by Lauren Algeo
Ellen nodded fiercely. ‘I don’t want those evil monsters to ever get their hands on my baby again!’
‘Then I’ll help you keep trying,’ Brewer said, squeezing her hand briefly. ‘We can do it together.’
Ellen clenched his hand back appreciatively. She still felt numb with shock, and hurt to her very core, but it helped to know someone else had suffered that awful torture too. That she wasn’t alone.
She looked fearfully towards the doorway. ‘What about her?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Brewer said. ‘She’s temporarily out of it.’
‘What if she’s just pretending again?’ Mitch asked.
‘I don’t think she is, and I’m not sure if she was lying before,’ Brewer replied. ‘The venom had taken hold of her, you both saw how sick she was, but maybe the dose hadn’t been strong enough and she started to recover.’
‘Could she have regenerated new blood to replace the poisoned stuff?’ Mitch looked sceptical.
‘Maybe.’ Brewer reluctantly let go of Ellen’s hand and stood up.
He went back to the kitchen to double check on the hiker. She was still lying in the same position and spittle bubbled at her lips.
‘Whether she started to heal herself or not before, she won’t be able to now,’ he said as Mitch walked into the room behind him. ‘A double dose will be way too much for her.’
Mitch took in the squirming, panting hiker on the floor. He still didn’t trust her. ‘We should take it in turns to watch her.’
‘Agreed,’ Brewer nodded.
He was dying to have a nap. To close his eyes and let blissful sleep take hold. His body needed to be shut down for a few hours, it was screaming for it. He could barely keep his leaden eyes open and he had a roaring headache.
‘I’ll take the first watch,’ were the words that left his lips instead.
Mitch shouldn’t be around the hiker until he knew for certain she was ill enough to leave his mind alone. The kid would be useless if she tried to attack him and give away everything Brewer had ever told him. Then there was Ellen. He certainly didn’t want to leave her on her own with the hiker so soon after what had just happened. She wouldn’t be up to it yet, therefore it had to be him.
‘What should we do?’ Mitch asked.
‘Rest. I know it’s only the afternoon but you should get as much sleep as you can. I know you can’t have gotten much back at the motel last night and we need to move tonight when the hiker dies.’
‘Ok. I think we should take Mrs Mac upstairs, away from that thing for a while,’ Mitch said. ‘She can still feel it in here.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ Brewer said. ‘Just keep to the back of the house though. I think there was a spare bedroom facing the garden, with a bathroom next to it.’
Mitch went upstairs to check the rooms. ‘You’re right, the guest room is at the back,’ he said when he returned. ‘It’s got twin beds and a small TV too so I can watch that and Mrs Mac can sleep if she wants to.’
‘All right, take her up there then,’ Brewer said. ‘We’ll do three hour shifts and you can take the second watch.’
By then, the hiker should be sufficiently close to dying and she’d be no threat to them. Mitch disappeared to take Ellen upstairs and Brewer wearily began to tidy up the kitchen. He picked up Ellen’s plate from where it had fallen earlier, surprisingly only broken into three pieces. There were drops of pasta sauce on the tiles that he’d need to clean up.
‘Run, rabbit, run,’ the hiker wheezed from behind him.
‘Shut up,’ he grumbled. He wasn’t in the mood for any nonsense.
‘You’re not as much fun as her.’ The hiker didn’t care what he wanted. She tried to laugh but it turned into a splutter. ‘She likes you, you know, thinks you’re “safe”.’
Brewer froze by the sink with the plate fragments still clasped in his hand. Her words had caused the small hairs on the back of his neck to rise. That couldn’t be true. Surely the hiker was just teasing him, trying to get him…
‘Not safe enough to prevent me from torturing her,’ the hiker’s voice was inside his head now. She’d snuck straight in while he was distracted. ‘Oh, the despair she felt. The delicious pain.’
‘Get the fuck out!’ Brewer’s feeling of stupidity at being tricked so easily turned into rage and he struck the hiker hard in his mind.
She gave a yelp and retreated to lick her wounds. He heard her shift on the floor and glanced over his shoulder. She was trying to look up at him through the straggly hair hanging over her face.
‘You like her too,’ she smirked.
He picked up the tranquiliser gun and gave her another sharp blow to the head with the end of it. She barely flinched but it made him feel better. She didn’t try his mind again and concentrated on throwing up instead.
He turned on the tap in the kitchen sink and tried not to think about what the hiker had said. She was definitely lying. Just telling him that in order to get him to lower his defences. He tried not to listen to the small, hopeful part of himself that wanted to believe her. What if she was telling the truth?
He shook off the feeling. Hypothetically, even if Ellen did ‘like’ him, as the hiker had said, that didn’t mean anything. It was a generic term. She probably ‘liked’ Mitch too, and long walks, and bubble baths. The hiker had just used the idea to confuse him. It was nothing.
He could hear someone moving around upstairs and wondered if it was Ellen.
Yeah, she’s coming downstairs to declare her feelings of like for you, the scornful part of his mind goaded him.
He turned off the tap and began to pile dishes into the full basin. He washed them quickly in relative silence. The hiker coughed and heaved a few more times but didn’t speak, and he could hear the faint murmur of the upstairs TV. Mitch had probably found his beloved MTV.
Brewer wondered how Ellen was feeling now. If her mind was still swirling with cruel images of Lucy. He couldn’t bear to think of her in pain, it made him deeply angry.
‘Splish splash,’ the hiker mumbled to let him know she was still back there.
He finished cleaning the kitchen then dried the dishes and put them away as best he could. He had to guess where some of the pans had come from. Hopefully the owners of the house wouldn’t notice. They might not realise some pasta and tins of tomatoes were missing either. He may have said it to placate Ellen, but he wasn’t intending to go and find some shops then come back to the house just to restock the cupboards. That was an extra risk he wasn’t willing to take.
Brewer glanced around the now-spotless kitchen counter; his work in here was done. Well, until the hiker died and he could clean up her vomit. He took a seat at the table, close to the deteriorating hiker, to wait out the rest of his shift.
Chapter 20
Two and a half hours later, Brewer slowly eased open the door to the spare room. Mitch was sitting on the right-hand single bed, watching the TV. The sound was low so as not to disturb Ellen, who was curled up on the other bed, facing the window. The curtains were closed and the room was in semi-darkness. Brewer put his finger to his lips and gestured for Mitch to come out to the hallway.
‘It’s your turn to take watch,’ Brewer said quietly. ‘I’m going to try and get some sleep. The hiker is completely out of it now.’
‘What if she wakes up?’ Mitch asked.
‘She’s either in a coma or deeply unconscious so I doubt she will. She hasn’t moved for over an hour and a half.’
‘Ok,’ Mitch nodded. ‘Shall I come and get Ellen after three hours?’
‘No,’ Brewer replied. ‘Wake me up. I don’t want Ellen down there alone with her.’
Mitch traipsed down the stairs to start his shift and Brewer used the bathroom before crossing silently into the bedroom. He inched the door closed softly then turned off the murmuring television. Mitch had found a different reality station to watch.
Brewer sat, exhausted, on the edge of the bed and undid his boots. He could hear Ellen’s l
ight breathing in the quiet room. Her back was to him and she had the bed sheet pulled up high to her chin.
He slipped off his shoes and settled back onto the bed. He fought down a moan of relief as his head encountered the soft pillow and his eyes closed tightly. Merciful sleep would engulf him in no time.
‘I can take my turn watching the hiker,’ Ellen said gently from across the room. Her voice was muffled by the bedcovers. ‘It’s only fair.’
Brewer’s eyes sprang open against his will. She hadn’t been asleep then.
‘We’ve got it covered,’ he replied tiredly. ‘You’ve been through a traumatic experience.’
He heard her sit up in bed. ‘No more so than you.’
There was a rustle of material and he turned his head to see her now perched on the side of the bed. Even in the gloom, he could see her eyes were wide and alert. She hadn’t managed to drift off to sleep at all; she’d been replaying painful memories of Lucy’s death.
‘I want to see that hiker suffer,’ she said. ‘It will fill me with nothing but joy to watch her die.’
‘That’s not a good reason to go back down there.’ He reluctantly sat up, even though his body was howling in protest. This was supposed to be bedtime.
He swung his legs down to the floor and sat directly opposite Ellen. Neither of them spoke for a minute.
‘Does it ever get easier?’ she asked eventually.
He could hear the sorrow in her voice and he ran a hand through his hair. ‘The pain never fully goes away,’ he admitted. ‘But it does lessen somewhat. A little bit more every day. Occasionally, you might even be able to remember something about that person without the stab of pain to accompany it.’
‘The one that knocks the breath from your lungs and makes you feel like the world is collapsing,’ Ellen whispered.
He nodded in the dimness. Ellen’s shadow moved in front of him and the bed creaked as she sat down beside him, on his left.
‘What was your wife like?’
The question took him by surprise and his heart began to pump faster. No one had ever asked him that before. Georgie and Mitch had only questioned him about how she’d died. He sat mutely for a moment then took a shaky breath.
‘She was beautiful,’ he said simply. ‘Inside and out.’
Ellen nodded, close to him. ‘She was. I saw the photo on your laptop. You both looked so happy together.’
Something in her voice broke and she glanced down at her clasped hands. ‘I wish I’d had that.’
‘You didn’t with Lucy’s father?’
She shook her head but didn’t reply. The silence between them grew again and Brewer realised she wasn’t going to say anything about it.
‘Karen always brought out the best in me,’ he said to fill the quiet. ‘She made me want to be a better person.’
‘Lucy was like that.’ Ellen found her voice again. ‘She saw the good in everything. Always had an enthusiastic outlook on life… well, until the bullying started.’ She gazed at him and he could see tears shining in her eyes.
He placed his left hand gently on her knee and she rested her hand lightly on top of his. The hiker’s words flickered briefly to the front of his mind again however this wasn’t the time to contemplate them further.
‘It was my fault,’ Ellen said sadly. ‘Lucy never let on exactly what the bullying started over. She never said out loud, but I knew intuitively. I could read it on her face. It was because she didn’t have a father. She never knew him.’
Brewer’s brow creased into a frown. ‘Did he not leave when she was young?’ That was the impression he’d gotten.
‘Try before she was born,’ Ellen laughed bitterly.
Her hand left his to rub at her eyes but he kept his in place above her knee.
‘He’s the reason I wasn’t very close to my mother either. We were hardly speaking when she died a few years ago. She loved Lucy but I knew that every time she looked at her, all she felt was disappointment in me.’
‘What happened?’ Brewer asked. His heart was still beating too fast. He’d been dying to know the mystery of Lucy’s father for days.
‘I was young and naïve,’ Ellen said. She seemed to sink into the bed more, as if she was finally ready to let go of a secret that had been haunting her for a long time. ‘I was barely twenty-one when I met Martin Goldman. He was quite a bit older than me – mid-thirties, charming and good looking. One of my friends and I had gone to a posh bar. I lived just outside of New York back then and we travelled into the city in the hope of finding some real men, instead of the boys from the suburbs we were used to. Anyway, Martin and one of his friends sent drinks over to our table. He was the clichéd tall, dark and handsome, and I was attracted to him instantly.’
Brewer felt a completely irrational sense of jealousy at those words.
‘He was a doctor and he was extremely wealthy but that didn’t matter to me. Neither did the age difference – I just loved how he made me feel. We danced and laughed all night. I split up from my friend and stayed with Martin in a hotel room. I thought it was the best night of my life.’ She paused and looked at her hands again. ‘I found out the next day that he was married. Not only that, he had two children as well. He didn’t wear a wedding ring and I’d had no idea. His family lived outside the city too, not far from where I lived with my parents at the time. I was crushed when he told me. He insisted that he’d never done anything like that before and told me I was special. I’m ashamed to say I believed him. I was stupid and gullible, and thought I was in love after one night. You must think I’m awful!’
Brewer didn’t say anything, merely shook his head. He could see how a young girl could be seduced by an exciting, older man.
‘So I carried on seeing him. We met once or twice a week for the next couple of months. I was madly in love with him and thought he was going to leave his wife for me. He told me how unhappy he was at home and we talked about finding a place together. At the time I didn’t even feel guilty about what I was doing, and I didn’t listen to my friends’ warnings. It was only after that I hated myself for it.’
She shifted on the bed and rubbed at her face again.
‘Then I found out I was pregnant. It was an accident but I was overjoyed at first. I thought that meant Martin would leave his wife and we could finally be together. I told him over the phone, as I couldn’t wait until the next time we were going to see each other, but he went very quiet. Then he made excuses not to see me for a few days. He stopped returning my calls and I began to panic. I was so distraught I ended up confessing everything to my mother. She was horrified. I can still remember the shock and disappointment on her face. She wanted me to get rid of the baby, only I couldn’t. I loved Martin and I wanted his child. My mum found out exactly who he was and went to pay him a visit, even though I begged her not to. I’ve got no idea what she said to him but he called me that night and arranged to meet me the following week. He said he wanted to take care of me and the baby.’ She began to wring her hands in front of her.
‘My mother would barely look at me and I didn’t care. I thought Martin had come around to the idea. The day before we were due to meet, he texted me an address close to my mum’s neighbourhood and said to meet him there. I was confused, but excited. More so, when I pulled up the next day and saw a “sold” sign outside a small two-bedroom house. I ran up the steps and the front door was unlocked, so I checked the place but Martin wasn’t there. I waited out on the porch, only he never came. About two hours later, I went inside again and found a note in the kitchen with a set of keys and a large envelope. It was from him.’
Ellen took a ragged breath and Brewer tried not to tense his hand tighter on her leg.
‘It said that he was leaving,’ she carried on in a small voice. ‘That he and his family were moving away and I was never to contact them. He had bought the house for me, and our baby, and there was a cheque for twenty-five thousand dollars in the envelope so we would be taken care of. He said the deeds for
the house would arrive later in the post from a solicitor, and him buying it for me was on the basis that he would have no contact with me ever again, and our child could never come looking for him. His family must never find out. The note was so cold and business-like. There was no hint of the love I thought we’d shared. It was effectively hush money. He was buying my silence and moving away from his mess.’
Brewer gazed at the side of her face and saw the glisten of tear tracks on her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.
‘It was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I was too distraught after that to fight. I had the baby, a little girl, but Martin never knew that. I sold the house he’d got us and moved to the one you found me in. I couldn’t stay in that place, the town even; it was tainted with my shame. Lucy asked about her father when she was younger and I just told her he’d left, and I was all she needed. When she got older, she just stopped asking. I tried not to think about Martin; luckily she didn’t really look anything like him. I could never forgive my mum though – our relationship was forever strained. She was ashamed of me and I was furious with her. She never told me what she said to Martin that day she went to see him, not even when I pleaded with her in tears. I’ve thought about it a lot since and can only imagine that she threatened to tell his family if he didn’t make sure I was financially looked after. That he should move away and not see me again. He never even knew Lucy’s name and now she’s gone too.’
The tears fell faster from her eyes and Brewer found himself moving his arm up to her shoulders and pulling her in towards him. She slipped her arm around his waist and nestled into his neck.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated.
His right hand moved to her face with a mind of its own and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Before he could think about it, his fingertips dropped underneath her chin. Her face tilted up towards him and he bent his head until their lips touched lightly. It was impulsive, and he didn’t stop to question it. He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth harder against hers, and felt her respond.
Her other arm snaked around to his back, pulling him towards her. He moved his hand from her chin round to the back of her neck, bringing them even closer together. His mouth moved faster against hers.
