30.
What, for fuck’s sake, do I have to do the entire day in a room without any form of entertainment? The walls are gradually suffocating me and I feel like crying out. Above that I’m thoroughly complaining about the fact I haven’t eaten anything. My sickness is over, but I’ve got a ginormic hole in my stomach instead that’s grumbling to be filled.
I look at the dress that’s on the bed. Again a piece that radiates wealth and exclusivity. The fabric is so soft it glides between my fingers.
I can’t stay here for another day. Impossible! It doesn’t seem likely to me that I’ll be able to save everyone from those tubes and then all happily walk outside. I can’t do it on my own; I got that in the meantime.
Staying here, only to get to know more about his intentions with the otherkinds, seems to be suicide right now. I don’t trust Noël, to me he can change his personality and views like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There’s a constant layer of madness slumbering around his gallantry and control.
During our last conversation I was about to ask him about the twentieth of May, but now I’m happy I didn’t do it. I feel intuitively it’s better and that I still conceal a trump like that.
I get to stand in front of the window and look into the garden. The fencing of the territory is nowhere to be seen, so it must be far away from the house. The dogs are also nowhere to be found, but I suspect they’ll appear out of nowhere at the slightest noise.
Let’s test it to break my boredom. I might be on the first floor, but the dogs won’t hear that difference, I suspect. Softly, because my muscular strength still isn’t how it should be, I pat on the window. No movement. I try a bit harder, which takes a lot of effort.
Aha, the two black spots appear between the bushes and seem to glide over the garden, that’s how fast they are. They don’t make the slightest sound, but their flat ears and upright fur tell me enough about their mood.
If only I could transform right now, damn it. Or get a hold of a pistol. Frustrated I lean with my head against the window. I’m about to give up. Let everything go the way it goes. And then the marriage comes back to my mind.
No! I’ve got to get out of here and it has to be today. I have no idea about how Noël thinks he can make me marry him, but he’s vicious enough to get his way. Maybe there’s the possibility. In what way could he let me say yes to him? Think, Manon, think.
I take a seat on the bed and let myself fall flat on my back. Staring at the white ceiling I let my brain rattle. Of course I would marry him if he threatens to cut Lucas to the quick. There’s always a chance he would survive a stay in a tube, although he needs to able to keep his brain then. Now I suspect Noël is getting out parts of brains from the others, I fear their lives can’t be saved anymore, unless they want to live further on like a plant. I also think he rather likes to use Lucas as a guinea pig rather than murdering him. I also don’t think there are so many otherkinds for the taking that can disappear to his cellar without further questions being raised.
And then the answer comes to my mind. The devil! Ed, or whatever he was called. He can of course manipulate my thoughts. Make me think I want to marry Noël. Damn it, he can even convince me I’m in love with Noël! Gross. After that I’m just a slave for Noël, turned over to his whims and demands. Ed can even renew it every day, make sure my brainwashing doesn’t wear off. And I don’t have Diedie to protect my head. Now I understand why the marriage is only planned tomorrow. Ed is still recovering from the stab I gave him.
The panic overwhelms me with a devastating power. I start to hyperventilate and my heart begins to beat faster. My fight- and flee reaction seems to take over and my brains go at full blast. At the same time I feel enraged. Enraged because of the fact that Noël would use a lame trick like that to commit myself to him and I can’t do anything against it.
What happens next is something I should have foreseen. Because fear and anger take turns and intensify each other, the suppressed adrenaline escapes and runs through my entire body. In a few seconds I start to sweat and breathe faster.
Of course! I look at my hands that transform into leaves. Yes, it’s working! Stay angry, Manon, stay scared and angry. Think about Lucas in Selena’s bed and how she looked at you. Think about the poor people in the tubes, the wounded Lucas, Noël and his obsessive meanness, the inhuman Doc John.
I can feel how the sleeping drug is driven away by the adrenaline while I’m transforming. As if one army is marching over the other one and crushing them. I become soaking wet of the sweat, but I keep concentrating on the horrible and angry-making images. I visualize the vanishing of the sleeping drug, hoping I fasten the process like this.
I now let myself transform into fog. This is my only escape possibility. It works with my hands, arms and then my head.
Damn it, the cameras! The transformation stops. I realize Noël told me he was going for a nap and so probably no one is watching my room. But I actually find the thought about having to hurry up a very good one. That way I incite the adrenaline even more to victory. And indeed, the transformation goes on and finally my feet transform into fog.
The crack underneath the door is big enough to let me go through and I’m quickly floating through the hall. Let’s hope I’ll find a crack downstairs that allows me to get through. I glidingly descend the stair downstairs, where no one is to be seen, directly towards the windows.
The first difficulty begins. The windows are all shut tight wherever I try and can’t even be opened. Nowhere on both sides of the house is an opening in the windows that can let me go through.
Where’s the front door? It seems to be a house from a nightmare. Would they have made a passage to the outside in the cellar? I wouldn’t know any different. Nevertheless, the cellar seems to me a too big risk to escape through.
I look around and then see the kitchen. The cooker!
I rush towards it. They’ve also blocked the drain of the washbasin in here. Nah well, it seems the kitchen isn’t used after all. And hooray! They didn’t think about sealing the cooker. Highly strange, but I don’t really care.
A few seconds later I’m hanging in the open air. I can barely believe it! Free!
Like a cloud I fly over the garden, the dogs far beneath me. Transforming into fog might be handy, but it takes a bunch of effort. This one is now faster gone because there are still bits of the sleeping drug streaming through my blood. So I need to get down quickly, but the territory is even bigger than I thought. A spacious field and after that a forest with especially spruces, which doesn’t seem to have an ending.
In the distance I finally see the enclosure. Just like a sputtering engine my body starts to protest and grumble. I’m not gonna make it! Shit, I’m not gonna make it!
I let myself down on the ground five meters before the enclosure and that was right on time. Automatically my body starts to transform to its human state. I sit on my knees on top of a layer of stinging spruce needles, panting for breath. I stink to high heaven, my shirt and even my jeans are soaked in sweat. My hair sticks against my forehead and my heart pounds so fast it seems it will jump out of my chest any minute.
I look up after about a minute. The enclosure makes eyes at me and I need to hurry up. I put my index finger in my mouth and put it in the air afterwards. The wind is fairly good, the dogs won’t smell my sweat immediately. I hope. I run as quickly as I can to the enclosure that consists of a concrete wall of about three meters high. Impossible to climb over it and the trees are just too far away from it.
I look angry at the wall and think about the things I could do. I can’t give up, not now I’m already this far! It won’t work the next time, they’ll give me a double dose then to keep my adrenaline under control.
Walk past the wall and look for an opening seems to be too time-consuming. By then those dogs would have smelled me already. Then I hear them bark. Oh no, oh no. If the dogs have given the alarm, Selena will also be there soon.
It has to happen now, Manon. You’re stronger than you think you are, I nerve myself. Much stronger than you think you are. With tightly shut eyes I concentrate and feel how my arms get longer and thinner. I open my eyes when I feel the top of the wall.
The barking gets louder, the dogs are getting closer.
With my last strengths I pull myself up and threaten to lose my consciousness any minute. But the hope for freedom gives my drive an extreme boost.
When I’m on the top of the wall I hear, next to the snarling dogs, a voice coming my way. Selena of course.
I don’t jump down, but let me fall slowly. I land painfully in a ditch. It will add a few bruises to my collection. I hope I didn’t break anything. There’s only a little bit of water in the ditch, but it’s extremely filthy through the garbage and indefinable mud.
The dogs and Selena sound very close, but I really haven’t got anything left. It’s too late. They’ll find me here, empty and exhausted.
A tear runs down from my eye corner, I feel immensely miserable.
Then I hear a car coming closer. Realizing that the chance is small, but also that it’s my last chance, I crawl out of the ditch. My hands grip into the mud. I slip and slide back into the ditch again. Hearing from the sound the car is only on a distance of ten meters. The dogs have arrived at the enclosure, I can hear them snarl closely, as if they’re standing next to me.
I finally manage to crawl out of the ditch towards the road. There I keep lying in the middle of the road, with the risk of getting run over. It will just be that way. I lose consciousness.
I wake up with a terrible headache and feeling of sickness. I’m disorientated for a while and don’t know where I am. I’m lying on a soft basis and hear music.
Noël’s house! They’ve found me!
I open my eyes and don’t see, as I expected, the bedroom, but cars zooming past. Surprised I look around me. I’m in a car and next to me is sitting a man.
‘Hello, young lady,’ he says politely smiling. He talks Dutch, but with a weird accent, a bit German-like.
‘Erm… hello,’ I say.
‘I see you’re feeling better again. But I’ll just bring you to a hospital.’
I rub my eyes and straighten up. ‘You found me on the street?’
‘Yes, you were lying there quite dangerously, so I picked you up. Okay?’
‘Of course, thanks so much!’
I can just kiss that man! There are after all still helpful people in the world!
Halleluiah!
I look behind me and see, to my great satisfaction, we have left the hilly country and drive into the built-up area.
‘You don’t have to take me to a hospital, I’m fine. I urgently need to get home.’
‘And where is your home?’ he asks.
‘Jabbeke.’
‘Jabbeke? Where’s that?’
‘Where are we here?’
‘Büllingen.’
Ah, there’s the German accent from. We’re still in Belgium, but in Eupen-Malmedy, the part where they talk German. That’s why Noël’s house was so isolated, that’s only possible in this part of Belgium. I think the man is about fifty years old, a balding head with grey hair and a beer belly. His look is most gentle and when he smiles, dimples appear in his cheeks, which give him a roguish outlook.
‘Jabbeke is in West-Flanders. If you can put me on a train I would be very thankful to you.’
‘Little girl,’ the man says. ‘It seems as if you’re coming from a war zone. To me you still aren’t able of taking a train all by yourself.’
I look at my clothes. They look dirty indeed and show some little rips here and there. In the mirror I see my worn-out face that’s covered with filthy smudges and my hands are full with scratches.
I sigh. ‘You’re right.’
‘And do you even have money with you?’
‘No, I also haven’t.’
‘What were you actually doing there so far away from home?’
‘I…’ I don’t know what to tell to the man. If I tell him the truth, he’ll certainly want to take me to a police office as quickly as possible. Then they’ll go to the house and although I’d love to see Noël and his sidekicks in prison, the police will discover the tubes with the otherkinds. Only that isn’t a disaster. No one can recognize them as otherkinds by only looking at them. What I’m really afraid of are the files about us in which all the information about us is listed.
‘I don’t remember,’ I just lie. ‘Sir, I promise you you’ll be amply rewarded if you bring me home.’
The man shrugs. ‘Of course I’ll do that, girl. I have a daughter of my own and if something like this would happen to her, I’d love someone would be so kind.’ He smiles warmly at me. ‘Don’t worry. Jabbeke, you said?’
‘Yes, just follow the highway till Ostend. Between Ostend and Bruges you’ll see a turning to Jabbeke.’
‘Still rest for a while. You want to eat something?’
I’m hungry, surely, but I need my rest even more, so I shake my head.
‘I’ll wake you up when we have arrived in Jabbeke. In the meantime I’ll call my wife, because she likes to know what I’m at.’
‘Thanks,’ I say and smile warmly at him.
He winks and then looks in front of him.
Although I don’t know the man, I haven’t felt so safe in days. He comes around reliable and I don’t think he has bad intentions. Besides I wouldn’t have the strength anymore to defend myself and can’t do anything else but close my eyes. I doze off immediately.
‘Lady.’
Someone pokes at my shoulder. I open my eyes slowly.
‘We have arrived. Where is it you live exactly?’
We stand at the side of the road, not very far from my house. A shiver of relief goes through me. I blink with my eyes to let them get used to the bright daylight.
‘The first street on the right and then right again.’
The man puts the car in first gear and joins the traffic.
‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Quite, yes, thanks for letting me sleep.’
He brushes aside my thank-you.
‘Where was I when you found me?’
‘You’re talking about which street?’
‘Yes.’
‘Holzheim, Büllingen.’
I get the address into my head. ‘Keep following here straight ahead, along with the curve.’
‘Okay.’
The high trees on both sides of the road that barely let through the sunlight and the ginormic houses have never made me feel more welcome than today. My goodness, I’m so happy to be back home again! I can just shout with joy and dance!
‘You can stop here before the gate,’ I say while pointing.
The man turns in and stops the car.
I jump out of the car, all energy again and push on the videophone. This one clicks on immediately, as if Diedie was waiting next to it.
‘Manon!’ she cries.
I can’t see her, but she can see me of course. I grin from ear to ear and hear the gate click open. Less than two seconds later Diedie is hugging me. She pinches so hard I can barely breathe and I can hear her sob softly.
‘My little girl, my little girl,’ she says continuously.
I don’t pull myself loose from the embrace, enjoy it way too much. I sniff Diedie’s flowery perfume deeply and I could just keep standing here like this for hours. Then I hear Jabar’s voice.
‘Manon!’
He’s also hugging me and with the three of us we keep standing there for a while. Until I realize that that friendly man is still sitting in his car.
‘Jabar, Diedie, someone is waiting there.’
They let go off me slowly and look at where I’m pointing. Then they see the man who found our little scene moving, because I can see tears sparkle on his cheeks.
‘He has saved me, Jabar.’
‘I understand.’
Jabar walks to the car and leans down at the window. They exchange a few words and Jabar then reaches for his pocket and gets out his wallet. The man shakes his head heavily and seemingly refuses to accept the money. Nevertheless, Jabar keeps insisting and the man takes it clearly unwillingly.
I walk towards them and in a spontaneous impulse I hug the man through the driver’s window.
‘I’ll never forget you’ve saved me.’
The man chuckles. ‘You’re welcome, girl, take good care of yourself.’
‘You too. Come home safely.’
He winks and then drives backwards to the street.
I watch the car drive off until it has disappeared completely. People like him make the world a better place and make you forget what sorts of evil are creeping around.
I turn around and see Jabar and Diedie look at me as if I returned from the underworld.
‘I’ve got a lot to tell you,’ I say. ‘But first I want a delicious Diedie-meal.’
Diedie turns around immediately. ‘On my way!’ she shouts and runs into the house.
Jabar and I follow her with arms linked.