A man. Only a man would do this.
Ashley knew the world was more dangerous than her parents and teachers let on. Television alone was enough to show that certain men were predators; sick-minded monsters who viewed women as playthings. She realised now that they were standing in the lair of one of those very men.
What if the sicko comes back and finds us?
This is bad. Very bad.
“We have to get out of here,” she said.
Jude looked at her. “What?”
Ashley shook her head, knowing that she was being anything but courageous. She was, however, being rational. “We need to go get help. There’s no way we can free her. We’re not capable of dealing with this. What if the person responsible comes back?”
Slowly, Jude’s eyes widened as he obviously realised what she was saying. They were in terrible danger, and they were only a pair of kids. Let the police handle things.
“You’re right,” said Jude, although he seemed sickened by what they were deciding. He turned to the chained woman and took a step towards her. “Listen,” he said softly, crouching down in front of her. “We’re going to get help. We’ll be back, okay? I promise you, everything will be fine.”
Ashley suddenly felt like an animal in a trap. She wanted to run – her heart was begging her to – but she couldn’t go without Jude. “Come on! We need to go. Right now.”
“One second.” Jude reached out a hand to the woman. “We’ll be right back, okay? Just try to—”
The woman sprang forward, lengthening her chains until they stopped her at the edge of the painted triangle. She snapped her teeth at Jude, trying to bite his face. Jude screamed in fright, recoiled, and lost his balance. His arms went out behind him and he crashed against the wall. A piercing cry escaped his lips.
Ashley rushed to gather her friend to his feet and pulled Jude away from the thrashing woman. He groaned and held his hand against his chest as she pulled him back into the other room.
Ashley’s heart was beating a mile a minute.
The woman started screaming again.
Jude had clearly injured his hand, so Ashley grabbed his wrist and forced him to show her. His palm was bleeding from a nasty gash that ran from the edge of his wrist towards his thumb. Ashley winced as she noticed something sticking out of the wound, and before Jude noticed, she pulled it free. It appeared to be a small piece of plastic, but she couldn’t see a way that there could be any plastic inside a derelict old farmhouse.
Is it a shard of bone?
Jude gasped. “It hurts.”
Ashley threw the piece of bone to the ground before he saw it and tried to set his mind at ease. “It’s nothing, just a cut. You must’ve landed on something sharp.”
“I want to go.”
“Me too. Let’s get out of here. Whatever’s happened to that woman, she needs more help than we can give. We have to call the police.”
Jude put his wounded hand by his side and shuddered. He looked like he might throw up. “So… So we’re going to leave her here for now? Alone?”
“What else can we do? Sooner we leave, sooner she gets rescued. Come on!”
The two of them fled the farmhouse.
It was strange, but the clearing around the farmhouse seemed different. The trees and bushes felt closer. There was less moss and undergrowth on the ground; and a lot more mud.
Ashley panicked when she failed to spot a way out, but got a hold of herself once she located the gap in the bushes where they’d entered. She pointed it out and Jude nodded. They wasted no time hurrying away from the farmhouse.
The woman’s screams escaped the open roof behind them.
In the short time they’d been inside the abandoned building, it had grown darker. While it was not yet night, dusk had arrived and things had grown colourless. The green leaves were dark. Tree trunks appeared grey.
Ashley’s mind was spinning. She was in a horror movie, running through the woods after making a grim discovery. Once again, she feared whatever sicko could chain a woman up and leave her.
Jude stopped at the gap in the bushes and pulled aside the branches. She’d never seen him so pale, but he was keeping his shit together. It must have taken great effort because panic was one of his default modes. A few years ago, Jude had been trapped in a lift with Ashley and had gone to pieces. By the time someone had got the lift working again, forty minutes later, he had been sobbing in her arms. It was embarrassing, but that was Jude. Her best friend was ‘sensitive’.
The two of them fled the clearing and headed back towards Devil’s Ditch. She still didn’t know how they were going to climb back up the steep slope, but for now she was glad to be running. She exerted herself so much that she barely noticed the pain of the brambles, thorns, and branches whipping at her. Her only focus was on pumping her arms and legs. Jude was one step behind her, mumbling under his breath as he ran. It sounded like he was trying to comfort himself. Maybe he was doing his adventurer thing.
The warrior princess and her trusted mage escaped the sorcerer’s pit, leaving behind a tortured slave.
Nope, it doesn’t make anything less scary.
That poor woman.
Who is she?
They made it out of a swath of thick bushes and reached the bottom of the slope. Seeing it again now sunk Ashley into an even deeper pit of despair. It looked twice as high as before and even steeper. How on earth had they avoided breaking an arm falling down it?
“How do we
