Alma Katsu - The Taker

I was led to another room, this one filled with trunks stacked on more trunks. They threw back lids, rummaging until they found clothing that would fit me, a nice dress in a red cotton and a pair of satin slippers. It made for a mismatched outfit but the clothing was still much finer than anything I’d ever worn. A servant had been ordered to prepare a hasty bath and I was instructed to scrub thoroughly, but quickly. “We’ll burn these,” the blond man said, nodding at my homemade clothes, now lying discarded on the floor. Before leaving me to my bath, the frightening blond woman pressed a goblet in my hand, good red wine sloshing inside. “Drink up,” she said. “You must be thirsty.” I drained it in two gulps.

I could tell the wine had been drugged by the time I left the washroom. The floors and walls seemed to shift and I needed all my powers of concentration to make it down the hall. By then, guests had begun to arrive, mostly well-dressed, bewigged men with masks obscuring their faces. The trio had vanished and I had been left alone. In my daze, I went from room to room, trying to grasp what was going on, the raucous bacchanalia spilling all around me. I remember seeing card games in a huge room, men sitting four or five to a table, amid roars of laughter and anger as coins flashed as they were tossed in the pot. I continued to roam, randomly drifting in and out of room after room. As I stumbled through the halls, a stranger would try to take my hand but I would pull away and run off as best I could, given my disorientation. There were confused young men or women without masks, all very pretty, being led off by partygoers in all directions.

I began to hallucinate. I was convinced I was dreaming, and that I’d dreamed myself into a maze. I couldn’t make myself understood; words came out in mumbles and no one seemed inclined to listen to me, anyway. There seemed to be no way out of this hellish party, no way to the relative safety of the street. Just then, I felt a hand alight on my elbow and then I passed out.

When I woke up, I was lying on a bed on my back, and I was nearly being suffocated by the man hovering over me. His face was unnaturally close to mine, his hot breath raking my face. I shuddered under his weight and the insistent slamming of his body against mine, and heard myself moan and cry in pain, but the pain was detached, blunted for now by the drug. I knew, instinctively, that it would all come back to me later. I tried to call out for help and a sweaty hand covered my mouth, salty fingers pushed past my lips. “Quiet, pet,” the man on top of me grunted, eyes half closed.

Over his shoulder, I saw we were being watched. Masked men sat in chairs pulled up to the foot of the bed, goblets in hand, laughing and urging the man on. Sitting in the middle of the group, one leg crossed over the other, was the host. The count. Adair.

I awoke with a start. I was in a large bed in a dark, quiet room. Just the act of waking sent bright sparks of pain shooting through my body. I felt as though I’d been turned inside out, stretched and raw and stiff, numb from the waist down. My stomach churned, a sea of bile. My face was puffy, my mouth, too, with lips dry and cracked. I knew what had happened to me last night, my pain all the evidence I needed. What I needed now was to survive it.

Then I saw him lying next to me on the bed. Adair. His face was almost beatific in sleep. From what I could see, he was naked though covered by sheets from the waist down. His back was exposed to me and mottled with old scars, hinting of a horrific beating once upon a time.

I leaned over the edge of the bed and, clutching the mattress, threw up on the floor.

My retching woke the host. He moaned at his hangover, or so I assumed, and raised a hand to his temple. His green-gold eyes blinked uncertainly.

“Good God, you’re still here,” he said to me.

I lunged at him in anger, raising a fist to strike him, but he knocked me aside with a lazy, powerful arm. “Don’t behave stupidly,” he warned me, “or I’ll break you in half like a stick.”

I thought of the other young men and women I’d seen last night. “Where are they? The others?” I demanded.

“Paid and gone, I hope,” Adair muttered, running a hand through tangled hair. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of my fresh vomit. “Get someone in here to clean that up,” he said as he lurched off the bed.

“I’m not your servant. And I’m not a-” I groped for a word I didn’t know existed.

“Not a whore?” He pulled a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his body. “You were not a virgin, either.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to be drugged and savaged by a group of men.”

Adair said nothing. He held the blanket closed at his hip, walked to the door, and bellowed for a servant. Then he turned to face me. “So, you think I wronged you? What will you do about it? You could tell your story to the constable and he will lock you up for being a prostitute. So I suggest you take your pay and get a meal from the cook before you go.” Then he cocked his head as he looked me over a second time. “You’re the one Tilde found on the street, the one with no place to go. Well… let it never be said that I am not a generous man. You can stay a few days with us. Rest up and get your bearings, if you like.”

“And am I to sing for my supper the same as last night?” I asked tartly.

“You are impertinent, aren’t you, to speak to me like this? All alone in the world-no one knows you’re here, I could eat you up like a little rabbit, a little rabbit in a stew. Doesn’t that frighten you in the least?” He smirked at me but with a glimmer of approval. “We’ll see what comes to mind.” He sank onto a sofa, wrapping the blanket around him. For an aristocrat, he had the manners of a ruffian.

I tried to stand and search for my clothes, but my head went light and the room swirled. I fell back onto the bed as a servant came in with rags and a bucket. He paid no attention to me as he got down on his knees to attend to my puddle of sick. It wasn’t until then that I felt the throbbing pain at my gut, just one sensation lost amid an ocean of hurt. I was covered, head to toe, in scratches, welts, and bruises. The pain inside had undoubtedly come the same way as the pain outside: at the hands of a brute.

I intended to flee the mansion if I had to crawl on my hands and knees. But I didn’t make it beyond the foot of the bed; I collapsed dead away in a faint of exhaustion.

Months would pass before I’d leave the house.

The dawn this time of year has a characteristic hue, the dusty yellow-gray like the rime on the yolk of a boiled egg. Luke could swear it hangs over the land like a miasma or a ghost’s curse but knows it’s probably nothing more than a trick of light playing on the water molecules in the morning air. Whether it is light waves or an ancient curse, it gives the morning a peculiar appearance: the yellow sky a low ceiling of clouds in ominous shades against which nearly bare trees stand in grays and browns.

After seeing the police car in the rearview mirror, Luke decided that they can’t continue the trip to the Canadian border in his truck. It’s too recognizable, with its MD plates and bumper sticker from Jolene’s former school proclaiming the driver’s child to be an honor-roll student at Allagash River Elementary. (Since when, Luke had wondered when Tricia insisted they put the sticker on his old truck, were there honor rolls in elementary schools?) So they have spent the past half hour backtracking to St. Andrew, hurtling over single-lane roads to get to the house of someone he believes he can trust. He called on his cell phone first to see about borrowing a car, but mostly he wants to see if the police have been asking around about him.