The Summerland by T. L. Schaefer Read Free Book Online

seem to summon the energy. Her mind churned listlessly, refusing to grasp or hold onto any solid thought. All she could do was look around the room; her gaze bouncing off one object before it rebounded and settled on another.
    Even her own change in appearance didn’t make an impact on her. Her clothes had been stripped from her, and she wore a robe of virginal white. Her feet were bare and every piece of jewelry had been removed, including the clip that had held back her honey-blonde hair.
    She shook her head, trying to clear the fuzziness, trying to summon a sense of urgency for what she knew was a dangerous, possibly deadly situation. She concentrated on the only thing that had mattered to her up to this point in her life, herself. As she ran down an internal checklist, she began to salvage the single-minded determination that defined her and made her the woman she had become. She had always been a survivor. She’d taken life’s punches as they were doled out and managed to turn most of them to her advantage in one way or the other. She lifted her head to scan the room, shaking off the initial lethargy and going into autopilot. So far she didn’t see how she could turn much in this room into an advantage.
    There was no door or window she could discern, as her eyes darted, looking for any crack or crevice that would aid her escape. And she knew, without question, that she would need to escape from this place, from this one-room nightmare of forest green everything.
    * * * *
    Samantha slowly stood up, bracing her hand on the ornate bedpost. The wall of books called to her, beckoning in a voice she didn’t recognize. She’d never been a bookworm in any sense of the word, and thought, in fact, that those who read were bores, nerds with no other life. But it stood before her nonetheless, and she never ignored that inner voice, because it was invariably right.
    The volumes before her ranged the gamut. Her eyes traveled over Raven Grimassi’s “The Wiccan Mysteries” to William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to the Koran. She put up a hand to brace herself on the built in bookcase, noticing as she did that most of the books were religious in nature, favoring the Wiccan religion above most others. Nonetheless, the hundreds of titles seemed to cover every religion known to man, most, of which she knew nothing about.
    She glanced around the room, really realizing for the first time that the only real furniture in the room was the bed and a comfortable armchair. Off to one corner sat an elaborate decorative screen depicting, in graphic detail, a couple engaging in sex. Beneath the depiction was an arcane symbol, something she couldn’t really identify, but recognized deep in her bones. Behind the screen she could see a toilet and sink. She completed her survey of the room, looking down at herself and the white robe she wore. It was more ceremonial gown than robe, she thought aimlessly, experimentally tugging at the voluminous, silky sleeves.
    She moved to the chair and tentatively sat on it, taking a deep breath as she did so. Her mind was really beginning to return from its previous Jell-O state, and she knew she had to do some hard thinking. She had never been a wailer or a screamer, and wasn’t about to begin now.
    The possibilities of what might happen to her in the coming hours caromed through her brain like pinballs, bouncing off of each other, sometimes in outright horror. She knew what rape would be like; she had already survived it once. It was the rest of it that was beginning to scare the living shit out of her. Stranger rape took place in dark corners and alleys, rapists didn’t abduct you. Killers did, and this one had obviously been waiting for just the right moment in time before he struck. She didn’t know why she was so sure it was a he, she still couldn’t remember the circumstances surrounding her unwilling incarceration. Just as she was sure it was a he, she was sure that he planned