Chapter 5: Butterfly
The darkness became darker as she woke from her dream.
She opened her eyes but there was nothing in front of her.
Her breathing was shallow. Not from exertion but from something that lay over her face. Cold, wet and heavy.
She tried to reach up to remove whatever was there but as her hands drew close they stopped.
Something cut into her wrists and pulled at her waist. Her hands were bound.
Elbows on the ground, she groaned, trying to sit up. Her head hit something about a foot above her.
She slumped back down, close again to blacking out.
Shaking her head, she managed to dislodge the cloth that was over her face.
Still the darkness.
As she tried to remember what had happened and how she got here, she called out
‘Help! Is there anybody there?’
Nothing.
Pulling against her restraints, she felt around.
Smooth surfaces in front of her and to both sides giving her about a foot of space all around. Her head was also touching something. She tried kicking out but her legs felt heavy, bound and restricted from the ankles down. There was no feeling in her feet.
Panic started to kick in.
‘Please, is there anybody there?’
Still nothing but then to her right, a flame sparked into life.
That burst of light sent pain and fear through her eyes, shooting down her whole body.
Squinting through the light she tried to see what it was. She momentarily saw her own face with dishevelled hair looking back. She was behind glass.
No sooner had the flame appeared, it vanished, replaced by a single orange glowing dot that hovered about a foot away from her face.
She watched as it danced in the darkness reducing in size and brightness before burning brighter again illuminating a scar pitted, unshaven face behind it, deep sunken eyes staring at her and a devilish smirk.
Horror swept through her as she realised that the hypnotizing glowing dot was the end of a cigarette and that she had seen the face behind it before.
She backed away till her head was touching the other side of her glass enclosure.
She screamed, ‘Help, anybody, help me!’
‘It’s no good shouting Butterfly, there’s no one within ten miles of this place, we’re on our own,’ came the haunting reply.
‘What do you want, I’ve got money. How much do you want? Please just let me go.’
‘It’s not your money I’m after, it’s you and the package.’
‘Package, what package? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t lie, I saw you at the drop off.’
‘Drop off? Please, I don’t know what you mean.’
That’s when it all came flooding back to her.
She had left her apartment just after lunch and made her way to the corner of Broadway and Hall Close to wait for her friend to pick her up, when she had heard a commotion in the cemetery opposite.
She ducked back into the door way she stood by and watched as a man dressed in a long black coat and boots and carrying a box of some description staggered through the trees and gravestones shouting and screaming, quite clearly distressed.
He made his way to a large stone monument that stood in the centre of the graveyard stretching up to the sky.
The monument must have been one of the first structures built in the graveyard. The stone work had long started to crumble, tiles were missing from the roof, exposing rotting timbers and there was an old twisted, worn timber door on the front complete with blackened ornate hinges and door knob.
The man slumped against the door and grabbed at the handle, missing at first and nearly falling over, before righting himself and made his way inside.
After a few minutes he burst back out empty handed heading in the direction he had come from shouting, ‘You’ll never get it now!’
She watched as the man, clearly still disoriented, zigzagged back through the graveyard and down Broadway till he disappeared out of sight.
Intrigued and knowing that she had a good ten minutes or so to wait for her friend to arrive (who was nearly always late), she decided to cross the road to see if she could see what the man had been doing.
Reaching the black rust covered steel railings she was disappointed to find that her view was blocked by the trees that hung their heads as if in sorrow for the fallen souls that lay beneath.
Looking up and down the road and seeing that nobody was about, she decided to take a closer look.
In through the wrought iron gates and across the grass to the monument she went.
As she approached the monument her tenth sense, intuition, made her stop.
She was being watched.
As she crouched down at the corner of the monument to scan the area, she put her hand on some kind of box. Small in size covered in brown wrapping paper with an address on it.
Instinctively, she picked it up, keeping one eye on her surroundings.
She spotted something to her right dart behind a gravestone.
She stopped, not daring to blink.
Shadows lurked beneath the trees and crumbling gravestones in between her and where she saw the movement.
Her heartbeat quickened, her eyes widened, she felt a bead of sweat gather on the back of her neck and slowly trickle down between her shoulders.
Then, as innocently as a child playing in their own backyard, a rabbit hopped out, stopped and looked over in her direction.
She let out a sigh of relief.
She’d obviously been watching too many films, the ones where someone was always lurking just out of shot ready to make you jump.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, then as she put her hand down to get up the rabbit took off.
It made her jump, even though she was half expecting it.
‘We’ve obviously been watching the same films.’ She giggled to herself.
She turned to look at the monument door.
Should she go in?
How stupid would she be if she did?
The man she’d seen looked a right weirdo.
Her better judgement won.
Her friend would be here soon.
As she turned to leave she heard the door to the monument creak open behind her.
She froze.
She knew she should run.
She wanted to run.
But her legs wouldn’t move.
Someone was behind her.
The someone felt close.
‘Hello, Butterfly.’
A cloth flashed across her face pressing against her mouth.
As she crumpled to the floor and her world grew darker, she saw her friend’s car pull up at the corner outside the churchyard.
Her friend was on time for once.
She reached out a hand and tried to scream.
Nothing but darkness.
Tears rolled down her face as she lay in that darkness watching the orange illuminated face encompassed by smoke grinning at her. It was the face of the distressed man who had staggered from the graveyard.
It had been a trap.
‘Please, let me go. You’ve got the wrong person. Please.’
The face lifted and disappeared.
She caught a glimpse of a bare chest and muscular torso tighten as her captor tipped his head back and gave a rasping, blood curdling laugh.
‘Hah, wrong person? You went for the package.’
‘I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s too late for sorry. They told me you would come for the package in the monument.’
‘But I didn’t go inside, the package I picked up was outside.’
His grin disappeared. ‘What?’
‘I didn’t go inside, the package was outside, on the ground.’
Her voice was only just audible through her tears and sobbing.
She heard a chair scrape and crash to the floor
as the man leapt up and moved away.
He disappeared into the abyss, then the room burst in to brightness as he flicked on a light.
She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut from the searing pain of the light.
Through squinted eyes she could make out that he was standing by a table.
The light illuminated the room, it was big, some kind of factory with containers, she read the side of one behind where her captor stood, Cement.
He had picked up the package, examined it and then screamed, tossing the package away into the darkness.
He turned to look at her.
The glow from the light behind him made his silhouette look almost angel like, but she knew he couldn’t be further from that.
Turning back towards her, his silhouette grew bigger.
He raised his fist to punch her.
She closed her eyes and waited for the impact.
She heard his fist hit something in front of her and felt the vibration but there was no pain.
As she opened her eyes she saw him standing above her looking down at her through a shattered glass spider’s web.
‘You were in the wrong place at the wrong time then.’
‘Please let me go, I won’t say anything.’
He said nothing. He made his way round to the head end of the glass container and pushed.
She wriggled and realised she was on some sort of trolley. ‘Where are you taking me, please just let me go.’
He wheeled her outside in to the daylight, it was raining.
She watched as the rain puddled on the glass above her before finding its way to the sides and seeping down the sides of the glass casket like her tears that trickled down past her ears.
She tried to kick out again. Her legs still wouldn’t move, her feet still numb.
Now in the daylight, she looked down to see that her feet were encased in a hardened block of concrete. It was then that she knew her fate.
The trolley stopped on the edge of a jitty overlooking a large lake.
Her captor hoisted the glass container from the trolley into a standing position facing the lake.
She tried to plead again but she knew it was futile.
He moved behind her.
She braced herself as she felt herself lean forward as he pushed her over the edge.
In the split second of free-fall she felt like she was flying.
Then the glass casket hit the water sinking almost immediately from the weight of the concrete boots that she wore. She thrashed about as bubbles inside her tomb found their freedom through the glass spider’s web in front of her, replaced by the cold water that flooded in.
He watched the glass casket slip beneath the cobalt water.
‘Fly home, Butterfly,’ he said.
Her world went dark again – this time for good.
***