A Perfect Canvas

by Kevin Adkisson

  Chapter 26

  Paige shoved herself up from the floor with shaky hands. Her mind didn’t want to come back from the deep black, but her stomach had other ideas. She rushed to the kitchen sink, dragging the throw blanket behind her, and made it just in time to spew soupy bile.

  She turned the faucet on, cupped cool water to her dry lips, and rinsed out her mouth. Pungent sweat dotted her brow, and she wiped it away. Her head thrummed. Her neck felt stiff, and there was a sharp pang when she turned her head.

  She glanced out the window. No sign of Nicholas’s car. No sign of Chris. But Paige saw the remains of the rocking chair had been moved into the kitchen. The largest chunk sat on the floor. Smaller pieces were on the counter. The leg she’d been carrying had been broken in half and was on the dining room table.

  Paige cracked another leg off the body of the rocking chair. This one she wouldn’t put down. She wouldn’t be caught off guard again.

  Having the solid piece of wood in her hand gave her some reassurance, but not much. It was too small. What she really needed was a better weapon, something that would give her a real edge when Nicholas returned, which, no doubt, would be soon.

  In the living area, the couch was still tilted forward, but the carpet had been smoothed back over most of the floor. The room was still a wreck. She smiled. Nicholas wouldn’t be pleased.

  The Tornado shelter style door in the floor stood wide open. The last thing Paige remembered was being hit on the head. She hadn’t had time to open the door before she’d been hit, which meant Chris had to have opened it, unless Nicholas had returned.

  She checked the window again. Still saw no sign of his car. But what did that really mean? He had a huge garage out back. It could be parked inside. She could think of only one way to find out.

  Paige tied the throw blanket back around her body and cautiously approached the door to the basement.

  Black painted concrete stairs led down into dizzying darkness. Another spasm of nausea assaulted Paige’s stomach. Her guts felt as if they’d spent the night in a blender.

  “Chris?”

  Paige rubbed at the back of her head unleashing a corkscrew of pain. She couldn’t help but wonder why the woman had hit her. Had she done something to provoke Chris or was she really working with Nicholas? It sure seemed like it. But perhaps Chris had only reacted out of fear for Nicholas’s wrath over the destruction she’d wreaked on his carpet.

  “I’m down here,” Chris’s voice echoed up out of the floor.

  Paige took a couple of steps down the stairs into the shadowy dimness. She wasn’t sure why she was going down into the basement. No rational and intelligent person would, but she couldn’t help herself. Something was drawing her down. Some part of her had to know what was down there in Nicholas’s secret lair.

  The basement swallowed what little living room light filtered down into it. Paige bent over and peered into Nicholas’s “studio.” It was hard to see how large it was, but it felt deep, enormous, even bigger than the ground floor of the house.

  Frigid damp air wafted up out of the darkness. Paige smelled ammonia and soap and something else. Something acidic that she couldn’t quite place.

  “Why did you hit me?”

  “Why didn’t you stop? I told you to stop. I begged you to stop. I’m responsible for what you do when you’re with me.”

  Chris’s voice had come from Paige’s left.

  An electric buzzing sound cycling between highs and lows came from the same direction.

  Paige took a couple more steps down into the pit. A dim orange candle flickered in a far corner casting a weak halo of light on what looked like a small desk. She couldn’t make out much else in the room, and she couldn’t see Chris.

  “I’m sorry,” Paige said. “I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted to get out of this house, away from him. And then I got angry. I wanted to hurt him in whatever way I could.”

  “He’ll punish us both for what you’ve done. It will be awful.”

  Paige took a few more slow steps down the stairs. Down. Down. Down. She took more than a dozen steps in all, and still she didn’t reach the bottom. From the angle of the light coming from the stingy candle, she guessed she was only about halfway down the stairs which would make the ceiling twenty or more feet tall.

  She stopped.

  It was like stepping down into nothingness. Her heart pounded in her palms. She didn’t want to descend further without more light, without knowing exactly how far down the stairs went, without knowing what was at the bottom. Besides, if something happened, she needed to stay close to the door in the floor, wanted to stay close to the exit.

  “I’ll tell him you had nothing to do with it,” Paige said

  The dim light from the candle stood in stark contrast with the darkness permeating the rest of the room. The concrete was freezing cold. Grew colder with each step down. She felt certain that even if she were wearing shoes she’d feel the chill in her heel bones, which didn’t make much sense. Underground rooms were supposed to maintain a fairly steady temperature. A cool, comfortable temperature. They weren’t supposed to be like a freezer.

  “No. He won’t listen. I have to take my share of the responsibility. I just don’t understand why you’re acting like this,” Chris said. “Why won’t you listen to me? Why are you fighting so hard? You should be thanking him for all he’s offered you.”

  Paige felt an evil presence creep up on her, as if something slithered towards her. It wasn’t Chris. Was it Nicholas? Was it death incarnate? Whatever it was it made her want to back away from the cold blackness, to move closer to the door, but she held her ground. She felt along the wall with her hands, looked for a light switch, found nothing. Not wanting to retreat and not wanting to move forward, she sat down on the stairs with her back against the wall.

  “The only thing he’s offering is slavery and death,” Paige said. “The man’s insane.”

  “I realize you’re afraid,” Chris answered. “That you might be having second thoughts. I had them, too. He can be so intense. But after I thought about it, I began to ask myself what I really wanted and whether there might be something to all this. It wasn’t like I’d found any answers on my own.”

  Paige heard the whir of an electric motor above her head and looked up to find the door above her closing.

  “No,” she wailed, sprinting up the stairs. But the door clanked shut before she could get to it.

  Caught like a bug in a can, Paige frantically felt around looking for a latch or a handle, but there wasn’t one. The face of the door was cold and smooth as polished steel.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Chris said. “Everything’s fine.”

  Paige banged the rocking chair leg against the metal.

  “Let me out! What the hell is wrong with you people?”

  “The door is on a timer. It closes automatically. We can leave this room whenever we want.”

  “You can open the door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then open it.”

  “I know you’re frightened. I know it feels like you’re giving up your control, but you’re not really giving up anything, at least anything you really want. I’m just trying to help.”

  Paige crouched at the top of the stairs, wrapped her arms around her legs for warmth. Her shivers had shivers. She kept the leg of the rocker in front of her. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, and she wasn’t afraid of being confined, but something about combining the two made her flesh whimper.

  “That’s crazy. You’re crazy. Open the door. Why would you want to give him anything? Give in to him? Give in to anyone? Open the door.”

  “Calm down,” Chris said. “You’re fine. I hear what you’re saying, but that’s not what this is, and we both know it. I know it feels like you’re giving up control. But you’re not. You have to get beyond that.”

  “What in the world
are you talking about?”

  “That battle of will, that moment where your mind is screaming at you to run. I always want to run. I even lash out sometimes or just take off. But in the end, I submit because it’s what I really want, not because it’s what he wants. You see, don’t you?”

  “I can see he’s broken you. That you’ve lost your sense of who you are.”

  “No. It’s a dance, a beautiful fulfilling dance. You’re the one who has lost the sense of who you are. I was meant for this, and there’s a lot of satisfaction in knowing that. It’s like there’s a line. A line that always lets you know where you stand. It sure beats playing the part the world wants you to play.”

  Paige spotted Chris’s form in the murky blackness, but even with the light from the candle she couldn’t see her clearly. At least she can’t get behind me.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. The man has warped your mind. Please, just open the door.”

  “I know you’re new to this. I know it sounds crazy. But haven’t you spent your whole life looking for something? Looking for an answer to a question that’s burned its way through you?”

  “So what?"

  “But I know the answer,” Chris said. “The same question called to me from deep within. You want to be saved from the nothing that you’ve become. Here you can be. Here you can become immortal.”

  “You’re seriously confused. You can’t find meaning to your life like that.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “And you’re working with him. That’s why you won’t open the door. You’ve convinced yourself that you’ve found something because you’ve had to in order to survive. I can understand that. But it isn’t real. Nicholas isn’t the answer, no man is, and he doesn’t have any answers. I don’t want this. I’ve never wanted any of this.”

  The odd buzzing sound stopped.

  Paige heard Chris’s bare feet slapping on the concrete as she crossed the room. Chris entered the candle’s circle of light, turned, and slid her bottom up on one end of the desk. She saw Chris held a smallish round object in her hands. Chris put the object down and picked up the candle. The flame wavered as she lifted it.

  “I’m not working with him,” she said, and blew out the candle.

  Paige shrieked in total darkness.