by Blake Crouch
“Lean back,” he whispered. “You got to pull it tight.”
Beth pulled the chain and Horace set the blade of the hacksaw against the metal.
“Andrew,” he said, poised to begin sawing, “would you grant me an exclusive interview when we get out of this?”
The second he asked, he felt dirty, and wished he hadn’t.
“You get us out of this, I’ll father your children.”
Horace began to saw.
It was awkward at first, the chain moving so much the blade kept slipping. But once it had begun a groove in the link, the blade moved through the metal like it was rotten pine. He’d cut the first link in less than two minutes, but as he started into the next one the light died again.
“Piece of shit.”
“That beam was pretty weak,” Andrew said. “Might not come back on.”
“I put fresh batteries in this afternoon.”
Andrew flicked the on-off switch several times and the light returned, just a faint orange glow, but adequate to work by.
Horace attacked the final link.
When the chain severed, Beth fell back into the wall, a manacle still attached to her left wrist.
“Who’s next?” Horace asked.
“Do him,” said the little blond.
Horace handed the flashlight to Beth, told her, “Aim it here.”
Andrew leaned back, pulled the chain taut.
Horace drew the blade slowly against the metal until he could feel a groove deepening. Then he sawed like mad, the friction of the blade on the chain filling the alcove with metallic screaming and the odor of heated steel.
He made it through the first link in less than a minute and had started into the second one when the blond whispered, “Wait!”
Horace stopped sawing.
They listened.
A creaking emanated from somewhere in the basement.
“What is that?” Beth asked.
Horace felt a tremor sweep through him.
“Someone’s coming down the steps,” he said.
As he reached for the flashlight it went out.
“Fuckin’ kidding me.”
Horace grabbed the flashlight, flicked the on-off button, and when nothing happened, smashed it into the stone. He heard the batteries fall out and roll across the floor.
Andrew said, “Horace, you have to leave and hide. Beth?”
“I’m right here.”
They were nothing now but whispers in the dark.
“Get back down on the floor and hold your hands like you’re still chained.”
“Who do you think is coming?” Horace whispered.
“Doesn’t matter,” Andrew said. “They’re all psychopaths. Now go and take the hacksaw with you so they don’t see it.”
The creaking had stopped.
Horace reached forward, felt the side of the wall, and stepped into the passageway. There wasn’t even the subtlest inference of light. Horace groped for the wall, found it, and crept away from the alcove, away from the stairs, staying close to the left side of the tunnel.
After ten steps the wall ended.
Reaching around he found that he could palm both sides of it.
He stood at the fork in the corridor.
Gazing back through swimming darkness toward the alcove, his eyes played tricks on him, firing phantom bursts of light.
The silence roared.
He strained to listen, thought he heard things—voices, footsteps—but it might’ve been his own heartbeat hammering against his eardrum.
When he saw the lanternlight on the stone he doubted his eyes. But the shadows were real, as was the sound of shuffling footsteps, and then the silhouette of a crooked old woman emerging from around a bend in the tunnel.
Horace slipped back into the adjacent corridor.
The voice he heard was soft, sweet, and utterly disarming.
“Rufus and I heard something. Ya’ll wanna go ahead and tell me what it was?”
“We haven’t heard anything,” Andrew responded.
“No?”
The old woman laughed. Horace peeked around the corner, saw her standing in robe and slippers in the threshold of the alcove, firelight from the lantern playing on her deeply wrinkled face.
“Well that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year, because the door under the stairs was open. How do you think that happened?”
“We haven’t heard a thing,” Andrew repeated. “I was as—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” the old woman said, “because Luther locked the door, so there won’t be any leaving. He and Rufus are searching the basement right now. Rufus knows it so well, he can do it in the dark.”
The old woman turned away from the alcove and started back toward the stairs, taking the light of the lantern with her, leaving Horace Boone alone in the black.
56
I will wake up in my room at the Harper Castle.
It will be warm.
The sun will reflect off the harbor.
I will get dressed and walk outside into the cool morning.
I will walk to the Ocracoke Coffee Company.
I will write this scene tomorrow over breakfast.
And if that pretty cashier is there, I will talk to her.
Tell her I’m a writer.
Ask her on a date, because I’ve never done that before and after tonight what is there to fear?
Horace dropped the hacksaw and tightened the shoulder straps on his backpack.
He sat leaning against the stone wall.
His entire body quaked and the more he tried to deny it the more he knew how gravely fucked he was. He’d never known this caliber of terror. It seemed to coat his insides like melted silver. And what magnified it was the knowledge that he’d come here on his own, dragged himself into the shit.
Down the corridor he thought he heard footsteps in the dirt.
Horace came to his feet.
The footsteps stopped.
Someone exhaled.
He strained to listen.
The darkness gaped with a silence that seemed to hum though he knew that sound was only the blood between his ears.
A light overhead flicked on and off.
So brief was its illumination he’d have missed them had he blinked.
But he didn’t.
And in that half-second snapshot of light he glimpsed tunnel walls, dirt floor, ax and shotgun, and not twenty feet away, the two men who held them—one old, one young—grinning at him.
A voice emerged from the darkness.
“What do you think you’re doing, young man?”
Horace could hardly breathe.
“I was following Andrew Thomas.”
“Who are you?”
“Horace Boone.”
Horace backed slowly into the tunnel as they conversed in darkness.
“I saw Andrew Thomas in a bookstore in Alaska last April.” Then fighting tears, “I’ve been following him because I want to write a book about him. I swear that’s all. I have a notebook in my backpack that’ll prove it.” His voice broke at the end.
“You came here on foot?”
“I left my car in the trees near your mailbox. I just want to write a book about—”
“And you’re here alone?”
“Yessir. I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t’ve—”
“Well, Luther, what do you think? Should we give him a head start?”
“Fuck no.”
A flashlight suddenly burned in Horace’s eyes.
He saw the twenty-eight-inch barrel pass through the lightbeam, shook shook, and he dove to the floor as the light went out.
There was an orange blossom.
Earsplitting boom.
He smelled gunpowder as the spray of buckshot hit the stone behind him.
And Horace was back on his feet, running blind into the dark.
57
IT was in the late afternoon when the shaft of light passed through the stone and lit th
e oval patch of rock.
Beth staggered to her feet.
The manacles and a sixteen-inch length of chain still hung from her left wrist. She’d spent several hours to no avail trying to squeeze her hand free.
Beth stood in bare feet, in her filthy yellow teddy, gazing down at Andy and Violet.
They’d all huddled in darkness last night, listening to the shotgun blasts, wondering what had happened to that young man.
“Come here,” Andy whispered.
She knelt, their faces close in the musty twilight.
“Beth, just get out of this place. That’s your first priority. Get somewhere safe before you try to do anything.”
She nodded, moved over to the twenty-something blond, whose once smart black suit now adorned her like rags.
“Violet,” she whispered, touching her face, running her fingers across the top of her dirty matted hair, “You’re going to have your baby.”
Vi’s eyes welled.
“Be safe, Beth.”
And Beth stood, stepped from the alcove into the tunnel, glancing back at her cellmates, barely visible in the temporary stream of sunlight.
Then she started into the corridor.
After three steps the darkness was total. She could hear hammering somewhere in the black distance. She dragged her right hand along the wall as a guide. Shards of laughter reverberated through the darkness, the dirt cool beneath her feet. She thought of her children. Drove them from her mind, thinking, Just get outside, under the blue sky, and go from there.
She walked into three deadends before she saw the light.
It came from a doorway twenty feet ahead.
The chain dangling from her wrist knocked into the stone wall.
Spurning the impotence in her knees, she crept forward until the voices became perfectly clear.
Rufus carefully let go of the oak strip he’d been pressing into the back of the chair for the last five minutes. The strip would serve as a sleeve for the heavy copper wire that ran up the backside of the four-by-four. Now that the wood glue had hardened, Rufus stepped back and admired his chair. It was crude, yes, but in a terrifyingly utilitarian fashion.
It would be so beautifully lethal.
Maxine sat in a corner reading At Home in Mitford.
Luther was crouched over a sheet of copper.
“Pop, what’d you do with the hacksaw? I have one more cut to make, and I can’t find it.”
“Haven’t seen it.”
“Mom, you haven’t touched it?”
Maxine peered over the top of her book.
“Do I look like I have any use for—”
“Oh, no.”
“What?” Rufus said.
Luther stood up.
“You don’t think our visitor took it?”
“No.”
“Well, do you see it here? I didn’t take it. You didn’t take it. Mom sure as hell didn’t take it.”
“Watch that language, boy.”
“The fucker”—Luther glanced at his mother—“didn’t walk off.”
“Beautiful, were they all chained up when you fed them this morning?”
“Gee, Sweet-Sweet, I don’t remember. I wasn’t really paying attention. What kinda question is that? Of course they were.”
“We better go check on them, son.”
Rufus and Luther were halfway through the doorway when they heard the dingdong.
The doorbell had been recently wired to a speaker near the stairs and they stared at it in amazement as it dingdonged again.
Beth froze, watching the Kite family emerge into the corridor. She did not move for fear the chain would clink against the stone or they would hear her footsteps. She wondered if the darkness were sufficient to hide her, should one of them happen to glance back in her direction.
The young man, the old man, and the old woman walked up the corridor away from her, guided by the light of a lantern.
The young man carried a shotgun.
The dingdong echoed again through the darkness.
In the orange illumination of the lanternlight, Beth saw them turn and disappear. She thought they had swung around into another passageway until the sound of their footsteps reached her.
They’re climbing stairs.
And knowing she’d found the way out, she crept after them.
58
RUFUS alone answered the door with a bright toothless smile that never faltered, even when he saw the badge. Two men stood facing him on the stoop, the sun in their eyes, just moments from sliding behind the house on its way into becoming a puddle of light in the Pamlico Sound.
The one with the badge was a big bear of a man in a JC Penney’s suit that should’ve been donated to the Salvation Army years ago. His hair was frosting, mustache just as dark and thick and pure as a stallion’s mane. The curly-haired man standing behind the cop looked half his age—mid-twenties, lean and tall, wearing jeans and a pinstripe button-down, with the eyes of a dog who’d been kicked.
The cop closed his wallet, dropped it back into his pocket, said, “Mr. Kite, my name’s Barry Mullins. I’m a sergeant with Criminal Investigations Division in Davidson, North Carolina. Could I come in for a moment?”
“Absolutely.”
Rufus opened the door wide and stepped back.
Sgt. Mullins whispered to his companion, “Max, please, just go and wait in the car. It would be—”
Max walked into the house.
Sgt. Mullins frowned and followed.
Rufus closed the door, the three men standing now in the dim foyer, the house perfectly quiet.
“Get you gentlemen a glass of iced tea?” Rufus offered.
Sgt. Mullins shook his head.
“Your wife at home, sir?”
“She’s out running an errand.”
Sgt. Mullins motioned to the long living room.
“Let’s have a seat in there, Mr. Kite.”
On her way to the stairs Beth stopped and looked inside the room where the Kites had been hammering and jawing and sawing. Tools littered the floor. A bare light bulb burned her eyes, humming directly above what all the ruckus must’ve been about—a rude chair in the final stage of construction, with copper plating along its armrests and front legs, numerous leather restraints, and thick copper wire coiled in the dirt beside it. The thing had an undeniable presence. As the architecture of a cathedral exudes solemnity and peace, its raw blocky masculine design radiated pure malevolence.
Beth shook off the chill and moved on. In the distance she could see where the corridor opened into a larger space. One of the Kites had left a kerosene lantern hanging in a corner to spread its worthless light upon the dirt and stone near the foot of the stairs.
She emerged from the passageway.
She rubbed her bare arms, bumpy with gooseflesh.
The stairs spilled down out of darkness.
Beth peered up, unable to see where they terminated.
And she wrapped the chain around her wrist to keep it from dragging and began to climb, the steps creaking so noisily that she did not hear the whispered footsteps of the old woman creeping out of the shadows behind her.
Sgt. Mullins eased down onto the same ottoman his detective had occupied six days ago during her first encounter with Rufus and Maxine Kite.
The old man lounged comfortably on the flaxen sofa, running his fingers through his cottony coif.
Max King stood by the cold hearth.
“Mr. Kite,” Sgt. Mullins said, leaning forward, forearms resting on his knees. “A week ago, I sent my detective, Violet King, to Ocracoke Island to talk with you and Mrs. Kite about your son, Luther. I understand she came here last Wednesday?”
“Yessir, she did.” Rufus smiled. “A lovely little thing, I must say. She met briefly with me and Maxine. Like you said, she wanted to know about our boy, Luther. And I’ll tell you what I told her. I haven’t seen my s—”
“Sir, I’m aware of what you told her. She called me that night. That’s not
why I’m here.”
Sgt. Mullins motioned to Max.
“This is Max King. Ms. King’s husband. He last spoke to Ms. King on Thursday morning. Late Thursday night, Ms. King called my home and spoke briefly with my wife. My wife is the last person we know of to have had contact with Ms. King. No one has seen her or heard from her since.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Now Vik—Ms. King was supposed to come back here and talk with you and Mrs. Kite late Thursday afternoon. Did she?”
“No, sir. We’d agreed to meet with her again after five o’clock, but she never showed. Do you think something’s wrong?”
Sgt. Mullins twisted his mustache and glanced up at Max, the young man’s jowls fluttering against the saltwater in his eyes.
The bare feet of Beth Lancing stopped on the third step. She was squinting up into the darkness at slits of light that framed a door when she heard something like the muffled thock of a knee or hip bone popping.
A leathery hand seized her left ankle and the floor hit her hard in the back, the old woman upon her, face contorted in the lanternlight, black eyes shining through a mass of wild wrinkles that looked hardly human.
Something caught the lanternlight thinly, fleetingly, and Beth heard herself gasp at the cold wet burn that was spreading through her abdomen.
Beth rolled on top of Maxine, grabbing at the old women’s wrists as the soles of Maxine’s orthopedic shoes found her stomach. Beth slammed into the corner, knees turning liquid.
Both women scrambled to their feet, panting. Maxine was just out of reach, blocking the stairs. Beth unraveled the chain on her left wrist, noting the warm red trickle down her inner thigh, the boning knife in Maxine’s right hand, and the weightlessness filling the space behind her eyes.
When Maxine lunged the chain caught her in the mouth. She choked and spit blood, staggered into the wall and dropped the knife.
Beth spun Maxine around and punched her so hard it broke her hand and the old woman’s jaw at once.
Swiping up the knife, she left Maxine unconscious in the dirt and tore up the stairs toward the slits of light.
59
