Hunting Ground

by Meghan Holloway

  “I want to finish telling you the story, and then you can help me with the conclusion.”

  “I always appreciate a good story,” I whispered, throat tight. My mind raced. I could feel the pistol pressed against my thigh as I cranked the car and pulled out of the museum’s parking lot. “Where do you want to go to talk?”

  “I want to show you my roses.” His tone was as genial as if we were neighbors talking about our gardens over a hedge fence. “Drive out of town. I’ll tell you the way.”

  I drove slowly and cautiously. The state road was in better condition, already plowed and salted. My car began to handle oddly as I passed through town. I angled my wrist to peer at my watch.

  I darted a glance at Jeff to find his gaze sharp against my face. I swallowed. “You…you wanted to tell me a story.”

  “I’ve been telling you the story since the first day we met. Have you not been paying attention?” His voice was deceptively relaxed, but in my peripheral vision, I saw his hand clench into a fist where it rested on his knee.

  “I have been,” I assured him. The steering on my car felt strange, and I thought I could see the dashboard bounce. “But I would like to hear it all from your perspective.”

  He made a noncommittal noise. “I’ve only tried to tell the story to Rose before. She didn’t pay attention, either.”

  “I’m paying attention,” I said. I heard the quaver in my own voice. “Who is Rose? Is she the woman I have reminded you of?”

  “Have you liked her gifts I’ve shared with you?” He was silent for a moment, and when I glanced at him, he was staring at my throat. “You’re not wearing her necklace.”

  “What?”

  He reached out with the swiftness of a snake striking and grabbed me by the back of the neck. My hands left the steering wheel to scrabble at his wrist as he yanked me across the center console. His hand fisted in the nape of my hair, clenching so tightly it felt as if the strands were being wrenched out of my scalp. My breath was a strangled gasp. The seatbelt cut into my stomach and hips as he dragged me toward him.

  The car veered dangerously, and I could see the canyon wall looming closer through the passenger’s side window.

  “You fucking ungrateful bitch. You just tossed it aside, didn’t you? As if it meant nothing.”

  “I—” I could not get the rest of the words out for the burn in my skin and the angled wrench in my neck. Tears pricked my eyes. My heart thundered in my chest.

  There was an explosion of sound and the car lurched. I reached over and yanked the wheel. The vehicle spun, and the world spun with it until it came to a violent stop.

  Thirty-Four

  When this monster entered my brain,

  I will never know. But, it is here to stay.

  -Dennis Rader

  JEFF

  She was heavier than she looked, and my head swam with each step. After another mile, I let her fall to the ground. The freshly fallen snow cushioned her landing, but I still heard the thump of her hitting the ground. I hung my head for a moment, struggling to catch my breath.

  I had been thrown against the passenger window on impact, and my brow had split as my head hit the glass. My vision was still blurred, my head throbbed in time with my heart, and my stomach roiled. A warm, wet rush of blood spilled down my cheek. Fury and nausea were in a race to bring bile rising into the back of my throat. The fucking ungrateful bitch had tossed my gift aside. As if it meant nothing. Just like Rose had.

  Once, Rose had promised me she loved me more than anyone else. She had sworn to never leave me, vowed that she would always be true to the bond between us. But the years had passed, and she began to look at me differently. The adoration and worship were gone from her gaze. Disgust and distrust replaced the love she had once sworn would never dissipate.

  So I set about showing her I had not forgotten those vows and promises. Soon the disgust was replaced by fear, and I found I liked the fear.

  But fear did not equal respect, and the day I found her with him, everything changed. They were in the back of his truck, parked beside the lake well off the dirt track. I suppose she thought I would never find her, but she discounted the connection between us. I would always find her.

  I had disbelieved the scene at first, certain I misunderstood. But his jeans were around his knees, her bare arms and legs wrapped tight around him. Her sighs and gasps, moans and whispered encouragement made me hard. They were not for me, though. They were breathed into his ear, not mine.

  I dragged the rutting brute off of her and held his head underwater until he stopped struggling. Until he could no longer hear those sighs and gasps, moans and whimpers.

  When I caught up with her, she stopped running. She turned with the sun gleaming off her hair and pushed her glasses up her nose. Behind the lenses, I saw not just terror in her eyes, but hatred.

  “Please,” she whispered as I approached her. A gust of wind swept through the rushes and blew her hair across her face. She trembled when I combed the locks back over her shoulders.

  “You’re a whore,” I said, keeping my voice gentle. “You’re even wearing the necklace I gave you.”

  She went still, and her eyes widened. “This is…I thought…”

  “You are mine, Rose. You promised.”

  She wrenched away from me, snapping the thin gold filigree chain from about her neck and tossing it in my face. “You’re sick,” she spat at me. “You sick fuck.”

  She should not have said that. And she should not have tried to run from me again.

  She had wept and begged, but I reminded her numerous times that she had promised. “This is for your own good,” I whispered to her.

  Promises deserved to be kept. A rose would bloom for you if you tended it. That was its promise.

  In the end, I had shown her that our bond could not be broken. Not even by her.

  A groan at my feet startled me back to the present. I leaned down, fisted my hand in the collar of Evelyn’s coat, and dragged her into the woods.

  Thirty-Five

  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

  Old Time is still a-flying;

  And this same flower that smiles today,

  Tomorrow will be dying.

  -Robert Herrick

  EVELYN

  I ached everywhere, and whatever surface I was lying on moved beneath me.

  Something sharp dug into my shoulder blade and raked across my back. The pain jolted me back to awareness. Everything was an indistinct blur, as if petroleum jelly had been smeared across my eyes. My hands flew to my face. My glasses were gone.

  Realization struck me, and I began to struggle, reaching back over my head to claw at Jeff’s hand where it was tangled in my hair and collar. He let me go, and I scrambled away from him. I was dizzy and woozy, though, and could not gain my feet quickly enough.

  He caught hold of my arm and yanked me upright so quickly my neck cracked and the surrounding woods spun around me.

  I squinted up at him. He held my right arm, and I could not reach the gun in my right pocket with my left hand. “Where are you taking me?”

  He did not answer me. He pulled me after him, and we slid down an embankment.

  “Where are we going?” I demanded again. I tried to shrug his hand off my arm, but his grip around my elbow was so tight that I was beginning to lose feeling in my fingers.

  “Don’t test my patience right now, Rose. You will regret it.”

  “Evelyn. My name is Evelyn. I’m not Rose.”

  I saw his face turn my way, but his features were without clarity and I could not discern his expression. “Evelyn. Rose. You both broke your promise.”

  “I haven’t made any promises to you.”

  He yanked me roughly after him. I tripped over something buried in the snow, falling to my knees. He jerked me upright and kept walking. My back was wet. My jeans from the knees down were soon coated in ice, and the dampness seeped into my bo
ots and permeated my socks.

  The wind sliced through my coat, but I kept my head up and eyes peeled. Without my glasses, though, I was as good as blind. I could distinguish nothing but the stretch of white punctuated by the black and green arrows of trees. Shapes washed together into an indistinct blur as he led me deeper into the wilderness without breaking stride.

  The forest thinned suddenly and deposited us on a narrow lane.

  “Where are we?” I asked again when he stopped.

  He rubbed his eyes, and I wondered if he had a concussion. Nausea churned in my own gut, and my head pounded with every step.

  “Close,” was his only response. He set off again.

  The way was easier on the hard-packed lane. I hoped walking along a semblance of a road would mean people to encounter, but there was no traffic, and no drives branched off from the lane on which we walked.

  We must have walked for miles. Without my glasses, with the snow blanketing the landscape, I had no sense of direction. The clouds overhead were the color of ink by the time we reached a turnoff, and the wind was sharp with the smell of snow.

  “Where does the road lead?” I asked when we branched off from the lane.

  “You’ll see,” was all he said.

  The trees closed in around us and snow began to fall. This narrower drive was one of twists and turns until around a curve it opened up before a sprawling ruin. As we approached, I strained my eyes to study it. Now it was little more than a leaning, sagging pile of timber, but I thought it once might have been an inn, likely from the turn of the twentieth century.

  Jeff kept his grip on my arm and led me around the dilapidated structure. He stopped for a moment, fumbled in his pocket, and then pulled me after him. Without my glasses, I thought he was leading me to a mound of snow. It was not until we descended a set up steps that I realized the mound was the roof of a subterranean structure. He kept his grip on me as he worked through a complicated series of locks and then let go of me when he opened the door. He swept his arm out in an invitation to enter.

  I glanced at his face but it was a shadowed blur. I stepped within and caught my breath. It was a greenhouse, the interior warm, the air lush in a way that reminded me of the South. The smell of roses permeated the air, mixed with the verdant aroma of freshly turned dirt. For an instant, homesickness pierced me, and then the weight of Jeff’s hand settled on my shoulder.

  “Let me take your coat.”

  I tried to shrug his hand off. “I’m still cold,” I said, though, already, sweat beaded on my brow.

  “You won’t be for long,” he said, tugging my coat from my shoulders, pulling strands of my hair with it.

  He hung our coats on a peg by the threshold, punched a code into a security system keypad mounted on the threshold, and closed the door behind him. We were sealed into this false summer. The light was low, and dim lanterns lit the stone path through the maze of roses. Most of the roses were in full bloom. I could see the smudges of colors of their petals against the dark foliage. They grew in a profusion that hugged the path and reached out to catch at my jeans and snag my hands as Jeff led me deeper into the greenhouse. I glanced back, trying to keep my coat with the gun in its pocket in sight.

  My hands were numb from our long, frigid trek, and I did not realize barbs had hooked my exposed skin until I felt the warm dribble of blood down my fingers. I shivered and tucked my hands close to my chest.

  Some bushes were skeletal, and a number of trellises we passed under held only barren vines.

  “Some of the old and climbing varieties only bloom in the spring and fall,” Jeff said. “My hybrids are repeat bloomers, though.” There was pride in his voice, and a level of devotion that sounded closer to obsession.

  “Impressive,” I allowed. “But I don’t understand why you wanted to show me this.”

  The stone path passed under one last trellis before we reached the center of the greenhouse. There, separated from the other roses, stood a single plant. I was close enough to make out one oversized blushing pink bloom on one thin spindle of a stem.

  “This is why,” he said, approaching the lone bush. He reached out and cupped the rose with a caressing touch most reserved for a lover. “I had to show you Rose. So you would understand.”

  When I squinted past him, I saw the dark depression in the ground where a trench ran through the center of the greenhouse. A shovel lay in the dirt next to it. I glanced behind me. I could not see the entrance to the greenhouse or my coat with the gun in its pocket through the maze of roses. “Who was Rose?”

  “She was everything.” The worshipful tone in his voice made the hair on the nape of my neck stand on end, as did the smile he turned to me.

  That smile faded swiftly, though, as he studied me. “Where are your glasses?”

  The question was abrupt and agitated. I backed away as he stalked toward me. “I don’t know.”

  I flinched when he reached toward my face. He touched the bridge of my nose and let his finger linger there for a moment. “This is wrong. You need your glasses.”

  I did not know what his sudden obsession with my glasses stemmed from, but I nodded. “I do. I can’t see without them. Let’s go back.”

  He stared down at me for a long moment before shaking his head. “You don’t need to see to dig.” He caught my elbow and pulled me toward the trench. “Dig, and I’ll tell you the story.”

  A shovel was a weapon, I reminded myself, as I picked up the tool. “I found the collection you donated to the museum.”

  He made a noncommittal noise. “I knew you were clever.”

  “Why did you give away your trophies?” I pushed the blade of the shovel into the soil.

  “Fate,” he said softly. “It was meant to be, you and I. And I was out of room on my shelves.”

  There was no dignity in digging one’s own grave. I knew that was what I was digging, and I was soon sweating. “To make room for more? What did you take from the woman at the cabin? From Amanda and Rachel?”

  “I didn’t need anything from them. They were just to get your attention.”

  I stopped digging and stared at him, sickened. “You have my attention.”

  He smiled. “Good. Keep digging, and I want you to listen.”

  I pushed my sleeves up to my elbows. My hands burned and wept blood where the thorns had snagged my skin. My stomach and head protested each movement as I tossed a shovel full of dirt to the side.

  The more Jeff spoke, the more certain I was that he was completely unhinged. He talked of roses and promises, and I could not tell if he spoke of an individual woman or of the bushes that surrounded us.

  A small bit of paleness in the rich black earth caught my attention. I squinted as I leaned over and picked it up. I held it close to my face to study it, and realization struck me so suddenly I dropped it. It was a bone, a slight digit from a finger or perhaps a toe.

  The horror I had been pushing aside flooded me. I glanced around the greenhouse in dawning realization.

  “Who is buried here?”

  I could see he turned to me, but I could not see his expression. “I told you. Rose. I couldn’t leave her behind. She would have hated being left in Kansas.”

  My knees weakened. I stooped, picked up the bone, and held it out to him. “Is…is it just Rose who is here?”

  “They are all roses now.” He plucked the bone from me and rolled it between his fingers. “You really haven’t been paying attention. That disappoints me.”

  They were here. Christ. They were right here, the women connected to the pieces of art, hidden beneath the dirt with roots twining around their bones and roses growing from their hearts.

  I was certain of it when Jeff moved to kneel beside the rose bush in the center of the greenhouse. He used his fingers to make a depression in the soft dirt, tucked the tiny bone in the hole, and covered it back up, smoothing the soil back into place with careful strokes.

  I could not
stand in this grave of my own making any longer. I lurched over the lip of the hole and stumbled to a nearby wrought iron bench. I sat down hard, still gripping the shovel. “I am now.” My words were rushed. “I am paying attention now. I want to understand.”

  He was quiet for several long moments, crouched beside the rose bush. “Then you have to understand that Rose was the one who awakened it inside me.”

  “Awakened what inside you?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Evelyn. It doesn’t suit you. We all have it lurking within us. For some, it never stirs. Others quell it.” He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “And for some of us, we embrace it. Mine slept for a long time after Rose. She was my first, and it all leads back to her. I thought that was the end of it consuming me. The others…” He stood and crossed to kneel in front of me. “They were just to keep it in check and keep it sated. It didn’t howl and gnash at me the same way it did with Rose.” He met my gaze and smiled a smile that chilled me to the core. “Until I saw you on the road that day.”

  I swallowed. “Because I reminded you of Rose?”

  “Because you made me realize it was not gone. It was simply waiting for perfection again.”

  I shrank away from him as he leaned toward me. He ran his hand through my hair and pulled a long lock toward his face. I bit my lips to keep a whimper from escaping and clenched my hands around the handle of the shovel. He stroked my hair along his cheek and breathed in deeply. Nausea coiled in my stomach, and fear quaked through me. I closed my eyes and turned my face away. His fingers tightened suddenly before he dropped the strands as if they were on fire and leaned away from me. I darted a glance at him to find fury twisting across his face.

  “Don’t turn away from me.”

  “I—”

  His hand cracked across my cheek so quickly I did not even have time to brace for it. I was still catching my breath and blinking away the shocking sting when he caught my chin and rubbed my smarting cheek with his palm.