And just like that it was gone? Just like that she was gone? How? Why? Why did this world insist on putting her down in the dirt?
Nina felt how the anger arose inside of her, causing her blood to boil. She could hardly hear what the man was saying anymore. The blood rushing through her veins was drowning out anything else.
The man leaned over and felt Blanka's pulse. Just the thought of him touching her fragile skin once again made Nina see red. It was like her entire view was blurred by blood, the lust for seeing this man bleed and suffer the same horror her beloved had.
He didn't find a pulse, then let Blanka's hand fall flaccid back on the bed. Then he shrugged. He looked at Nina lustfully, then licked his lips, letting the tongue caress the black hairs on his upper lip.
"Too bad," he said. "She was great fuck."
That was when Nina finally lost it. In one great leap she jumped the man and sat on his shoulders. She screamed like a wild animal before she bent down and bit into his ear. The man screamed and tried to pull her down, but Nina burrowed her long nails that Nadja made sure all the girls had and took care of, into his skin.. Blood was gushing out from the ear and the pierced skin, running down his face and shoulders. The sweaty man was groaning while turning and trying to throw Nina off, but she held on, while scratching and biting him like a crazed wild animal. She bit so hard into the ear that soon a big chunk of it came lose and she spat it out onto the floor. The man screamed in anger and pain. He grabbed Nina by the leg and finally managed to pull her off his back. He threw her through the air and she landed on her back into a dresser. It hurt like hell, but Nina was so angry she didn't care. No amount of physical pain could ever measure up to the emotional pain Nina was going through right now. And that gave her the strength to do what she did next.
The man was stunned but steaming with anger and he walked toward her with his fists clenched. She tried to get up on her legs but her hand slipped on the floor, reaching in under the dresser where it touched a shoe. All the shoes they were provided in the brothel looked the same so she didn't have to look at it to know it was high heel stiletto shoes. Just as the man came close enough Nina pulled it out from under the dresser and hit the heel into the man's right eye. As it struck his eye, she realized it had gone so deep she couldn't move it. She let go and the man screamed and fell to the ground, trying to pull the heel out of his heavily bleeding eye. Nina got up on her legs and walked over to him and kicked him in the crouch. Then she leaned over and grabbed the shoe again. Put her foot on his face and pulled the heel out of the eye. The man hollered in pain and blood spurted out of the eye that had been so badly damaged it no longer resembled an eye, just a blob of bloody jelly.
Nina waited a few seconds until the man once again looked at her with his remaining good eye. She waited because she wanted to look into it when she did the next thing. She wanted to see his fear, to watch the terror in his one eye when he realized what she was about to do. Then she smashed the heel into the other eye and blinded him completely.
Chapter 45
April 2013
Sophia was still in shock when we entered my house later that afternoon. And I guess so was I. Christoffer and Ida were quiet all the way home and not once did I hear them discuss the auditions. Christoffer hadn't gone through to the next round, but Ida had. Under normal circumstances it would be something to celebrate.
I opened the door and let the kids and Sophia in. My dad came out and hugged me. I had called him from the theater to let him know what was going on and why we were going to be very late.
"How are you doing?" he asked.
That was when I finally broke down and cried. After hours of keeping my cool I couldn't hold it in any longer. It had to come out somehow. My dad held me tight and helped me into the kitchen so the kids wouldn't see me cry. Sophia was soon surrounded by her children who all wanted something from her. They dragged her into the living room while I was alone with my dad.
"That bad, huh?" he asked. "I've made coffee. Do you want some?"
I nodded while making sobbing sounds. "I can't believe it, Dad. I mean she was just a little girl. No more than nine years old. Who would do something so horrible like that?"
My dad shook his head heavily. "I don't know, sweetie. I wish I had some answer to make you feel better, but I really don't."
"For a moment I thought it was Ida. I was so scared, Dad. I could hardly bear it." I sniffled and my dad handed me a tissue.
"I think this calls for one of these," my dad said and placed a small chocolate turtle in front of me. They were my favorites and always had been since I was a child.
I chuckled while sobbing still. "Thanks, Dad. I think you're right."
I felt slightly better after eating it, not so much because of the chocolate but because of my dad's concern for me. He'd always had a way of comforting me when I was sad and he could still do it. "I can't believe you remembered how much I loved these," I said while chewing on the turtle. The cream inside of it melted on my tongue.
"How could I forget?" he said and poured me a second cup of coffee.
It felt nice to sit in the kitchen with my dad again and just sip coffee and not have to say anything.
After a few minutes Helle peeked in. "How are you doing?" she said.
"Okay I guess. You heard what happened?"
"Your dad told me and I heard some on the radio, too."
"On the radio?" I asked. "I thought you were here all afternoon?"
She shook her head. "No, I went to the shop for a little while just to check in on Jack. He's been down there all day painting. It's going really well."
"So you were downtown when this happened?" I said thinking about the bowties. I wasn't sure where I was going with this. It was absurd.
My dad looked at me like I was crazy. I felt like I was, but couldn't escape the thought. She was the only one that I had seen with access to bowties like the ones I had seen sewn into the victim's chests. I shook my head and sipped my coffee. No, it was stupid. I was just jealous because she was my dad's new girlfriend. That was all it was.
"Horrible thing about that girl who has gone missing too, huh?" she said. "She was a Countess, I've read."
"Was?" I asked. "As far as I know she is not dead yet."
Helle shrugged. "No. It's just a long time already since she went missing so I assumed that she might… Do you think it might be the same killer? Do you think the bowtie killer took her as well, then killed her but they just haven't found the body yet?"
I sighed and sipped more coffee while thinking it through. It was the easiest explanation to all of this, but I didn't buy it.
Chapter 46
April 2013
I didn't sleep much that night. I kept tossing and turning, seeing that poor girl in front of my eyes, crying for her and her poor family. Around three in the morning I went downstairs to get a glass of milk. I peeked inside first Maya's room to make sure she was alright, then inside Victor's. Maya was sleeping heavily, whereas Victor seemed to be sleeping uneasy. He was tossing and moaning in his bed and the sheets and blanket were all knotted up around him. I walked closer and put my hand on top of his head carefully and started patting him in the hope that it would make him calm down. His face was strained and he was sweating. I wondered if he was coming down with a fever.
"Shh," I hushed as I stroked his hair gently. It felt great to be able to touch him again. I missed so much holding him in my arms. I quietly cried thinking about the young girl at the theater. Her mother was never going to hold her again, never going to see her grow up, never going to hear her sing again.
Victor was calmer now. His face still seemed stressed like he was struggling in his sleep, but he had stopped tossing. I was filled with an overwhelming gratefulness that he was still in my life.
"I love you so much, Victor," I whispered.
I leaned over him and kissed his cheek with my eyes closed. When I opened them again and leaned back Victor was suddenly moving. He opened his eyes
and looked directly at me. I pulled back with a gasp.
"Sorry if I woke you, buddy," I said.
But Victor didn't react. His eyes were looking at me, but he didn't seem to see me at all. "What's wrong? Did you have a bad dream or something?"
Victor didn't answer. He sat up. It was starting to get a little creepy. The way he moved, the way his eyes looked made him look just like a doll. Like a human sized doll. It kind of reminded me of the dolls I had seen in Helle's store. I stepped backwards. Victor turned his head like an owl and stared directly at me. His eyes were glasslike and hardly looked real. His upper body and arms were stiff as he moved them. He lifted his right arm, which was bent at a ninety degree angle, and put his pointer finger to his lips, signaling for me to be quiet.
Moving almost like a robot—or a doll—he took the arm down again, then leaned back into the bed. As soon as his head hit the pillow his eyelids closed. He fell back to sleep with his arms still pointing up in the air. My heart was racing heavily as I watched him doze off and his body turn back to normal again. His arms soon relaxed and fell to the bed, his head turned to the side on the pillow and as suddenly as it had appeared, the stiffness in his body was completely gone.
I blinked several times and kept staring at him for at least ten minutes more before I dared move. I couldn't believe what I had seen. Could I have been dreaming? Hallucinating from lack of sleep? From the stress and shock I had been through the last couple of days?
I listened to his steady breathing and as soon as I was certain he was sleeping heavily again, I sneaked back out into the hallway. I went down stairs taking deep breaths trying to calm myself down again. I grabbed a glass and filled it with milk from the refrigerator. I drank it but it didn't make me any calmer. I kept wondering about what I had seen. What did it mean? Was he just dreaming? He had been right about the bowtie this week and the spiders last year. What did the doll mean? Did it have something to do with my dad's new girlfriend, Helle? If so, then what?
I rubbed my head and suddenly felt so confused by everything. I kept thinking about that girl, Josephine Gyldenstjerne, who had gone missing this week. Could Helle be right? Was she just another one of the bowtie killer's victims? But what about the other children that had gone missing earlier then?
I went to my laptop in the living room and opened it. I found the old articles written about the first children to have disappeared. The first one was a six-year-old girl named Nina Kristensen. She had been playing on the playground when her mother had lost track of her. She'd looked all over but couldn't find her daughter. All they found was the girl's doll on the ground.
Doll? I thought and looked up from the screen. It was still pitch dark outside. The wind had picked up in the trees and I could hear the branches scrape against the roof of my house. Could that just be a coincidence? Was that what Victor was trying to tell me? Was there a connection between the dolls and the missing girls?
I searched the rest of the articles about the other girls that had gone missing but there was nothing about dolls in them. So that couldn't be it. There had to be something else. I found the first article again and saw the picture of Nina Kristensen's doll. It was dirty and had one eye broken. Little Miss Jasmine, it said underneath. It didn't look like the dolls in Helle's store. They looked more like real children which was what made them so creepy. They all had long thick hair, this one didn't. Little Miss Jasmine was more like a baby doll. But there was one thing about it that once again made me think about Helle.
There was a big bowtie on the bottom part of the dress.
Chapter 47
January 2005
She had escaped her prison just to enter a new one. After blinding the sweaty mafia boss at the brothel six months ago, Nina had thought she was going to be killed by Nadja's many security guys that kept beating the girls up and raping them as they pleased. But luck had been on her side on that terrifying day.
When Nina had still been in the room and watched with pleasure how the mafia boss squirmed on the floor in utter pain, she had noticed a big knife attached to his ankle. She had pulled it out while the man was still screaming. For a second she had considered killing him on the spot, releasing him from his pain, but quickly she decided that would be letting him off the hook too easily. She liked the idea of him having to go through life without being able to see again, crippled and having to depend on the mercy of others.
Nina smiled and steeled herself for what was going to happen next. She placed herself right at the door opening so as soon as it opened and Nadja stormed in to see what the screaming was all about, Nina plunged the knife deep into her stomach. It took Nadja by such a surprise, she hardly realized what had happened until it was too late. She fell to the ground, blood spurting out of her mouth and stomach, coloring the floor red, and landed next to the squirming mafia boss with a thud.
It was almost too easy, Nina thought as she pulled the knife out and stabbed Nadja again. Nina was a little disappointed that she died so fast. She would have liked to see her suffer, and she wanted to make sure she knew who had done this to her, who was the cause of her suffering. But now it was too late. She was already dead. Nina pulled the knife out of her chest and stabbed Nadja again and again. Nina was panting and sweating now as she kept poking more holes in the already dead woman. It was almost as if she couldn't stop. She wanted to keep stabbing her, punishing her for all she had done. For all the years lost, for all the months and days she had kept her in this place, for all the time she had held her prisoner. For the many long merciless nights with one man after another.
Nina soon stopped herself. She had to get moving if she was going to survive this. Quickly she cut Nadja's skirt open and found the small gun she knew she had attached to her leg. She pulled it out, then left the room holding it up in front of her. She ran down the hallway to Nadja's room where she found clothes she could wear for her escape. Nina soon heard voices and footsteps in the hallway and figured the guards had realized what had happened. There was knocking on doors all the way down the hallway and girls were screaming.
Usually Nina would be scared to death of these sounds, but not anymore. Nina had nothing to lose now. She grabbed the gun and went into the hallway. As soon as the first guard spotted her she lifted up the gun and shot him between the eyes. His eyes rolled back and he fell backwards on the wooden planks with a loud bump. Nina breathed heavily and closed her eyes for just a second. She wanted to savor this moment of utter power, unlike anything she had ever experienced in her young life. For once, she was the one taking lives, she was the one deciding who was to live and who wasn't.
Another guard yelled and ran towards her. That poor sucker. He'd barely lifted his gun before Nina had shot him in the face, killing him instantly. Then she turned and as another guard lifted his gun with the intention of shooting her in the back, she shot him as well. Then she bent down and grabbed one of the guard's guns and started walking downstairs holding guns in both of her hands feeling more powerful and alive than ever in her life.
If anything moved, she shot. There was no mercy, she didn't stop and ask. Dressed in Nadja's expensive clothes she walked through the hall downstairs that she had been in so many times dancing for the dirty old men, glancing at the door in the distance with the exit sign above it, dreaming for what was on the other side. Longing to be able to once again walk outside and breathe in the fresh air. To be able to go wherever she wanted to.
Nina took in a deep breath and didn't look back before she grabbed the handle and turned the lock. She heard so much screaming behind her as the door closed and she was finally, finally on the other side, the big mysterious outside, standing in the street among ordinary people walking by the house of terror that had kept her prisoner for years, like it was any other ordinary house that they never cared about and never would.
A woman gasped and crossed the street when she saw Nina with her guns and Nina realized that from now on it was all about laying low. She put the guns in the pockets of the jac
ket, then started walking along the street, not knowing what day or even what year it was. And worst of all, without knowing where to go.
Nina walked for hours with the sole purpose of getting as far away from the brothel as possible. But she wasn't wearing enough clothes and soon she was freezing. She considered using the guns to rob a convenience store or maybe just some poor sucker in the street, but the last thing she wanted was to be found by the Polish police. She knew what happened to women like her. They would rape her and sell her to a new pimp. That was what the other girls at the brothel told her and she stuck to what she knew.
By the time it was getting dark, Nina found herself outside of an old bakery looking in at all the food, feeling hunger eating her up from the inside.
That was when a big black car drove up next to her and the windows were rolled down. A man stuck his head out.
"How much?" he asked.
Nina swallowed hard to try and drown the little pride she had left. She approached the window and looked in.
"Five hundred," she said with a small voice. Just enough to get me out of here, she thought and jumped inside the car as the door was opened. It was dangerous to get into a car like this. She had heard many stories of women being abused and tortured mercilessly by rich guys like this one, but Nina wasn't afraid of him. She reached down and felt the guns in her pockets. No one could touch her anymore.
The man brought her to his home, a beautiful mansion outside of town where he kept her for days, paying her for every day he wanted her to stay. Much to Nina's surprise, he didn't hurt her on the first night and not on the second one, either. He wanted to do all the same stuff as most of the other men, but he didn't beat her afterwards or threaten her. All he wanted was for her to stay at his house, he said. She was to stay in one part of the mansion and never leave until he told her she could. Someone brought her three meals a day. She had to eat them in her room, but they were good meals of fresh meat and vegetables and even cake and cookies for dessert. He was gone most of the day, but at night he entered her chambers and had sex with her. Then he left, putting more money on the counter for her. After a week, Nina had saved a lot of money, enough to get by for a long time. But the man wasn't done with her yet, he said.