Postby KP Presents » Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:19 am
“No, thank you Barry,” Lord Holderness said as he shook the hand of the Chief Superintendant, and showed him out of the room. As the door closed, Anne sat down and said “Now we can begin - I’m sorry you four had to find out what had happened in this way, but now you know I am sure you can understand why it is important that Suzie, Cassie and the other younger ones do not hear more detail.”
“I understand,” Alicia said as she looked over from where she was holding her mother, “but why are we here? Why are you here? And is this what Sara really saw?”
“We can talk about Sara later,” Lady Holderness said as she looked round the room, “but for now, I have asked Anne and the others to come over because we somehow need to start to put this behind us. They have a lot of experience in similar situations, and they have a plan as to how we can do this.
“Also - they are friends, and we need friends to do this. Anne?”
“Let’s set a few ground rules first,” Anne Duncombe said as she stood in front of everyone. “For the next two days, nothing we say or share leaves this place unless we want it to. You need to feel free to express, share, rant, scream, cry - whatever it takes for you all to deal with the events of that Saturday night. What we are going to do has worked for Amy and Veronica, and in a way for Chloe. It is a mixture of conventional and - well, different methods. You will understand as we go on.
“To start with, we need to tell each other exactly how we felt about that night - and we need to be 100% honest with each other. For the ladies, you need to share what you felt, however painful it is. For the rest of us, we need to share how we felt when we found out - but the women need to go first.”
“Why?”
Susan looked up at Anne Duncombe, then at the assembled group. “Why do we have to share? What if it is too painful for us to talk about, and we just want to push it out of our minds and forget it?”
“Because, Susan,” Amy said quietly, “that’s not going to happen. When Veronica, Dorothy and I were kidnapped with the girls and held hostage by a madman, and made to do things we did not want to do, we tried to forget it, but it ate away at us from inside. We could not sleep, we had nightmares, and we were tired and nervous all the time.”
“How bad was it?” Susan shouted out. “Did you have a man strip you almost naked, bind you so tightly you could not move, and feel a cold steel knife moving up the inside of your leg? Did you have him touch you where only one man should ever touch you? Were you blindfolded, gagged, wondering when they were going to.... When they were going to....”
As Susan Holderness stood up and glared at Amy, she suddenly slumped back into her seat, burying her head in her hands as she started to son uncontrollably. Alexander and Bobby sat either side of her, holding her between them as Bobby said “It’s all right, Mum, we’re here for you now,” and Alexander whispered into her ear, “It’s all right, Susan, it’s all right, we love you and we’re here for you...”
“No,” Veronica said quietly as Susan kept crying, “We cannot say that happened to us. Instead, we were made to watch as the man humiliated us, made us dress in increasingly skimpy outfits, as he did the girls, and at the end we were made to watch as he prepared to assault both Cindy and Heidi. We were made to watch as the daughters of Amy and Dorothy were almost raped - had Anne not arrived, who knows what might have happened.”
Susan looked up at Veronica, her eyes red as she sobbed “I’m sorry - I didn’t know...”
“It’s all right, Susan,” Lady Holderness said as she sat down, while her husband came back in. “For my part, when those masked men came into the room, all I could think of was the fact that, with the exception of Miranda, all of you were in no position to resist whatever they wanted to do. If I am being one hundred percent honest, and we need to be, I was - afraid. I had to do all that I could to protect the six of you, and I suspect Miranda felt the same way.
“Susan, you out of all of us have never faced a similar situation before, and I knew you would be the most afraid. So I had to remain calm, but not just for you - we had three new mothers as well, and from the look of the men I had a horrible feeling they were not going to be too concerned about that.”
She looked at Anne Bowden, Jennifer Craig and Connie Brown as she said this, before continuing “Sometimes, my past catches up with me in unexpected ways, so I tried to keep the men calm and said we would co-operate. But then they took the rest of my family away, and I had to hide my fear at what was happening. That was when Anne did the first brave thing I saw that night. I suppose we have you to thank for setting our rescue in motion, when you set off the silent alarm.”
Anne Bowden smiled, a small, unsure smile as she said “Well, I was scared for you as well - so I pretended to stumble and pressed one of the alarm switches on the banister. I’m glad they didn’t notice. But I wasn’t brave - I was petrified. For me, for Andrew, for the girls - especially Angela.”
She reached over and put her hand on Angela’s, as the younger girl looked up. “I was petrified - I mean, we had been playing a good game, a fun game, and then we were suddenly caught up in an armed robbery.”
“It must have truly terrified you, my friend,” Chloe said as she sat forward. “Can you tell us how you felt, what happened when you, your mother and your aunt were taken into the bedroom?”
Angela swallowed and said “I wanted to protect both of them but I was too well tied. I must have sworn every obscenity know to man when they stripped us of our skirts and trousers, and then made Mum and me lie next to each other on the floor, then tied our legs so tightly before they hogtied us to each other. My head hurt from the way they had tied my hair as well -and then there was that extra rope - the one that meant I had to lie as still as possible...”
Alicia took Angela’s other hand as she started to cry as well, while Chloe said “We understand, Angela - the rope you describe, it can be a pleasure and a fear as well, especially if you have never experienced it before. And even more so when one - forgive me, Madame Bowden - is more sensitive than usual in that area.”
“What is she talking about,” Jenny said, but her grandmother shook her head and said “We can explain later - please, Angela, continue if you wish.”
“No, I will,” Anne said, “Angela is right - I was more scared than I have ever been in my life, but for her and Susan as well as me. Susan, we have been robbed before, but you must have been absolutely petrified.”
She looked over the red haired woman, who nodded as she smiled weakly back at them. “The other man hogtied me on the bed, pulling my skirt off, and then his hand came round and pulled my blouse open. I was powerless to stop him as he groped me, whispered such foul things into my ear - I tried to get away, but he slapped me and then threatened to... to...”
She started crying again as her husband held her in his arms.
“Then the other man brought you in, Grandma,” Angela continued. “At least we had our clothes on, but you...”
“I was forced to strip, to stand naked in front of my family, and let him bind me more tightly than I had been for a long time. In itself that was bad enough, but he made my put my own underwear into my mouth, use my own hose to gag myself, and then wrapped the tape around my head.” She felt her husband’s hand on her shoulder and put her own on top of it, before continuing “All through that, however, I kept trying to reassure you Susan, to keep you calm. The worst thing you could have done was panic and start struggling - in your state, I shudder to think what would have happened.
“But then they put the pillow cases over our heads, and taped them around our throats. I had never, ever felt so helpless, so unable to control what was happening, and that had to be the worst moment of my life - no, sorry, that came later.”
“The threats?”
Lucinda looked at her granddaughter and nodded. “When I heard them speak of what they might do to Miranda and her family, I started crying - at that moment, I felt closer to death than I had done since retiring from the field. If it had just been me, I would have stood tall and endured, but the thought of losing all of you, and also of my grandchildren - I think that was when I stared to lose hope.”
The others watched as Lucinda stood up and put her arms round Desmond’s neck, sobbing quietly against his shoulder.
“Can I say something?”
Anne looked at where Mrs Bridges was sitting with her husband. “Of course you may,” Veronica said quietly.
“I was in the kitchen when all this was happening - they had lashed me so tightly to the chair I could barely move a finger - but I could hear, and I had no idea where George was. I too was scared, but I knew there was hope - because he had not appeared yet.
“And then the two women came in - Miss Duncombe and the other one - and I began to feel brave again.”
“Two women,” Colin said as he looked at the housekeeper. “Chloe, you said a few weeks ago you had not met my father, but you recognised him today - were you the other woman?”
“No she wasn’t - were you Chloe,” Alicia said as she looked at the young French girl. Chloe shook her head and said “Non - it was not me, and I think you know who it was?”
“ It was Sara, wasn’t it? When she told her stories, one thing was clear - her ancestors all put themselves in danger’s way. So she didn’t just have a dream and tell the police, did she - she was in the manor house.”
She noticed the way Miranda, Jennifer, Connie and Cassie looked at each other, before her grandmother said “Yes, she was Alicia - Sara has a very special gift, and we will tell you more later. You deserve to hear that - but for now, may we continue?”
Alicia nodded as Lucinda continued “Then there was the white light - we all saw it didn’t we?” She looked at Anne and Alicia, who were holding each other’s hands, and then at Susan.
“I saw it - and I know the leader of the gang did as well, because he pressed his gun against my head and screamed something. What was it?”
“It was the Shadow.”
They looked at Mrs Bridges, who said “I saw him with Anne Duncombe and Sara in the kitchen - very clearly and distinctly, dressed like a Georgian man, like the portrait of the first Baron.”
“You are joking,” Alexander Holderness said quietly. “Every record we have of the Shadow is a blur, but this time he appeared distinctly.”
“He did,” Angela said, “just before I killed the man.”
“You did not,” Anne Duncombe said quietly. “If anyone did, it was me - I came into the room, told him to drop his gun, and then shot him. He stumbled back and tripped over you, Angela - you had no part save as an accidental obstacle. I think he was more scared of a ghost, but any involvement you had was accidental - do not feel any guilt over that.”
“But I do,” Angela sobbed, “because he would have been brought to justice if I... If I...”
“If you had managed to get out of the way with your ankles tied to your mother and the rest of you trussed tightly?” Her father put his hand on Angela’s shoulder and said “Trust me, Lass - you were not responsible.”
“And he was facing justice anyway,” Anne said quietly. “That was when I released first Lady Holderness, then the rest of you. You were all scared, all crying, all frightened out of your wits - and I was glad of that.”
“Glad?” Anne Bowden looked at her and shouted “GLAD!!! HOW DARE YOU...”
“She was glad,” Amy said quietly, “because that meant you were still alive, still feeling, still aware - and that mean there was hope. Do you remember what you said when you found out who had kidnapped us, Veronica?”
“I believe it was something along the lines of ‘you have got to be fucking kidding me,’” Veronica replied with a small smile. “You four ladies of the Holderness family faced the most terrifying night of your lives, and you came through it. Together.”
Anne, Angela, Susan and Lucinda looked at each other, and then walked to meet as a group. “I guess we did, didn’t we?” Susan said as they embraced, and then sat back down.
“But that was only half the story,” Anne Duncombe said as she turned to look at the others. “How did the rest of you feel that night?”
Cassie Craig had sat for the session so far, saying nothing and staring straight ahead. “You really want to know how I felt, Anne,” she finally said in a measured, quiet tone.
“I do - and remember, hold nothing back.”
“Well then,” she said as John, Connie and Miranda looked on. “I wanted to take each of them by the head, smile at them and rip their fucking twisted, perverted minds clean free from their bodies, then stuff a red hot poke down their necks and ensure they all burn in hell. Is that clear and reasonable enough?”
Last edited by
KP Presents on Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:58 am, edited 3 times in total.