The Understorey, Book One of The Leaving Series (41 page)

    “Crap,” I said slamming
down the receiver.

I left the house in a hurry and nearly sped
the short few miles from my house to Jules’.
Don’t want Danny to
pull me over
.

I thought about what I’d do if I did catch
the jerk on the video and we definitely needed to catch him on
video as soon as possible because the rumor of Jules’ leaving for
Mauch Chunk was bound to get out inevitably.

I pulled into Jules’ driveway and parked the
truck. I was a little frightened to go inside. I was afraid of what
I might find. I did what I had to and slammed the door behind me. I
found the laptop still running and still recording which was a good
sign.

All three cameras worked and I could even see
my truck in the view of the camera pointed in the direction of
Jules’ window.

I stopped the current recording and saved the
files permanently.
This was a lot easier than I thought it’d
be
, I thought, until I watched each video. I started with the
one pointed toward her window inside her room since it was the
least convoluted. I started fast forwarding and stopped at three
seventeen a.m. There they were, in all their repulsive glory. I
felt like throwing up. The rage was all consuming. I felt compelled
to do things no sane person should think of. I wanted to pin him
down, torture him, and murder him. I tried to calm myself down but
it wasn’t working.

I jumped up and decided to try Jules again,
this time she answered.

    “Hello, hello,” she
cheerfully said.
    “Jules?” I said inadvertently panicked.
    “What?” She pressed, nervous.
    “I, uh, I checked the surveillance and saw them
breaking in.”
    “What did they do?” She asked stoically.
    “I’m not sure, to be perfectly honest. I never
finished the video. I couldn’t finish the video actually and I
called you so you could stop me from doing something
rash
.”
I chuckled, but not out of humor. I was close to becoming violent.
‘Goodbye Jules. I’ll see you in twenty to life’ violent.
    She sucked in a harsh breath, “Elliott, listen
to me. If you so much as look at Jesse our chances of catching him
will be lost. If you hurt him, you won’t be able to protect
me.”

That put everything into perspective. She was
right. If I did hurt him, I
would
feel better, but I would
also lose the opportunity to protect Jules. I was blinded by hate,
but no longer. Jules released that feeling from me.

    “I’m so sorry Jules.
You’re right. I’m an idiot.”
    “No, you’re not. You’re just in love with me and
want to stop the problem that’s threatening me. It’s only natural,
but you’ve got to tame the urge.”
    “Why are you so damn smart?” I asked.
    “I’m not. I’m
just........
intuitive.”
    “And just as in love with me as I am with you,”
I said in complete confidence. “That’s why I’m determined to get
you back here by new year’s.”
    “I won’t hold my breath, but,” she paused, “I
will hold a kiss.”
    “I’m counting on it.”
    “Alright, Elliott. Call me when you see the
entire video.”
    “Okay. Hey, Jules?”
    “Yeah?”
    “I’m so in love with you.”
    “As I am with you.”
    “Bye.”
    “Bye.”

I set the phone on its receiver and walked
back over to the laptop with a surprisingly clear mind and calm
body thanks to Jules. I took a deep breath and pressed play. I
watched a masked Jesse climb through the window and check for Jules
under her bed and closet.  He was wondering where she was. I
felt the rage again but remembered Jules’ words. He started
rummaging through her things. I couldn’t figure out what he was
trying to do. This wasn’t his usual routine. I think he was looking
for information that could clue him in on why she wasn’t in her bed
but what he did next surprised me.

He sat at the edge of the bed and looked
toward the window, like he was talking to someone but I couldn’t
hear anything and I could have kicked myself for not thinking of
microphones. He was signaling toward the living room.
He must be
telling Taylor to check the living room windows to see if Jules was
sleeping on the couch.
But she wasn’t there. She was a cool
five hundred miles away from their insane asses, probably sleeping
in a down comforter. That warmed me on the inside.

Finally, something got to them but I started
to realize that they were looking for her for a reason. I was
desperate to know why. I knew something for sure though, I knew if
they came tonight that they’d know something was up and stop coming
altogether and my efforts would have been for not. I needed to
sleep here tonight. Jules’ parents would have never agreed to it,
neither would mine, or my Uncle Danny, especially not Danny. They
knew the potential danger. I’d have to do it on my own. Before I
left Jules’ house, I made sure to unlock one of the window’s in the
living room so I could get in easily.

    That night I readied
myself for battle, so to speak. I ate dinner, casually tried to
have a conversation with Jules and then my mom and went to bed
late. My mom didn’t suspect a thing. Jules, on the other hand, took
some convincing. She told me she could hear something in my voice
and I spent the entire conversation reassuring her I wasn’t going
to do anything stupid.

I’m an impeccable liar the rare times I have
to do it but Jules knew me so well the charms of it escaped her. I
hung up the phone not entirely sure she wasn’t going to call Danny.
It was still a risk I was willing to take because I knew it was my
last chance to catch Jesse and stop this entire thing in its snowy
and dangerous tracks.

I laid in my bed, not sleeping. I thought of
Jules to pass the time and around one in the morning I slipped out
my window just as I had a few nights before. I reached the street
and ran as fast as the cold would let me to Jules’ home, pulling my
coat tightly into my chest and raising the collar to protect my
neck. My wool cap, the one that always kept me warm in the coldest
weather, was doing nothing to keep the cold from my ears. It was
bitter weather, blizzard like. I could barely see ten feet in front
of me.
Please, let this be the last time I have to do this
,
I begged myself. I knew my boots would leave a trail through the
snow and needed to find an alternate way around her home and I’d
need to enter through the opposite side so my boot prints would not
tip Jesse and Taylor off that someone else, me, might be there
waiting, so I looped far around the bit of forest by Jules’ home
and approached from the back right portion of the house, jumping
their neighbor’s fence. I needed to get through the living room
window furthest from Jules’ room and was praying that it wouldn’t
be too difficult or too loud so as not to wake her parents.
   

I took a deep breath before trying, hoping
Jules’ dad didn’t check the windows before they went to bed and
miraculously it opened. I almost jumped in excitement I was so
happy. I clumsily climbed through the window and landed with a thud
on the living room floor.
Great
, I thought,
all this
effort just to get shot by Mr. Jacobs.
But it was quiet. I
closed the window and laid there without a peep just in case. When
the ice from my boots had melted into small puddles on the floor
beneath them I knew it was okay to make a move.

I looked at the laptop and it was recording
everything. I’m glad I checked. The last thing I’d want to happen
would me be exposing Jesse for what he was and not get it on film.
I tiptoed, well tiptoed as much as a guy in boots could, and
entered Jules’ room. Mission accomplished, well, sort of. I was in
the room at least.

Then came the hard part. I waited. I waited
and waited. Then, waited some more. At three forty-five I heard
commotion outside.

“Jeez, Jules really does sleep like the
living dead. I can hear them coming from a mile away,” I whispered
to myself.

When they seemed to be approaching, I hid in
Jules’ large armoire. I had taken out all her clothing and shelves
and hid them underneath her bed. I knew, there, he’d never suspect
a thing.

Eventually, I heard the window slide open. My
heart raced into my ears. I felt the thudding pulse of blood in my
neck and almost vomited from the sheer anticipation. This was it.
This was my opportunity to expose him for who he truly was. I
needed to expose his face as soon as possible to the camera. That
was the first on my list of priorities. The next? Beat the bloody
crap out of him? It sounded like a plan to me.

I left the door of the wardrobe cracked open
and watched his every move through Jules’ vanity mirror. The next
part took all of five seconds but it seemed like an eternity to me.
I could hear Jesse breathing and I could see him squinting as if he
were trying to see something that wasn’t there.

Jules’ bed was empty but he didn’t seem
surprised, or angry, or anxious, more like he was just searching. I
couldn’t wrap my head around it. I needed to catch him off guard
and immediately so I didn’t waste any time.

In a fraction of a second, I was on his back
desperately trying to remove his ski mask. I got just enough of it
off to expose the chin and mouth but he shrugged me off of him
before I could remove it in its entirety. I had to get the entire
thing off if this was going to work.

He yanked the mask back onto his face and
turned, his back toward the camera. I’ll admit, it wasn’t going as
smoothly as I’d like it to. We were both being extremely quiet, a
silent fight. It was a riddle of a clash, urgent, raging and
totally soundless. As much as either of us wanted to yell and throw
the other into the wall we fought a restrained battle, neither
wanting to wake the Jacobs. I, because I wanted to keep the danger
from them and he, so he couldn’t get caught. What should have been
exaggerated movements became minimal. I hated it, every second of
it.

The adrenaline pumping through me would have
produced a hit the equivalent of a Mack track going a hundred miles
an hour. He should have been dead weight on the floor by now but I
just couldn’t risk waking the Jacobs. He held the slightly upper
hand only because I let him have it. A woke Gerry and Ann Jacobs
could mean a hurt Gerry and Ann Jacobs and that was not worth it.
This situation was my fault and I was finally starting to regret
the risk of it. I still hadn’t exposed his face and things were
quickly spiraling out of my control. He was catching the remnants
and gaining the upper hand.

He pinned me to the ground and hit me
brutally across the face with something hard within his reach. It
was too dark to see what it was but it made me too dizzy to fight
back. I watched him stand up, walk to the window and mumble
something under his breath. He walked back and my eyes barely
reached the six feet to his masked face.

“This is how I win,” he said and that was all
I could remember before he stuck me with a four inch needle in the
neck.

Chapter
Eight
Rubber Ribbons and Jellied
Arms

When I woke, the morning sun branded itself
into my eyes. All I could see was the blinding yellow rays of light
that gave me an instant pounding headache. I went to block the sun
with my hands but couldn’t pick up either of my arms. I was
freezing cold. My teeth had to have been chattering unconsciously
for hours because even my teeth felt sore.

My jaw was so tender, too pained actually,
and I realized that whatever Jesse had hit me with had actually
broken it. I was in excruciating pain and worse yet, I couldn’t
move. I started to panic.
Why can’t I move!
I felt paralyzed
and worried that Jesse may have broken my spine at the neck no
less, but if that were true how was I able to feel everything? The
tears were beginning to well up but I fought back. I wasn’t going
to shed a single drop for the psycho.

I tried to turn my head to see where I was
but wasn’t able. I did recognize a very large tree from the school
parking lot and wondered what Jesse was up to in putting me here.
For several hours, I remained paralyzed, but somehow in incredible
pain.

I tried to remember what had happened during
the struggle but was having difficulty. I finally recalled a needle
and couldn’t comprehend where Jesse had gotten something like
that.

He’d drugged me. I wondered if he was trying
to kill me and it just didn’t work. I tried moving my body again
and again and eventually found I had regained the use of my toes. I
sighed in relief when I heard Danny’s police cruiser. I could tell
it was him because it was moving along at a snail’s pace and his
windows must have been down because I heard his dispatcher spout
some code.

It was difficult to see properly through a
window when the temperature on the inside of your vehicle was
almost thirty degrees higher than the temperature outside. He was
looking for me. I tried yelling but found that I couldn’t. A new
panic rushed through me. I hadn’t tried using my voice before when
analyzing what I was able to move on my body.

I waited an agonizing five minutes to be
discovered. I heard Danny’s car screech to a halt despite his
sluggish pace. I heard him flip his cruiser into park and jump out.
His boots clamored up the sidewalk and ran up to me. It was so
cold, the moisture from his breath froze in the air and billowed
into tiny clouds above my face.

    “Are you alright son?” He
asked, desperate for a reply.

I could tell in his reaction that I didn’t
look good. I couldn’t respond, only squint my eyes in terror.

    “God! Elliott! Why didn’t
you wait for me boy?” He asked, his eyes becoming moist. His hands
searched the air above my body. Searching for something he could do
for me. Everything about Danny’s eyes made me realize that Jesse
had probably beaten me within an inch of my life and if felt that
way too. I managed a grunt but that was the best I could do.
    “Can you move?” He asked and I furrowed my
eyebrows in response.