Authors: Amy Cross
Penny
“It's kinda hard to tell,” Lindsay mutters as she trudges back over to join me at the edge of the muddy field. “That's the problem with being out in the countryside. Everywhere basically looks the same.”
“Not to me,” I reply, turning and looking back the way we just walked. “I've spent so long out here, I know the place like the back of my hand.”
“It's cold,” she continues, zipping her coat shut. “I remember it was cold back then, too. When Enda helped me get away from the farmhouse and took me to the Happy Eater, it was freezing.”
“And you don't remember the route you took?”
“Just a bunch of fields,” she replies. “Plus, I was in kind of a bad way. How about you?”
“I was unconscious,” I tell her, stepping out across the field, even though my feet are sinking into the mud. “One moment I was in the farmhouse, trying to get Hugh back, and then the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital.”
“You see?” Lindsay asks, as she follows me. “Enda cares. She didn't have to let you go, but she did. She's not some evil, psycho monster.”
“She tried to feed me to her pigs,” I point out. “Although she apologized later. She said she panicked.”
“I don't envy the psychiatrist who has to work on her,” she mutters. “When we get her back to civilization, she's gonna have a hard time adjusting. It's gonna be like one of those Tarzan movies where they get the dude back from the jungle. Hell, Enda'll probably get freaked out by cellphones and computers and all that shit. It'll be kinda fun showing her around the modern world.”
“You sound like you want to be her friend,” I reply.
“It's not like that!” she bristles. “I just... Someone needs to help her.”
“I'm sure you can visit her in jail.”
“Jail?” She sounds shocked. “There's no way Enda should go to jail!”
“She's a kidnapper, at the very least,” I point out. “Maybe a murderer too.”
“She's just a kid!” she protests. “Seriously, she's not even -”
“There's some fog moving in,” I add, as I see a wall of whiteness up ahead. The last thing I want is to hear Lindsay defending Enda all day. “I think the weather's going to get worse before it gets better.”
“This whole goddamn place gives me the creeps,” Lindsay replies as we strike out across the field, heading straight into the fog. “I've never been a country girl. Give me a city, any day. At least there, you don't risk getting stuck in the middle of nowhere.” She glances around for a moment. “Do you ever think that maybe she's watching you?”
“Enda?” I ask, surprised by the question.
“When you're out here all alone, don't you ever wonder if she's hiding behind a bush, keeping an eye on you?”
“I doubt it,” I mutter.
“I feel like we're intruding,” she continues. “Like, this is her world, and we're trespassers. And I definitely feel like I don't really understand the rules out here. Now, if we plopped Enda down in the middle of London, the tables would be turned. I could totally run rings around her, but here...” Her voice trails off for a moment. “This
is
mud we're trudging through, isn't it? It's not, like, cow poo...”
“It's mud,” I reply, trying not to get too frustrated by her constant stream of questions. To be honest, even though I appreciate her help, I'm starting to think that maybe I was able to get more done when I was out here alone. I don't need anyone else.
“It's all around us,” she says suddenly, holding her hands up and swirling her fingers through the rapidly-encroaching fog.
Turning, I see that she's right. The fog is closing in from all directions, and it's moving much faster than I would've expected. By the time I turn and look straight ahead again, visibility is down to just a few meters in each direction.
“So is this cool or scary?” Lindsay asks. “I'm thinking cool, but with a definite
hint
of scary.”
“It's just fog,” I point out. “You really
aren't
used to the countryside, are you?”
“Like I told you, I'm a city mouse through and through.”
For the next few minutes, as we make our way through the fog, Lindsay keeps yammering on about how much she hates being out here. The more she talks, however, the more I realize that she seems extremely nervous, and I'm starting to think that she's terrified of discovering the farmhouse. I don't know the details of what happened to her when she was with Enda, but I know enough to understand that she went through an extremely traumatic experience. That being the case, however, I can't quite see why she's so keen to find the place again. Despite her obvious fear, she even starts hurrying ahead of me, making her way through the fog even though it seems to be getting thicker by the minute.
“Slow down,” I call after her. “There are a few rivers and gulleys in the area. You don't want to go stumbling straight into one of them.”
“We're close!” she shouts back to me.
“Close to -” Barely able to see her now as she hurries onward, I pick up my pace a little. “What do you mean?”
“Can't you sense it?” she continues, her voice filled with a hint of wonder. “Seriously? It's like I can feel the farmhouse getting nearer.”
“I'm really not sure it works like that,” I reply. “It's not magic!”
“I can't believe you're not feeling what I'm feeling,” she adds breathlessly. “We're definitely close. Maybe the fog's something to do with it! Maybe the fog's, like, a way to get there!”
“Slow down!” I shout again, barely able to see her at all as she hurries into the distance. “Lindsay! What are -”
Before I can finish, I hear a faint gasp.
“Lindsay?” I call out, running after her. “Are you okay?”
When I finally catch up to her, I find that she ran straight into a stone wall that runs across the field. She's bent double, clutching her belly as she leans against the wall.
“That hurt!” she hisses.
“No kidding. I told you to be careful.”
Placing a hand on the wall, I feel that the stones are damp. I look both ways, and although I still don't see any sign of the farmhouse, I can't help thinking back to the stone wall that ran around the farmyard. The two walls are similar, almost as if they were build from the same materials, maybe even by the same hand. For a moment, I actually feel a flicker of awareness in my chest, as if I can tell that the farm is nearby.
“You
do
feel it, right?” Lindsay asks, finally standing up straight again. “I can see it in your eyes.”
Instead of replying, I turn and look along the wall.
“This way,” I whisper, before setting off in that direction. I don't know how, but I can somehow tell that we're getting closer with every step, although there's a part of me that worries I'm simply letting Lindsay get into my thoughts too much.
“These assholes think they can hide forever,” Lindsay mutters. “Like hell they can! It just takes two of us, pooling our instincts, and we'll find 'em.” She nudges my arm. “Are you sure you didn't see the brother when you were there?”
“Apart from Enda, there was just an old man.”
“There's a younger guy too,” she continues, her voice filled with anger. “Maybe he as hiding from you, but you're lucky you didn't meet him. When Enda and the old guy were gone, the younger one... He did things to me. Haven't you noticed my limp?”
“He broke your leg?” I ask.
“He broke
me
,” she says darkly, hurrying and passing me. “The others punished him for it, but that's not enough. He needs to pay for what he did. Enda might not be evil, but the brother -”
Suddenly she stops, staring straight ahead.
“What's wrong?” I ask.
“Don't you see it?”
Stopping next to her, I stare at the fog, which seems to be clearing just a little. I open my mouth to ask her what she sees, but slowly a faint shadow is starting to appear in the distance. Too large to be a person, it almost seems like...
“Careful,” Lindsay whispers, limping forward.
“We can't have found it,” I reply, refusing to let myself believe that after all this time, we might have stumbled upon the farmhouse. My chest feels tight and I'm on the verge of panic, but I can't hold back. Hurrying forward, I quickly find that we're at the top of a small hill, and the fog is clearing faster and faster, revealing...
“Get down!” Lindsay hisses, grabbing my arm and pulling me down onto my knees.
Staring straight ahead, I wait as the fog continues to clear. Slowly but surely, the old farmhouse is coming into view. After six years, I finally made it back.
“Pete,” I whisper, struggling to my feet. “Hugh!”
Penny
“Are you insane?” Lindsay gasps, grabbing my hand and pulling me back down onto the wet grass. “We can't just go and knock on the front door, for fuck's sake! These people are dangerous!”
“I have to go and find my son!” I reply, trying once again to pull free.
“We'll find him, alright,” she mutters, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a couple of large carving knives. “Here,” she continues, “I borrowed these from the pub's kitchen. One for you, one for me.”
“I don't -”
“These people are dangerous!” she says again, setting one of the knives next to my hand. “I'm willing to bet any money that there's a shotgun somewhere on the premises, and that runty little bastard won't hesitate to use it. Plus they know the area, they're on home turf, and this probably won't be the first time they've had to defend themselves.”
I turn to her. “Lindsay -”
“I'm gonna kill him,” she continues, with pure fury in her eyes. “I swear to God, I've waited so many years for this chance, but I'm gonna slit his fucking throat and hold his head back as all the blood drains from his body. I'm gonna feel the life draining from his body. I've dreamed about this moment for so long.”
“I thought you were here to help Enda,” I tell her.
“Fuck Enda. It's her brother I'm after.” She glances at me, and somehow all the flickering anger from the psychiatric ward seems to have returned to her face. “I couldn't say that to anyone before, could I? They'd never have let me out of the hospital if I'd admitted I was coming to kill the bastard who fucked with me, and you probably wouldn't have let me come with you either.” She pauses, with tears in her eyes. “Do you have any idea what Enda's brother did to me when I was here before?”
“I'm not -”
“Look!” Pulling up the front of her shirt, she reveals several thick, knotted scars. Before I can ask about them, she starts pulling down the front of her pants, allowing me to see that the scars join together and become thicker around her crotch. “He damn near killed me,” she continues, her voice trembling with anger. “And then after I was safely back at the hospital, I found out I was pregnant. The fucker actually... He...”
Her voice trails off for a moment.
“Lindsay,” I whisper cautiously, “I'm so sorry, I never -”
“He fucking raped me,” she stammers, with tears in her eyes, “and got me pregnant. I came so close to getting rid of it, I was in the room with the pills in my hand, but I couldn't do it. So I carried that bastard's baby for nine months, and then when it came out...” She pauses. “It wasn't a baby at all. Not really. It was like a little stump of flesh and blood, with half its organs on the outside. There was no face, I don't even know if it was really alive, but it was throbbing and pumping. I'll never forget the looks on the doctors' faces. They didn't know what to do with it. Later, I found out that the most humane way they could think to kill it was to put it in the freezer. Can you believe that?”
I wait for her to continue, but tears are running down her face now. After a moment, I notice that she's scratching her arm so hard, she's already bringing blood to the surface.
“And do you know the worst part?” she asks, her voice trembling with shock. “The worst part is that I didn't hate the fucking thing. Even though it was just a lump of nothing, I wanted to hold it, and I wanted to keep it alive. Even though that bastard had raped me and put his disgusting, mutant seed in my body, my fucking maternal instinct still kicked in. He put that monsters in my body and then he made me love it! And then after it was dead, the doctors told me that there was so much damage in my womb, I can never conceive again.” She takes a deep breath. “So now do you have some fucking idea why I have to kill him?”
I want to tell her that I'm sorry, but I figure words can't possibly be enough.
“And then about three months later, you showed up with that detective,” she mutters, reaching up with a bloodied hand and touched the scars on the side of her neck. “Until that day, I was never quite sure that I hadn't somehow imagined the whole thing. But when I met you, I realized it had all been real.”
“Lindsay,” I say cautiously, “I just -”
“It's almost five,” she continues, checking her watch, “which means we have two, maybe three hours of daylight yet. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell want to be able to see if one of these fuckers creeps up behind me.” She sniffs back more tears. “We need to get this shit on the road.”
“We should call for help,” I reply, reaching for my phone. “I'll get Detective Palmer to -”
“Fuck that,” she mutters, getting to her feet with the knife in her right hand. “They'll never be able to find us out here, and you know it.”
Unlocking my phone, I see that the matter is moot: I have no signal.
“Do what you want with Enda,” Lindsay continues. “I don't care, not anymore. I was lying about that. I'm here for the brother. He's mine.”
“You can't just -”
“Don't tell me what I can't do,” she says firmly. “That's what the doctors were like, and I fucking
hated
them.”
Figuring that there's no point arguing with her, I get to my feet. All I care about is finding my husband and my son.
“Every night in that cell at the psychiatric ward,” Lindsay continues, as we start making our way down the hill, “I dreamed of getting back here and cutting that fucker's throat. I even learned to trick the doctors, to make them think I was better, just so that I could get them to let me out. It took years, but I knew I'd get back here one day. Now all I care about is making Enda's brother pay for what he did to me, and making sure he can't ever do it to anyone else.”
By the time we get to the foot of the hill, my heart is pounding. The farmhouse is just a hundred meters away now, but so far there's no sign of life. As we get closer, however, I can't help noticing that a few things seem different. Over the past six years, the gate at the front looks to have been fixed, and in general the yard appears to be much tidier. The truck is still parked in the same spot, but when we reach the stone wall it becomes apparent that Enda has done a lot of work to make the farm neater and less dilapidated. Whereas before the place looked like it was falling down, now it actually looks almost like a home.
“They've still got the pigs, then,” Lindsay mutters, as oinks and grunts rise up from the pen.
“Look,” I reply, spotting a couple of crude wooden crosses over at the corner. Stepping closer to take a look, I see the name 'Pa' scratched into the surface of one. “I guess she buried him.”
Turning, I see that Lindsay has already made her way into the yard.
I look down at the knife in my hand, figuring that I'll only use it if I have no other choice. Heading over to follow Lindsay, I make my way through the muddy yard, while constantly watching the windows of the farmhouse in case there's any sign of life. So far, however, the place seems almost deserted, although the pigs are louder than ever. A few stray strands of fog are still drifting through the icy air.
“Oh God,” Lindsay stammers, as she looks into the pen.
“What?” Hurrying over, I see three large, old pigs in the mud, along with two other smaller, younger pigs that seem horribly deformed. One of the young pigs has no face, just an opening where its mouth should be, while the other has hopelessly crippled back legs which it has to drag through the mud.
“That's what you get with all the in-breeding,” Lindsay mutters, as one of the deformed pigs lets out an ear-piercing shriek. “Someone should tell these people to expand their horizons a little.”
The faceless pig shuffles toward us, but it's clear that the poor thing has no eyes. There are a couple of holes on the sides of its head, however, which makes me think that it might be able to hear. As it reaches us, it bumps against the wall slightly, and to my surprise Lindsay reaches down, as if she's about to stroke its head. A second later, however, the pig squeals and pulls away, and I see rich red blood dripping from Lindsay's knife.
“Just putting the poor thing out of its misery,” she mutters, watching as the pig slumps down. Blood is pouring from the gash in its neck, and its legs are twitching wildly.
“You can't just kill them,” I tell her.
“Come on,” she replies, turning and heading toward the farmhouse. “We're going in. These freaks of nature are gonna get what's coming to 'em.”
***
“Hey, you fucking monsters!” Lindsay calls out, banging her fist against the wall in the hallway. “Where are you? Are you hiding, is that it? It won't do any good! I'm gonna drag your asses out and cut your fucking throats!”
“Maybe they're out,” I suggest, as I head over to the door in the corner.
“Where the hell would they go?” she asks. “A family day out?”
I reach for the door handle, but for a moment I'm too scared to push it open. I remember struggling out through this exact same door, six years ago. Back then, with Hugh in my arms, I was terrified. Now, as I finally push the door open and look into the darkened room, the fear has been replaced by a sense of profound shock, and by a desperate need to find my son and my husband.
Sure enough, the metal table is still in place in the center of the room. Even the straps and chains have been left dangling from the sides.
“Is this where they held you?” Lindsay asks.
I nod.
“Me too,” she continues. Slipping past me, she steps into the room and looks around.
“It's cleaner than before,” I point out, noticing that the tools appear to have been left neatly stacked on the tables, whereas before they were strewn about the place. Looking down, I see that even the floor is clean, with all the blood and other fluids having been wiped away. Still, a shudder passes through my chest as I approach the table where, six years ago, I gave birth to my son.
“I guess Enda's a little more house-proud than her old man,” Lindsay mutters, opening a cupboard door but seeing nothing inside other than a few old bowls.
“But where is she?” I ask, heading over to the far side of the room and peering out through a narrow window. All I see outside is the yard, with the countryside stretching into the distance and meeting a slate gray sky at the horizon. “I don't even get how we found the place,” I continue, turning back to see that Lindsay is heading to the door. “I'm certain that I checked this valley several times, and the police must have flown straight over with their helicopters. There's no -”
Before I can finish, Lindsay pushes a set of glass bowls off one of the counters, sending them crashing to the ground.
“Maybe it's like I said,” she replies. “Maybe it's easier when there are two of us. I'm gonna take a look outside. There's no way these freaks have just vanished. They must be around somewhere.” She glances back at me. “Watch yourself. Remember, they're dangerous.”
Once she's gone, I head out into the corridor and wander over to the foot of the stairs. Even though we've already checked to make sure there's no-one around, I can't help heading up once again to the upper floor. The house seems almost
too
empty and
too
quiet, as if it has been abandoned for a while. At the same time, I can't believe that Enda would ever have left, so I figure she must be around somewhere, in which case I need to find her and find out where she's taken Pete and Hugh.
“Hey, you fuckers!” Lindsay's voice rings out from the yard, accompanied by the sound of more breaking glass. “I'm smashing your house up! Don't you wanna try to come and stop me?”
Opening one of the doors, I peer through and see a small room with a bed in one corner. I step inside and head over to the table next to the bed, where I find a couple of old wooden toys. Holding one of them up, I realize that it's a crude spinning top. Turning, I see to my surprise that one of the walls has been painted, filled by a large, untidy and not entirely accurate picture of a rainbow.
Outside, Lindsay's still smashing things and shouting into the fog.
It's almost as if I'm in a child's bedroom, although I'm sure that when I was here six years ago, this room was occupied by the old man. Still, someone has apparently tried to make it nice for a child.
“Hugh?” I call out, just in case there's any chance he might be able to hear me. I know it's a forlorn hope, but I still can't shake the feeling that I'm going to find my son and husband again. “Are you here?”
I pause for a moment.
The house is perfectly still and quiet.
“Hugh?” I continue, before spotting a panel low down on the far wall. Stepping over, I realize that the panel seems to be loose. “What the -”
“Hey!” Lindsay shouts suddenly, somewhere outside the house. “Wait! Stop right there, you fucking asshole!”
“What is it?” I yell, turning and rushing out of the room.
“Stop!” Lindsay continues, and I hear the sound of someone running across the yard.
After racing down the stairs, I hurry to the front door and pull it open, but I stop suddenly as soon as I hear a loud, terrified scream.