Hello and welcome friends old and new to On Sundays, We Read Horror. This month, I present the novella Jane Doe Number Six, where a woman tells her story of a blind date gone terribly wrong. An evening out in the city turns into a battle to survive starvation, nature, and the Lakeside Killer.
Monica and Richard fight for their lives, but there are worse things than a serial killer on the hunt.
All art by Byron Rempel.
Have you ever been shot, Detective?
I’m sorry. That was a foolish question. I’m sure you know lots about guns and things. It felt… It wasn’t what I expected. I don’t know if it was shock or what. It didn’t exactly hurt. It was like it was happening to someone else.
Richard saw what he did and managed to shake crazy man off. I fell over. I tried to get the door open, but it had shut, locked up tight… I don’t know how he did it, but Richard got up. Crazy man was scrambling backwards, like a crab. The lantern had fallen over, and crazy man looked like a monster in the light. He scurried to me at the door. He hit me in the leg where I was shot. Oh, how it hurt me right then. I balled up. He fumbled for the key and got out. The wall rocked when he slammed the door behind him.
“Let me take a look at it,” Richard said. I moved my skirt. I got shot in the calf. It was bloody and swollen. We couldn’t tell if the bullet was still in my leg or not. We didn’t have any water to clean it, so I tore a piece of my dress to bind it. We were grateful for the lantern. It had a battery, so we knew we’d have to be careful to make it last. The light was a blessing, though.
Crazy man dropped his gun.
Richard picked it up. He knew more about those things than I did. He unloaded it and counted the rounds. He showed me how to use it. I didn’t like it. I’ve always been afraid of guns. Things were bad, though. Richard asked me if I could shoot at crazy man if I had a chance. If he’d asked me the day before, I would have been horrified. I told him that I’d try. Lord have mercy on me.
She looked into the detective’s eyes. He rubbed them, then dropped his gaze down to the photos before him.
We knew we needed to get out. We still had no water. We both were hurt bad, and crazy man was not going to help us.
I guess you knew that, though.
Well, Richard and I. We knew we had to get out. We decided one of us would try to find a way out. We knew about the cement, but we could hear the water lap up against the boathouse, so we would try to find a weak spot in the wall. The other would watch the door and try to shoot crazy man if he came back in.
I didn’t like it. Neither did he. What could we do, though? We didn’t want to die there.
Monica leaned forward slightly in her seat. “You’ve been to the boathouse, Detective?” Jones looked up, grunted, and returned to his notetaking. Monica nodded and returned to her story.
The building, well it’s rectangular, and the door is on the far end away from the lake side. We could hear the water, so we figured that we should be able to get to it. We needed to get to it. We had to get out. Richard, he was getting worse by the day. My leg was getting bad, too. I didn’t tell him, but I could feel an infection coming on. It got hot and hard and red. We did the best we could. There wasn’t anything else to do.
So, we stayed quiet at the back of the room. We listened for the water. One of us always had the gun ready, and we rigged the doorknob with old cans on a string, so we’d hear of crazy man came back.
We poked around with sticks, looking for a soft spot in the wall, something to start with. We were careful with the lamp, but it did make the job easier. Pushing back the sand, we were able to find the join between the cement and the wall. I was never so happy to see a piece of wood in my life.
Richard had the lamp. Grabbing a bit of scrap metal, he started working it in the seem. I kept watching the door in the dark. My hand hurt for holding the gun so tight. None of us were talking. I listened for the clang of the iron at the door.
It felt like we were there for hours. I could hear Richard grunting as he was trying to pry off the boards. I knew there was nothing else in there with us, but I thought I could see something there in the dark, moving around. I shook my head, trying to make it go away. I jumped at a noise behind me.
“Monica! I think we’re through!” I tripped over some trash in the dark, but I didn’t care. I crawled to the light to see what we had.
Richard’s hands were covered in blood and dirt. He was trying to wipe them and point at the same time. It was a small sliver, but for the first time in a long time, we saw the light of the sun.
We were able to open up a notch in the wall by the ground.
Water. We could see the water. Good Lord, how we carried on. It felt like days. My head was splitting. We found an old drinking straw, and we took turns, our heads smashed up against the wall, drinking water from who knows where with any old thing in it. Now, I’m horrified, but right then and there, that water was the best thing I ever drank.
The water eased my headaches enough, but we still had no food. Richard made a joke about wishing he’d gotten a second bowl of Pho. It felt like that was from someone else's life. I didn’t say anything, but my leg was getting worse. It was hard and hot. It was starting to weep and streaks of red ran up and down my leg.
It wasn’t good, but Richard was worse.
He didn’t say much about it, but he took a good knock on the head. I didn’t know him well before we were taken, but he’d get forgetful. He’d get up to fiddle with something, then not recall what he was trying to do. He’d get grumpy, too. We were both hungry and scared, but he’d get … vicious. He’d be sound asleep, then start thrashing around. He’d get angry and throw things. He never laid a hand on me, but I could see him fighting himself over it. I’m ashamed to say it, but sometimes, I’d be more afraid of him than crazy man.
We had to get out.
The water helped, but things were getting worse. The hunger ate at my belly, and the infection was spreading from my leg. Richard was getting worse, too. We’d try to work on the wall, try to get out, but we’d pass out, wake up hours later. It was bad. The longer we waited, the weaker we’d get. I’d have dreams, too.
I’d see this lady. She looked like she was from the Middle Ages. The room was dark, but she’d glow like she was on fire. Her fancy dress never touched the sand. She floated in the air. At first, she’d stay on the other side of the room, but sometimes she’d get closer. I remember thinking how short her hair was. It didn’t go with the dress, but she was beautiful, until you looked into her eyes. I don’t know how to describe them. The rest of her was so bright, I couldn’t look right at her, but her eyes. It was like they sucked the light away, like a black hole. I don’t know how I know this, but it was like looking into the pits of hell.
I didn’t like it when I saw her. I remember one time; she came up next to me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream to Richard. She just got closer and closer.
When I came to, I was covered in blood. I thought it was Richard, but he was asleep, with not a drop of fresh blood on him. The boobytrap we put by the door wasn’t moved. Who did this to me?
After all this time, I still don’t know.
Time didn’t mean anything to Richard and me, but I knew that we’d have to get out fast or die. Crazy man hadn’t been back since the time he shot me. We worked on the hole in the wall, but it was getting harder and harder. At the start, we tried to make the best of it, tried to work together. Between Richard’s head injury and everything else, it was all just survival.
We didn’t talk much. When we did, it was short and bickery. I didn’t want to set him off, so I kept to my end of the things to do. Truth is, no matter how bad it got, I really couldn’t blame him. None of this was normal. If something happened, we all like to think we’d be heroes, but we don’t know until it happens, do we?
During the daylight, we’d try and listen by the hole. If it was a lake, maybe other people were out on the water. It was always quiet, though. We tried to catch fish, too. We never had any luck.
The bright lady, I’d see her at night sometimes. I never ended up bloody except for that one time, but I never mentioned it to Richard. Why should I have? It wouldn’t have done any good.
We were working on the back door when the alarm sounded. Crazy man came back. Richard grabbed the gun, but before he could fire, crazy man bounded across the floor and grabbed me. He shoved me in front of him, like a shield. He dared Richard to shoot. I yelled at Richard, told him to save himself, but crazy man grabbed my hand. He saw the gouges and scars on my arms from the bright lady.
He spun me around to face him. “How did you get these? Don’t lie.” Something about the way he … interrogated me. I told him about the bright lady. How she’d come after me in the night. I told him how she was dressed, and he got all pale. “Her? You saw her? She came to you?” I saw Richard out of the corner of my eye. He stood there, his mouth hung open, his hands down. Crazy man dropped me, ran his hands through his hair. “Her…,” he kept saying. He cocked his head, like the first time I saw him in the boathouse. He nodded, turned, and ran out the door. Richard and I both stood there. It wasn’t until we heard a car start and drive away that we realized what had happened.
We were free.
It felt strange, being outside. I read once, about a man who had been in prison. He came out and realized he hadn’t seen a stop sign in years. Has anyone ever told you that, Detective? The sun hurt us. Richard threw his shirt over his head and we made for a spot under a tree.
We were by a lake in the mountains. We weren’t sure where, but it wasn’t anyplace near where we were taken. There was a house and a dirt drive next to the boathouse. It was quiet, with no other houses and no boats out on the water that we could see. There was a cool breeze and it was beautiful.
There wasn’t a sign of a car, but we didn’t know if there was anyone else there. It was hard for me to walk, so I stayed out of sight and kept a lookout down the dirt road while Richard checked around the outside of the house. We stayed quiet. We couldn’t find any signs of anyone, but we couldn’t find any signs of electricity or phones, either.
We went inside. There was no one home, but we were able to find bandages and medicine, and we could clean ourselves.
And food.
We’d gone days. We tried to be careful. We tried to eat slow. We tried to keep watch.
But we were so hungry. Soft white bread. Tins of chopped ham. Peanut butter out of the jar. We couldn’t stop.
I’m ashamed now, but I remember thinking how… nice it all was. How safe I felt. Even with my leg, Even with Richard and his health. Even with crazy man. Even his little girls. It all felt so lovely. Hot showers. Food. A soft bed.
I was a fool.
To be continued
******************************************************
So, if you’re not already, please consider becoming a subscriber (paid is awesome for reasons, but free is amazing, too).
You can find subscription links for Substack, Patreon, and now Spotify here.
Each morning, The Sample sends you one article from a random blog or newsletter that matches up with your interests. When you get one you like, you can subscribe to the writer with one click. Sign up here.
Share this post