OPHELIA: Chapter 48
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 48
The crisp, cool air fluttered through her white tee, entangled with the stinging sunshine from above. She sat at the driver’s seat of Stefan’s car as Vivian got into hers from behind. As she was about to turn out of the driveway, she noticed a figure staring back down to her from one of the upstairs windows.
Elaine stood there as white as a ghost. Her figure like a candle with that burning bright red of fire-like hair tousling through the abuse of the wind. She had seen her. She had seen Ophelia for who she really was. A sick knot twisted within her stomach. She knew in her heart that coming back to Rose Gap was a horrid idea, but she was in too deep now.
She closely drove behind Vivian’s car feeling a shiver run up her spine. A sudden thought ran through her mind at that moment. Could she trust Vivian? She frowned at that thought. Lake Tampa was about a ten minutes’ drive. They got there fairly quickly. The sun still held itself up as witness to their crimes. Ophelia stepped on the earthy ground and walked in her sinner’s shoe. She killed a man once here, and now, two more. Three, if you count the child.
“What are you thinking about?” Vivian asked as she shut the door of her vehicle.
“Now normal this now feels to me,” she admitted.
Vivian frowned at her words, she wanted to say something but held herself back. The dying sun caught her attention, this needed to be done quickly. “Don’t blame yourself for his death.”
Ophelia wasn’t sure at this point whose death Vivian spoke of. Was it Jame? Was it Christopher? Was she now considered a notorious serial killer? Was this what a murderer usually feels like?
“I grabbed our soiled clothes,” Vivian continued and threw them in a pile on the dirt, “We have to get rid of them.” As she said that, she lit a match and threw it on top of the pile. “I really liked this car,” she said whilst giving it a little pat at its trunk, “It was a real piece of crap that got me places.”
“I’m sorry,” Ophelia apologized. Her mind was afar as she put her hand on the back of the trunk and began to help her push the vehicle into the water. Lake Tampa was steep and many of the townspeople stayed away from here as to the danger levels. They stood and watched as the car slowly began to sink to the bottom. Vivian sat on the stony ground and pulled out a pack of cigarette. She sat before the fire and stretched her hand out to light her cigarette. “Want one?” She asked after taking a pull and exhaling a smoke of words.
“No,” Ophelia answered whilst sitting near the fire. Today felt like the longest day of her life. And at this very moment, she felt miserable.
“I heard they took him in.”
“He didn’t kill her,” Ophelia sighed.
“Well of course he didn’t. Any stupid person would know it’s just a cover up. Besides, I don’t even think the girl’s dead.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They didn’t even find a body. Just some of her belongings and Pierre-Louis’s book from what I understand. They must have seen it as an opportunity to keep him away from you. They took advantage of the opportunity. When I heard about him being arrested, I went to the manor.”
Ophelia rubbed her cold palms together and warmed them by the fire, “You’ve done a lot for me, to help me, I can’t repay you.”
“I’ve made my mistakes; I’ve wronged as well. My conscience and my guilt makes me feel like I haven’t helped at all.” She paused, exhaled again, and threw the cigarette into the fire, “We should keep moving, the clothing is all burnt so that’s good.”
“If it is that these people, this cult or whatever they are, are looking for me then it’s only a matter of time until they find me. If I go back to the manor I’ll be putting everyone’s lives in danger. I can’t do that. They’ve all suffered enough. I can’t go back there, not unless I know that Stefan is there as well.”
“Are you afraid, Ophelia?” Vivian asked as she stood. Ophelia mirrored with a limp.
“I’m not afraid. I’m angry. I’ve been for a long time.”
“Good, keep holding on to that. We can’t fear them. They want us to so don’t ever give that to them. The way I see it, it’s better to be angry than afraid in this town.”
She limped to the driver’s seat of the car. “Let me drive,” Vivian suggested, “You’re injured.”
Ophelia remembered the way Sally had offered to drive. She wondered if this too was a mistake. Yet, at this moment, her legs were aching and sore. Having someone else drive seemed like the much better option. She’ll live with the consequences if any. Or die.
Vivian drove slowly, she had seemed tired as well. Her eyes held heavy dark bags beneath. They drove past the old, abandoned farmhouse which sat on top of the hill at the edge of the forest when Ophelia noticed something strange. A girl in a yellow sundress, walked inside. At first glance she thought it might have been Claire but as she squinted closely, she noticed it to be Terilla.
“Ophelia,” Vivian suddenly alerted her attention back to her, “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes- I- what was it?”
“I asked where you would like to go? You say going back to the manor could be dangerous. Has Stefan been released yet?”
She frowned and squeezed the phone, “No, he would have reached out to me by now. I tried calling Charlie too, the call didn’t go through.” Worry plagued her facial expression. Her colour was draining out of her just as the sun was about to set from the sky.
“Don’t worry,” Vivian assured her, “These men know what they’re doing.” She hoped.
“Is that old motel still there? The one just at the outskirts of town.”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
“Let’s go there for a bit. I need to think things through,” she suggested.
Vivian nodded in agreement. As they were about to drive out of the town, they drove past the Gap Park cemetery. A group of persons dressed in black were gathered around a grave where a casket was slowly being lowered down. Father Greywood stood alongside a crying woman.
“What’s that about?” Ophelia asked, perplexed.
“It looks like Mya Boyle’s funeral.”
“They found her body?”
“They don’t have to,” Vivian frowned, “Greywood can convince anyone to do things his way once he says it’s all under the Lord’s will. Mya’s mother’s a drunk, she wouldn’t know any better either. Her voice of reason’s been corrupted a long time ago.”
“You know quite a lot.”
“Well, I have been living here a long time, and it is a small town after all.”
The sudden thought of Eva, the young girl who worked at the Lockwick’s house, ran across Ophelia’s mind. “Eva spoke to me about her family’s financial condition. She seems like a smart girl to be working as a maid.”
“The state won’t grant any aide to the town, Ophelia. And even if they do, the money is shared amongst the men at the top. There was another maid who had worked with us, her name was Greta. Do you remember the St. Roses Charity Home for Girls?”
“The facility for the homeless girls?”
“Yes, do you remember how much Father Greywood and the Sheriff used to gush about all they did for the charity?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t hear the end of it. I thought they were real heroes back then,” Ophelia scoffed.
“Well, it turns out that none of the money that was given to the charity even made it to the charity. And one by one a lot of the girls began disappearing. Greta was one of them. They told us she ran away with a boy out of town, but I never could have believed that. She wasn’t that type of girl. She was too fond of God, she had told me she wanted to be a nun when the year was over, she wanted to give herself to the Lord. Her running away with a boy was unlikely. So, I decided to do a little investigation, that’s when I found out more about it. I made some donations so I can get inside the place. No one really cared about the girls that went missing, Ophelia. They had no one to care about them because they had no one but each other. I spoke to some of them. They lived in constant fear every day.”
“Do you think that it was the cult that did it?”
“Greywood was a constant there, I believe he must have picked out the girls he wanted. The sheriff had no less of a part either, and I’m sure there are many more persons in this town involved that we don’t know about.”
“Why use these girls- why hurt them?”
Vivian scowled deeply as she spoke, “Sacrifices, to breed them.”
“To breed them?”
“Ophelia, how do you think that house had so many little girls who don’t know or remember who their parents are?”
“Oh my god…”
“When the girls there began to understand what was happening they-” Vivian paused, unable to say her next words. She took a shallow breath as her heart dropped, “They killed themselves. The younger girls drank poison and the older ones hung themselves.” She inhaled sharply to flush her emotions out of her system, “The sheriff covered it up as the older girls killing the younger ones and then hanging themselves out of guilt and shame.”
Ophelia wasn’t sure how she was feeling to listen to such a story. Her stomach felt unsettled, “What happened to the facility home?”
Vivian laughed bitterly, “Can you believe, it was turned into a recreational club. Most of the townspeople didn’t like the idea and never became a member. Only very few go there. There’s a hotel on the same estate, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s were Sebastian is staying.”
The sudden thought of Sebastian made her feel uneasy. She shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat. A month ago she pretended and treated him as her husband, and now she wanted to squeeze every drop of thought that remained with her about him out of her memory. Ophelia hated being used, being played, a small part of her wanted to trust him, to trust his words, to trust that she was safe with him, but it was all a lie, it was all fake, just like their relationship.
“You’re thinking about him,” Vivian noted in a matter-of-fact manner.
“How could I not? He has me right exactly where he wants me, just as he always had.” Her eyes remained stuck to the dying sun outside the car window. A slow painful departure it almost felt like. La mort de la lumière apporte la naissance des ténèbres. The death of light brought the birth of darkness. She had remembered that line quite clearly from one of Stefan’s poem. “Why does he hate me so much?”
“Sebastian grew up alone. He had no love, no family, nothing. His parents sent him away when he was a child so he didn’t form any sort of bond. Even when he’d come back home, he was usually silent, almost depressing to look at. I tried speaking to him on many occasions. I tried to view him as my brother when I was a young girl, but he was really just a fantom in the house. It was almost like anyone could just walk through him. I personally think he lived in the shadow of his older brother, even after his death. But, he wasn’t upset about it. It was almost as if he liked being alone.” She stopped with a soft laugh, “He was the polar opposite to his father, his father was a recklessly loud man, whereas Sebastian barely spoke, and I think that’s what pissed his father off even more.”
“He didn’t have a good relationship with his father?”
“His father was a manipulative asshole. Who would have a good relationship with someone like that? He hated his father, he hated everyone quite honestly. I was shocked when Sebastian even came back here to listen to that old piece of shit of a father he has, who’s high on cocaine up in his little whorehouse.”
Vivian pulled into the driveway of Palmer’s Motel and turned off the engine. She sat in a silence before she said her next words, “To be fair, Ophelia, I don’t think he hates you. I think he wants to. I’m only saying this because when Sebastian hates someone, you’ll know. But this, with you,” she paused again to look at her clearly almost trying to search for an answer, “I don’t understand. And I’m not sure if he even does either.”
**
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