Page 51 of WITSEC
Twist. Twist. Pull.
Strangely, the pain of my nerves rubbing against the rope had numbed. Was it my need to escape—my adrenaline blocking out the one thing that could slow me down?
It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to know. I had no idea when Mr. X would come back. I wouldn’t let myself think about what he would do to me when he did. I just had to get out of here.
Twist. Twist. Pull.
The rope around my right wrist slid up around my hand. I held my breath as I pulled on it again and the rope squeezed over the rest of my hand, passed over my fingers, and I was free. A new surge of hope and relief rushed through me.
“Oh, Shiii…loooh!” Mr. X sang, his voice echoing from down the hall. I was so tired of him calling for me that way. There was no doubt that sound would haunt me for the rest of my life if I survived this.
He began humming as he made his way down the hall toward my room. I worked quickly to untie my other wrist as I listened to him getting closer. Once my other hand was free, I glanced down at my tied ankles. I wouldn’t be able to untie them in time. Panicked, I searched around. There was a pen on my nightstand. I reached for it. My fingers were barely able to roll it close enough to scoop it into my hand.
Moving as fast as I could, I wrapped the rope back around each wrist, praying that he wouldn’t notice that they weren’t tied. I hid the pen in my clenched fist behind the taut rope. My gaze went back to the doorway just in time to see Shayla’s feet slide away.
My hand that wasn’t holding the pen squeezed around the rope so tightly it was painful. I needed that pain. I needed it to be worse than the fear that was threatening to paralyze me.
Mr. X stepped into view. Only he wasn’t alone. He was holding Shayla’s limp body against him with an arm around her waist and his hand held one of hers. Then he waltzed into my room, quite literally. Still humming, he spun around—dancing with her lifeless body. As he dipped her, he said, “Your sister always was the attention whore.” He stood straight and stareddown at Shayla, whose head flopped around like a newborn baby’s. “Even though you two are identical, you couldn’t be more different.” He spun around again, swinging Shayla with him. “She flaunted herself about, gobbling up every ounce of attention she got like a greedy, spoiled princess. She may have been beautiful on the outside, but her soul was ugly.” He tossed Shayla’s body to the ground and his eyes flicked to me. “You, however, are perfection. Inside and out. You don’t have to flaunt anything. Your soul radiates a genuine and pure light. It calls to me.” He walked over to my bed. Eyes never leaving mine, he brought his knee up onto the mattress. “Your innocence draws me in like a moth to a flame,” he said as he crawled over me until he was straddling my hips. His hands cupped my face. “I covet that innocence.” His hands moved down and around my neck. “I want it so bad…” He squeezed. “I almost want to destroy it.”
He cut off my air completely. Panic flared through me, taking over. I thrashed and bucked beneath him, almost forgetting that my hands were free. I quickly worked to shed the rope.
“You are mine, Shiloh. No one can take you from me now,” he growled as he continued to choke me.
I got the rope off my hand holding the pen.
Do it! Do it now!I screamed internally. Fisting the pen in my hand, I swung it. I stabbed the pen through his cheek.
“AH!” he screamed, rolling off of me and off the bed. He hit the ground with a loud thump that shook my room.
I didn’t waste any time and started untying the rope around my ankles. I got one untied pretty quickly, then jumped to the next one. He groaned loudly and crawled toward the bathroom connected to my room.
As soon as I had my last ankle untied, I quickly clambered off my bed. I jumped over Shayla’s body and ran for the door. I was caught by my foot and fell forward. The moment I hit the ground, I was dragged back.
I started kicking my legs and because my ankles were bloody, his grip on me slipped. He let out a loud roar as I started to crawl away. I pushed to my feet and ran for the door again. By his ragged breathing, I knew he was right behind me. Not wanting a repeat of what had happened on the stairs, I made a last-second decision to turn right, the opposite direction from the stairs, as I ran out of my room. I had a plan in my head, and I prayed it would work.
Pushing my beaten body to the max, I returned to my parents’ bedroom door. I squeezed through the door quickly. Just as I got inside, Mr. X tried to grab me. I let out a yelp as I leapt away and dashed for my parents’ en suite.
Just like the bedroom door, the doorknob was missing from the bathroom door. I’d anticipated that. My parents’ bathroom had a linen hutch for their towels, extra bedding, and other stuff they’d chosen to store in there. I put my back to the side of it, set my feet on the wall, and pushed. Grunting loudly, I used the strength in my legs to knock over the heavy hutch in front of the door just as Mr. X tried to shove it open. The sound of the hutch crashing to the floor echoed loudly in the bathroom, followed by Mr. X yelling my name on the other side of the door.
The hutch wouldn’t keep him out for long, which I’d known before coming in here. I rushed across the bathroom over to what looked like a cabinet door in the wall near the shower. It wasn’t a cabinet. My parents’ bathroom was located over the laundry room. And the door in the wall was a laundry chute.
When we had been kids, Shayla and I used to climb down the chute. I was older and bigger now, but I was certain I could still fit. Ripping open the door, I peered down the narrow tunnel made of wood. It was going to be a tight fit. As soon as I started to slide my body into the chute feet-first, Mr. X started ramming against the door with what I assumed was his whole body. If he kept doing that, he’d get inside in no time.
Moving as fast as I could, I continued lowering myself into the tight tunnel. I put my feet tightly against the walls of the chute to help lower me down and to keep me from falling. As soon as I was fully inside, I closed the door to the chute. Nothing could be seen but darkness. I did my best not to focus on it and started working my way down, trying to be as quiet as possible.
“Shiloh!” Mr. X roared and I froze. His stomps as he moved around the bathroom made the walls in the chute vibrate.
When they started to sound far away, I moved down some more. I was almost to the bottom when the door to the chute was ripped open.
“Shiloh!” he yelled down at me.
I only glanced up at him for a second, to see him staring down at me, before dropping down the chute the rest of the way. I fell into a basket that was sitting on top of the dryer to catch the clothes. Because the basket was too small for my body, it tipped over and I fell to the floor. I tried to catch myself with my hands. They slowed down my fall a little, but the rest of me still smacked to the ground.
Breathing heavily and starting to feel pain, I got to my feet. The first few steps I took, I limped. As I made my way out of the laundry room and into the mudroom, I tried my best to quiet my breathing.
I had two ways to get to the front door. I could go through the guest bathroom to my mom’s office or take the hall by the stairs. Stepping out of the mudroom, I turned left and cut through the Jack-and-Jill guest bathroom that led to my mom’s office. Taking the hall by the stairs would leave me too exposed.
Before I stepped out into the foyer, I leaned on the wall in my mom’s office so I could peek out. I looked up the stairs and down the hall and tried to see into the living room straight across the foyer. I didn’t see Mr. X anywhere. Silently, I stepped out of my mom’s office. With the front door in my sight, I crept toward it.I strained to listen for any sound that would give me a hint of where Mr. X was in the house. I heard nothing. Just the hum of the air-conditioning blowing through the vents.
