A whistle blew on the platform and doors opened and closed. “I have to go,” Graham said. “Write me when you arrive?”
She nodded and remained in the corridor while he said goodbye to Bridget and shook hands with Mr Park a final time. Then it was her turn and all too soon she was watching his back as he walked down the narrow corridor and off the train.
Agnes waited until she felt the train start to move before returning to the compartment. Mr Park was back in his book and she sat down opposite him, next to Bridget. He was a tall and skinny man, his legs were folded awkwardly beneath him. He was not as pale as Bridget but close. His hair was long and loose. If he noticed her staring at him he had the good manners not to comment on it.
The train moved away and she stared through her own reflection to watch the platform slide away. Somewhere back there was the village that she had called home for all her thirty-two years. She was sad to see it go but what choice did she have? She wanted to be a good wife to Graham and that meant going where he went.
When the lights of the town disappeared she turned away from the window and saw that Mr Park had closed his book and placed it on his knee. He was now looking at her. She turned away again immediately but couldn’t help wondering what he might think of what he saw.
“Excuse me,” he said and turned away in a huff of embarrassment.
“What book are you reading?” said Bridget.
Mr Park smiled at Bridget. There was no name on the book but she thought it was probably a New Testament. He looked at her as if asking permission to speak.
“You should be flattered Mr Park. My daughter never speaks to strangers,” she said.
“Well I hope I shan’t be a stranger for long. It is a very long journey to Lunden.” He turned to Bridget. “It’s a very special book Bridget,” he said. “It was written by a very important man who is sadly no longer with us. Do you like to read?”
It was the strangest thing but Agnes couldn’t recall telling him Bridget’s name. Perhaps Graham had told him. That must have been it. Beside her Bridget was nodding that she did like to read.
“Did your mother teach you?” Mr Park said.
Bridget nodded and then all of a sudden they were in deep conversation and not just about books and reading. Mr Park spoke to her about Sunday school and her friends, about helping around the house and about what she wanted to do when she was older. The answer, ‘travel the world’ surprised Agnes as she had never expressed an interest in travel to her.
Mr Park was an excellent conversationalist with an easy manner. Agnes soon forgot all about her initial cold feelings towards him. However, when he pardoned himself to use the toilet his book fell open and she caught a glimpse of the pages inside. It was not, as she had first thought a bible. The pages were hand written so it looked more like a diary.
When he returned Bridget was asleep and she was headed the same way herself but she didn’t want to appear rude. But Mr Park was insightful and told her; “Please don’t stay awake on my account. I won’t sleep but you must rest.”
She smiled at him and closed her eyes. She opened them once a few moments later to see that he had picked up his little book again and was reading by the lamp next to his head. Then she closed her eyes for the last time until she woke.
CHAPTER 7
AGNES WAS WOKEN BY A SUDDEN MOVEMENT AND cried out in surprise. The bag that had been above her head fell down and the contents spilled out on the floor. The train had stopped moving.
Agnes pulled her wits together and looked around the compartment. Mr Park was gone and so was his little book. Bridget was standing by the door looking into the dark corridor.
“Bridget,” she said and her daughter turned around. She couldn’t tell anything from her expression and refused to ask if she saw anything out there. Her own concerns would not become her daughters. “Come and sit down dear.”
Bridget walked over and sat beside her. She could feel the warmth radiating from her little girl and longed to put an arm around and hold her tight but that would just scare her. Likewise comments about how everything was going to be fine and not to worry. Although Bridget was a very perceptive child so she more than likely already knew how Agnes felt.
They sat in silence and listened to the voices outside. Stiff little whispers that floated in on the warm night. She wondered if they were supposed to get off the train, was there a mechanical fault? Were they safe? She realised that Bridget had fallen asleep and seeing her very perceptive daughter so calm helped her to relax. She very nearly closed her eyes and went back to sleep herself but all of a sudden Mr Park was standing at the door. She hadn’t noticed him arrive.
“Please Mrs Kable,” he said. “You need to come with me.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” he said, “yes there’s a problem. Hurry please.”
She might have argued that it wasn’t proper for a married woman to go off with a strange man, but Bridget was already on her feet and at the door. Agnes got up and followed them.
Mr Park said that there wasn’t time to stop and collect her valuables or even to wait while she put her suit case back together. They hurried into the narrow corridor which now smelled of gunpowder. Behind her she could hear screaming. Agnes did not need her daughters gift to realise that the problem was not a mechanical one. ‘Highway men’ she thought and hurried to keep up with Bridget and Mr Park.
At the end of the carriage he opened the door and she followed him out.
The night was thin and cold. A few meagre clouds hung low in the sky but they did not obscure the stars or the moon. They climbed down onto a bank, a field that stretched down the side of a hill and vanished in a forest that she could just about see by the light of the moon. There were a few individual trees scattered frugally around the grass.
She could hear the voices now, although they were on the other side of the train and therefore further away than they had been while she was in her compartment, they gentle breeze carried them across the track to her ears.
‘...the girl...’
She heard the word and in that instance she knew with a certainty she could not explain that they were talking about Bridget. Whatever had happened it was because of Bridget.
“Mrs Kable please,” Mr Park said. “We need to hurry.”
He offered her his hand but of course she didn’t take it. She looked at his face and it seemed handsome in the moonlight in a way it had not done earlier. Could she trust him? He was a stranger and, despite the warmth of his hand, she had not been able to completely forget the sensation of cold that she had felt when they had first met. And there was the book. She didn’t know why the book concerned her so much but she could not deny that it did. On the other hand he had been very gentlemanly and he had professed to be looking after them. If he was dangerous, or, worse still, working with the men who had stopped the train, why had he led them away?
Agnes did not know if she could trust Mr Park but she went with him. Perhaps a mothers instinct told her that he was also concerned for Bridget’s safety, perhaps she simply couldn’t think of anything else to do.
They hurried along the side of the train, keeping low and close so that they wouldn’t be seen. She heard shouting and two gunshots but she didn’t stop moving. When they were half-way along the train they stopped and pressed themselves agains the side. Ahead of them there was a small copse.
She was out of breath, her dress made it difficult to get enough air into her lungs, but she was possessed with a wild passion to keep her daughter safe. She would not let anything happen to Bridget she was certain of that. If they planned to take her they would have do it over her dead body.
“Are you ready?” said Mr Park after a moments rest.
She nodded but didn’t waste breath speaking. Bridget was nestled between them, Agnes could feel her shaking but couldn’t bring herself to look at her face and find out whether it was cold or fear. She didn’t think she could stand to see terror on her daughters
face.
Then they were running and then they were seen. A voice that seemed to cut through the air said; “After them.”
They made it halfway to the copse before they were surrounded. Vulnerable in the open field they clung together and turned in a slow circle to see the twelve men on horseback who had them trapped.
“Hand her over,” said one of them in a voice identical to the other.
Automatically Agnes stepped between the one who had spoken and Bridget. She hoped she made her intention to defend her daughter clear.
She could not see the men clearly in the darkness and she would never be sure whether it was the slope of the hill or something else but they seemed too big. In her mind the men were twelve feet tall and their mounts were as big as elephants.
“You won’t have her,” said Mr Park and Agnes felt a warmth in her own soul that more than compensated for the coldness in his.
“This is none of your concern,” said a different rider with an identical voice. They could have been twins.
“She’s under my protection,” said Mr Park.
“Your protection,” said a third, still with an identically deep baritone voice. Agnes began to feel her head swimming as if there were some charge in the air that she couldn’t see. “Your protection doesn’t mean anything to us.”
Agnes glanced at Mr Park and waited for him to say something more but he didn’t. He stood as a stranger beside her but ready to fight for her daughter and that made him family as far as she was concerned.
The men climbed off their horses at the same time and in the same way. It was like watching a single man dismount through a prism. The men moved forwards with the same pace and upright swagger. The air seemed to hum with static charge.
They pressed Bridget between them but they were the only protection she had. The men stopped in front of them.
“Hand her over now,” they said, all at once and in perfect time with one another. Agnes felt her head swim. She glanced up at the train and saw dark faces pressed against the windows, watching but not doing anything to help. “This is your last chance.”
“You won’t have her,” Agnes said. “You can’t.”
“As you wish,” they all said together.
The man in front of her towered above her. His hand felt like an anvil dropped from a great height as it struck her. She opened her mouth to scream but the air had been forced from her lungs. She tried to stay on her feet but they left the ground and she flew several feet across the field before landing face down on the damp grass. Something snapped as she landed but she didn’t feel any pain. That would come later.
Agnes turned back and tried to stand but her ankle was twisted and couldn’t hold her weight. She watched helplessly as the men closed in on Bridget. They were going to take her and there was nothing she could do about it. Even Mr Park, who she had no doubt was very strong, couldn’t defend her from twelve men.
But she was wrong about that.
The twelve men closed in on Mr Park and Bridget. She heard her daughter scream and then saw the first man fly backwards through the air. He seemed to fall in slow motion and when he hit the ground his body shrank as if the grass were absorbing it. She didn’t understand what she was seeing but then it happened again and again.
She wondered if it was something Mr Park was doing. Did he know some mystical eastern fighting technique that caused his opponents to dissolve? It seemed unlikely but you heard all sorts of things about the eastern arts and she was seeing it happen before her very eyes. No doubt Graham would have some perfectly reasonable explanation for what was happening but suddenly she didn’t care very much what Graham thought. He was the one who had put them on the train by themselves so, in a way, this was his fault.
Another man flew through the air, landed and dissolved, and another. She tried to stand again and found that she could do so if she was slow and careful. She didn’t think she could do very much to help though, more likely she would get in the way.
One by one Mr Park dispatched the men until there was just one left. It seemed that he had done it, that he had successfully defended her daughter. But then she watched the single man became two. He split in half before her very eyes as if a mirror had been placed in the field. Then the two of them split again and there were four of them. A third time and there were eight. They split again a fourth and final time and now there were sixteen men. All identical, all huge and all trying to get her daughter.
Agnes thought she might faint. It was impossible but she had seen it with her own eyes.
They moved towards Bridget and Mr Park and she knew that this time Mr Park would not be able to win again.
A hand grabbed her arm and she screamed.
“Enough!” said a voice behind her. She tried to turn around to see who it was, but they squeezed her shoulder so tightly that she couldn’t move.
The men stopped and stepped back. She could see Bridget again, holding Mr Park’s hand as if he were her own father. Agnes tried to go to her, twisted ankle be damned, but the man kept a firm grip on her shoulder.
“Hand her over Park,” said the man behind her.
“You won’t have her,” he said bravely and pushed Bridget behind him away from the man.
“Hand her over or this one is dead.”
The air froze in her lungs and her heart stopped beating. The pounding in her ears stopped and she couldn’t move. She felt her legs start to give way and in a moment she would be on the ground but that didn’t seem to matter. What was a little mud on your dress when you were dead.
“Stop!” Mr Park said and suddenly she could breath again and her legs felt almost solid. “Okay,” he said.
“No,” Agnes screamed. She wouldn’t let him do it, her life for her daughters was a fair deal. But she knew that wouldn’t be the case, not really. The man hadn’t said it was one or the other, he had made it very clear that he would either take Bridget or he would kill her and then take Bridget. But still, how could she live with herself it she chose her own life over Bridget’s? “Don’t let him hurt her,” she said.
Mr Park ignored her and she hated him. She hated him as he walked across the field with her daughter in his hand and she hated him as he saved her life.
Bridget didn’t seem to know what was going on. How else could the almost serene glow on her face be explained? She held her head up and remained poised as they approached the man who was holding her.
“Bridget run,” said Agnes but her daughter didn’t seem to hear her. Perhaps it was some other eastern trick that Mr Park was performing. So in a last ditch effort to save her daughter she did something she never liked to do, something that Graham would refuse to believe was possible before telling her she must never ever do it. She reached out for her daughters mind and found it in the night. ‘Bridget? Bridget honey, it’s mummy, can you hear me?’
Mr Park stopped a few feet away. “Let her go,” he said.
“First the child, then you can do what you like with the mother, she’s no concern of ours.”
‘Yes mummy, I can hear you.”
Mr Park seemed to be debating what he should do, whether he could trust this man to do as he said. Behind him the sixteen men had become one again.
‘Honey I need you to run away. There’s a forest behind you, do you think you can get there?’
Bridget turned to look at the forest but of course no one else knew why.
‘Well honey, do you?’ she pressed because there wasn’t much time now. ‘Could you do it for mummy?’
‘Yes I think so.’
‘That’s good, that’s my good girl.’ She could feel herself starting to cry because it seemed like this was the last conversation she would ever have with her daughter. When the man realised what was happening he would kill her and then go after her daughter. ‘Mummy loves you sweetheart.’
‘I love you too mummy.’
‘When Mr Park lets go of your hand you have to run. Don’t stop and don’t look back. Do you understand?
’
‘Yes mummy.’
It happened suddenly. One moment Bridget was standing there the next she was gone. Agnes thought (or perhaps simply hoped) that Mr Park had tried to help. He seemed to push Bridget behind him while at the same time appearing to hand her forwards and give her to the man.
Bridget ran, just as she had promised she would do. She ran with all her might, her little legs pounding away as quickly as she could manage.
Agnes was thrown aside. She landed painfully in a heap with her arm awkwardly twisted beneath her. She looked up and saw the men charge through Mr Park as if he wasn’t there. He fell on the floor but just as quickly got up again and started to chase them.
They caught Bridget long before she reached the forest.
The men rounded on her, circled and trapped her. Agnes could only scream while Mr Park ran headlong into the wall of men and was sent flying.
She screamed again and tried to stand. Her ankle gave way beneath her with a sickening crack that shot waves of pain through her leg, up her back and into her skull. The edges of the world became black and soft. She tried to fight the overwhelming sensation of nausea but she failed.
Tilting forwards she vomited into the grass and toppled over so that she landed on her already damaged arm. The pain was too much, her heart couldn’t take it and the panic of what they were doing to Bridget. She tried to fight, tried to stay awake but the soft darkness enfolded her, swallowed her up and she was gone.
CHAPTER 8
THERE WAS SILENCE. LONG BEFORE SHE FOUND THE courage to open her eyes again she knew that they were gone. Knew that Bridget was gone. When she did open her eyes she saw that even the train had gone.
Agnes reached out with her thoughts for a trace of Bridget. Even a scrap of thought, something left over that might reassure her that she was still alive. But she felt nothing.
She was leaning up against a tree on the edge of the forest and for a moment she didn’t think to wonder how she had got there. Her arm hurt as if it had been snapped in two and her ankle felt worse. She didn’t think she would be able to crawl let alone walk and how far was she from the nearest town anyway?
Terror in the Night Page 4
