Heller's Regret

by JD Nixon

  We stepped away to urgently discuss the situation.

  “We have to get them away from Malefic. He’s not going to be a good influence and you can bet whatever he has in mind for them isn’t going to be wholesome.”

  “I can’t do anything with them if they’re going to threaten me like that.”

  “I can help push them into the room,” I offered.

  “Chalmers, you know the rule. Hands off the clients unless absolutely necessary. Clive will not thank us if these girls make a complaint about us manhandling them. And as a male adult, it will look particularly bad for me to touch young women. They have me by the balls. There’s nothing I can do. They’re all yours.”

  “Farrell,” I complained, even though I could see the sense of what he was saying. Accusations like that from some female teens for a man working towards promotion in a business where he enjoyed working, would cripple his career. Didn’t stop me whining though. “How am I supposed to get them into the hall? They scare me. I feel like I feel like I’m at high school again.”

  “If I knew that, I’d be doing it. All we can do at this stage is keep an eye on them. We can’t force them into the hall. But don’t let them out of your sight and let that smug fraud know you’re watching him every second. It might pull him up.”

  Or it might fuel him on, I thought. In my opinion, Malefic had a huge ego that needed constant feeding in order to survive. He needed attention every bit as much as he needed oxygen.

  At that moment, Miriam flung open one of the hall doors, her face creased with panic, her voice high and fast. “Please come and help! We think one of the attendees is having a heart attack.”

  I couldn’t bear to hear those words again, ready to run in to offer my assistance. My father couldn’t be saved, but perhaps someone else could.

  Farrell, however, had other ideas. “I can handle this, Chalmers. You stay here and keep an eye on the teens.”

  “But –”

  “Just do what you’re told,” he snapped, not wasting a precious second more on me, but dashing into the hall, followed so closely by Miriam she stepped on the back of his boots.

  “That’s enough chatting, ladies. Time to return inside. Make the most of your time at the conference because it ends tomorrow,” I said.

  “Good,” retorted the head teen. “None of us wanted to come. Our parents made us.”

  “They’ve sent you here because they thought it was a message worth hearing for you. You should at least be respectful of their intent and the money they’ve outlaid on this conference to attend each session.”

  “If you’re what it’s like to grow up, I’d rather stay sixteen forever, thanks. You’re boring,” she replied, turning her back on me.

  “That can be arranged,” Malefic said in a low tone to her, but loud enough for me to hear. The girl giggled at his personal attention, but to me his words were nothing but sinister.

  “You’re quite a disrespectful young lady. You should think about that,” I scolded like an irate grandma. Was I ever that condescending and discourteous as a teenager? Perhaps I’d airbrushed my memory of myself, but I couldn’t recall any precise examples of me being as bad as this girl. However, vague memories did surface of me frequently arguing with my parents about my clothes, my schooling, my chores and my social life, and my responses had probably been every bit as snotty and self-entitled as this girl’s.

  “Have you finished, Matilda? You’re interrupting us,” Malefic asked.

  I wanted to punch his supercilious nose. “I’ll be over there, watching you.”

  He laughed at that, and it wasn’t a nice laugh. “Hope you enjoy the show.”

  Pissed off, I stalked away, but not too far, keeping an eye on him and the giggling gaggle of teens under increasingly lowering brows.

  Chapter 28

  Miriam rushed from the hall, and I caught the flurry of noise coming through the doors.

  “I’ll be out the front, waiting for the ambulance,” she explained in a rush, zipping past me to the exit and dashing down the stairs.

  “Okay,” I said to nobody.

  Malefic, his acolytes and most, but not all, of the teens moved in a group as if heading towards the bathrooms. Two teens broke away from the group of eight, slipping back into the hall. And though I was glad to see that, my focus was all on the other six.

  Peeking into the hall, Farrell was hard at work in the far corner performing CPR on an older man. He lay flat on the floor, his brightly patterned shirt unbuttoned and open. Farrell’s face was serious as he pumped the man’s chest with his palms. I couldn’t interrupt him from this potentially life-saving task for advice, so would have to make this call myself.

  Malefic stopped the group at the bathrooms and entered the men’s, followed by his sole male acolyte. I hurried to the teens.

  “What’s happening? Where are you going?”

  “None of your business,” the head teen snapped. “Why don’t you just get off our backs?”

  “Your parents think you are in a conference where there are adults to supervise and watch out for you. Don’t you be thinking for one moment you can leave this centre without their permission.”

  “You’re such a bore. Go away.”

  The three female acolytes got in my face, not doing anything aggressive or mocking, but merely looking at me with detached, vague expressions.

  “Get lost,” I said to them, discomforted by their overly close proximity and their relentless staring. They didn’t move, but remained in place in front of me, examining me with no real interest, but with something else that made my skin crawl. As an intimidation ploy, it was remarkably effective.

  When Malefic returned, the head teen immediately spoke up. “She’s being a pain in the arse. Can’t you make her disappear or something?”

  “It’s possible, but I’d prefer not to. I’m quite fond of Matilda in my own way. She is a disappointment to me, I won’t deny. I had great hopes that we could unite for the benefit of both of us, but alas, it was not to be. You see, Matilda has a great brute of a boyfriend who actually threatened me with violence if I didn’t leave her alone.”

  His comment caused everyone to laugh, though I struggled to see the joke. Heller would have beaten the crap out of him, maybe even worse, if he hadn’t left me alone. It was his folly to underestimate Heller’s lust for revenge; a trait I was coming to believe that was one of his main driving forces.

  “But really, she won’t leave us alone,” complained the head teen.

  “I owe Matilda a great debt. She saved my life and that comes with a heavy burden of repayment.”

  “You can repay me by you and your acolytes leaving this building peacefully and allowing these young ladies to rejoin the conference,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. The repayment for such a debt has been decreed in the Grande Grimoire, and edicts in the Greatest of Books can never be changed, ignored or disobeyed. They say the Grande Grimoire is written entirely in demon blood,” he informed as an aside to the goggling teens. “No, Matilda, I’m sorry, but my repayment must be in blood. For saving my life, I must take another in gratitude. I must smite your chosen enemy.”

  “Can I ask you to smite yourself?”

  He laughed again. “Once again, I’m afraid not. But if you don’t choose someone, my repayment hangs over me for the remainder of my mortal years. I don’t care for that. It’s rather messy and plays havoc with my blood reckoning.”

  I didn’t know what ‘blood reckoning’ was and I didn’t want to know. And I didn’t want this awful man thinking that he owed me some sort of debt. Saving his life had been an instinctive action – something any person would do for another in the same situation. I didn’t expect, or want, a reward of any kind for doing it. I didn’t want us to have any connection, regardless of how tenuous and one-sided it was.

  I lost my patience with this entire farce. “Ladies, this game is over, do you understand? Go back to the hall immediat
ely. You are not leaving the building with this man. And if you do, not only will I ring your parents, I will also ring the police and report you as being abducted. Have I made myself perfectly clear on this?” And though I addressed my comments to the girls, I looked directly at Malefic.

  “Perfectly clear, Matilda. But now it’s time for you to listen to me.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. And though I threw it off as soon as possible, the lingering feel of it and the ‘tentacles’ of whatever he ‘injected’ into people had already begun to worm through my skin into my veins.

  “No,” I said, stepping back, averting my eyes from him.

  “Look at me, Matilda.”

  “No. You’re not hypnotising me.”

  “Look at me, Matilda.”

  “No!”

  I stumbled backwards into the arms of a couple of his acolytes. I thrashed against them, thinking I had a good chance with this couple of weaklings. But when the other two joined their pals at the request of Malefic, my fight suddenly became more difficult. I was reasonably fit, but my two illnesses had sapped my core strength and I hadn’t had a proper chance yet to bring it back to strength.

  “Girls, return to the hall,” I implored. “You’re not safe with this man. Please.”

  One scared teen fled, ungracefully loping back to the hall, standing fearfully at the door, looking back at her friends.

  “Matilda, I just want to talk to you.” I squeezed my eyes shut so he couldn’t see them. “Open her eyes so I can talk to her.”

  “She must be crazy,” opined one of the teens.

  “She obviously has major issues,” said another, with all the confidence of someone who knows absolutely nothing about a subject.

  “She probably just wants Malefic for herself. She can’t leave him alone,” said the head teen.

  “I know – what a cling-on.”

  “Total desperado. So embarrassing. I hope I never get old and desperate like her.”

  The male acolyte propped open my eyes, and though I made my best attempt to bite one of his hands, he captured me in a headlock, so I couldn’t reach him. Malefic came close, gazing into my eyes with his strange all-black eyes.

  “You have lovely eyes, Matilda.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  He only laughed again at my impotence, burning me up with anger. “I believe you’d keep saying that until the day you die.”

  “Rather see you die first,” I said gamely.

  He laid his hand on my shoulder again, his eyes piercing mine. To my complete disgust, I could feel him spreading his evilness inside me, trying to take control of my free will.

  No way, I thought. If it came to it, I’d go down fighting rather than acquiesce to him. I lashed out with my boot, connecting sharply with his shin, kicking him backwards. Then I elbowed behind me, smashing into somebody’s chin. Hands instantly released my eyes, so I guessed I’d struck a target in the male acolyte.

  I pushed Malefic out of my way and ran helter-skelter down the foyer back to the hall. At the door, I peered in, but Farrell was still working on the man, asking loudly for someone to check whether the ambulance had arrived. There was nothing we could do to help each other.

  I had no choice but to stay with the girls. I thought briefly of calling the cops, but what would I say to them? That Malefic might commit an unknown crime? Nobody was going to thank me for that call out.

  The acolytes, under Malefic’s instruction, swept the willing teens down the nearest staircase to the carpark. With a desperate backwards look at Farrell, I decided to follow them. I’d try to ring Farrell in ten minutes to see if he was free to help me. Once the paramedics arrived, there was nothing more for him to do up here, and I’d sure appreciate his help in the carpark.

  I reached the exit, creeping down the stairs. I kept myself hidden behind a wall of the stairwell, daring to poke my head out to scan the carpark. No one to be seen. I descended another level, hearing the unmistakable giggle of the teens from an even lower level. Because Malefic had arrived quite late at the centre, he’d had to find a spot in the dark recesses of the carpark.

  The giggling grew closer as I climbed down cautiously, step by step. Poking my head around the wall like a shy turtle from of its shell, I had to jerk back when I caught sight of the group. Luckily none of them had seen me. They moved further away, so I was able to sneak out to shelter behind a parked car.

  None of them looked back in my direction so I duck-walked to the next car and then to the next. Raising my head over a bonnet, I had a good view of the group. They stood behind a large van consisting of a dual cabin and a cargo area with a back window. I wasn’t familiar with the make or model and couldn’t see its badges at this distance. Malefic laid his hand on each teen, one at a time, murmuring something in a low voice I couldn’t hear. When he’d finished, the acolytes assisted them to step up into the cargo space, where each disappeared inside. When all five teens were ‘loaded’, the door was slammed behind them with a chilling finality.

  The acolytes and Malefic climbed into the dual cabin, the male acolyte driving, Malefic in the front passenger seat. The engine started, and though I’d scribbled down the number plate and everything else distinctive about the van, I was at a loss to know what to do next. Farrell had the keys to the Heller’s 4WD and I couldn’t chase after the van through traffic.

  It was difficult to believe how easy it had been for Malefic to abduct the five teens during daylight, no matter how willingly they’d gone with him. He’d been so nonchalant about it too, not caring that many people had seen him talking to the girls in the foyer and security cameras had surely picked up his movements with them. It was almost as if he intended to disappear entirely after he’d done whatever evil thing he plotted to do to them.

  The van reversed from its space and wound its way through the carpark to the ramp taking them up to the next floor. Frustrated, I watched in despair, my mind considering and rejecting a hundred different plans. I bolted up the stairs to the next level and waited until they drove past me. Then I took the stairs two at a time to the top level. A nebulous idea coalesced in my brain. I could block the van’s exit by standing in the middle of the final ramp, the one leading out to the street. They’d have to run over me to leave.

  But what if they did run over me? Malefic had shown his complete contempt for the law with his brazen abduction of the girls, so what would the hit-and-run of an annoying woman be to him? Nothing, I thought, answering my own question. But the stark fact remained that I had no other plan. I wouldn’t be able to face myself in the mirror if I didn’t do everything I could to try to save those girls.

  So when the van motored into view, I moved from car to car to be closer to the exit. Unexpectedly, the van pulled up, its motor still running. One of the female acolytes climbed out of the cabin and went around to the back, opening the door. She discussed something with one or more of the girls.

  She closed the door and went to Malefic’s window. Irritated, he followed her around to the back, laid his hand on one of the girls and spoke some low words. She sat back down on the benches around the edge of the van’s inside. Satisfied, he nodded at the acolyte and she slammed the door shut. But what I didn’t see her do was relock the back door.

  My heart thudding with hope, I ran to the rear of the van, keeping low, expecting them to start driving again any second. But they remained idling for a few minutes, perhaps sorting through their cash for the right amount before having to pay.

  I tried the door and it opened. Having absolutely no idea what I was going to do next, I climbed into the back with the girls, closing the door just as the van took off again.

  I wedged myself into a corner of the cargo space, closest to the door. The girls looked at me apathetically, shifting along the bench seat without raising any fuss. God, what had he done to them to turn that confident, cheeky group of young women into these expressionless zombies?

  We stopped again as they paid the toll, several unrestrained girls lurc
hing into me, squashing me up against the door. I took stock of what I had with me: my phone – always helpful; a canister of capsicum spray – again, very helpful; the swipe card to the Warehouse and my flat – useless; spare hair tie – useless; wallet – barely containing a brass razoo to bribe Malefic to let us go, so that would have to go in the useless pile.

  I pulled out my phone and texted Farrell a message with a brief summary of what had happened, the number of people involved and the licence plate and general description of the vehicle. I also asked him (all in capital letters for effect) to call the police urgently. Hopefully the cops would be able to trace the vehicle to Malefic’s lair or even better, traffic cops would spot it on its way there.

  There was no air-conditioning in the back of the van and it was hot and stuffy. The van appeared to have been designed as a vehicle for trades people, not as a transporter of humans. I could see through the protective black film on the back windows, though I’d wager that people couldn’t see into the cargo space from the outside.

  We bounced around uncomfortably in the back, the girl who’d raised a fuss earlier rousing again out of whatever stupor Malefic had managed to put her in.

  “Oooh,” she moaned. “My head. Where am I?”

  “Shh,” I soothed, reaching across the van to take her hands. “My name’s Tilly. Somehow you’ve ended up in the back of a van. I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m going to find a way to help you and your friends escape from these evil people who’ve taken you.”

  “Ooh,” she moaned again. “Was it that weird man?”

  “Malefic? Yes.”

  “He told us he had this brilliant magic trick in his van. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to return to the conference like my best friend Juanita did. But Nellie, she’s the big mouth of our group, called Juanita a pussy for chickening out.” She watched her fingers tugging nervously at her skirt hem. “I didn’t want to be called that in front of everyone, especially by Nellie.”