Unspeakable

swallowed. The men all shuffled in closer now, still smiling. When she spoke, her throat was so constricted that she couldn't stop herself from coughing. 'If I'-cough-'if I let you do this? will you swear to me that nothing will happen to Daisy?'

Judge Boynton beamed and lifted his glass. 'Now, that's one of the things that I really like in a woman: maternal instinct.'

Raven's Revenge

'This is the arena,' announced Judge Boynton proudly, leading the way into the bedroom. In the center of the room stood a four-poster bed with carved pine pillars and headboard, hung with heavy orange-and-gold brocade curtains and covered with a matching throw. The floor was carpeted in cream shag pile, and on the walls hung a series of erotic oil paintings that might have been titledNudes of All Nations.It looked as if it had been designed for aPlayboyspread, circa1973.

Mickey ushered Holly into the room. Close beside her, Martin A. Brimmer said, 'Forget about your inhibitions, Holly. This is a special place. Private. Nobody else will ever find out what happened here.'

'This is nothing to do with inhibitions,' Holly retorted. 'This is nothing but gang rape by a group of losers who are too old and too ugly to find a woman who wants to go to bed with them.'

'Holly,' warned Mickey. 'We're thinking of Daisy now, aren't we?'

'Oh, sorry, Uncle Mickey. And to think I let you sit on her bed and tell her a bedtime story?'

'That was a story about somebody who did somebody else a favor-and got rewarded for it.'

'That was a story about men who get what they want by deception, and if they can't get it by deception, they get it by force.'

'Come on, now, Holly,' put in Randolph Bruckman. 'We're all friends here, aren't we?'

'How can you call yourself a friend?'

Randolph gave her a private little smile. 'To tell you the truth, I've always wanted to ask you out to dinner. Never had the nerve, I guess.'

'Well, this will save you the price of a meal, won't it?'

It was then, however, that Judge Boynton said, 'Okay, gentlemen. Let's do it.'

Mickey and Martin seized Holly's arms while another man came up behind her and tried to gag her with a silk scarf. She kicked and struggled and thrashed her head from side to side, but two other men grabbed her legs and they were far too strong for her. Mickey seized her chin and held it in a clamplike grip while the scarf was pulled tight between her teeth and fiercely knotted at the back of her head. She stared at Mickey with bulging eyes, trying to appeal to him to stop these men from hurting her and to let her go.'Unnnffffff!'she grunted at him, but all he did was grin and turn away. The next thing she knew, a dark woolen scarf was tied over her eyes so that she was blinded as well as deaf.

She was suddenly swamped in total helplessness and absolute terror. She felt as if she had been swept away from the shore by an icy wave, in darkness, and that she was drowning, with nobody to see her and nobody to hear her. She had always been able to cope with her deafness, because she could still see, but her blindness made her deafness even more overwhelming than ever.

She was going to die. Her whole world was cold and black and chaotic but utterly soundless. She couldn't even manage a muffled scream, and if she had, she couldn't have heard it. It had been frightening enough when she was a child, seeing Margaret fall from her bedroom balcony in flames, but now death was afterher,and she had never realized how heart-clenchingly terrifying it was going to be, to know that the end of her life had almost arrived.

Her arms were forcibly lifted and her sweater was pulled over her head. Her bra catch was unfastened by fumbling fingers. She violently twisted her hips, but two men unbuttoned her jeans and dragged them down to her ankles, and at last her panties were pulled down too.

She had no idea of what the men were saying- whether they were silent or whether they were laughing or whether they were whooping with excitement. She was so panicky now that she found it difficult to breathe, but there was no way of begging them to stop.

She was heaved across the bed. Four or five men turned her over onto her back, raising her arms over her head and opening her legs. They held her pinned down until she felt narrow nylon cords being tied around her wrists and ankles, leaving her spread-eagled and helpless.

She thought:Now, now they're going to do it,and braced herself, biting hard on her gag.

But then there was a long pause. Thirty seconds went by? almost a minute.

What are they doing? Maybe they've changed their minds. No, they haven't changed their minds. They're going to rape me and then they're going to kill me. They'llhaveto kill me, won't they, because I know who they are. Oh God, I hope they don't do the same thing to Daisy. Please don't let them hurt Daisy.

She tried to calm herself by breathing deeply and steadily, the way her yoga instructor had shown her, but it was almost impossible with her mouth so tightly gagged. She kept swallowing saliva, almost choking.

Still nothing happened; none of the men touched her. She lay completely still, trying to feel them, trying to sense what they were doing. Were they still in the room? Maybe theyhadchanged their minds. Maybe they would let her go if she promised not to tell anybody what had happened here tonight.

But she knew with iron-cold certainty they wouldn't. How could they? A judge, a police commander, several respected attorneys, a police lieutenant, and a court official.

How could they afford to let her live?

Judge Boynton had boasted that none of their previous victims had complained, and there could be only one reason for that. She thought of Sarah Hargitay and Jennie McLellan and Kay Padowska and Helena Carlsson. All of them independent, strong, and very attractive women, and all of them had disappeared without a trace, except for Sarah Hargitay's shoe, which had been discovered at Bridal Veil, only a few miles from here.

Oh God, Daisy. Oh God, let them do what they like to me but don't let them kill me. What will little Daisy do if they kill me?

Holly felt something soft and heavy touch her cheek, like plums. Instantly she jerked her face away, but then something else brushed her other cheek, something harder, and then her shoulder. She felt a man climb onto the bed beside her, then another, and another. She could feel them, she could feel their weight and she could feel the heat of their bodies, and she could smell them too: a strong, rank smell, stale sweat and Gucci aftershave and alcohol. They were all naked, all of these men, all hairy, and they were rolling and massaging their penises all over her body, even the soles of her feet, as a way of exciting themselves.

Wildly she kept on jerking her head from side to side, but that only encouraged them to press their penises against her even harder. Even though she was tied so tightly, she managed to twist her hips and buck herself up and down on the bed, but again that only seemed to excite the men even more.

She felt warm slime against her left cheek, and she was so disgusted that she retched. She knew that she couldn't break free, but she wasn't going to let them think that she was ever going to give in to them. She was trembling uncontrollably with effort and she could feel the blood banging inside her head, but she kept on struggling and grunting and more than anything else her soul screamed out,No!

Fingers started to stray all over her, tugging at her nipples and sliding right inside her, single fingers at first, then three and four fingers at a time. There was nothing she could do but shake her head and let out furious noises, like an animal.

Oh God, let this be over. Oh, please, God, let this be over.

There was another pause. She tried to catch her breath again, but the smell of sexually aroused men was so repulsive that she gagged again, and bile ran down the back of her throat. Then a heavily built man climbed onto the bed and positioned himself between her legs. She could feel his hairy thighs against her skin. He opened her up with his fingers, and then she felt the swollen head of his penis pressing against her.

Please God.

Something happened-something so jumbled and unexpected that she couldn't work out what it was. The man bounced on the bed and struggled off her urgently, as if he had found a snake in the sheets. Some of the other men started to struggle around too: She felt three or four of them collide with the side of the mattress. She couldn't imagine what was going on, but they all seemed to have totally lost interest in their orgy in a matter of seconds.

She thought she faintly saw two or three flashes through her blindfold, and then she smelled something smoky and acrid.Don't tell me the house is on fire and they've just left me here, all tied up,she thought. She grunted and pulled at the ropes around her wrists, but the men had knotted them so tight that she couldn't even begin to loosen them.

Then she felt a hand placed on top of her head, firmly but very gently, as if somebody were trying to reassure her to stay calm. Her head was lifted from the pillow and the blindfold tugged free.

To her surprise, the house was in darkness, except for a dim illumination from the windows. A shape was standing over the bed, something huge and very black. She stared up at it, still gagged, unable to cry out. Her heart almost melted with fear. This was a hundred times more frightening than the Justice League. This was the thing that took all of your happiness away. This was bad luck incarnate, and now it had caught up with her at last, and it was greedy for her misery.

Outside the bedroom window the lightning flickered on the peak of Mount Hood, and she saw black shiny feathers and eyes that glittered in the