a piece of the screen came loose.
“Fuck me! Fuck!”
Vauvert rose to his full six-foot-seven height and barged around the piles of folders everywhere in his office. He struck a wall with his fist once. Twice. A pile of papers went tumbling from a shelf the third time his fist met the wall.
“Dickhead!” Vauvert bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Fucking desk-jockey dickhead!”
He stormed out of his office and slammed the door. His colleagues raised curious eyes in his direction, but no one dared say to anything.
He gave them a dismissive wave to let them know that everything was fine and walked down the hallway. He did not want to put on a show, but he needed to breathe some fresh air. He planted himself at the open window, trying his best to calm down.
It was downright impossible. Eva had been assaulted in her home. She had been kidnapped. God almighty dammit, it was the same MO. It was the killer they were after who had attacked her. And what were all those fucks going to do now? They couldn’t even be trusted to save any of those girls. How could he hope that Eva would survive?
He gripped the window ledge until his knuckles turned white.
Did they at least have some sort of lead?
He walked back to his office, still drawing curious stares from his colleagues, and once again, he slammed the door shut.
His cell phone was still on the desk by his computer. Using his thumb, he pushed the loose part back in place, click. He tried to turn on the phone. The screen lit up. The phone seemed to be working. He scrolled through the numbers and pressed the one for the airport.
“You’ve reached Toulouse-Blagnac Airport. What can I do for you?” a ticket agent said on the phone.
“I’d like a ticket for Paris. On the next flight available.”
36
In the dark and the cold. She can feel she is being pushed. She is being pulled. She is being moved around, thrown into a car. She recognizes her own Audi. But she keeps sinking.
She has been through this before. Once. This one time only, which is buried at the very bottom of her memory. Protected by the weapons of drugs and oblivion.
It was long ago. So very long ago.
She wants to scream, to struggle. Never, ever, to remember. For a split second, she thinks she is going to make it, that she can emerge. She shoots out of the black river of unconsciousness like a drowning girl gasping for air. She is being carried, pushed again, and she tumbles to the bottom of a staircase. Her face lands in the dust. In the black of unconsciousness. In the rivers of darkness again.
The darkness is flowing all around her now, and she cannot see anything. Yet, she can feel the ground against her back. She can feel stone against her head. She can feel someone grabbing her. Pulling her off the ground, harshly onto some rough surface. A table, maybe. A big wooden table?
She is trying to regain control.
She is fighting with all of her might.
But she remains underwater.
Her T-shirt is being pulled off. Fingers are unbuttoning her jeans. Her hips are being raised. Hands are yanking her jeans, pulling them down her legs and off her feet. And she still can’t move, still can’t defend herself.
She is nothing but a powerless naked body. This offered flesh on the altar of sacrifice.
She has the impression that she has managed to utter something. “No.” As though it were a magic word. But maybe she only dreamed it. She no longer knows what’s real and what isn’t.
She is aware that her ankles are being bound with ropes, though. And again she struggles. She tries to fight, to kick, all the while knowing that this is some kind of waking dream, that her limbs refuse to obey her. The knots tighten. Her legs are spread wide apart without her being able to defend herself. Without her being able to even open her eyes.
Then her wrists are bound too.
She refuses to give up. Panic overwhelms her. She arches her hips and tenses all of her muscles. Or maybe she thinks she does. She has the impression that she is actually lifting one hand. Her fingers brush against a cold face. A porcelain mask. A hand clutches her wrist, brings it back down. Pain spreads as first her right arm is seized and bound to the side of the table, and then her left arm is seized and stretched to opposite side.
Helplessness.
Over and over again.
That’s her fate.
Condemned to be handled so, to be shaped so.
The ropes cinch her wrists.
Her arms are stretched out cross-like.
She is lying, blinded, on this board in the darkness.
Just as she was when she was six years old.
Darkness was all around her as she held her sister in her arms, telling her that everything would be all right, that they would never lose each other, that if they stayed together, the monster would not take them.
She wants to scream, to struggle, to shatter those memories and reduce them to nothingness. She has disciplined herself to do that her whole life. She has denied the darkness. She has done her best to banish the memories and the nightmares that accompanied them. She erased her childhood from her memory. She thought it would keep her away from the flowing darkness. But it has finally caught up with her, as she knew it would. No one escapes the shadows forever. You just get a respite.
Suddenly she feels that she is regaining the use of her senses.
She manages to open her eyes.
She pulls against the restraints, tenses every muscle in her body. There is nothing to do about it. The ropes keep her immobilized, stretched out.
“No,” she protests. “No.”
A figure is standing in front of her.
The woman with the mask on her face.
When she sees that Eva has regained consciousness, the woman comes close.
Her smooth porcelain mask is a burst of white framed by long silky hair.
The mouth under that mask is smiling at her.
It is smeared with blood.
The tongue runs over the lips, once, twice, and the smear spreads.
Eva realizes that it is her blood. Her own blood on that grinning mouth.
It is only then that she becomes truly aware of the intense pain in her thigh.
The darkness swirls all around her.
Her own blood flowing.
37
