Strange in Skin (34 page)

The tears started to flow. The feeling of entrapment combined with being so physically injured tore
at my heart. I took a deep breath. My ribs throbbed and a headache was quickly forming as I felt
around on my head and a large lump was growing on the top of my skull. The fire radiating up from
my punctured skin burned intensely. I closed my eyes for fear that I might accidentally look down and
see the bone again. Closing my eyes would make me unable to see the gruesome sight. I put both hands
behind me and felt the bloody wetness on the cold dirt and brought up both hands horrified. Death
would soon conquer me.

Emry wouldn’t want things to have ended like this for me. He had warned me to be careful, and I
had been such an idiot this time. I was messing with the wrong people who couldn't care less about
what happened to me. They only wanted one thing, Emry Logan destroyed, and if it meant destroying
me too, then so be it. I had proven loyal to the wrong side in their eyes. I was just as much a criminal
and threat as he.

What I was thinking? I scolded myself for even thinking that Emry would still be caring about what
happened to me. Whatever had happened between us had been hopeless. He was a smart man. He
would have given up. Only I had become the foolish one, had put myself in this situation and now I
was in too deep. There was no way to get myself out of this one.

I was so pathetic. I deserved to die down here like a worthless thing. My life was meaningless. I
had no purpose, no one to believe in me, nowhere to turn. I felt the same despairing emotions rush
over me similar to those that I had felt after the realization that me and Emry Logan would never be,
only this depressed feeling was even worse.

The dizziness came over me then, integrating its way throughout my entire body. I couldn’t think. I
couldn’t move. I felt my consciousness fade in and out, in and out. I felt my body fall over onto my
side, my hair caked in vomit and blood, as the cold, damp earth beneath me engulfed me until all I
could see was black.

The sound of voices awoke me partially. I had no sense of how long I had been down here. I
couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. My wounds still throbbed uncontrollably.
“This is what I needed to drive the whole way down here to see? What did you do to her?”

“I caught her upstairs in the room nosing around.”

 

“So just to get this straight, you snap, lose your temper and need me to get you out of this mess, does
that about sum it up, Lauren?”

“Who else was I going to call?”
“You could’ve killed her. Just look at her. I’m surprised you even called. Why not just let her die?”
“I couldn’t.”

“Really, Lauren? You mean you actually have a heart thumping around somewhere in there? Who is
she?”

“Anna James.”
“Why does that name sound familiar? Wait. The pastor’s daughter?”
“Yeah.”
“Just great, Lauren.”

I felt my eyes flitter open slightly. They immediately snapped shut again as the bright light from a
flashlight was being shined directly on me.

“What a mess. What’s mom going to say about this? Does she know?”
“Not yet. It’s her own fault. She was supposed to stay out of it.”
“It?”
There was a long silent pause between them.

“Never mind. I can only guess what she’s been up to. I told you all long ago I want no part in any of
this. I mean it. Don’t tell me one thing more.”

The flashlight moved out of my face and off to the side. I tried to open my eyes again. There was
just enough light in the room for me to see the faces of two men. One was Lauren Anderson, the one
who had just confessed to finding me upstairs and who had caused me this cruel misery, and the other
looked familiar. I tried to squeeze out the pain for a moment so I could concentrate and think. It was
another one of Mrs. Anderson’s sons. I believed he may have been the oldest, but it had been a long,
long time since I had seen him. He had moved away.

“Can you fix her?” Lauren asked his brother.

 

The man let out an overly irritated sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t do anything down here. These
conditions aren’t exactly sanitary.”

Oh, that’s right. I remembered that Mrs. Anderson’s oldest son had moved away, because he had
gotten a job out of town in a nearby city as a physician. A little hope fluttered through me. I wasn’t
dead yet. Perhaps he’d be able to help me.

“Do whatever you can.”
“She’s lost a lot of blood. You didn’t have to be so violent.”

Another pause. Then I heard footsteps walk closer toward me and the flashlight shining again in my
face.
“Anna? Anna James? Are you able to open your eyes? Are you able to speak?” the man asked me.

I felt my lips part slightly, but a wave of pain swept over me again. My eyes squinted from the light
as I tried to open them as well. I felt the light touch of his fingers on my neck as he checked the rate of
my pulse.

“She’s bad, Lauren. Real bad. We have to move her and quick. She has a fever. She’s in shock.
Here, take this. Anna? Anna, listen to me. You’re going to feel a pinch in your arm.”
I felt the needle go into my arm but barely. It was nothing compared to all the other things I was
feeling right now.
“She’s not stable enough to go back up those stairs. We’ll have to take her out that door. Go open
it.”
I prayed for some sort of relief. Then all at once, the light of the flashlight began to dim, and I saw
blackness once again.

When I opened my eyes, I was still in the damp basement. I no longer felt the cold dirt beneath me
and realized that I was in some sort of a cot. I tried to sit up but winced. My ribcage was bandaged,
and there was an IV in my arm. I remembered how badly my ankle had hurt but couldn’t feel the pain
as much now. Looking down, my leg was casted. He must have helped me. Mrs. Anderson’s son must
have somehow repaired the injured ankle and given me pain medication. I was a little groggy but
overall much improved. I reached up and touched my hair. It was damp. Someone had cleaned me up
as well. But why had they brought me back to this place?

The door at the top of the basement stairs creaked open, and I could hear multiple footsteps
stomping down the stairs toward where I was. I laid back down on the cot. I wondered if I should
pretend to be sleeping, but before I could think it through properly, I looked up and saw them gawking
at me.

“Finally she’s awake. Ms. James, how do you feel?”

 

I recognized Mrs. Anderson’s oldest son, the one who I presumed had saved my life, as he stood
directly over me, his eyes intently staring at my face.

“Better,” I managed to whisper, although my voice sounded a little muffled and raspy.
“Good, good.” He put a cuff over my arm and took my blood pressure. “This is the last time I’m

checking on her and then I’m out of here.” He shined a pen light in my pupils. “I suppose I can’t talk
you out of what I’ve already told you.”

 

“No.” Mrs. Anderson stood from a distance looking harshly at me. She had her hands clasped
together in front of her.

 

“She needs to be in a hospital,” her son told her.

 

She quickly shook her head as her mind was already made up. “Why, so they can just release her?

Absolutely not. Not until this whole thing is over and done with.”
He frowned, his face illuminated by the glow of a small lantern at the bottom of the stairs. “If there
are any signs of infection, another fever, yellow drainage from the wounds ...”
“Yes, we understand,” Mrs. Anderson whispered.

I didn’t like the way she spoke. She seemed overly calm all the time when there was this
treacherous storm really going on underneath the surface. And the way she talked about me, as if I
weren’t in the room or a child or something, was so irritating.

“I don’t want called if that happens,” her son went on, being persistent in the way he spoke to them.
“Take her to Seneca General, but I am done here.”
“You don’t have to repeat yourself ten hundred times,” Lauren grumbled.

A loud knock echoed all the way down to the basement from the front door upstairs. Within only a
few moments, the knock repeated, even louder. Everyone stared at each other uncomfortably. I was
hopeful for whoever it was, anyone but this grisly family in front of me.

“Don’t just stand there. Go see who it is,” Mrs. Anderson snapped only allowing her tone of voice
to rise slightly.
Lauren rushed up the basement stairs taking two at a time. I could hear the front door open and
another pair of feet anxiously shuffling inside the house.
“Where is she? What’s going on?”

It was my father. He was panicked.
“Down there.”
“What? Why is she down there?”

And then he made his way down into the dully-lit basement, his eyes locked on mine and the
condition I was in. He looked pale even in the shadows.
“Anna!” he said horrified. “What happened?”

He rushed over to my side and took my hand in his, his eyes scanning frantically over the various
bandages and my cast, the IV plugged into the vein in my arm.

I opened my mouth to speak but no words would come out. Tears flowed freely down both cheeks,
and I could do nothing more but sob and bury my face into his chest trying to mumble how sorry I was
for everything.

He turned around and glared at the Anderson clan, demanding an answer from them.
“She fell,” Lauren lied.

 

His mother gave him a stern look and took a step closer to my father. “There was an incident in
which Ms. James was found meddling with my affairs upstairs.”

“Was found?” he asked. “What exactly does that mean?” He glanced back down at me.
“It means we weren’t home and she broke in,” Lauren said bluntly.
Mrs. Anderson held up her hand motioning for her son to keep quiet.

“Is that true?” His eyebrows furrowed. It was the look of disappointment I was dreading, though
inevitable, to see. “Anna? Please tell me there’s a better explanation than that.”

 

I closed my eyes and squeezed his hand. I opened my mouth and cleared my throat. “I’m sorry.”
“But why? What were you doing? What were you thinking?” he demanded from me, his tone no
longer holding even a twinge of sympathy.

 

“John, you know exactly why she was here,” Mrs. Anderson told him, giving him just an extra
nudge to confirm his suspicion.

 

He released his grasp from my hand and stood, backing up as he did so, so that he was a few steps
away from me now. “No. It can’t be that. You’re done with him. I thought this whole thing was over.”

“Love is such a difficult thing to turn on and off.” Mrs. Anderson smirked at me.
Anger burned within me at her mockery. I absolutely abhorred her.

My father was starting to fall apart. He stood there rocking back and forth on his heels as if he
could barely take it. His mind was going a million miles an hour, and I couldn’t tell which direction
he was taking as he processed all the information. I had betrayed him. He had trusted me to have been
me
again, the me he had always liked, always thought I was. He trusted that Emry Logan was out of
the picture entirely and that it would never come down to this again, this vicious cycle of
disillusionment that twisted all of our lives uncomfortably upside down, forcing us to have to
reevaluate who we were, what we’ve become. I could feel the instant strangeness between my father
and I as I had once felt in Seneca County Prison after Buck had caught me and Emry in a moment of
brief passion. It was as if my father didn’t recognize the child he had watched grow up before him,
nor did I recognize my father, my pastor standing there whose eyes had grown as black as the
shadows surrounding him.

“So you found her, Lauren?” he asked, his voice just as jittery as his body language.
Lauren nodded.
“And then what?” he questioned him. “You beat her up? You taught her a lesson?”
“Not exactly,” Mrs. Anderson answered for him.

My father was on the verge of losing all control. You could hear the edge to his voice. It was still
undetermined though if he’d lose it on them or me. “Then please, enlighten me.”

 

“I already told you she fell.” The gruffness in Lauren’s voice grew as if he were ready to defend
any accusations thrown his way.

 

“That’s not true,” I quickly said. “He threw me down the stairs.”

My father bit his fingernail anxiously. Then he closed his eyes. I could tell he was trying to fight the
emotions writhing within him. He was fighting to remain as calm as possible.
“Don’t strain yourself, child. You’d better just rest and be silent,” Mrs. Anderson told me.
I glared at her, trying to project the hatred from within my eyes. “I won’t be silent. He tried to kill
me. You want rid of me like you want rid of Emry.”

She scowled back at me. I had said his name. I had struck a nerve. It was written all over her face,
but she didn’t reply. She simply took my father by both hands and turned him around to make him give
her his total attention. “John, listen to me. She’s fine.”

“She doesn’t look fine to me.”
“Of course not, but it’s all been taken care of. My Richard has performed surgery on the girl.”

“Surgery?” He tore his hands away from hers and then backed away, moving closer to me. His eyes
searched the shadows, searched to see Richard Anderson’s face in the darkness. “Is he here?”

“He’s here.”
The oldest son stepped out of the darkness and near the lantern, a worried expression on his face.

“She’s stable. She had a good bump on the head, a few fractured bones, and her ankle needed the most
work, but it’s been pinned and casted, and I’ve given her IV fluids and some pain medication.”
My father turned around to look at me again, realizing what I had just gone through, his face pained
with the thought of it all.

“Now, if there’s nothing else needed, I must be on my way.” Richard gave his mother and brother a
stern look. “Remember what I said.” Then he faced my father for a brief moment and gave him an
apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Pastor.”

I watched him walk slowly but steadily up the basement stairs. He probably hadn’t wished to be as
involved as he was, nor had he wanted to see my father face to face. He was in a big hurry to get out
of here and far away from Seneca and the drama his family was deriving here.