551
WALTER OLEKSY
720 LARAMIE AV., GLENVIEW, IL 60025
Phone & Fax: (847) 832-1419
email =
Mainstream women’s novel: 120,700 words
…AND YOU WILL FIND LOVE
by Walter Oleksy
Where there is no love,
put love,
and you will find love
-- St. John of the Cross,
1500s
Prologue
London -- May, 1945
In the ruins of a bombed-out London churchyard on a gray afternoon the first of May, Barbara Markey was fleeing from two disparate men. One of them young and beyond handsome, pursuing her; the other a hideous-looking older man with half a face, stalking her. Physically opposites, she feared they both had the same things on their twisted minds -- lust or murder. Or both.
Hiding among the tombstones in the church graveyard in a steady drizzle, she wished desperately for the third man in her life. The man she loved. But he was nowhere near her, now.
The man in the churchyard who was her age, just under thirty, might be every woman’s dream of a man come true. His face bordering beautiful, possessing an athlete’s toned body, he was one of the richest men in the free if war-torn world, and wielded power to equal his wealth.
Barbara found more than one reason to fear him, but his main fault, she had grown to realize, was that he was mad. Certifiably. And worse, he was obsessed with her, in a very dangerous way.
The older man with the disfigured face stalking her was not her dream of a lover; he was her nightmare come true. She feared him almost as much as the younger man, though she knew nothing about him except he would be wherever she tried to hide, because he was always there. At times over the years, when she had almost forgotten he existed, he was there again, menacing her like a ghost, a phantom. And she had no clue as to who he was or why he kept entering her life.
Of the three men in her life, she only felt safe with Stephen, the man she loved but could not have.
Stephen, save me from them! she beseeched silently in the churchyard. I’ve always been able to take care of myself... I’ve flown B-17 bombers, nearly been shot out of the sky half a dozen times, and survived more than that many tailspins. But I can’t save myself now, without you!
She wanted Stephen even though she knew that marriage with him, her greatest love, was impossible.
Barbara had gotten her handsome pursuer’s note at her hotel in Grosvenor Square in the early afternoon, just after she had returned from the British Air Ministry, for whom she was a volunteer pilot. She had gone there to get her next flight assignment and learned she was to fly a B-17 bomber on a secret mission that night to a part of Czechoslovakia still under Nazi domination. Or had the Russians taken it for themselves by then?; she did not know. Nazis or Communists, it did not matter. The flight would be dangerous no matter which of them controlled it now.
Barbara did not know the reason for the night flight. She only knew it was not an official mission for either the British Air Ministry or the WASPS, the American volunteer air-ferrying unit, the Women Airforce Service Pilots. She was flying fighters and bombers for them on non-combat missions, relieving her countrymen for bombing flights from London to war targets over France and Germany. She would not be told her mission in Czechoslovakia until just before take-off that evening.
While she had been in her hotel room preparing for the flight, a bellboy had delivered the note:
Barbara, I am here in London and coming for
you. Funny double meaning, huh? You cannot
escape me. I will find you no matter where you go.
If you stay in your hotel room, so much the
better. I’m sure there’s a bed there for us.
If you leave and try to hide from me, don’t
think you can. I’ll find you. I always have.
Today, this afternoon, I will finally have you. And afterward, no one else ever will.
Aren’t you sorry now, you’ve made me wait
so long?
Your adoring one, Chet.
Barbara could almost hear the writer’s insane laugh as she crumpled the paper and threw it in a waste basket.
Stephen, where are you? I need you so desperately.
I don’t even know how to reach you.
It was impossible for Barbara not to add to her thoughts:
And God, why do I fall in love with men I can’t have?
She hoped her beloved American Army captain was still in London with his Special Services unit. But maybe by then he had rejoined General Patton’s Third Armored command, giving Hitler’s fading army hell on his rampage through Germany. Patton’s brave men had just crossed the Rhine River and were fighting their way to Berlin, desperate to get there before the Communists.
Since Chet knew where she was, Barbara did not feel safe in her hotel room. She also would not give him the satisfaction of finding her that easily. Putting on her blue air service raincoat, she left the hotel and knew where she must go.
Riding a double-deck bus to London Tower, she imagined that Stephen, the man she would never stop loving even though she could not marry him, was beside her, as he once had been, his hand touching hers tenderly. But when the bus stopped at the Tower, Stephen vanished from her thoughts. She got off alone and found most of the buildings in rubble from Nazi bombings and missile attacks.
Barbara walked in a cold drizzle until without realizing it she began to run, toward All Hallows-by-the-Tower, an Anglican church first built by the Saxons in the seventh century. She had felt safe there once with Stephen; before it was gutted when Nazi planes had rained down bombs and turned London into an inferno and a pile of bricks. Now the ancient church was in ruins, she feared she might not find sanctuary even in its courtyard. The war in Europe was finally coming to an end, but she still had hers to fight.
A bobby’s shrill whistle startled her as it sounded from some distance away. “Here, now!” the rain-coated policeman called to her. “Don’t go in there, Lass! It’s not safe!”
Barbara did not need anyone to tell her that. But she had felt safe there, once, in Stephen’s arms. Stephen who truly loved her and she loved in return, though their love was hopeless.
That love was lost to her now, and the churchyard was her last refuge, the last place she could try to escape the two men who were now after her. She knew what her fate would be if her pursuer, the handsome one, caught her. He’d take her, then
probably kill her. How could he not take his revenge on her like that, after she had revealed his terrible secret, exposing it to the world?
The other -- No Face -- she did not know what he intended doing to her. She did not even know what she had done to cause him to stalk her so relentlessly, no matter where she went. She just knew that the very sight of him had frightened her for years. Yet, she did not know who he was; just that at times he was there, to watch her and wait his time for whatever he would do to her.
Ignoring the warning of the bobby, Barbara ran into the dark, damp churchyard. She wound her way among the tombstones that lay there, some of them broken and fallen, without having seen the sign to one side of the iron gate at its entrance that read:
DANGER
STAY OUT!
UNEXPLODED BOMB
Moments later, as she searched for a hiding place among the shadows of the churchyard, she heard footsteps behind her and muffled angry grumbling. Were they from one man, or two?, she wondered.
Hiding in the shadows under a densely vine-covered stone half-arch that had not completely crumbled in the courtyard, she
desperately hoped it was the bobby’s footsteps and grumbling she had heard, and he would be there to save her. But then she heard the high-pitched pulsating siren of an ambulance or fire engine. From her hiding place she saw that the bobby who had just entered the churchyard was now going back out of it, following the sound of the emergency vehicle’s wailing.
Barbara’s heart sank as she felt alone again. Alone except for the footsteps that meant one of her pursuers was close-by; perhaps they both were.
Anxious moments later, in the glow of a lamplight at the courtyard entrance where she had passed only moments before, she saw the man she feared would violate and then kill her. Tall, slender, incredibly handsome with thick blue-black hair and azure blue eyes, he wore a dark suit and, except for seeing his face in the lamp glow, he looked like a walking shadow.
She could see that Chet still walked with a cane, limping slightly. She had been the cause of that, and thought it must have been part of what had driven him mad. Lust, anger, and hatred now distorted his handsome face, and she knew to whom they were directed.
“Barbara!” he called out in a cat-and-mouse voice.
“I know you’ve come in here. I followed you from your hotel.
Come out, so neither of us falls and breaks our neck. I can’t
see where I’m going, and neither can you. Why not just come out and... we’ll talk.”
She did not reply, but moved farther back into the church- yard, praying that she could blend with its overgrowth and shadows and become invisible.
Chet quickly lost his patience. “Barbara, come the hell out where I can see you! Don’t make me any more mad at you than I already am. I’ll be gentle with you. I promise. Even after waiting for you so long, I’ll be gentle. Even after what you’ve done to me, I’ll be gentle...”
His crazy man’s high-pitched laugh then frightened her so, she turned and began to run, not knowing where in the shadows she was running.
“Dear God!” she screamed as she ran right into the other man, who was stalking her. Tall and broad-shouldered, his gray hair wild and windblown, his clothes looked worn and dusty, as if he had been at work in the churchyard. Digging a fresh grave? Her grave?
Barbara had run right into No Face’s strong, possessive arms, and they held her like she was in a vise. They stood face-to-face, except that his was only half a face. He had not lost the other half of it in the war; she knew that because she had seen him before the war, back home in America.
Now the sight of his face, as if it had been eaten away by a cancer, with only half a nose on the left side and no right ear, and him holding her so close, sent her into hysterical trembling.
Holding Barbara so tightly she could hardly breathe, her
stalker then covered her mouth with the heavy flat of one hand.
“Shhh!” No Face told her harshly. “Don’t make a sound!”
She tried to free herself from his grasp, but he would not release her. The harder she fought to wrest herself from him,
the tighter No Face held her. She tried to bite his hand, but could not open her mouth.
Unable to utter a sound, Barbara silently beseeched the ghosts who haunt bombed-out churchyards. “Dear God, No!” Her words were muffled and could not escape her tightly closed mouth. “Merciful God, No! No! No!”
In whose hands would she rather die?, she wondered. Her pursuer’s or her stalker’s? Neither!, she vowed to herself,
finally freeing one hand. Making a fist, she pounded it against No Face’s strong chest as he still held her close.
Then the terrible thought came to her: Is my stalker holding me so my pursuer can take his revenge on me? Am I going to be savagely taken, first by one and then the other? Then left to die alone in this graveyard?
“No!” she screamed inside herself, unable to take her eyes off the hideous face of the man who held her to him while she heard the other, laughing, as he came out of the shadows and started toward her, looking as if he knew he finally had her.
“Stephen!” His name exploded out of her even though it was muffled in the hand that remained clenched over her mouth. “You said if ever I really needed you, you would come to me, no matter what.”
Time then stopped for Barbara. She had not fainted, nor had her thundering heart stopped beating. Time as she had known it until then stopped, and an entire lifetime -- her lifetime -- swept over her like the storm clouds gathering over the churchyard as a cold, wet veil of fog descended over the darkness and Barbara and her pursuer as he advanced on her and the stalker who held her close against him and would not let her go, or even scream.
PART ONE
Where There Is No Love
Chapter One
Chicago, 1936
For Barbara Markey, life began at Fairmount, a small private college in a west suburb of Chicago. Not that she and her widowed mother could afford for her to go to the exclusive school, mainly for the daughters of wealthy North Shore families. She had been granted a small scholarship for needy students, earned extra money by waiting on tables at a sorority house on campus, and lived with her mother in a small apartment in the city.
She liked college, but her real passion was flying, ever since she was a little girl and had read about the adventures of pioneer women aviators. When she learned there was a small airport not far from Fairmount, she got extra work there on Sunday afternoons, hoping to earn enough to pay for flying lessons.
Red Olafson, the airport’s owner and chief mechanic, a short, stocky, balding Swede, studied her. “Do you know how to sew? Or better yet, how to use a sewing machine?”
“Yes, but what’s there to sew around airplanes?”
Olafson took her to a hangar where he showed her the tears in the wings of a biplane. “Planes get pretty beat-up, by the wind and weather. The wings are covered with cloth and they tear, so they need to be patched. I’ve got some linen bed sheets you can sew them back up with.”
Barbara agreed to be an airport seamstress, on the condition she be paid in flying lessons.