Chapter 13
”Aman started coming around. He and Daddy argued a lot. I don”t really know what about, because Daddy sent me out when he was there, and I was happy to go because I knew he was a bad man. I just knew!”
Melody had started to tense incrementally and was now so stiff that she was literally forcing the words from between her clenched teeth.
”Then, one day, I think they must have had a fight, because I could hear bangs and crashes and the sound of things breaking and smashing. Daddy had locked me in my room, which he never, ever did. Not even when I was naughty. But that time, he did, and when it finally went quiet and I thought he was coming to get me, the door rattled, and someone pounded and hammered on it, and I knew it wasn”t Daddy.”
Her voice had become quiet and strained and her breath was coming in short, sharp pants, but Micah knew that if he stopped her now, it would be twice as hard for her to relive it for a second time. So he kept quiet and offered a hand in support, turning his palm up in front of her so that it was hers to take if she so chose.
And choose, she did. Micah was unprepared for the way she grabbed at his hand and squeezed, hanging on as if he were some kind of lifeline. As he closed his fingers around hers, he could feel the intensity of the quakes that were wracking her frail body.
”He started to s-smash the door.” Her voice quivered, and while the words were stammered, Micah could feel her resolve as if it were a living thing and knew she was determined to get it all out, no matter what. He couldn”t help but admire the force of her will, and in those moments, he knew she had the strength to come through this. She had found her way here, after all, and that had taken willpower and resilience.
”He b-broke the door down,” she whispered, clutching the blanket around her in one hand like it was some kind of protection while gripping Micah”s fingers with a feral intensity in the other.
”I t-tried to run from him…to hide, but he caught me and dragged me out.”
She trembled uncontrollably, her eyes wide and dilated with a faraway stare, and Micah knew she was reliving the scene as it played out in the cinema of her mind.
”I don”t know where Daddy was. I didn”t hear him or see him. He didn”t come to help me, and I”m sure he would have if he could. I think the man hurt him, although I don’t know for sure. But he never came for me. I never saw him again,” she finished in a mournful whisper, and Micah knew that whatever guise their relationship had taken, Melody had been genuinely fond of the man she called Daddy.
Micah wasn”t sure if Melody was going to continue after that. She was quiet for a long time and completely still, lost in the memories inside her head that only she could see. Her grip on his hand had relaxed, so he disentangled himself and checked the water for her feet.
It was that which seemed to bring her around, as if she had started to think about them for the first time in a long while.
She groaned, pained. ”They hurt even more now.”
”I”m sorry to say that they will,” Micah confirmed as he handed her more water and encouraged her to drink. ”The doctor said the pain would get worse as you started to get the feeling back. Believe it or not, that”s a good thing, but I can give you some painkillers if you like.”
Melody shook her head. ”Not yet. It”s bearable at the moment.”
If he were to hazard a guess, Micah imagined that she probably had a rather high pain threshold, although whether or not she was inherently masochistic or had just been moulded that way remained to be seen.
He was almost surprised when she resumed her story. He had expected that it might be too much for her, but she proved her innate, quiet strength yet again.
”He beat me for the first time as soon as we got back to the house where he kept me.”
Her voice was no longer trembling but now had a kind of detached quality to it, devoid of any kind of emotion, as if she was describing things that had happened to someone else, and Micah knew that was her way of dealing with what had happened to her.
”He told me I was being punished for Daddy”s crimes, but he didn”t tell me what those were. I don”t think he meant actual crimes, just whatever it was that he had a problem with. After that first whipping, I was bloody and almost unconscious. He shoved me in a tiny cage for hours. A whole day and a whole night, I think. It was a basement, so it was hard to tell, and I wasn”t completely with it for a while. But there was a little bit of light that came through the boards covering a tiny, narrow window, like cellars sometimes have, and it was light and then dark and then light again through that little bit of a crack. He didn”t let me out at all. Not to feed me or let me use the bathroom or even to see if I was still alive. The cage was so small that the wire dug into all the places that already hurt and I couldn”t move around at all to change positions. For a while, I thought he was going to leave me there to starve to death and die…sometimes I wished he had.”
A chill went through Micah at the matter-of-fact way she said it with no inflection at all in her words. Like it didn”t really matter, either way, and he had to mentally block out the images of Sara and her bruised and lifeless body as memories came flooding back to him with Melody”s inadvertent rousing of his own demons.
”There”s some time I don”t really remember at all. Just hazy images of…of…” She faltered for the first time, her face turning as white as the snow that had started falling outside. ”…of really horrible, evil things he did to me, that he made me do.” Her voice was almost too quiet for him to hear, not even a whisper, just a wisp of breath that didn”t want the dreadful episodes she had endured to be heard, in case it made them real again.
”He forced me and beat me and did things that no human should do to another, and when I passed out, he just waited until I was awake before he did them all over again. Maybe sometimes he didn”t even wait for that, but at least then, I didn”t know about it… but he liked me to know. He liked to hear me scream.”
She was quiet again, and Micah started to think she was finished. When he heard what she had to say next, he wished that she were.
”And that was my life. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I was never allowed clothes, not regular clothes, anyway. I never saw anyone else…” she trailed off and swallowed hard, and when she spoke again, her voice was a choked whisper. ”…except when he sometimes had…friends…over, and they would join in the torment.”
Micah closed his eyes against the implication of what she was not saying and felt his stomach heave.
”I was never allowed out of the house unless he chained me, out in the dark as a punishment, usually when the weather was bad, otherwise, what would be the point?” She laughed humourlessly, and it was an empty, chilling sound.
”Or sometimes when it was far too hot for any sane person to be out in the scorching sun without liquids or protection.”
Micah felt his nails cut into the flesh of his palms and realised that he had internalised his rage to the point of injury, but it still cost him a concerted effort to relax the impotent fists his hands had balled into.
”He never realised, but it was the hot days that allowed me a chance to find out where I was and what was around me, despite the eight-foot fences. There were no other houses right next door, but I knew they were close, because sometimes I could hear people or animals in the distance. There were fields to the rear, out past a thick, prickly hedge along the back boundary. I escaped by squeezing through it where it thinned.”
As he looked at her thin forearms and shins where they poked out of the blanket, he realised that had been the cause of the deep scratches and the nasty looking punctures she was peppered with.
”The weather was foul, freezing cold with sleet interspersed with hail. I thought for sure I was going to die, finally. He left me out there for so long, watching from the window as I shivered, and my feet and fingers turned so numb that the pain was almost unbearable. I knew, if I didn”t find a way out, that this punishment would be my last, but at least he hadn”t chained me that night, because the weather was so bad, he didn”t want to go out in it, himself.”
”My God, he turned you out naked?” Micah muttered, horrified.
Melody looked up at him solemnly through the veil of extraordinarily long eyelashes, and although she didn”t answer, Micah knew he was right. He swallowed harshly, bile rising up to burn his throat, but he laced his fingers with her own, holding tight, even though he was unsure who was taking comfort from whom.
”I was making a plan in my head when he decided to turn off the outside lights. It was supposed to be another part of my punishment, but it was actually my salvation, my opportunity to escape.”
The tiniest of smiles brushed Melody”s lips. ”I took the tarpaulin from the woodpile to wrap around me and squeezed through the hedge, where it was thinnest, until I got out into the field. Then I ran and ran. I heard him shout, but I kept on going. I found a cottage across the field, but I didn”t dare stop, in case they knew him.”
Her voice drifted to a faltering stop, and Micah was surprised, after all this time and all the strength she”d shown, that there was a soft, unexpected sob.
As he peered at her, he noticed the lone tear that quietly trickled down her cheek. He couldn”t stop himself, this time, from leaning over and gently wiping it away with his thumb.
”What happened at the cottage, Melody?” he asked, wondering how there could be something there that upset her more than the rest of her deeply disturbing story.
Heat reddened her face and Micah realised she was embarrassed. She ducked her head and refused to look at him, her lips pressed into a tight moue of discontent that only endeared her to him.
”There were some boots on the porch,” she whispered so quietly, he had to bend his head closer to hear. ”And when I decided to take them, I noticed a lovely, warm scarf as well, so I stole that, too. I’d never stolen anything in my life until that day!”
Her voice broke on another sob, and finally, Micah relented his hard stance and pulled her to him in a gentle embrace, his heart breaking for the young woman in his arms.
It was unbelievable that after all she”d been put through, after enduring being held captive, escaping the abuse and fleeing the near-death situation of being turned naked out into the frigid night, she was genuinely more upset about the fact that she”d had to appropriate some wellies and a scarf in order to keep from freezing to death.
She was a complete sweetheart, and right then and there, Micah vowed to be the best master he could possibly be, until the time came when she was able to stand on her own two feet.
”Don”t worry,” he promised earnestly. ”I”ll take care of it.”
He meant every word.