My Kind Of Crazy (8 page)

“We’re doing everything we can to find Anastasia.”

“So she’s still missing. After I found May, I called 911 on
Anastasia’s cellphone. The cellphone was under the bed in the upstairs bedroom,
the one down to the right at the top of the stairs. I had to use her cellphone
because the main lines were cut.” Blood is dribbling out the corner of my mouth
and coating my tongue. I let my head hang as I close my eyes and try to calm my
breathing to a normal level, or at least a level that doesn’t make me look
insane. Then I chuckle to myself because I
am
insane, and what if
they’re right? What if I imagined my earlier conversation with Anastasia and
the lasagna? There’s a possibility that I did, and during that blackout I hurt
her in some way. She could be dead in the woods because I lost my temper, and
then I remember
why
I lost my temper earlier.

“Mr. Taylor, I don’t know his first name, but he drives a
metallic colored Lexus. He’s been stopping by every day for days now telling
Anastasia that she has to sell her property to him, our property.” I hope that
will help them, and if I get my hands on that rotten piece of dead flesh
walking, I’ll kill him.

“Jonah?” My voice comes out scratchy and quiet, but it’s
loud enough to get my captor’s attention.

“No, not Jonah.” I don’t recognize the voice which frightens
me. It’s not who I would expect it to have been, and that sends chills down my
spine.

“Who?” I try to clear the phlegm from my throat, but it’s
thick and sticky, and yet my mouth feels drier than the Sahara Desert air.

“Never mind who. Tell me where it is!” When I’m finally able
to feel my arms and legs, part of me wishes that I still can’t. My wrists are
tied tightly with something abrasive and stringy that reminds me of a thick
twine, and my ankles are tied with the same. I’m lying on my side with my legs
drawn up to my chest, and my shirt is tattered from being drug through the
woods.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. If you could
just elaborate what ‘it’ is?” Now is not the time for a snarky attitude, but I
can’t seem to control myself. I’m still unable to focus on anything in front of
me, yet my sense of smell seems to be working on overdrive. The air is musty.
I’m lying on dirt, and I can smell something that reminds me of death.

“The tape, the tape, you
must
have the tape!” I
understand why I’m unable to see right. It’s because my eyes are barely open.
So I open them up fully and manage to get an eyeful of dust as the man walks
past me in a pair of hunting boots.

“What
tape
are you talking about? What’s on this
tape?” I assume it’s not Disney movies, and since this man drugged me and
kidnapped me, I assume that it’s not anything I really want to see. Yet I have
a morbid curiosity to understand what is on this tape, and why this man would
think I possess it.

“You watch it don’t you? Late at night, you watch
my
tape!” He’s really starting to lose it, or he’s lost it a long time ago. The
man begins to cackle in a high pitched voice, and I almost groan when I
recognize the throes of insanity. I’m not going to get anywhere by asking him
what is on this tape or why he thinks I have it. My remaining energy should be
spent on figuring a way out of here because obviously I’m too far in the woods
for anyone to hear my scream right now.

“I have to pee.” That’s a viable excuse to get outside of
this stinking hole in the ground, right? I assume it’s a hole, but perhaps I’m
in some sort of dirt cabin. Did my father have more than one cabin in the woods
with a crazy man in it? I must be feeling really awful because that thought
makes me want to cackle right along with this psychopath.

“You can
pee
when I have my
tape!
”
Unexpectedly, he grabs my hair in his hand and wrenches my head back so that
when I open my eyes I’m forced to look at his face, or lack thereof. He’s
wearing a ski mask that leaves nothing but his eyes revealed, but I can tell
that he’s fair skinned from his eyelids. I study the hazel eyes with tendrils
of brown radiating out from the irises, and the dark ringlets around his hazel
eyes. If he weren’t insane, I’d say his eyes are pretty.

“I can’t concentrate if you’re pulling my hair out of my
head! Let me think, and maybe I can help you get your tape!” My teeth snap
together as he pulls my head back even further and runs a finger around my
small Adam’s apple, what happens next will scar me for the rest of my
existence. The creep puts his cracked, dry, dirty lips to my throat so gently I
can barely feel it. But oh do I feel the shivers climbing up my spine and makes
me want to hurl.

“Maybe I can make a new tape.” The stranger suggests with
glee in his voice, and if it weren’t for my insane amount of self-control I
would be vomiting this instant all over the dirt floor.

“No!” I swallow harshly and try to get my galloping heart to
stop pounding on my rib cage. “No, you’re other tape is much better, and I will
help you find it. Just please, let me go outside to pee.” I’m not lying
anymore; I really do have to pee. And yet, if I were actually given the chance
to squat and do it I probably wouldn’t get anything out I’m so terrified right
now.

“I can’t let you out of here. No, if I let you out you will
run and tell the
pigs
out there looking for us right now that I’m here.
And then you will tell
them
how to find the tape!” Before I can protest
and lie through my teeth that I was not about to do any such thing, my captor
hits me across the face with something long and cold. It eerily reminds me of a
gun. That’s my last thought before I collapse back onto the floor unconscious.

“Daddy?” The man sitting on a bench with his back to me
looks oddly familiar, but I’m afraid to sit down beside him. What if he looks
different than he did when he was alive?

“Ana, sweetheart, come sit with me.” Even with the
irrational ball of fear tangled in my abdomen, I make my legs jerk forward like
a zombie’s. I’m almost to the back of the bench when my father turns his head
to the side, and I have a clear profile of half his face. The fact that it
looks like it did any other day of the week when he was alive soothes me. So I
move around the bench and sit on the opposite side, looking out over the gray
mist ahead of us.

“I’m so lost without you. I miss the phone calls on
Wednesdays, and the fact that we always promise we’d get together sometime.” My
throat clogs with my unshed tears, and I look down at my arms, the scarred,
ugly arms that are mine. “I wanted to fall into old habits again after the
police called.”

Without any knowledge of how I got there, I’m suddenly
soaking in the warmth of my father’s hug. Here, in a place where no one will
ever know, I whisper to my father all the heartache I’ve been dealing with for
the last week since his death. I tell him about how angry I was that he never
told me about Jonah, or the fact that he split everything down the middle
between me and Jonah. All the while, my father holds me and strokes my hair. I
even tell him about how everyone is calling me Ana now and not by my real name,
and he stiffens.

“Tell me about the tape, Anastasia.” I feel my throat
working as the words slice through me, and then the mist is starting to recede
from my vision. I’m running after it with my hand outstretched, silently
screaming as the back of my father disappears.

I’m jerked out of the dream, and slapped in the face with
reality as I realize that it’s my captor who is holding me. He’s stroking my
hair with a gloved hand as he rocks me back and forth as though I’m his own
child, and then his hand begins to wander down my front to my abdomen. His
fingers bunch in the remains of my shirt while I fight the urge to kick and
scream. I have to wait for my moment, and then I’ll kick, but I won’t be
screaming. No, it’ll be this Weirdo who will be writhing on the floor in agony
by the time I’m done with him.

“You have much softer hair than the others. It’s like cool,
silk sheets running through my fingers.” The vomit is starting to gather in my
esophagus. I really don’t want to know what lasagna will taste like the second
time around, although I have a feeling there won’t be much left. I think I’ve
been out here longer than I previously guessed, which means the police might
have stopped searching already.

“If I tell you where the tape is, will you let me go?” My
voice quivers, but I manage to keep my body from shaking like leaves in a wind
storm.

“If you tell me where the tape is, and I find it, then I
will let you go.” I know what that implies. “If you lie to me, Anastasia, I
will cut off each one of your fingers until you tell me the truth. It will be a
shame because they are such long, elegant fingers.” I’m going to hate my own
fingers for the rest of my life now. But I nod anyway, and I struggle to plow
ahead with my reckless plan.

“It’s in a fire proof box, in my father’s bedroom,
underneath the third floorboard from the door.” I hope that’s enough detail for
him to believe me because I don’t have anything better than that.

“Don’t scream while I’m away, it’ll be useless darling.
There is no one out here to hear you!” He lets out this laugh that reminds me
of a child, and then he’s opening up a door to my right to let the night sounds
waft in.

As the moonlight graces the inside of what looks like
another cabin, I take in as much as I possibly can. There are tarps over the
windows to block the light, and it looks as if they’re held up with boards over
the ends nailed to the wall. I don’t see a weapon that I could use, but if I
could get one of those boards to rip off before he came back, I might be able
to break a window. That is if I can get out of my restraints.

“Don’t go anywhere. There are worse things in the woods at
night than me.”
I highly doubt that.
I manage to keep that thought to
myself as he steps outside of the door. A chain rattles as it thunks against
the wooden door and I know that the door is not a viable option for escape.

Over two hundred seconds later, I counted, I hear his
footsteps crunching away from the cabin. I count to two hundred one more time,
and then I start to jiggle the rope around my wrists first. It’s not budging,
and neither are the ropes around my ankles. Making an angry, guttural noise, I
pull myself into a sitting position and start scooting around so that I can
find
something
that will help me get these bindings off.

I have no idea how long I search the floor for something
worth helping me before I start to attempt squeezing my hands through the
opening. If I twist my wrists methodically to the left and then to the right,
it feels as though the rope might be getting loose. I end up sloughing off some
of my flesh as I get my right hand free, and then my left.

With no knowledge of how long I have left before the
psychopath returns, I immediately start undoing the restraints on my ankles. My
breaths are coming quick now to match the rhythm of my heart that is soon going
to fly out of my chest cavity. If I don’t get out of here soon, I won’t be far
enough away when he returns. My hand slips on the rope and I cuss, rather
loudly, when I hit the injured side of my hand on the floor.

“I guess he was right, no one will hear me out here, not
even him!” I giggle hysterically as I finally get the nylon rope around my
ankles to fall away. The bark of laughter that follows is scratchy and inhuman
to my ears, but who can blame a person for losing their mind when they’re
threatened with losing fingers?

The boards are much more difficult than the restraints,
considering they’re
screwed
into the wall rather than nailed, which
means
I’m
screwed. I’m not sure what is really over the window, whether
it’s tarp or some other sort of thick material, but it’s going to be difficult
to break through with my bare hands. Especially hands that are already
throbbing as if they’re asking me to just stop right here and now. Yet I love
my fingers dearly, and I love my life even more.

Embarrassed by the action, I pull off my shirt and wrap it
around my left hand, which is not torn up from the rope. I’m right handed, but
I’m going to need to learn how to punch with my left hand in the next minute,
or I might be missing the fingers on my right. Somehow, I just imagine him
starting with my right hand. The images fuel my fear, and kick up my adrenaline
another notch as I pull my left hand back.

“Here it goes,” I whisper to myself. All the while, I’m
wondering why I’m even bothering to talk to myself, but hearing my own voice is
helping.

My fist crashes into the tarp and smarts as soon as it comes
in contact with the glass. I hear it crack, but it doesn’t shatter. I pull off
one of my sneakers and slip my hand into it, and I start using that to break
out the glass of the window. The broken glass tears holes within the tarp
easily, so I pull my sneaker off my hand and slip it back onto my foot. Then I use
my good hand to rip the tarp away, and breathe in the fresh air pouring through
the window. The night sounds are like a chorus of cheering to my ears as I pull
myself through the opening.

I hiss when my leg catches on a stray piece of glass and it
tears through my jeans to kiss my flesh. Blood runs down my leg under my jeans,
but the sensation is welcome as I start light stepping away from the cabin. I
don’t want him to know which direction I went, so I try not to disturb the
leaves and sticks underneath my feet. When I’m about twenty yards away from the
Hell hole, I start running as if my life depends on it, which it does.

Being lost in the woods with a maniac on the loose is a lot
like being chased through the Sahara Dessert by a lion, or any other predator
chasing down the prey is an excellent comparison. My breathing is so loud to my
own ears that I want to gag myself, but I’m having a hard time getting oxygen
to my brain. Fear seized me back at the cabin, but panic is beginning to drag
me down under the proverbial water.

Just as I’m about to start screaming like an idiot, a
familiar smell wafts through the air towards me. It’s the scent of burning
wood, which means I’m close to a camp fire or a wood stove. My eyes sting with unshed
tears as I start blindly running towards the smell. I’m smiling when I burst
through the trees and find myself face to face with a large, burly man with a
large gun in his hands.

“Do you have a phone?” This man probably thinks that I’m
insane as he grabs me by the shoulders and holds me back. It’s then that I
realize I’m not wearing my shirt anymore because it’s resting on the floor of
the tiny cabin I was in. My face flushes as he pulls off his flannel shirt and
wraps it around my shoulders.

“Thanks.” I mumble to him as I pull my arms through the
oversized sleeves and button up the front.

“What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of the
woods at four in the morning dressed like that?” He sounds more than shocked.