by E. Earle
The walker frowned at me as if I had gone mad.
“Aldrith farm is that way five miles out,” his wife said helpfully, cheeks red from the cold wind. “Follow the signs for Pennington and it’s there.”
“Wonderful- thank you!”
The roads got narrower as I followed her instructions. I think I got lost a couple of times and then I saw that glorious sign.
Aldrith Farm.
I pulled up in front of it, my heart beating. I pulled out my phone and considered calling Calloway. I looked at Ben as if for answers but he was involved in a much more important task of grooming himself.
I swore and pressed DIAL.
Calloway picked up on the second ring.
“Calloway here?”
I flinched at his formal greeting. “Err, hi, it’s Ellena-”
“Ellena! Where are you?”
Remembering that I hadn’t given him my new number, (which in hindsight is probably a stupid thing to forget) I ploughed on. “Look- you can shout at me later, but I’m outside the Principal's place in Stratford- it’s a place called Aldrith Farm-”
“Why? Why are you there? You wait there for me, you hear?”
“No- I’ve got to check this out-”
“Listen Ellena, this is not a game,” Calloway growled. “You are not a cat with nine lives, ok?”
I looked down at Ben, rubbing his head against my arm, purring contentedly. He would go anywhere with me. I smiled and rubbed his ears, ignoring Calloway. Sometimes you just have to decide what is right and wrong in life. You can stand here and allow things to happen, or you can do something about it.
Besides, things never worked out when I waited for people to make it happen with me.
“I’m going in, Arthur,” I said.
He started to splutter on the other end, I know, trying to find the right words that would make me stop.
“What’s wrong, Detective?” I said finally. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Ellena!”
I hung up.
The hill was a downward slope. It was muddy, cold and frozen in patches. I almost slipped a couple of times and I was thankful that Ben had his winter coat on. I could see the dilapidated farmhouse below past a cluster of trees. There were car tracks across the field, so someone had been here recently.
I pulled my coat tighter around myself. I had hidden the car down another lane and walked the rest of the way.
“Ben, if we’re both going to die today, don’t you want to tell me how you came back?”
“We’re not going to die today, silly human.”
“But don’t you want to tell me?”
He walked on ahead of me, tail high, fur burning brightly in the frost. “You don’t need to know how everything happens, Ellena.”
“How can you talk?”
He was silent.
“You’re never going to tell me, are you?”
“I don’t need to,” he said. “You’ll find that out for yourself one day.”
We were quiet then for a while as we ploughed on. “I tried to change your name to Aslan when I was little,” I said, suddenly remembering.
“You did.”
“It never stuck.”
“It didn’t.” He rubbed against me. “Like I said- my name is Benedict.”
I rolled my eyes and began to feel the true effects of fear as the farmhouse came close. It was strange. It was as if I was walking in a dream, as though my body was not my own. I didn’t want to think too much of it in case I ran away. It looked as though some renovation had been attempted on it in the past, but it had been given up on halfway through. It could be quite a pretty building, I thought. One story and long, its bright walls were made of sandstone. Someone had strapped tarpaulin over the windows and put metal sheeting where there wasn’t glass. The wind whistled through it sharply, and I dug my hands further into my pockets.
I hunkered down at the side of the wall and pulled Ben closer.
“Can you skirt around and see if there’s anyone inside? Check out the situation?”
He licked my hand. “Of course.”
“I’ll wait here.”
I watched as he slinked off into the cold. A fog had started to rise and it sent my senses screaming. My boots were sinking in the mud and my leggings were damp already from the drizzle that had started to fall. My nose twitched, the smell of moss and mould surrounding me.
I held my breath, hoping Ben was all right. Seconds may have passed but it felt like an age. A rustling came behind me and I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned round.
“Anything, Ben?” I asked, just in time to see the blow that knocked me out.
Chapter Eight
I don’t know how long I was out for, but when I blearily opened my eyes I realised my face was half engulfed in mud. Making little movement, I turned my head.
Shapes danced ahead, until I realised they weren’t shapes but people. Warmth trickled onto my nose from my forehead and down my cheek. I wasn’t a genius, but even I knew it was blood. God, I felt sick.
“What do we do with her now?” growled a voice.
I shut my eyes again, pretending to be unconscious, all the while my brain dancing about, grabbing information as I could.
“We’ve got to split. The money is being transferred tomorrow morning. Flights leave tonight.”
“What do we do with these two then?”
“Put them with the others.”
Others?
I wondered where Ben was, but when I tried to move my hands and feet, I realised that they were tied. Strange that the first fear that came into my mind was for my cat and not me. I could have laughed.
I stiffened when I saw boots approach me through slitted eyes, could taste the dust and mud he unsettled as he came closer. Hands roughly scooped me up and lifted me. Unwilling to go anywhere this guy was taking me, I kicked out and was promptly dropped.
The man swore and kicked me, earning a yelp that I only realised minutes later was mine.
“She said the name ‘Ben’,” he growled. “There’s a dude sniffing around here, I know it.”
“We’ll keep an eye out for him then, won’t we?”
I flinched, my hazy memory trying to recollect the voice it belonged to.
“No witnesses! That’s what you said!”
“Exactly. Now come on- we’ve got some gasoline to pick up.” This voice, I realised suddenly was Rino’s.
“Yeah,” the man said. “This place is going to go up like a torch, little girl. BOOM!” He laughed then and kicked me once more for good measure.
I groaned and curled up into a little ball.
I realised, a while later that I had passed out again and had woken up for the second time. It was pitch black, and something warm was licking my face.
“Ben?” I muttered.
“Yes, silly human,” he meowed softly. “Those rats have gone, but there is another one outside keeping watch.”
I moaned again. Blood was salty in my mouth and I wondered when I had bitten my tongue.
“Can you sit up?” he asked.
I tried, but my legs were wrapped really tight. It took a couple of attempts before I managed it, and even then I almost passed out again.
“I wish I was a lion,” Ben said woefully.
“I don’t. I love you just the way you are.”
This earned some mores licks from Ben. I shuffled backwards so the wall was supporting my back and took a breather.
“There’s another person here,” Ben said, settling into my lap.
I took a deep breath and started to wriggle to the place Ben said they were. A curled up ball of limbs was huddled in the corner of the darkness that was supposedly a room.
“Hello?” I whispered. “Oh god, Ben, I need my hands. Can you chew through the duct tape?”
Ben set to it, biting my skin more than a few times. I held back my grunts of pain, trying to concentrate making out the shape of the unconscious person. I pulled my wrists as hard a
s I could, trying to stretch out the tape and then would let Ben carry on chewing. It was an agonisingly slow procedure.
“Hurry up!” I hissed.
“This...doesn’t...taste....very nice...you know...” he growled between bites.
Suddenly, lights from the car illuminated the place; shards of yellow seeping through the cracks were the metal sheets couldn’t cover, exposing unmistakable long blonde hair of the person next to me.
“Emily!”
She didn’t move, or turn her face to me. Nothing.
“Ben! Hide!”
But he was already gone. Clever cat.
The doors opened and Rino and his buddy walked in carrying barrels of oil. Oh this was not looking good. They were both swaying slightly and I took it for granted that they had been drinking.
“Oh, she’s moved has she? Gone to see your little friend, have you?”
“Keith, shut the fuck up, will you?”
I would love to tell him exactly what I thought of him there and then, but I wasn’t stupid. The men ignored me then as they carried on drinking, checking their watches and laughing at a stupid joke. I pulled on my wrists as hard as I could and jumped when it actually snapped.
Damn. The cat was good.
“All right, what are we waiting for then?” Keith said. “I’ll do a couple of lines first then set to it.”
My hands shuffled behind me, looking for something- searching for a lifeline in the dark. Cold mud shoved its way under my fingernails, glass shards nipping my skin and slicing my knuckles. My muscles ached and it hurt to breathe, making me wonder if I had cracked any ribs. It made no sense to think of it now.
My desperate eyes fell onto Emily and I wondered just how injured she was. I didn’t want to think what they had done to her, but the inevitable thoughts pushed their way into my head and made my movements more frantic. Nudging her with my knee, I was rewarded with a groan. “Emily!” I whispered. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Another groan. I wanted to reach out with my hands to check her over but didn’t dare move in case Rino found my hands free.
Footsteps crunched the stray pebbles on the ground. “You messed with the wrong people,” Rino said finally coming into view, white powder shining from his nose. He looked as though he had slept in the black suit he was wearing, his burgundy striped shirt stained, his hair a mess and his face unshaven. I wondered what he had been through since I saw him last and then decided I didn’t care.
That was when I saw it.
A canister of oil was in his hands.
I looked from the canister to his face and then back again. Whatever expression I had on my face must have amused him because a huge grin suddenly broke on his face.
“I suppose you’re wondering what this is?” he purred, waving it about, the sloshing sound of its contents loud in my ears.
I kept my retort bitten down and watched as he walked lazily around the debris of crates, hay and old farming equipment, his hand starting to twist around the cap.
“No? Oh smart girl has worked it out.” He winked at me and started to drip it around the dilapidated barn. “I warned you, didn’t I, sweetheart?”
Silence was his only reward for goading me, but I’m sure he liked the sound of his own voice.
Keith was smiling behind Rino as he lined up his powder on a sheet of metal. He made grunting noises as he slid his face over it, coughing at one point and then starting again. I hoped he breathed in a shard of glass.
Rino had started to hum under his breath as he pranced around the room in a seemingly drunken dance, as if he was watering flowers and not preparing to send me up in flames.
It’s strange when you feel your time run out. An inevitable moment of clarity where you know it’s either flight or fight. You have a choice of doing something- being proactive. I thought of my nephew, that beautiful baby and what he would think when he grew up when he found his auntie couldn’t fight back- didn’t fight back. I felt a sudden huge regret that clenched my stomach so hard it made me unable to breathe.
“Hey Keith- go and get the others why don’t you?” Rino snapped as Keith rubbed his face clear from the last line. “Let’s finish this. I’ve got a flight to catch.”
“Going somewhere nice?” I asked, unable to help myself, my fingers stretching out behind me in a spiderlike dance, still searching, grasping.
Rino stopped pouring gasoline for a moment and actually smiled. “Something like that,” he said.
I smiled back, blood filming my teeth in a salty manic grin, something colder than the earth meeting my insect hands finally. Something hard and unforgiving.
My smile disturbed him, I could tell because he started to step towards me. “I don’t know why you’re grinning like a Cheshire Cat,” Rino spat, then changing direction to Emily. Then, his eyes narrowing into a smile more manic than my own, lifted the canister can.
My nostrils flared in panic as I watched the liquid splash down on Emily, soaking her clothes and filling the air with that strong chemical stench. Still, she didn’t move, a bare whisper of a whimper coming from her core.
I took a breath. He was goading me.
“I do,” I said, and that was when I hit him. My arm snaked out in one long arc as I hit him full force in the stomach, a metal cattle prod revealing itself in the sickly yellow light as my weapon.
He fell, winded and rolled on the floor, just as Keith waddled in. “Hey, Rino, do you want them brought in separately or-” His fat form swayed at the sight of the boss grunting in pain. “What the-”
Just then, a ginger ball of claws and teeth lunged onto his face. Keith screamed, wrestling with a furry demon of fury. “Rino! Help me!”
I scrambled with my feet, pulling off my boots and the tape with them (haven’t they watched detective films? always tape the ankles!)
“I’m gonna get you, you little bitch!” snarled Rino, grabbing my foot.
My breath caught as I kicked him in the face, grabbing Emily from under the shoulders. She whimpered as I dragged her across the floor, the world spinning from my head injury. I halted, realising Rino had opened up his lighter.
“Stop right there, missy,” he said, blood leaking from a cut eyebrow. “One more step and your mate is roasted and toasted.”
My eyes widened at Emily’s gasoline soaked trousers. I swallowed.
“Now that’s it. Sit down like a good girl.”
My heart pounding, Keith’s screams suddenly quiet outside, I realised that maybe this really was it.
I sat down, grasping Emily’s freezing hand. “You don’t need her anymore,” I growled. “You can just go on your sunny holidays and leave her!”
He tutted, shaking his dark head. “Ah now, you see, I can’t do that. People have to die here tonight.” He pulled out something from his back pocket I had never seen before.
A gun.
“Now, don’t worry, this isn’t my gun- this is the Principal’s husband’s gun, but I suppose that don’t matter does it?”
“Not to me,” I muttered.
“Well, you see it should.” He knelt then in front of me and held my bloody chin tightly in his rough fingers. I realised then that I had cut his lip, the red oozing in a bloody lump. “You see, you made my girlfriend shit herself, it only seems right that I should do the same to you. That’s why I’m gonna tell you. I want you to know everything that’s gonna happen to you.”
It seemed a weird logic, but I was beyond caring. I wondered if Ben was ok. Was he hurt? I hoped he would run away. Find a nice new owner.
“Enlighten me,” I grunted.
“You see, the people we have in the boot is the Principal’s ex and his new missus.” His smile widened at my look of horror. “That’s right- the Principal’s ex is a sicko. He likes to snatch employees of the U.C.W. He took your friend, then you and shot you both. His girlfriend walked in, and in surprise he shot her too. Then, too ashamed and horrified at his actions, he then sets the place on fire and shoots his brains out.�
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“You’re mental,” I said finally.
His self-pleased smile fell. “Yeah? And what have you ever achieved? You’re lying here in the muck about to have your brains blown out.” He hit me then. “Then I’m gonna torch your body. Watch you burn. No one’s gonna be able to tell it’s you by the time they hose this place down and drag your corpses out!”
He leaned closer, his stubble poking out from olive skin, dark eyes gleaming, and a new idea playing on his mind as he looked me up and down. I have only had glimpses of evil before. I used to work at a prison and you could see small flashes in it in people’s stories- see it in the news from the result of their actions. But I had never seen it this clear before. This delight of chaos. This pleasure in inflicting pain. This sadistic and twisted calculated manoeuvre of cruelty.
Like a wild cat, I threw myself at him, knocking the lighter from his hand and away from Emily. He grunted in surprise as I hit him as hard as I could in the face. The gun went off, and suddenly shouting was all around me. Dazed by sudden light flooding into the room, I punched Rino again before falling off, feeling hands at my throat.
He was winning, his fingerprints pressing down in the tender flesh around my jugular. His bloody lips curled back in a dog-like snarl, I could do all but stare hatefully back at evil as I clawed at his hands, my head crunching lower and lower into the mud.
I blinked, sirens booming in my ears as the air struggled to reach my lungs. Suddenly, I could breathe, hands away from my throat, the weight gone from my body. I heaved precious oxygen into my body before rolling onto my front, my eyes locking with Emily’s filthy face. Her eyes were open.
I think I actually laughed in relief.
Sitting up, I crawled over to her as police flooded the cattle barn, Rino’s shouts ringing off the walls.
She blinked at me, whatever patch of skin that wasn’t covered in bruises or dried blood was smudged in dirt. Her fingers twitched as though she was trying to reach for my hand. I grabbed it.
“Ellie,” she whispered. “…You’ve got red all on you.”
“Ellena, you here?”
Calloway’s voice almost dragged me out of the confusion, as I looked from Emily down to my stained shirt. I reached to touch the spreading dampness from my middle and turned to see the Detective suck in a breath. My apologetic smile cracked my face.
