The Abduction of Monica 16: Insertion
by Richard Alexander (Gromets Plaza)
(story continues from The Abduction of Monica 15: Clues)
We argued on the way back to the motel about how we should proceed. Sofiya wanted to get the police in straight away, but I wanted to be sure. I proposed we at least make a reconnaissance of the place, just to be sure we weren’t making a big mistake and wasting everybody’s time. That was why, at 4.30 in the afternoon, we found ourselves driving down a dirt road through lush native forest until we came to a small parking area. Here several signposted walks led into the bush under a regional parks conservation scheme. The road beyond was barred by a drop-down barrier that was padlocked in place.
There were no other cars and we ducked under the barrier without hindrance, continuing on towards the cement works. It was signposted by faded signs that were peeling and barely decipherable. A newly printed laminated sign had been nailed over the existing ones warning of asbestos and prohibiting entry to the cement works.
The gravel road turned to an overgrown track defined by twin tyre tracks. The foliage closed in – tree ferns and shiny-leafed trees whose names I didn’t know. The ground was rich in forest litter and ferny undergrowth, smelling of damp earth. It was very quiet, almost spooky. Now and again a bird twittered, but there didn’t seem to be the same variety I was used to in the Australian bush. Sofiya stayed close to my side and we moved in silence, our shoes swishing through the grass on the track. She was still wearing the white sundress and I rather wished we had opted for something not quite so conspicuous. Unlike most women who carried a handbag or purse, Sofiya had a small backpack that was really no bigger than a handbag. It was kind of cute, I thought – like a girl clinging to tomboy habits.
The trail swung through a series of bends and sloped down towards where I expected the river to be. Evidently a lot of the product had been taken out by barge when production was in its heyday many years ago.
At length we emerged from the forest to an open stretch of pasture beside the river, though the forest closed this off at each end. The cement works stood before us like a dark castle, the evening sun casting long shadows and creating gloomy corners and recesses. The place was surrounded by a wall made from precast concrete panels as high as a man and topped with barbed wire. There were several entrances but each had obviously received a newly installed mesh gate, also topped with barbed wire and displaying asbestos warning signs with a skull and cross bones. There would be no mistaking the intention, particularly in the case of the frequency of words such as “Keep Out”, “Danger”, “Trespassers”, “Dog Patrol”, and “Prosecution”.
“I think they’re trying to tell us something,” I said.
“What if it really is true?” Sofiya whispered.
“Then we try not to get caught and we try not to breathe the air inside the place. On the other hand, this whole thing seems like a perfect – and cleverly contrived – cover. Just the sort of thing Warren O’Rorke would carry off.”
“I think you’re right.”
“You feel something?”
“Yes. Is very strong. I think Monica is here.”
We approached the wall cautiously – it wasn’t going to be easy to climb. The gates would probably be a better bet. As we reached the wall and moved along it closer to the gate I stopped and listened.
“Hear that?”
“What? Oh – is it generator?”
“Very good. I think somebody’s home.”
There was a small gap under one of the gates where it was possible to squeeze through only where the tyre ruts were. It was really tight – for me, anyway – and not made pleasant by the fact that recent rain had left the rut a muddy mess. My jeans and polo shirt were soaked by the time I had wormed my way under, and the process had also obliged me to put my head half into the mud. I must have looked like a badly-camouflaged soldier.
I suggested that Sofiya should stay outside, but she was having none of it. Before I could argue she tossed her backpack over the gate to me then was on her knees squirming her way under the gate. She stifled a squeal as the stirred up mud slid between her breasts and ruined the white dress. At least she would not look quite so conspicuous now. She stood up looking a total mess, the dress a brown colour with muddy water running down her legs and into her sneakers, and her hair dripping wet where it had slopped in the water despite her best efforts. I tried not to laugh.
Now cold and shivery we scurried across to the nearest building, hoping the threat of dogs was just a bluff, since there had been no sound of barking. The buildings were a mixture of brick and concrete, all in equal stages of decay. I had a feeling that the whole asbestos thing was a bluff as well. Not even Warren would be stupid enough to mess about in a place like this if it really was riddled with asbestos, but it certainly would make people want to stay away.
We skulked along the wall and peered round the first corner we came to. There was a narrow alleyway about twenty metres long between buildings, which seemed to be in the direction where the generator noise was coming from. I gripped Sofiya’s hand and we ran down the alleyway to the next corner. My heart was racing and I felt like I was in some bizarre spy movie. I quickly realised how big the complex was. We were at an intersection where another roadway crossed at right angles, overgrown and scattered with bricks, odd bits of roofing iron and rusting steel. Nothing seemed to have passed this way for a good long time, but at the end of it, fifty metres to our left, I glimpsed something that looked out of place. I couldn’t make out what it was until we got closer.
“A caravan!” Sofiya breathed.
“Someone’s made themselves comfortable here.”
As we reached the end of the alleyway there was a small open area between buildings, obviously accessed by another roadway bigger than the way we had come, for in addition to the caravan there was a Toyota four-wheel drive hooked up to it and a small delivery truck with a rear roller door. The noise of the generator was louder now and seemed to be coming from a low-roofed building beyond the caravan.
The grass around here was much flattened due to vehicles turning and obviously feet crossing it. I had no idea as to how many people might be based here, though the caravan was a large luxury one with twin axles. The blinds were drawn and but lights were on inside. I reckoned it was big enough to probably sleep 4 at a pinch.
I was starting to get just a tad hyped up, but I wanted to find Monica and Mary, at least to establish that they were okay, and to see what we were up against, before we called in the cops. Sofiya didn’t seem fazed at the creepy situation we found ourselves in, though.
“Look – there are power cables!” she said, pointing to several orange electrical leads in the grass leading past the caravan to a high-walled brick building with a steeply sloping roof of rusty corrugated iron. We slipped into the shadows and followed the electrical leads, past the caravan and up to the wide open doorway where we peered round the edge of the door.
The interior was lit up by two portable floodlights on stands – the sort builders use until such time as the permanent power is connected. Dangling from a block and tackle fastened to a massive overhead beam was a star-shaped figure like a slowly rotating ‘X’, casting cyclic shadows against the roof trusses and the underneath of the corrugated iron. It was Monica, hanging two metres in the air, bound to a steel St Andrews cross that was perfectly balanced so that she hung horizontally, face downward. The cross had a horizontal shaft through its centre supported by two curved pipes that met in the centre above it, where the chain was attached at a swivel. I realised at once that this construction would allow the cross to be turned vertically through 360 degrees around the shaft, as well as rotated in a horizontal plane around the swivel. Anyone secured to the cross would find themselves able to be placed in a very uncomfortable position with the barest of efforts by a tormentor.
Monica had been secured with U-shaped iron bars that passed around her wrists, elbows, ankles, thighs and stomach. Similar bars passed above and below her breasts with the added feature of trapping her boobs between them, making them bulge outwards in a way that was painful even to look at.
A final bar passed around Monica’s head at mouth level, merging into an O-ring that kept her mouth open, with an attached pair of bars that ran from either side of her mouth up past her nose to join at her forehead and continue back to a cross bar welded between the two extended arms of the cross. All of these bars seemed to be secured in place by allen key clamps. I knew we were seeing another example of Mister Kingi’s blacksmithing skills.
I took in the scene, with Monica suspended at head height in her iron trap, and Warren standing beneath her, reaching up to grasp one of the legs of the cross. He had his back to us, and in the same instant I saw Mary, scrunched up in a tight ball in a cage that was impossibly small. Her head poked through the top of the cage which was only the size of a small suitcase, compressing her knees up against her chest, with her wrists cuffed to the rear bars. She, too, was suspended in the cage at waist height, and I could see she was impaled on a dildo attached to a pole jammed vertically in a hole drilled in the floor. I couldn’t tell exactly which orifice the intruder entered, but I knew it would be very uncomfortable.
Like Monica, Mary’s mouth was jammed open with an O-ring, held in place more conventionally by a strap buckled around her neck. No doubt Warren had been carrying out all manner of degrading acts through these O-ring gags.
I think both Mary and Monica saw us at the same time, for their eyes widened, but any sound they made through the gag would not have sounded any different from the hundreds of protests and complaints and cries they had no doubt uttered that day. Sofiya pulled me back out of the doorway.
“Now! We must phone police now!” she hissed.
“No! I can take out Warren, just you watch!” I had no doubt of this. If I couldn’t, both of us could.
“No – must call police first! We don’t know how many others are here! Must get backup!”
“All right, but be quick!”
Sofiya pulled out her mobile phone while I peeked around the door again. Warren had grabbed the foot of one of the cross legs and given it a great tug downwards, so that the cross spun vertically about the shaft axis. It had been well oiled and moved freely, with Monica crying out in fear as she turned head over heels in mid-air. I couldn’t stand this any longer. What was the matter with Sofiya? I turned to where she was punching numbers.
“It doesn’t work! Shit! Police is one-one-one, da?” I knew the New Zealand emergency number was exactly that, different from the triple zero of Australia. It should have worked on any phone, anywhere! Sofiya swore in Russian. “I do this sometimes! I have made it not work – is the bad energy of phones – I hate them!”
“Give it to me!” I ordered her, not bothering with the niceties of etiquette. I cleared it and dialled triple one, but somewhere the signal seemed to get lost in the ether. Was this Sofiya’s confounded mental interference again, or had she just let the battery run down? I held it to my ear but only faint beeps and buzzes emanated from it.
“Hello? Police?”
The next voice I heard was a different one, but again with a Russian accent.
“Drop the phone! Warren! We have company!”
I spun round to see Ivana Marchenko pointing a pistol at us, her eyes narrowed and her hand steady enough to suggest that she had done this sort of thing before. She wore tight jeans and a black leather waistcoat with nothing underneath. Her jeans were tucked into tall boots that had a sensible enough heel to not get caught in the rough terrain around the buildings but still give her added inches. The jet black hair had been pulled back into a pony tail and she looked all business.
There was no way I was going to argue with anyone pointing a pistol at me, much less some lunatic Russian control freak. Probably Dimitri was around here as well, but in any case Warren made his appearance in a couple of seconds. He snatched at the phone and in the process of pulling it from my grasp, dropped it on the concrete slab. I could tell from the sound of it that it wasn’t going to be much use after that.
To say Warren was furious was pretty much an understatement. He was livid – and full of questions. How had we got there? How had we found the place? Who had we been phoning? He picked up the phone but could learn nothing from the smashed screen it now had.
“They were talking to the police, I am sure!” Ivana said.
Warren pushed me against the wall.
“Were you?” he demanded.
“Bad connection,” I said.
Regardless of what I had said I think he’d already reached his own conclusion, namely that the mere fact that we had found him meant the cavalry were about to descend, and all his dreams of three months carrying out unspeakable acts on Monica and Mary were about to go pear-shaped.
He grabbed the pistol from Ivana and pushed me and Sofiya into the building, now in full view of the wide-eyed Monica and Mary, who made incoherent sounds around the rings in their mouths.
“On the floor!” he snarled. He was almost incoherent with rage. I suddenly had this overwhelming certainty that he was out of control and was going to shoot us there and then. Whatever had happened to Warren in prison, something had snapped sufficiently for him to go after Monica on this obsessive crusade. Now, with the prospect of all his intricate and expensive plans going down the gurgler, he was about to run amok. That was when I knew we were all going to die.
* * *
18.08.09
story continues in The Abduction of Monica 17: Flight
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