by Maren Smith
Never in her wildest dreams would she have expected an adult resort to have a daycare. She hadn't seen any children on her bus or getting on the one that left before hers. Who would bring their kids to a place like—
The door opened and out spilled a bouncy thirty-something brunette in a short (very, very short) blue and white pinafore that barely came down far enough to cover her diaper. She was lacy and frilly, with her pretty pink lips locked around a pacifier and her short hair barely long enough for the pigtails she wore.
She was accompanied by a well-dressed gentleman who held her hand. “Are you ready to visit the horsies?”
The “little” girl nodded, bouncing and grinning and looking in that moment so much like Selena that Chelsea could only stare. She backed hastily to get out of their way, but the gentleman stopped when he saw her. He looked at her clothes, his mouth pulling into a frown. “Young lady, what are you doing out here dressed like that?”
Glancing down at herself, Chelsea then looked at each of them in turn. She beat a hasty retreat back to the main hall, glancing back over her shoulder once just as she turned the corner, but neither the gentleman nor his “little” girl were pursuing her. They remained just outside the nursery doorway, the man still frowning and fishing what looked like a pager out of his pocket.
Chelsea ducked out of sight, a thin quiver of panic digging in under her breastbone. She hadn’t been here one full hour yet and already she was in trouble. Screw Wardrobe. Her most important thing right now was finding those admissions tables. She had to get checked in so she could get her map, her room key and then spend the rest of the day hiding out while she tried to figure out what exactly she’d got herself into.
Walking quickly, Chelsea fled the length of that long hall, through a wing filled with endless doors labeled N201 to N240, until she came to a windowed exit at the far end. She burst through that door onto a stone landing that overlooked a long and narrow grassy playground. Surrounded on three sides by tall Castle walls and gated at the far end for privacy, the playground was full of adults in Victorian-era children’s clothing—little girls dressed in a veritable rainbow of “Alice in Wonderland” dresses and little boys in short pants with matching jackets, knee socks and shiny, black shoes. They played on seesaws and merry-go-rounds and swung on swings, and intermixed among them were more adults, this time dressed like adults albeit in full period costume. Men wore the distinguished trousers, vests and jackets of Victorian men some two hundred years out of date. Women wore either the gray garb of impeccably dressed governesses or the much fancier gowns of Ladies of A Higher Station. Despite having flung herself out here hard enough to make the door slam and rattle against the doorstop, almost no one noticed her. Those who did, however, stared, making her feel so very conspicuous in her jeans and simple white blouse.
Chelsea hugged her envelope as if it were a shield. She was about to go back inside when a sudden commotion across the playground drew her attention. A gentleman had caught one of the young men in short pants by the ear and was leading him, kicking and fussing, off to one of the benches set up along the Castle walls. Before Chelsea could react, he stripped the young man of his belt first and then his trousers, and promptly up-ended the “youth” over the back of the bench. What happened next nearly wrenched a scream out of Chelsea, though it wrenched more than a few out of the young man. He was thrashed, the whip and snap of his own belt as it licked across his naked buttocks carrying across the playground almost as clearly as his shouts and wails.
Dear God…she was in a crazy place!
Chelsea stumbled back inside and quickly helped the spring-controlled door close faster than it was inclined to. Though it did block out the whipping sounds, the rapidly disintegrating shouts, then pleas, then wails of the man on the receiving end still permeated through the door.
Her stomach quivered—a very odd shivering sensation that she didn’t know how to describe. Fear came close, but she wasn’t really afraid, at least not anywhere except for down deep in her tingling, tightening stomach. No, this felt more like something else—apprehension, excitement and…and something she really didn’t want to examine too closely because feeling that in this particular moment just wasn’t right.
A grown man in little boy clothing was being tortured—beaten—just outside this door with no one doing anything to help him and here she was, her heart racing, as short of breath as if she’d run a mile in a minute, feeling tendrils of—of something best left unacknowledged, swimming around inside her. She hugged her envelope, pressing it hard across her stomach in a vain effort to squeeze that shivery feeling into frozen submission.
The sound of those wails had reduced. Chelsea didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself. She snuck back out on the landing just far enough to see for herself that the whipping had stopped. The two men now stood, the gentleman with his arms around the youth, stroking his hair, comforting now that discipline was done. Chelsea could see his mouth moving, but she was much too far away to make out what was being said. It wasn’t for her ears anyway. This was all for the young man, who nodded and hiccupped, sniffling while he reached back to rub his bare bottom, his trousers still a puddle of forgotten fabric around his feet.
Chelsea crept back into the Castle, pulling the hydraulic door closed between her and the crazy outside world all over again. She rubbed her stomach, clutching and re-clutching at her stolen envelope and her meager Wal-Mart bag, willing that confusion of sensations to still.
“Hey there, baby girl.”
Chelsea jumped, slapping a hand over her mouth to keep back her yelp of surprise—first for being startled and then again when she saw the truly massive man coming towards her down the hall. He was tall, broad, with muscle stacked upon muscle and big, bold-white letters “Castle Security” emblazoned across his black shirt.
Oh…crap…
“Don’t be afraid,” he said with a gentle, friendly smile. “Come here, sweetie. I just want to have a word with you.”
Oh crapcrapcrap!
Her heart in her throat, Chelsea bolted. She would have ducked outside, except two more security men were jogging up the courtyard stairs, coming straight toward her.
“Wait…” The big man tried to stop her, but she quickly veered left. A pair of huge wooden doors blocked off the end of the hall, but they weren’t locked. When she threw herself against them, they opened easily and Chelsea spilled into yet another corridor, this one full of people in all sorts of costumes. Maids and butlers mingled with nobles and peasants, governesses and school “children." A sultan walked right past her with his entire harem of veiled women of all ages, sizes and body types.
What the hell kind of place was this?
“Come on, baby girl,” the muscular security guard called cajolingly after her. “Don’t make me have to chase you.”
Chelsea broke into another run, faster this time, though she knew she had nowhere to go. She could run right smack into room R221, but what good would that do? She didn't have the key to get in. She was caught. They already knew she didn’t belong here. What was she going to do? Would they send her to jail for this?
Ducking elbows and dodging wide costume skirts, Chelsea darted around the next corner, praying she’d find the main staircase and grand entrance hall but instead, she ran nearly head-on into three more security guards. One was on his cellphone. When he saw her, they all turned around and looked. When he put his cellphone away, like a single wall of black t-shirts and stark white letters, they started toward her.
She skidded, nearly falling on her butt in her haste to turn around and dropping all the contents of her bag right there, across the hallway floor. They were all she’d brought, but she had to abandon them, and still there was no going back the way she’d come. The big man was jogging up behind her and the other guests had begun to take notice of the situation. Some were getting out of the way while others were squaring off around her, caging her in to help make it easier for the guards to catch her.
Chelsea looked everywhere, frantic for any avenue of escape. With three guards like a wall just ten feet behind her and the big man blocking the way up ahead, there was just no place for her to go.
“It’s okay.” The big man held up his hands, slowing from a jog to a walk. He didn’t look angry with her. Rather, he seemed very calm, perhaps even a bit perplexed. “Calm down, sweetheart. I just want to talk.”
Her heart raced. She could feel it pounding bruises against the inside of her ribs, but there was no place else for her to run. She was caught, surrounded by a cage of people who stood whispering amongst themselves, watching, some as if in a state of high expectation, while others tried to sneak quietly past the blockade so they could continue on their merry way.
“Hey.”
On the verge of tears, Chelsea looked to the big man. The guards behind her had slowed, but they were still closing the distance. Any minute now, they were going to grab her. And then they were going to take her to jail. She just knew it.
“My name is Jackson,” the big man said. “Don’t be afraid, baby girl. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Jackson? Sara’s Jackson? The woman with the pregnancy tests lined up along the sink in that medical room? For some reason, knowing that he was connected to the only few people in the resort that Chelsea knew, made her feel better…right up until a door down the hallway opened and in walked the two men from the playground. The young man in short pants was holding his disciplinarian’s hand. He was smiling, skipping almost, but all Chelsea could think about when she saw him was the sound that belt had made each time it had come whipping down. She backed away, from Jackson now as much as from those two men, and she pointed at them. “D-don’t you t-touch me! Any of you!”
For reasons that went far beyond the exertions of her brief escape attempt, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She clutched at her envelope, not because it was some grand saving shield of protection, but because it was all she had and she desperately needed to hold onto something.
“It’s okay.” Jackson held up both hands, showing her they were empty, as if that small act alone could somehow make a strong man his size instantly harmless. “It’s okay,” he said again, soft and cajoling. “Daddy’s not mad, sweetheart. I just want to talk.”
“What?” Her breath caught in the back of her throat all over again. Daddy? Seriously? In what strange, parallel, Twilight-Zone dimension was it okay for an unknown man to call himself her daddy? Why did the way he’d said it have all these weird sexual undertones? And really, why did she want to walk right up to him and instead of punching him in the nose, curl up against his chest in the hopes that he’d put those massive arms around her and just…what? Make everything magically all right? What was wrong with her? What was wrong with this place? Nobody had ever called himself her daddy, except, well, her father. And maybe her college boyfriend, because she had this hazy half-memory of him once saying that horribly clichéd “Who’s your Daddy?” And since she couldn’t remember his name right now, much less whether or not he actually said those words, what did that say?
“Come here, baby girl.” So soothing and soft, Jackson reached for her hand. “It’s okay. You’ve done a naughty thing, but it’s nothing we can’t fix. Where’s your bracelet?”
More confused now than scared, more so at her own bewildering reaction to how he was treating her, Chelsea looked first at the white bracelet on his arm and then the identical bracelets worn by each of the three guards blocking the way behind her. She had bracelets just like those in her envelope, two purples and a white. She tore the Manila paper in her haste to dig them out and thrust all three at Jackson.
He took them, his tone registering his surprise. “You’re in the royal program, not the nursery?”
She tensed when his fingers slid around her wrist and though she stiffened her legs, he pulled her closer. Right up to his chest.
“Let me see,” he said as he took the envelope from her hand. “I just want to take a quick peek. Why don’t we get out of the middle of the hall so all these people can go about their business? Come along, sweetpea. Let’s go sit down over here.”
Now that the excitement had dwindled, those who had stopped to watch began to disperse. A distinct air of disappointment emanated from the other guests, as if the scene between her and Jackson hadn’t quite culminated into what had been expected. Chelsea didn’t understand it, but once more drawn to whatever destinations awaited them in this maze of a castle, the crowd moved on.
Pulling her by her hand, Jackson drew her into a shallow nook off the main hall. Set up like a waiting station, it consisted of four chairs and a short table and sat adjacent to a single door marked with a sign that read, “Clinic Hours: Daily 10am-6pm.” Beneath that, were the names of three doctors: Milton, Ng and Kruchek. There was a check beside Kruchek’s name, and from behind that closed door Chelsea could hear the breathy cries and soft moans of a woman in either extreme ecstasy or dire distress. Considering what she’d seen out on the playground, it was entirely likely it could have been both.
“Sit down.” Jackson gestured to one of the chairs.
Chelsea sat, but holding still was impossible. She clasped and re-clasped her hands, alternately watching as Jackson sorted through her meager assortment of stolen papers and, with each renewing cry from across the hall, casting nervous glances at the Clinic door.
The big man tsked, not once but twice. “You just might be in more trouble than I at first suspected. Did you not register at the admissions table when you first came in?”
“I…” How much of what happened dare she admit to? Feeling sick in the pit of her stomach, Chelsea thought about the pregnancy tests lined up on the sink in the medical office and then about how very much she did not want to be the person to break that news. Silence, in this case, really was golden. She twisted at her fingers and shut her mouth.
After a moment of agonizing silence, Master Marshall stopped waiting for an answer, gave her a look, and then returned to perusing his papers.
“What happened to Ben?” he asked next.
Now was the moment. She could come clean—They threw their vacation away and I dug it out of the trash; or perhaps even, They changed their mind and I came in their place—that probably wouldn’t end her up in jail right away, but it likely would end in a phone call to the credit card holder. Then, she’d go to jail. Or maybe they’d simply stick her on the bus back to Granger and she’d spend the night sleeping in her car, but at least no worse off than she had been that morning. Honesty was probably her best bet at this point, and yet, when Chelsea opened her mouth that wasn’t what came pouring out past her lips. “We had a fight.”
Jackson tsked again. “He didn’t come with you?”
She shook her head.
“Did you inform anyone that you were here alone or did you bypass orientation entirely and just come right on in?” He was smiling when he gave her his next Look, one that plainly said he already knew the answer to that. When she dropped her eyes to her lap, he pulled out his cellphone. “Suit yourself, young lady, but don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”
“A chance for what?” She watched him punch in a quick text and send it off, then he put the phone back in his pocket and stood up. This time, he didn’t offer her the choice of his hand, but took firm hold of her arm and pulled her to her feet.
“Come along, young lady,” he said, planting a quick swat to her bottom when she didn’t immediately fall into line at his side. Her whole body jumped when he did that, but she didn’t even get a chance to protest, because what he said next stopped everything. “It’s time we got to the bottom of this—you, me and the Master of the Castle.”
A rising tidal wave of dread swept up through her and it drowned out every other sensation…except, perhaps, the tingling-prickling feeling that was even now crawling across the surface of her bottom.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Doesn’t seem to matter h
ow many checks and balances we have in place,” Master Marshall said, taking the manila envelope Jackson handed him. “Somebody always manages to break the rules. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s one in every busload.”
Hovering in the doorway, standing rooted to the floor exactly where Jackson had finally stopped pushing at her, Chelsea watched helplessly as the Master of the Castle emptied her stolen contents out onto his desk. Picking through the few papers, he found the receipt first.
“Ah… Ben Murdock and Elizabeth Jenkins. I wondered what had happened with you two.” Plucking two file folders out of his inbox, he opened them both, laying one on top of the other. “I can honestly say it’s very, very rare when a guest comes so far in the registration process, including paying for the privilege of being here, and then doesn’t show up. Tell me—” Seating himself at his desk and gesturing for her to take one of the two guest chairs opposite him, Master Marshall folded his hands on top of her file. “—is Ben roaming the halls, as yet undiscovered, as well?”
Her chest felt as if there was a fist squeezing in around it, but Chelsea stuck to her story. “There was a fight.”
“So he stayed home and you came anyway.” His smile turned slightly sympathetic before he shut Ben’s folder and set it aside. “Tell me something else…is it Beth or Elizabeth? You have it both ways on your form.”
“Um…” And so it began, the improvisation required by all great liars to be just that—great at lying. God, she wished she had more practice at this. “Beth?” she guessed.
“Tell me, Beth,” he began again. “How did you manage to miss the admissions process?”
Chelsea glanced up when Jackson eased into the chair beside her. She rubbed her sweaty palms against her thighs. “I got in line,” she admitted, but now how could she explain and yet avoid bringing Selena and the others into this mess? “I-I guess I got swept up in the excitement?”
She cringed a little, something Marshall noticed. “That sounds like a question.”
