What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (8 page)

“Shut up. When we get back, I’m shoving you both in the cage. You belong with the animals.” He kicks at me with the toe of his boot and strikes my shin. It hurts but that pain can’t compare to what’s happening in my head.

The van starts to move forward a little. There are a few sharp turns. The driver has to back up and try to go in another direction. “It’s like a maze,” he says, cursing.

Suddenly I feel sick, horribly sick to my stomach.

“What the hell is that?” Milo, the man or boy or whatever he is in back, says.

“She’s throwing up,” the female says.

“Get her out!”

I can sense him step over me, hear the van door squeal as it’s wrenched open and feel a cold rush of air. He kicks me out of the van and I tumble to the hard pavement outside. Even as I fall, I continue to vomit, heaving up watery residue from my empty stomach.

I hear the sound of boots clatter to the ground as the two in back jump out beside me. “Get up in the light!” Milo orders me. I feel the toe of his boot jab into my side. I think just for a moment that maybe I could get to my feet, maybe I could run. But I can’t raise myself up any higher than my hands and knees and he keeps kicking at me so I crawl forward, to the front of the van until I’m gasping and heaving in the glare of the headlights.

“She’s bleeding,” the female voice says.

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to touch her now. And we’re only supposed to bring her back.”

“We’ll bring her back.” It’s the voice of Bodie, standing with the others.

“What if she dies?”

“She’s not going to die. I didn’t hit her that hard.”

“Maybe she has a concussion.” I wonder if that’s a hint of compassion from the female.

“Are you going to cry over her? She’s the one that killed Gideon.”

“We don’t know if he’s dead for sure.”

“None of them ever had a gun before.”

“She’s special, isn’t she?”

“We’ll treat her special, that’s a guarantee.”

I’m starting to gain some control over myself. My stomach has quieted down and I’m breathing more evenly. But then blackness starts to fill my head. I want to stay awake, alert enough to defend myself, but I can’t. I’m spinning down a dark hole. The wide beams of the headlights narrow into pinpoints, then disappear altogether. I can no longer hear or see anything.

The darkness swallows me whole.

There is water
below me.

I know because I can hear the slap of waves against concrete. A bird shrieks as it darts past. There’s a fishy, algae and decay smell. My eyes are crusted shut and I have to rub the gunk loose so I can see. Then a blast of chill wind revives me completely.

I’m floating in mid-air.

My mind won’t accept it but my eyes tell me I’m up high, dangling above an enormous river. I try to think of a way to explain it but the only thing I can come up with is that maybe I’ve died. This might be some weird mid-point, a way station between this world and the next.

But there’s solid wood below my feet, wood above my head and black bars all around me. I try to stand and this platform I’m on sways dangerously in the wind, knocking me back. I slide and think for a moment I’m going to tumble off the edge but my back is caught by the row of iron bars behind me. There is not enough room to stand up straight.

Then it hits me that I really have been locked in a cage, penned up like an animal, just like the one they called Milo said he was going to do to his companions.

I have to shut my eyes, force myself to concentrate, make myself believe this is happening. I’m up high enough that the fall might kill me—I know that. Another flurry of icy wind rakes across me, makes the cage rock to and fro. I drop to my hands and knees, crouching low, trying to stay in the center of the cage’s floor to keep it steady.

The wind stinging my eyes makes them tear up and I’m able to blink the rest of the gummy residue away. I touch my face and feel a large bump in the middle of my forehead painful to touch, covered with a sticky-sweet coating of blood.

I scan the horizon. To my left are the towering offices of a city’s center. To my right I see a warren of warehouses and buildings only four or five stories high. In front of me, as far as I can see, is the broad sweep of the river and the bridges that span it. I count four of them receding into the distance.

Creeping to the front edge of the cage, I slide a little, making that end tip down. I press myself flat, let my head rest against the rusted iron bars until I can peer almost straight over the rim. There’s a sheet of water the color of weathered steel spread below me. Weak sunlight pierces gloomy skies, skitters across the tips of wavelets driven by the wind. Starlings dive and swoop all around me.

I shut my eyes as a wave of nausea hits me. My throat feels ragged, as if I’ve been gargling with sand. Then I hear voices, the chatter of voices somewhere nearby. The cries of the birds make it impossible to pick out actual words but I get an impression of cheerfulness, of young people casually strolling along, not a care in the world.

Rolling over, I look up at the stained, scratched ceiling of rough wood above me, listening hard, trying to decipher what they’re saying. There is the metallic ping of someone rhythmically beating a handrail with a piece of pipe or a rock, something heavy. This sound grows louder, filling the space above me—the unknown above the roof of my cage. Then the pinging stops, right above my head. I can hear words clearly for the first time.

“She’s still down there…”

“What a great idea they had…”

“Tonight we’ll…”

“If she’s still alive.”

Then a voice shushes the others like a teacher bringing a class to order. It’s a female voice familiar to me but it takes a few minutes for me to connect it to anything recent in my memory. My mind is moving slowly, as if my thoughts have to claw their way through thick syrup in order to come clear.

“Are you still alive down there, Gillian? Please respond if you are.”

An image of the self-satisfied, taunting face of Jendra with her platinum blond hair and doll-like features flashes into my mind, a face so healthy, so well cared for.

Then William’s voice follows hers. “We have food and water for you but you have to say something to get it.” I see William offering me his sandwich with real bread back in the motel room, thick slices of soft, moldless bread. Memories of the smell, the taste of it from years ago fill my senses, make my poor, parched mouth water.

“Maybe she
is
dead,” another voice says carelessly, like it hardly matters.

“What’ll they do then? If she’s dead.”

“We won’t have any excitement tonight,” Jendra says. “Everyone will be
so
disappointed.”

“Delicious wa-wa, sweetie,” William calls down to me. “You must be thirsty. But you have to say something first, otherwise why should we waste it?”

Involuntarily, a dull, rasping sound escapes my throat. It’s not loud enough for anyone to hear. The back of my throat burns, like I’ve been inhaling smoke from a building on fire.

“We’re going to leave, Gillian. We might leave you dangling up here forever.”

I try to frame a few clear-headed thoughts. They’re torturing me because I killed one of them. But something’s going to happen tonight. They want to prolong my suffering for some reason.

As long as there’s even the smallest chance for me to find a way out of this, I have to do something, do whatever I can. I’ve come so far with my kids, my family—we’ve reached the legendary city at the north end of the highway.
The
city—

I can’t just surrender. I won’t permit myself to simply roll over and die.

But I need water. I need food.

I stand up as much as I can, trying to maintain balance, crouching with my back pressed against the craggy layer of wood above me. I grab hold of the bars facing the industrial side of the river and try to raise my voice. I hear myself make a sound like an elderly crow, a sort of broken cackle. Then I’m able to form actual words. “I’m here!” I’m not sure if the words are loud enough but it’s the best I can do.

“Ah, I think she’s alive,” William says. “Moira will be so happy.”

“Can you hold on for a few more hours?” Jendra calls down to me.

“Give me water,” I say. I try to raise my voice above the sound of the birds.

“We’ll have to think about that. You don’t sound like you’re at the end of your rope yet. Get it? End of your rope?”

“We could cut this rope, you know,” a strange voice says.

“I happen to have a knife,” William says. “Would you like that, Gillian? If we sawed away at the rope a little? I don’t know how strong the rope is. It was the best one we could find to hang your cage with.”

Panic makes my stomach knot. The dull pain in my head recedes a bit and lets in the full realization of what’s happened. It’s like something from a horror movie. It can’t be real but
it is real
.

I’m in a cage made for an animal, suspended high above the wide river that runs through the city of Raintree, dangling from the side of a bridge.

It maddens me that I can’t see anything directly above me, can’t see the rope, how securely they’ve tied it or what they’ve tied it to. Or the row of grinning, mocking faces staring down at me. I want to hurt them. I want them to feel like I feel, be as frightened as I am.

“And I have a stone, a large round stone,” Jendra says. “What if I drop that stone? Gillian, what do you think will happen?”

“Should you do that?” another voice says. “They want her alive.”

“It’s the ceremony tonight. Moira is going to take over.”

“Gideon would have wanted her to,” the first voice says with deep respect.

Moira. Gideon.
I killed Gideon
. That’s what the three in the van said.

“Oh, no,” Jendra cries out, laughing. “The stone slipped out of my hand.”

A heavy thud on one end of the roof of the cage immediately follows the sound of her voice. It causes the cage to tip and me to sprawl back against the bars. The entire cage quakes. I hear a plonk and a splash from far down below. I scramble back to the middle of the cage and wait for it to stop rocking.

I imagine dropping straight down into the chilly waters of the river. I’m a good swimmer but in this cage I would sink to the muddy riverbed, thrashing against the bars until I could no longer breathe, the pressure of the water pounding against my ears until everything grew completely still, completely quiet.

If I had to dream up an ultimate nightmare for myself, I couldn’t come up with anything better.

But they want to keep me alive a little longer. They want to torture me. They want me to suffer.

“I think that’s enough for now,” Jendra says brightly. Then she calls down to me. “We’re going now. All you have to do is to wait until dark.”

The voices continue to chatter, happy and carefree, as they fade into the distance. Two thoughts fill my mind.

The water they offered was a lie. The food was a lie.

I open my mouth to call out but let the words die in my throat. I know the harsh, pleading rasp I made would be ignored, laughed at if they heard it at all.

All that water below me and I can’t taste a drop. I hope for a moment that the cage does fall so I can at least drink deep the river’s steel-gray depths in the moments remaining before I slip away from this life.

Then I fall asleep or pass out. The only reason I’m aware of this is because, when I open my eyes next, it’s suddenly dark out.

Black silhouettes, more
like wraiths than living beings, dance around the cage that still encloses me. Some carry lit torches which they wave and toss in the air, thrust at one another like swordfighters. They circle so fast I can’t get a fix on their faces in the light of the flickering flames. All I see are glimpses of white hands with pale, death-like fingers that rake along the iron bars.

I’ve drawn myself up tight with my knees pressed against my chin and my arms wrapped around my shins. I’m too frightened to feel the pain in my arms, my back, my head, the thirst that scratches at my throat.

Then one of the wraiths thrusts a torch through the bars of the cage. Although the flames don’t touch me, I scuttle back like a wounded animal. There is laughter—high-pitched, crazy-sounding laughter. Someone shoves a torch inside the cage behind me, singeing my clothes. I feel its heat bloom against my back and scuttle crab-like to the other side.

These shapes twitch and shake to the pounding of drums.

I catch glimpses of hunched figures squatting in a circle, hammering away with the palms of their hands, the bodies of the drums clutched between their knees. There’s also a boombox somewhere with the volume so loud the electronica it blasts morphs into the shriek of a jet plane, white noise over thudding beats.

And beyond all this is an enormous bonfire. I can’t see how high its flames rise. They seem to reach up forever like a burning redwood in an ancient forest.

I see all of this. I know all of this is happening but I’m beyond the point where I can figure out a way to respond, an action to take. I feel
exactly
like an animal now. Not thinking, just reacting. Alive for the moment. Waiting for the end.

From the bridge, dangling over the murky-gray waters of the river, they brought me here.

The smell of smoke woke me. Nor far away something was burning. The birds were quiet and I saw that I was still high above the water
—
there was enough moonlight to see the spans of the bridges in the distance. I had been sleeping or unconscious and night had fallen.

I heard the sound of an engine coughing into life somewhere to the left of me, not far from the river’s bank. People shouting. Then the hum of large truck tires skimming along the steel grate on the floor of the bridge. I felt the vibrations run through me, making the cage tremble.

A large vehicle squealed to a stop right above me. There were voices in the dark, more shouts and then a jerk on the rope holding me aloft and I was lifted up.