twenty

“Paul,” Michael’s voice hovered in the air above him. “So that’s who you are. I should have guessed.”

They had torn off his mask. Paul, held down by six men, looked up, and saw a slow smile spreading across the blond man’s face. 

“He’s the one who gave me this,” Michael said to his buddies, lifting his face to the moonlight. Paul could see the beginnings of a dark bruise swelling on his cheek.

“Let’s give him one of his own,” Craig said, squeezing his hand into a fist. “Or do you want to do the honors?”

“No,” Michael put a hand out. “We can have him arrested for trespassing and assault. There’s no need to bloody him up. What we want is something more like this.” And Michael punched Paul in the stomach, and his friends laughed in surprise.

“Good one, Comus,” Craig said while Paul tried to recover his breath. “How about we get going with turning him over to the police?”

“But what about the girls?” Brandon asked, looking at the escaping boat. Behind them, Mark was crawling out of the water, dripping wet.

Michael shrugged. “They won’t tell anyone. Their father is a strict fundamentalist Christian. He’d throw them out of the house if he even thought they were out at night. No, I think we’re safe.”

His eyes wandered over Paul and he smiled again. “Paul, on the other hand, is just passing through town. I saw him at the festival yesterday. He’s a juggling clown.”

The others chuckled. “Ooh, a ninja clown!” Craig chortled. “This is going to be great!”

“Get him up,” Michael said, and Paul found himself roughly heaved to his feet. Craig and Todd still held onto his arms.

Michael reached down and nonchalantly picked up a life preserver that hung on a hook in the quay. He flipped open a pocketknife and cut the rope off the life preserver. Coiling it around his arm, he said, “Bring him up to the heliport,” and tossed the life preserver aside.

Craig twisted Paul’s arm behind his back painfully and moved him forward. They pushed him up the narrow stone steps that led through the woods to the flat ground where the helicopters could land. As they moved upwards through the dappled black of the forest, Paul’s thoughts were on the girls. They might be almost home by now. At least they were out of danger. Even though he wasn’t.   

There was a big helicopter coming into view now, black and insect-like in the moonlight. For a moment, he half-believed that they were going to fly him to the mainland and hand him over to the police. But Michael abruptly turned off to the side, and started to go down into the woods. As Craig and Todd started to force him to follow, Paul knew his instincts were right—Michael had something completely different in mind. 

Seizing his chance, he thrust an ankle between Todd’s feet, tripping him, while yanking his arms free and pulling Craig off balance.  Todd let go of him and fell, while Paul seized Craig and threw him on top of Todd. Both men crashed to the ground.

It was a fast move, and the four guys ahead of them almost had no idea what happened. Paul was just about to turn on them when two swift punches hit him on either side of his spine, directly on his kidneys. Stunned by the sharp pain, he fell to his knees, and Michael’s arm tightened around his neck. Craig and Todd got back up from the ground, red-faced and angry and seized Paul’s arms. 

He felt a breathy chuckle in Michael’s chest. “Got you there, Paul.”

Michael yanked Paul’s chin upwards and looked at him, breathing hard. The bruise on the blond man’s eye showed clearly in the moonlight. “Strip him. And tie him up. This clown is going to provide us with our entertainment for the night.”

Rachel drove fast. Alan’s pudgy boat was surprisingly swift with only one person in it. She splashed over the oncoming waves with rhythmic bumps that hammered at her as her heart hammered at her chest. Soon she was approaching the island, its shadowed shores widening and engulfing her vision. The island was disrobed of its delight, but not of its dark power.

She decided that the quay was too exposed for her to return to. So instead, she piloted the boat along the shore on the opposite side, near the docks. There were trees overhanging deep water, and she cut the engine, paddled the boat into the shadows, and got out, trembling. She was not entirely sure what she was going to do, but her anger and sense of justice wouldn’t let her stay away. Remembering Paul’s apprehension that something bad would happen tonight and his poignant acceptance when she refused to heed his warning, she felt even more bound to help him…This would be a good time to pray, she thought abstractedly, but she couldn’t formulate any words, except Help. Hurriedly she fastened the boat to a strong branch, and plunged into the woods.

Paul shivered in his boxer shorts, his hands tied tightly behind him as they went along through the forest, going down, sharply down. He clenched his teeth as he stepped on thorns and was thrust through bracken, which scratched his bare skin. His war injury, which had been bruised in the fight with Michael, was starting to ache. It was difficult to see in the unfamiliar woods, but Michael and his cronies seemed to know where they were going.

And then Paul found himself being pushed forward around a sharp bend and then he was stumbling on level ground.

He caught himself and had barely time to take in the surroundings—a small cave with a wide opening that writhed away into shadows, lined with rough benches and log stools. And behind him a massive rock, with a twisted tree crawling up its side, branching over its top. There was an odd smell in the air, a mixture of sweetness, foulness, and dust.

Michael pushed past him and turned on a light somewhere, and the cave area was filled with an unearthly gray light.  The blond man popped a pill into his mouth, opened a beer bottle, and took a drink.

“Let’s get started,” he said.

Craig shoved Paul’s shoulders back against the tree’s trunk. Michael flicked out the rope, and passed it around the tree and across Paul’s chest, pulling it tight. As his shoulders were arched back against the tree, Paul’s bound wrists were shoved into the small of his back, throwing him off balance. He tried to compensate by planting his bare feet on the sandy ground of the cave as best as he could while the rope was tightened and knotted.  Recalling his breathing exercises, Paul began his mental preparation.

The other guys lurched passed them into the cave and threw themselves down on the rough benches. Paul saw Dillon reach greedily behind a rock, pull something out and light it.

While Craig tied his ankles to the base of the tree, Paul concentrated on centering himself. He knew that his body would get used to the discomfort of the knots if he could keep his mind from focusing on it. Plus, he sensed there was worse to come. 

When Paul was tightly lashed in place, Craig sat down, but Michael remained standing in front of him, observing his prisoner with a strange smile on his face. His eyes were deadened, as usual, but with a pale flicker of interest. Paul kept his eyes on Michael’s chest, waiting, watching for his adversary’s next move while keeping himself upright and balanced.

“A Catholic boy,” Michael murmured, putting out a hand to Paul’s miraculous medal. He jerked downwards, snapping the chain, and held up the gleaming silver.

“I’m superstitious too, you see,” he said softly, and hurled it over the rock into the forest.

Paul caught his breath, his neck smarting. He resumed his mental preparation, slowing his breathing, and finding his way back into calmness.

Craig twisted open a beer bottle and flicked the bottle cap at Paul, hitting his thigh. “Make him scream, Michael,” he said. Some of the others chuckled in anticipation.

Paul ignored him and kept himself still and as upright as possible, his head down, watching Michael, waiting, and preparing. He saw Michael’s eyes fix on his neck, and began to tense his toes in preparation, to turn the pain away from the upper part of his body.

Michael’s eyes glimmered as he reached out with both hands and pinched the large nerve centers on the back of Paul’s neck and pulled up. Pain ratcheted up Paul’s neck and across his shoulders, but he was partially ready for it. He concentrated on working his toes, knowing that eventually the pinched nerves would adjust to the pain, and it would subside. He just had to wait. He hung from his tormentor’s hands like a limp cat, flexing each of his toes in turn, keeping his breathing steady.

After a few moments, Michael dropped him and stepped back.

There was general dismay. “You didn’t feel that,” Michael said accusingly. “I’m disappointed.”

Paul meant to keep disappointing him, as long as he could. He dropped his eyes to hide his defiance. Openly taunting Michael in this situation would not be prudent.

Michael probed along Paul’s neck again, his fingers as methodical as a large spider’s. He pressed Paul’s collarbone, working his way up towards the shoulder. Then he began to dig his fingers into the skin on either side until he had a hold on the fragile bone, and quietly began to pull on it.

The pain was swift and screaming, followed fast by fear that the thin bone would snap. Paul writhed his wrists, found a nerve center, and dug down into it with his fingernails, so that competing pain began rushing into his hands. He wrenched his mind away from the fear and seized his self-inflicted pain and thrust it downward, away from him. Take it, take it, he prayed. Breathe. Breathe. Still. Still.

“You’re not doing it right,” Craig complained, lurching to his feet. “He’s not squealing. Come on, break his collarbone! He won’t need it!”

Paul disregarded the words and held on. 

“He’s just being obstinate,” Michael said. He held the bone ten seconds longer, and then released it.

“You’re losing your touch,” Craig warned.

Masking his relief, Paul tried not to let himself relax entirely. He wasn’t trained enough to stop from completely feeling the pain, but he had managed to stop himself from responding erratically. Once again, he sent up a grateful request for further endurance.  It was not going to get any easier.

Resolved or not, Rachel floundered about in the woods, trying to find her way up towards the house. The black skirt of her dress caught on the branches, and she wrapped it around her legs, trying to move quickly as well as quietly. But her outfit was scarcely conducive to stalking.  At least it’s black, she thought to herself grimly. 

At last, almost miraculously, she stumbled across a path—plank steps leading from the dock to the side of the house.  Her heels made clocking noises on the stone, and they were impractical. She tore them off. In her stocking feet, she crept up to the house, trying to ignore her anxiety. She wasn’t sure what she would find, or exactly what she would do when she found it.

The lights were still on, but the house was silent.

She approached cautiously, tiptoed up to the veranda and stood behind a pillar, looking in the window. There was no sound from inside, and no more music. The smoking ruins of the birthday feast were still on the table, sprayed with extinguishing foam, water dripping from the tablecloth to the carpet. 

After a moment, she stepped inside the house. She opened the door to the basement and listened. There were no sounds but the hum of some appliances. After a moment, she stole downstairs. There was the abandoned pool game, with cues and balls all askew, party napkins and drinks littered around the empty room.

She searched the entire basement, then returned upstairs, opened the door to the kitchen, and tiptoed inside. There were the remains of Prisca’s omelet preparations and a can of beer on the counter, but nothing else. 

Finding a hallway and a staircase, she stole from room to room, opening doors onto empty rooms with increasing bewilderment. There was no sign of life. It was eerie.

It was as though Michael and his cohorts had never existed. As if, with a flick of a magic staff, they had vanished with their captive into the ground, never to be seen again.

Starting to become unnerved, she opened a bedroom sliding door and hurried out onto the small balcony. The breeze whipped her hair as she looked down at the portico where they usually danced. It was deserted. Only the branches of the willow trees swayed over the silent stones. She could see the helicopter gleaming on the heliport. Had they taken him away in a boat? She looked down at the dock, but couldn’t tell if any boats were missing.

She stood on the balcony, searching over the wooded island, thinking. Her gut instinct told her that Michael was still here, though unseen. Perhaps he was watching her from some hidden corner, waiting merely for her to give up before springing his trap. She looked over her shoulder despite herself, and then steeled herself to be rational. Yes, somehow, she knew he was here, but not seeing him made her enemy seem increasingly omnipotent.

Pain and humiliation. Those were their weapons. Weapons to both punish him and shut him up. Weapons to break him, and make him ashamed to go to the police, or to tell anyone about his ordeal.

His obstacle was his helplessness. Tied down and barely able to move, he was relatively unable to resist. But within those boundaries, he had to fight his enemies, with as much persistence as if he were unfettered and armed.

So far, he had managed to remain silent as he sweated and endured, even though he couldn’t keep his expression fixed. Although his concentration was sustained, he was finding it hard to stay still and upright, to keep pressure off his upper body, whose muscles would otherwise start cramping from the extra-tight ropes.

His seven captors were taking turns, trying experiments and debating about what they could do next to break him.  Since pain expands rapidly to fill its temporal space, Paul wasn’t sure after a while if he had been tied there for minutes, an hour, or several hours. 

He had to let that sense of time go, he told himself, licking his dry lips between moments. To hope for a definite ending would only make him desperate.  And desperation was his biggest enemy now.  Trust. Trust, he told himself.  From moment to moment. That’s all I need.

“I almost think he’s enjoying this,” Michael said, casting a sidelong glance at his prisoner.

They had tossed beer bottles at him to see him duck, and doused him with the leftovers of their drinks.  His shoulders were sprinkled with broken glass where one had smashed over his head.  Paul attempted to distract himself by taking an inventory of his wounds. He was bruised, he could tell, but not seriously cut. The beer still dripping down his neck continued to irritate his skin wherever it ran, and the smell mixed with his own sweat was unpleasant.

“He should enjoy his prize even more then,” Craig said, with a sneer. “A free helicopter ride to the deserted field of our choice.”

“Does he get his clothes back?” Dillon queried.

“At this point, no,” Michael said.

“He’s made you really mad, hasn’t he?” Todd said.

“He knows it,” Michael said.  His eyes were fixed on Paul’s face, but Paul was intentionally not meeting his gaze.

“Then the deserted field is going to be at least as far away as Ohio,” Mark said.

“More like Minnesota,” Michael said.

“Too much trouble,” Craig said, flinging a bottle cap. Paul ducked again and it pinged off his neck. “I say if he’s being this obstinate, let’s fly over the Atlantic and see how far he can swim.”

Paul knew they hadn’t meant most of what they said. He recognized that if he had given them what they wanted—groveling and begging for mercy—they would have let him off by now. But the foundation of aikido was treating even adversaries with dignity. He had to extend that respect to himself as well.  Besides, he was stubborn.

Breathing deeply again and making a sudden dodge against the dart of a bottle cap, he steadied himself internally.

“No clown is going to get the better of me,” Michael’s voice said softly.

Rachel retraced her steps downstairs to the ruined buffet, trying hard to think of what could have really happened, shoving aside the bloated image of evil in her mind. Unless Michael Comus were truly a demon, he and his cronies—and Paul—had to be visible and apparent somewhere on this island.

A shudder ran through her, and she suddenly remembered following Michael down that secret stair, to the little hollow with the twisted tree and the heavy sense of squalor….

The cave. Michael’s old hiding place. That’s where they must have taken Paul.

The answer was hardly reassuring. She ran to the veranda and looked out towards her home. She couldn’t see or hear anyone coming. Her sisters must have told Dad by now, but perhaps something had delayed them. There was nothing for it but to go herself.

Turning back into the woods, she raced down the narrow steps back to Alan’s boat, trying to think and plan as she plunged downwards. By the time she reached the boat’s shrouded hiding place, she had the beginnings of a strategy. Michael was not going to win if she could help it.

After devising several inventive but obscene games for their amusements with Paul’s person, Michael and his cronies appeared to give up. They all settled themselves on logs, opened new drinks, and lit up fresh joints, gazing at him with almost professional perplexity.  Paul saw Michael down two more of the pills.

Paul waited wearily, feeling the sweat and beer drip off of him. Flexing his raw wrists against their ropes, he tried to drive down the swelling in his upper arms. And his wound was starting to ache from the sheer exertion. Center, center, he told himself. Still yourself. Trust.

“New game,” Michael said suddenly. “Who has a pen?”

Todd did, and handed it over. Michael twiddled with it, his eyes gleaming. He said, “Each one of us has to come up with a few appropriate words and take turns inscribing them with the pen somewhere on this clown’s skin. Then, we vote on the one we like best, and carve it into his flesh as a permanent reminder of this encounter.”

He pulled out his knife, snapped it open, and thrust its silver point into the log he was sitting on, with another smile at his victim. Paul realized a line had been crossed.

“Oh, fun!” Dillon said, stumbling to his feet. “Give me the pen. I’ve got a good one.”

Paul prepared himself, but winced as the man scrawled an obscene word across his chest with the sharp-tipped permanent-ink pen, driving the point in hard as he wrote. The result was greeted with howls of raucous laughter.

“Oh, gimme that, I’ve got one,” Mark hurried up and took the pen from Dillon.

Mark wrote his message up one of Paul’s arms and down the other one, snickering to himself the whole time. Paul turned his head aside so he wouldn’t have to smell the guy’s alcoholic breath, and attempted to let go of the pain once more. It didn’t help that Mark was standing on his foot. He caught a glimpse of what Mark had written and was repulsed.

“That’s a good one,” Todd said appreciatively.

“F—Fiddlesticks,” Craig lumbered to his feet and snatched the pen from Mark. “You’re too long-winded.”

He squeezed Paul’s cheeks, and, squinting, wrote something across Paul’s forehead, the pen slipping in the sweat.  He wiped off Paul’s forehead and outlined his letters again. It took him several attempts to write the one word. “Oooh!” the party exclaimed.

“We’re running out of room,” Brandon complained, after three other words had been written.

“We can always untie him and turn him around—there’s more room behind,” Craig said, with a snicker.

But no one else came forward. After a moment, the ringleader stood up.

“All right then,” Michael said, pulling the blade from the log and tossing it back and forth in his hands. “We vote.”

At the boat, Rachel groped in the darkness, pulled out the emergency kit, cursing her shaky hands and grabbed the flares and the matches.  Then she flipped the alarm switch on the boat to “On.”

A loud zooming alarm started echoing over the water and the land. Rachel sprang into the woods, struck a match, and lit the flares one by one and threw them in the air as they exploded. Then she ran in the opposite direction, hoping the noise hid her approach, making her way up the steep wooded slope towards the cave.

Paul heard the noise of the alarm first. He stretched his numbed fingers and relaxed them, praying. Someone had come. The others heard it next, and were startled.

“That can’t be the police,” Craig said.

“I don’t think so,” Michael got to his feet, snapping the knife closed and putting it into his pocket. “If it is, tell them I drove the clown back to the shore hours ago. You got me? He’s gone.”

He moved to the back of the cave and clicked off the light. The cave transformed from dull gray into indigo light, and after a moment, Paul saw the men, changed into dark blue shadows, slip out of the hollow one by one. But Michael stopped by Paul and pulled out a handkerchief. Methodically he folded the cloth into a triangular half and stretched it across Paul’s mouth and knotted it at the back of the head. Then he thrust most of the cloth into Paul’s mouth with two fingers.

“Even if it is the police, they’ll never find anyone down here,” Michael murmured, tightening the ends of the gag as Paul choked and worked fruitlessly with his tongue to push the wad of cloth out. “Don’t think you’re going to get out of your nice helicopter ride.” He slid into the darkness.

With an exertion, Paul made himself slow his gulping and found that he could still take in air around the gag and through his nose, although it was difficult. Now that he couldn’t breathe so easily, he found it too hard to remain firm on his feet. Unwillingly his body sank down against the ropes, which squeezed him like vises. Shuddering, he felt pain coursing through him from all different directions. He was cold, drained, and desperately thirsty. But temporarily, at least, he had a respite. Until they returned.

 Rachel crouched in the bushes as the seven men ran by her, down the slope. As she had guessed, they had come from the direction of the cave.

As soon as she was sure they had all left, she crept stealthily upwards, until she reached the massive rock that hid the cave.  She moved swiftly through the bracken around to the entrance. There was a rank smell coming from the cave—of spilled beer, sweat, and worse things. Listening at the entrance, she heard someone’s labored breathing.

“Paul,” she called in a whisper.

She felt her way around the stone and looked into the cave.

There was a pool of moonlight, cut into odd shapes by the branches of the disfigured tree. Bound to its bare trunk was a mostly naked man, his head down, his chest heaving, his arms twisted back by ropes. Catching her breath in shock and repulsion, she barely recognized her friend. 

He was far from the skilled rescuer she had last seen, and even further from the splendid flute-playing god on the rock. The laughing, joking, persistent goodness that was Paul had been stretched, scarred, and humiliated.

Her stomach violently wrenched inside her, and part of her wanted to turn and run away. But if this was real, she couldn’t leave him. As if in a nightmare, she took a step forward, her stocking feet crunching on broken glass, and stretched out a wavering hand to touch him. She felt the smooth, damp skin of his shoulder, crossed by tiny red cuts.

With a gasp for air that was almost a sigh, he lifted his head heavily, his brow crowned with shame, and the amount of pain reflected in his eyes was almost too much for her to bear.

Hurriedly, she came up to him and put her hands around his neck to undo the gag, looking up as she felt for the knots so that she wouldn’t have to look him in the face. Her fingers pulled at the tight little knot obstinately, and at last it came loose. She worked the wad of cloth out of his mouth, damp with saliva.

“Rachel, don’t stay here. Go get help,” he said huskily after he got his breath. She could feel his intense shame.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she said fiercely, licking the tears that were falling into her mouth. She ran her fingers over his face, attempting to wipe some of the sweat away. As she did so, she brushed his lips with the tips of her fingers, and trembled at the deep feelings that welled up within her.

Quickly, she groped around him, naked or not, trying to find the knots. Finding one buried in his ribs, she began to pull at it.

“They’ll come back, and find you,” he whispered, attempting to get back on his feet.

She didn’t care. A loop came out, and she quickly pulled the knot apart. She started to pull the rope from his chest, but it caught again. Following it, she found another knot, and began to worry it.

“Rachel, please go.” His voice was a rasp.

“Not without you,” she answered stolidly.

“Rachel, please,” Paul insisted, his voice more urgent but quieter. “I hear something.”

“I’m never leaving you again,” she whispered intensely, curling her fingers through the rock-hard knot and pulling it, softening it, coaxing it loose. He was almost free.

Paul seemed to stiffen, listening. “Rachel,” he whispered. Then, he barked a warning, “Rachel!”

Too late, she felt fingers clamping around the back of her neck and pinching tight. She flailed and blackness swarmed over her vision and she sank down into murk.