“I will.”
With one final look at my brother, I turn and head toward the campsite. The closer I get to it, the faster my heart races. By the time I’m stepping into the partial clearing, I feel like I can hardly breathe.
I clear my throat, trying to get the attention of the man whose back is to me as he sits next to the small campfire, but he doesn’t acknowledge my approach. “Excuse me, sir,” I try again, taking a few steps closer, but he still doesn’t respond.
I’m reluctant to get too close, so I walk along the outside of the clearing to widen my approach. When I can finally see the profile of the man’s face, I realize his eyes are closed. For a moment I’m elated at the thought of simply grabbing his nearby backpack and sprinting for the tree line, but a couple of extra steps disabuses me of that notion, as it is all I need to clarify the situation.
A large cut traverses the man’s neck, and his dark shirt is soaked with blood. Someone did this and left him in this sickening position on purpose. I look to the backpack over by the tent and see the shiny cans of food spilling out, but no sign of the weapons that were visible before. Someone took them and left the rest. They left this scene just the way they wanted it.
“Oh my God,” I breathe out as I scan the woods around me. “They’re still here.”
I bolt back toward my previous position, unsure of where Jake might be, but knowing he must be somewhere close by. I whisper his name as loudly as I can while I search for him through the trees and brush. My voice gets louder each time, until I’m practically yelling his name in my desperation to find him.
“Where are you?” I cry out as I come to a stop and bend over with my hands on my knees, gasping for breath. A painful sob racks my chest at the realization that I am truly alone. After everything we’ve been through, I’ve failed my brother and myself, and I have nothing left.
I gasp as I feel a sudden sharp prick in my arm, the painful sting quickly smoothed over by a calming sensation that spreads throughout my body. A floaty feeling takes over as my eyelids grow heavy, and I give in to it easily, surrendering to the darkness as I collapse to the ground.
7
Now
I know I’m awake, but I’d like to remain in denial of that fact for just a little bit longer. I need to take a moment to remember what has led me to my current state: lying down face-first on this cold hard surface.
I can picture the dining room illuminated by candlelight with steaming, delectable foods on the table. The man with the dark hair and unreadable olive eyes was there, filling my plate and questioning the scar on my hand. And of course there was the wine, that large glass of red liquid that I had downed in a few quick gulps to help get me through what I knew would be a difficult conversation.
My unsettled stomach begins to make itself known, the sensation quickly washing over me to the point that I have to sit up because I know I’m going to be sick. In a quick, disoriented look around the bathroom, I find the white porcelain bowl of the nearby toilet and scramble to it just in time to empty the contents of my stomach into it.
The relief at getting that poisoned substance out of my body is almost instantaneous, but the relief is short-lived when I realize the dark-haired man is staring at me from a chair in the corner of the room, his face illuminated by the daylight coming through the sheer curtain over the window.
“What did you give me?” I ask wearily, pushing away from the toilet.
“It was just a little something to calm you down and help you relax.” He leans forward with his elbows on his knees, watching me carefully. “It was meant to be taken in sips along with a meal, not guzzled down all at once.”
“Of course,” I respond sarcastically, more to myself than to him. “Where is my brother? Please.” My throat clenches at the last word, exposing my desperation for reassurance that Jake is okay.
The man’s eyes pierce into me, somehow managing to create deep fissures in my resolve with nothing more than his harsh gaze. “It’s not time for you to see him yet.”
My eyes immediately close for a long moment, as I’m on the verge of falling apart. I hate that I’m this willing to give up right now, but I don’t know how much more I can handle. I’m physically weak and emotionally exhausted. I have absolutely nothing left to give, and all this asshole wants to do is take from me.
Without any warning, the man gets up from the chair and approaches me, and I can’t help but cringe and move away as he stops within a foot of my vulnerable position on the floor. I brace myself to prepare for whatever he’s going to do to me, but the contact I’m expecting never comes. In its place I hear the familiar, but now rare sound of the toilet being flushed.
“How did you—”
“You’re lucky, you know,” he interrupts in his typical calm and cool demeanor. “I built this house to be completely self-sustaining. Its solar panels provide enough electricity for running water and a working kitchen. Its solar water heating system allows for warm showers.”
I should be amazed to hear this house holds such luxuries that I haven’t experienced in months now, but I don’t have the mental energy to be excited about it. The expectant look on his face tells me he’s waiting for a reaction, but given that I can barely even sit up right now, appeasing his ego with compliments about the amenities he offers is far from my primary concern.
He seems disappointed in my lack of response as he towers over me, but he doesn’t say anything. After a few painful moments of silence, he steps away from me toward a freestanding white bathtub in the other corner of the room. With a quick turn of each of the two handles, water begins pouring into the tub at a rapid pace.
“Tell me, Ash,” he says as he runs his hand under the water and adjusts the positions of the handles again. “How long has it been since you’ve had a warm bath?”
Almost as if on cue, hints of steam begin rising from inside the tub, and I both crave and dread the thought of dipping my sore and filthy body in that warm water.
“How long?” the man presses, still expecting an answer.
“I don’t know,” I respond meekly. “It’s been a long time.”
“Go ahead, then.” He steps away from the tub and motions me toward it. “I want you to enjoy this.”
As he takes up his seat on the chair in the corner again, it becomes clear to me what he has in mind right now. This charade of a good deed will be enjoyed more by this man than by me.
For a moment I consider protesting. My best method of fighting against him right now is my lack of compliance with his demands, but it’s hard for me to justify doing this when he has the life of my brother tucked away in his back pocket. He’ll leverage him against me to force my cooperation. Hell, he’s doing that right now without even trying. He knows I won’t go against his wishes while he has Jake. I’ve already demonstrated that to him.
Slowly and carefully, I push myself into a standing position and lean against the white ceramic sink to help keep me vertical. I work the button and zipper of my jean shorts with my good hand and slide them down my legs. After kicking them off completely, I strain to pull my shirt over my head, the muscles in my shoulders and arms screaming with soreness from the hours on end I was strung up in the dark room. When I’m down to my bra and underwear, I begin to walk toward the tub, but the man raises his hand in the air to stop me.
“All of it.” His eager eyes lock on my chest then follow down my stomach. “Let me see all of you.”
For a moment I freeze, as my mind and body are at odds with each other in a panic to determine my next move. Though everything inside me is screaming to fight back, I have no choice but to comply. I reluctantly lower my underwear and step out of them before reaching behind me to unhook my bra. My cheeks burn with embarrassment as I stand naked before him, completely still, awaiting his critique of my appearance.
No matter how hard I try to avoid his gaze, my eyes inevitably lock with his. Though he tries to maintain a look of indifference, I can tell he’s pleased with what he see
s. It feels like an eternity that I stand here exposed to him until he finally gives his next command.
“Turn around and walk to the tub.”
My response time is almost immediate, since I’m more than happy to look away from the man. The moment I’m turned around completely, I briefly close my eyes and draw a deep breath before walking the short distance over to the tub.
“Turn off the water and get in. I want you to face this way in the tub.”
I do exactly as I’m told, turning back the handles until the water flow stops completely before I carefully lift my leg over the side of the tub. The water is warm and inviting as I step into it, providing almost instant relief to my sore muscles. As I grasp the sides of the tub to lower myself to the bottom, my body is enveloped by the comforting liquid, and for a short blissful moment, I close my eyes to bask in the tranquil feeling of it. The soothing experience is short-lived, though, when I open my eyes to the reality of the man in the corner watching me intently, clearly enjoying every second of this.
“Now that you’re comfortable,” he continues as if this whole situation is completely normal, “I believe you have a story to finish.”
My reluctance to resume telling the story behind my scar isn’t strong enough to outweigh the exhaustion I feel, so I decide to just give him what he wants and be done with it. “It was a couple of weeks before Christmas last year. I was a student in my final year at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. I was first chair violin in the school’s symphony orchestra. We’d just finished our last concert of the year.”
It feels strange talking about these places, like they were from another planet or another lifetime given how drastically things have changed since then. I doubt Berklee’s campus has survived the fall of Boston. If finals hadn’t just ended for me and Jake only days before that, giving us the opportunity to wait at the coastal house for our parents’ arrival for my graduation, we probably would have been stuck in the city when it fell. We never would have made it out alive.
And in the end, it might not matter, because I don’t know if we’ll survive this.
“I was walking back to my brownstone apartment after the concert,” I continue. “It was dark, and I was alone. Jake was at the concert and offered to walk me home, but I declined.” My throat clenches at the thought of my brother, but I have to bury those emotions if I’m going to make it through this story. “I lived in the opposite direction of Northeastern University where he went to school, and I walked home alone all of the time, so it wasn’t a big deal.”
I take a deep breath before I let my mind delve into the memories I’ve tried to keep tucked away, the images and feelings that only reappear in my nightmares. “Two guys jumped me and started beating me on the sidewalk. They grabbed for my purse and the violin case on my shoulder. That violin was like an extension of me and by far the most expensive and precious thing I owned. There was no way I could let it go, and I didn’t. I managed to save my violin, but not before one of the guys pulled a knife and sliced almost completely through my palm.”
My body involuntarily flinches as the man gets up from the corner and resets the chair right next to the bathtub, taking a seat within a foot of me. “Let me see it.”
Pulling my left hand out of its refuge in the water, I reluctantly present it to him for inspection. I’m expecting his touch to be rough and forceful, but when he takes my hand between both of his to feel the line of my scar and to bend my fingers back and forth, his touch is cautious and gentle.
“Make a fist,” he instructs, and I try but fail to bring the tips of my fingers all the way down to touch my palm. After a few more moments of inspection, he lets go of my hand and leans back in his chair. “It never healed properly.”
I quickly return my hand beneath the water. “There were multiple surgeries. I was just about to start aggressive rehab after the last one when the world went to hell.”
The man’s expression remains indifferent, his vivid eyes alive with the thoughts turning in his head, but giving me no insight into them. He reaches over to grab a small white bottle on a nearby table and offers it to me. “Time to wash up.”
I’m relieved that he’s moving on from his strange interest in my hand, but can’t deny my concern about what could happen next. With the small bottle of shampoo in hand, I lie back fully and submerge my entire upper body beneath the warm water, part of me enjoying the strange relief of hiding away beneath the surface. The cleansing water feels good running off my face as I bring myself back up to a sitting position and begin to wash my hair.
It’s hard to ignore the man sitting right next to me as I work the shampoo through the long, wet strands. His intense gaze combined with the silence of the room is unnerving, fueling a need within me to direct his attention to something else, something far away from me and what I’m doing.
“I don’t know your name,” I blurt out, and the man’s eyes connect directly with mine.
“Silas.”
His brief and immediate answer is unexpected, causing me to scramble to find something else to say. “How did you get the scar on your face?”
He shakes his head as he grabs a bar of soap off of the nearby table. “That’s a story for another time.” He offers the bar of soap to me, clearly ready to get on with the next part of the show.
Distraction. I need to keep diverting his attention away from me.
I take the bar of soap and begin working it over my neck and arms while continuing my line of questioning. “Why did you kill that man in the forest?”
His answer is almost immediate, his voice completely calm and even. “He was going to hurt you.”
I can’t hold back the bitter laugh that escapes me. “And what have you been doing to me this whole time? You’ve been hurting me from the moment you took me.”
“You struggled to escape, hurting your wrists,” he shoots back, his voice escalating as he narrows his eyes at me. “You drank all the drugged wine when you were only supposed to sip it. I only ever meant to hold you in place and help calm you down. The rest was your doing.”
A terrifying feeling of vulnerability takes over me. I know I’ve pushed him too far.
I work quickly to finish scrubbing down the rest of my body and then rinse the soap from my skin and hair. By the time I’m done, I’ve made the decision to keep going with my questions, even if it means pushing him completely over the edge. “What have you done with my brother?”
His expression turns irate. “Why do you keep asking about your brother?”
“Because he’s all I have left in this world,” I respond honestly with the slightest tremble to my voice.
“He doesn’t have to be all that’s left.” Silas gets up from the chair, knocking it over backward with the force his quick movement. “You have me. You and I will make a great team.”
I stare up at him blankly as he towers above me, the perfect representation of his power and control over me while Jake and I are his prisoners. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ll be my partner,” he says decisively. “You and me together…we’ll achieve great things.”
Unease pools within my stomach. “And how does my brother fit into this?”
“He doesn’t.” Silas grabs my neck with his right hand and forces my head to the side so that his lips are within millimeters of my ear as he whispers, “It’s just you and me.”
With a quick upward movement, he raises me out of the tub by my neck and discards me on the floor. I cough and struggle to catch my breath as he lifts me from behind by the shoulders and shoves me against the wall next to the only window in the room. He keeps his right hand firmly against my back to hold me in place as he pushes the sheer curtain aside with his left hand, revealing the glass window to the outside world. My face is suddenly shoved against the glass, forced to look outside.
“You see him out there?” Silas roars at me. “You see where I’m keeping your brother?”
My body’s entire focus shifts away from surviv
al mode to scan the area outside for Jake. I search desperately through the visible bushes and trees all the way out to the tall wooden fence that appears to encircle the property, but I can’t find him anywhere. I just see the forest and the fence and something completely out of place and not naturally occurring.
And when I realize what it is, my knees give out on me. My entire being no longer has a purpose. There is nothing left of me, and I am instantly lost to this world.
A fresh mound of dirt. A wooden cross.
The resting place of my brother.
I wail and scream my pain away as I’m pulled back from the window against Silas’ chest. He holds me tightly to him, preventing me from collapsing to the floor. My breath catches as I realize the same arms and hands that hold me now are those that ended my brother’s life, and within a second my body reacts in a final reckless burst of retaliation. With every bit of strength I have left, I fight back against the evil that holds me, thrashing about in my struggle to break free until my head is hurled into the wall, dazing me.
The fight in my limbs instantly subsides. My vision begins to blur. He’s dragging me now, my wet bare skin sliding across the floorboards as he pulls me by the arm. The force of his grip and the weight of my body cause a fiery pain in my right wrist, but that physical pain is nothing compared to the devastation I feel inside. I vaguely hear him speaking to me, something about having a choice between staying with him here or going back in the dark room.
Darkness. Solitude. Those are things I need now. That’s where I belong, my own final resting place.
“Room,” I manage to say, and after being dragged a little farther, I hear the familiar creaking sound of the heavy wooden door to my prison.
Silas swings me by the arm to throw me inside, my damp and naked body landing hard on the cold cement. He steps away for a moment and returns with a plastic bucket and a water bottle in hand, tossing both objects into the room onto the floor next to me before turning around to slam the door shut.
Falling Ash Page 5
