OPHELIA: Chapter 47
Blurb
Elizabeth Lockwick wants one thing… to ensure Ophelia remains dead.
For years she’s weaved a life seen through rose-coloured glasses in idyllic Vermont with her husband Sebastian Lockwick, an alluring man with a broken moral compass, whose intent lies in protecting his wife. However, apart from her unorthodox understanding of Sebastian’s dark and gritty hidden nature, she finds herself slipping away from her sanity in maintaining this picturesque life.
After receiving a gruesome gift from an unknown sender threatening to expose her, she finds herself haunted and possibly hunted by her buried past.
In order to make things right for herself and ensure that her secret is hidden, she reluctantly travels back to her sleepy small hometown in Wisconsin. A town where young girls seem to be mysteriously disappearing. There, she reunites with the dysfunctional Pierre-Louis’, a French-American family who sheltered her in their manor in her time of need.
With time slipping away, she struggles with her guilt and a dangerous affair and realizes that perhaps Ophelia wasn’t dead after all these years.
Elizabeth suddenly finds herself caught in a game of cat and mouse, unsure of which she really is this time and who she can trust.
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Chapter 47
Ophelia limped down the dirt track. Soft rain fell against the sunshine that seemed to be kissing the pain off her face. Her entire body ached. And yet, there was a blank numbness inside her. a numbness that stilled her heart more than her body. It was as real as the wetness of the rain against her skin. She wondered if God had been crying for her. Had he been trying to wash away the sin she just committed. Was he really that forgiving? Was what she did self-defense or did she intend to do it? Why wasn’t she as guilty as she thought she might have been? Had she really been a monster. Her head ached with the varying questions that bombarded her.
She stopped and fell to her knees on the ground. Hot tears streamed down her face like a silence river. She sobbed and felt herself trembling and throwing up at the side of the path. Ophelia felt utterly dead inside. More dead than Cane probably was back at the barn.
She pushed herself up again. She had to keep moving. The sight of her old home came back into view. She was about to walk past it when she suddenly saw another vehicle parked at the front. She knew this vehicle. She had seen it around. Her footsteps took her nearer to the car and she peeked inside to notice a familiar purse. Vivian’s.
The sound of a violent scream was suddenly heard from inside the manor. One good thing she had done was take Cane’s gun out of his pocket and carried it with her. She hadn’t forgotten about that dirty bitch Sally. Ophelia felt so upset. Upset that she was played in that manner by the girl. Upset that she let her guard down and trusted her so blindly. It was Ophelia’s own fault, and she could blame no one else but herself.
She walked up the staircase as cautiously as she could. The room upstairs where they were had been empty. There was no one there. She walked towards the broken window and stared outside in hopes to see what that sound was. Was she imagining things? When she ran from here, Sally had been laying right here. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t have been. Where the hell was she if she hadn’t already gone to hell yet?
Taking a deep breath, Ophelia scowled.
“Good that you came back, it makes my job so much easier,” Sally suddenly said from behind.
Ophelia swiftly turned to find a bloodied girl before her. Her face was a mask of liquid red, dripping down the sides. She held a sharp rod in her hand and was about to bolt towards her, regardless of her shaky demeanor. Before Ophelia could have pulled out the gun, someone suddenly knocked her out from behind using a wooden plank.
Her body fell to the ground with an echoed thud and before her, Vivian stood. She dropped the plank she had in her hand and looked at the now empty body of the girl on the floor. Vivian had seemed to be injured to the arm as well and her white chiffon was stained with splashes of red. Her face was smeared and her eyes a dimmed sky blue. Her hair had been tousled and pulled and strands fell over her face.
She looked over at Ophelia and noticed her damaged expression as well.
“Do you think we’re going to hell?” Ophelia suddenly asked.
“I think hell is last of our worries right now.”
“Why did you come here?”
Vivian let out a soft breath, “I had a gut feeling. I went to the Pierre-Louis’s manor, you weren’t there.”
Ophelia stooped to cover the eyelids of the dead girl before her. “She was pregnant.”
“She chose her faith when she sold herself to these people, Ophelia.”
“The child was innocent, regardless of how it was conceived.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sally spoke about a ‘father’.”
“Greywood?”
“He seemed to have suggested to her and her brother Dean to conceive the child. It would have been some ‘blessed child’.”
“You think that we pissed them off now that the child is dead?” Vivian asked already knowing the answer to her question, “We need to get rid of the body.”
“Bodies,” Ophelia corrected, “It isn’t just one.”
They dragged Sally’s body and put it into the trunk of Vivian’s car. “We’ll come back for your car here when we’re done. Tell me where the other body is.”
“An old farmhouse barn up ahead,” she said as she got into the passenger’s seat and shut the door.
“Farmer Miller’s. The barn isn’t too functional, he’s been out of town for a while, it’s good that he wasn’t there.”
“Where do the animals get their food?”
“Neighbours who live a little above on the hill sometimes come down to feed them at sunset. So we have time to get that body out of there before they arrive.”
“Thank you,” Ophelia suddenly said as they drove along the silence road.
“For what?”
“For everything. For helping me. You didn’t have to do this, you didn’t have to get so involved. You can still walk away from this.”
Vivian stopped the car at the entrance of the barn. She looked at her with wary, heavy eyes. “I can’t,” she said, and in that moment, Ophelia understood that Vivian was too far damaged. She knew things that she couldn’t speak of and hadn’t spoken of. There were words begging to be spoken within her silence but her throat was choking her from doing so.
“Come on,” she forced a smile towards her in the hopes of changing the topic, “Let’s get this over with.”
They both walked inside the barn with the putrid scent of feces and death. Vivian twisted up her nose in disgust as she walked towards the pen. Flies had been hovering over the body of Cane. His stomach showed a pool of soaked blood. She exhaled. “What a shitty man he is.”
Cane’s body was heavier than Sally’s as they both lifted it. Their shoes were soaked in thick feces and debris as the pigs walked around them and the cow mooed loudly. They both slipped as they were walking out but steadied themselves from falling completely fall on the ground.
“Will he fit?” Ophelia asked as they neared the car.
“I hope so, because I won’t be too fond of chopping him limb by limb to fit in the trunk of my car.”
Luckily, they fit both bodies inside snugly.
“What now?”
“We need to bury them. We need supplies. Shovels, anything. I don’t have that with me. And we need to get your car parked back at the Pierre-Louis’s manor. Keeping it parked there for too long wouldn’t be wise.”
“We should go back then.”
“I can check in Miller’s house for anything we can use.”
“No,” Ophelia refused, “I can get everything back at the manor. It doesn’t feel right to invade his home anymore than we already did.”
Vivian frowned with an understanding nod.
Ophelia pulled up at the back of the manor in Stefan’s vehicle as Vivian parked just behind her. She couldn’t take the chance of risking anyone seeing her and Vivian in such a state. Too many questions would be asked if that be the case. She quickly stepped out of the vehicle as Vivian mirrored in her.
They both walked up the dimly lit staircase at the rear of the manor. One that was rarely to never used. She had remembered times Stefan used to sneak out here without the family knowing. Thank goodness he had told her about this. Ophelia stopped at the upstairs hall and took the nearby corner as Vivian continued to follow. She was about to head directly to her room when suddenly Elaine turned, walking out of the opposite corner.
They froze. Elaine’s eyes stared blankly ahead. She saw Ophelia, hadn’t she? Of course she did. She saw everything, ironically. Instead of approaching her, Elaine instead walked past her as if she hadn’t noticed their presence. They walked into the room quickly and Ophelia closed the door behind, sparing a glace back at Elaine who had now entered her room.
“It’s good that she didn’t ask questions,” Vivian noted.
“She can’t see.”
This made Vivian chuckle, “You believe that Ophelia?”
“It’s what I’ve been told.”
“First rule, don’t believe everything you’ve been told in Rose Gap. She isn’t blind, nor is my mother. From what I understand with my research is that a long time ago these women were brought into a group. The men performed a ritual called the ‘sacrifice of the senses’ on the woman. Most of them died. The ones who survived I guess pretended to lose at least one of their sense.”
“That way the men wouldn’t have had any use for them?”
“Exactly, they wouldn’t have thought it worked and then discarded them.”
Ophelia sighed and sat on the floor whilst leaning against her room door.
“We have to get rid of the bodies, Ophelia. We can’t waste any time. Change into new clothes quickly.”
She stood and went over to her closet grabbing a new pair of jeans and a baby blue linen shirt, “You can change into this,” she said and tossed it at her. “Burying them isn’t a good idea, we need to get rid of it and ensure nobody finds out.”
“What are you thinking then?”
“Lake Tampa,” she responded, “We need to drown them along with the car in Lake Tampa.”
**
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