The Ruth Valley Missing (15 page)

I squinted as I looked at one blur
for a minute, rubbing my eyes as I tried to make it out. I set the photo to the
side to look at the next. Another unfocused shot, but there was something
there, something I could barely make out. A skull in dirt? It couldn’t be.
Maybe it was just a shadow. I turned to the next photo to see what looked like
a deep red stain on a concrete floor. Each photo showed more of the same.

And then there, in the corner of one
of the photos was something familiar. I jumped out of bed and ran into the
bathroom, turning on the lights to get a better look at the photograph.

I knew that pattern. It was the same
pattern of fleur-de-lis in the tapestries of the church and covering the screen
of the confessional.

My stomach tightened. I had started
to believe that maybe I was imagining drama, that I was bored with the small
town and was trying to invent something that wasn’t there. But this was
confirmation that I wasn’t imagining anything. Confirmation of way worse than
anything from my imagination.

I heard a noise downstairs and
thought it might be Jack. Looking outside the window next to the door I saw a
light on upstairs. Odd, I thought, since he didn’t call. I started to head out
to check, grabbing my bat as I did.

I stepped out of the house, looking
around before heading across the yard. It was creepy how dark it got back here.
Even with Jack’s porch light on, I felt the need to walk faster to get out of
the darkness. I banged on the door, dancing in place trying to contain my
nerves and fight the cold.

No answer.

I turned the handle, and finding the
door unlocked, I let myself in. “Jack!”

Still, no answer.

I got to the living room, and was heading
for the stairs when I saw a figure in the dark and felt something crash into
the back of my head.

I awoke to the sound of my own
muffled moans and a sharp pain in my side. I couldn’t see or move my arms and
legs, but I felt the warmth of blood traveling down my side. Someone hovered
just in front of me, their breath in my face, then a whisper in my ear.
“Someone needs to learn their place.”

Another blast of pain and more
blood. “You interfered where you shouldn’t have,” came the whisper.

Tears burned my eyes, dampening the
blindfold. My mouth was taped shut, keeping me from speaking or screaming. I
felt something cold and wet being slowly dragged across my stomach. When it
disappeared, someone grabbed my hair, throwing my face down into the floor. My
shirt was lifted and a searing heat was pressed up against my back. I was being
held down. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream. I could only taste blood in my
mouth and smell my own flesh cooking.

I tried to hold on, but again,
everything went dark.

I didn’t know if it was minutes or
hours before I heard voices again. I heard one whisper, “That’s enough for now.
We’ll decide in the morning.”

I listened to the shuffling of feet
and murmuring, then a door slamming shut. I took a breath, trying to stay
composed.  

Slowly I rolled onto my back, pain
coming from all directions, screaming at me to stay still. My only hope was to
fight past the pain.

I rubbed the back of my head against
the wall behind me, inching the blindfold off my face. As it fell off, I took a
moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dark room. It was dark, but not pitch
black. My ankles were bound with tape, and it felt like my wrists were held
together the same way. I scooted around to a large cabinet and began rubbing the
tape on my wrists against a corner, hoping the edge might be sharp enough to
wear it away. I ignored the pain every time I slipped and slid my wrist rather
than the tape against the sharp edge.

After lots of work, the tape
weakened and snapped. With my hands free, I made quick work of the binding
around my ankles, then removed the tape across my mouth. I pushed myself to my
feet, the pain in my side nearly knocking me down. Leaning against the wall, I
looked around for a weapon. The room was large and cold, sparsely furnished
with an unlit stone fireplace. There I spotted a poker and grabbed it, figuring
it was better than nothing.

I listened next to the door for a
few minutes. Silence. I opened the door, the slightest crack, widening it
enough to see out. A cold draft rushed in and I heard movement, prompting me to
shut the door again. I sat down on the floor, holding the poker across my
chest, waiting a bit longer before trying again.

This time, as I opened the door, the
cold hit me again, but this time in silence. I stepped outside the small wooden
house, trying to discern where I might be. I was in the woods, that much I
knew. But was I even still in town?  

My only option was to pick a
direction and start walking. Unsure of whether the torturers would return, I
opted to follow the pathway that led away from the house, but from a distance,
through the woods rather than on the actual path. Branches poked and grabbed at
me, and the feeling of something crawling on my skin kept me swatting at the
air the entire way. After a while, the path dumped into another one, diverging
in two directions. Without knowing why I headed right.

When I reached the street, I
recognized my surroundings. I was a few blocks up from the Doc’s office. I
tried to run, but the pain was too much. Willing my legs to keep moving and
trying to ignore the occasional gush of warmth spilling from my side, I kept on
toward the Doc’s. I made it there, feeling weaker with every minute that
passed, only to find both the front and back doors locked.

Great, I thought, the Doc would be
the one person in town who locks his doors.

I slammed the butt of the poker
through the glass window next to the door, clearing enough of the glass to get
my hand in to unlock and open it. Once in, I started gathering supplies. I kept
trying to slow my breathing, attempting to artificially calm myself as I threw
saline, gauze, pain killers, and a suture kit into a an old shopping bag I
found lying around.

I reluctantly sat as the room
swayed. I taped large patches of gauze over the wound, a temporary fix until I
could get a better look. I was trying to decide what my next move was; stay
here and try to patch myself up for real before moving on, or keep running.

Click.

The sound of the front door set my
heart racing faster. I jumped out of the office chair I was resting in and
pressed my body against the wall. I looked around, realizing I had set the
poker down by the door when I came inside. I couldn’t see any place to hide, or
anything to use as a weapon.

I held my breath, feeling like every
exhale would betray my location. A beam of light shot down the hallway, the
beam narrowing as someone drew closer. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to
think about what was going to happen to me when I was inevitably found.

“Police! Come out!”

“Jack?!”

Jack swung around the corner, gun
and flashlight pointing at me. “James! Is there someone else here?”

I shook my head, the lump in my
throat leaving me unable to speak. Jack looked down at my blood soaked shirt, and
placed his gun in its holster. He came around to my side, gently putting an arm
around me. “Can you make it to the car?”

We made it to the Jeep, and I laid
in the passenger seat. Jack took off, speeding through the small town streets.

“You’re not taking me to Doc
Matthews house, are you?”

“Yes. We don’t have a new doc yet.”

“Take me to your house.”

“What?”

“You’ve said it yourself, he’s an
old drunk. This late in the evening I doubt he is even in any condition to
stand, let alone help me out. I’m better off without him.”

Jack looked unsure, but took a quick
turn, heading towards the familiar dead end.

The pain of getting out of the Jeep
overwhelmed me, and I collapsed forward into Jack, knocking him over. He sat on
the grass in front of the house, holding me. Through tears I whispered,
“Please, just get me inside.”

Jack lifted me off the ground, and I
let out a cry as I felt the skin around my freshly acquired burn pull. “Oh,
James, I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head and wrapped my arms
tight around his neck. As he walked in the house he pressed his cheek against
the top of my head. “Tell me what you need.”

I kept my eyes squeezed shut, my
head buried in his chest. “A mirror. Lots of light. And the bag I brought from
the Doc’s office.”

He carried me upstairs, and sat me
down on the floor of his bathroom, the bag of supplies next to me. I opened my
eyes, looking at the full length mirror along the inside of the door and
started laying out the supplies, popping pain pills as I did. I unbuttoned my shirt,
and slowly rolled my camisole up the length of my torso, kicking the wall
across from me as it stuck to my skin, pulling at my wounds.

Jack reached for my hand, balled up
in a fist as I tried to fight past the pain. “What can I do now?”

“Whiskey. Lots of whiskey.”

~~~

I stared at the slices across my
side, grateful at least they were clean cuts. The bleeding slowed, but the cuts
were deep and needed stitching.

I injected an anesthetic to numb the
area, then after a shot of whiskey, I set about stitching my own wounds. At
first, I felt only the tug of the “thread”, and while watching each stitch made
me want to pass out, I wasn’t in terrible pain. Jack sat there in silence, his
hand to his mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was there out of shock, awe, or nausea.
Partway through the third gash, I plunged the needle in and stopped, punching
the floor and kicking the wall.

“What is it?” Jack kneeled next to
me, a hand on my shoulder. I pushed him away, breathing heavily, then slowly
spoke, grunting.

“Not. Numb.”

I kept my hand out, keeping him back
until I got past the rush of pain I’d just inflicted on myself. I looked at the
empty bottle of local anesthesia on the floor, then at the wound, the needle
dangling from it.

“Jack? Have you ever sewn anything?”

He answered slowly, “Yes.”

“I only need you to do a few
stitches.”

“James, I don’t know if I can—”

I grabbed his hand and pulled him
close, my hands shaking. “I need you to do this. I can’t keep my hands steady enough
through the pain. I’ll talk you through it.”

I laid flat on the floor. “You don’t
want to go very deep, but you need to go far enough that the skin doesn’t
break.”

Jack was kneeling over me, looking
unsure for the first time since we met. “You can do this. I trust you.”

He took a deep breath and pushed the
needle in and through the other side. I used every bit of strength I had to
keep from moving away from the pain. I looked over at mirror to see the stitch,
blinking away the tears. “Good. That’s it. Now do exactly that a few more
times. Wait. Hold on.” I grabbed the bottle of whiskey, now wedged between me
and the mirror and took a sip. “Ok. Go.”

I held back a scream as the room
seemed to rock back and forth. After a while, the pain lessened, and I heard
Jack saying my name. I opened my eyes and looked up. Jack was staring down at
me, his hand stroking my hair. “It’s done.”

“See, I knew you could do it.” I
slurred, grabbing the whiskey and taking another sip. “Help me up?”

Jack pushed an arm behind me,
pulling me into a sitting position, then moved his arm down around my hips to
help me up. As he did, I felt a whole new pain hit, causing me to wince and
stumble. Jack pulled his arm away. “What in the world...”

He pulled further away, and I looked
over my shoulder to see the reddened blister on the small of my back. A
familiar looking fleur de lis.
 

I pulled the oversized sweatpants
on, careful to leave the waistband below my newly acquired brand, then pulled
one of Jack’s t-shirts over my head, pulling it down slowly, away from the
wounds. I leaned against the bed, trying to hoist myself up unsuccessfully,
stopping as the motion pulled at my stitches.

“Let me help.” Jack had entered the
room, setting a glass of water on the dresser and rushing over to help me into
the bed. I eased into the pillows as Jack pulled the comforter over me, the
combination of pain meds and whiskey hitting me hard as I laid back.

“Jack...”

“Shhh. You need to sleep right now.
We can talk about everything in the morning.” He leaned over me, kissed my
forehead, then shut off the light as he left the room. The room spun as I
started to fall asleep.

Alone in the dark, eyes shut, I
heard the whoosh of fabric and footsteps coming toward me. I tossed and turned as
the sweet smell of burning flesh and lavender choked out the air around me,
making it impossible for me to breathe. I tried to yell, but nothing would come
out.

“James.” I shot up from under the
blankets. Jack was sitting next to me in the dark. “You were screaming. It’s
just a bad dream.”