The following is an
excerpt from The Fear Of The Dark
by Eric Dalen. © 1999 Eric Dalen. All rights reserved.
The Martyr.
She lay in total
darkness, trying to figure out what day it was.
There had been three
breakfasts and two dinners. She had been abducted on
Friday -- no, Thursday night. So, assuming she had
not been knocked out for more than a few hours, and
hadn’t lost an entire day or two, her first
breakfast was Friday morning. Then dinner, then
breakfast, then dinner, then breakfast. That makes this
Sunday, she decided. Unless her first breakfast was
Saturday, which would make this Monday.
Rebecca’s eyes
blindly scanned the blackness.
Other than being
kidnapped, tied down on a table and left in a windowless
room with the lights off, she had been treated fairly
well. That one man -- the FBI agent who abducted her -- hadn’t been around since she had been brought
to this room, and not seeing him was good all by itself.
He scared her to death.
Maybe that was a poor
choice of words.
Things could have been
much worse, she knew. There could have been no meals, no
water, no trips to the outhouse. She could have been beat
up, ignored, or . . . worse. So she kept her mouth shut.
She didn’t complain.
Another man -- a
shortish guy with a lot of muscles she had mentally
nicknamed "Pug" -- was the one who came to
take care of her, if you want to call it that. He’d
ask how she was feeling, but he didn’t ask it to
make small talk. He’d check her wrists and ankles to
see if the restraints were causing any problems.
He’d untie her for her meals, so she could feed
herself, but he’d blindfold her on each trip to the
outhouse -- presumably to keep her from getting a
look around. The trips must have been on some kind of
schedule since there was no way she could signal them
that she needed to go. Pug just showed up.
She kept her words to an
absolute minimum. She had decided not to relate to him or
in any way appear friendly or cooperative, although she
knew not to fight either. The man always had a machine
gun slung over his shoulder, and looked beefy enough to
wrestle a rhino -- she wasn’t stupid enough to
try to take that on. But she kept alert, in case there
was some chance -- any chance -- to get away.
Lying quietly now in the
blackness, she heard a sound at the door, and she held
her breath to listen. She waited until the door opened
before she resumed breathing. The light switch was
clicked on and she closed her eyes before the
fluorescents could flicker to life, knowing they would
blind her after being in the dark. It showed she was
adapting. She was getting used to captivity.
She heard footsteps and
then the door close. She let her eyes open a little to
allow some light in and get them adjusted. What she could
see was frosty and blurry, but she could tell this
wasn’t Pug. It was the other one. Agent Demming.
"Well, well, how are
we doing today?" he asked.
She only blinked as her
eyes got used to working again.
He was standing next to
the table she laid on, leaning over to take a look.
"You look kind of mangy," he said.
Truth was, she felt kind
of mangy. Two or three days without a bath, without a
change of clothes could do that to a person.
"How do you
feel?"
She stared back silently.
"Stubborn little
thing aren’t you? Well, I like a person with some
spine to them." He smiled, but it was an eerie grin.
"Is there anything you’d like to ask me?"
He was tall, thin, and
older -- somewhere in his sixties, which surprised
her. She didn’t automatically think of men of
retirement age as the typical kidnapper type. His eyes
had an arrogant intelligence to them, and his smirk was
annoying.
"No? Nothing?"
he asked. "You have nothing to say? Going once,
going twice . . . Okay, this is the deal: We’re
going to be making a phone call. You’re going to
make it, anyway. It’ll be simple. We even have a
script for you. Then, if everything goes well, which no
doubt it will, you can take a shower and get cleaned up.
We’ve even got a fresh change of clothes for you.
How does that sound?"
She remained silent,
keeping her face blank.
Demming considered her
for several seconds. "You shouldn’t be this
stubborn." Then in a mock German accent: "Ve
haff vays of making you talk!" He smiled again, his
hand caressing her chin, moving gently down her throat to
the opening of her blouse. "There are several
gentlemen here who haven’t been home in a
while."
Rebecca Van Ness suddenly
couldn’t breathe, horrified. His fingers felt like
ice on her.
Then, suddenly, he pulled
his hand away. "You must really believe that I need
you for something."
She stared back, feeling
the terror subside, hoping none of it showed.
He looked at her,
appraising, crossing his arms over his chest, cocking his
head to one side. "You know, I have to respect you
for that, for what it’s worth, blindly standing up
for your husband without any idea of what’s going
on. You’re very lucky to love someone that
much."
He paused.
"But that
doesn’t change anything. Bluff, counter-bluff,
that’s all we’re doing here. You don’t
want to die, and I can’t kill you yet. So let’s
cut to the bottom line." He leaned over very close,
just inches from her face. "You have no choice,
except to do what I ask, because when you’re done, I
really won’t need you anymore, and that is
not a bluff. But I’ll also have no reason to kill
you either, unless you make things difficult for me. If
you do what I say and not cause problems, you can live.
If you cause problems, you die. Understand?"
"Yes," she said
calmly. "I will die."
He stood up straight.
"No. You are going to make a telephone call. Then
we’ll rate your performance." He moved over to
the workbench and picked up the blindfold, then returned
and placed it over her eyes. "Lift your head."
"I’m not going
to make the call."
This time, he didn’t
reply, instead placing his hand under her neck, raising
her head to slip the blindfold on. Then she heard him
walk away. The door was opened and someone else entered.
This other person began removing the restraints.
She lay limp as he
worked. She wasn’t going to fight, she wasn’t
going to help. She realized playing the martyr was risky,
but she couldn’t see any other avenue to pursue.
Demming’s only goal was that he wanted to kill Neil.
How could she do what he asked without Neil being hurt in
some way? She couldn’t. He could put her in front of
the telephone and tell her what to say, but he
couldn’t make her say it. And she wouldn’t. She
would not help him kill her husband.
"You okay?" It
was Pug.
She nodded once.
He helped her off the
table, then gently nudged her forward to start walking,
and a moment later they were outside. It was warm, and
she could feel the sunshine on her skin. They walked
quite a ways, the ground was hard, her bare feet on dirt,
and then the dirt turned to grass.
"Step up," Pug
said, and they entered another building, tile underfoot.
She was led in a weaving pattern, as if around furniture,
and then they were in what she guessed was a hallway.
After about six or seven steps, they slowed and stopped.
A door was opened, she was moved forward, and the door
was closed behind her.
"Over there,"
Demming’s voice said, echoing slightly. A hollow,
empty sound. As if the room were fairly large.
She was led to a spot,
then stopped, turned and gently pushed down to sit. Pug
took her left wrist, placed a handcuff around it, then
lowered her arm to the side of the chair where the other
end of the handcuff was attached to the chair leg. Pug
walked away. The door opened, then closed.
What she saw when her
blindfold was removed disoriented her for a few moments.
There was no way she could have imagined what she was
seeing, much less expect it.
It was a room, dark brown
carpeting, white plaster walls, another windowless
cubicle, but much larger than the one she had been in.
Other than the chair she was sitting in, and a table just
to her left that held the telephone, there was no other
furniture in the room. A pair of photographer’s
flood lights were set up and turned on, illuminating the
far wall opposite her. There were three people in the
glare of the lights, sitting on the floor, backs to the
wall, blindfolded, naked, hands behind their backs, legs
bound at their ankles.
On the left was a man in
his fifties or sixties, gray wavy hair on his head, black
mustache over his lip; in the middle was a woman in her
early twenties with thick dark hair; on the right, a boy
of four or five, black hair.
Demming, standing behind
her, had given her time to take this in. Then he leaned
down and said softly in her ear: "These people are
from Central America. They came to this country illegally
to find work." Then he stood up again.
Suddenly there was a
terrific explosion, deafening, and Becky flinched and
jerked involuntarily.
It had been a gunshot
fired just above her. The man across the room snapped
backward against the wall, fell forward, then slowly
slumped off to the side, away from the woman next to him.
A radiant glob of bright blood colored the wall, then
running in small rivulets toward the floor. The woman and
boy both screamed in terror.
Demming’s mouth was
at her ear again. "There’s a piece of paper on
the table next to you. At the top is a telephone number
and just below that is a name. I want you to call the
number, ask for the name. When he gets on the line, I
want you to read from the script on the paper. I want you
to follow its directions and instructions exactly. You
cannot deviate from what is written. If you do, I will
kill the mother. Do you understand?"
Rebecca nodded
forcefully, eyes wide, scared. She was horrified,
terrified, sick, and unable to speak.
"Good, let’s
begin," Demming said.
Using her uncuffed right
hand, she reached for the telephone, took it off the
hook, laid the receiver on the small table top. Her hand
shook violently. She looked at the number, finding it
hard to see. She blinked hurriedly to clear her eyes and
began pushing buttons slowly. She hit one wrong and had
to hang up and start over.
She could hear the
Spanish whispering of the woman across the room, the
murmur of what may have been a prayer.
Yes, pray,
Rebecca thought. Please, pray.
This excerpt © 1999 Eric Dalen. All rights reserved.
