by Duvane, JB
As I ran my fingers over the raised dots I thought about what Landen said to me the other night, about him seeing what I do as art. There was no way what I had hidden in that other room could compare to the work of art that Avery had accomplished on her arm, but it was another undeniable coincidence that I just couldn't ignore.
As much as I didn't want to, I decided it would probably be best to tie her up. I was going to be gone for quite some time while I was getting rid of the girl in the basement and I didn't want her to do something crazy like jump off the balcony. I found some ties that I hardly ever wore in the closet and used them to secure her hands in front of her then did the same with her feet. I stood there and stared at her for a little while longer because I knew that when I got back she would most likely be awake and probably wouldn't have that peaceful look on her face. I didn't even want to think about the way she would be looking at me when she woke up.
I headed down to the basement and when I opened the door the girl was still there at the top of the stairs. I grabbed a towel and wiped off the blood that had pooled up on the stairs, then I picked her up and carried her the rest of the way down. She was unconscious and I could barely feel her pulse so I knew that it would be easy to finish her off. I wrapped my hands around her neck and watched her face as she made small jerking movements and then it was all over. And I didn't feel a thing.
This is the last time. I swear to God, this is last time, I thought as I squeezed my eyes shut.
I put her body into one of the old laundry bags from the salon, as well as the towel I had used to clean up the blood and the parts I had cut off of her. Then I hoisted her over my shoulder and headed out into the tunnel, locking the basement door behind me. In the past, it had always taken me at least a half hour to get to the old pier where the tunnel came out, but I was in a hurry and I hoped I could get this whole thing taken care of in less time than that.
There used to be a loading dock entrance into the tunnel system at every street that lead down to the river but most of them had collapsed or had been bricked up at some point. But I knew of one entrance that still existed and I knew exactly how to get there. And because there were so many fences and walls and obstacles down at the old docks to keep people from accessing the tunnels, I never had to worry about anyone seeing me dump a body off the loading dock.
What used to be a bustling pier with merchants buying goods directly from the ship crews was now a wasteland of rotted wood, cesspools of muck and garbage and the occasional patch of quicksand and was the perfect hiding place for the bodies I needed to get rid of.
It was surprising to me that the police had never searched this area for any of the hundreds of people that had gone missing in the last century, and I was sure that I wasn't the only one dumping bodies here. I had actually seen Landen for the first time, way before we met, dumping a bag over this dock. I was still a kid and I just happened to be checking out one of the abandoned buildings right on the docks one night and I looked out of one of the busted windows just behind him. As soon as he dropped the bag he turned around and looked right at me, then disappeared into the tunnel. I saw a glint of the moon in his eyes and even though I only saw him for a few seconds I never forgot his face or stopped wondering what was in the bag.
I watched the girl's body sink into the thick murky cesspool thirty feet below me, then made my way back to the house as quickly as possible.
When I got back I set to work immediately cleaning the basement. I still wasn't sure that I was going to be able to put Avery down there, especially after all of the horrible memories that still played out in my dreams of the cage and the bed and my mother, but I didn't know what other choice I had.
I turned all the lights in the basement on, including the old lighted makeup mirror that my mother had put down there a long time ago, because those lights were the brightest, and I could actually see the entire basement for the first time in my life. The basement was divided into two halves and the section towards the front half of the house was filled with old furniture and stacks of boxes that lined the walls from the days when the basement was still used as a storeroom for the grocery store. I didn't like going into that part of the basement and it had just become a big pile of furniture and boxes that were impossible to navigate through.
The back half of the basement, the section with the cage and the door that led out to the tunnels, was also filled with a lot of junk, but it wasn't nearly as bad. I had hoped that this would all be cleaned out someday, but I guess I hadn't really thought about how that was going to happen. How this house was going to go from being a dusty, musty prison of painful memories to being the clean brightly lit space it always appeared as in my fantasies. Like when I imagined what it would be like the first time Avery and I kissed. I was starting to realize that more of my life went on in my imagination than I was willing to admit.
Since I didn't really have time to clean out all the junk I decided to just leave it there and focus on cleaning the floor and the space inside the cage and that took me about an hour. Then I took the sheets off the mattress on the lower bunk and switched the mattresses around so that she wouldn't have to sleep on a bunch of old bloodstains. Not that she would be able to see them through the sheets, but I felt better knowing she wouldn't be lying on top of them.
I went upstairs to get some new sheets but when I got to the top of the stairs I noticed that the door to my bedroom was open. I looked in the room and panicked when I saw that she wasn't on the bed, then I ran to the closet and out onto the balcony but she wasn't there either.
Suddenly, I heard a loud clattering sound coming from the kitchen and when I ran in I found Avery, her hands and feet still tied, holding a kitchen knife towards me.
Chapter 12 - Avery
I opened my eyes and my head felt like it was made out of concrete. My eyes wouldn't stay open and I could barely form a thought in my head. I moved one of my hands up to rub my eyes and realized that they were tied together.
What the hell, I thought as I tried to pull my arms free. But the more I struggled the tighter the knot became.
I laid there trying to clear my head so I could figure out where I was and why my hands were tied. I still kind of felt like I was asleep and part of my brain told me that I was just having a weird dream.
My mouth tastes like chemicals, I thought as I once again tried to open my eyes and focus them on something. I saw some French doors that were exactly like the ones in my room, only they had thick curtains that attached at the top and bottom of each door. And as I looked around the room, at the trim around the windows and doors, it dawned on me that I was in the room across from mine in the house next door and I started to remember the last few moments before I blacked out.
The weird heads in the dark room, the arm that grabbed me and pulled me back inside, the girl at the basement door whose face and hands were covered in blood, and the scream that came from her after the door was shut.
Oh my God! I'm in his house.
I rolled back and forth in the bed trying to get up and realized that my legs were also tied together. I tried to sit up, but my head was incredibly heavy and every time I lifted it too far off the bed the room started to spin. So, I laid there on the bed for a few more minutes, trying to make an escape plan and hoping that no one would come through the door.
I bent my legs back and tried to undo the knot, but it seemed tighter than the one around my wrists and my body kept cramping up before I could get my hands in a good position. When I was finally able to, I sat up a little and looked around the room to see if I could find something to cut the ties with but I couldn't see anything that would work. I remembered that there was a kitchen next to the room with the heads and I knew I would find a knife in there so I forced myself to get up.
I waited on the bed for a few minutes until the room stopped spinning, then got up and tried to keep my balance. I was still pretty unstable and my feet were tied together so it made it harder to stay upright, but I managed to
do a little hop shuffle towards the door.
You can do this, Avery. You can get to the door. Just one little step at a time.
I was terrified that the guy that lived here was going to hear me and come back into the room so I made my way across the floor as quietly as possible. There were a few spots on the floor that creaked and each time that happened I held my breath for almost a minute to make sure no one was coming, then continued on. I wiggled and shuffled and hopped along until I got all the way to the door without falling over and leaned up against it for a minute to catch my breath.
The room was still spinning a little so while I leaned against the door and tried get my strength back I listened for any kind of noise, however slight, but the house was completely silent. I was terrified that I was going to open the door and he would be standing there waiting for me right outside.
I turned the doorknob as slowly as possible and open the door just a crack and I couldn't see anyone out in the dark hall so I opened the door up a little further and poked my head out into the hallway. There wasn't a sign of anyone so I wriggled and shuffled my way through the doorway, but then decided to hop as fast as I could because I wanted to get the hell out of that house.
I knew I was making too much noise so when I finally made it into the kitchen I stopped at the counter for a minute and listened to see if anyone was coming. Just then I heard footsteps that sounded like they were coming up the stairs but they didn't sound like they were in a hurry like they had when I was running out the back door. The door at the top of the stairs opened up and the footsteps crossed to the opposite side of the hall, but I knew that any second that guy would realize that I was gone so I started pulling drawers open. I was in such a panic that the drawer that I was looking for, the one with the silverware and knives, came all the way out and everything in it crashed to the floor.
Fucking awesome, I thought to myself as I picked up a knife off the floor. Now he knows exactly where I am.
He appeared in the doorway almost instantaneously and even though I had managed to grab a knife off the floor, I hadn't been able to cut any of the ties off. So, I just stood there, holding the knife towards him and hoping that I was going to get out of there somehow.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Avery," he said as he slowly started moving toward me with his hands open and facing me.
"Stop!" I yelled. "Don't come near me." I tried to sound angry but it came out like more of a plea. Tears were starting to stream down my face and my hands were shaking and I was hunched over and leaning one elbow on the counter so I'm sure I didn't come off as any kind of a threat whatsoever.
"Please, Avery, put the knife down. I'm so sorry everything has happened this way. But please believe that I am not going to hurt you."
For a flash of a second I saw an incredibly sad look in his eyes and a teeny part of me wanted to believe him, but I had seen too many TV shows to imagine that I was going to get out of there alive.
He kept moving closer and closer and when he got to the pile of knives and silverware on the floor he shoved them out of the way with his foot. I wondered if I might be able to stab him in the stomach if he got a little bit closer to me, but I knew that if I tried to do anything now I would probably just fall over.
"Why are you doing this?"
"I'm not doing anything, Avery. You broke into my house."
"Yeah but ... it was an accident. I didn't mean to. I was trying to find my friend's dog and ..."
"I don't know if I believe there are any accidents anymore," he said with that sad look again. "Please, just give me the knife. I have no intention of hurting you."
"The ... the girl in the basement. What about her? You hurt her! She had blood all over her face and it looked like ..." I started sobbing as I remembered what I had seen.
"... it looked like part of her face was missing!" I yelled, sobbing so hard that my body doubled over. I almost lost my balance and grabbed onto the counter next to me but dropped the knife in the process.
"Fuck!" I reached down and tried to you pick it back up but before I could he grabbed me again and put his arms around me like before, but this time it was almost like he was trying to calm me down.
"What the hell are you doing?" I yelled as I kicked in the air and tried to free myself from his arms.
"Please, Avery, I'm not going to hurt you ... but I can't let you go now."
"What do you mean you can't let me go? What do you mean? I want to go home now!" I yelled as I twisted and bucked inside his iron-like grip.
"I'm going to take you downstairs for a while. I just need some time to think." He said as he started to move me towards the kitchen door.
"No!" I screamed as loud as I could. "Please, please don't take me down there ..."
But before I could say another word his hand was over my mouth again and we stopped moving towards the kitchen door.
"I'm just taking you down there until I figure out what to do," he said quietly in my ear. "I don't intend to keep you down there, I promise. Can I take my hand off your mouth now?"
I nodded my head and he took his hand off, then he picked me up and carried me down the stairs in his arms.
* * *
When he set me down I realized I was in some sort of cage in the basement and as I looked around I was terrified that I was going to see that girl with the bloody face but she had been moved to another part of the basement or was completely gone, I wasn't sure.
"Please, please let me go," I said as I gripped his shirt with my hands that were still tied together. "I won't tell anybody anything, I promise. I'll leave. I'll just go to some other city really far away from here and I'll never tell anyone what I saw. I promise." I looked up into his eyes and all I saw was sadness, not anger or the eyes of a psycho or anything that I was expecting. He removed my hands from his shirt and looked away from me as he started talking, completely ignoring everything I had just said.
"I really wanted to make it nicer down here for you. I cleaned up a bit, but I haven't had a chance to put the new sheets on the bed yet. I'll go get them now," he said without looking at me once. He went out and shut the cage door behind him, then put a padlock on and snapped it shut.
"No, please, don't leave me like this!" I said as I wrapped my fingers through the chain link fence and over his. My voice was shaking and there were still sobs choking out of me every few minutes. I was hoping that he would say something back to me, tell me why he was doing this to me, but he just turned and walked away without looking at me.
The cage I had just been locked up in was almost exactly like the storage spaces in the basement of my apartment building, only about three times as big. There was a bunk bed that sat perpendicular to the concrete wall of the basement, and at the foot of the bed, along the same concrete wall, sat an old toilet and sink. I couldn't believe I was in there, locked up in a cage in a basement like a prisoner. And I couldn't believe that Barbara was right, this guy was a total psycho.
I heard the basement door open and then footsteps on the stairs and when he came into my view I saw that he was carrying a stack of sheets and blankets with a pillow balanced on top.
"I'd appreciate it if you would sit back there ... on the toilet," he said as he opened the cage door. "Just for a minute while I make the bed."
I turned a bit and hopped sideways a few feet until I reached the toilet, then grabbed onto the chain link fence and eased myself down so that I was sitting on the edge. I watched him as he made up the bed with sheets and what looked like a couple of handmade quilts, then folded everything down at an angle before placing the pillow on top. He straightened up and looked at my feet for quite a while like he was trying to figure out what to say, but he still didn't seem to be able to look me in the eyes.
"I'm sorry about all this. And I'm sorry you saw what you did. I didn't want it to be like this. But now that you're here I have to figure out what to do."
"What do you mean you didn't want it to be like this?" I asked.
"T
hat doesn't really matter. I just ... I just want you to know that I'm very sorry."
He moved toward me and pulled a knife out of his pocket and I was sure that he was going to plunge it right into my chest so I screamed and tried to shrink down against the fence, but I wasn't getting any smaller and he wasn't getting any further away.
"Avery, please, I'm not going to hurt you. You have to understand that I never wanted to hurt you or scare you."
"Then why do you have the knife?"
"I'm just going to cut the ties on your hands and feet, ok?" he said as he held his hands up to show me that he had no ill intentions towards me, even though he was still holding the knife. I stopped screaming but I was still shaking as he approached me.
He cut my legs free first, then my hands, and then put the knife and the ties in his pocket. I shrank down a bit more as he put his hands on my arms but all he did was lift me up so that we were both standing, then he walked me over to the bed.
"You might be more comfortable over here than on the toilet," he said with what I could only interpret as a kind look on his face. He kept surprising me; the looks on his face were nothing like what I was expecting from a deranged killer. I was still terrified, but there was a part of me that almost felt like I could believe what he kept saying to me.
"I'm going to leave you down here for little while. I know it's not very comfortable down here, but I don't know what else to do at the moment. Are you hungry?" he said as he finally looked into my eyes. His eyebrows were so dark and straight and with the blackness of his eyes below them and the dim light of the basement he almost looked like a charcoal drawing, like the intensity and darkness of his eyes couldn't really exist on a human being. I couldn't move as I looked up into them, but then I suddenly snapped out of my trance as I remembered where the hell I was, trapped in a cage in his basement.
"No, I'm not hungry," I said as I looked down and wiped the streaks of tears off my face with my sleeves. He walked across the cage and pulled some toilet paper off of the roll near the toilet and brought it over to me. I took it from him and blew my nose and when I looked back up at him the corner of his mouth turned up into a very slight smile and the intensity in his eyes softened a little.
