BEHOLDEN

TW: Assault

BEHOLDEN

‘Who’s there? Don’t do this to me!’

The fear in Sara’s quivering voice slices the icy darkness like a knife as she flees back down the passageway hoping to escape the certainty of the ‘vision’ she has just seen.

Sara remembers when it happened before. She was only eleven and her mother told her she was just dreaming and she would grow out of it. With eerie certainty she realises now, how wrong her mother’s advice had been.

At the same time as Sara flees, Bridie feels a warmth she hasn’t felt in a long time. Beholden to Sara for rescuing her from that dark cellar where she could still feel her attackers clutches and feel his vile spit in her ear as he threatened,

‘Come ‘ere ya little whore an’ gi’ me a bit of what ya bin’ sharin’ around! Ya say ya lookin’ fa ya father. I’ll show ya what ya really bin lookin’ fa!’

She feels his rough calloused hands as they loosen their strangle hold around her neck and begin tearing at the strings on her bodice. As his hands continue to rake at her bare flesh, Bridie struggles to pull away from the sharp pain of her attackers’ intrusion but his crushing weight thrusts her head back with an echoing thud against the unforgiving cellar wall. The blackness engulfs her!

. . .

Sara arrived by bus at the old outback pub in the shimmering heat of late afternoon. It had been a long trip into the unknown and she was so pleased to snuggle into her dad’s big bear hug while he made her feel like his little girl again. Her excitement was short lived as she looked around her, taking in the tired old building sitting in the middle of nothing. No trees, no grass, and no town, just brown dirt blowing across the flat. At nearly seventeen she considered herself a girl of the world. When her dad asked her if she would like the kitchen-hand position at his pub she jumped at the chance to leave her boring under-achieving school life and her over protective mother.

‘Come and I’ll show you around your new home. It hasn’t changed much since it was built over a century ago.’ Her dad sounded proud of this fact!

They left the shimmering glare of the sun behind as she followed him into the front bar of the pub with its big oak wine barrels holding up the dusty timber slab bar. In the darkness she glimpsed drinker’s sitting at the end of the bar and the rows of shadowy bottles perched on shelves above their heads. Sara shivered involuntarily as she followed her dad down the long main hallway with its thick walls and high ceilings.

As they walked past the kitchen, ‘This is where you will be working in the kitchen preparing meals and cleaning.’ Panic set in as she realised, she would have to work here!

At the end of the hallway her dad turned into a huge dark room.

‘This used to be the old kitchen but it will be your bedroom now.’

As Sara looked around, she noticed an open fire place and a sink which still had an old hand water pump. There were only cupboards for crockery.

Sara’s shocked question ‘Where can I hang my clothes, dad?’ came with his reply ‘Don’t worry love, I’ll put an old dressing table I ‘ve stored in the cellar in here for you. It will fit all your clothes and your jewellery on top.’

Her dad made her feel at home and helped her set the dressing table, which had a huge oval mirror, in front of the fireplace and her bed where it hid the sink. He also found an old carpet square which she helped him shake out all the dust.

‘Now you can come out to the kitchen with me and I’ll show you around.’

Sara began to relax with her dad’s company in the kitchen until the bar closed and her dad shut the doors.

‘Goodnight love. Well done on your first night!’ as he ushered her down the hall to her new bedroom.

Then the trouble started all over again! Sara caught a glimpse in the large mirror of her dressing table of a gaunt man’s pale face.

‘Lassie, would it nought pain ye to walk around me? I’m just tryin to warm meself in front of ta fire!’

‘What do you want from me,’ Sara screamed into the dark room as she turned on her bedside lamp with the hope her loud voice would rid her of the unwanted intrusion.

Instead, she watched in frozen horror as a reflection that she thought was hers, moved.

‘You have a huge h-o-l-e in your …. Head!’

‘It’s me, Bridie. I came here to find my father a long time ago!’

Sara’s voice faltered as she noticed blood on Bridie’s clothes and watched as her hands bent towards Sara’s silver brooch on the dressing table. There was no mistaking the beautiful pair of sky-blue butterfly wings pressed into the face of the brooch.

‘I pressed those butterfly wings into that brooch and gave them to my father before he left us to go to fight in the Great War. He came out here to work on the new Railway and my mother and I lost touch with him. I had to come out here to search for him.’ Bridie’s voice crumbled to a sadness Sara could feel in her soul. ‘I had a terrible experience when I was employed as chamber maid at this Hotel and could not get out of the cellar.'

Bridie’s soft ghostly voice resonated from the walls,

‘Where did you get this brooch?’

‘It’s mine!’ Sara tried to sound convincing. ‘My dad gave it to me. He said it was his grandfathers and it had been given to him by his daughter before she mysteriously disappeared. He told me his grandfather had searched for her for a long time but never found her. He wanted it passed down to the eldest girl in the family in memory of her!’

Sara felt that familiar embracing warmth as Bridie’s reflection fades from the mirror and her soft voice whispers close to Sara,

‘Thank you, Sara ….!’