The Disappearance of Katie Wren

by Cross,Amy

  “Stop!” I hiss.

  “Mum -”

  “Just stop! Stop saying all these awful things! You're my daughter, you're an ordinary girl and a good girl, and I'm taking you away from this terrible place!”

  “You can't take me away,” she continues. “Don't be silly, Mum. I've already started reaching out to him. I couldn't leave now, even if that was what I wanted. The ceremony simply amplifies the connection between us, but it's a connection that can never be broken.”

  “You really believe this, don't you?”

  She steps closer and puts her arms around me again.

  “You'll understand when you see it, Mum,” she tells me. “You'll realize that I'm right, and that I'm so lucky to be the chosen one. Truth is always beautiful, and this is the most true thing of all.” She kisses the side of my neck, and I feel her tears against my flesh. “You have to see it. You can't be told. You have to see it for yourself, and then you'll understand. All those other people... Their lives were worthless.”

  “Tim's life was not worthless!” I say firmly, stepping back from her.

  “Of course it was. In the grand -”

  Before I'm able to stop myself, I slap her hard. She steps back, clearly shocked, but then slowly she turns to me and her smile returns.

  “You'll see,” she continues finally. “Your eyes will be opened and you won't have a choice.”

  ***

  “Hear me!” Katie cries out, her voice filled with hope as she leans her head back and looks up toward the stones that tower above her. “Hiirux, hear my voice! Come to me through the darkness!”

  I step forward, determined to go and pull her away, but I feel hands on my shoulders and I turn to find that the maids are still holding me back.

  “Follow my words!” Katie shouts. “Come closer! Come to the world! We need you!”

  She's naked, standing on a stone altar in the center of a vast and cavernous room beneath the main house. Fires are burning in huge bronze bowls all around us, while several robed figures remain kneeling in front of my daughter. Some of the figures are chanting, while others simply have their heads bowed. At the far end of the room, behind Katie, the High Priest is reading aloud from a book, as if somehow he's leading the ceremony. Yet at the center of it all, at the focus of all the attention, Katie remains in place on the altar with her arms up high and her wrists held tight by a set of metal shackles. My poor fragile girl is shaking so hard, I'm scared she might fall apart.

  “Get her out of there!” I shout, with tears streaming down my face. “Katie, stop!”

  “The world will welcome you!” she calls out, ignoring me. Her eyes are wide open, and she seems almost mesmerized by the sight of the stone pillars. “The world has waited so long for someone to come and offer guidance. Billions of people are living their lives without help, without hope, without the certainty that something exists beyond this miserable life. Your return will be met with joy and happiness, but first you must find me through the darkness and fill my body with your mind! You've wandered lost and alone for long enough! Hiirux, come to me now!”

  She falls forward, but the chains around her wrists keep her up.

  “You don't mean this,” I whisper, with tears in my eyes. “Katie, this isn't the real you.”

  “I can feel you now,” she continues, lowering her head and closing her eyes. “I can sense you in the dark, coming closer. I know you still have an infinite ocean to cross, but you will cross it, and then I shall feel you pouring yourself into me. I am waiting, Hiirux. I have no purpose but to serve you, and no will but to be yours. I am your humble servant and I -”

  Suddenly she cries out, and her whole body twists and writhes as if she's in pain.

  “Stop!” I shout, stepping forward again before the maids grab my arms and hold me back. “You're hurting her!”

  The High Priest continues to read from the book, and more chants rise up from the bowed figures all around.

  “I feel him!” Katie gasps, hanging down from the chains around her wrists as her body continues to shudder. “He's found me in the darkness! He's closer than -”

  She lets out another pained cry, and again she tilts her head back. She whispers something, but her voice is too soft now and she's drowned out by the chants.

  “Get her down from there!” I sob. “You're going to -”

  Suddenly she cries out again, and to my horror I see a sudden tear running through the flesh of her belly, splitting her open and causing blood to start dribbling down to her legs. It must be some kind of trick, some form of effect, because nothing touched her and there's no way her flesh should simply open like that.

  “The mark of Hiirux!” she screams, as blood starts dripping from her feet. “He touched me! He's so close now, he actually touched me! I have his mark and I am his and -”

  She cries out again, twisting desperately. It's clear that she's delirious, and I can't help wondering if these monsters have drugged her. My sweet girl would never act in such a way unless she'd been fed some kind of stimulant.

  “Stop!” I shout, pulling away from the maids and starting to make my way toward the altar, only for two hooded figures to block my way. I try to get around them, but more appear and hold me back, grabbing my arms tight even as I try desperately to push past.

  “He is upon me!” Katie gurgles, as blood starts running from her mouth. “He is -”

  She screams, twisting her body yet again as another rip pulls open the flesh around her waist. I know it's not real, I know it's some kind of awful joke, but I still cry out as I see my poor girl flailing naked, still hanging from the chains. She looks to be in so much pain, and nobody is lifting a finger to help her. I try to reach for her, but the robed figures are forcing me back toward one of the pillars.

  Katie is still shouting, but her words are just an incoherent cry now and she seems to be in constant, unrelenting agony. She pulls again and again on the chains, and blood is running from thick wounds at her wrists, but at the same time she's starting to let out a strange, gurgled cry as more blood erupts from her mouth. Shocked, I realize that she actually seems to be laughing.

  ***

  I dip the sponge back into the bowl of warm water. As soon as I squeeze, I see a cloud of blood, so I quickly pull the sponge out and place it back on Katie's ravaged belly. My hands are trembling, but I can't stop my work. I have to clean her. I have to fix her up so I can get her out of here.

  The wounds are real. That much is clear. I can't explain what caused them, but my best guess is that they were somehow faked during the ceremony and that these monsters then inflicted them for real while she was being carried back here to the recovery chamber. There was no resistance when I insisted that I should be the one to clean her, and now I can see that the ruptures in her flesh have left the muscle exposed. At least the worst of the bleeding has stopped, and Dominic Stewart told me that a solution had been added to the water that would hopefully encourage her to heal faster. In the circumstances, I have no option but to believe him.

  “Mum,” she whispers suddenly, struggling to open her eyes.

  “It's okay,” I tell her. “I'm here. You're not in that awful place anymore.”

  “Did I...”

  She lets out a faint, pained gasp, but she's trying to smile.

  “Did I do okay?” she asks finally. “I did, didn't I? I felt him. He was getting closer. I feel him still.”

  She raises her trembling right hand and places it on her belly, fumbling to find the splits in her flesh.

  “Katie, be careful,” I whisper. “You must -”

  She lets out a gasp of pain, although I think she might also be laughing.

  “He's never managed to do so much before,” she continues. “That's a good sign. It means he's getting closer and closer, and he's finding it easier to break through to the corporeal world. The schedule is perfect. I saw his shadow in the darkness.”

  I shake my head.

  “You still don't believe me?” she
gasps. “Really? After what you saw?”

  I can't believe you,” I tell her. “I just can't.”

  “You will.”

  Again, I shake my head.

  “You have to,” she continues. “It's only going to be stronger next time.”

  “I'm going to clean you properly,” I tell her, trying to stay calm, “and then you and I are going to get out of this awful, wicked place. Do you understand? You need to see a doctor. These wounds could become infected, and I can't let these people keep doing this to you!”

  “But I want -”

  “You're in no fit state to judge!” I hiss.

  She laughs again, although after a moment she winces.

  “Look at you,” I continue. “Look what they've done to you, Katie. I can't bear to see you like this.”

  “It's not them,” she says with a grin, turning her head to look at me through half-open eyes. “It's Hiirux. This is the most wonderful sign, Mum. There's no doubt that he recognizes me as the chosen one. No doubt at all. It's all happening precisely as the ancient texts foretold, and as the High Priest promised me. First the dark visitors came to me in my apartment. Then the black birds tried to stop me. And now Hiirux himself is close.”

  “You're deluded,” I tell her. “Utterly, utterly deluded. We can fix this, Katie. We can get you back on the straight and narrow, but the first step is to take you away from this awful place.”

  “You can't do that,” she whispers, closing her eyes. “I just need to rest now. I need to be ready for the next time. We'll have to do it again soon, so that he's still close. We must be...”

  Her voice trails off. She continues to mumble to herself for a few more seconds, but clearly she's losing consciousness and finally she falls quiet. My first instinct is to wake her, and then to get her onto her feet so we can leave, but I know she's too weak. All I can do right now is continue to clean her wounds and then wait for her to regain a little more of her strength, and then I have to find a way out of this place. I certainly can't let her go through anything like this again.

  No matter what it takes, Katie is not spending another night at Knott's Court.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Harry's Choice

  “I need to know the plan for getting her out of here!” I whisper as I sit next to Annabelle in the gallery room. “These people are insane and they've somehow infected her mind! She can't stay here, they're doing awful things to her and she seems willing to go along with it! You need to tell me what to do!”

  Leaning forward, I close my eyes and put my head in my hands. For a moment, I feel as if I might scream.

  “She looked crazy,” I add, struggling to hold back more tears. “Her eyes... I swear, she looked utterly deluded, like she really believes all of this.”

  I wait for a reply, but Annabelle says nothing. Since I found her in here a few minutes ago, she's been sitting completely still and she hasn't uttered a word. Finally I turn to her. She's staring down at the floor, her eyes wide with shock, and she seems almost catatonic.

  “Did you hear a word I just said?” I continue, nudging her arm but still eliciting no response. “You said you had a plan! We don't have any time to waste!”

  Again I wait, and again she says nothing.

  “I was thinking we had to wait until she's well enough to walk,” I mutter, “but now I'm starting to wonder whether it'll be easier to move her while she's weak. At least when she's unconscious, she can't stop us. We just have to find some way to carry her out through the front door, but I'm quite certain these lunatics will try to interfere. They say she can leave whenever she wants, but that's rot. Perhaps we need a distraction, although...”

  I pause as I turn and look around the room. There are no windows, and to be honest I've lost track of exactly where we are in the house. There are so many corridors and different rooms, the whole place is somewhat like a maze. I think we're on the ground floor, but I most certainly don't know how to make a quick exit. After a moment, I turn back to Annabelle and see that she's still just staring down at the floor.

  “Well?” I whisper. “What's the plan?”

  No reply.

  “Annabelle?”

  “I thought he was dead,” she says after a moment, her voice sounding hushed and fragile. “He taught me everything I knew about the world, and then he died. Or that's what I thought. Now it turns out he was alive all this time, and everything he told me was a lie.”

  “We can discuss that later,” I say with a sigh, “but right now -”

  “He was full of shit,” she continues, interrupting me. “He told me we had to fight against corruption and power wherever we found it. But it was just a facade. He was pretending to be the man he wanted to be, and all the while he was secretly working with these bastards. He couldn't even explain it to me properly.”

  She turns to me.

  “He said he knew it was wrong, but that he couldn't leave the cult. He said he was railing against injustice and against the evil in the world, but that Knott's Court isn't part of that evil, not really. I think he's got it all worked out in his head, but he can't put it into words. He's insane, and he's wrong, and he taught me to build my whole world based on a lie. Even the cancer that was supposed to have killed him... He faked it so he could disappear and spend all his time here at the house. And do you know what else? He -”

  She hesitates, and now her bottom lip is trembling.

  “He told me he's proud of me. Can you believe that? He's proud of me for listening to what he said, and now he wants me to see things from his point of view. He wants me to join this dumb, evil, cruel cult.”

  “I'm sorry you've been let down,” I tell her, “but there'll be time to deal with that later. Right now, we have to focus on getting out of here. You said you had a plan. I need to know what it is.”

  “The plan?” She stares at me, before furrowing her brow. “The plan was to throw ourselves into this mess and figure something out once we were right in the middle. The plan was to have a microphone transmitting our every move back to Bob, but they found the damn thing on me. By now, Bob's hopefully getting away, 'cause there's a real good chance they'll go after him. Either way, we're on our own now.”

  “But we must have a plan!”

  She shakes her head.

  “You told me you could always come up with a plan,” I continue. “When I first met you, one of the first things you said to me was that you could always figure out how to get out of a difficult situation.”

  “That was then!” she says firmly. “That was before...”

  Her voice trails off for a moment.

  “Fuck him,” she continues finally. “Fuck him for lying to me, and fuck him for thinking I'd understand.”

  Getting to my feet, I make my way over to the doorway and look out at the corridor. I pause, waiting for some sign of movement in the distance, and then I turn back to Annabelle.

  “Tonight,” I tell her.

  “Tonight what?”

  “They're going to put Katie through that awful ordeal again. She seems keen, she says she can handle it, but it'll undoubtedly leave her weak. She'll probably sleep again, and that's the only opportunity we have to force her out of here. Plus, I noticed that in the immediate aftermath of the ceremony earlier, the staff here were very busy. They barely came and checked on Katie once. It's not much of a chance, but it's all I can think of.”

  “You want to carry her out?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “How about we just give up?” she asks. “How about we just accept that we lost?”

  “Never.”

  “It's too late. We can't fight this. I was wrong about everything.”

  “Don't talk like that!” I hurry back over to her. “Ever since the day I met you, you've always -”

  “I've always been a fool!” she hisses. “I was tricked and deluded! I hero-worshiped Harry, and look where that got me! My whole life was built on a lie! I thought we could fight people in pow
er, but we can't. They'll just crush us.”

  “We're going to get my girl out of here!” I tell her.

  “It'll never work!”

  “It might!” I continue. My mind is racing as I try to come up with some more details for the plan. “We just need to know the layout of the house. You said there's a rear entrance, so maybe we can go that way instead.”

  “We're near the rear right now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nods. “I don't know the exact layout, but we're definitely near the kitchen area, and that's where there's a rear entrance that opens out into the yard. I'm sure it's guarded like crazy, but it's gonna be a damn sight easier to use than the front. At least there aren't doormen. At least, I hope there aren't. But there's no point even talking about this, 'cause we don't have a hope in hell.”

  “Harry lied to you,” I reply, “but that doesn't mean you have to give up.”

  “I'm too tired.”

  “You believed him because he appealed to the part of you that values truth and justice. That part still exists, even if it's taken a knock. You don't need Harry Plume, Annabelle. Not to be yourself.”

  “You're not my mother,” she says with a sigh. “I don't need a pep talk.”

  “Don't you want to prove Harry wrong?” I ask. “Don't you want to show him that you were right all along? Life isn't about picking the stronger side and going with the flow, Annabelle. I tried to teach that to Katie, and now I'm trying to teach it to you. Life is about doing what you know is right, and I for one would rather fail at that than surrender. And even if you won't help, I'm still going to find a way to get my daughter out of here!”

  She pauses for a moment.

  “That's awfully tough talk,” she says finally, “for a country mouse. But you might have a point.”

  “We'll have to act as quickly as possible,” I continue, pacing over to the far side of the room and then turning back to her. “As soon as -”