Chapter 26: The Knockout Round
All three of us stare at each other in silence. I look straight past Jim’s smug grin and focus only on Ryleigh’s blank face, her eyes lower to the ground. A white bandage wrapped around her cut turns slightly red as she stands in front of me. I shake my head in disbelief.
“You had something to do with this, too?” I say in Ryleigh’s direction.
I’m waiting for a response from her when Jim replies, “Oh, yes! I told you my family had the gift of acting and manipulation.”
I say to Ryleigh, “So you were playing me from the start.”
She looks up, “No. I really did love you, and I never wanted it to get this out of hand.”
Jim coughs while throwing his arms up as if to say what are you talking about. He walks over to her and puts his arm on her shoulder. The ease at which he approaches her makes me extremely uncomfortable. What is happening?
Jim says, “He didn’t ask if you loved him. He asked if this had been planned from the start. Well?”
There is a moment of silence in which Ryleigh gives him a sharp stare before she says, “Yes. Meeting you was all part of the plan. I have been in consistent contact with my brother since I met you. We used the cover story of him being my boyfriend as a failsafe in case things got out of hand. But, I did love you… as much as I possibly could.”
The notepad in my dad’s office. The fact he thought someone close to our family was betraying us. It was Ryleigh! Without her, Jim would have never gotten close enough to do anything. “So, you were the one giving him the information about my memory.”
“Yes, that among other things.” She says with a slight grin.
“So, you were also the one that had been texting me and giving him my whereabouts so he could follow me.”
Jim looks at Ryleigh with a clenched jaw. “What text messages and who was following him? You were supposed to keep an eye on him.”
“I did! He didn’t say anything.” She screams.
If it wasn’t them, then who has been following me? I have to get out of here. This isn’t going to end well for me.
Unexpectedly, there is the sound of light footsteps running just outside the door. Jim and Ryleigh stare out the room in bewilderment. The footsteps are obviously as unexpected to them as they are to me. My eyes move from the knife in Jim’s hand to the doorway. As my eyes peer through the dim light into the hallway, the lights suddenly flicker out.
I don’t waste the sudden cover of darkness. Whoever is outside the door has to be better than these two. I rush through the dark to the door. The smell of smoke blankets the area around me. As soon as I step out of the room, someone grabs me by the arm. I fight the instinct to recoil as I’m pulled towards a set of stairs.
There are only about three feet of visibility in the darkness, so it's hard to make out but a few details of anything. The person pulling my arm is short in stature, and the swiftness at which the person is navigating the dark corridor is like the elegant dance of a premier ballerina. The hand gripping my arm is soft and gentle despite my jerky movements as I struggle to keep pace during our getaway. As we near the stairs, rising smoke wafts over us from several torches sticking out of the wall.
The sound of Ryleigh and Jim running after us quickens our pace as we race down the stairs, in such a rush I nearly lose my footing. Upon stumbling off the stairs, I’m yanked down a dark hallway. After running past a few rooms, the person leading me stops and opens a door to a room that’s about halfway down the hallway.
I’m shoved into the room, banging my knee against some cluttered debris, as the door shuts behind me. The person then leads me to the back of the room, through the wreckage, to a pile of broken wood and motions for me to get behind it. In a soft whisper, a woman's voice calls out to me, “I’ve called the cops. They should be here within fifteen minutes.”
The voice triggers something within me. The hatred inside me is giving way to something, a feeling of truth or comfort. But I can’t quite pin down the voice or feeling until the memory returns to me while we wait in the darkness.
I’m in a bar, sitting beside Ryleigh, Matt and Joanna. Joanna reaches down and gently pulls me by the arm over to the side of the bar. Her hands are soft and calm even though her eyes fiercely look deep into mine. “I think you are in danger, Ryan. I think your entire family is in danger.” She whispers to me.
“What are you talking about? Are you jealous or something?”
She rolls her eyes in disgust, which is in stark contrast to her blushing cheeks. “Unbelievable! I’m trying to save you. Someone is going to come after your family.”
“And, how do you know that?”
Her tone raises to just above a whisper as she emphatically replies, “I just know. Your dad has been trying to find a secret family fortune, and since I have been working with him recently, he asked for my help. I think someone else is trying to find it, and they will harm you to get it.”
“Ok, I’ll bite. Who wants to harm us?” I ask.
“All I know is someone broke into your dad's office. Your dad had to be in court so I personally checked the security video along with a police officer, um, I think his name was Byron or Boyd, something like that. There was a man in a black mask looking for something in the building. There was also a woman…” My head turns towards Matt, who is chatting up Ryleigh. “Ryan, look at me. The girl you are talking to at the table looks a lot like the woman from the video!”
I shake my head, “If you're jealous just say so. You don’t have to slander innocent people in a bar just because I’m talking to them.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Fine! I need proof. Where is the video?”
“It's at the office, your dad told me to bring it by sometime today. I’ll go get it and you can watch it with him, but be careful. I don’t trust the look of her even if she isn’t the one from the video. But, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt until I know for sure whether she was involved or not. There is still at least one other person looking to harm y’all. So be careful.”
My text messages, the bar, the missing pieces… It not only was Joanna, but it is Joanna. She has been there for me the entire time, just like high school. My arms wrap around Joanna’s shoulders, which are hidden underneath a fur coat. “You were the one. Joanna, thank you so much! I can’t believe you figured it all out, and I couldn’t see it!”
She whispers back, “Shush, I wasn’t completely sure of Ryleigh’s involvement until she didn’t leave the mansion when Boyd let her go. I thought he might have other officers involved because I could never find the security tape, but it’s clear that it’s just him and Ryleigh working together. Now, stay quiet, we aren’t out of this yet. All I have is a flashlight. If they find us, we are both dead.”
The happiness within me takes a backseat to my growing desire to live and get revenge. I can’t dwell on anything other than what I need to do to get out of the mansion. I reach out for Joanna’s hand as she gives me the flashlight. By its weight, it feels like a heavy-duty flashlight that could easily knock someone out.
We sit in the dark waiting as distorted voices approach from the hallway. The voices become clearer as they get closer. The two evil doers’ voices shoot through the darkness like an arrow allowing me to make out what they are yelling. Jim shouts, “Ryan, I will find you. There is nowhere you can hide and whoever else is here is going to pay dearly for disrupting our family business.”
He goes on calling my name in various ways until his voice again distorts into nonsense due to his distance from us. I turn to Joanna, who is clinging to the wood debris. “Do we stay in here or what?”
“Don’t ask me, I’ve done my part.” She whispers back.
I say, “Let's go. This room is too cluttered for us to escape if they find us hiding back here.”
I pull up the bottom of my T-shirt and place it over the lens to the flashlight. When I turn on the flashlight, the shirt
dims the light to only a few feet around us. The light reveals a very debris filled room, more than I had even expected. It looks like the furnishings from other rooms along with broken or deteriorating objects have been thrown into the room without much thought or care. “Try to find something that can be used as a weapon. We ain’t getting out of here without a fight.”
I shine the light while she searches. The closest thing to a weapon she can find is a jagged splintered piece of wood. It’s better than nothing I suppose. We carefully step over a jagged rotten bookcase on the way to the door. I motion with my hand for her to stay in the room while I check outside. My raw wrist burns as I turn the doorknob.
The hallway is pitch black, resembling the deepest depths of an immutable cave. The darkness coaxes me further out into the hallway. The inviting calmness makes the entire building seem dead with inactivity. My pulse stands on edge as I reach back into the room for Joanna’s hand. She takes hold of my hand, shaking from her own anxieties and fears, while I ponder what to do next.
I find it stimulating that after Joanna has been protecting and leading me through the darkness of my mind the past few days, that now I’m the one protecting and leading us down the hallway in the dark. I hold her hand with my left hand while I hold the flashlight tightly gripped under my shirt with my right. The softness of her skin calms me, but the thickness and hardness of the flashlight make me that much more tense.
We walk right alongside the wall as we blindly travel down the hallway like two cockroaches trying to avoid the rubber soles of two monstrous shoes. Every so often, a spider web or dust will brush against my face as we walk. For one of the first times in my life, the thought of a spider falling on me doesn’t make my skin crawl because my skin is already tingling with the thought of Jim popping up out of the darkness, squashing any chance of us making it out.
We are approaching what looks like the end of the hallway, when we are forced to stop as murmuring voices from within a room a few steps ahead of us filter out into the hallway. I look back at Joanna, unsure of how to escape the watchful eyes of our exterminator. There is nowhere to go but forward, a retreat at this stage in the game would be an all-out forfeit.
We creep towards the opening of the door. My breathing labors as the intensity of the moment blossoms like the first punch in an epic boxing match. Adrenaline pumps through my veins, strengthening my body and honing my alertness. I let go of Joanna’s hand as she moves directly up against the wall behind me. I whisper, “Whatever happens, you just run and don’t look back. I’ll be right behind you.”
The tension builds into the middle stages of the boxing match while my pulse steadily quickens as I take on the role of a ninja assassin. I crouch down in an athletic position as my hand squeezes against the hard material that coats the flashlight tube. More tension builds within me, as I near the knockout round which in this arena means a fight to the death with the two people that ruined my life. Footsteps approach the doorway. There’s nowhere to go. My heart pounds in my chest. Joanna’s trembling hands press against my back as a shadowy figure appears under the doorway.
I’m only a short couple of feet from someone standing just inside the room. I can’t tell who it is but this is my chance. My instincts take over my body, forcing me to explode forward into the doorway. I am in no way in control of my actions as I raise my arm back and fire my rotator cuff forward along with all my momentum. The flashlight gently swivels along with my arm and wrist as they continue accelerating forward on a downward plane, until a crushing impact occurs.
The scurrying sound of Joanna’s footsteps bounce of the walls as she takes off running while the flashlight recoils in my hand. Someone makes a deep moaning sound just after the impact as my momentum carries me face forward into the room. The force of the impact causes the person I hit to fall backwards, deeper into the room. A loud metallic thud of something hitting the wood surface echoes just before both of our bodies’ crash onto the floor.
I quickly move my finger across top half of the flashlight tube searching for the on button. Finding the button, I press it sending a wide, bright beam of light into the previously dark room. In front of me, a woman begins screaming. I turn the beam of light to the body beside me. The beam illuminates Jim holding his head with bloody hands.
He flails his arms towards me as the light moves towards his eyes. His fist swings just out of reach of my face. I take my free fist and throw a punch in his direction, while using my hips to gain the necessary ground and momentum to make contact. I’m only able to see the initial contact of my fist because as soon as my arm follows through with the punch Ryleigh pounces on me.
Because I’m off balance from my punch that just landed, she is able to knock me backwards onto the floor. My head bangs against the wood, reopening my head wound. With her on top of me, I use all my strength to throw her over my head into the hallway. I only muster enough strength throw her about three feet into the hallway, which would be about six feet from where I am sitting just inside the room.
I fight myself for control of my body. The hatred heats within me, but I can’t let it take extended control of my actions. I grab the flashlight and sprint out of the room into the hallway, avoiding Ryleigh in the process. Instead of running after me, she returns to the room to probably check on James or get the knife. I don’t know which because I don’t look back to find out.
The beam of light jumps around along with my arm as I run. I bolt out of the hallway and into a large room. The light bounces around the room until it hits something that causes shades of light to disperse in all different angles throughout the room. I'm briefly awe struck until I realize the light has hit the chandelier in the foyer. My eyes briefly move upwards toward the sparkling chandelier as my thoughts shift to Joanna.
I am nearing the chipped fountain when police sirens burst into earshot. At the start of the day, the sirens would have meant disaster in the hands of Jim’s police officer persona, but now, thanks to Joanna the sirens are safety. I race down the entrance hallway towards the sirens. The door is standing wide open and the blinking blue lights of police vehicles glisten in the darkness. I rush out of the wretched Gate’s Mansion towards the safety of the night air.
I hit the porch running full speed. The storm that had ravaged the area has left the porch wet and slick. My feet hit the slippery surface and slide across the wet porch, my momentum carrying me directly into a police officer that has drawn his weapon. Thankfully, he doesn’t shoot me, but instead catches my fall.
I’m ushered off the porch to a mud stained police car where Joanna is already waiting for me. We watch as several police officers run into the building with flashlights and weapons drawn. The lights from their flashlights stream through the windows as they search the building, and their voices can be heard crackling over the various police radios.
Before I know it, both Joanna and I are being asked to get in a police car. The car pulls out of the gravel walkway as I look out the back window at the mansion. The two trees that guard the structure stand tall like jack-o-lanterns ominously lit by the flashlight beams trickling out from within the mansion. Joanna lays her head on my shoulder as we drive down the muddy road leading out of the plantation.
We don’t get too far before a black Escalade sitting out beside the road proves Joanna’s part in the puzzle. It’s the same S.U.V that I have spotted several times since my parents’ death. The one Joanna had used to keep a not so subtle eye on me. The road is passable, but the recent storm and increase in traffic make it difficult to traverse. When we make it to the iron gate of the plantation, a huge weight lifts from my spirit. For the first time, actual peace finds a home in my strained heart.