The Skull Man: Part 5

HAZEL

Did they know she was starting to enjoy hearing them suffer? She'd been the caged animal for so long and now that he had finally let her out of that cramped metal box, the scorching rage she felt inside was begging her to kill whatever she laid eyes on.

The Skull Man had kept her blindfolded since the day he forced her to follow his orders. The darkness was all she was used to now. The light only burned her eyes and made her uncomfortable. Even now in the dim lighting of the room he had escorted her to, she felt apprehensive entering it.

"I picked her out for you, Hazel. I hope you like her," her deranged captor professed as he slipped an odd instrument into her frigid hands. Her gaze settled on the hardwood handle first. It didn't look like normal wood to her. There were patches of dried blood on it, but she didn't ask where they came from, or who the blood belonged to. She knew they were already dead. The carbon steel blade stuck in the middle of the wood was alarmingly clean compared to the wood. He'd cleaned off the blood for her first victim, but she didn't thank him. He'd take her gratitude from her later, by force if he had to. And he always had to. The unhinged man who threatened to kill her family and Dante if she didn't comply with his orders, relished in taking things from her. He started off with her body, and ended up with her defeated soul.

The dark-haired young woman chained to the ice blocks resembled live bait, a dotted line running against her throat in what looked to be small dots of blood, probably made by the tip of the ice pick in her hand. She was completely exposed to them, no item of clothing on her shivering body, which was already turning a burnt blue color from the freezing temperature surrounding them. It only made her bruises and cuts stand out against her pale skin.

"Do you smell it?" the Skull Man asked her, as he pushed her towards the young woman and Hazel did her best to control her anger towards him. He repeatedly claimed he would hurt the people she loved if she even thought about betraying him. With the amount of indignation filling her veins, it was only a matter of time before she used the ice pick in her hand against him.

"Smell what?"

"Justice, Hazel. She drowned her children in a lake not too far from where we are. Her rights as a human being were revoked the moment the thought of drowning her offspring came into her mind," the man explained and while his words filled her with more disgust that her body could handle, she refrained from slicing her throat and dropped the ice pick down onto the floor.

"Death wouldn't do those children justice," Hazel answered gravelly, taking in the her new role as the executioner, instead of the victim. She felt the power of finally being in control consume her as the woman lifted her head slowly to look at her. Her dead eyes were too tired to beg for mercy but Hazel would change that soon enough by taking her anger out on her.

"It...it....was...an...accident...." the woman spoke her last words, her teeth chattering from the cold before Hazel used the tip of the ice pick to carve out her heart.

"Stop the car," Hazel ordered her friend Elle from the passenger's seat of the car as she stirred awake from another nightmare. Elle hit the brakes and her car stopped right in front of Leech Lake Park, which was conveniently standing a mile or two away from her house. While the memories were still fresh in her mind, she wanted to see if this was the lake the Skull Man had been referring to in her nightmare.

"Babe? Are you alright?" Elle asked in concern as Hazel stormed out of the car in the middle of the quiet and deserted road.

"Do you still have your taser gun in your purse?"

"Oh, honey I have a fourty-seven magnum under my seat and my beautifully groomed fists. Why?" Elle boasted as she took her shoulders with her hands and made her look at her. Her friend had been used to her odd behavior over the years due to her PTSD, but she was far from the type who would scare easily. She'd grown up with her single mother, in the urban streets of Queens, New York, and managed to survive with nothing but her wits and hands, rising above the sexism in the police force she applied to after college, proving to them all that a woman had other purposes in life than to bare children and wait on her husband. They could save lives too. Hazel envied how incredibly normal Elle's life had been compared to hers, even with all the struggles she had gone through with her mother as a kid, but it was one of the giant elephants in the room they never talked about.

"We're going on a hike."

Elle asked no questions about Hazel's abrupt decision to go on a hike so late at night. She was there, walking next to her in the creepy and foggy woods of Leech Lake. She'd spent a lot of time with her family here. Hazel held back the smile her late mother brought to her lips as she thought about all those times Hazel had made fun of her for being afraid of the water. She could still hear her father, Michael Nash's throaty laughter as he furtively made his way behind his wife during a family barbecue, and managed to push her into the same lake she was so afraid of swimming in. Her mother had been so furious at him, but her brief rage ended as soon as he jumped right into the lake with her, catching her around the waist, apologizing with a tender kiss as their kids groaned with disgust from the patch of land they camped on.

Her heart stopped aching for them years ago, since there was nothing she could do to bring them back. Still, the same desolation their absence caused brought her to tears often.

"Hikes are fun and all but I think I'm wearing the wrong boots for it." Elle stressed behind her as Hazel stopped and looked around with the flashlight on the back of her phone. Nothing. There was nothing out here but dead trees and broken branches. Damn it. She'd been so sure the Skull Man had brought her to the woods before but her memory still remained loyal to him, only displaying what he wanted her to see. His influence had been tight around her neck back then, and nights like this made her believe his presence still lingered somewhere inside her.

Closing her eyes, she tried to surf through memories of their time together for any clues it might lead her to the place he'd kept her hostage. It had been in a fishing cabin, that she was she was sure of. She was certain of it because the pungent smell of live bait that suffocated her along with the stench of the dead bodies coming from his torture room, could never be erased from her memory.

"I think I just stepped on a dead animal. But I'm sure you'll make up for it by telling me why we're out here in the middle of nowhere, with no food, and crappy cell service." Elle interrupted her concentration with sarcasm and Hazel opened her eyes to see the first snowflakes of the winter season drop down on the dead leaves by her boots.

"I thought I remembered something important. Forget it, let's just go home," Hazel insisted, hooking her arm around hers but Elle stood her ground and Hazel narrowed her eyes at her.

"The storm wont hit us until the morning. Whatever it is you need to find, we should look for it now before you lose it," her best friend urged and Hazel hesitated before she nodded. They resumed their walking, heading deeper and deeper into the woods until Hazel felt the pin-like headache forming at the base of her skull. She usually got them when something reminded her of her year of captivity.

Running. Hazel's memory showed her running away from something, or someone in the middle of a snow storm. She had an inkling of who it was and it motivated her enough to follow the pathway triggered by the light snow on the ground. She took Elle's hand for reassurance, making sure she wasn't stuck in another nightmare and they walked down the pathway for a few minutes. They stopped when they came across an abandoned cabin, covered in vines, with no signs of life in it.

"Is this where he took you, Haze?" her friend inquired softly beside her as Hazel closed her eyes and pictured the first woman to fall victim to her damaged psyche. Her last words had remained imprinted into her mind, along with the torture she performed on her lifeless body, even after she was dead.

"Let's go in." Elle's sudden persistence annoyed Hazel enough to block her, keeping her away from the house of horror she spent so much time pretending wasn't real. One step into that cabin, and Hazel would lose herself again. She couldn't afford to do that now that her life was finally back on track.

"Trust me, you don't want me to go in there," she warned her friend, which had caused her to flinch at her aggressive tone. But the determined look in her eyes let Hazel know Elle wasn't letting this go so easily.

"Back home it is then."

"Hazel?" the soft way he made her name sound shook her out of her trance-like state and panic instantly filled her. There was blood on her hands again. And this time, there was no Skull Man in sight to blame her actions on.

"What happened? Where am I?" she said in trepidation as she took in her surroundings and her clothing and realized she'd been sleep-walking again, this time ending up at Dante's estate in the middle of the night, while the snow still fell from the sky.

"Come inside," Dante ordered hurriedly, stepping aside to let her in, then closing the door after she entered. Tears blurred her vision as she swallowed back the lump in her throat and Dante escorted her to the nearest bathroom, closing the door behind them after turning on the lights.

"I didn't know you still had a sleep-walking problem," Dante mentioned as he turned on the water in his shower and left the glass door open for her to step inside.

"They said I was cured of everything...." Hazel trailed off as she began to feel her control slip out of her hands again, which would be a problem for everyone around her soon. She felt the dark side of her slip through cracks of her mind, threatening everything she worked so hard to suppress.

"Somebody worked hard on making you believe that, Haze," Dante added as he stared at her intently. She wondered what he was waiting for, then kicked herself as she realized she needed to get all this blood off her and shower before she headed back home. She didn't want anyone else to see her like this.

"Are you planning on turning around?" she asked carefully as her fingers lingered at the hem of her long-sleeved gray pajama top, waiting for his answer.

"Would it bother you if I said no?" he asked in a husky tone, keeping his eyes steady on her. It was wrong for her body to respond to him the way it used to but she could feel the desire enveloping her loins, setting them on fire with just his piercing gaze.

Hazel felt the confidence slowly return to her as she took off her top and her shorts, watching him as he watched her. He didn't move an inch to touch her, out of respect she figured, but his expression said otherwise. He knew once he crossed that line, he wouldn't be able to turn back.

She wondered if it would bother him to know she didn't want him to.