Storm's Spirited Harmony: The Grim Reapers Mc book 1

by Stacy Barnett

  The Samuel fellow doesn’t say anything before my mother carries on talking, “I need your help right this minute Samuel. Can…can you come for us?”. Looking at my momma she sounds even more broken and lost than before her beating. I don’t know if she is ever going to be the same person, who would tell me silly stories or would chase me around the house in a game of tips ever again.

  I tune everything out around me and think about how my daddy should pay for what he has done to this family and I promise on everything good in this world, I am going to be the one to make that happen. All I must do, was wait, until I was old enough and then he will find out his days of being a mean and abusive gutter snake are numbered. I will come for him one day, when he least expects it and make him suffer like he did to my beautiful momma, with the beatings and the burnings. I will make sure he feels everything, until the time when I have had enough and I can no longer look at him, before I slit his fat throat.

  I suddenly come out of my vengeful thoughts about my father when I hear Samuel saying one firm word of, “yes”, to my mum.

  Momma sobs out as best as she could, the directions to our home, “we are at 202 Terrance way in Coffs Harbour. Samuel, I must get my daughter Harmony and me out of here before he kills me and sells his daughter to the highest bidder as a fucking sex slave. I can’t…I can’t let him hurt her Samuel, I…I…need help…”. My poor mother wails that last part and her hand begins to shake uncontrollably, with the cell phone bouncing all over the place.

  “I’m on my way honey. Can you get to a safe place until I can get there, hopefully somewhere there is a park? I will be bringing one of my helicopters, to get you both and I need somewhere safe to land it”? Samuel’s voice is panting now, as if he is running and trying to calm my mother down, as he goes to where he needs to.

  “I usually take Harmony to a park down the road to play, when she is feeling hyperactive and when I need to get away from Terry. It is called Sanctuary park. It has a huge island in the middle of a dam the birds us as a sanctuary and there is a large area this side of it, big enough for someone to land a plane or a helicopter in”.

  As my momma tells him to meet us at sanctuary park down the road, I get up quickly and race to my room to change into some warmer clean clothes. I was thinking it would be a good idea to be prepared to go anywhere and as it will be cold outside, as winter has really hit Coffs Harbour hard this time of year. Pulling out my thick winter pink jacket and putting it on haphazardly, I quickly look around my room for some type of bag, to stuff some of my clothes into.

  Finding my school bag under my bed as usual, I empty out all my books on to the floor, then I quickly stuff my backpack full of clothes and my favourite teddy bear my momma gave me when I was five. After I finished filling it up, I raced into my parent’s room, to pack a small bag for her that I could easily pull behind us and not slow us down too much.

  After I finished that chore, I grabbed her some warm and soft clothes, for her to change into in the bathroom and as I helped her to get dressed, I smiled calmly to her, “we will be fine momma, I promise”.

  I don’t know, if I was trying to convince her or I was trying to convince myself of it, but either way I was going to keep reminding her of that fact and get us out of there.

  As I had been running around her room packing, my momma had gotten herself up from the floor and was trying bravely to keep herself standing. The determination in her eyes, made me so proud of her and me even more determined to try and protect her.

  I had walked up to her with my arms full and as I placed her clothes on the old cracked counter, I began to strip her out of her blood-soaked nighty. She cries out a little, when it scraps over her open wounds but luckily as it falls to the floor, I could help her a lot quicker to get her into some clean warm and comfortable clothes. When I was finished helping her into a set of sweats and a pair of thick socks, I slip her ugg boots on over her feet and look up at her to find she was smiling down at me, “you are my special kind of Harmony and I am so happy you are my sweet little girl”.

  She leans against the sink again, as I finish doing up the buttons of her blue jacket, still smiling down at me. Grinning bravely, I grab her hand firmly and her small bag, then pull her out of the still bloody room, before I answer her, “I know what I am to you momma and you are my whole world to, but we have to get out of here before daddy comes back and hurts you again. I…...I can’t handle him hitting you anymore mum. He is going to take you away from me, for forever if this keeps up and I can tell you know that too”.

  When we head down the hallway together, I softly turn her towards the back door, as it leads to a quicker way out and a short cut down to the one of the biggest parks in town, Sanctuary. I look over my shoulder at momma and I cried out a little, as she looked like she was about to fall apart, from either the pressure of escaping or her injuries.

  Tightening my grip on her pull along bag, I give her a firm reassuring squeeze with my other hand and tell her once more, “momma, we are going to be fine and one day I will make him pay for hurting you, but right now we need to get out of here, before he comes back to hurt us”.

  I learned a hard lesson, a long time ago, that my father was especially nasty when he thought he had been crossed for any small thing. I once knocked one of his beers off the living room coffee table and he back handed me in the face, then made me clean it up while I sobbed silently to myself. So, us escaping, was going to end up much worse, if he catches us.

  She nods and tries to stand up straighter, only to moan deeply while putting her free hand over her sore ribs. If I had to hazard a guess I would say my father has just broken her ribs again and decided to not take her to hospital this time, for fear of being arrested for spousal abuse. God that man is a real arsehole for this….

  My mum looks down at me and bravely says, “right my little Harmony, let’s leave this hell behind and make a new home with my Samuel. I just wish you didn’t have to be the mother in our little pair right now and I was stronger and got you to Samuel sooner”.

  Thinking to myself about who this Samuel man was that he would have my momma trust him like this. He must be very brave to come and pick us up in a helicopter, in the middle of the suburbs of Coffs Harbour. Chuckling I hope he owns the helicopter, he is coming in and doesn’t like to steal them and go out for joy rides in them. Whatever the case, I just hope he comes and helps us out of this nightmare.

  When we come to the end of our houses hallway, I push open the back wooden door and stick my head slightly out to check if we were in the clear. Sighing softly, I was happy I didn’t see anyone, as everyone I know should still be in bed and I thanked our lucky stars too, as all the strange men must have gone off with my father, leaving us alone for a while.

  Out all the men I saw in our living room tonight, that man that called himself Storm was the dreamiest of the lot of them and I hoped one day, I could see him on even ground, like when I grew up to be a woman. Even though, I was only ten years old didn’t mean, I couldn’t dream of meeting someone who could love me for me and not an object to be sold to the highest bidder. Sighing, I thought even though I was still young I knew I had what is called an old soul, like my mother always told me. So, I figured I was going to have to find a way on using what god gave me and protect my family from the monsters in the shadows, like the monster in my dead-beat father.

  Pulling a small camping torch off the shelf beside the door, I look over my shoulder, to look at my hurt mother and whisper as calmly as I can, to not frighten her any more than necessary, “It is all clear momma, let’s go”.

  Turning on the handheld torch, I gently but firmly tug her outside and down to the back fence. Stopping for a few seconds to unlatch the gate, I could hear motorbikes coming up the road gradually. The bloody things were that loud, I knew they were at least several blocks away and wouldn’t take long to get back to us. My momma tenses up like an ironing board from the loud sounds coming closer and looks down at me and whispers urgen
tly, “baby we need to run and we need to run now. Those bikes belong to your father’s motorcycle club and when he finds us missing, his going to kill me and take you away for being disloyal to the him”.

  Nodding fearfully, I fling open the old gate and begin to run down the road with my mother right beside me panting. As we ran, I hoped really, hard we would be safe soon, and I also prayed quickly up to god, asking him to let us make it to the park before they find us. We both ran in-between a few houses, to make the race shorter and as we came around the last corner out of breath. There in the park, where I usually play in, we found a huge black helicopter waiting for us. Taking a deep breath, I looked closer and see a big man standing beside it, looking around hopefully for us two.

  Momma tugs me harder along the path, as the deep throbbing sound of the motorcycles was becoming louder again, signalling that they had changed direction and were coming for us and if we didn’t get a wriggle on, we were going to get caught.

  When we got closer to the man standing outside of the helicopter’s door, he was waving at us to hurry. My momma calls out breathlessly down to me, “drop our bags honey, that way we can run faster and don’t have to carry so much weight….”.

  Nodding frantically, I let go of her hand to fling my back pack off my shoulders, even though I didn’t want to and found that I was lighter and we could run that much harder. My momma cried out from her the pain in her ribs and body, but she kept on moving until she fell exhaustedly into the arms of the mysterious man, who I assume was the man she called Samuel, “Samuel, I’m so…. sorry”.

  He lifts his head off the top of my mother’s and yells out over the loud whirling sounds of the rotors, just to be heard, “Sarah we need to go before Terry gets here and starts causing trouble”.

  She nods quickly stepping out of his arms and turns to me, “come on baby, in you go”. She pushes me gently into Samuels arms, so he could lift me up inside. As I get inside, I scramble to take a seat away from the open door and the incoming danger of my father. I take a deep stuttering breath in, as I watch Samuel lifting my momma inside before he too, climbs in fast himself. My mother takes a seat beside me and pulls me into her arms tightly, as we both watch as Samuel closes the door with a resounding thud. As the click of the lock sounds, I see the large group of mean looking bikers from earlier tonight, come racing around the corner in to the parks carpark. They don’t even slow down as the ride full pelt and were heading straight for us over the grassed in area. I cry out as I watch them stop about ten metres away from us and begin to run at us with their guns drawn, ready to fire.

  Samuels turns and yells out to the pilot, “go…go…go.”.

  I feel the pressured feeling of lift off, when my momma frantically buckles us both in, before the helicopter rises to high. When we are firmly strapped in, we then watch as my father runs full steam at us, screaming into the wind. He then raises he gun at the helicopter and begins firing straight at us. As the helicopter rises higher into the night, I could hear these small pinging sounds hitting the side of the helicopter, like a summer hail storm hitting a hot tin roof.

  I screamed out frantically, “mummy…...”, and hug her as tightly as I can without hurting her ribs, then when I heard the pinging sound again, I cried out again, “he has a gun momma, he’s going to hurt us again”.

  My mother pulls me in even closer to her chest, not acknowledging the pain she must be in and looks at Samuel like she has seen a ghost. She pales even further, when she realises the bullets haven’t stopped hitting the underbelly of the helicopter, “Samuel….”.

  I turn my head to the side to watch Samuel, as he turns to us both and smiles broadly. He quickly points to the roof to indicate what he wants us to do, and that was to put on a pair of the helicopters head phones. It would make things easier to hear, when we were connected to the helicopters internal speaker’s system. After momma gets them down for us, we put them on securely and listen as he begins talking into his own mike. As I listen, it is just like, as if he was in a quiet room, “don’t worry girls, this helicopter has armor plating and nothing short of a rocket launcher will take it down. Those pinging sounds are just their bullets bouncing off the underbelly of the helicopter and doing no harm”.

  My mother and I take a deep breath at the same time, as we realised we were finally free and safe. Samuel looks directly at momma and asks her straightforwardly, “Sarah would you like to tell me how Terry is a member of the Death Dealers Mc and I didn’t know a damn thing about it. I thought he was just a fucking mechanic, that worked out of that damn shop down the street from the Coffs Harbour marina?”.

  She tenses up her arms around me, at his question and looks at him while still holding me tightly to her panting chest, “Terry would never tell me where he was going all the time Samuel, and yes, he works at Chip’s garage down near the marina, but that was until he got me pregnant with Harmony. After she was born he let me know about that bloody club and how he was one of the top players in it. Then he thought since I know now about it, it was then his right to hit me to keep me silent. I couldn’t tell anyone on threat of death and I couldn’t let anything else happen and leave little Harmony alone with that monster. Every time I looked like I was going to run, he would take Harmony from me and then beat the shit out of me to prove a freaking point. It was only tonight I realised, how my miserable life was really affecting my daughter, when she had to clean me up on my bathroom floor. Also, when my husband threatened to take Harmony away permanently to give to another man, I finally cracked. He told me tonight he has every intention of selling our daughter, to one of his business associate’s and letting him rape her as much as he wanted. That was the last fucking straw for me, Samuel. I could handle the beatings he would give me but doing that to our daughter was just going that one step too far”.

  She lowers her head and takes a shuddering breath in, before calmly continuing on with her explanation to Samuel, “I always thought I could change him for the better and make him see I still loved him deep down, but when he told me what he was going to do to his own flesh and blood, we argued until he beat me to a fucking pulp. I couldn’t let him do that her or to me any longer, so I called you for help and just hoped you would come like you always said you would”.

  When my momma finally stops talking, the only sounds I could hear were the helicopters blades swirling above our heads and her agonised sobbing. As my own breathing slows down, followed by my erratic heartbeat, I pull out my friend’s cell phone, I had in my jacket pocket that momma had given back and handed it over to Samuel.

  Talking softly into the mike, near my lips, I explained about the phone, “there is video on that phone of what daddy was doing to momma. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but you can have it, if you want. At first, I thought of getting help for us, from the nice man I met, that came to the house tonight but they ended up being friends with my father. So, you can have it and do with it what you want. I just want justice and peace for her, no matter what, so I hope you can be the one to give it to her”.

  I narrow my eyes to look at him closely as he nods his and looks down at the phone carefully. I watched as his face screws up angrily, when he finds the video’s and watches them carefully. When he finishes looking, his handsome face seems to shut down, before he quickly looks up and watches my mother with a critical eye before nodding at me. He turns the phone off quickly, then before he hands it back to me, he expertly takes out the battery and sim card to put in his coat pocket for later use.

  Shrugging my shoulders at his actions, as I was never really going to use the phone again anyway, because my father could trace it, if he truly wanted to as I only had one friend and he would know he would have helped us somehow.

  Sighing tiredly, I pull out of momma’s tight grasp and sit back for the ride. I hope where ever we were going to, was going to be a safe place to stay for a while, as momma can’t take any more surprises. I watch as the nice Samuel tends to momma’s wounds, as best he could
in the cramped quarters of the helicopters cargo area and I see that he is being as gentle as possible.

  I must have fallen asleep shortly after momma laid down on the opposite bench seat and closed her eyes for a short rest, because when I was still half asleep, something kept tickling my nose, making me want to sneeze.

  Scrunching up my nose, I automatically reached up to scratch it and woke myself up completely, as it was a small bug irritating me. And as luck would have it, the timing was perfect for me to see something wondrous out the side helicopter window. Smiling for the first time in a while, I quickly realise I must have been asleep for a while because when I woke up and looked out the side window, the sun was just coming up over the horizon. The colours in the sunrise, just felt perfect to watch, and reminded me of a new day dawning. Not just for the world but for momma and me.

  Looking away from the beautiful colours, I look down to the ground beneath us and see a big house that looked like a fairy tale castle, like one you would see in a children’s story book. Pressing my nose to the doors window, I try to and get a closer look, at where we were going, but just ended up with a sore, flat nose.

  Rubbing my nose, I could see we were going to land on a small forest covered island, that was surrounded by crystal clear blue ocean and just below the castle was the helicopter landing pad and a large storage shed. To my innocent eyes, it looked like we were going to be staying in a paradise, built just for our family. In the light of the sunrise, I could see so many different coloured plants and then there was all the birds flying around finding homes. I swivel my head around and look at a chuckling Samuel, only to have him wink at me before looking down at my mother again to run his hand lovingly over her slumbering head.

  I turn to look back out the side window again, knowing she was still safe and finding I had to rub my eyes roughly to wake myself up better, so I can get a better look around and see more. Unfortunately, moments later, I never got the chance, as the helicopter bumps into the ground with a soft thud a moment later and the motor starts to wind down soon after to a slow whirling.