Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you.’

Keller felt panic rising in his chest, the fear that someone might discover him here in the woods in the dead of night with a near-naked woman in the boot of his car. He had to do something. Leaning into the boot, he grabbed the small, stunted baseball bat he kept there and waved it in front of Karen’s face. ‘Get out or I swear I’ll hurt you.’

‘Leave me alone,’ she begged him. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

‘Get out of the car and I won’t.’ He spat the words into her face, panic threatening to take away what little control he had left, but still she wouldn’t do as he commanded. ‘Get out of the fucking car,’ he screamed as loudly as he dared, the wind and rain swallowing his words before they could travel more than a few feet, but she continued to cower in the boot.

He raised the bat above shoulder height and brought it smashing down on to her knee, the pain slicing through the alfentanil and making her scream. Again he raised the bat, this time smashing it down on to her elbow, her next scream merging with her first. Wrapping a hank of hair around his fist, he pulled as hard as he could, partially dragging her as she scrambled from the boot and fell to her knees on the wet gravel road. He slammed the boot shut and pushed the bat into the waistband of his loose tracksuit bottoms, his eyes never leaving the cold, wet, shivering creature kneeling before him, the drizzle sticking to her body, making her olive skin look like the sea at night. He slid his hands under her armpits and pulled her to her feet, immediately pushing her towards the forest that waited at the side of the road.

She stumbled across the grass verge and into the dark, foreboding trees, the shadow and musky smell of him close behind her, shoving her forward and then helping her to her feet whenever she fell, marching her deeper into the forest. Soon her feet were covered in cuts from the brambles that snaked across the ground. She tried to turn to face him, wanting him to see her face as she pleaded not to die in this godforsaken place, but each time she turned he shoved her in the back, sometimes knocking her to the ground as she tripped on unseen snares. ‘Please,’ she implored the trees in front of her, ‘just let me go and I swear I won’t tell anyone. Please, Jesus, I swear to God I won’t tell anyone.’

‘You have no god,’ he sneered, gripping her hair and twisting it tight. ‘You betrayed me, Sam. You let them keep us apart. Your parents, the teachers, they all lied and you believed them. You turned your back on me. You abandoned me and left me alone, Sam, you left me all alone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she told him, playing his game, sensing one last chance to save herself. ‘I won’t ever leave you again, I promise, I swear to God.’ The anaesthetic was wearing off, but still she felt so weak and confused, it was difficult to keep up with what he was saying, difficult to pick her way through the labyrinth of his distorted mind.

‘Do you know what happened to me after you left me?’ he asked. ‘Do you know what they did to me in school, in the care home? The things they made me do?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she tried to touch his conscience. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I wanted to stay with you, but they took you away. I couldn’t find you,’ she rambled, hoping something she said would ring true with whatever he was talking about, would make him pause and think before he did to her what she was increasingly sure he would.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice devoid of emotion, ‘but you betrayed me then and you’d betray me again.’ He stopped walking, his hand resting on her shoulders, pulling her to a halt.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked through choking sobs, trying to turn to face him.

‘Don’t turn around,’ he warned her, ‘don’t look at me. Now, take your clothes off.’

She hugged herself against the drizzle that had turned to icy rain, the wind driving it hard into her face, washing away the dirt and blood from her ordeal in the cellar. She looked up at the tree branches swaying high above her head, clouds sweeping fast across the dark blue night sky, and she knew she was deep in the forest, where no one would see her plight or hear her screams for mercy.

‘Take off your clothes,’ he repeated.

Karen shivered in the cold, her semi-naked body turning pale with the loss of temperature, her lips sky blue. ‘I don’t have clothes,’ she told him, her voice pathetic with surrender.

‘What you have,’ he insisted, ‘take them off.’ Her hands went to the filthy underwear she wore as she realized what he wanted her to do, her legs nearly buckling under the weight of his cursed command. ‘Do it,’ he hissed, his voice impatient. ‘Do it quickly. I’m not going to touch you.’

Karen slowly reached her arms behind her back, the bruises from the previous week reminding her of what she’d already suffered at his hands, the pains in her arms and shoulders making it almost impossible to reach the fastening on the strap of the bra. Eventually her straining, stretching fingers found and released it. She managed to catch the bra as it fell, pressing it hard against her breasts, refusing to let it fall away and leave her exposed. She felt a sharp jab in her spine that stole her breath.

‘Let it fall to the ground,’ he demanded. ‘I need it.’

Once more she tried to face him, to connect with him somehow, but his anger made her quickly turn away.

‘Don’t look at me!’ he snapped. ‘I told you not to look at me. Do as you’re told and let it fall.’

She felt another jab in the spine, her sobbing ignored. Slowly she released her hold of the bra she’d once hated but now clung to as if it was her life itself. It fell to the ground, almost floating to the brown leaves and dirt on the forest floor. ‘The rest,’ he said. ‘And the rest.’ There wasn’t the slightest trace of compassion in his voice.

‘No, please,’ she appealed to him, to any human decency he may have left. ‘I’m begging you, please just let me go. I swear, I swear I won’t tell anybody.’

‘Take the rest off,’ he ignored her pleas. ‘Do it quickly.’

She felt something solid connect with the side of her head, hard enough to split her ear and dull her world, but not violent enough to knock her down. She clasped both hands to her bleeding ear, her mouth contorted with pain.

‘Take the rest off,’ he insisted, ‘or you’ll get more of the same. You’ll get everything you deserve for what you did to me, Judas.’

She slipped her thumbs under the sides of her soiled knickers and pulled them down over her hips, letting them slide to her ankles as her arms once more crossed her breasts. She stood in the silence of the night, its purity only spoilt by the sound of him breathing behind her, fast and deep, as if he was close to an asthmatic attack.

Thomas Keller raised the bat above his head and closed his eyes as he brought it down across the back of her head, the skin breaking, a fine jet of blood spraying across his face, hissing as it painted a line across the fallen foliage on the ground. She fell forwards on to her knees, clutching the back of her head, conscious, but seriously dazed, giving in to the fog of pain that overtook her and falling prostrate to the forest floor.

Keller moved towards her still living body, looking down on her as she writhed. He knew he needed to show her mercy now, despite her treachery; he needed to show her mercy and end her suffering. He kneeled and rolled her over just enough so she could see him. His arms felt like lead weights hanging at his side, almost impossible to lift, but somehow he forced them to rise, his hands closing around her throat, his fingers clamping around her jugular as his thumbs, side by side, pressed deep into her trachea.