Chapter 6

So there I was: I’d come to interview a local clam digger, Randall Licton, about the effect marine beach closures had on his small business. Instead of scoring a front page human interest piece for the Cliffside Chronicle and seeing my name in print and receiving rent money, I was being kidnapped by an ax-wielding madman.
I’m sure you have heard that term, iron bands? Shackles of steel? More arms than an octopus and stronger than the guy who holds the world on his shoulders? All of that and more dragged me into a dark, dank, sandy, creepy cave, my cast kicking-I’d broken my leg because of this madman kidnapper -I screamed and resisted as best I could. But wrapped in my warm winter coat for an interview on a dark and stormy beach I had all the punch of a giant purple Boo-bah. My name in print flashed before my eyes. Not on the front page, but deeper in the paper, next to a little picture of me: Ashley Whitaker, found dead of mysterious circumstances. Beloved only daughter. Great Friend. Aspiring talented writer, she would have received more awards and won many contests had she only finished one manuscript during her short life.
I was lifted up off my feet and shook. My kidnapper treated me like a rag doll, like I was a Paris Hilton twig instead of average height and full figured like the cute lead from Ugly Betty. He didn’t even grunt, just spoke in my ear over my muffled protests and attempts to bite his hand, “Ashley, I am not going to hurt you. I just want to talk. Talk. Really, luv. This is the only way I could reach you.”
His English accent in my ear, with his warm breath on my neck sent electrified goose bumps all over me. Was it an English accent? Or was it a Colonial accent? Was I going barking mad? “Ever try a phone, Mr. Badass?” that’s what I said, but what came out from behind his hand sounded like, “Mmm mmm mmmummff!”
“Calm yourself, Miss Whitaker. If you please,” said the spider to the fly in his gentleman’s voice, as he carried me deeper into the cave and up a squeaking staircase. It might have been a staircase; all I knew in my panicked state was he carried me upwards through darkness. I was thinking: murder, rape, bats, spiders, wet slimy ocean buggy creatures, my bloated white body rolling in the breaking waves against the beach killed by the yummy smelling, spectacularly strong and virile centenarian Marcus Holt, the brother to an eighty year old clam digger who had set me up!
Marcus had no trouble navigating the dark, as if he had come this way a thousand times. He hauled me down a tunnel and through a door way, up more stairs and into a building. I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed it was Woodbury Manor. Where else could it be? Back to the scene of the crime, so to speak. Was it yesterday, or a few days ago when I had stood outside of this old house, looking at the lighted tower window and the mystery it represented. I had climbed into that window expecting to find nothing, dust and memories…maybe the crazed and demented child of incest locked away like Heathcliff’s wife, but not a hunk from my favorite Fireman of the Month Calendar. No, I’d found the hunk, all right, and the shock of it had scared the poop out of me. So I had run before said hunk could attack me or call the police on me for breaking into his house. He had chased me. I broke my leg. He knew my name. And I tried to find out who the heck might be living in the local haunted house namedWoodbury Manor.
“This would be easier if you would come along nicely.” The large hand was removed from my face.
“I don’t do FORCE, nicely…Mr. Who-ever-you-think-you are.” I tried to sound brave.
“I give you my word, all I want from you right now is conversation, Miss Whitaker.”
“All right. All right, but you gotta let go of me. Hello, ever hear of personal space and everything?”
“It is best if you stay very close to me.”
“Can’t we just go down to Mel’s café, talk over coffee and pie, like normal people?”
“No.”
Just that. Final, irrefutable. It made my hackles rise. “What the hell do you mean, NO? Why not? If you want ‘just conversation’ then we should go to a nice public place.”
With one hand on my upper arm, he reached for something leaning against the wall.
Oh, Gawd. The ax! It was Paul Bunyan’s ax. Huge, with a dark wood handle and a dark head glinting on the sharp parts. The ax looked old and well used. He hefted it as easily as he had hefted me.
I flung myself away from him, and he pulled me back, a yo-yo on hid string, an irritated expression brewing on his face. “I had taken you for a sensible woman. More the fool I.”
“What sensible woman goes into dark places with an ax murderer? Let me go!”
The irritation on his brow changed to baffled. I had that effect on people, I guess, but now was not the time to explore why. “Stay close,” he said, and pulled me forward.
There were hardwood floors under my feet. My cast slipped under my weight in its wrapped bundle, but Malcolm held me with a steady unshakable grip. I should be at home with my foot up in the air, watching my favorite episodes of I Love Lucy, sipping Swiss Miss, and chasing tiny marshmallows with my tongue. Why did I leave the house today?
I searched for a weapon to defend myself, something to bash him over the head with, and instead saw something round and thick slither across the floor out of the corner of my eye. “Snake?” I gasped in surprise. Not just skinny innocent garden snakes, but thick, terrifying, Amazon jungle, swallow a party of five for dinner, humongous snake. My imagination was doing crazy things, I admit.
“Not snakes.” Came the answer from just above my head. “But a living curse. If you will step this way please.” He gestured with the ax toward another doorway in the shadowy gloom. Stairs going up. Could his ‘living curse’ not climb the stairs?
I heard something move. Creak. More than just the wind outside or the sounds of an old house. Still seeing visions of an Amazon man-eater, I dashed in the direction he’d indicated. My every step made the stairs groan, reminding me how old this place was. I emerged into the little tower room I had so recently escaped from. Lit with one little light on a desk, filled with books and shadows and an organized chaos of papers, I searched immediately for an emergency escape route. I’d come and gone by window before, I could do so again.
Except the window was blocked. A monster claw of pointy branches was now pressed against the glass. I must have broken a branch in my desperate and clumsy attempt at escape. I was trying to figure out a way around the blockage when Marcus came into the room.
“Don’t worry, Miss Whitaker. You will be able to leave the same way you came in, through the tunnel. I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk. Why don’t you have a seat?”
I frowned at him. My best I-don’t-trust-you-if-I-had-mace-I’d-use-it -frown. He seemed entirely unaffected by it, waving toward the rumple of his unmade bed.
“Sit there? Uhhh. Think not. When is the last time you changed the sheets?”
He gave me a sheepish expression revealing a single deep dimple in his cheek. It was gorgeous. It was sweet. When he stalked to the corner to drag over a chair for me I watched him move, checking for concealed weapons in the fine fit of his jeans across his behind. Nope, no weapons. He must have caught me checking because he made a coughing sound in the back of his throat and motioned to the chair pointedly. My face felt hot and I sat in the hard seat of the shaker chair with a thump and a raspy crunch from my down jacket. Angling my cast in front of me, I said. “So, you wanted conversation? How about, who are you? What was that I saw downstairs? Are you kidnapping me, and do you have anything I can drink?”
He gave me a perplexed expression, as if I were speaking in another language. I shrugged, “Shouldn’t you offer me water or something?” I was thirsty and I wanted clear, sane answers, in that order.
He opened a brown box that turned out to be an old-fashioned ice box and handed me a bottle of water. “Miss Whitaker, I can understand your distress. I apologize for that. You cannot imagine my surprise when you appeared through that window. “
I cracked open the lid on the bottle and toasted him before taking a drink. It wasn’t really that cold, but the cool liquid more than satisfied the cotton swab feel of my mouth. “Please, can you just use my name? Ashley. I feel like a second grade teacher when you call me Miss Whitaker. I am sorry about the breaking and entering thing. I kinda thought the house was empty. I was just looking for information…I wasn’t going to steal anything.” I felt a little ashamed, knowing I had broken into an occupied building.
“I believe you,” he said, with a friendly smile that gave me butterflies in my belly. Oh man. He was the most attractive male I had ever been near.
I was still oozing over his smile like an idiot when he laid a file folder of papers on my lap. I opened it to find a clipping from the Northwest Historical Society Member newsletter. An article I had done on Researching Your Native American Ancestors. It was very dry and informative, written while I was in college. There was another article, more opinion oriented, about the displacement of Northwest Indian tribes. Like the other article, I hadn’t gotten paid anything for it, but I was rather proud of this one. More surprising than these published pieces was the photocopy of one my term papers: Myth and Lore of the Pacific Northwest Indians. How would he have gotten that? More importantly, why? I had inadvertently stumbled upon my very own ax-carrying-psycho-stalker, and had no idea if I should be terrified, again, or flattered.