Ghost With Cats ~ Book of Eloh #1.Draft

Warning- this chapter contains triggers for those who have suffered abuse.

Rule #1 for surviving : Always have your tools.

“Hadif had been using his job on the task force to hide his group’s attempts to buy a bomb, but after he met me and learned about Pandora, they decided to use it to get what they want. He treated me like a princess, gifts and manners and romance. Everything a girl dreams about. It was too perfect, like something out of a movie or romance novel. I fell in love with him, but he was in love with the destructive power of my parents’ research and how much money he could make. He drugged me, killed them, then took all of my parent’s work on the Pandora device and my notes. He must have drove me to the down the mountain because all I remember is him carrying me onto a jet that took me away. I woke up the next day. My watch said it was December 22nd. I was on a dirty bed in a brick room.”

She breathed out slowly, then revealed, “They couldn’t make Pandora work and I refused to write out the rest of the formulas. Hadif was shoved in the door like he was a prisoner too, he begged me to finish the device so they would let us go. He got angry when I said I wouldn’t.”

She sobbed slightly. “He asked me if I loved him, claimed they were going to kill us. If I loved him I would tell them what they wanted. When I reached up to touch his bruises and they wiped off. I backed away against the wall, when he demanded to know what was wrong, I just held up my fingertips. He swore, then he started laughing, telling me how stupid I was, how easy it was to gain my trust. He told me to finish the bomb or he wouldn’t love me anymore. I slapped him as hard as I could. He looked so surprised that he slapped me then I punched him and broke his nose. Hadif began to beat me, hitting me like I had never been hit before, and when I couldn’t fight back anymore, he... he...”

She stopped again, but she didn’t cry, just took several deep breaths as tears leaked from her eyes. “Well, it wasn’t the romantic wedding night I had always hoped for. Afterward I still wouldn’t give him the rest to the figures. I refused to help them with everything I was. His buddies began threatening him, so he gave me to them. They all took their turns with me and laughed about it while I was chained with a bag over my head. It was humiliating and horrible. The next day, they tried giving me truth serum and a bunch of other drugs. There was more abuse and every time I passed out, they would throw ice water on me to revive me or hold me down in a tub of ice water.”

Her fist clenched so tightly around her coffee mug she was afraid it would break in her hands. “They weren’t even making the bomb for a religious or political reason, they just wanted money, and to cause fear. I heard them talking about all the things they would buy. It made me so angry, and more determined to resist. Every day they tortured me and every night they raped me. Christmas Eve, they held me under too long and I almost drowned. I was barely conscious so they dosed me again, finally, my heart slowed and almost stopped. They thought I was dead so they threw me in the trash pile. I was just a toy to them something to fill their sadistic whims and time while Hadif finished an unstable version of the bomb.”

“I didn’t know that many people were looking for me and Hadif. The cats had gone home covered in my parents’ blood and the neighbors had called the police, who called the government, who had called the task force.” Her coffee was almost gone, she couldn’t stop shaking, she felt so cold. She pulled the afghan from the couch closer around her.

“They thought both Hadif and I had been kidnapped. They had gotten the ransom message for the device, with images of my torture and fake images of him being tortured too. Hadif’s Grandfather Sheikh Opir promised to pay anything to get us back. One of his Bedouin spies found the place where they were hiding. He found me in the trash, barely alive. He hid me in a building, got me warm again, and went for help. But being raised as I was, a Texas military brat, I got up and I decided I was going to kill them all. I learned to hunt when I was 5 years old. They were animals, so I hunted them; I stabbed them; cut their throats one by one. I piled their bodies up and then I burned their compound to the ground. It was the only time since I was 14 that the smell and sight of blood didn’t make me want to vomit.”

Rule #4 for Surviving : You are the only one who will save yourself... Never quit trying.

This is where she was usually interrupted, with the question every person she had ever told the story to, who wasn’t there, had asked, ‘What do you mean you hunted them?’ ‘Did you really stab them all?’ or her least favorite, ‘Why did you feel the need to kill them like that?’

Like it was okay that all seven of them had repeatedly raped and beaten her. Forgivable that they wanted to commit an act of terrorism that could have harmed the whole world, but wrong of her to kill them violently as they deserved. Annie waited, staring into the flicker of the fire. Neither of Tal nor Vorn said anything. Her mind played those moments. She was surprised when Vorn placed her coffee cup, refilled, back in her hand, and nodded for her to continue. Tal was putting another log in the fireplace. She took a deep breath and began again.

“Only Hadif had escaped me. The coward had taken the bomb and fled when he heard his friend’s screams as I stabbed him to death. Sheik Opir and Aji, who was barely 11, their men, and a Mossad agent named Isaac found me sitting by the gate, half-naked and bloody and armed for bear as my daddy would have said. When I told them what happened, we chased down Hadif, but he threw the case down a test drill bore. He said if he could not have the money, he would destroy the wealth of his people and their holy land with it. Isaac made him tell me the resonance frequency he chose and components he used, and that was when I realized the bomb he made would blow up the planet. Hadif confessed that he and his friends had always intended for the bomb to be used. They had put a radioactive metal in place of an alkali one, so it was exponentially more powerful, like he didn't understand what he did..” Annie stopped and sipped her coffee, she never stopped staring at the fire as she spoke.

Her tears burned but no longer fell. “I asked him how he could do it, didn’t he know he had killed the whole world? He didn’t even care, he just laughed and said that at least he had one virgin before his death.” She swallowed and the coffee cup trembled in her hands.

“I... he... He just laughed about raping me,” she repeated. “Sheikh Opir struck him across the face and cursed the day he was born. A whole bunch of other people showed up, including General Paul, and I volunteered to go down the hole and disarm the bomb. The hole was about 1 meter across and over 1000 meters deep, but by chance, it jogged and the case got caught less than 800 feet down. It was purely luck. If Hadif had run to a different hole, we wouldn’t have been able to reach the bomb in time. It was mid-morning when they started dropping me down the hole and after sunset when they pulled me out. I had the case, the timer was off, but I had radiation poisoning and was seeing spots, half-blinded. They couldn’t even let anyone close to me, I was so radioactive. I couldn’t even vomit anymore. I put the bomb in a lead lined drum, and sealed it. People in radiation suits were trying to talk to me, but all I could hear was the ringing of bells. I honestly believed was that it was my last Christmas eve. I wasn’t going to live a day beyond 22, but at least I would soon see my parents in heaven. When I looked up at the sky, I saw the holy star, and swirling lights like angels dancing, then I fainted.” She took another deep breath and shook her head.

They knew what she did now, that she didn’t die. They didn’t know she wished for so long that she had died that night, that she had wanted several times to kill herself but she didn’t. She hated the person that Christmas had made her. A person who barely existed, trapped by her fears. The person who had been a world traveling adventurer was gone and in her place a pathetic coward who would barely leave her home or hotel to teach a three hour college course a few months a year, without enough mace in her pocket to disperse a riot. She was a ghost who became a ghostwriter. She needed to go on because Tal had wanted to know about his brother, Truh.

“When I woke up the first time, your brother was standing at the foot of my bed, and the whole room was glowing, I thought I was hallucinating. When I woke again, Isaac and Opir introduced me to him as Regent Vanth Truh, a visitor from another world who had come to make sure the weapon was not used. He thanked me for my courage after all that had happened to me, and told me I was special, a light among my people. He told me not to be afraid that I would not die, to have courage to face the life that had been returned to me, then he bowed and left, and I never saw him again. Later, Isaac said he was an Elohim, that he had mostly healed me, and after that day Isaac left the Mossad and became a Rabbi like his eldest brother Jakob. Every day for a month, Opir or Aji came and read to me, while my eyes finished healing. Sometimes, Isaac or his niece Sharon came. When I was released, I spent over year with all of them. They became my new family. Sharon had lost her husband almost 2 years earlier, and we became best friends as we grieved together. Finally, I came home, and the anxiety attacks began, I couldn’t make myself leave my Grandpa Dove’s ranch and I built a new house with my settlement. It’s a fortress with three panic rooms. My bedroom is in an underground bunker.” She sounded so ashamed of herself, it shocked them.

“Ev-every year, I make myself come here and face it. The first year, Sharon helped me pack the Christmas decorations, clean up the bloody cat prints, and throw away the police tape, then she took me back to Texas. I began writing alternate story copy of the books she read with me while my eyes healed, just for something to do, and since Sharon was a publisher, she got me a job as a ghostwriter.” She concluded. Her voice was completely empty as if she had run out of feeling. She just swallows her last gulp of coffee. “This is the first year I decorated.”

“What happened to Hadif?” Vorn asked quietly.

“He was beheaded as a traitor and infidel. Before his death, he knew his own grandfather had disowned him and adopted me, restoring my honor, and the Oman even declared me a heroine for defending their people, then saving their holy land. By first refusing to help with the bomb, and then by disarming the one they made. All six of his companions were declared infidels too. They were very wealthy, from good families, and... and they just wanted more money... They each had more money than most people see in a lifetime, in ten lifetimes, but it wasn’t enough.”

She shook her head in disbelief, “Women aren’t supposed to raise their hands against a man, but I was pardoned for their deaths since I saved millions of their people, billions if you count the whole world. So, now you know the truth about my shame and my fear. You know why I can barely tolerate to be around my own people. Why I freak out and have panic attacks. Why I ended up in the desert with you. Pandora is an evil that just keeps killing, my parents weren’t the first, they won’t be the last.”

Annie shrugged deeper into the afghan, she always felt so spent at the end, so cold like the ice water was still being poured on her. She looked over at a spot on the floor in front of the fireplace. Sometimes she could still see her mother’s blood. A final tear ran down her cheek as she waited for the judgments to come like they always did.

Her anxiety reminded her, There is no sympathy for survivors in this world, you knew that before you were one.

She heard a slight sound and was surprised to notice Tal kneeling before her. He carefully wiped the tear away.

“You have nothing to feel shame for, Lady Annie. You have overcome a great trial, an act of war against your very soul and won. I would pray for an army as courageous and strong as you. You have every right to hate or fear every creature you meet, and yet you act daily with compassion and courage. It is amazing. I am glad my brother met you and healed you. I am glad I was blessed to meet you. I am sorry to break my promise, but I cannot look at you the same way I did before I heard your story, because now I admire you much more than I did before.” Tal stated in an awed tone. She looked at him like he had lost his mind.

Vorn rose from a chair and went to the window, outside Bries was still splitting firewood. “It is good that Bries did not listen, he would hear only your pain and not your triumph. A raging Sword Pet is useful in battle, but would be a problem here in the wilderness. You are truly remarkable, Lady Annie, to overcome such adversity and still help strangers such as us. Some day you must tell me how Isaac knew the ancient name of our people. Every day your world becomes more fascinating to me.”

Annie just sat there, she actually felt relief to tell the story without being judged or pitied, it was weirdly liberating. They didn’t think she was a monster. No one had ever reacted to her story like that, except those few who had been there and actually seen the truth of her horror.

“Thank you for being okay with it all,” she responded quietly, looking down into her empty cup, the bottom says ‘Happiness is a full cup.’ She had poured out her cup of pain and been offered encouragement to refill it with, instead of judgment. For the first time in years,she actually felt like she was starting to heal. She watched the fire-place, it felt warm on her face.

At some point after she had told her story to Tal and Vorn, she must have fallen asleep because she woke up to the afternoon sun pouring in the windows. The golden sun peaking through the snow covered cedars and pines to reach the tall glass panes that held out the cold air and framed one of the twin peaks. She had a second throw across her and the gray tabby from down the hill on her feet. Herlinda’s big black and white cat, pressed its black nose on her cheek. Tal was sitting in a chair reading her bible, he was at the very end. He was frowning.

“The Revelation?” she asked softly.

“It is very confusing,” he answered.

“It was meant to be, perhaps you should start at the beginning,” she suggested. Then the phone rang, she stared at. It stopped and started again.

Carefully, she rose and answered it in a strange voice, “Hola, Miss Annie’s house.”

“Hey, it’s Clark from Town Center Shops, is Miss Dove there?”

“No sir, Miss Annie, not home. Can she call you, Mr. Clark?”

“No... Look, just tell her some weird guys were just in here and wanted to know if she was in here last night, scary government types. Okay?”

“Sure, Mr. Clark. I tell Miss Annie, adios.” And she hung up on him.

She turned to Vorn and Tal, “Grab our bags now, we’re flushed. Get Bries.”

She ran upstairs to her loft, and changed quickly, wrapped her braces on under two pairs of socks and her boots. She rushed back downstairs, Vorn was loading the Rover. Bries was walking the perimeter with her rifle. Tal was scanning from the balcony. He had put out the fire. She goggled the New Mexico tourism bureau and printed out a tour of lights for Santa Fe and left it on the printer. She booked a hotel room there. She grabbed her laptop, the Christmas gifts, and they left. It all took less than 5 minutes.

They stopped at the old church half-way down the mountain, and switched to the jeep. Annie had paid a local mechanic Jorge to get it good running order and replace all four tires. Jorge had tinted the rear windows, and stocked it. He had even gotten her false registration and plates. She left the Rover’s keys in the donation box. It would look like her maid had fled after getting Carl’s call. She hoped he wouldn’t get in too much trouble.

She sent a text from her burner cell. “Wolves early.”

It immediately replied, ”Gate Key 6 day yr. You left a paw print."

Annie started driving, they passed several government and law enforcement vehicles as they drove north. Soon they turned west into the sunset and evening traffic over the Pass. Vorn was listening to their communication bands through her laptop as they drove. She did have all the best toys as she called them, Vorn thought.

“You were correct, Lady Annie. The young man Carl had warned us just in time. They have surrounded your house, and believe you left earlier today. They questioned him again and are looking for your maid. They are setting up roadblocks in other directions. I am surprised they found us in such a remote location.” Vorn stated.

“They found us because I was stupid.” Annie revealed bitterly, holding the text message for Tal to read. He didn’t understand the first part, but the second part was clear. He groaned.

“At the antique store, you used a card with your real name,” Tal said, shaking his head, “I am at fault as well. I should have remembered.”

“I got distracted by my student... It will be okay, my mother’s friends will let us use their retreat. We only need to let your crew know we are just west of the original coordinates. Or we can head south to my great uncle’s beach house in Texas. It will take 26 hours if we drive straight through. Your choice, Admant.” She offered.

Tal could tell from her tone, she was angry with herself. She had had a stressful day. Tal folded his arms thinking, they were three days from contact and six or more from retrieval, better to stay hidden as long as possible and as close to the original retrieval area as they can. He could always summon his flier’s pilot to him once they were through the atmosphere. Traveling in unfamiliar territory increased the risk of ambush.

“We stay hidden here. The Texas house will be a last resort. We could even return to Cuchara to be retrieved, they may not expect such an action.” Still he wondered about the nature of their enemies, that they found them in less than a day, it showed great determination and resources.

“As you wish, we will be there in a few hours. Hope y’all like hot springs,” Annie answered.

“What are hot springs?” Tal asked.

Annie just grinned at him.

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Thank you, Mama Magie