She skidded to a stop. Her bare feet were covered in mud. She could smell it and realized that her hands, pants and shed elbows were muddy. She didn't remember tearing her blouse, but both elbows looked out, scratched, bloody and now covered with moldy mud.
The rain had stopped without her noticing it. But the break would be short-lived. The clouds had darkened, and the mist grew thicker, brushing around her like restless ghosts rising from the ground. God, she shouldn't think of such things. She shouldn't think at all, just run.
Leaning against a tree, she tried to catch her breath. She had followed the only path she could find in the dense forest, hoping it would lead her into freedom. She was aboutto lose her head, panic had gripped her.
She expected her abductor to emerge from behind a bush at any moment and to grab her. Dry and broken branches pierced her blanket cloak. Several times she had been caught and then pulled back, as if hands were grabbing her neck. The painful strangulation marks had been an unpleasant reminder of his attack. Nevertheless, she didn't drop the blanket because it felt like a weak shield. She was soaking wet from rain and sweat. Moist hair stuck to her face, and the silk blouse was like a second skin.
The dense fog soaked her even more. In less than an hour, the darkness would sink over these endless forests. The certainty made her even more afraid. She could hardly see anything through the damp haze. Twice she had slid down a slope and almost fell into a pool of water that had looked like a dense gray fog from above. The darkness would make further progress impossible.
The kidnapper had taken her wristwatch for obvious reasons. He had left her the sapphire ring and earrings. She would have gladly swapped the three-thousand-dollar ring for her watch. Not knowing the time was terrible. Which day was it? Could it still be Wednesday? No. She remembered that it had been dark at the brief awakening in the car. Yes. Headlights blinded her. Which meant she had missed most of Thursday. She suddenly realized that she had no clue how long she had been unconscious. Maybe for days.
The new fear made breathing more difficult. Calm down! She had to think calmly about how she wanted to spend the night, and plan and approach it step by step. Although her instinct told her to continue running, rationality told her that it was more important to find a place for the night. In the meantime she wondered if it wouldn't be better if she have stayed in the shed. Had she really achieved something with her escape? At least it had been dry in the shed, and the lumpy cot now seemed to be wonderfully comfortable. She had no idea where she was, and it didn't seem as if she had come any closer to her goal of escaping from the forest jail, even after miles of running.
She crouched down, leaning her back against the rough wooden bark of a tree. She had to rest her legs, but to remain alert and ready to escape. Black crows pushed down on her indignantly and scared scared her. She sat still, too tired and weak to avoid them. The crows gathered for the night in the treetops. Hundreds flew in from all directions and announced with harsh screams that they took their sleeping place.
Suddenly it occurred to her that the birds would hardly settle here if they didn't consider this place safe. Should there be a disturbance or danger at night, the crows probably warned her more reliably than any alarm system.
She looked around for a safe resting place. Here lay a carpet of fallen leaves and pine needles from last fall. However, everything was soaked by rain and fog. The mere thought of lying on the cold floor made her shiver. The screaming of the crowd continued. She looked up and examined the branches. For years she hadn't climbed a tree. Her aching muscles reminded her how foolish it was to want to climb up somewhere. Foolish or not, she was safe up there. He wouldn't look for her in the treetops. Other nocturnal hunters as well. God, she hadn't thought of animals yet.
The tree next to her was forked in the perfect Y, so she could sit well in the branch fork. Immediately she got to work, collected branches and twigs and piled them up crosswise to get a makeshift ladder. As soon as she reached the lower branches of the tree, she could swing into the Y. She no longer thought about fatigue or the burning of her cut feet. With each load of twigs or the lifting of a branch her muscles urged her to cease the activity immediately. But fueled by new energy, she continued, so that her pulse beat in her ears.
The crows above her were silent as if they watching her feverish efforts with interest. Or did the animals listen for something? She paused, her arms full of branches. Her breath rattled, and she heard little more than the pounding of her own heart. She held her breath and listened. Silence around, as if the breaking darkness had swallowed every sound and movement.
Then she heard it.
At first it sounded like a wounded animal, suppressed screaming or high whining. She turned slowly and blinked hard in the fog and darkness. Sudden wind created nocturnal shadows. Wielding branches became waving arms. Rustling leaves sounded like footsteps.
Maura dropped the branches and looked around anxiously. Could she get into the tree without the makeshift ladder? Her fingers clawed at the tree bark. Carefully, she stepped on the pile of wood and tested its durability. She pulled herself up and reached for the next branch. It creaked under her weight but didn't break. She held on with both hands, though loose bark crumbled and fell into her eyes. She was ready to swing her legs into the Y when the suppressed whimpers became recognizable words.
"Help! Please, somebody help me!"
The wind carried the plea clearly in her direction. She froze. She was hanging on the branch, her feet dangling a bit above the wooden pile. Maybe she imagined that? Perhaps her perception tricked her because of exhaustion.
Her arms hurt, her fingers went numb. If she wanted to make it into the tree, she had to mobilize the last reserves right now.
Again the words blew like mist.
"Please, somebody help me!"
It was a woman's voice and it was close.
She dropped to the ground. By now she could only see a yard ahead in the growing darkness. She walked slowly towards the voice. Her arms stretched out in front of her, she followed the path and silently counted the steps. Branches tore at her hair and attacked her. She moved towards the voice without calling to betray herself. Cautiously, she still counted the steps, to turn around if necessary and to be able to run back to her safe haven.
Twenty-two, twenty-three. Then suddenly the ground opened underneath her. She fell, and the earth swallowed her.
She laid at the bottom of the pit. Her head was buzzing. Her side burned as if it were on fire. In her panic, she breathed quickly and gasping. Automatically, her hand found its way to her belly. There was nothing around her except mud, which sucked on her arms and legs like quicksand. Her right ankle was twisted under her. She knew immediately that it would be difficult to move it.
The smell of mud and decomposition made her gag. Total blackness around. She saw absolutely nothing. Above her she recognized the shadows of some branches, but the rest of the light was swallowed up by the fog and the night. The shadows she could make out told her just how deep her earthy grave was. Up to the surface it was thirteen feet, she would never be able to climb up there. She struggled to get up, but fell over as her ankle bucked. Shocked, she jumped up again and clung to the wall to stop herself from falling. She tugged at the wall and felt with her fingers desperately for a hold that didn't exist. She only broke off wet clumps of dirt, felt worms slide through her fingers and flung them away.
She kicked and drummed with bare hands and feet against the wall, climbed and slid off. Then she realized she was screaming. Not the sound frightened her, her rough throat and aching lungs scared her. When she stopped, the screaming continued. Now she finally lost her mind. The screaming turned into a whimper and became a soft groan in the corner of her dark hole. A shiver ran down Maura's sweaty, muddy back. She recognized the voice that had guided her into this hellhole. Was this a trap? "Who's there?", She whispered into the darkness.
The groan became a muffled sob.
She waited. Regardless of her throbbing ankle, she pushed herself along the wall. She didn't want to sit down again, to be watchful and ready to escape. Looking up, she expected her kidnapper to look down at her, smiling. But she only noticed a brief flash, which she interpreted as lightning. A faint thunder in the distance confirmed her guess.
"Who is there?", she shouted this time, letting out the fear that threatened to take her breath away. "And what the hell are you doing here?" She was not sure if she wanted to hear an answer to this question.
"He ... did this," said a strained voice in a high, whiny tone. "Terrible things ..." The voice added. "He did ... that. I tried to stop him. I could not. He was too strong." There was a groan again.
The other woman's fear was palpable and got under her skin. But she was not allowed to burden herself with the panic of this woman.
"He has a knife," the other woman continued, sobbing. "He ... he cut me."
"Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?" She stayed against the wall, unable to move. She tried to adjust her eyes to the darkness, but saw only a dark outline, about two yards away from her.
"He said ... he said he would kill me."
"When did he bring you here? Do you remember?
"He tied my hands."
"I can untie -"
"He tied my ankles, too. I couldn't move."
"I can -"
"He tore my clothes off and took off my blindfold. He said ... he wanted me to watch, then ... then he raped me."
She wiped her face and replaced the tears with mud. She thought of her clothes, the wrong buttoned blouse, and she felt sick. Don't think about this! Not now!
"When I screamed, he cut me," the woman continued. Her words just spilled out. "He wanted me to scream, I couldn't fight back, He was so strong He climbed on top of me. He was so heavy. My breasts. He squeezed my breasts as he sat on me. He was so heavy. My arms were caught under his legs. He was sitting on top of me, so that he ... he ... pushed himself down my throat, I choked, he pushed on, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move -"
"Stop!" She screamed, startled by her own strange-sounding voice. Her hysterical undertone scared her even more. "Please stop!"
Immediately silence returned. No more groaning, no more sobbing. She listened, but only heard her own heartbeat. She was trembling all over, as if her liquid cold were running through her veins. A breeze rose, letting the plague waft follow. The thunder grew louder, flashes of light brightened the world up there, but didn't make it down to the black pit. Leaning her head against the wall, she looked up at the branches, skeletal arms that waved at her in the flashing light. Her body ached from the effort to suppress the threatening sobs.
Rain set in, and she slid down the wall until she felt the mud sucking at her again. With her arms around her drawn knees, she rocked back and forth to defy the cold.
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Maura sat huddled in a corner, her arms around her knees, trying not to remember how her bare, swollen feet were stuck in the stinking mud. The rain had finally stopped, though it thundered in the distance, like boulders rolling. Was it because of the clouds that the sun did not set, or had the crazy kidnapper made a pack with the devil?
Sometimes she heard the woman moan quietly to herself. Her heavy breath was very close. Thank God the sobs and the high whimpers had stopped. As the sky finally brightened, the slumped figure began to take shape.
She closed her eyes, then opened them again, blinking, unable to believe what she saw. The woman opposite her was completely naked. She had curled up in a foetal position. Her skin was covered with mud, and, as it smelled and looked, was also covered with blood and excrements. "Oh, my God." She said silently. "Why didn't you tell me that you are naked?" She struggled to her feet, but her ankle protest and she dropped to her knees. The pain, however, was irrelevant. She forced herself to get up again and, above all, strained her healthy foot.
Feverishly, she tried to untie the knot of the blanket she still wore around her shoulders. The woman was shaking all over. No, that was more than trembling, that was convulsive twitching.
Her teeth chattered and her lower lip bled, apparently because she had bitten it more often.
"Are you in pain," she asked and noticed how stupid the question was. Of course she was in pain.
She tore off the blanket and carefully wrapped it around the woman. The fabric was damp, but had prevented that she became hypothermic during the night. I hope she didn't make it worse. But it could hardly become worse.
From a safe distance, she looked at the terrible bruises, the cuts and the torn flesh at the bites - human bites!
"God, we need to get you to a hospital!" Another ridiculous statement.
If she didn't even come out of this pit, how was she supposed to take the woman to a hospital?
The woman didn't seem to hear her. With wide eyes she stared at the wall in front of her. The shaggy hair stuck to her face. Maura stroked her haircloth back. The woman didn't even blink. She was in shock and evidently had withdrawn deep into herself, into an inaccessible sanctuary.
She stroked the woman's cheek and wiped her hair and mud from her face and neck. Her stomach rebelled as she saw the bruises and bite marks on her neck and breasts. There was an open wound around his neck, like the imprint of a rope that had been pulled so tight that it had pressed itself deep into the flesh.
"Can you move", she asked but didn't get an answer.
As light fell from above, she looked up to gauge the depth of her hole. It wasn't quite as deep as she had originally thought. It seemed to be part of an old trench, partially broken, with uneven sidewalls from which sticked tree roots and boulders out. Fresh spade traces suggested that the pit had been deliberately expanded to a trap.
What kind of monster did such a thing to a woman and throw her into a pit? She didn't allow herself to think about it, otherwise she would be completely paralyzed with fear. She had to focus on getting both of them out. But how?
Jane!
She knelt down next to the woman, who was barely twitching beneath the blanket anymore, to check for broken bones, ignoring her own abdominal pain. There were enough notches and small protrusions in the wall that gave them a hold to climb out. But the woman had to climb independently. She couldn't carry her.
When she was about to touch the woman's shoulder, she spotted what the woman was staring at all the time, and jumped back in shock. Despite her reluctance, she slowly came closer to take a closer look. Directly in front of her, buried in the mud wall, but partially washed away by the rain, was a human skull. The empty eye sockets stared at her. And then she realized that this was not a trap. It was a grave.
Her grave.
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I woke up because Maura has been tossing and turning in her sleep while a thunderstorm lightened our bedroom, and I know that it brought some memory up."Do you wanna tell me about it." My question is met with silence and I am sure that she will shake her head. Maura's flinching the moment a flash is lightening our bedroom and I hold her closer running her back with my hand.
"I was back down in the pit." Maura suddenly says and I hold my breath, tryimg not to move. "The pit in which I broke my ankle. It was foggy, rainy and cold. And after a while, a thunderstorm started. There was this woman in it, too, Bethany Girardi. She was crying and calling for help, and then she started to tell me what O'Keefe did to her when it was still dark. How he tortured and raped her. And then I yelled at her to stop because I couldn't take it. She kept for the rest of the night and if I wouldn't have heard her rattling breathing, I'd think that she's dead. And with sunrise I have seen her bruises and cuts, and the bitemarks and the strangulation mark around her neck. She was completely naked, Jane, and covered in her own blood and excrements."
I have to close my eyes while she's talking, not because it sounds like a really good bedtime story but because I won't and can't show her how much her story is hurting me, too. I know who Bethany Girardi is, was. I have seen her maimed body laying on the autopsy table and thought how lucky I was because this wasn't Maura. That Maura was safe and sound again.
"I tried to help her," Maura says after a brief pause. "I was able to get out of the pit and wanted to get some help, or just run away as far as my ankle allowed me to, I wanted to get away from there, but the farther I was the worse I felt because I left Bethany behind. And then I went back to the pit, back inside of it even though I knew that I probably signed my own death warrant with it, but I couldn't leave her alone. I thought that she might gather some strength from my presence and I stayed in that grave two whole nights. I could tell from her breathing that Bethany was struggling and realized that she was feverish. I assumed that she was suffering a sepsis, according to her injuries, or even a pneumonia." She pauses again and I look at her with a frown. "And to be honest, I didn't want to be alone either, alone lost in the woods. I think that's a reason why I went back into the pit, too. She talked to me sporadically and deep down I knew she was about to die. And during that I was holding onto the memory of you because I thought I'd end up in that grave, too. I was holding onto the memory of your smile, your eyes, your voice. I was holding onto the memory of how you love me, emotionally and physically. How strong and protective you are. How your hands feel, and your lips. How your body feels against mine." She's silent again and then I hear a heart-wrenching sob. "And then I realized it, the night was dark and silent again. There was no rattling breathing anymore, and no sobs and whimpers. Bethany was gone and I was alone again. And then I became aware of what happened to myself. I was so focused on escaping and helping Bethany that I ignored the signs of miscarriage that I have shown. To be honest, I've almost forgotten about the pregnancy until I've been thinking of you and how you've been touching my belly a before O'Keefe took me. How you promised me to keep the baby and me safe by any means. And suddenly I was by myself, you didn't come to safe us, neither Bethany not me or the baby."
I have to swallow hard and say nothing. Actually, I don't know what to say to that. Guilt is bubbling up again. Not only because of Maura and our baby, but also because of Bethany Girardi. I'm sure that Maura told the woman hang on for a bit longer and that BPD is looking for them.
We were, but we didn't know that there was a second woman was in extremis, and with Maura. We assumed that O'Keefe dumped Bethany Girardi's body in the pit days before he abducted Maura, and that she was dead already at that moment. Obviously we've been wrong. We've been wrong about a lot of things.
I want to tell her that I'm sorry like I did a million times before but I don't because I know that it will anger her. I want to tell her that we worked as fast as possible but I don't because she knows that we did.
Honestly, right now I'm speechless. I don't really know what to say.
"I know it now." She suddenly says and I furrow my brows.
"You know what?"
She places her chin on my collarbone and looks with a frown at me. "That you did everything possible to find me as fast as possible. I now understand. Everyone told me that you barely slept, neither of you."
"Who's everyone?"
"Nina, Frankie, Korsak, Angela, Cavanaugh. Even the uniforms."
I run my hand under the top of her pyjama, to make sure that her body's still warm. "It's true, neither of us really slept. Each of them offered their help voluntarily, Maura. You know why they did?" She shakes her head and I smile a little. "Because you are one of us."
Maura sighs heavily. "Only because of you, Frankie and Angela."
"No." I disagree without a second thought and she looks at me again. "No! It's because of yourself. Sometimes you are a little quirky and a smarty, and hard to understand. But in the same time you are the kindest, generous human being all of us know. You made all of us leave for home with a smile. And you bring the best of us out, Maura. Without you, I wouldn't be the same I am today. Neither would be Ma or Frankie. Not to mention the people at BPD. We all love you."
"Even Kaminski?"
"He's not working at BPD."
"I've been told that he was helping you."
"Nina!"
Maura's smiling at me and I roll my eyes. "Yeah, he was quite helpful the moment he heard about you being abducted." I pause know. "I hope you now see how you're affecting everyone's life the moment they cross your way."
She kissed me softly and sighs. "As long as I affect your life in the best ways."
I am silent for a moment and flinch the second she's pinching my side, and I smile. "Of course you're affecting my life in the best ways, Maura. Without you, I wouldn't be the person I am today." I furl my brows the second I see something flickering in her eyes as a lightening fills the room again. "What is it, Maura?"
"It's just ... If ... If we wouldn't be a couple -"
"No," I cut her off immediately because I know what she wants to say and she's frowning as I turn the nightstand lamp on. "No, Maura, you don't go there. And since when do you like sentences that start with "if"?" She doesn't answer and lays down straight on her back. I turn to my right side so I can face her. "Even if we wouldn't had been a couple the day you got abducted, I would have move heaven and earth to bring you back home because you are my best friend. And even if you wouldn't be, I would do the same. And I can assure you that the progress of healing would bind us because I wouldn't let you go through this all by yourself. You don't end this relationship because you feel bad about the miscarriage. You -"
"I didn't want to break up with you, Jane." She now cut me off and I blink confused. "Yes, I do feel bad about the miscarriage but I didn't want to end the relationship, we already had that and it nearly killed me. That time was as worst as the time I've been missing, and I wouldn't survive it a second time." She's silent again and places her head back on my shoulder. "I can't live without you, Jane. Not anymore."
I take a deep breath and kiss the top of her head. The feeling is mutual, I can't live without her, too. I switch the light off again before I say, "Let's try to get some more rest."
She nods and snuggles even closer to me.
