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“I don’t like it. Write another.”
George couldn’t believe his ears. “What? You don’t like it?”
Amelia, not sparing a glance his way, tore the piece of paper she was holding into several pieces, letting them flutter to the floor. “Nope. Write me another. And be quick about it, I’m tired of sitting here while you write more disgraceful things about my mother.”
It had been a number of days already (George had lost count just how many), and he was no closer to escaping the clutch of his kidnapper. Maybe slightly, if his healing foot counted, but that wouldn’t be much use if he couldn’t unlock the front door to run away. Even if he could pick the lock, there would be no time before Amelia caught up to him, and that would only be if he could get past her in the first place. She had him seated at the desk, not tied down as she believed his foot still could not bear his weight (and it nearly couldn’t), as she lay on the bed between him and the bedroom door.
Nobody had come to rescue him yet, which felt out of character for the quick-acting Murdoch. He supposed perhaps they hadn’t even discovered he was missing at all; he was on a book tour, after all, it’s not like his absence at work would be considered unusual. As it stood, it would appear as though he had to take matters into his own hands, before he ran out of time. He worried she would… dispose of him once she got what she wanted.
“No,” he said, letting his hands drop to his knees with a smack. Finally, Amelia looked up, albeit sharply.
“No?” she echoed, tone dangerous and, if George was being completely honest, a little scary.
He shook his head. “Amelia, I will not write another false story about your mother. It won’t change a thing, and I do not believe it will make you feel any better about the situation.”
Immediately, Amelia stood and marched her way over to tower over him. He tried his best to remain confident, but the fierce expression on the woman’s face dwindled his courage. “Might I remind you, George Crabtree, that your foot is still on the mend from the last time you tried to defy me. You are in no place to deny me my demands.”
At her words, his foot let out a pang, as if to reinforce her point, but George held strong. “I won’t do it.” Maybe, if he refused altogether, he could instead convince her to let him go. “But, if you let me go, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you on my account. I won’t tell the police a thing. Just let me go, and we can forget this ever happened.”
To his dismay, Amelia appeared unconvinced. “And how can I be sure of that?”
George scrambled for something, anything, to make himself seem trustworthy. “Because I care about you,” he blurted. “I care about what happens to you. Being stuck --” bad choice of words, George! “-- I-I mean allowed to stay with you has made me feel your struggle, and I only want what’s best for you.” George didn’t consider himself a good liar, but he could be quick with words when he wanted to be.
And yet, Amelia still held firm. “I don’t know, George, what if you’re just saying that so I’ll let you go?”
“I’m not, Amelia, really,” he insisted.
She bent, now, to touch her nose with his, voice taking on a more sultry tone. “Are you ready to prove your words true?”
A sharp pang of nervousness shot through George’s chest. “Wha-what are you talking about? I really am telling the truth!”
Amelia didn’t reply, instead tucking up her dress to allow her to straddle his knees. Her arms came up to loosely loop around his neck. “Do you really love me, George Crabtree?”
George could barely speak, mind racing. How desperate was he, really? If this was the price to pay for freedom, was it worth it? Surely Murdoch would find him, eventually, and George could still stall for a few more days. Who knows how many times she’d force him to rewrite the story anyway. However, backpedalling from this with a lady as crazy as she would certainly come as a challenge.
As he struggled to find words, Amelia leaned in impossibly closer. “Show me just how much you care,” she breathed in his ear. A shiver ran down his spine, carrying a different feeling than she meant.
Without applying any pressure just yet, George brought his hands up to grip her shoulders. “Amelia, I fear I’ve been misunderstood --”
“You said you cared about me,” Amelia interrupted, voice once again carrying a note of danger. “You said. ”
George took in a deep breath before speaking, partly to calm his nerves and partly to give him time to think of the best reply. “Yes, I did,” he began firmly, “but caring for someone and loving someone are very different things.”
A beat. Her face remained tucked in his neck, blocking him from gauging her reaction. He decided to brace for the worst.
Manic whispers reached his ear, and after another moment she leaned back. He still couldn’t understand her, but he could easily see he was in trouble. If looks could kill, he’d be six feet under.
“-- won’t write, won’t stay, won’t love me…” Finally, her voice cleared enough for him to make out her words. Still muttering under her breath, she lifted herself up and disappeared into the kitchen, out of George’s rather concerned view. He could hear her sifting through the drawers, looking for something. It didn’t take long for her to find it, and she returned, more deranged whispering on her lips.
George could have sworn his heart stopped when he caught sight of the glinting knife in his captor’s hand. Time slowed to an imperceptible speed, and in the time it took for Amelia to cross the room to stand over George again, nearly his entire life had played like a moving picture before his eyes.
Then, just as impossibly, the next moment sped past him. George could barely process what was happening before pain punched him in the torso, and he dazedly looked down to see the blade no longer before him, but sticking out of him.
The world began to melt away. No longer could George make out Amelia’s expression, nor did it matter. Everything quieted, only his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The pain and shock effectively rendered him speechless, and even if he could’ve manipulated his lips the right way he wasn’t sure what he’d have to say anyway. What was there to say, after being stabbed?
Through the haze, he watched more than felt Amelia rip the knife out, take his wrists into her hands, and heave him up, displaying a strength George had no clue she’d had in her. His legs instinctively held him up, though it sent an aching pain into his foot, and allowed her to lead him past the bed and out the bedroom door. She led him all the way over to the basement stairs, at which point his knees finally buckled and sent him keeling heavily to the floor. Immediately, his hands rushed to clutch his wound, blood soaking his torn shirt.
“Don’t tell me you won’t be able to make it down the stairs,” Amelia tutted. The words, alongside the ache in his abdomen agitated by the fall, sparked some amount of indignance in him.
“Maybe if you hadn’t stabbed me, I’d be more compliant!” Though strained, George managed to muster enough breath to yell.
A mistake, clearly, as his captor’s face fell into an eerily blank expression, and she crouched next to him in order to grab his collar and tug his face closer to hers.
“I only ever hurt you when you stopped being compliant, George Crabtree. This all would have been avoided if you’d only followed my requests.” She held him there for an extra moment, steely eyes staring into his glazed, frightful ones. Then, abruptly, she let him go, and his head crashed into the floor, ripping a yelp from his throat. He lay there, bleeding out onto the floor for a minute or two, before a click! coming from just above him made him open his eyes. A terrifying sight greeted him: Amelia, still with that blank expression on her face, steadily pressing a gun into his forehead.
“Get up.”
Even with a knife wound in his torso, George gained enough adrenaline from the sight alone to stand up and begin the slow, painful hobble down the stairs. By the time they made it all the way down, miraculously without incident, all the fight had (literally) drained out of him. Especially while Amelia still had a gun pointed to his head.
Only the daylight spilling in from the open door lit the basement, making it difficult to see much of anything. George could barely make out the dirt floor and stone walls, but anything past where he stood disappeared into the freezing darkness. Amelia prodded him forward, and he obeyed with little resistance despite the gnawing anxiety in his chest.
Before George could ponder much on the idea that Amelia was probably about to leave him down here to bleed out and freeze to death, she grabbed him, turning him around to face her before resuming her lethal aim. The light behind her made her merely a silhouette, hiding her expression. George swallowed harshly.
“Remember, George, this is your fault,” she said, her fingers slowly tightening around the gun’s handle. “You should have listened to me. I told you I get a little unhinged sometimes.” George could just see every little movement the gun made, and he could certainly see her hands shaking. From nerves, or from anger? Perhaps it didn’t matter in the end. He knew what came next.
“Amelia, think about this,” he tried anyway, voice rough. “If you kill me, you’ll hang --”
“I don’t care.”
Amelia’s words stopped George in his tracks. The rest of his bargain died on his tongue, and his brow furrowed.
“Mother’s dead, you won’t listen to me anymore -- I’ve had it. I’m done.”
A stretch of silence. Amelia’s hand grew inexplicably steady. Dread built in George’s chest.
“Neither of us should be here anymore.”
“Amelia, please.”
She hesitated for just a moment. Just one, but then a heavenly sound managed to reach the basement.
A knock.
Amelia closed her eyes, either frustrated or relieved, and dropped her hands. The fear pressing in on George’s chest lessened a touch, and he sent up a quick thank-you to his guardian angel.
Too early, it would seem, as two petite hands shoved his shoulders with all their surprising might. George jerked backward with a shout, bloody hands now flailing for something, anything to stop his fall. A fruitless endeavour. Walls of dirt rose up to surround him, and he belatedly realized she’d pushed him into a grave. If George had any sense left in him, he would have taken back that prayer.
His back made contact first, knocking the wind out of him and leaving him gasping for breath. Next came his head, bouncing off the hard ground. The spike in pain from his torso overshadowed the other sensations before he could process any of them, and he instinctively clutched at it again.
“You are a lucky, lucky man, George Crabtree,” Amelia called down to him. She reached into the shallow grave, and it was then that George noticed the wood surrounding him. The grave wasn’t empty.
Through his strained panting, he managed to croak out, “You were going to kill me all along.”
Amelia paused, expression unreadable. “That coffin was not for you,” she said darkly, “but it’s too late now. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to bury you once our guest leaves.” She heaved the lid shut, sending George into pitch darkness and despair. Before he could think about lifting the lid and escaping, a heavy thump sounded from above him, followed by footsteps. Something metallic snapped shut to his left, and one final thump suggested Amelia had climbed out.
Panic began to set in immediately. George knew he wouldn’t last long, whether it was the lack of oxygen or blood loss that got him first. He should have screamed for help as soon as he heard the knock, but Amelia still had that wretched gun in her hand, and in her own panic she may have decided to take the shot anyway. Now there was nothing he could do, no way to call for help, and he could feel his strength seeping out of him with his blood --
Stay calm, there’s still time. As long as he could keep himself from rushing his demise, he could still hold on to the hope that Murdoch would find him. First things first: calm his breathing. He already had a limited supply, no use in needlessly depleting it by panicking. Unfortunately, he found this easier said than done, and by the time he’d gotten his breath down to a manageable speed he’d begun to shake with the cold. His hands were numb where they still pressed down on the stab wound, but whether that was from the cold or blood loss he could no longer tell. Perhaps both.
After an indeterminate amount of time, George came to the realization he could no longer feel his toes. He tried to wiggle them, but then had the second realization that there would be no way to tell if he was or not in the pitch dark. He huffed. The rest of him lay dead still.
Some minutes later, his hands slipped off his abdomen and thudded to his sides. He found he had no energy left to pick them back up.
His head throbbed. Nobody was coming. Not even Amelia had returned to fill the rest of the grave with dirt, if the continued silence meant anything. Maybe he’d just been unconscious for it. He couldn’t even tell if he was conscious now. Maybe he was already dead.
…
Some more time passed. George figured if he had died already, his head and side wouldn’t hurt so much. Though, the numbness that had already taken over his hands and feet had begun to spread, so he didn’t hold much hope out anymore.
…
Shouts rang out from above. All intelligible, but one sounded familiar --
“Sirs! I think I’ve found him!”
Higgins!
George tried to hold on to consciousness, if only so he could see Henry’s face one last time, but as the walls around him jostled and the voices grew louder, he slipped away again, and this time George was sure he had died.
***
He hadn’t, to his own surprise and delight. His eyes creaked open to a strange but heartwarming sight: Effie leaning over him, brushing his hair back; Henry to his other side, hunched over the bed and gripping his hand tight; Detective Murdoch and the Inspector behind Henry, talking solemnly, Murdoch’s hand reaching out to rest on Henry’s back; and even Ruth seemed to be waiting by his bedside behind Effie, though she wore her “nurse” outfit and appeared exasperated with Henry’s dramatics.
“George?” came Effie’s whisper. She moved her hands to cup his face, and immediately the atmosphere changed from an anxious silence to a hushed excitement.
Henry’s head shot up. “Is he awake?” He dropped George’s hand in favour of loudly scooching his chair closer to the head of the bed.
Murdoch and the Inspector also turned toward him, looking more relaxed and now sporting small smiles.
“Now, now, don’t crowd him,” came Ruth’s indignant exclamation, though she too appeared relieved at the development. “He’s only just woken up.” Of course, nobody heeded her orders, and she reluctantly sat back in a rare demonstration of defeat.
There was no hesitance to shower George in apologies and reassurances, though he could barely reply in anything but weak hand squeezes. It didn’t seem to matter, anyhow. Everyone seemed relieved enough that his eyes had opened at all.
George tried to take it all in, the fact that he had such a loving group of people on his side, but Ruth was right; he’d had a long few weeks. He took in as deep a breath as he could, and rasped out a gentle apology, and that he’d like to rest a few minutes more. Their expressions softened, and slowly they each gave him one last pat or hug and made their way out, except Ruth, who tended to his pillows with a scowl on her face.
(Later, Murdoch would tell him of how they found him, how a neighbour of Amelia’s had reported her strange behaviour and Henry, in the area looking for George, had insisted on investigating. George made sure to thank him vehemently for saving his life, but Henry just hugged him tight and whispered, “I know you’d do it for me.”)
(He would.)