by Amy Cross
"This is crazy," I reply. I guess I was an idiot to even entertain the notion that Natalie might be onto something here. I've only been in the basement for a day, and I'm already starting to crack up. "Natalie, maybe we should get some sleep. It must be past midnight."
"Just try it!" she hisses, looking back yet again to make sure that Elizabeth hasn't stirred. "Please, just try it once. Focus on the bar turning and flexing. Think about it being pulled out of the stonework."
Realizing that Natalie has lost her mind, I decide to just play along for a moment. After all, I guess it's not my place to start dashing her dreams, even if those dreams seem to be based on some kind of bizarre belief that we can break a set of iron bars simply with the power of our minds. I guess the incident with the perspex fed into her delusion and gave her the confidence to keep trying. I just wish I could make her see reason.
"You're not trying!" she says after a moment.
"I am!"
"You're not! I can feel it! You're not really, really trying! This'll only work if you promise to focus as hard as you can!"
Sighing, I try to concentrate on the bars. I feel kind of stupid, but the whole thing is a welcome distraction from everything else that's been happening. I just hope that I don't end up losing my mind the same way that Natalie seems to have lost hers. After five years of -
Suddenly there's a scraping sound from the bars, and I swear one of them actually seems to move slightly. Not a lot, but just enough to be noticeable.
"Did you see?" Natalie asks excitedly.
"I don't know," I reply, my heart racing. "Maybe. What did you see?"
"Keep trying!" she says.
Forcing myself to stay positive, I continue to stare at the bar that moved. In a strange way, it's almost as if I can almost feel Natalie's mind reaching out with me, and for a moment I allow myself to believe that something might be happening. Sure enough, there's a faint scraping sound from one of the bars, almost as if somehow we're managing to get it to move. Forgetting my doubts, I continue to stare at the bar, and finally I allow myself the faintest of hopes that maybe, in some bizarre way, we might actually be able to get it to come loose.
"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asks suddenly.
We both turn to find her standing right behind us.
"Nothing," Natalie says, scurrying back over to the spot on the floor where she was sleeping earlier. Like a terrified animal, she's acting almost as if she expects to be beaten or punished.
"We weren't doing anything," I say, even though it's obvious from the look on Elizabeth's face that she knows exactly what was happening. "Natalie was just showing me the view outside the window."
"There's no view," Elizabeth says coldly. "You can't see anything. It's too dark."
"We can see the stars," I continue, "and we thought maybe we could see a jet."
"Natalie," she continues, while keeping a skeptical eye on me, "have you been filling Holly's head with your silly ideas?"
"She -" I start to say.
"It was her idea!" Natalie shouts, seemingly in a total panic.
"What was?" Elizabeth asks.
"She wanted to try something!" Natalie continues. "She asked me to help her! It was nothing to do with me! I just thought I'd see if I could do it for her, but it was her plan!"
"Excuse me?" I reply, shocked at her willingness to throw the blame onto me.
"We'll talk about this in the morning," Elizabeth continues, "but for now, I want you to sleep. Do you understand?" She walks over to Natalie. "We discussed this before. Do you really want to keep putting yourself through such awful pain? You can't keep acting like this over and over. You're going to hurt yourself, or you might even hurt someone else. Is that what you want?"
Terrified, Natalie shakes her head.
"If you make a fuss, do you know what'll happen? You'll draw his attention, and then he'll call you up for another ice bath. Do you want that?"
She shakes her head.
"Do you think you could survive another one so soon?"
"Please, don't say that," she whimpers as tears run down her cheeks.
"Then it looks like everything's settled," Elizabeth continues, coming back over to me. "Please don't encourage Natalie to get over-excited, Holly. She suffers terribly. You don't know her the way I know her. Believe me, she's a fragile and tender girl who needs to be cared for with sympathy and compassion. Whipping her up into a frenzy like this is cruel. She can't take the strain. I'll explain in the morning, but for now, just let her sleep. If you don't get your rest, you'll never start to recover from today's ordeal."
As Elizabeth goes back over to the other side of the basement, I'm left staring at Natalie. After a moment, I look back up at the bars. I want to dismiss everything that happened, to pretend that it was all the product of a fevered imagination, but it was more than that.
"Go to sleep!" Natalie hisses from the darkness, her voice filled with choked rage and fear.
"I just want to -"
"Go to sleep!" she hisses again, and it's clear that she's terrified of Elizabeth.
"Alright, snitch," I reply, figuring I've just about had enough of her for one night.
Stepping over to the window, I climb up onto a chair and take a look at the bars. Sure enough, one of them appears to have been slightly pulled away, as if some kind of force was able to tug and shift it from its position. I reach up and brush some brick-dust from the edge, and I swear it looks as if the bar has been moved. Looking back down at Natalie, I see that she's still staring at me, her eyes wide with fear.
Ignoring her, I go over to the far corner and settle down for the night. At least when I'm arguing with Elizabeth, I've got something to do; the worst times down here are when everyone's asleep and I'm left with my thoughts. I miss my parents so much, it feels like my heart is aching. All I want is to get out of here, and all I can do is hold on to the hope that soon, somehow, I'll find a way to go home.
Ben Lawler
Today
"I always knew it wasn't over," says Joe Kukil, sitting on his porch as we look out across his garden. Having retired a few years ago from his post as sheriff, Joe has been spending his time pottering about and tending to his plants, but he's kept an eye on local events and he still has a keen interest in the house on Willow Road. After all, he was the one who first found the women after they escaped. "That bastard's dead," he continues, "but it's the house you've got to watch out for. It's the house as much as anything else."
"But the guy is dead," I reply, taking a sip from my beer. "You're sure of that, right?"
"He's dead alright. Saw the body with my own eyes, chained to the wall. Saw the autopsy too. Hell, I was even there when they lowered him into the ground. There's still a few questions about the whole thing, but his death isn't one of them."
"And his name," I continue. "Did you really never learn his name?"
"We tried everything," he says. "It seems crazy, but there was nothing. No documents, no history, no record of him at all. Obviously he had to have had a name, but he seems to have gone to great lengths to cover it up. In a way, that was one of the creepiest things about the whole damn situation. If we'd had a name to put to him, we could've started trying to understand him. When you look at a man's face, you need to know his name. It's a part of him. It's as much a part of him as his DNA. I always felt we were missing a big part of the story."
"What about the house?" I ask. "Surely there must have been a name on the deeds?"
"The guy rented the house from a man a local farmer named Fred Willard. When we went looking for him, we found nothing but a rotten corpse. There was no paper trail. That pervert's name was never uncovered." He pauses for a moment. "What could be so horrific about a name that you'd want to bury it forever? Hell, if you don't like your name, you can just change it easy enough. But this guy, it's like he didn't want to have a name at all. He just let his own name go."
"Or someone took it from him," I suggest.
He shrugs. "May
be I'm off base. But either way, that house is the real danger. I knew the moment I walked in there. It's almost as if the house is alive." He pauses for a moment. "No, that's not quite right. The house isn't alive. But there's something else there, something we never found. We looked in every room, but when we were done and we shut the front door, I knew it was still in there."
"You really believe that?" I ask.
"I believe that the house on Willow Road is evil," he replies. "Does that answer your question? I don't know whether the man absorbed the evil from the house, or the house absorbed the evil from the man, but by the end of it there wasn't much to tell between them. That's why I kept pushing for the place to be taken down. I even considered going out there with a torch to do the job myself, but it wouldn't have been enough. Someone needs to go in there with a bulldozer and demolish the entire place, and then they need to salt the ground and make sure nothing can ever grow there again. Anything else won't be enough."
"You never struck me as the superstitious type," I tell him.
"It's not superstition when you've looked into its face and seen the evil," he replies.
"You saw the guy who lived there?"
"I saw the house," he continues, "and I saw..." He pauses for a moment. "The official reports all described the kidnappings as the work of one man, because that's all we were ever able to prove. The three girls said there was just one person who was responsible, and at the time I didn't feel like pushing the matter with them, 'cause they were so upset. But there were a few little signs here and there, things that didn't quite make sense unless you considered the possibility that there might have been someone else involved. A second man."
"So he could be behind the things that have been happening?" I reply. "Do you think he's come back to carry on with the job?"
Joe shakes his head. "If he existed, and I'm not even certain that he did, then he's certainly not around anymore. I'm sure of that. He died a long time ago, before we even knew what was happening there. For all I know, he might even be buried out there. I pushed for a full exhumation of the basement, to see what was under the floor, but no-one around here wanted anything to do with it. They just wanted to seal the place up and forget about it."
"But if there was someone else -"
"Again, I don't have a name. I probably shouldn't even have said anything, but it's just that the way those girls talked... I swear, when they thought there was no-one else around to overhear them, they seemed to be talking as if there'd been someone else there, but that he was dead." He sighs. "It was always hard to really know what those three were on about. By the time they got out, they were a real trio, really close. It was almost like they'd got their own private language, you know? Their own way of thinking and talking."
"Some people think they were witches," I point out.
He pauses for a moment. "Yeah," he says eventually. "Some people think that."
"What do you think?" I ask.
"I think there's something there," he says. "I don't know what it is, but it's there." He turns to me. "Here's the thing. They want to do the house up so they can film there, right? Well, they can't touch the place if it's a crime scene. So if you're wondering why there's some official reluctance to acknowledge what's happened up there, look no further. The way I see it, they've got two options. Either pretend like nothing's happened, or act fast and claim that they've resolved it."
"With Samantha Briggs in hospital, they can't just sweep it under the carpet," I point out. "When she wakes up, she'll be able to explain what happened."
"Which is why I'm worried about you, Ben," he continues. "If they want to pin this on someone, you're by far the best candidate. They can re-open the Brenda Baynes case and make it seem like you killed her, and they can pin Samantha Briggs on you too. I'm not saying that's what they'll do, but I think you should be careful. Don't give them the opportunity. These are dangerous people. Trust me, I've known Jefferson Jones for a long time. When there's money on the table, he's not above pulling a few strings. It'd be very convenient for him if Samantha doesn't wake up."
"He wouldn't have someone killed," I reply. There's a pause as I wait for a reply. "Would he?"
"If Samantha Briggs can remember what happened to her," he continues eventually, "things might start moving. The one thing Jefferson Jones can't ignore is a scared, frightened girl who goes telling her story to the papers. When she wakes up, she'll clear your name and maybe she'll get things moving at the same time. That's not what he wants."
"Maybe she won't wake up," I reply. "Jones says she's getting worse."
"I bet she is," he replies. "Don't underestimate the lengths these people will go to, if they think they can make a lot of money from that house. Problem is, they're playing with something they don't understand. There's evil in that house, Ben. Pure, unadulterated evil. It was there when that guy kidnapped the women, and it's still there after he's dead. Whatever's planned for the place, the evil isn't going to go away. Maybe this is what it's been waiting for. Maybe it's been waiting for some damn fool to go opening the place up again. After all, something's sure woken it up." He turns to me. "Do you want to know the biggest question I've got about the whole thing, Ben?"
"Go for it."
"After they got free, Elizabeth Torbett and Natalie Bay went home. They couldn't wait to get back to their parents, even though they'd been away for so long. But Holly Carter?" He stares at me for a moment. "From what I hear, she went home once. Just once, for a few hours, to say hello to her folks, and then she never went to see them again. I've always wondered why she did that."
"Trauma?" I suggest.
He shrugs. "I'm no expert," he says after a moment, "but it seems like strange behavior to me. I looked into that girl's eyes after she escaped, and there was something different about her. Something wrong." He raises his beer bottle and drains the last. "If you want to know what's really hiding in that house, Holly Carter might be the best place to start."
Part Four:
The Thin-Faced Man
Natalie
15 years ago
They're arguing. Why can't they stop arguing?
Please, God, make them stop.
Squeezing my eyes tighter and tighter, I start holding my breath, desperately hoping that somehow the noise will go away. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, I take a deep breath and open my eyes. It's no use. They're still arguing.
Please, God. I'm only asking for one thing. Make them stop arguing.
I've been awake for a while now, but I'm pretending to be asleep. I know that as soon as I draw attention to myself, they'll draw me into the whole thing. Elizabeth'll talk down to me as usual, treating me like I'm a child, and Holly... well, she's new, so I haven't quite got her worked out yet. So far, Holly seems to be more open to my ideas, and she seems to want me to stand up to Elizabeth. I understand her point of view, but at the same time she doesn't understand what it's like down here. Maybe when she's been here for a little longer, she'll see the patterns that float through the air, and she'll start to understand the power. For now, though, she's just disrupting everything. Still, it's fun to see Elizabeth's feathers being ruffled; I shouldn't find it funny, but I do.
"Let her sleep," Elizabeth says gruffly. She clearly doesn't like Holly very much, and she's struggling to maintain control over the situation. Holly represents a threat, and Elizabeth doesn't know how to react.
"You need to listen to her," Holly replies. "Last night, she -"
"Last night she was tired," Elizabeth continues, interrupting her, "and weak. You both went through a huge ordeal yesterday with the ice bath, so it's only to be expected that your minds are troubled. You're reacting to an enormous period of stress, but you have to focus and allow your mind to establish dominance over your body, otherwise you're nothing more than an animal."
"We have to get out of here," Holly continues. "If you just accept the situation, you're playing into his hands."
"Natalie needs her sleep," Elizabe
th says. It's typical of her to change the subject when she knows she's losing the argument. "That poor girl is so weak, she needs to be protected from herself. You don't know her, but I can assure you, she's capable of inventing the most bizarre fantasies in her mind. She believes them, too, and then she spirals off into a series of self-destructive events that can last for weeks. By encouraging her, you're just putting her in more danger."
Poor little Natalie.
Poor, weak, pathetic little Natalie.
Typical Elizabeth. Always trying to protect me. Sometimes it's as if she thinks I'm crazy. She's always been like this, since the very first day I arrived down here in the basement. She just naturally assumed the authoritative, mothering role in our relationship, and I guess that in return I regressed a little toward childhood. She treats me like I'm an idiot.
Maybe she's right.
I don't tell Elizabeth about my dreams, of course, but they come night after night. It's always the same: I'm back with my family, and I'm starting to get on with my old life again. Eventually I wake up and find that I'm back in the basement. I try not to sleep too much these days. The dreams are more trouble than they're worth, and they make me think too much about my family. I can't help wondering what my parents have been doing for the past five years. Have they continued to search for me, or did they eventually give up? Do they assume that I'm dead? Do they keep pictures of me around the house, or have they tried to pretend that I never existed? Do they occasionally make fresh appeals for my location, and do they sometimes dig up places where they think I might be buried? After five years, they must think I'm dead. I wouldn't blame them for moving on with their lives. I hope they're happy. I miss them. I hope my Mom's okay.
Dear God, if you can't stop Elizabeth and Holly arguing, can you at least go tell my Mom that I'll be home one day. Or if I won't be home, make her forget all about me. I don't want her to be sad.
"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asks after a few minutes.
"None of your business," Holly replies.
"It most certainly is my business," Elizabeth continues. "Keep your voice down. You'll wake Natalie!"
