Dark Realms (4 page)

Sighing myself, I stuck a forkful of turkey
into my mouth.

“Um, I have to use the bathroom,” said
Marie, who seemed to be playing with her food.

“Oh, hell,” said Darnell, putting his fork
down. “Why does this not surprise me?”

“Please,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “I’m
sorry, I just can’t help it.”

“Fine. Anyone else need
to
go
?” he asked,
standing up.

We all raised our hands.

“Women,” muttered Clement. “Okay, one at a
time. I’ll watch the ones at the table while you bring ‘em to the
toilet.”

“Okay. Let’s go. You first,” said Darnell,
waving his gun at Marie.

Something in her eyes told me she was
planning to do more than pee. “Wait,” I said, pushing myself away
from the table. “We should go two at a time. It will be much
quicker.”

Darnell eyed me suspiciously.

I tilted my head. “What? Do you think we’re
going to try and escape down the toilet together or something?

Tara snorted.

He gave me a dirty look.

“Come on. Going together makes much more
sense, doesn’t it?” I prodded. “It’ll take half the time.”

He relented. “Fine.”

I stepped away from the table and he moved
behind the both of us, his gun near the back of my neck. “Down the
hall to the right,” he ordered. “Then up the stairs. Keep your
voices down.”

I followed Marie to a dilapidated staircase,
which was old and creaked with every step. When we reached the top,
it was dark. “It’s down there. Keep your voices down or you’ll
regret it.”

When we reached the bathroom, we closed the
door, separating him from us.

Marie leaned against the doorway and
sighed.

I put my finger to my lips and walked to the
window. It was small, but definitely escapable. I tried pushing it
open, but it wouldn’t budge.

“What’s going on in there?” whispered
Darnell as Marie and I stared at each other. “It’s too quiet.”

“Jesus, can I take my jeans off?” Marie
hollered back.

“Shh…” he answered.

Marie stared down at the toilet, which was
surprisingly clean. “Did anyone ever tell this guy that it’s
impolite and more than a little weird to listen to someone trying
to go potty?”

“Just do it,” he grunted from the outside of
the door.

She smirked. “It’d be a lot easier without a
guy listening in.”

I tried the window again, this time with
success.

“Sorry, Emily,” lied Marie loudly. “I must
have eaten something really bad. This is going to take a few
minutes. Back up, Darnell, or you’re going to be in for a real
unpleasant treat.”

Biting back a smile, I stuck my head out of
the window and wondered if breaking a leg would be worth trying to
escape.

It was a long way down.

“Go,” she whispered into my ear.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled myself out of
the window and started crawling down the lower section of the roof.
When I reached the edge, I sighed in relief, it wasn’t as high up
as I’d originally thought. I turned and lowered my body, until I
was hanging from the edge. I then dropped down onto the porch,
followed by Marie, who was now sporting a pair of sunglasses.

“Come on,” she said, pulling me forward.

As we started running, I could hear Darnell
screaming from the bathroom window.

“Bye, suckers!” laughed Marie as we ran away
from the house and towards the fields.

“What about the others?” I hollered, looking
back. “We can’t just leave them!”

“We have to. We’ll get help… send someone to
rescue them. Come on, before it’s too late!”

We ran as fast as we could away from the
house, next to the dirt road leading away from the farm. It seemed
to go on for miles and as I looked ahead, I knew we’d be caught if
we didn’t get away from the open road.

“We need to go into the woods,” I pointed
towards the trees up ahead. “Otherwise, they’ll catch us for
sure.”

“Okay,” she huffed.

Just as we made it to the cover of the
trees, we heard an engine in the distance.

“Keep going, Marie!” I prodded.

“Wait!” she gasped, as she was lagging
farther behind.

I glanced back.

She held her side. “I should have never
started smoking!”

“Just keep running and don’t look back,” I
hollered, as we headed deeper into the woods.

“Yeah… sure… where are we going?” she gasped
out.

“I’m not sure,” I yelled back, leaping over
a large branch. “But we have to keep moving!”

“Wait!” cried Marie.

Groaning, I stopped and turned around.

She was bent over with her hands on her
knees, panting. “Yeah… I just have to… catch my breath.”

I stared past her towards the direction of
the road, expecting Darnell to come barreling through the
trees.

“Do you think he saw us?” she asked.

“Probably. We really need to keep
moving.”

She straightened up. “Okay.”

We started running again, going even deeper
into the woods. Once I thought we were fairly safe, I stopped to
rest.

“Where are we?” she asked, leaning her palm
against a birch tree.

“I don’t know,” I replied, looking around.
It was hard to see anything with so many tall trees. I couldn’t
even tell if we were headed towards the mountains.

She frowned. “Great, we’re lost.”

“Well, it’s certainly better than being a
prisoner.”

She closed her eyes and touched the bridge
of her nose. “God, my dad is going to flip out.”

“Would you quit worrying about him?” I said.
“He’s the least of your worries right now.”

“Oh, if you knew him, you’d say differently.
He can be a real monster.”

“Come on. Let’s just get moving.”

“What if we’re heading farther into the
wilderness? We could get really lost.”

I bit my lower lip.

She was right. The deeper we went, the
higher our risk of bumping into something a lot scarier than our
captors – bears, mountain lion, even moose. There was no way we’d
be able to defend ourselves against them.

“Maybe we should wait here for a while and
then head back the way we came before sunset. When it’s dark, we
can follow the dirt road to the nearest town,” said Marie.

“Wherever that may be. Something tells me
I’m a long way from home.”

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Missoula.”

“I’m from Polson.”

“I wonder where we are?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied with a smirk. “I
left my map at home.”

I grunted.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’m just so thirsty. What about you?”

“Me too,” she replied.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “We need
to find water.”

“Even if we do, it’s probably not safe to
drink anything not bottled or out of a tap.”

She was probably right. “Maybe, but we need
to stay hydrated.”

It was warm, in the eighties, we hadn’t
drunk anything for hours, and we’d just run what felt like a
marathon. I needed to find something to drink – and soon.

I wiped more sweat from my face and noticed
that I was feeling dizzy. “I don’t feel well.”

Marie stepped closer. Her forehead wrinkled.
“You’re very pale. You should sit down.”

I swallowed. “Yeah, you’re right. Just for a
little while… it won’t hurt, I suppose.” I staggered over to a
large tree and slid down until I was leaning against the base of
the tree.

She walked over to me and knelt down. “Don’t
worry. Rest. I’ll keep watch.”

My eyes felt heavy. “Okay. Thanks.”

Marie touched my shoulder and squeezed it.
“Just rest,” she repeated, staring into my eyes. “Sleep.”

“Yeah. Okay,” I whispered, falling
asleep.

Chapter Five

I opened my eyes. It was dark and all I
could hear were crickets chirping in the shadows and leaves blowing
in the trees.

As I blinked and stared in confusion,
everything came rushing back. Martin, the barn, Gloria’s body in
the loft, escaping from the rooftop with Marie.

“Marie,” I croaked, my throat sore.

She didn’t answer.

I stood up and shivered. The temperature had
to have fallen by at least twenty degrees.

“Marie?” I whispered loudly, brushing at a
small spider on my sleeve.

Where in the hell was Marie?

Something moved in the bushes ahead of me
and I froze. I stared at it for a few seconds, holding my
breath.

Probably a squirrel or
small animal,
I told myself.

Hoping that I was just being paranoid and
Marie had also fallen asleep somewhere nearby, I began searching
for her.

“Marie,” I called out again, my voice
echoing in the night.

The moon was full but the darkness made it
hard to see much of anything. I called out for her a couple more
times as I walked around, but she didn’t answer. After a while, I
began to wonder if she’d decided to abandon me, or worse – she’d
wandered gotten lost.

Just then, the sound of twigs snapping made
me jump. I whipped around, but found myself alone.

I released my breath and told myself to calm
down. It was a forest and there were small animals everywhere. I
began walking again, praying that I was headed in the right
direction, whichever that was.

“Emily….”

Alarmed, I stopped and looked around, unsure
if I’d imagined the voice. A gust of wind blew my hair and I
brushed off the sound, blaming it on the wind and my overactive
imagination.

Shivering, I shoved my hands into my
sweatshirt pockets and began walking through the woods again. After
a few steps, however, something made me look up into the trees. A
pair of reddish-orange eyes stared back down at me and I gasped in
horror.

That
was not an owl.

Terrified, I began to run.

“Emily…”

This time there was no
doubt in my mind that someone or some
thing
was calling my name. The voice
was eerie, with an almost feminine quality.

I pushed myself forward, the blood rushing
to my ears as the voice called my name again, this time followed by
mocking laughter.

“You can’t escape…”

Scared to death, I choked back a sob and
kept running, my legs moving faster than I’d have ever thought
possible. Soon my eyes filled with tears, making it harder for me
to see, and before I could blink them away, I tripped over
something on the ground and flew forward onto my knees.

“Emily…”

I scrambled back onto my feet, trying to
ignore the throbbing in my left knee, but the hot intensity of the
pain was overwhelming.

“How did that feel?”

I turned around to find Martin staring at
me, his eyes like hot cinders. He stepped towards me. “Funny how we
keep meeting at night.”

I backed away from him. “Don’t you fucking
come near me!”

“Such foul language,” he said with a
chuckle.

“I mean it, Martin. I’m not afraid of you,
and I’m certainly not going to let you take me back to that
barn.”

He sighed. “Come on now. You disobeyed,
Emily. Now you have to learn to deal with the consequences.”

“Look, you can’t just kidnap someone and
expect them not to try and escape.”

He didn’t say anything, just stared at me
quietly. Expecting me to obey him.

Fuck it.

I turned around and started limping away.
Twenty steps later, I found him blocking my path.

How had he gotten in front of me?

“Surprise,” he said, grinning smugly. “See,
you can’t possibly escape. So why even bother running? I mean…
limping.”

Sick of his arrogance, I clenched my fists
and decided that I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. “So now
what?” I hollered. “You’re going to teach me a lesson by killing
me?”

His eyes glittered in the darkness. “If it
were left to me, I wouldn’t, but...”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” I
interrupted. They were beginning to glow an eerie reddish-orange
color.

He took a step towards me. “You know, your
fire intrigues me,” he said, reaching forward. He put his finger
under my chin and raised it. “It’s… exciting, actually.”

I felt like I was in a trance as he caressed
the side of my cheek with the pad of his finger.

“Truth is, I’m not quite sure what to do
with you,” he whispered, eyeing me appraisingly.

I swallowed hard.

His lips curved up and something warm and
delicious ignited deep within me as our eyes held. It spread from
my pelvis all the way to my fingertips.

“What’s happening?” I whispered, my legs
turning to jelly.

He put a hand around my waist to hold me up
and slid the other one behind my neck. “Don’t fight it,” he
whispered, staring into my eyes.

I couldn’t understand what was happening. A
minute ago I wanted to get as far away from him as possible. Now,
thoughts of his lips on mine made me tingle all over. As if he
could read my thoughts, he lowered his mouth towards mine and I
held my breath.

“Emily,” he said in a husky voice. “Your
scent is driving me crazy. I don’t know whether to kiss you
or…”

“Kiss me,” I whispered, anticipating his
mouth, hungry for it.

“Stop!” ordered a strong voice behind
us.

Martin growled and released me.

I fell to the ground.

“What in the hell are you doing?” snapped
Marie angrily, staring at Martin.

He put his hands behind his back and stood
with his legs apart, glaring at her in silence.

“Marie!” I gasped, standing up. “Thank God
you’re okay!” She turned to me and I noticed in shock that her eyes
were glowing the same way Martin’s had just moments ago.

She smiled coldly and
turned back to Martin. “I’m fine. But I’ll be better after I
feed
. Obviously there’s
been a holdup.”