39. Chapter 39 - Ash

Everything hurt. I woke up in the dark, very dark, dark, total darkness. I said, in a whisper, "Hello?" No sound. Or rather, no sound nearby, I…I was under something very heavy. Like a weighted blanket… I inhaled. It smelled old and musty, thick and not laundered... a piece of it tickled my nose. A fur? The top of my head was cold in the air. Where the heck was I? I put out my hand and felt a cold wall beside me.

There was no hum. It sounded like I was camping in nowhere, just the sounds of night, and a… faintly, the lowing of a cow. The steps of an animal.

I felt blind. I concentrated, adjust your eyes… but I couldn't make out anything. I moved my head around, looking out different directions, and noticed a pale gray space. A window. I focused on it but couldn't determine anything outside.

I was in a cabin of some kind. Was I in the woods? Oh my God, I was being trafficked.

I started to panic, stomach dropping, heart racing, tried to draw in breath, but it was short and ragged. I was frozen, but wanted to look out that window. My eyes faced it, but I couldn't make myself move. It was like being separate from my body. I needed to see. I needed to look.

Go go go go.

If I was in Yulee or some other place in the county I needed to get the heck out of here.

Go go go.

I could get out the window. I could smash the glass.

Go.

I lay there staring at the square of paleness, thinking of nothing but the racing-heart horror of what might be happening to me. Sound was muffled, except I could hear my breaths and racing heart pounding in my ears.

But then I calmed myself. Deep breath, in, then out.

This was fubar, but I could handle it. Go.

I threw back the bed covers and scrambled up from the bed. I was in my boots, wearing my work clothes still, a long cargo skirt and a short sleeve shirt, and immediately started shivering. I rushed to the window, but it looked weird. I pressed my hands against it, and it felt like parchment paper over an open window with no glass. Weird. I pushed on it, and tore it away from the side. No wonder it was cold in the room — it was a cold night, brisk and chilly.

A cloud moved away from the moon and the landscape glowed. I could see a grassy lawn, and ringing that, high timber walls. Beyond, I could see the tops of dark trees, a forest? Did I recognize it?

I held the parchment up and looked to the right and left, seeing a few low buildings. I recognized nothing.

I tried to think of where it could be that there was a timber wall... nowhere?

I had explored a lot of Nassau county but didn't remember anything like this at all. Also, chillingly, the air felt different, the smells. It smelled disgusting, like I was on a farm, but not in the salt air Florida way. This smelled musty and old and blatantly gross and disgusting.

I would need to run.

I let the parchment flap down and felt toward the posts on the bed corners, some kind of drapery hanging on them. I felt around on the bumpy mattress for anything to wrap around myself for warmth, finding in the heavy pile a wool blanket. I pulled it around my shoulders and felt along the wall opposite me, looking for a door. What felt like branches brushed the top of my hair. I pulled my hair free and my hands hit what felt like wood, rough wood, and I felt for a doorknob of some kind, finding just more wood. I pressed, it didn't move. I tried to pull, it wouldn't move. Maybe I was wrong. I felt more, heading to the right — banging my knee on a low wooden piece of furniture.

Ouch!

I rubbed it, trying to listen. Did anyone hear it, was there no one here?

No one came. I must not have had a guard.

This was good.

I would escape, run until I found a house with someone home and bang on the door. I ignored the fact that there were some big forests in Florida. I was capable of a long walk. This would be doable — if I could get out.

I tried for a few more minutes, but couldn't find a door so I returned to the window. I pulled up the parchment again and looked out, the ground seemed like it was right there, just a few feet down. I hoisted myself up, put one leg out, had to bunch my skirt up to get my legs spread enough to cross the sill, and quickly brought up my other leg to step down. I was out!

The sky above me was lightening by degrees... it made me think that dawn was on its way, maybe, but I couldn't be sure.

But there weren't any lights illuminating anything, and I sensed that I was surrounded by walls, buildings, and by the stench, some kind of stables nearby. Or a porta-potty. But also it smelled like fire. There was a fire somewhere near — which would mean heat and warmth, but also, guaranteed that was where the men who had…

It was hard to say it — I was kidnapped? What kind of horrible nightmare was this? What evil? How had I let this happen, I had been armed! I should have killed that guy. All those guys.

But I couldn't dwell on it, I had to get out of here. I walked, as briskly as I could, forward, my hands out, going through darkness toward the wall. Stumbling over a bush, I crouched quietly and listened. Then headed to the left of that until I got to the blackness of the wall. I felt along it and my excitement built. I would get out, just follow this fence. I walked with my shoulder against it until I came to a corner, then I followed it in another direction, another corner. How many? I huffed. Was I going in a circle?

I abruptly came to a stone wall. I crouched and followed it around, but I couldn't tell where it was going and I was exposed with nothing to hide behind.

I had no idea where I was and was lost in a freaking circle. Think, Ash. What do you do?

I was shivering — You can't figure out how to get out.

Yes I can. I'm just cold, I will get out.

Crouched, with my back against the wall, I needed to calm myself. I breathed, in and out with my eyes closed, and then opened my eyes. I could see my hand against my knee. Was dawn coming?

If I just waited for a few minutes, it would be easier to see.

It would also be easier to be seen. I ran to the shadow of the timber wall and waited for the sun.

Ahead of me was a cluster of low buildings with thatched roofs. It seemed almost medieval — was I in St Augustine? Or what about north, was I in Savannah? How long had I been out?

My eyes swept the courtyard and then saw a young woman in a long skirt, looking Amish or something, oh damn, was this a cult? I pressed closer to the wall, trying to hide in a shadow, averting my head. If I didn't look at her, maybe she wouldn't see me. Was there an east coast cult of some kind, had I been kidnapped into it?

I wasn't hiding very well, because the woman saw me and rushed up, speaking very loud and very fast. The issue was…

I couldn't understand a word.

"Carson a tha thu an seo!" She repeated it again, "Carson a tha thu an seo!" Her voice sounded far away, everything was dark around the edges, the sound of my breathing crowded out everything else.

I was terrified.

She wasn't menacing though, she seemed to be trying to take care of me. Just like a cult.

She spoke in rapid-fire gibberish with guttural noises, pulling my blanket around my shoulders, tugging me away from the wall, hugging around my shoulders, she led me toward the buildings.

Her voice grew soothing and low. She did seem to want me to be okay, but it was hard to think— I was going to pee on myself. I couldn't think of escape or running, or... "Bathroom? I need to use the bathroom, I need a toilet." She looked at me blankly, shaking her head, leading me toward a low building with a thatched roof.

This had to be some weird dream, but it felt so real, the pain in my bladder really hurt, badly.

I reached up to touch the thatching as I ducked to go through the short door. Lochie wouldn't fit in here. The room was cold, she rushed to the fireplace and began shoving sticks and kindling in it. I heard a flint strike as she tried to build a fire.

This was the room I escaped from.It was very dark around the edges, as if there was a smoke filter on everything. There was the bed, a tapestry hanging on the wall, a rug on the floor, a table and a couple of chairs. A wooden chest at the end of the bed.

I said again, "I really need a bathroom."

She looked at me blankly.

I acted out, my hands waving down in front of my skirt. She nodded, stood, rushed to my side, grasped my elbow, and pulled me to a bowl in the corner.

My eyes went wide. "Here? Here in this bowl?"

She nodded her head, speaking fast and using her hands to mimic raising skirts and crouching. Then she rushed back to the hearth.

I pulled up my skirt, pulled down my underwear, and held it out of the way as I crouched over the bowl. I peed, feeling a great deal of relief, and then a rush of consciousness now that the pressing urge was gone — where the hell was I?

The door opened, another young woman entered with a tray of food she placed on a table near the fireplace. She set a place. Whose meal was it, mine?

I pooped. In front of the two women who were holding me hostage. I was usually not very regular, but here I was pooping at the worst possible time.

No freaking toilet paper.

I said, "I need something to wipe with."

They both looked at me, looks of confusion, then one rushed over, it seemed to be the way she moved, rushing around. She picked up a bit of moss from the nearby corner, and held it in front of me, speaking fast. She was muffled. My vision was effed up, it was like I was wearing sunglasses indoors. I wondered if I had been drugged.

I put out my hand. She dropped the moss into it. I wiped my bottom with moss and tossed it into the bowl.

One of the women gestured me over to a bowl to wash my hands. The water was scented pleasantly, and I was handed a piece of linen to dry them.

Then they both bowed and gestured toward the wooden plate with what looked like stringy meat and a hunk of bread. There was a pewter mug beside it, no utensils.

When I didn't go toward the table, one of the women gestured again. The other smiled pleasantly, and waved both her hands toward the table. I went closer, but when I didn't sit down to eat the first woman used her hands to gesture eating.

I sank into the chair. Behind them the door was ajar, I could just pull it open, walk out and leave, but I didn't know where the outer door was.

I said, "Can you tell me what's going on?"

Both the women shook their heads, not as if they couldn't tell me, but because they clearly didn't understand me. They both bowed.

The heat from the fire warmed me. I looked over the unappetizing food. I was hungry but so scared that my stomach was upset.

I was in a medieval reenactment of some kind, or a cult, and the two women seemed nice enough: They were feeding me, they weren't causing me immediate harm, but they couldn't or wouldn't actually communicate. And none of this made sense.

But I calculated the steps to the door. There was a hiding place in the corner. There wasn't much that would make a weapon...

I gazed around the room as I chewed the crusty bread. The meat was poultry of some kind, gamey tasting, like a dark meat from a turkey. It all needed spice.

I could pick up this chair and swing it at this woman while her back was to me. I could knock them both out with the candlestick...

I drank from the mug. It was a dark ale, with a thick head. I was tense and frightened, but the warmth of the hearth, the bread, and the stout beer worked to calm my nerves. The mug had a bit of heft to it, I could use it as a weapon.

The women left, thankfully, carrying my poop bowl out to dump it, leaving me alone in this ‘kidnap-house-of-horrors' to finish eating.

The men who had grabbed me had been dressed in modern clothes, I felt sure. They had been driving SUVs, they hadn't been old fashioned like this. These people were pretending to be in some ancient kind of land... I was wracking my brain for a memory of some kind of cult in the county — I grew up in a small town, I didn't understand why I had never heard of any religious communes. How had this place been kept secret?

After I finished eating I stared into space. How would I get out of here? I needed to find a phone, a gun, anything to use to call for help.

The two women returned, one carrying a bundle of cloth, the other bringing a pitcher of water. They gestured for me to stand and came at me with a wet rag.

I shook my head. They made hand gestures for washing my hands and face.

I looked down. My clothes were gross, my arms were filthy, likely my face was equally bad. Fine. I stuck out my hands. One ran the cloth over my hands and arms, the other started washing my face. I spluttered, and tried to turn my head. I would not be manhandled, but they manhandled me anyway, holding my arms they washed me without my consent.

Then I pulled away and went and stood against the wall near the table with the mug. They both held up a dress and urged me with wild gestures to take my shirt off. They wanted to dress me.

Over my dead body.

I shook my head and held up the mug, menacingly.

They gave up, laying out the clothes on the bed and then bowing and leaving the room.

I looked down at what I was wearing and over at the clothes they had left out for me, they did look warmer, the fabric was pretty, but it would be a mistake to put it on — if this was a cult then putting on their uniform was the first step in joining.

I would not.

I approached the bed and felt the fabric and considered. The weird part was that this dress was prettier than theirs.

I still would not wear it.

Even though the dress had long sleeves and would definitely be warmer than the t-shirt I was wearing. There was a cape, but even that was a no.

The skirt I was wearing was dark gray, and had drawstrings that cinched up the side, I loosened those, so that the bottom hem went straight across, covering my ankles, but that was all I could do to get warm.

I strode over to the door and found it unlocked. I pushed it open and stood in the doorway, looking around at the buildings and the timber walls. My sight was dark and dim, my hearing muffled. What did they do to me? And who were they?

I could leave.I could just go. Down at the end of the timber wall I could see what might be a gate. Would there be guards? I was so confused. Where would I go?

I would decide once I was out.

I kept the door ajar but returned to the interior of the room and noticed a piece of paper stuck in the folds of the dress. I pulled it free, unfolded it, and in a looping script it said:

Make yourself at home.

I dropped it to the ground, my hands trembling and looked around the room.

I was completely alone, kidnapped, and probably something terrible was about to happen. They wanted to dress me like some kind of princess. Why on earth would they give me a dress? I would not comply.