I knelt down and pulled my shoes on. I wasn’t wearing any socks. I glanced back toward my house. It was still completely dark. I felt a yearning to rush back there. Then I felt the knife again. He pushed me up the hill. We were walking through the empty lot. Scrub oaks. Lots of dry brush and grass. He suddenly stopped me, reaching down among the weeds. Picking up the two green bags that had been tied together with a rag, he slung them over his back and chest.
The road behind my house runs up against the mountain. Reaching the top of the empty lot, we hit the road. He pushed me to the left. The road sloped gently downhill. A hedge ran along the front of the nearest house. Headlights illuminated the side of the mountain as a car came winding down the road. Immediately, he thrust me behind the bushes, pressing me toward the ground. The grass was damp. The night was cold now. As he held me close, I realized how powerful he was. Peering through the hedge, crouched just a few inches off the ground, I watched the car approaching. I saw the lights on top of the roof, then the markings on the door. A police car! It was a miracle! It was going to be okay.
“If this is the work of God, then let this police car pass without finding us,” the dark man said as he held me to the ground.
The car drew nearer, its headlights illuminating the winding road.
“If you move, I’ll kill you. If you make a sound, I’ll kill you.” He held the knife against my chest.
I watched the car pass in front of us, no more than ten feet away. The stranger seemed to hold his breath. I felt the tension in his body. The car was moving slowly. I didn’t know what to do. He seemed to sense what I was thinking and held me tighter.
“Move and I will kill you!” he said again.
The police car passed. The man waited only a second before he pulled me up again, directing me across the road. On the other side was a trailhead that led up the side of the mountain. We started climbing up the trail.
The reality finally hit me. It was like a jolt to my heart, a stabbing pain in my chest: This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a nightmare. This is real! I’ve got to run!
But he was always right behind me, the knife always at my back. He held on to me with a tight grip that hurt my arm. The trail was steep around us, thick trees and rock on all sides.
If there had ever been an opportunity, that time had passed.
As we started climbing, I gathered courage. “Who are you?” I begged. “Why are you doing this? I have never done anything wrong.”
He continued pushing me up the mountain.
“Why are you doing this?” I begged again.
“I’ll explain to you later. When we get to where we’re going.”
We continued climbing. The night was dark. He forced me to hold a flashlight to illuminate our way. He held the knife in one hand, his arm always at my waist or shoulder.
“Do you realize what you are doing?” I pleaded.
“Of course,” he seemed to huff.
He had told me that he intended to hold me for ransom, but I didn’t believe that anymore. “If you let me go, I won’t press charges. I won’t let my father press charges on you,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.
He huffed again. The trail was getting steeper. “You don’t need to make me any promises,” he said in a sarcastic tone. “I know what I’m doing. I understand the consequences of my actions.” He didn’t sound crazy. He only sounded mean.
Up and up we climbed. The trail grew narrow and more difficult. Farther up, there were trees on every side. We climbed and climbed. I was getting tired and very thirsty. He stopped to drink, pulling a canister of water out of one of his bags. He didn’t offer me any. Not this time. Later he would, but I didn’t want to drink from his water anyway. He urinated, then we kept on climbing. A streambed joined the trail on our right. “Turn up the streambed,” he commanded. Though the trail continued, we left it and headed up the rocky streambed. The going became even more difficult. Boulders. So many trees. So much thick brush. Yet he was always right behind me, matching my every move.
I thought of the story of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. I thought, Okay, God, this isn’t the Red Sea. This is just some scrub oak. Could you please just part it so I can run away? I kept looking for an opening, for any means to escape. But the man was right behind me. He had a knife on me. And if he wasn’t right behind me, he was in front of me and always holding tight.
So I kept on climbing.
It got colder. It was the middle of the night. I was praying and pleading for a way to escape, but there were steep slopes along the stream bed, walls of scrub oak on each side. It was hopeless and I knew it.
By then, I’d had enough time to consider another option that I hadn’t thought about before; something just as terrifying but not as likely to enter into the mind of a little girl. “Please,” I begged. “If you’re going to rape and kill me, please do it here. That way someone will find my body.”
“Keep moving,” he replied.
We kept on climbing. It was painfully slow. So dark. So steep. So many obstacles.