled. “I overburdened you. I should never have let you do all this work for us, taking care of the kids, always cooking when you should have rested instead. I should have known better after the stroke.”

“Don’t say that,” a voice behind me said.

I turned and faced the doctor that I had spoken to earlier. Doctor Philipsen, his nametag said. “Sorry,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was just checking in on my patient before I go home for the day.”

I smiled and wiped the tears of my eyes. “It’s okay. I’m glad you care,” I said.

“Well I do,” Dr. Philipsen said. “And I have to tell you that keeping your dad busy with work at the house, taking care of grandkids isn’t why he ended up in here. On the contrary he needs it. He needs to keep his body working. Sitting still after a blood clot is the worst you can do. You need to move around, take long walks or whatever works for you. If housework is what your dad likes to do he should keep it up, by all means. It is in his best interest.”

“But … I don’t understand. Why did he get the blood clot then? If it wasn’t because he overdid something?”

“I don’t know, but the lab says they did detect something unusual in his blood sample that they want to look into,” Dr. Philipsen said.

“What are you saying?” I asked, quite startled.

“I don’t know anything for sure yet, but even after he wakes up we will need to keep your dad for a couple of days in order to run more tests.”

“But what did they detect in the blood?”

“I don’t know the details, just that they have to run more tests.”

I sniffed. “Did they find cancer or something?”

“As I said I really don’t know, just that they are asking for more time. Let’s wait and see. It’s probably nothing.”

Dr. Philipsen gave me a not very reassuring smile. It felt like all the blood inside of my veins froze. There was definitely something he wasn’t telling me.

“I’ll let you know as soon as we have the results,” he said and left the room with a gentle “Goodbye.”

I exhaled deeply and stroked my dad across the cheek. “Poor little daddy. What is happening to you?” I said while the tears rolled fast down my cheeks.

The snow fell thick and made the roads almost impassable when I tried to drive back from the hospital. The small roads leading to Arnakke had become slippery and hard to drive through. My car kept getting stuck in small piles of snow or slipping off to the side so I almost lost control. I texted Sune on my way that it was going to take a while for me to get back and he texted back that there was no need to hurry, he had started getting the kids ready for bed and they were all fine. Just be careful.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I mumbled while trying hard to see through my front window where the wipers had trouble keeping up with the big piles of snow that kept landing on it blocking my view. Even when I managed to wipe the snow away the visibility in front of me was like zero. I could hardly see the road and tried to focus on just not ending in a pile of snow not being able to get free or even worse hitting something.

 Of course that was exactly what happened next.

Chapter 27

Slowly and gently Anders Granlund managed to help Mette get back on her feet again. He helped her regain her self-esteem and her trust in people again. With love and understanding he helped her get back to life and soon she even found herself laughing. He could make her laugh.

Anders was only visiting Hungary on his trip around the world visiting different churches, a trip he referred to as his “spiritual journey.” He told her he was trying to find himself and God in a world destroyed by evil forces. Then he taught her what he believed, that evil forces lived in people, often even possessed people and made them sin towards God and do evil things if they weren’t stopped, driven out of the body they possessed. Mette had never heard anyone talk like Anders. She found him refreshing and different, and she soon became very fond of him, and later she fell helplessly in love with him, this savoir who wanted to save her from herself and the world surrounding her. He told her he was starting his own church in Denmark even if he didn’t like the term “church” - he would rather refer to it as a family. Mette had liked that. A family. She had never had much of one and had always dreamt of having her own.

“If you come with me you’ll get a big one,” he said. “No matter where you come from, no matter what you experienced in your past, we will treat you as family, we will love you.”

Mette had really liked the sound of that. So after a couple of months in the center Mette went back to Denmark escorted by Anders Granlund to meet her new family at the camp in Arnakke that they were restoring. At first they were so supportive and helped her in any way they could. She had a hard time staying in small rooms and they let her sleep outdoors since it was summer, at least for a couple of weeks. When it got colder she acquiesced to sleeping indoors in the big spacey common room and finally she felt comfortable enough to sleep in her own room. They were patient with her and very very loving. They even helped her at night when she woke up screaming and when she crumbled by human touch. They taught her that touching could be nice and filled with love.

It wasn’t until later she realized that something was wrong. When her new adventure slowly turned into misery. After a while in the camp she realized that they never had anything else to eat other than vegetables and that they were all very weak from not having proper food, and not enough of it. Mette soon learned that it was used as a control tactic by Anders Granlund who now wanted her to call him the Priest and not by his name. He would feed them very little and sometimes drag them out to walk in the middle of the night. Mette remembered how she felt so exhausted she didn’t even have the strength to protest when they came to get her. All night long they were forced to walk in circles in the courtyard. Mette loved the priest so much she was willing to endure anything for him. That quickly turned into him demanding her sexual favors which she provided and he returned the favor by letting her increase in rank and soon she was eating meat once a week at his table while the rest of the “family” were stuck with only vegetables.

The priest told them they needed to suffer, to deprive the body of its fleshly desires before they were ready to step up the next level like he had. It was vital for their survival that they fasted. It would starve the evil inside of them and soon it would be forced to leave. Then and only then they would be able to be closer to God. God demanded this of them, she heard the Priest say. The lack of sleep, the starvation and being engaged in intense physical activity during the day soon broke all of the members and Mette saw how they ended up worshipping the Priest and kissing his feet. So did she. Mette had only eyes for him and just the mention of his name could make her shiver. Shiver with a rare combination of fear and delight. The fear of losing him was worse than the fear of his rough treatment of her. Without him to guide her in her life where would she be? What would have become of her? That was why she gave him all of her money when her parents died, that was why she had devoted her life to serving him, to loving him and providing him the pleasure he needed, whenever he needed it. The Priest told her that she was “meant to serve” that it was a way to find “inner peace.”

Mette tried to escape once. That was before she learned how to use her gender and sex appeal to have the Priest give her favors and make her one of the leaders. It was back in the beginning after only a few weeks in the camp when she had grown tired of all the hard work she was told to do. The members had told her to wash six of their cars and her hands were blistering and bleeding from scrubbing, but they told her to continue even if blood was smeared at the cars. So when no one was looking, she ran. Ran towards the exit and climbed the fence. She ran into the street and hid in a vacation house nearby that at the time was empty. Less than half an hour later she saw the six cars she had been forced to wash loaded with church members. They were driving on all the roads surrounding the house and knocking at all the doors, telling people they were looking for someone who escaped a sanatorium, asking if they could search their houses.

It didn’t take them more than fifteen minutes to locate Mette. When they brought her back the Priest looked at her disappointedly. Then he locked her in a small closet without food, water or toilet for four days. Mette screamed hysterically for the first two days. Then she went quiet. When they finally opened the closet they found her shaking, covered in her own excrement, broken.

She never refused to obey again not even when the Priest asked her to participate in doing those awful things to that poor girl many years later.

Mette woke up with scream. She was lying on top of her bed still fully dressed. She hadn’t realized she had dozed off. It had to be the tea, she thought and looked at the pot on the dresser. She hadn’t wanted to fall asleep, she wanted to be fully awake all night and usually she slept with one eye open, something she had learned back at the room in Hungary. To survive, Nadja had told her. Now she woke up because she thought she heard a sound. Someone was outside her door, she thought and got up. Her heart was racing. Probably from that dream she just had. She had dreamt about the girl. She had stared at her just like Hans Christian had just before he died. She had pointed at her and yelled the same words:

“… You … You!” then she had laughed that horrific laughter.

Mette stopped herself. Was the handle moving? She was certain it was. She reached over and grabbed her crucifix. Then she kissed it and started praying. Her heart was racing faster now and she felt almost suffocating. A burning sensation was spreading underneath her skin. Was this it? Was she coming for her? Was she finally going to pay for her sins? For what she had done? Suddenly it was like Mette heard voices in her head. The voices of the many men she had been with, the voices of her parents, the voice of the Priest yelling at her that she was impure. She threw herself to the ground holding her head between her hands, screaming. Where did all these voices come from? Where were they? Why were they yelling at her like this? Then suddenly it went quiet for a short while and Mette got on her feet again, panting, gasping for air. Was this it? Was she going insane before she died?

Next, she was certain she heard another voice. It sounded like it was coming from the other side of the door. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest. She recognized that voice. It was calling for her. Calling out her name. She whimpered as she reached out for the handle and opened the door.

Her heart stopped and Mette froze. There she was. Right in front of her stood the little girl with the crooked deformed head, looking at her with her green eyes, staring at her and pointing, while laughing a demonic laughter, her eyes almost like fire, like they were the very door to hell.

Mette screamed and backed up into the room. The girl stepped closer and Mette tumbled to the floor while trying to move away from her. Her laughter grew stronger, wilder, more manic. Mette crawled backwards, still while screaming. She reached the wall behind her and spotted her chance. Quickly she opened the hasp on the window and jumped out into the snow with a scream high-pitched enough to penetrate glass. When she got up she stared at the window, the girl was looking directly at her, still laughing manically. Then Mette turned around with a gasp and started running, just like she had run trying to escape the guards in Hungary, trying to cheat death for the second time in her life.

Chapter 28

I had no chance of seeing it coming. Luckily I was driving slowly on the slippery road when I hit it, whatever it was.

It was like had it come out of nowhere, I thought when I tried to regain control of the car that soon landed in a big pile of snow. I hurt my forehead as the car came to a sudden stop. I was breathing heavily trying to calm myself down and put the shock behind me, before I stormed out the door and ran through the heavy snow towards whatever I had hit. I hoped it was a big deer or maybe a fox, but I knew in my heart it was way too big in size to be just an animal.

“Oh my God,” I stuttered holding a hand to cover my mouth. In front of me in the snow lay a woman. She was small, skinny and wasn’t dressed at all to be outside in this kind of weather. “Oh my God,” I exclaimed again when I realized the snow was colored red by her blood. She was moving, groaning, trying to pull herself forward in her arms.

“I’m so so sorry. Are you alright?” I asked.

The woman didn’t answer, she groaned and looked up at me with weak eyes that seemed like they were about to cave in any moment now.