Benjamin!
She ran to him, throwing herself into his arms, before he even turned off the engine. He laughed, trying to get a hand free to take off his helmet. “Oh you heard baby! We won! We won the final!” He laughed, kissing her hard on the mouth, but stopped abruptly as soon as he sensed she wasn’t kissing him back.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
LIKE A BIRD SPREADING ITS WINGS
Later. Time was making no sense. But it was later. Definitely later. Benjamin’s dead body had been removed. A long time had passed before it had happened. At least it felt like a long time. His dead eyes staring at her, life drained from them. Still they stared, boring into her. It felt like forever. The cameras zooming in and out, turning on their hinges, with that faint humming noise.
The horror of what was to come next made every cell in her body shudder in expectation of pains yet to come. The terror growing each time she heard footsteps outside the door, and her eyes darting back to Benjamin’s dead body, or the pieces of him lying around.
His stare. Dead eyes staring at her.
At last, the clown came back. He released the ropes still attaching Benjamin’s body to the chair, pushed the body to the floor and grabbed it by the legs, pulling it along like a sack of potatoes.
Agnes watched on in silence. Petrified.
Benjamin’s body left a scarlet trail of blood on the concrete floor. Fingers missing on both hands, his stomach cut open, his nose, ears, and mouth cut to pieces. As the clown dragged the body along, Benjamin’s arms slipped up along his sides and over his head, like a bird spreading its wings.
She watched as he was dragged out through the iron door into a dimly lit hallway. She saw the dirty white walls, the raw concrete floor with drainage holes, a naked light bulb on a wire hanging from the ceiling. She saw a layer of dust on the socket and on the light bulb itself. And then the door slammed shut.
Now she was alone. Trying hard not to look at the pieces of her beloved still lying around, strewn carelessly in the pools of blood on the floor. The cameras were busy capturing it all, zooming in, greedily, eagerly, passionately. Agnes felt empty. She felt disconnected, lost in a reality that couldn’t be real.
She watched as the door opened and the clown returned, carrying a shovel and a thick black plastic rubbish bag. He leaned the shovel against the wall and opened the bag, rolling down the sides to make it stand open on the floor. Then he performed a little dance routine before returning to the shovel, which he grabbed Fred Astaire-style, before using it to scrape together the remains of Benjamin’s body into a pile that he finally shoveled into the bag. With this done, he closed the bag, set it down next to the iron door, and scraped the pools of blood and other bodily fluids down a drain in the concrete floor. He was thorough. Even so, some of the blood had already soaked into the raw concrete floor and couldn’t be removed.
The clown exited the room, leaving Agnes all alone with no sense of time at all. She stared purposefully into the wall, to not see anything.
And she waited.
Waited.
Not wanting to.
Not knowing why.
But she waited.
Until the doors flew open and the clown reentered the room, dragging behind him a half-naked, beat-up woman whom he carelessly threw on the mattress. The woman’s body was covered in dried blood. Her hair long, bleached, and messy. The breasts were large and a bit saggy. Agnes didn’t recognize her at all before the clown laughed, “I guess you two know each other, right?”
Belinda.
IT’S MY DUTY TO HELP
“We have to go!” Agnes yelled, breaking Benjamin’s embrace. “There’s a killer! A maniac!”
Astonished, Benjamin giggled. “What, baby? Are you kidding?”
“No! Christoffer’s been stabbed! He’s lying inside the shop. There’s blood everywhere!”
“Who’s Christoffer?” He dropped his helmet down into the sidecar, looking in all directions at the same time. “There’s nobody here.”
Agnes shook her head furiously and pointed to the shop. “There’s a car around the back of the shop. I don’t know who drove it. Christoffer’s Belinda’s boyfriend. He’s lying inside the shop!”
“Where’s the guy who stabbed him?”
“I don’t know. Around the back, maybe. I…but…No, stay here! Don’t go in there!”
“I’m a medic, Agnes. It’s my duty to help if somebody’s been hurt.” He took her hand and pulled her along. “Come on. We can’t leave him there, can we?”
“But…You don’t understand! We need to get away from here! We’re not safe here!”
“Agnes.” He sent her a tired glance as he pulled her hand again. “Come on.”
She yanked her hand from his grip. “No!”
He shrugged, raising his hand in amazement. “I’ll be right back,” he said in a tender voice and ran to the shop.
“Benjamin!” she shouted after him, but by that time the automatic doors were already closing behind him.
And that’s when she realized that she’d lost the fire extinguisher, in her haste to escape the shop.
Around her, outside the brightly lit area of the petrol pumps, the darkness almost seemed to sneak in upon her.
IT’S OKAY, I’M A MEDIC
Benjamin was met by complete chaos as he entered the shop. Upturned shelves lying everywhere, postcards and bags of potato chips scattered all over the place. Over by the counter and the backdoor a very young, and very frightened, woman was observing him. Mascara running down her cheeks, she was kneeling next to a lifeless young man, the front of his shirt soaked in blood.
“I think he’s dead,” she says. “I can’t find the pulse.”
Benjamin rushed over to her. “It’s okay, I’m a medic. That’s not the right way to check the pulse. Here, we need to stop the bleeding.” He surveyed the chaotic room while his fingers fortunately found a calm and regular pulse. “The pulse’s fine. He’s going to make it. Do you have a cell phone?”
“Sure.”
“Call an ambulance!”
She just stared at him blankly.
“Now! Call an ambulance!”
AFTER THAT, IT WAS ALL DARKNESS
Agnes’s legs buckled under her and she fell to her knees next to Benjamin’s motorcycle. Leaning against the sidecar, she counted to three and used all her strength to pull herself back onto her feet.
“Benjamin!” she whimpered. She wanted to shout the words, but terror blocked her throat, all she managed was this weak whimper. She’d never been this scared in her whole life. Never ever. How could she let Benjamin enter the shop? Why wouldn’t he listen to her?
She cried. No longer the adult woman she’d been for years now. The reasonable, educated woman she was proud to have become, was gone. That caring, sensible, and cultivated woman she had learned to think of as herself was gone, gone, gone. With nothing left but a scared little girl, a frightened animal caught in bright lights under the canopy of the petrol station. That brightly lit spot in a sea of darkness. Her senses were alert, sharpened by fear and adrenaline. She smelled the gasoline, the hot motorcycle engine, the old leather on the seat of the sidecar. She detected the tiniest details, some rust on a scratch of the motorcycle tank, a few strands of grass under the legs of the billboards, a microscopic piece of glass on the tarmac. She spun toward sounds she couldn’t place. The wind? Voices? A weak hissing from the air pump. The ticking noise from the motorcycle.
A car door opening.
Behind the shop.
She swallowed again, and again, unable to rid the lump from her throat.
She stared at the shop windows but could see neither Belinda nor Benjamin. She took a step toward the shop, shaking so badly she could hardly stand.
“Benjamin!” Again, all she managed was a whisper. Tears flowed freely from her eyes, streaming down her cheeks, dripping from the tip of her chin. “Benjamin!”
One moment she thought she could hear his voice demandin
g an ambulance, the next, she wasn’t sure she’d heard it at all. She took another step and fell down hard on the tarmac as her legs gave way again.
The last shred of reason that was still present inside her, understood that she was in a state of shock, but that didn’t really help her any. She put her hands on the tarmac and pushed herself back up to her knees, feeling her heart pounding against her ribs like a boxer. A wave of dizziness flushed through her the second before a sound behind her made her turn around, just in time to see somebody kicking her in the head.
After that, it was all darkness.
A BALL OF BARBED WIRE
“There’s no time!” Belinda cried, grabbing Agnes’s Doctor-boyfriend’s arm. “Don’t you get it? They’re still outside!”
He flashed her a hard glare. “I can’t find the stab wound. It bloody well has to be here somewhere. What’s his name?”
“Who?” She could neither look at Christoffer nor Agnes’s boyfriend. Her eyes had a life of their own, constantly returning to the backdoor.”
“This guy your boyfriend?”
“Christoffer. His name’s Christoffer.”
“Great. Now listen to me. It’s very important you listen carefully. He is only going to survive if we get an ambulance out here immediately. You want him to survive, right?”
She nodded. “I do. But they are still outside. It’s the two guys who came by earlier. Or at least, I think it’s them. Anyway, it’s them, it has to be, I knew it right away. They had a love doll in the backseat. They were filming Agnes. I told her they were evil psychos, but she wouldn’t listen to me, and now look what’s happened! They’re out back in their BMW. They’ll come in here any minute. We are not safe here. We have to go. We have to take Christoffer with us. Don’t you understand? They are dangerous. They stabbed Christoffer! They’re sick I tell you.” She could hear herself ranting, not at all coherent, but there was no time to tell this story from the beginning. “I saw it at once. They’re the types who’d kill their neighbor’s dog when they were kids. They also made Christoffer pull an evil prank on us. They’re maniacs, I’m telling you. Listen to me! Fuck your fine medical education and fucking listen to me!”
“Are you going to call that fucking ambulance, or do I have to do it myself?” His voice hit her like a punch to the face. She stopped talking as her insides twisted into a hard knot like a ball of barbed wire. He wasn’t going to listen. She understood that now.
He was waiting for her to make the call, a commanding, impatient glare in his eyes. “Are you calling?” he insisted, in a voice trembling with restraint.
She took her cell phone out of her pocket but she never made the call, because in that moment they both heard the sound of a car door opening, and seconds later slamming closed. They heard footsteps approaching the open backdoor.
“I told you!” Belinda whispered.
“Agnes…” he realized quietly and shot up.
“We have to bring Christoffer along,” she implored to his back.
But he wasn’t listening. “Agnes!” he bellowed, thrashing his way through the sea of chip bags, stepping on some of them, making the bags explode. Chips flying everywhere, as he kept screaming, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!”
THE STREAKS ON HER DIRTY FACE TOLD THE STORY
“Agnes? That you?” Belinda asked, as the sound of the clown’s footsteps disappeared outside the iron door. She struggled to a sitting position on the mattress despite her aching body. “Agnes?”
“Yeah.” The woman tied to the chair in the middle of the room turned her head slowly to reveal a heartbroken expression. “He killed Benjamin…with a…with a…” She gasped for breath, but she wasn’t crying. Still, she had been crying. The streaks on her dirty face told the story. Now, she grimaced, snarled, and gasped for air. Like a hurt animal. “Shears for cutting steel plates. He killed Benjamin with shears. Right in front of me.”
Belinda drew her legs in tight into her chest. She said nothing. What could she say? It seemed pointless to tell Agnes about the violence she’d been the victim of inside another smaller cell somewhere else down in this nightmare of a basement. How could she speak of the beatings she had endured, the kicks. How she’s been groped all over her body, how she’s bled, lost a tooth, been tormented with clamps everywhere, nose, ears, lips, breasts, arms, cheeks…How could she possibly speak of this, when Agnes had been forced to watch as they butchered her boyfriend? She tried to nod her head, not really sure what it was supposed to imply, or even if it showed at all when she was shaking as badly as she was.
“We are being filmed,” Agnes uttered after some time. “There’s cameras there, and there, and there.”
“Snuff…” Belinda’s voice was calm as death. “Fuck.”
“I think it’s even sicker than that. I think there’s a live-audience. Behind that one-way mirror over there.”
Belinda observed the mirror. “You think they’re watching us right now?”
“Oh yeah. They’re watching, and listening, wanting to indulge themselves with every torment, every suffering of ours.”
“We will both die tonight.” Belinda hugged her legs even tighter.
Agnes didn’t answer.
Silence filled the room, no sounds coming from the outside, no footfalls in the hallway, no distant voices, no humming from zooming cameras. Nothing but the hiss of their own breathing.
“Maybe there’s a break in the show?” Agnes started to wriggle her hands that were still tied behind her to the back of the chair. “Do you think you can get these ropes off me?”
“What if he comes back?”
“Then he’ll kill us.”
“But…”
“But he’s going to anyhow. I need to get these ropes of off me. We have to fight him, the two of us, you can’t take him down alone.”
Belinda shook her head. She’d already tried to take him down before. That’s how she’d lost her tooth. “But they can see…they can hear us.”
“Yes. If they are watching us right now. I think they might be upstairs somewhere having a break, drinking coffee and eating cake before the grand finalé. The cameras were zooming in and out all the time before, now they’re all quiet.”
“You can actually hear the cameras zooming?” Belinda glanced at the nearest camera. “I didn’t think a camera zoom was supposed to make any noise?”
“Maybe they’re some kind of cheap junk made in China. What do I know? I heard them zooming.”
Belinda bit her lip so hard it hurt. “Okay,” she answered dimly. “I can try.”
“As long as the cameras stay silent,” Agnes said, squinting her eyes, “we are safe, I think.”
Belinda crawled to Agnes and began working on the rope around her right leg. “Fuck,” she muttered. “They’re really tight and my fingers are fucked up. I can hardly…” She started crying but continued to work on the rope, despite the pain from her broken nails and the sore, swollen joints of her fingers. It was a difficult job and progress was so slow.
“Hurry!” Agnes whispered.
THE CELL PHONE BEEPED AGAINST HER EAR
Kneeling by his side, Belinda stroked Christoffer’s face, feeling the stubble scratch the skin of her hands. She looked from his bloodied shirt, to the bags of chips lying everywhere around them, to the automatic doors. For a brief second, she glimpsed some sort of movement outside the shop windows, then it was gone. She turned to the open backdoor and the darkness behind it as she dialed 112. Her hands were slippery, covered in blood, snot, and tears…the cell phone slipped from between her fingers.
It crashed to the floor, a cacophony of sound hitting her like a wave of thunder. She stiffened, listening, as her stomach tied itself into a hard knot. Footsteps coming this way.
Wiping her hand on the legs of her trousers, she picked up the phone and swept her eyes from one door to the other while she dialed 112. This time, she made sure not to drop the phone.
It connected, the cell phone beeped against her ear, and then a co
ld female voice answered. However, Belinda didn’t get to utter a single word, because in that same moment a strong hand seized the back of her neck out of nowhere and smashed her head down on the floor. The first hit sent explosions of color and light through her vision, by the second hit, darkness took over.
HE HAD A BAG IN HIS LEFT HAND
Having untied both of Agnes’ legs, Belinda had moved on to her hands. She was crouching behind the chair, struggling with the ropes as footsteps echoed through the hallway outside the iron door. Agnes felt the tiny glow of hope that had been starting to build inside her chest shatter and die as she turned her head toward the door. She heard a key enter the lock of the door. “Fuck,” she mumbled, feeling lost.
Belinda quickly scrambled to the mattress.
Then the doors swung open, and the clown appeared in the doorway. He stayed there for a while, looking from one to the other, before he closed the door and moved to Belinda.
Agnes wriggled her hands to get a sense of how close Belinda had got to untying them. She wasn’t even close. Only the rope around her left hand appeared to be a bit looser than before.
The Ringmaster Page 7
