Chapter 11
Hours had past, night had fallen, and Rick knew he was hopelessly lost. He had walked and walked and walked. It was midnight when he arrived. The castle was completely dark except for lights in their suite. He felt happy that Rhonda was there and safe. Rather than awaken the house he went back to the servants' entrance. He fumbled his way through the storage area in the dark, and he found a door that led to the dimly lighted hallway. Quickly he made his wav up the servants' back stairs. When he reached the third floor, he turned toward what he thought was his suite but he saw a strange entrance way and knew he was in the wrong corridor. Peering around to make sure no one was watching Rick quickly stepped through the opening.
At one turning he saw what appeared to be a pane of clear glass. Beyond it was an empty room. He walked on until he came to what appeared to be a theater lounge with several leather chairs placed strategically in front of another window. There was a tripod standing there also. When Rick looked down from the glass he almost passed out from the sudden shock. He could see Noreen reading a book in bed. Even as he watched, she yawned, closed the book, and turned off the light.
Suspicion was piling up on suspicion. With great apprehension he began moving back toward the secret passage. He made a wrong turn once and opened a door and found himself in a well equipped modern darkroom. What kind of a crazy operation was this anyway? He decided they better leave tonight. He left the darkroom without looking at the film hung from the drying line.
All the lights were on in their suite when he entered. Rhonda looked pale and distraught and was dressed in her traveling clothes. Her bags were packed and ready to go. She turned to him and immediately burst out in tears. "Oh Rick," she uttered and weeped copiously.
"Rhonda? What's wrong?" he asked suddenly very frightened that she knew about Noreen.
"Rick, don't touch me ... don't come near me ... I'm leaving you."
Rick swallowed and decided she knew about Noreen after all. "Something I've done," he managed....
She denied this and then finally reached in her purse and pulled out the manila envelope. She gave it to him.
Rick unfastened the clasp and pulled out the pictures. His eyes widened with horror and distaste as he looked at the first one. He looked sick by the time he had finished the stack.
He cleared his mind enough to ask her, "Rhonda, did you know what you were doing or do you remember it as sort of ... well, a sort of dream?"
Sobbing, she merely nodded. "In my dream I was doing it with you ... and it was so beautiful
... and so right!"
"You couldn't help doing this ... you were drugged ... or hypnotised."
"Rick, those pictures were taken last night. Tonight I wasn't drugged and I repeated every one of those things. They forced me by saying they would show you, and send them to mother and all of my friends...."
"Blackmail!" Rick suddenly thought of the negatives. Rick realized that there would be negatives of others too ... the stories about the weird castle that had been heard in town were true ... he could send them all to jail if he found the negatives ... to jail with long years of no sex at all! That would be revenge. He pleaded with her to calm down and pack his things. Then he left for the darkroom.
Once in the darkroom, he gave silent thanks for Monroe's scientific methods of operation. Every print was numbered in a negative book so it took only a minute to discover that six prints had been made of Rhonda. Those would be the six they gave her.
There had been five prints made of him and seven of he and Rhonda together. He grabbed them all and shoved them in his pocket. The negative books had names and dates and would make excellent evidence for the police.
It took four trips to carry all the negative books to the car. When he got there after the last trip, Rhonda was waiting in the front seat.
He pushed the car down the hill and through the front gates. When they reached the turn in the road hiding them from the castle, Rick put the car in gear and started the engine.
They drove up the hill, then swung around a curve. For a moment, the moon glittered and skipped across the lake, while the castle looked as though it were some ghostly apparition from the past ... then it disappeared from sight.
Rhonda began weeping again.
Rick patted her knee and then reached inside his coat and handed her a manila envelope. "Here, these probably won't make you feel any better, but they may change your mind about a lot of things."
He heard her gasp as she saw the first picture ... succeeding gasps followed with each additional picture. Finally she turned questioningly and said, "You look as if you were ... enjoying these things...."
"I was...."
"But how could you?"
"Simple. I thought I was giving pleasure to you ... just as you thought you were giving pleasure to me.
Rhonda was suddenly happy. In the East, the sky was lightening as a new day approached.
They stopped twice; once to burn their photographs and the rolls of film shot of them. The ashes were thrown into the cleansing waters of a lake and disappeared from sight.
The second stop was equally memorable ... for Rhonda was to discover that dreams and things that happen under duress can never be equated with the real thing. And when the boy and girl had finally rolled away from each other, they discovered the dawn had come and a new day was there ... full of promise and untold, coming delight.