by Jacob Rayne
Moving further from hell and closer to heaven.
She was right, but not in the way she had hoped.
By the time she’d gotten to her neighbour’s house, she was utterly exhausted.
Her body had seized up in the cold weather and she felt like dying might actually be preferable to the pain she was going to wake up with.
Assuming, of course, she survived that long.
She felt sure Cross had gone, as there had been nothing to suggest that he was still following her.
She saw no car, which made her feel like he’d made his getaway rather than getting his head blown off.
Still, doubt gnawed at her.
Would he really give up so easily after he’d killed everyone else at the party?
The neighbour’s house was also still, but she didn’t take this as strange, especially since it was just after five in the morning.
They were quiet, kept themselves to themselves, in fact she thought they had kids (she saw them that rarely that she wasn’t sure).
She rang the doorbell, all the while her eyes scouring the darkness for her hidden attacker.
Nothing moved, bar the brass wind chimes tinkling on the eaves to her right.
The silence again consumed her.
She felt tiny.
Insignificant.
Lost.
Not sure if the doorbell had worked – she’d certainly not heard it – she went to rap on the door.
As her hand touched the varnished wood, it swung open and she knew instinctively that something was wrong.
People just didn’t leave their doors unlocked, even out here in the country.
Her flesh began to crawl, her heart to race.
The moisture in her throat seemed to suddenly evaporate.
Still, she figured it was worth trying to call the cops, or an ambulance.
The phone will be fucked, she thought.
As though God was finally on her side in all of this, she saw blue lights coming up the drive.
‘Thank you,’ she said, gazing gratefully into the heavens.
She ran to the cop car, the gun now hanging low by her side.
She was going to be ok.
The good guys were here.
They would catch the bad guy and riddle him with bullets, saving her conscience the burden of killing him.
As she approached the car from the passenger’s side the window wound down.
‘Get in, miss,’ the cop said.
‘Oh, my God. Am I pleased to see you,’ she gushed. ‘There was this madman. He had a priest’s collar on. But he was killing my friends. He said we’re all sinners.’
‘You can relax,’ the cop said. ‘It’s all over now.’
Something flagged in her mind as being wrong, but, in her haze of terror and adrenaline and despair she couldn’t figure out what it was.
‘Have you caught him?’ she asked. ‘I think he might still be hiding out here somewhere.’
‘Not yet, miss. But we will,’ the cop said.
It was the wind that made her realise what was happening.
It blew up really intense, blowing dust up from the road that went into her eyes.
She blinked hard to try and clear it, and that’s when she realised the cop hadn’t blinked in all of the time they’d been talking.
She moved closer to the car, to get a better look at him.
As she did so, she saw that his eyes were staring, glassy, dead.
Saw the knife, glistening with dark gore, that protruded from his belly, shoved through the seat from behind.
While she stared, in mute contemplation, the driver’s door came open.
In a flash she was face to face with the man who had killed all of her friends.
‘You didn’t think I’d give up on you that easy did you, sinner?’ he giggled, twisting her wrist so the gun fell out onto the road.
This is it, I’m going to die, she thought.
He grabbed her head with his hands on her temples, crushing together so hard she feared he was going to crack her skull like an egg.
Without warning, he slammed her head into the car door, hard enough to make the world do a flip.
Before she could react he had done it again.
And again.
And again.
He was still doing it when everything became darkness.
2.5
Deborah woke, head pounding.
She was disoriented, and found herself in darkness so absolute that at first she thought she’d gone blind.
A more thorough investigation of her surroundings revealed a very dim outline of light around what she took to be a door.
It was as bright as the sun in contrast to the utter darkness of her surroundings.
Something made a sound behind her.
In the silent black, it seemed much louder than it actually was.
A droplet of water landing on her head made her jolt.
As much as she tried to get a grip of her surroundings, the darkness made this nigh on impossible.
She tried to get to her feet, but her legs and back had seized up from sleeping on the concrete floor.
Even getting to a kneeling position set off a chain reaction of muscle spasms from arsehole to eyelids.
She winced, shaking her head as if to rid herself of the pain.
The events preceding her waking up in here were still lost to her.
At first she’d taken herself to be in bed, but the cold, wet surface below her shot that theory out of the water.
She desperately tried to think.
Adrenaline and the after-effects of the party conspired to make her throat feel like she’d been gargling with sand.
She rubbed her tongue on the roof of her mouth, a trick she did when hungover in an attempt to stimulate her saliva glands.
It worked a little; the fluid as welcome as a cold beer on a hot day.
She tried to breathe, but the pain in her belly stopped her from filling her lungs to their full capacity.
Shit, the baby! She thought in despair, cupping a hand to her belly.
Panic raced through her when she realised she couldn’t feel the baby moving.
While she pondered what had happened, panicking that she’d got arrested for drunken antics – it wouldn’t be the first time, for damn sure – the corona of dim light around the door intensified.
Seconds later the door creaked open, the squall from the rusted hinges cutting through her thoughts like a bandsaw blade.
She looked towards the doorway, now illuminated enough to reveal a bug-eyed man wearing only a smile and a blood-smeared dog collar.
Flashbacks of the last time she’d seen him hit her like blows from a nail-studded baseball bat.
It was enough to sap the little strength she’d regained.
Paralysed by fear, she slumped back to the floor.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and for a few seconds she felt nothing.
Then a sharp pain across her left cheek roused her from her slumber.
‘Wake up, you whoring sinner,’ her captor hissed.
She tried not to look at him, wanted to forget him and everything he had done to her and her friends already.
The grin and the malignant glint in his dark eyes suggested that there was much more still to come.
Oh my God he’s going to rape me, she thought when her bulging eyes registered that he was naked and sporting an erection.
She also noticed neat rows and columns of livid scar tissue on his left thigh.
‘Take your eyes from that, you little whore,’ he spat.
‘What are you going to do with me then?’ she snapped, suddenly enraged.
His grin widened, wrinkling the pale skin beside his eyes.
His left hand fiddled with a loose strand of thread at the bottom of his dog collar.
‘Our Lord went out into the desert for forty days and forty nights. In that time he had no comforts, no food, nothing. I am going to keep you here for the
same length of time. And I will lead you back to God.’
‘You’re out of your fucking mind,’ she hissed.
Her curse wiped the smile from his face.
His hand hit her hard, bursting her lips in a spray of warm blood.
‘Mind your language, you daughter of the devil. You are in the presence of God here. I won’t warn you again.’
She held her hand to her lips, feeling the blood that ran from the cut in them.
‘I am trying to save you from eternal damnation. I am going to let you see the face of God. He has chosen me to lead you back to His side.’
‘You’re crazy.’
The last bit of fight in her was knocked out by his bare foot slamming into her midriff.
She wheezed and panted, feeling her stomach contract hard.
‘Please,’ she begged, curling up to protect her belly. ‘I’m pregnant. You’ll hurt my baby.’
‘The first step in your redemption will be the removal of the child.’
‘NOOO! Please. I’ll do anything. Please… please.’
‘He says it has to be removed.’
‘Wait… WAIT! Isn’t abortion against your rules?’
‘The child has been conceived in the presence of the devil. So it must die.’
‘Please, I’m begging you. If you are a good man – which you must be if you’re a priest – don’t do this.’
He grinned again and stood over her.
The smile faded for a split second and a sad expression replaced it momentarily. ‘It has to be like this. I’m sorry, but it is the only way.’
With that, his foot slammed down into her gut again and again.
Deborah woke in agony, blood still spilling from between her legs.
The feel of it cooling and thickening on her inner thighs made her bend double and hurl blood-flecked bile onto the cold floor.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed, cupping her hands to the life in her belly that she had failed to protect. ‘I’m sorry I’m so shit a mother that I couldn’t even bring you into this world.’
In utter despair, she curled into a ball and cried her heart out.
When she finally stopped crying, she noticed Cross was watching her through the bars of the cage with the curious expression of a child gawping at an animal in a zoo.
‘Why do you cry, child?’ he asked, his soft tone the epitome of sympathy.
She found his tone and the way he was addressing her very strange considering his standard ‘devil’s daughter’ and ‘whoring sinner’ diatribe.
It was like he was a different person.
‘Why do you think?’ she sobbed, not daring to look up at him in case he did anything else to her.
‘I genuinely don’t know. This should be a happy occasion. I’ve flushed the diseased life from your womb. I’ve set you on the path to a better life. The path to God. You should be smiling. You should be whooping with joy. You should be thanking me with every breath you have.’
She shook her head, a fresh hail of tears racking her body.
‘Just kill me,’ she sobbed. ‘There’s nothing else you can take from me. There’s no more hurt that you can inflict.’
‘Oh, we both know that that is not true,’ he said, his face and tone changing back to that of the psychopath she’d found in her front room. ‘That is most definitely not true.’
For the first time since he’d come in, she noticed the knife in his hand.
‘Please, stick that through my throat. Or cut out my fucking heart, cos there’s nothing for me to live for now that you’ve taken my baby from me.’
He tutted, shaking his head. ‘The profanity that seeps from your mouth is a sign of a blackened soul. But I’ve already told you my views on this. Pain is a great cleanser. Every day in here I’m going to take a pound of flesh. If you survive for the forty days and nights then it is by God’s will. If not, then at least you will be heading to the afterlife with a cleansed soul.’
She didn’t even move to stop him.
She hoped he would kill her, though she knew this was a vain hope.
Maybe if his knife slips and hits an artery…
Suddenly she felt a pinprick in her neck and warmth flooded over her.
She was still here, still alert, still viewing his leering face through a haze of tears, but she couldn’t move a muscle.
‘Even as despondent as you are, you will still put up a fight when the blade hits,’ he said, clearly an authority on the subject. ‘They always do.’
He shoved the knife to the outside of her left thigh, digging in hard.
Warm blood ran down her leg and into the puddle formed by her miscarriage.
She screamed with the sudden intensity of the pain.
He was fast with the blade, cutting a square piece of flesh loose with frenzied movements.
The pain when he tore it loose was like nothing she’d ever felt, even when she’d miscarried.
‘I told you you’d want to move,’ he grinned.
After he’d pulled the lump of flesh loose, he threw it into the corner with a wet splat.
‘One pound of flesh,’ he beamed, gazing upon her with a look that was partly pride and partly awe. ‘You handled it like a true child of God. It’s a long tough road out of hell, but you have taken your first faltering steps. I have every faith that you can do this.’
While she listened to his words, she noticed that he held a fire poker in his hand.
Through the haze of pain and terror she heard a roaring sound.
He moved back into her eyeline and put down a blowtorch.
The poker was glowing red hot.
When she realised what he was doing with it, she began to scream.
But nowhere as much as when it touched her and began to seal her flesh shut.
‘We don’t want you bleeding to death,’ he said, his tone back to that of a loving parent. ‘You get some sleep. We’ve got to do this all again tomorrow.’
Her first night in the cell was filled with terror and pain and despair, all swapping in headline roles.
It was agony trying to sleep on the floor, with her wounds, but when the drugs wore off, she managed to find herself a slightly more comfortable position.
She rolled onto the side which hadn’t been carved open by a raving madman and cried herself to sleep.
2.6
Sometime the next day – Deborah took it to be morning, but it was impossible to tell in the perma-dark of the basement room she felt certain would one day become her tomb – the door creaked open again.
‘Have you spoken to Him yet?’ were his first words to her, his eyebrows arched, his face like that of a child asking a parent if they could play their favourite game.
She winced at the noise as it stabbed into her ears like knitting needles, looked up and furrowed her brow.
‘Who? What are you talking about?’
His face dropped instantly, his eyes falling to the floor.
It was as though a shadow had fallen over him.
He shook his head, furious.
‘If you have to ask you haven’t spoken to Him yet,’ he snapped.
She clicked what he was talking about. ‘I thought He’d have told you if I’d spoken to Him,’ she teased.
He didn’t answer, he was busy.
Before she could say anything else, he’d slipped the needle into her arm and everything had gone warm and fuzzy again.
‘Remember pain is good for the soul,’ he grinned, brandishing the knife with glee.
When he’d done taking this pound of flesh, he said, ‘You will find Him in this room, believe me. And only He will help you get through this. Look for Him.’
And with that he had cauterised this fresh wound and left her in darkness again.
The next morning, he came in and she could see that he was anxious about something.
‘I apologise with all my soul,’ he said, his head bowed in penance.
For one insanely hopeful second she thought he was going to
tell her that this was all some crazy-ass joke and he was setting her free.
Before this possibility could flower properly in her mind, he began to speak again.
‘I have come to realise that you have been in here for three days without having a wash. This is simply unacceptable.’
He didn’t dare to meet her eye, and it was strange, as though she suddenly had all of the power in this fucked up scenario.
He moved his weight from foot to foot, his right hand rolling a patch of hair on his bare right thigh.
Her eyes were drawn to the raised patches of scars on the outside of his leg. They were faded yet still prominent, like a secret message rendered in braille on his skin.
‘I am so sorry, my child.’
‘How dare you,’ she said, going with her gut instinct. While he was like a naughty child, she was going to treat him like one and see where it left her. ‘God is very angry at you for this.’
He flinched at each word as though it was a hurled projectile.
To her amazement, he began to sob. ‘I know He is. And I’m sorry for treating you this way.’
Also to her amazement was how truly out of his mind he was; the fact that he had kidnapped and imprisoned her and was carving a little bit of her away every day in some insane divine mission was normal to him, but God forbid she go a few days without a wash.
She almost giggled at the absurdity of it all, but the idea of how truly unhinged and dangerous he was really hit her at that point.
‘It is unacceptable,’ she spat.
Again he flinched.
He looked the very definition of a naughty school boy, albeit a naked, dog-collared one with the eyes of a psychopath.
He said nothing, but she could make out the tears as they rolled down his cheeks and plopped onto the floor.
‘I’m sorry. There’s just so much going on at the moment. I’m trying so hard, really I am.’ He then trailed off and began muttering to what she assumed was God.
He paused, as if listening to someone replying, and he looked so intent that Deborah believed he was hearing someone.
Her veins were suddenly flooded with iced water.
His eyes rolled back in his head a little, exposing bloodshot whites.
He let out a low moan, nodding his head slowly.
Then he straightened.
