CHAPTER EIGHT
Mommy, Daddy’s doing the bad thing again.
It was very dark and suddenly the sound of laughter erupted and a light went on, illuminating a campsite. The young man checked the woman’s backpack to ensure it sat perfectly where it was supposed to so that when they did the miles of hiking they’d planned on this leg of the trail, she would be as comfortable as possible. She didn’t appear to be as used to hiking as he was. Clearly, he wanted her to really enjoy it.
He had light brown hair, trimmed neat, as if he might have gotten out of the military recently, or maybe was a police officer. He held himself very straight, his shoulders perfectly aligned. He had a trim body with a lot of lean muscle. He moved easily around the woman, making sure her water bottle was full.
She had her blonde hair in a ponytail, the mass coming out the back of the hat on her head. He handed her gloves and she pulled them on. The gloves were the same color as the thin neon-pink piping on her jacket, boots, hat and shades. Both wore headlamps to illuminate the trail when they began their hike.
The lamps showed colors of fall bursting overhead as leaves of gold, red, orange and green cascaded in, weeping waterfalls in every direction. The leaves swirled to the ground to cover the floor of the campsite. There seemed to be the dark sheen of water in the distance, but the man shut off the lantern, plunging the campsite into darkness again. Abruptly, as the two backpackers started along an unseen trail with only their headlamps on, the man leading the way, the camera lens shut down.
STELLA WOKE, GASPING, choking, twisting, clawing the bed-sheets, fighting for air. Not again. She sat up and put her head between her knees, trying to combat the nausea. She wrapped her arms around her middle and began to rock herself, trying to soothe the child in her, that little girl who saw those gruesome murders. The one who told her mother, but no one would believe.
She was alone. She had to be alone. No one could know. She could never tell anyone. Don’t you say one word, Stella. Her mother’s voice rang sharp in her ears. If you tell anyone, they’ll take you away and throw you in a deep dark pit and feed you to the lions. Do you want that? I won’t be able to find you. They’ll cut off your hair and chop you into little pieces so those lions can eat you. I took you to the place where the lions are. You saw them. The way they looked at you. That’s what will happen if you tell anyone.
She remembered that place to which her mother had dragged her, right up to the cage where the lions were roaring with hunger and rage. The man took the money from her mother, lots of it, and had her stand in the doorway of the cage with raw meat in her hands, all bloody. Her mother told her it was another little girl who didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut. The lion leapt at the doorway and the man thrust the meat inside with a long instrument, laughing as she screamed and screamed.
She pushed her fist into her mouth and tried not to choke on the sobs. She’d never gone to a zoo again. Never. Not as a child. Not as a teen. Never as an adult. She’d never told anyone what her mother had done.
Now she had to contend with another murderer. He was going to kill again. A couple? The man? The woman? Where were they? Backpackers. They looked so happy together. How could she stop him?
“I’m right here, sweetheart.” Sam’s voice came out of the darkness. Steady. Calm. Reassuring.
She felt the weight of his body settle on the mattress beside her and then he was pulling her into his arms. Onto his lap. Rocking her gently, his chin on top of her head. Bailey pushed his head onto her thigh.
“Another nightmare?”
She nodded, gripping his leg hard. She needed to feel the steel of his body. That tough infrastructure that was Sam.
“She told me not to tell anyone. I tried to forget that. I never let myself remember if I could help it.” She turned her head to look up at him over her shoulder.
He tightened his arms around her and kept rocking her gently. His lips were barely there on her temple, a soft brush of encouragement.
“When I was little and would try to tell her, she would say it wasn’t real, Daddy would never do such a thing, it was all in my head. Later, she would get angry with me and say I was never to speak of it and it would ruin our family. Sometimes she would grab my head and hold me very still. She’d look into my eyes and make me repeat over and over that I would never tell anyone that Daddy was doing the bad thing.”