Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
EMMA
H e strangled me.
I fought so hard to stop him, but he was stronger.
Being restrained by a man like him felt like being trapped by a brick wall. Any fight I had in me was pointless. I didn’t stand a chance.
As I started to come around, the first thing that hit me was how sore my neck was and how dry my throat felt. I coughed, trying to swallow to ease the pain in my throat, and felt resistance from the tape that’d been bound over my mouth and around my head, pulling at my skin and hair. I couldn’t even scream for help. Instinctively, I tried reaching up to touch my neck, but I couldn’t do that either. My hands had been tied behind my back, and my shoulders ached from being forced into an unnatural position as I lay on my side.
There was darkness all around me, and I could hear the hum of an engine as my body rocked and swayed against the hard walls of where I was trapped. It was a car. I knew I was in the boot, so I tried to kick out, but like my wrists, my ankles were also tied together. I could kick, but it wasn’t as forceful as it needed to be to take out a rear light or have any impact on my current predicament.
Where the hell was he taking me?
And what would he do to me once he got there?
Sharp, excruciating pain stabbed me in my stomach and heart as I tried not to think about what lay ahead, or the horrors I’d seen him inflict on others. I couldn’t bear to torture myself with what could happen, and yet, little details kept invading my mind like arrows and stab wounds, reminding me that he’d cut out tongues, gouged out eyes, sliced Achilles heels, and on and on and on.
I didn’t want to be a statistic.
A headline on the front of the newspaper.
Another name that people would utter and say, “God, wasn’t it awful what happened to her.” Before they got on with their day and forgot I ever existed because things like that didn’t happen to them. It was just a newspaper story. A nightmare. Not real life.
But it did happen.
And it was happening to me.
Right. Fucking. Now.
Eventually, the smooth bumps of the road he was driving along turned to rockier, bumpier terrain, and the tyres crunched as they drove over what sounded like rocks. Then we came to a stop, and he switched off the engine.
I lay deadly still, my eyes darting about in the darkness. My heart beating so hard against my chest that I could hear the pounding pulse in my ears, but I tried to stay calm, to focus and breathe steadily so I could hear what was going on outside. The calmer and more focused I stayed, the better chance I had of escaping and surviving.
I would never stop fighting.
And I’d never give up hope.
I heard the car door open, then a harsh bang as he slammed it shut. His footsteps were slow and measured as he walked towards the back of the car, and I could hear twigs and branches snapping under his feet. Then, a rush of cold air hit me as he opened the boot and shone a torch into my eyes, making me squint, shuffle my body backwards, and close my eyes.
“Oh good,” he mused, like this was all a game. “You’re awake.” And he put the torch between his teeth as he reached forward to grab the tops of my arms and pull me out of the boot.
I tried to resist. My mind screamed at me to do something, but there was little I could do with my arms and legs bound and my mouth taped shut. I fell at his feet with a thud, twigs scraping against my face as I lay on the cold, wet floor of the forest where he’d brought me.
“It’s just over here,” he snapped, and I felt him pull at my arm as he dragged me across the floor, the ground scratching and ripping into my flesh as I scrambled to stand up, to do anything to give myself some leverage. I tried to dig my feet into the soil, and I clawed at the ground, dirt gathering under my fingernails as I desperately tried to stop him and slow myself down.
But I was powerless.
It was nighttime now, the moon and stars above bearing witness to my plight. Roughly, he pulled me through the forest until, eventually, we came to a clearing where torches had been set up to offer some light amongst the darkness of the trees that surrounded us. Trees that stood like the devil’s guards, keeping me trapped in hell. My eyes frantically scanned the area, and when I saw what lay ahead, I gave a muffled scream and tried to clamour away.
He'd dug a deep hole in the ground.
A grave.
My grave.
He continued to drag me across the clearing, and I cried out, terrified that he was about to throw me into that grave. But he didn’t. He pulled me towards the trunk of a tree and forced me to sit against it.
I blinked through my tears and gasped for breath, my eyes darting around to try and find a way out. But he just laughed to himself and then leaned down to stare in my face and grin at me like the lunatic he was.
I stared back...
At a face that had become as familiar to me as my own.
At green eyes that I’d got lost in more times than I could count.
At a smile that always set my heart fluttering.
And a man who had turned my world upside down.
Only...
It wasn’t his face I was looking at.
Or his eyes.
The smile was so similar, and yet, it wasn’t.
He had the same tattoos on his hands and neck, only different.
And in my mind, I screamed, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
He tilted his head and said, “You can see it, can’t you.”
I nodded, snivelling as pieces of the jigsaw started to fall into place, but the pieces didn’t fit, and the picture looked so wrong.
“I was going to compose something for you, to explain it all, but then I figured, fuck it. I may as well tell it like it is. I didn’t want to waste my precious time on you. You don’t really appreciate my words, anyway.”
He stood up and stepped back, keeping his eyes on me as he did. Then he walked over to a nearby tree and said, “Let me just check this is working,” before adjusting something he’d set up there.
I couldn’t make out what it was, but I spent the time that he was distracted trying to prize my wrists apart, dragging the plastic cable tie against the rough bark of the tree and pushing at the restraints on my ankles. But the cable tie on my wrists wouldn’t budge, and the plastic and wood of the tree cut into my skin. The duct tape around my ankles was bound so tight and so thick I couldn’t shift it. And when he turned around and saw me struggling, he laughed.
“You’re going nowhere, Emma. I suggest you save your energy for later.” He pointed at the tree beside him. “The numbers are always higher when there’s a struggle.” And knowing I had no idea what he meant, he added, “We’re currently streaming live on the dark web. The sick fucks there love violence and depravity. I know we’ll give them what they want.”
I felt sick, and I rolled onto my side, desperate to do anything to get away.
He strode towards me, grunting as he leaned down and grabbed me, yanking me back into a sitting position. And then he got right into my face, his nose pressed against mine with a flaming fire of anger in his eyes.
“You need to be sitting comfortably for the story I’m about to tell. Show some fucking respect.”
I glared back at him, panting each breath through my nose as my head screamed. ‘Fuck you and fuck your story. I won’t ever show you respect.’
He stood back up, sighed, and then smiled as he took his jacket off and folded it over his arm. He turned his back to walk away from me, heading over to a tree opposite where I sat, and he draped his jacket carefully over a branch. Then he turned to face me again, walking forward slowly as he rolled his sleeves up, first the left, then the right.
“This,” he suddenly announced, his voice booming and echoing in the dark void of the forest. “Is the story of Elizabeth and William Kingston.” He stood with his legs slightly parted like he was giving a lecture, his hands on his hips in such a casual way it made me feel sick. “A couple who to the outside world looked respectable and honourable, pillars of the community. Picture perfect, some might say. But all was not as it seemed.
“You see, Elizabeth loved William more than anything in this world. And William, he loved Elizabeth even more. They lived for each other. They’d have died for each other. There wasn’t room for anyone else in their life. It would always be them, together, against the world, forever. They didn’t want anything else. They had everything they could ever need in each other.
“Elizabeth loved to travel, and William would’ve followed her to the ends of the earth. It was on their travels that they encountered different cultures, tribes, philosophies, and ethics. It was also on their travels that Elizabeth found out that she was pregnant.
“At first, she thought it was the end of the world. She didn’t want a baby. Neither of them did. A baby would ruin everything and take their attention away from each other. They didn’t want that. They didn’t want him. They decided that they needed to make a plan.
“They arrived back home and made an appointment with their doctor, but in a fit of despair, Elizabeth broke the promise she’d made to William before they’d returned. She’d broken down and told her housemaid what had happened. No one else was supposed to know. It was supposed to be their secret.
“Why are you upset?” the housemaid had asked. “This is wonderful news. You love each other so much, and you’ve made a whole new life from that love. Why would you want to end that?” Elizabeth wasn’t sure. Everything was becoming confusing. Her judgement was clouded. She didn’t know if she wanted to end it or not. The baby was a part of both of them. If they destroyed it, would it destroy a part of them too?
“Eventually, she told William that the housemaid knew, and in a fit of anger, he sent the rest of the staff away, banishing them from the house for the foreseeable future. But at Elizabeth’s insistence, he kept the housemaid on. She knew their secret, after all. Maybe she could help them? William had noticed that Elizabeth had started to withdraw, to become depressed, and he was at a loss for how to fix it. He’d do anything for her. He couldn’t lose her. Not now. Not like this.
“Eventually, the doctor arrived and checked Elizabeth over. He used his own personal ultrasound machine and made a discovery that would shatter their world completely.
“It wasn’t one baby.”
“It was two.”
“Elizabeth cried. William shouted in frustration. And the doctor stayed quiet as he looked across the room at the housemaid who hid in the shadows.
“I can’t do it,” Elizabeth had wailed. “I can’t get rid of two babies. It doesn’t feel right.”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” William pleaded, his only thought was with his tortured, pregnant wife.
“For days, they lived in turmoil and anguish, mourning the loss of the life they knew and loved. It’d never be the same again. Not now. Not after this.
“Or could it be different?”
“You see, Elizabeth had always been a philanthropist, more daring in her outlook on life than William. And one night, she had an idea. Maybe this wasn’t the death sentence they thought it was. Maybe it was an opportunity. A chance to test something in this world. To research and establish an answer to the long-standing question of nature versus nurture. The golden opportunity to leave a legacy, make a name for herself. The legacy being that she’d find the answer to the question that had baffled generations before them. To prove it with her own experiment. Oh, how na?ve she was.
“What if we kept one baby and gave the other away,” she’d suggested to William. He’d listened to her idea about one being raised with the wealth and opportunity they could provide, while the other languished in another world, a very different world to the one they knew. One filled with poverty, deprivation, prejudice, hatred, and greed. “Let’s see what happens as they grow older,” she went on. “Will they both achieve success? Will the poorer sibling flounder? Who knows?” she’d exclaimed with glee. She didn’t care about the impact it’d have. Her ideas made her feel free.
“William loved Elizabeth; he’d do anything she said. But Elizabeth was a cold-hearted bitch to everyone else in her life, she only had love for William. And he was so blinded by that love that he didn’t care what the outcome of her outlandish idea would bring. She was happy again. She had a plan. That was all that mattered to him.
“So, they decided to put their test into practice. Elizabeth would give birth to the babies at home, with the help of her housemaid, Alma, and the private doctor that they had on their payroll. They’d keep the firstborn, and the second would be sent to the village to live with a childless couple that Alma knew. A couple that had no idea about the test. They’d been promised a baby by an old family friend, and that’s all they cared about. They didn’t ask any questions. They weren’t the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. Their morals were non-existent, and they simply didn’t care.
“The woman had always wanted a baby, and she’d have done anything to get one. At least this way, they didn’t have to abduct a child from its mother or procure a baby in some other nefarious way. This one had quite literally fallen into their lap. Alma knew them. She knew their desperation. She also knew they weren’t the type of couple to cause trouble, make waves, or ask questions. But Alma didn’t really know them. She didn’t know what kind of future lay ahead for the baby placed in their dubious care.
“On the night Elizabeth went into labour, Alma was on hand to assist in the delivery. The doctor was called and paid off with a hefty sum of money to keep the news of the birth quiet. They explained that they were only keeping one baby, and the fate of the other was none of his business. Money talks, and the amount credited to his account for his silence was more than enough to stop his tongue from wagging.
“At twelve thirty-two in the morning, Alex Kingston was born and placed straight into the housemaid’s arms, as his birth mother screamed at the doctor to get the other one out. And William clung to his wife, only interested in her well-being.
“Twelve minutes later, at twelve forty-four, Arran Kingston arrived. Only that wasn’t to be his surname, no. He wasn’t destined to live with his birth family. Both the universe and Elizabeth and William had other plans. Twelve minutes meant the difference of a lifetime.
“The housemaid placed Alex into a crib beside Elizabeth, then took hold of Arran, after the doctor had cleaned him up. She wrapped him in a blue blanket, that he still owns to this day, and took him out of the house. Neither Elizabeth nor William took a moment that day to look at their second child.
“Alma couldn’t drive, and the couple, who were in the warm with their newborn son, had insisted no one else should see them. So, in the darkness, Alma walked with the baby boy in her arms into the local town. Once there, she went to the home of Aimee and Ray Dulcett, knocked on the door, and when Ray opened it, she placed the baby into his arms and walked away.
“Nature versus nurture, that’s what they’d said. But as the years went on, they forgot about Arran and the test. Elizabeth was known for getting bored easily. I guess she grew bored of waiting for the results she wanted. After a while, she simply didn’t care.
“She was never the mother she could have been to Alex. He was shipped off to boarding school the second he was old enough. But she was no mother to Arran. She didn’t even see him, only getting the occasional update from Alma; which she chose to ignore. William followed his wife’s lead. He only cared for her.
“The staff, that had all been banished before the news broke, came back to work. As far as they were concerned, Elizabeth had given birth to a beautiful baby boy in their absence. Only Alma knew the truth, and she’d take that secret to the grave because, just like William, she loved Elizabeth. Had done for years. She’d have done anything for her.
“And how do I know all this, you’re probably asking yourself. Because Alma was my friend. She told me everything. And I think, in a way, she felt guilty at the part she played. Because there wasn’t just poverty and deprivation in my childhood. There were drugs and alcohol, gambling and fighting, raised voices and violence on a sickening scale. Violence directed at me. Because I was a mouth to feed that they couldn’t afford. I was a boy who needed direction that they didn’t want to give. I was time-consuming, an annoyance that grew bigger as I grew older. They loved me as a baby, but that love didn’t last. Not when reality set in.
“Through my early years, I didn’t know I was adopted. If you could call what happened to me an adoption. It was more like abandonment. As a teenager, I was wild, feral, and angry with the world. I turned to drugs and alcohol, gambling and fighting, just like them. I guess the nature versus nurture question was an easy one to answer. I’d had no nurturing, so nature took over. But not the nature of my ancestors, no. The nature of one who has to learn to survive in the jungle of life.
“I did what I had to do to get by. I stole from others; I didn’t care. Humanity? What was that? I didn’t feel it; and no one had ever felt it for me. Compassion was a foreign word, a foreign feeling. To me, it was an alien concept. I had no empathy; I felt hollow inside... until I discovered art.
“Creating art let me escape the world I hated and dulled the voices in my head for a little while. At first, it started as graffiti on walls of the town, using leftover cans I found scattered on the floor. If I was lucky, I’d catch an artist in full flow and beat him black and blue for his spray paints, steal them, and leave him for dead. I didn’t care. I needed to create at all costs. But there was no real flair to my work, not yet. It’d take time to practise and hone my craft.
“I broke into stores and stole art supplies. I also broke into houses and took my anger out on the people sleeping inside. People who slept peacefully in warm houses and comfortable beds. With quiet minds and happy lives. I was an angry man, angry at the world.
“And then, I met my brother, Alex.
“One morning, he’d walked into the drug house I was squatting in, and when I saw his face, I thought I was still tripping from the night before. He had the same green eyes, the same smile, the same everything as me, only he looked healthy, tanned, and fitter. He was the better version of myself. The one I could have been.
“But when he said the name, ‘Arran’, and waited for me to respond, I didn’t. I glared back at him and growled, ‘fuck off’. He saw the worst version of himself in me. Emaciated, addicted, a man so close to death’s door he could’ve opened it at any time and walked right through.
“He told me the story of my early life. Said he’d found the paperwork to prove it. Our parents had died in a car accident, he said, but he didn’t look like a son in mourning. I guessed he hadn’t had the best of upbringings, like me. But he was dressed smartly, he looked clean and smelled expensive, so not exactly like me. He told me I was owed money from the estate, but I told him again to fuck off. I didn’t want a penny of it.
“Eventually, he left after I refused to speak to him. But he came back the next day, then the next day, then the day after that.”
He shook his head with a smile.
“He never gave up. But the final time he showed up, he saw me at my worst. He saw the beast that I could be as he walked in and found me strangling a guy who’d tried to steal my drugs. I stared at Alex as he stood in the doorway and watched me choke the life out of that piece of shit. And when that fucker stopped thrashing and lay dead on the floor with my belt wrapped around his neck, Alex asked what he’d done to deserve it. I told him, and Alex shook his head. ‘If you’re going to kill someone, at least make it count. Stealing drugs is a shitty excuse to end someone’s life. There are people out there who do much worse. Who deserve to be put down,’ he replied and for the first time in my life, I was stunned into silence.
“You see, Alex wasn’t disgusted by what I was. He knew. And he didn’t walk away. He stayed. He won my trust. And in turn, I agreed to do things his way. He wanted me to work to a code. He knew I had urges; desires I couldn’t ignore. And he told me, if I had to kill, then I should kill those that deserved to die. If I had a hunger, there were ways it could be sated without hurting innocent people.
“I didn’t want his money, the money that came from parents who didn’t care if I lived or died, so he devised a way to pay me what he thought he owed me, through my art. He set me up with a studio, put me in touch with people who could further my career. He put me on the path that took me to the top.
“Alex saw potential in my work. He also saw a beast of a man that needed taming, and he tamed me. Everything was going great; my life was perfect...
“Until you turned up.”
He took a deep breath and threw his head back, staring at the night sky. Then he let it fall forward as he stared at me, grinning like a devil.
“That night at the gallery, he didn’t watch my performance. He watched you. I even saw him take a photo of you on his phone. I hated you that night. He’d always given me one hundred percent of his time and attention. But not then. You saw to that. So, no, it wasn’t the fake article that put a target on your back. It was Alex. He followed you, became obsessed with getting to know you, and as he did, I felt him pull away from me. You took something of mine, so I decided to take something of yours.
“I did my research, found out about your life, your work, your family and friends. Your best friend .”
Gracie.
I gave a muffled shout through the tap over my mouth, as I kicked my legs and glared back at him.
“I started talking to her online,” he went on, “Managed to get her to agree to meet me in real life. She was stubborn at first, but I’m a persuasive guy. What can I say?” He shrugged. “I’m a real charmer when I want to be. I talked her round, eventually. We went on a date, for a meal at my favourite restaurant.”
He wagged his finger at me playfully.
“You and I both know she was lucky that night. If Alex hadn’t arrived when he did, I’d have taken her out to my car, drugged her, and taken her back to my studio. I had it all set up, ready. The noose, the knives, the pretty bow. I was going stage the scene, so she’d look like the barbie I sent you. Then, when it was all over, I’d send her gift wrapped to your door with photographs to show you each stage of my process. But when I saw Alex, I decided to change my plan. She wasn’t who I wanted. You were.” His voice began to change, becoming more sinister, as he said, “You need to go, Emma.” And then he screamed, “Because you’ve ruined FUCKING EVERYTHING!”
He started to pant, gritting his teeth, clenching his jaw and fisting his hands in fury. Then suddenly, he changed, jumping on the spot, shaking his arms and rolling his neck like a fighter about to enter the ring. The switch was so quick it made me scramble backwards, bending my knees as I braced myself against the tree trunk. This man was so wickedly unpredictable, so evil, I didn’t know what he’d say or do next. I needed to get out of here.
“You’re gonna die tonight,” he hissed, pointing at me as my eyes darted about, looking frantically around the clearing, praying for a way out. “And that right there is your grave that I’ll dump you in. I got it ready earlier because I don’t want to waste time on you. You’re not the main event tonight...”
As he said that, I saw movement in the trees up ahead, and when Alex appeared in the clearing, holding a gun pointed right at Arran’s head, I felt the rush of relief flood through me.
“You took your time,” Arran said calmly as he turned to face Alex. Then he focused back on me and said, “Don’t think he’s here to save you, by the way. He didn’t track us down with a tracker on the car or anything like that. I asked him to be here. He’s here for me.”