literature

A Chill in the Air, Chapter 3/12

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Chapter Three

Hannah knelt in the snow beside the woodland stream, heavy metals test kit open on the ground beside her.  With deftness born of practice, she poured the trial solution into a test tube, then capped and shook it.  After the solution had turned green, showing the reagents had activated, she uncorked the tube and used a pipette to add a precise amount of the stream’s water to the solution.  She recapped the tube and shook it vigorously, then turned it upside down and peered at the contents.

She hummed a few bars of “The Minstrel Boy” as she waited.  After a minute had passed, the test result ring inside the tube began to change color, from green to a rusty pink.

“Bingo,” she said to no one in particular, and began scribbling results in her notebook.  The concentration of lead in this part of the Cawdor Burn was higher than anywhere else she had tested – yet just a hundred yards upstream, there was hardly any lead in the water at all!  The source had to be close.

Hannah studied the grouping of pre-fab buildings in the woods across the Burn, one large warehouse-style structure flanked by two smaller outbuildings.  The warehouse solidly abutted the hill on which Cawdor Castle stood, a few hundred yards away.  One of the small buildings bore a sign emblazoned “Griers Quad Bike Adventures.”  As if to emphasize the name, a quad bike was parked beneath the sign.  Muddy vehicle tracks scored the ground around the buildings, and several large embankments of recently dug earth rose along the stream.  Evidently the all-terrain aficionados who patronized this place enjoyed jumps and other acrobatics.  Yet right now the area seemed deserted; all was quiet under the trees.

The small complex seemed rough and out of place, and it gave Hannah an odd sense of foreboding.  Though the buildings were obviously newly-erected, they still seemed dilapidated and ill-kept.  More seemed to be somehow “off” about the place, but Hannah couldn’t articulate why.  Something in her mind tugged and urged her to head in the other direction, but she shooed away the thought.  Too close to turn back now.  After packing the test kit she picked her way across the stream, using a few large stones to avoid dunking her boots into the water.  Ascending the far bank, she glanced over the piles of earth before scooping a few bits into a baggie for later testing.  If these punks have been contaminating the water with indiscriminate dumping, they are going to regret it.  The faint trail of green-tinted slime between the heaps of earth and the water told Hannah that her instincts were right.

As she approached the largest building, she thought she heard a faint whirring sound and voices from within.  Though she was close to the doors now, they still sounded muffled and far off.  How big is this building?  After quickly rehearsing what to say, she took a deep breath, raised her gloved hand, and knocked loudly on the door.

After a moment, all the noises from within the building ceased.  Then an angry voice inside called out, “Alright, which of you plug-uglies was supposed to be watching the door?!”  One door opened just a crack, and the lined face of a working man poked through it.  He looked her up and down slowly before speaking.  “Whaddaya want?  We’re closed today.”

“I don’t want to rent a ‘bike.  I want to know what’s going on with the digging you people are doing.”

The man’s face tightened.  “What digging d’ya mean?”

Hannah pointed to the embankments behind her.  “There.  Do you have a permit to be dumping all that right along the stream?  It may be having serious repercussions on the riverine ecosystem.”

“Er…that’ll be a question fer the manager, an’ he’s not here right now.  Come back tomorrow.”

Hannah wondered how far she could push this, considering she had no actual authority.  “Look, I’ll talk to him later, but I also need to hear what you have to say.”

The man simply repeated, “Come back tomorrow,” and shut the door.

Hannah banged on the door and raised her voice.  “Hey!  All I want is a few straight answers about what you’re doing here.  And I’m not leaving till I get some!”

She waited to see if her tirade had had any effect.  When a minute had passed with no response, she turned from the door and pondered her next move.  Perhaps she could poke around the other buildings and see if any strong evidence presented itself.  As she faced the embankments again, it abruptly dawned on her what had seemed so strange about them.  The mounds of fresh earth were obvious, but there were no corresponding trenches or dig sites in the ground anywhere nearby.  Where is it all coming from?

Suddenly a rough hand shot out from behind her and clamped over her mouth.  “Have it your way, lassie,” the man whispered into her ear.

Hannah’s scream was deadened by the man’s clammy paw.  She shook her head violently from side to side, trying to break the grip of his strong arm as it pulled her back, trapping her against his body.  She tried to force a quick elbow jab into his ribs, but his other hand thrust forward and tightly gripped both her wrists.  He then forced her arms down, shifting his grip into a mockery of an embrace.

Thus enfolded, unbidden memories exploded in Hannah’s brain like morbid fireworks – memories of another unwelcome embrace, on a moonless night back home in Glendalough, years ago.  In the present, another man’s hands reached around and violently ripped off her Kelly green scarf, leaving her lovely slender neck vulnerable and exposed.  He hurled the scarf away, and it was claimed as a keepsake by the whistling wind.

Wild-eyed, Hannah’s winsome face convulsed in fear and panic under the stifling hand.  Her muffled shrieks intensified as she tried to stamp down hard on one of his feet.  But his sturdy work boots held fast.  The second man reached around again, holding a syringe.  Hannah had seen hypos before, and knew what they sometimes held.  Her desperate straining increased, but to no avail.

The needle felt no harsher than a pin-prick as it pierced the tender skin of Hannah’s neck.

The girl stiffened with realization.  Afterward her struggles continued, but the fight was lost.  Gradually the writhing movements of her lissome body declined in strength.  Vigor and vitality left her, washed away by the flood of brotizolam which coursed through her veins.  Her kicks and twists grew spasmodic.  Her neck muscles ceased to fully support her head, which slowly tilted backward.  With a glassy look, she gazed at the evergreen canopy overhead, searching for some rescue which did not come.  Finally the lids closed over her green-grey eyes.  Her long, full eyelashes fluttered for a few moments before they, too, were stilled.

All at once her long legs ceased to support her, and Hannah sagged in her captor’s arms.  As he had been fighting against her strength until that moment, the shift caught him unawares, and he dropped her to the ground.  She hit the patch of damp earth with a dull thud.  Her half-bent legs were stacked atop one another; she twisted slightly at the waist, and her shoulder blades touched the ground.  One arm lay tucked close behind her back while the other lay in front of her, bent at the elbow, delicate fingers curling upward to grasp at nothing.  Her mouth was slightly agape, lips trembling reflexively.

Her two assailants stood over the insensate student, breathing hard.  The one who had grappled her bent and put his hands on his knees.  “Jesus, Finnegan, couldn’t you have been any quicker with that?  She was a strong little minx.”  He reached down and brushed a few strands of hair from her face, revealing the shuttered eyes and the petite nose dappled with freckles.  “Looker, too.”

Finnegan looked at him askance.  “Daley, if you can’t keep ahold of a little girl like this for more than a minute, maybe you should ask the Bitch to just leave you off the next job.  They’re not all going to be cakewalks like this one, you know.”  His voice dripped with sarcasm.  He nudged Hannah’s left leg with his foot, causing her muscles to tremor faintly.  “So what do you want to do with her?”

Daley’s hand strayed below Hannah’s face, where her coat and base layer top had come partly unzipped in the struggle.  One finger traced the edge of the exposed area, exploring the soft white skin along her well-defined collarbone.  “What do I want to do with her?”

“You know what I mean.  Dump her in the stream, or take her inside?  If we dump her maybe we won’t have to disturb the Bitch.”

Daley shook his head.  “No, she’ll want to know either way.  No getting out of it.  Might as well get her inside.”  He rubbed his hands together.  “Help me get her to the admin shack.”

Daley bent down and hooked his arms under Hannah’s shoulders.  Finnegan grasped her calves, fingers momentarily slipping on the smooth material which covered her legs.  They lifted; her limp form swayed between them.  One solitary tear, left over from her struggle, still glistened on the girl’s cheek.  It rolled off and disappeared into the earth as they passed through the doorway.

Then the wood was quiet again.
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DOAFan247's avatar
Uh-oh! Hannah's potential protest against those thugs got her into quite the predicament! Love the way the KO was described, it was poetic. Perhaps the description of her limp form along the ground was a little overeloborate, but greatdetail nnonetheless.