- Home
- Selena Kitt
Christmas Stalking Page 3
Christmas Stalking Read online
Page 3
Her backpack caught onto something one of them was holding. She felt a sharp tug, something gave way, and the guy bringing up the rear gave up the struggle as he continually repeated “She saw us!” as they all fumbled out the door.
It was over as quickly as it had started. She stood for a moment, watching their taillights disappear out of the parking lot, wondering if she had been dreaming. She looked down at her feet and saw what one of them had dropped. She hesitated only a moment before she grabbed it and bolted out the door, running in the opposite direction until the ache in her side forced her to slow.
She didn’t even know where she was. She had run into the neighborhood behind the strip mall, and had made as many turns as she could, hoping that no one was watching or following her. Panting, she sat down on the curb next to a parked car. She leaned her head against the bumper and tried to stop the shaking. She felt faint for a moment, but let the feeling wash over her and pass.
She couldn’t live this way anymore. She had to do something. Anything. No matter where she went, she felt as if the world were closing in on her, as if she really was the trash Patrick always claimed, being compacted into a neat little throwaway piece. She and Maggie had lived under the cloud of Patrick’s view for so long they both believed it was true—they didn’t deserve any better.
But the boys do.
Ginny remembered them this afternoon, a million years ago now, Sean’s sticky hand in hers, Michael’s long legs flailing underneath him on the swing begging for purchase. She was determined that neither of them would ever know what it would be like to live as human garbage.
The tears came. She swiped at them, but they were coming too fast for her to stop them from falling onto the bag lying between her feet. Her hands were trembling as she picked it up, and without thinking, she pulled the drawstring and looked inside.
“No,” she whispered, feeling instant salvation and damnation settle in the pit of her stomach like an anchor.
There was no denying the reality of what was in the bag. She took it out and counted it there in the glow of a streetlight, and then she counted it again, because it was more cash than she’d ever seen in her lifetime.
Twelve-hundred dollars.
She looked around, but the street retained the early morning quiet that the suburbs often do, house lights dark, blinds closed, a world asleep. Just standing was a struggle, between the exhaustion and the weight that felt as if it had been lodged somewhere beneath her rib cage. She didn’t know how she was going to manage to walk to the shelter in this state.
She was no longer a part of this world where houses were warm, beds were soft and food existed as if by magic in refrigerators. She wanted the boys to be. It was the best Christmas gift she could think of to give them.
She tucked the money deep into her backpack and zipped it, shrugging it on, ignoring the taut ache of her muscles and the numbing exhaustion creeping into her limbs. She walked just to keep moving, unsure of her destination, following the thought of sleep like an illusion, a mirage she was chasing on some distant moonlit pavement.
Chapter Three
She had just missed the seven-day-advanced purchase ticket price. It was a fifty dollar difference that meant she didn’t have enough money left over to be able to stay somewhere like the local YWCA, or even the one small youth hostel in the area. She hadn’t dared to go back to the video store. Instead, she’d been sleeping in cul-de-sacs and beneath underpasses for the past week.
With the wind whipping up under her long coat, the cold was so pervasive and relentless she shivered in a permanent state of misery. Her normal body temperature had become a constant fever that left her teeth chattering. She longed for the relative warmth that existed between two glass panes which somehow had come to feel like home.
Ginny had spent many of her days tucked away in a warm corner of the library. In her Internet searches, she had found a support network, a sort of underground railroad, that would help her escape Patrick’s long reach. It was an entire network that could hide her, even provide her with a new identity, if she wanted one. He may not be able to trace her easily in the city, but she couldn’t afford the chance of running into him or his cronies on the streets. California was as far away as she could imagine. It meant a cross-country trip, but she would finally be free.
She had headed over to do some more research about the San Francisco Art Institute and the possibility of financial aid, but she had forgotten the library was closed on Christmas Eve. Now, she found herself out on the street again before it was even dark, facing an hour walk back to town.
Maggie was expecting Ginny tomorrow morning, where she would spend Christmas day with her family for the last time in who knew how long. Then she would board a Greyhound bus for California. All that was left was the little detail of telling Maggie and the boys she was leaving.
Last night, she had slept in the recessed doorway of the high school only a few blocks away from Maggie’s new place on Fourth Street, choosing a door that faced away from the road. She spent most of the night awake, worrying about the possibility of being found and fantasizing about the relief of the video store around the corner.
She knew she had been lucky with the unseasonable warmth, but she had heard a weather report this morning that foretold temperatures tonight dropping well below freezing with the possibility of snow. This portent arrived as she trudged her way back into town, walking down a street in a small downtown area lined with fun little shops where people were taking their very last opportunity to buy gifts.
A little girl was standing in front of the bakery holding some sort of cinnamon bun that made Ginny’s stomach clench. The child turned to the woman next to her and cried, “Mommy, look, it’s snowing!” The tone was one Ginny remembered echoing like some distant memory, that awed and giddy voice which made anything around Christmas sound magical.
Ginny looked up and saw small white flakes floating against the light of one of the lamp posts. The town’s holiday decorations, a candy cane and two silver bells flocked by evergreen branches, were just starting to gather the first bit of white dust.
The little girl had her tongue out, trying to catch the larger flakes, and her mother smiled indulgently. The woman caught Ginny watching them and commented, “Perfect timing for Christmas, isn’t it?” before she steered her daughter out of the way of shoppers and they made their way down the street.
What was perfect timing for everyone else’s holiday felt like a warped and unjust act of god to Ginny. Her very last night sleeping out in the cold, and now there was the added insult of snow! As she watched the mother and daughter pair retreat, something heavy settled in her belly, a pain that went deeper than hunger.
Her indecision stopped her at the intersection. Where was she going to spend the night? She glanced back at the street scene—traffic crawling, cars looking for places to park, people milling between stores, their gloved hands clutching packages or bags. It reminded her of a snow globe she had as a kid, one of those cheap plastic things you shook in order to watch the snow fall on a city street.
She smiled at the memory. Maggie had given her that funny little globe, the one that looked so odd and stilted with all the snow gathered in clumps on the bottom. Still, in those few seconds when everything turned upside down and then righted again, when those unidentifiable little white pellets floated through liquid in a sweet simulation of snow falling, everything seemed right with the world. Ginny found herself feeling homesick.
Maggie had asked her to come spend Christmas Eve with them, but she had refused. She knew if she spent even one night with them, she would never want to leave. It would just sap her courage and urgency to get on the bus tomorrow night.
That wasn’t the only reason, of course. The main reason was she was being followed, and she didn’t want to lead Patrick anywhere near Maggie’s new place. Putting herself in danger was one thing, but putting them all at risk was something else altogether.
The decision weighed heavi
ly on her as she stood on the street corner and watched the snow fall. She knew if she went left, she wouldn’t end up at the high school but rather on her sister’s doorstep. She just couldn’t do that. Eyeing the coffee house across the street to her right, she knew it closed late, even on Christmas Eve. It would kill some time and allow her to sketch for a while. Just down the street from the cafe, she was drawn to the promise of a warm, safe night tucked in the vestibule at the video store that had closed for the holiday hours ago.
If she couldn’t have the nestled calm of Maggie’s home, the video store felt like the next best thing. It had been a week since the robbery, and the memory of it seemed distant compared to the ache she was feeling for something, anything, familiar. She made her decision, turning right, and noticing that enough snow had already fallen for her to leave footprints behind her as she headed to the coffee house.
—
With great relief, she settled into her spot on the floor of the vestibule much earlier than usual. Fatigue crept into her joints and bones as the warmth began to unthaw her limbs. She had no worries about being disturbed tonight because the sign on the door read: “Christmas Eve 10am-5pm. Closed Christmas Day.”
She stretched out onto her back and watched the snow falling even more heavily now. Her bus ticket was tucked away in her pocket, and although she dreamed about warm beaches and sunshine, she felt a bit sad that this might be the last snowfall she saw for a very long time.
It seemed impossible that a Christmas Eve alone and homeless, watching it snow from the entrance of a video store, was preferable to the night spent at the place she had always known as home. But when she thought of this day last year, she knew she had a lot to be grateful for tonight.
When Patrick had dragged her from her bed in the middle of the night, she found herself looking up through the branches of the little tabletop tree she had decorated in an attempt to make some semblance of a normal Christmas. She wondered how she ever could have believed in something as benevolent as Santa Claus. She was getting the only gift she would get from her stepfather that year, as he knelt between her legs while Steve, his partner, forced himself into her mouth. Merry fucking Christmas, sweetheart.
There was the hope that now she had escaped, her life could unfold, and she clung to that. The envelope in her pocket was the ticket to a freedom she could only begin to imagine. She felt a greater anticipation tonight than she had ever felt on any Christmas Eve before, her whole body tingling with it as she watched the magic of the first real snowfall of the year, remembering the snow globe and how you had to turn the world upside down to make it snow.
Her whole world had turned upside down, but all was right somehow. She felt something filling her, something she very seldom felt, a novel belief that something good was coming. Perhaps it was just the promise of this night, the weighted expectation of Christmas Eve. Her blood sang with it every year, and it was operatic now, filled with something beyond the feeling she had when she was young and thought she might glimpse Santa leaving something in their stockings.
And yet somehow she was surprised, but no more shocked this Christmas Eve than she was during the last, when a door opened and the safety of her universe collapsed under the weight of a man. There were two of them, and she recognized the tall one right away, the one who had punched in the security code. The other had a jacket she recognized, black with blue stripes.
Her quick instincts might have saved her if it hadn’t been for the length of her own coat. She was up and had the door open before they were on her, but one of them stepped on the hem and she was brought up short. It was just long enough for him to grab her by the arm and twist her back into the vestibule, pressing her hard against the glass. It was the tall one. She could see his reflection, although her breath was beginning to fog it enough for it to be unclear.
“Where’s our fucking money, bitch?” he demanded, pulling her toward him only to shove her back hard again, her cheek pressed onto the cold surface of the glass. She gasped but didn’t say anything—she knew it wouldn’t matter.
“Look through her bag, idiot,” he urged his friend in the blue/black coat, who then yanked it off her shoulder. She could see his reflection pulling out clothes, her sketch pad, her toiletries, tossing them aside.
“Nothing,” blue/black coat said, tossing her bag into the corner. “Hold her.”
Ginny closed her eyes against his hands digging into her coat pockets, pulling out a bus ticket, twenty dollars in cash, and a Scrunchie.
“Well, she spent some of it on this,” blue/black coat showed the tall one her bus ticket, then shoved it, and the cash, into his pocket.
“You gonna skip town with our money? Where is it?” The tall one twisted her arm tighter.
Ginny felt herself leaving, floating somewhere above them, gone somehow, nowhere near her body in that moment. She couldn’t have answered him if she wanted to. She knew it was only a matter of time, and she was right.
The tall one spun her around, snatching her coat off and throwing it over her bag. “Maybe she’s got it hidden somewhere under all this.”
Their hands were on her now, pulling, pushing, leaving her cold and trembling, stripping her down. The floating, observant part of her was bemused at their frustration with all her extra layers of clothing.
“Told you she wouldn’t still have it.” Blue/black coat eyed her shivering form in jeans and t-shirt.
“Haven’t checked everywhere.” The tall one grunted as he unzipped and tried to shove her jeans down her hips over her leggings. “Come on, help me.”
Blue/black coat took over the tugging, and their hands were on her, searching, probing. It was when the tall one turned her around and pressed her into the glass again, and blue/black coat pulled her leggings down to her knees, that the disembodied part of herself came home and, finding her voice, she flailed and screamed at them.
The tall one clamped his hand over her mouth, using his other arm across her midsection to pull her in tight against him, crushing the air out of her. “You better shut up,” he warned.
Feeling him pressed against her behind, she knew what it was and what he intended to do with it. She was still screaming, but nothing was coming out. She bit down hard on his hand, and he swore, shoving her head hard enough against the glass it created a small spider web crack. Seeing blackness, then stars in the blackness, it was only then that she felt the pain, exploding through her head like white hot fireworks.
Moaning, she heard one of them say something about getting her, teaching her. Her ears were ringing, her head on fire. There was a tugging, a ripping, her panties gone, then she was being bent over. Her voice resurfaced and she found herself screaming again.
“Shut her up!” blue/black coat hissed, then someone hit her hard across the mouth and she tasted blood.
Still, she couldn’t stop screaming, and the hand came again, this time in the form of a fist. It felt as if something in her head rattled loose with that hit and the voice stopped. Everything stopped. Sound receded. Light faded. She was sinking, falling, dying, and all she could feel was relief and gratitude.
“The cops!” Blue/black coat yelled and the tall one dropped her.
She crumpled to her knees.
They bolted out the opposite door into the snow, but she didn’t see them, just heard them. She was dry heaving onto the floor—there was nothing in her stomach to come up, but she was convulsing as if there were.
She was aware of boots, the familiar blue uniform. Large hands were holding her hair back as she trembled and heaved, murmuring something unintelligible. She turned her head to look and her heart sank when she saw him, the same man she had seen in the library, at Borders, in the 7-11.
“I knew you were a cop,” she croaked before slipping into a blissful, empty and painless darkness.
Chapter Four
She woke up floating on a cloud, her body aching but resting on something so soft it was unimaginable. Her eyes focused and she realized she must be
in someone’s home. She was lying on a sofa and there was a television, a coffee table, all the usual living room amenities, along with a Christmas tree in the corner and one stocking hung on the fireplace mantle. She could hear someone talking and, for a moment, couldn’t remember anything that had happened.
“Yeah, I have her here now. I’m gonna see if I can get her to come in without any hassle,” he was saying.
She sat bolt upright, suddenly remembering everything.
She scanned the room for her backpack and coat and found them in a corner. The world slipped a little as she stood. Steadying herself on the arm of a chair, she moved toward her things. She had to get out of here before Patrick showed up.
The stranger had moved further into the kitchen and his voice was muffled now. She strained to hear. Was he calling more cops? Worse, was he calling Patrick? She shivered, sure it was the latter as she shrugged on her coat and shouldered her backpack, easing toward the front door.
“Hey! Hey there! Hold on!”
She heard him call out as she turned the knob. She pulled, but found the deadbolt locked.
He caught up to her in three quick strides, and as she unlocked the deadbolt and pulled open the door, he pressed his hand flat against it and shut it again. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She moved around him, starting toward the kitchen. “Anywhere but here!”
“Listen, you have to stay.” He caught up to her again, moving in front of her and blocking the entryway with his body.
“Like hell I do!” She shoved at him, but it was like trying to move a brick wall, and her head and mouth throbbed with the effort. “What for? So you and Patrick can finish what those two started? I don’t think so, asshole! Now get out of my way!”
“Patrick? Who the hell is Patrick?” The genuine look of confusion on his face stopped her for a moment.
“Do they give you acting lessons in private dick school?” she snarled, turning away from him and running toward the front door.