A Step to Nowhere (39 page)

Inga was grateful for her rescue but felt bad. Because of her this nice guy was arguing with his parents. Well, he argued with his mom, but wasn’t it enough? The sense of guilt went away though and was replaced with euphoria. She had been kidnapped and sold for sex, but she escaped and avoided the shared fate of the other people who would never leave that damn house. Of course the thought darkened her extended sensation of happiness, but Inga believed she could find the house of terror and end its existence for good. Eagle, Drake, and their team, including Bitch, would pay for what they did to her. Of course they would escape the pain and humiliation they caused their slaves, but at least they would be behind bars if fate wished (like Inga believed in fate anymore) and maybe get their share of torture. She wanted them to suffer, even though before she had been kidnapped, she couldn’t imagine wishing something like that on her worst enemy.

Inga searched the darkness, trying to think about what was going to happen next. She thought how she would enter the sheriff’s office tomorrow and tell him about all the terrible things that happened in that old, forgotten motel. She thought how the sheriff would go there with his team before the criminals found out and closed the spot. She thought about the phone call to her mom and hearing her voice. First disbelief, then crazy happiness. Inga saw the white fence by her house that she hated so much just a few weeks ago. She couldn’t wait to see it now. She dreamed about entering her mom’s house, about getting into her bed and hugging her favorite brown bear, and looking outside at the old oak tree with the swing on its branch that hadn’t been used for years. Her dad had made it when she and her sister were little girls, and her mom didn’t want to take it down. When her husband of twenty-eight years died, she wanted to keep everything he had made.

A few weeks ago Inga wanted to leave all of it. She was attracted to the lights of the movie capital of America. She wanted a taste of the bright life. She had tried it, only it was different than she had imagined. Like something she had heard on the news and thought it could never happen to her.

Inga believed that she could forget all of it. Maybe some of the girls would need therapy or even need to spend time in the hospital, putting their lives together, but not her. She was strong and she could get over it. She could start her life anew. She would lick her soul’s scars like a cat, close her eyes on those that stayed on her body, and just live. Like a girl of twenty-three, finishing college. New friends, new work, and an old city that seemed so attractive now.

She closed her eyes. The sounds behind the door started to fade, and the silence swallowed the house along with darkness. Inga started to sink into sleep slowly, like an apprehensive swimmer diving into cold water, periodically jumping out of it to draw a choking breath. She was afraid to awaken and learn that everything was just a dream, born from her exhausted mind. The tiredness was strong, and Inga slowly but surely let it take her to a place of forgotten fear, to a place of pink elephants and purple bunnies.

Chapter 4

Screams. Somebody was screaming. Screams of pain. Agony. A woman’s voice. Some woman was screaming in deadly agony.

Inga’s eyes opened. Deadly silence and darkness. No sounds, not even a clock ticking or the roar of a far away car.
Nothing.
Where was she? What was happening? Faces of her torturers appeared in front of her, but the memory of the last few hours pushed its way back into her thoughts. She was not in the house of terror. She escaped and was saved. She was in the house of a family that let her stay for one night and nothing threatened her life here.

Inga pushed the blanket away, put her legs down and, holding onto the wall, walked to the place where she thought she would find a light switch. She found it, flipped it up, and closed her eyes against the brightness of the light.

When her eyes adapted, she saw the table, two chairs, the bed, and a picture on the wall. She wasn’t dreaming. She was really saved and she was in the house of a noble man named Alman. Then who was screaming? It seemed that somebody was screaming close by. Here. Nightmare? Did she have a nightmare?

“Of course I was dreaming. It
was
a nightmare.”

Inga sighed with relief but it wasn’t a real relief. How long was she going to wake up like this? Trying to figure out where she was? She didn’t want to think about it now. She turned the light off and went back to bed. The air in the room became colder, but the blanket saved her heat and it immediately warmed her shaking body.

She probably had a dream about the house of the terror; the scream from the girl who wasn’t lucky. In fact she was very, very unlucky.

Inga was unlucky only once; thank whoever needed to be thanked. The skinny guy, with hollow cheeks and a big nose looked shy and harmless, before he tied her to the bed. Inga was sure she would not survive another round like that. She was sure that she would die from pain, from the inability to fight back, desperation, humiliation, from simple understanding that her life was nothing. From simple understanding that after entering that house, she had ceased to be called a human being.

“Enough!”

Inga hit the bed with her fists, turned onto her stomach, and pressed her face against the pillow with a damp, musty smell.
Forget, forget, forget
. It was all left behind. No, not behind. It had never happened, never happened,
never happened
!

Inga repeated this phrase until it became muffled, crumbled, and faded as she returned to sleep.

“The scream was in this house,” Inga mumbled before drifting off completely. “Somebody screamed here.”