Page 17 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

With a rehearsed gesture, I brush my hair back. For the first time in my life, I’m happy with my appearance. With a little concentration, I even manage to push back the furtive look in my eyes, although I’ve put my eye drops with the belladonna in my pocket just to be safe.

Again, I stare at the parking lot and try to suppress the rush of excitement, joy, and fear in me. I know I won’t get many chances, maybe only one. Unconsciously, my hand twitches to the pocket where I’ve stashed the bottle of chloroform, the sedation drops, and a couple of zip ties. Originally, I wanted to think of a concrete strategy to lure Lou into the RV, but I can’t exactly plan something like that, it has to arise spontaneously from a situation. She might linger around after a hike, lag behind her brothers, and I can talk to her. Maybe I’ll put on a bandage and ask her if she can help me with something, but for that she would have to be without her brothers.

Maybe the plan to lure her into the RV won’t even work. Then I’d have to kidnap Lou from her brothers’ tent at night, which makes the whole endeavor more difficult. I’d have to use the knockout gas, but I’m afraid I’d hurt Lou with it. She’s the lightweight of the Scrivers and a dose that puts Avery or Ethan in a deep sleep could cause her to stop breathing. No, the RV variation is the better option, even if it demands a lot more from me.

I smile again and my gaze wanders to the center’s entrance road. You have to drive over the steep pass and only enter from the right. What if they don’t even show up? Perhaps Lou posted some crap to mislead me? Could she have somehow realized I’d been stalking her for months?

I press my hands against my temples. No, impossible. Lou couldn’t have noticed, could she? I never commented or messaged her. But her overly cautious brother may have decided to change their itinerary—precisely because Lou posted it.

Ethan. The shadow of a dark thought falls over me. Of course, he knows what perverse fantasies a girl like Lou can awaken in men’s minds. He’ll probably guard her like a hawk. My hands tremble with suppressed anger as I imagine him thwarting my plans and I take several deep breaths.

I need to calm down. I can’t think about Ethan. I can’t think about anything that upsets me. I can’t afford another flashback. I have already had too many these past few weeks. Again, I feel like a jack-in-the-box just waiting to shoot up as soon as the lid pops open.

I keep waiting. The sun climbs to its zenith and starts to sink again. In the meantime, three RVs have turned off the access road and taken places in the area for larger vehicles. The area is to my right, separated only by a few hawthorn bushes, and the children’s voices buzz toward me like gnats.

Around two thirty it is so hot, even in the shade, that sweat runs down my back. Soon after, the hoodie is glued to my skin and I could curse for not wearing a T-shirt. I’m considering taking it off when I suddenly spot a gray Toyota on the access road. Lou posted her brother’s car months ago with mayo under the door handles in revenge for one of Ethan’s pranks. With nerve-racking slowness, the car rolls into the parking lot directly toward the visitor center.

My mouth is bone dry. Even at this distance, I can make out a young blond man at the wheel. Ethan? In the picture Lou secretly posted of him, he’s wearing a pigtail and his expression is dour.

Like a shadow moving with the sun, I move around the trunk to keep an eye on the car. I peek through the sparse foliage of a hedge in the direction of the parking lot. It really is Ethan, I recognize him quite easily! He is even wearing a red-and-white checkered shirt.

Suddenly, chaos erupts in my head. I’ve waited so long for this moment, it now flies by without me really understanding what’s happening.

The Toyota comes to a halt between me and the visitor center, immediately after, all four doors swing open. Lou’s brothers get out almost simultaneously; they seem to me like phantoms that spring from my imagination. But they are real, less than a hundred feet away from me.

Ethan, with a pinched face and hands on hips; tan Liam, with incredibly long hair and a blissful grin like he smoked a joint along the way; Jayden, with tangled strands sticking up from his head, clearly the youngest of the brothers; and Avery, the tallest, soft-featured, the one most closely resembling Lou.

But where is Lou?

Cold creeps up my spine: She stayed at home with friends!

Her boyfriend?

My hands involuntarily clench as I glare icily at the Toyota. Avery leans in again and says something I cannot make out from here.

“My goodness, she should just stay in the car, then,” I hear one of them call out, annoyed. “But then she won’t know where the showers are either!”

A shiver of relief runs down my spine. Avery is still talking. Lou probably just doesn’t want to get out. As if she knew I was standing here waiting for her.

Maybe I should just get in the car with her, drug her, and hotwire the car once her brothers are gone. I glance at her siblings.

“Jesus Christ!” Ethan yells, who is now standing under the covered entrance. “Leave her be if she wants to sulk!” He disappears inside the visitor center and Liam and Jayden follow while Avery continues to lean toward the back seat, gesturing widely.

Suddenly, he backs away and a blonde girl climbs out. Just like that. As if this moment had no meaning.

I want to fall to my knees. Lou is real, truly real! Sunrays bounce off her hair, which she has tied in a high ponytail. For seconds, I can only stare without thinking, without breathing. I find her even more delicate than in her photos. Even brighter, even lighter. She giggles and elbows Avery in the ribs, then laughs and pulls up her blouse, which has slipped over her shoulder. Avery also laughs, and in that moment, I envy him fiercely for the many years by her side. How good that must feel!

When I can breathe again, it’s as if the weight of my loneliness burdens me even more. Just like in front of the monster’s house, a veil of red fog sweeps through my mind and dazes me. Lou pokes Avery in the ribs again and again until he playfully punches her in the upper arm. They laugh, Lou nods toward the visitor center and says something to Avery that makes him grin.

I stare after them as they step in side by side, my hand wandering to the zip ties, knockout drops, and chloroform in my pocket.

“Soon,” I hear myself say. Softly and stoically as if I had to calm myself so as not to rush after them.

A half an hour later, when the Scrivers exit the visitor center with Lou linking arms with Avery, I retreat further into the woods. I walk parallel to the gravel road when at some point the gray Toyota drives past me. I jog behind them, hidden by the trees, but turn around as soon as I see where they pitch their tent.

Knowing Lou is within reach puts me on an emotional roller coaster and I fear another attack.

Back in the RV, I rip my sweaty clothes off, get in the shower, and figure out how to fix the flashback problem. Maybe I should use my eye drops with the atropine before our first meeting. Then I wouldn’t see Lou so clearly, I could stay cooler, and my eyes would definitely not be that of a hunter on the prowl due to the dilated pupils. Besides, it would also be good to minimize other stimuli. In L.A., I even managed to use the eye drops to move around in a large crowd for a short time without getting a flash. The drops are for iris inflammation, but if used cautiously, they are not harmful. At least that’s what the medical student wrote on the darknet. And of course I use a low-dose variant.

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