Fallen Heroes

by Amy Cross

  “You still nattering away to yourself?” Lewis asked, as he returned with the can of petrol.

  “It's pretty poetic, really,” Ophelia told him, trying not to panic as she desperately searched for a way to get free. “I mean, I should've known I'd die on this bed one day. The same bed where Andrew Renton kept me chained up and fucked me every few hours.”

  “I miss you,” Renton's voice whispered.

  “Sounds like a lovely guy,” Lewis said with a grin. “I need to do some more research about him, find out how someone like him ended up so weird and twisted. There's got to be a story there, hasn't there? And, you know, there's also the question of why he kidnapped you. There must have been something that made him the way he was. People don't just turn without a reason.”

  “I did it because I loved you,” Renton whispered. “The first moment I saw you in the street, looking so sad because you'd missed the ice cream truck, I fell in love with you. I'd been looking for a little girl, and you appeared in my life at the perfect moment. It's almost enough to make me believe in God.”

  “He did it because he knew he could get away with it,” Ophelia continued, fixing Lewis with a determined stare. “He pounded away at me, he used me for his own sick pleasures, he made me believe it was normal, and he knew no-one would find out or stop him. I can still feel his grubby hands on me, and I can still smell his foul breath, and I can even hear his voice, like he's here right now. The worst part is, I think in his own sick way he thought he loved me, and he thought I loved him in return. And all the while, he kept on doing things to me. Dark things. Dirty things. Things that made him feel good, and he told me they should make me feel good too. In the end, he even persuaded me that they did make me feel good, even though they hurt so badly.”

  Lewis paused for a moment, staring at her.

  “It's amazing what people will do in that situation, isn't it?” she asked. “When they know, with absolute certainty, that they can do anything they like and no-one will be able to stop them, and no-one will ever find out. It's as if all their darkest desires get unleashed.”

  She waited for him to say something, but she could already tell that her plan was starting to work. It had failed with Daniel Gregory, but she figured Joe Lewis was perhaps a slightly easier catch.

  “I guess that's just the kind of world we live in,” she added finally, reaching down and lifting her shirt up to her neck, before turning to show him her bare back. “Andrew Renton gave me these scars,” she explained, her voice trembling with fear as she realized she could smell the petrol in the can. “It was his way of punishing me. Every time I displeased him, he'd get a knife out and cut me. I guess they never would have healed, not completely.” She paused, before keeping her shirt lifted for a moment longer than necessary as she turned back to him. “He knew no-one could stop him. He was completely in charge, and I just had to put up with it. In some sick kind of way, I think I even started to like it. He taught me that black is white, right is wrong, pain is good... I'm still trying to untangle some of that stuff. I guess he trained me well.”

  “Let me see them again,” he replied.

  “Why?”

  “Don't show him!” Renton hissed. “You're mine!”

  Stepping toward her, Lewis reached down and began to pull her shirt up, letting his fingers brush against her flesh in the process.

  “No-one can hear someone screaming here, can they?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied, keeping his eyes fixed on her body, “they can't.”

  “Someone could do anything in a place like this, so far from civilization, and they'd get away with it.”

  A faint smile crossed his lips as he ran a hand against her scars. “They could.”

  “I know.”

  He paused, before opening his mouth to say something.

  “Now,” Renton whispered.

  With her one free hand, Ophelia grabbed him suddenly by the neck and pulled him down, before using her elbow to strike at the back of his neck. With Daniel Gregory, she'd lost at this point, but with Joe Lewis she pushed on. He let out a gasp of pain, but she quickly rolled him over and then sat up, before slamming her knee into his face several times, as hard as possible. Grabbing his collar, she tried to lift him, only to realize that his body was already completely limp. She checked the side of his neck, and after a moment she felt a pulse.

  “Pity,” she muttered.

  “That's my girl,” Renton whispered.

  Once she was sure he'd been knocked out, she pulled him closer and began to go through his pockets. There was an enormous amount of rubbish in there, everything from old tissues and rubber bands to gas station receipts, loose chewing gum pellets and a box of matches.

  “Please,” she whispered, “please...”

  Finally pulling the key out, she quickly unlocked the handcuffs and put them around his wrist, before arranging him on the bed and then taking a step back. She was slightly out of breath and she felt as if she might collapse at any moment, but at the same time she knew she couldn't stop, not yet.

  “I can't believe you fell for that,” she sneered. “The oldest trick in the book, and it actually worked.” Turning, she spotted the can of petrol on the floor, and she immediately knew what she had to do next.

  “Stay with me,” Renton whispered. “You tried running, and you just ended up back here. I'm gone, but... In some ways I'm still here. Be honest, Becky. Do you really hate me, or is there still a part of you that misses the time we spent together?”

  She paused, feeling a shiver pass through her body.

  “No,” she said out loud finally, “there's no part of me that misses you.” Picking up the can of petrol, she pulled the lid away and immediately started pouring the noxious mixture out all over the carpet, before taking it out to the landing and getting rid of the rest. Once she was done, she opened the box of matches she'd taken from Lewis's pocket and pulled one out, ready to strike it.

  “Stay,” Renton whispered. “We can be together. Join me.”

  Turning, she looked at Lewis's unconscious body on the bed, with petrol soaking into the carpet nearby.

  “You've crossed that line, have you?” she heard Daniel Gregory's voice saying. “The line that separates those who've killed a fellow human being from those who haven't? There's no going back once you've done that. Once a killer, always a killer. Welcome to the club.”

  “Aren't you tired?” Renton asked. “This would be the perfect way to go out. Kill that sick bastard on the bed, destroy the house so no-one else can ever live in it, and come to heaven so we can be together forever.”

  She paused for a moment, trembling with fear, before finally lighting a match and holding it out, ready to drop it onto the carpet.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Three years ago

  “Bloody hell,” Renton muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I'm sore as a...”

  He paused, trying to think of the right word, before turning to see that Becky was on her side, facing away from him. He watched her for a moment, allowing himself a faint smile. Finally, reaching over, he nudged her waist.

  “You alright?” he asked when she didn't respond. “Come on, don't sulk. I'll go downstairs and make tea soon. I was thinking of doing fish fingers. They're your favorite still, yeah? You always used to love fish fingers when you were little. We should start having them again.”

  He waited.

  “Yes,” a faint voice whispered finally.

  “I'll teach you how to cook them yourself one day,” he replied. “Shame I couldn't do it before, but you know how things have been. It's not exactly my fault, is it?” He paused again, watching the back of her head. “Sometimes I wonder how things would've been if we'd been able to have a normal relationship from the start. I get why you found it hard to trust me, but still, it's been a while, don't you think you could've somehow come to see that these things are inevitable? It's taking a lot longer than I expected, you and me, we're -”

  Suddenly h
e turned to look at the window, and a moment later he realized there were footsteps outside. A moment after that, someone knocked on the door.

  “Who the hell is that?” he whispered.

  Getting to his feet, he headed to the bedroom door and looked out at the landing. When he turned to Becky, he saw that she was on the bed, watching him, and for a moment they both seemed panicked, as if they had no idea what to do now that someone had suddenly intruded.

  “If you make a noise,” he said firmly, “you might get taken away from me. You don't want that, do you?”

  She paused, before slowly shaking her head.

  “So you'll keep quiet, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, as the person knocked on the door again. “What is it with people? Why do they have to come and disturb us? I swear I'll -” Pausing, he took a deep breath. “Just stay calm. It's probably nothing. No-one knows about us, I've been very careful. Just... I need to act normal.”

  Heading downstairs, he took a moment to get himself straight before heading to the door just as the person knocked yet again. After taking another deep breath, he pulled the door open and found a middle-aged woman smiling at him.

  “Hi!” she said. “Sorry if I disturbed you, but I'm a little bit lost. I was hoping you could give me directions to Kerrydale.”

  “Kerrydale?” He paused for a moment, his mind racing as he tried to work out if the woman was onto him, if maybe she was from the police or social services, if she had any way of knowing about Becky. She reminded him a little of the social worker who'd visited him when he was younger, the one his mother had hated so much.

  “It's near here, isn't it?” she asked. “I thought I knew the way, but I've been driving around for hours and then I spotted your little house out here, in the middle of nowhere, and I thought maybe you could help me out.” She paused, but slowly her smile began to fade as she waited for an answer. “It is around here somewhere, isn't it? Or am I completely lost?”

  ***

  Still on the bed, Becky stared at the window and listened to the muffled voices outside. Renton was talking to someone, and it sounded like a woman. It had been a long, long time since she'd last heard anyone else's voice.

  She wanted to cry out, of course, but she knew that wouldn't do much good. The woman was probably just some random person who'd come to the door, and she figured that Renton would be more than willing to kill anyone he felt was on the verge of getting to the truth. For the woman's sake, then, she told herself to stay quiet, and she also hoped that she might be able to gain Renton's trust. In the back of her mind, she still had a dark fantasy about him one day removing the chains again. All she had to do was play along, and then eventually...

  Third time lucky.

  Hearing a car door being slammed, and then an engine starting, she realized the woman was leaving. A moment later the front door was shut, and then she heard footsteps on the stairs. She braced herself for the sound of his whining, sniveling voice, and a moment later she heard the floorboard creak by the bedroom door. Slowly, she turned to look over at him, and she could see immediately that he was wound up and agitated.

  “Some stupid bitch,” he told her, “wanting directions to Kerrydale. Can you believe some people? Just knocking on the bloody door like that, like she had the right to disturb us! I'm gonna put a sign up.” He sighed. “Then again, a sign might make people suspicious. You'd think you could not be interrupted in a place like this, wouldn't you?”

  “Is she gone?” she asked, her voice low and strained.

  He nodded.

  “Good,” she added.

  “Good?”

  “She might have got between us,” she continued, feeling sick to her stomach as she said the words but hoping against hope that they might work. “She might have been nosy. What if she'd asked to use the bathroom?”

  “Too bloody right,” he replied, heading to the window. “Yeah, off she goes. I pointed her in the right direction. She had that look about her, you know? Like she enjoys poking about in other people's business.”

  “I'm glad she didn't,” Becky replied, watching him carefully. “You... You'd have killed her, wouldn't you?”

  He turned to her.

  “You would,” she continued, trying to smile but not quite managing. “If it had come down to it, to protect us...”

  He nodded.

  “That's what I thought,” she told him.

  “I'd do anything to keep us safe,” he replied.

  “I know.”

  “No-one's got any right to keep us apart. There's people out there, you know, who'd ask questions. They'd think what we have together is wrong or twisted, they'd have all these disgusting, perverted ideas about what we do. They wouldn't understand that I look after you, that I'm protecting you from the outside world, that I teach you and I give you books and I school you and everything.”

  She nodded.

  “How are you getting on with that cube?” he asked.

  Reaching over to the table by the bed, she picked up the Rubik's Cube he'd given her a few weeks earlier.

  “My record's thirty-one seconds now,” she told him. “I think I'd be faster by now, but I've also been reading that book on the Second World War, so I didn't have as much time to practice.”

  “You're my smart girl,” he replied. “See? I told you it'd be better here with me, than at some stupid school where you'd be crammed in, forty to a class and surrounded by snot-nosed idiots.”

  With trembling hands, she worked the cube until, after just over half a minute, she was done.

  “You did very well,” he continued, “not calling out. I mean, I was pretty sure you wouldn't, but still, there have been times before when I've trusted you, and that didn't work out too well, did it?” Reaching out to her, he put a hand on the side of her face. “And you don't flinch when I touch you anymore. That's nice. Is it because you don't hate it anymore, or is it because you actually like it?”

  She tried again to smile, this time with a little more success.

  “You're really beautiful when you do that,” he told her. “You know that, right?”

  “As long as you think so,” she replied, fighting the urge to throw up. “That's all that matters.”

  He smiled in return. “Do have any idea how tempting it is to believe that you've finally come around?” he asked. “After eleven years... You're all grown up now, aren't you? You're a woman. I've been waiting so long for that to happen. I always hoped that one day we could try to have a little household together. You know, like normal people. Happy.” He moved closer, as if he was about to kiss her again. “That smile of yours always drives me crazy. One day, when you're ready, I'm going to -”

  “What about the fish fingers?” she asked, feeling a shiver pass through her body.

  “I'm not hungry. Not for food.”

  “But I thought we could cook them together.”

  He paused. “You did?”

  “Just an idea.”

  After a moment, he sat back. “You and me? Down there in the kitchen?”

  She nodded.

  “But I'd have to unchain you,” he pointed out, “and I'm still not sure that'd be a good idea. I want to believe you, Becky, I swear, but I've been burned before, remember? I have to be absolutely certain before I unchain you. It's been eleven years, I think I can wait a little longer.”

  “I understand. Maybe another time.”

  Staring at her chains, he seemed to be genuinely undecided.

  “Please,” she continued, “don't worry about it. I was just thinking out loud, really, I didn't mean to make you feel bad.” She took a deep breath, before leaning back. “I'd never try to question your judgment. You'll know when the time is right. You're always the smart one.”

  “Huh.” He paused, before reaching into his pocket and taking out a key. “I suppose I will.” He paused for a moment, staring at the key, turning it over in his hand. Finally, he turned to her, and a faint smi
le crossed his lips.

  ***

  “It's a bit messy in here,” he explained a few minutes later, as he led her through into the dining room. Picking up a piece of paper from the table, he showed it to her. “I was just gonna pay this phone bill, but I guess it can wait.”

  “What's a phone bill?” she asked.

  “It's...” He smiled. “I guess there's still some stuff I haven't taught you, isn't there? I'll explain later.”

  “What's this?” she asked, picking up the chunky mobile phone he'd left on the table.

  “That's a phone.”

  “There's no antenna,” she pointed out. “It's tiny.”

  “A lot of stuff's changed in the world while you're been here,” he told her. “I keep most of it out of the house, but some of it's useful.” Reaching over, he took the phone from her and slipped it into his pocket. “Don't worry about it right now. I'll teach you the things you need to know.”

  “I can go and cook, if you like,” she told him. “You might have to show me how to do it first, but...” Looking down at her hands, she couldn't help rubbing her wrist, where the chains had once been. They'd been wrapped around her for so long, she could still feel them somehow.

  “It feels good, doesn't it?” he asked with a smile, setting the phone bill aside. “You see, you could have been down here years ago, Becky, if you'd just accepted that we're meant to be together. We lost, we wasted, so many years, but we've got the rest of our lives to catch up.” Stepping closer, he kissed the side of her face. “I always knew it. Right from that first moment I saw you on the street with your fifty pence piece in your hand... I know it sounds crazy, you were only five years old, but I knew right there and then that we were meant to be together. And now look at you, you're a woman and you've finally realized I was right. I did a good job with you.”

  She forced a smile. “Should I just fry them?”

  “You really want to cook my supper for me, don't you?”

  “Isn't that what a woman's supposed to do for her man?” she asked. “Besides, you've cooked for me so many times.”