It was dark and cold the night he brought me home.
I couldn’t see in the bag, but I could hear everything. The wind was crashing through the trees, tumbling into every individual leaf like the pounding drums of a relentless marching band. The journey was long and winding. I could tell by the way my body fell helplessly from side to side. I screamed, but he just turned the radio up louder. I’ll always associate The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind’ with being transported into John’s evil world.
I remember the muffled screech of metal on metal as the dead bolt locks slammed shut.
One, two, three. Locked.
The silence that descended was deafening.
The smell of bleach and cologne permeated through the fabric walls of the bag as he placed me down on the floor. The cold from the stone tiles crawled into my bones and made its home there for the next three years.
I had never believed in love at first sight, I used to scoff at those who did, convinced they should have moved past their childish Disney fueled happy ever afters and reluctantly embraced the bleak, colourless reality the rest of us inhabited. My friend Millie was the worst for it, gazing at every passing man as though he were Prince Charming. It was nauseating.
My previous relationship had put me off men entirely. In my experience, men promised you the world and delivered years of subtle, but grinding abuse instead. And yet, when John walked into my life on a random Tuesday afternoon, I allowed myself momentarily to believe in love and all its rose tinted nonsense. He had the most beautiful smile I had ever seen, sounds cliché, but it’s true. His voice was soft and melodic, every sentence composed like a symphony. His eyes were the green of a summer tree top canopy, and everything about him felt like home, not a home I had ever known, but the one I had always longed for.
And it is because of this that I was willing to look past the kidnapping.
To you, that probably sounds insane. But when you’ve had a life like mine, homelessness, hunger and a perpetual state of fight or flight, you learn that survival often means compromise. Whether I had willingly gone with John or not became irrelevant. What mattered was that I had a roof over my head and someone who, at least on the surface, seemed to want me.
You see, it wasn’t all bad.
There were moments, fragments of something almost tender, wedged in between all that violence. I have to tell myself that, it’s how I justify letting it go on for as long as I did.
Winter evenings when I lay across his lap whilst he absentmindedly ran his fingers through my hair. Summers where I was allowed into the enclosed patio, for those fleeting, precious hours, life was peaceful, joyful even.
Then I would look up from the chair and see the locks. My vision would shift from the trees tickling the clouds to the mesh wire that surrounded the patio. I would be gently reminded that I was a hostage, not someone John actually loved. I would sit there, basking in the sun and dream of escaping this place, of running into the woods that seemed close enough to touch, yet impossibly distant. Disappearing into something vast and untamed.
Free from the screams. Free from the unprovoked kicks in the rib when John’s temper flared. Free from the guilt of surviving while they had not. Then I would look up again and see him calmly levelling the soil with his shovel, and I would become grounded in reality. If I ever tried to escape, my body would be helping the plants bloom before dawn. Just like the others.
The first girl was buried beneath Hydrangeas.
Blue and purple blooms, like the bruises that covered her body by the time he was finished.
She arrived like me, though without the bag. He threw her through the open door as though she were nothing more than a heavy bag of shopping. An inconvenience.
Mouth gagged, hands tied, and tears cascading down her face. She looked at me, really looked at me, like I could save her.
I could not.
He was so calm, so stoney faced. Just going through the motions. I understood that this was either not the first time he had done this, or he had rehearsed this in his mind over and over.
He glided over to the front door and slammed the deadbolts.
One, two, three. Locked.
As he had dragged her up the stairs by her long ponytail, I shot out of the way and hid in the office.
The screaming began shortly after the bedroom door slammed.
I had heard screaming like that before, it’s the kind of primal scream forced from your lungs by the certainty of death.
I tried to intervene. I did. I scrambled at the door. I begged him to stop. I told myself that if I could reach him, calm him. Maybe he would settle for keeping her here like me. Alive. Death is final. Captivity, however long, has the potential to be temporary.
And then the screaming stopped.
I smelled the blood before I saw it. When the white wooden barrier between us eventually flew open, the metallic stench hit me first, thick and suffocating. The walls were painted in it. Blood dripped from the bed in slow, deliberate trails, like icing sliding off a cake.
The next thing I remember was waking up on the office floor, my vision blurry, John leaning over me, whispering apologies in that same soft, melodic voice.
Her body was gone.
The room was spotless.
And the next morning, there was a new plant in the garden.
It could have been a nightmare, but her blue and white chequered skirt had snagged on the bannister and was left there for three days. He only snatched it off when the doorbell rang. In the race to bury her body and clean the bedroom, he had forgotten about the weekly food delivery. The murders had that effect on him. The adrenaline and post kill guilt left him foggy for days. He would get this thousand yard stare creep into his eyes when the news was on. A concerned reporter announced that the search for a 15 year old school girl was underway.
I recognised the skirt before her face.
He had just stared blankly at the television, changed the channel and returned to running his fingers through my hair. Days went by, days turned into weeks, weeks into months. No one came, though I had felt sure that they would. I think John had too. But the police never showed, and the case ran cold. The parents’ desperate appeals were no longer on the nightly news, and the world had moved on as she lay decomposing in the garden.
The second was under a rose bush.
This time, he had prepared. I assumed he had learned from his previous escapades. Plastic sheets lined the bedroom. Bleach bottles stood in neat formation. The grave had already been dug.
He had mastered his art.
She arrived in the same way as the first. Gagged, tied and terrified. Pleading, weeping and powerless. John was emotionless. As cold as the floor she had been thrown to. The sound of the deadbolts sealing her doom.
One, two, three. Locked.
This time was different, he had dragged her upstairs by her long, flowing hair, but returned downstairs moments later to pour himself a drink.
He let her wait.
He let the fear fester in that room until it had become so palpable I could feel it through the door.
That was when I understood. This wasn’t just about the power and control he felt when taking another’s life. It was about anticipation. Her fear was a starter before the main course. He was feeding off of it.
I heard her muffled cries. I stared from the office doorway and dreamed of all the ways I could have helped her escape. I couldn’t think of a single scenario in which we both left that house alive.
But I had felt compelled to try.
As I edged closer to the door, I heard him. The clicking of his shoes on the stone tiles.
His shadow had begun to grow on the wall as he ascended the stairs.
His eyes locked with mine, fierce and unfeeling.
Unfortunately, I am a coward. It’s how I have lived this long. Cowardice has a way of disguising itself as a survival instinct. I backed away slowly into the office and hid there until the splashing sounds and screaming had stopped, and silence descended over the house.
The fumes from the bleach made my eyes water.
The plastic sheets had not been completely water tight, and droplets had found their way onto the carpet. There they remained like blood time capsules, a painful reminder that she had been there. That there was only one way out of this house. To be buried in the garden. The aftermath was the same as before, pleading parents, baffled detectives and a community coming to the slow realisation that Hydrangea girl was only the first. That anyone with long dark hair and a school skirt was a target.
But the media circus subsided once again.
The rose bush bloomed.
Life moved on.
John, however, did not. His temper grew shorter every day. The random kicks became more frequent, and my ribs groaned in complaint every time I sat, or walked, or drew breath. One positive was that he spent more time outside, which meant time on the enclosed patio. The horrors of those nights seemed to temporarily evaporate in the sun. But as I sat there, staring into the trees, I could still hear the screaming. It rang in my ears like an endless, ominous bell.
Every time I shut my eyes, I was met with John’s empty gaze, the cold, dead stare of the killer I was forced to depend on.
His affection subsided more and more. Most nights, I stayed curled up on the sofa, out of his way. I didn’t want to be in that room. I never planned to sleep in there ever again. But he noticed my absence. One night, he grabbed me and threw me in there, slamming the door shut. I lay there frozen the entire night. I could have sworn I saw them standing there. Eyes hollow. Hair matted. Skin pale. Maybe it was a trick of the light.
Enraging John became as easy as breathing at the wrong time. It was clear his hunger for terror was not satiated, and soon he would feed again.
The third girl was under lavender.
He left me on the patio this time.
The wind had clawed at my side, screaming into my ears. Reminding me of so many nights spent at the mercy of the elements. It was a calculated move. John was reminding me of what he had supposedly saved me from.
I woke to the sound of him crashing through the back door the next morning.
The birds had sung cheerfully as her lifeless body scraped along the floor. The sun caught the silver nail polish on her blue tinted hands. I watched with a mix of intrigue and disgust. I had never seen this part before. I had only seen the garden grow. He threw her in the open grave the same way you throw a trash bag into a wheely bin. Indifferent to everything other than the smell. His casual tossing of her body made what little I had eaten for dinner last night rise through my throat and land on the patio floor. My legs gave way, and the warm sun had desperately attempted to smooth me as tears prickled in my eyes. By the time I had summoned the strength to lift my head, he was there, towering over me. I waited for a boot to the side or a clip round the face, but none came. Instead, I was met with his hand brushing my face. His eyes were no longer cold but full of remorse as he whispered how sorry he was.
At that moment, I finally understood.
Not just what he was.
But what I had become by staying.
I knew I had to put this monster down.
The following month, when the plastic sheets were put up, the bottles placed in formation, and the olive tree sat in a pot on the patio, I knew the time had come.
I snuck into the bedroom and crawled under the bed.
And there I waited. In the pitch black. Heart beating in my throat.
I came to terms with the fact that by the end of that night, I would either be dead or free.
It would finally be over.
For me, at least.
As I heard the car rolling over the gravel and the headlights danced over the plastic sheets, the moment had come to save the olive tree girl, or die trying. The front door creaked open and was followed by the familiar sound of the deadbolts clicking.
One, two, three. Locked.
The sound of her bones cracking as he threw her onto those cold and unforgiving stone tiles.
The muffled sound of her screaming through the tape and the clicking of his shoes.
They ascended, the ominous thud of her fragile body hitting the steps as he dragged her up the stairs.
And then the door flew open.
She was so small that she barely made a dent in the bed. I heard her cries as his fists began crashing down, colliding into her face like missiles. And then he stood up, his feet inches from my face. He let out a cold sneer before the door flew open and he went downstairs.
I had never been a believer in fate, if it existed, it had never been on my side. But as I saw the light piercing through the small opening in the bedroom door, I could feel a small ember of optimism igniting in the pit of my stomach. Catching the edges of the nerves and slowly beginning to burn them away. I crawled out from under the bed, and my eyes met hers. Wide and filled with terror, her eyes shone like a haunted lighthouse against the dark ocean of the bedroom. The swelling on her face had begun already, her jaw had been hit so hard that the skin had split, forming a red, flowing waterfall that trickled down her pale face.
I wasted no time.
Furiously tugging on the ropes, it took all my strength, but the first knot finally came loose.
She stared at me in disbelief for a second that felt like a lifetime, then something in her seemed to snap. Her eyes sparkled with a concoction of hope, adrenaline and incandescent rage. She got the second knot loose in no time at all and untied her feet. And then we heard it.
The clicking.
The slow creaking of the stairs under the weight of his body.
My eyes snapped away from the doorway and back to her as she ripped the tape from her mouth.
Her eyes locked with mine.
‘Run’, she whispered.
And we did.
What happens next is a blur. The door flew open. He gave a startled shout. The dawning realisation crept across his face as he realised what I had done. She screamed as she tackled him on the stairs.
She made it past him.
He was just one stair behind.
I had the feeling that my heart was about to leap right from my chest.
The moment I realised she wouldn’t have enough time to open all three locks.
I did the only thing I could think of. I threw myself under his feet. The sound his skull made as it bounced against the stone tiles echoed throughout the house. A mix of brain matter and blood flooded the hallway.
The last thing I remember about her is the way her hair flowed over her shoulder as she looked back at me from the driveway. Her face illuminated with an expression I had not seen in many years.
Relief.
I lingered in the open doorway until I saw the lights from the police cars dancing against the trees. My gaze lingered on John’s lifeless body for a while until I heard the police cars reach the drive. I considered staying. To linger as the world tried to make sense of what had happened here. Make sense of how someone could be driven to take the lives of those innocent girls. Of how something so beautiful as a garden could be so sinister.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I stepped across the threshold. The cold that had made its home in my bones receded and gave way to a new feeling. Hope. The sun had just begun to seep through the lower branches, and the forest that had been so close, yet so far, for all those years was now mine to explore. To call home.
And besides, it’s not like the police could have interviewed a cat anyway.