by Rick Wood
Her name rebounded back to him multiple times in an empty echo.
He huffed, put his hands in his pocket, and wandered aimlessly from one wall to the other.
He imagined living here.
Imagined a different woman in every room. Endless food from his chef. The biggest and best room for his healthy mum to come visit.
His mates would be damn impressed by this abode.
He huffed. Looked to his watch. It had been almost twenty minutes. He should have arranged a time to meet.
He meandered toward the window, where he stood, looking out upon the driveway below, coated in darkness. The distant street light of the road was hidden between a far row of trees, the outline of the gates barely recognisable from this far away.
So far, no one could hear you scream…
He laughed at the thought. A silly joke, probably not that funny, but it amused him.
He huffed.
Where was that damn girl?
He leant against the window, peering out, gazing at the perfectly-groomed grass – grass that would be perfect with two sets of goal posts. He and his mates would have an awesome kickabout on a pitch like that. Maybe they could put a small changing room between the bushes and the Mercedes.
His body tensed so abruptly he stopped breathing.
The Mercedes.
He strode in the direction Amber had walked in, this time with more purpose, more haste.
“Amber!” he called out.
He marched through the first bedroom, where he found draws emptied, and through the next one.
Into a corridor lined with doors, so many doors, doors that led to God-knows-where.
And almost no light to guide his way.
“Amber?” he shouted again, this time less of a scream, more of an inquisitive wonder. “Amber, are you there?”
He put his hand on the wall to guide him forward.
He tried the first door to his right, the first door to his left, and tried the next, and the next, and the next and the next and the next.
None would open.
Why was this guy so keen to lock his doors? Who was he locking them from?
And what was he locking inside?
“Amber!” he tried again, this time with more exasperation. “Amber, come on!”
Thinking he heard something, he stopped still, silencing the shuffle of his clothes.
He listened intently.
And then he heard it.
The distant scream of his sister followed by his name.
Without another thought, he ran from door to door, calling out her name and hoping she would keep shouting back.
26
The man finished his coffee with a satisfying slurp and placed the cup down upon his smooth leather coaster.
“I– I…” Gray stuttered, searching for an answer to the question why the fuck are you in my house that wouldn’t prompt this man to either call the police or try to detain Gray himself.
“Good Lord, spit it out,” the man insisted. He was sat with his chin resting on his fist, his elbow resting on the table, and his other hand resting on the knee of his wide-open legs.
Gray could feel his body shrinking smaller and smaller.
The door. A few yards behind the man. Could he make it?
“You keep looking at that door,” the man observed. “You keep staring at it, over my shoulder. What is it about that door?”
Gray didn’t answer.
“Is it because you’re planning to try and run for it, is that what it is? Is it?”
Gray turned his feet. Prepared his hands.
He was going to do it.
He was going to run past this guy and get out.
“Don’t be a fool, my friend.”
Too late.
Gray leapt to his feet and sprinted.
He didn’t get more than three steps.
The man held out his arm, sturdy and flexed, his fist in a ball, and Gray ran right into it.
The man’s hand then found its way to Gray’s throat. Without any struggling or shaking of his bicep, he lifted Gray into the air and slammed him down upon the table.
The man’s face had changed. It was no longer accommodating like he had first appeared, or questioning like he was a second ago – now it was rage. Pure, unadulterated, unleashed, flying rage. Wrath. Scorned hostility. Every one of his pores burst with the anticipation of Gray’s death.
“You think…” the man spoke between heavy breaths, squeezing his hand tighter and tighter over Gray’s throat, “that you… can just… come into… my house… then run past me… like that…”
Gray punched and punched against the man’s arm, but, just as he’d expected, his punches were untrained and weak and feeble and had as much effect as if a toddler was fighting against him, as much effect as if he was trying to coerce a pole to move.
Gray thought nothing of fear, nothing of death – as his mind hadn’t gone there yet. All he was aware of was that he could not breathe. His throat was being squeezed so tightly it was collapsing, his oesophagus so squished that no matter how much he wheezed or tried to cough or tried to suck in the relief of a clean intake of oxygen, the man was not affording him such pleasures.
In an abrupt spurt of strength, the man picked Gray up again and threw him into the depths of the kitchen.
Gray landed on his knees, sucking in breath as he ignored the pain in his kneecap.
“Hey,” the man said, holding his hands out, a big, teasing grin beaming down at Gray. “I’m only kidding! Only joking with you. What do you think I am? Some kind of psycho?”
Gray stroked his throat, feeling the indents of where the man’s thumbs had just been. He was breathing, but not easily. His throat still felt squashed, still felt like his neck was collapsing inward.
“If you want to leave,” the man said, “then you are welcome to try that door as much as you want.”
“Please…” Gray managed, finally finding the guts to beg. “We didn’t mean to…”
“Didn’t mean to what? Break into my home? Invade my sanctuary? Rob me?”
“We didn’t, it’s our mum, she’s sick…”
The man’s grin extended even further. “Did you just say – we?”
“Wh– what?”
“You mean, there’s more of you?”
Gray bowed his head.
He’d just set his brother and sister up to this sadistic arsehole.
“Please, we don’t mean you any harm,” Gray repeated.
“Tell me your name.”
“Please, just–”
“I am not going to ask you again. What – is – your – name?”
“… Graham.”
“Graham? You don’t look like a Graham.”
“My friends call me Gray.”
“Gray? What, like the fifty shades guy? You like him, is that why they call you that? You all into dominating and lycra and sex games, is that it?”
“No… It’s just a shortened version of my name…”
The man nodded, confirming that he would accept this answer. He took a step toward Gray, who remained crouched, and took something out of his pocket – something that looked like a button or a remote control or something like that.
Gray backed away, expecting a weapon, and was honestly relieved.
“Hey, Gray?” the man said.
“What?” Gray weakly replied.
“Want to see something cool?”
Gray shook his head. At least, he thought he did, but his head barely moved.
The man pressed the button.
A sudden chug began, some kind of electric motor, a heavy movement. Metal shook and the moon began to disappear.
Gray looked to the windows. To the door.
Outside of them, metal shutters descended, going lower and lower and lower.
Gray had no choice but to try to get out. He ran past the man and the man let him.
By the time he had opened the back door the shutters were all the way down,
blocking his escape.
He charged against the shutters, but they didn’t even buckle. They were solid, as good as brick, impenetrable.
Gray looked back at the man.
“What are you doing?” Gray asked.
The man replied with a grin, nothing else.
“What kind of place is this?”
The man dropped the remote to the floor.
“Please, let us out.”
The man lifted his foot.
“Please…”
The man stomped his foot downwards, landing his heel on the remote. He lifted his foot again, landing his heel once more, then once more, then once more – until, eventually, the remote was nothing but empty casing and a wiry mess.
“Looks like you’re trapped in here with me, Gray.”
Gray would like to say he was thinking of his sister, or his brother, or even his mum, at this point.
But he wasn’t.
All he was thinking of was this strange man before him, who the hell this guy really was, and how much longer he had left of his life.
27
Luke was boxed in by darkness. He ran to the windows, his mind grappling with a muddle of thoughts that were unsuccessfully attempting to make sense of the situation.
Metal shutters descended with a sinister rattling, a slow omen of isolation.
He pulled on the base of the windows with all he had, but they responded with a strength he couldn’t fight.
He rushed into a nearby room, knocking the door open with his shoulder, only to see three windows also being covered by shutters.
He returned to the window of the corridor and punched it with his fist, attempting to smash it, but barely making it shake.
He whirred his fist up, pulled it back, imagined the face of his father in the reflection and poured his fist forward with all he had.
This time, it shook.
He did the same again, pouring his anger into the lunge of his fist. One thing Luke knew was how to throw a punch, and how to take the pain to his knuckles.
When the glass did eventually smash, Luke clutched his fist and brushed the minute shards of glass from his fingers – fingers that were now glistening with small specks of blood.
The pain could wait.
The blood could wait.
Ignoring it, he placed his fists upon the shutter. He rattled and rattled it, it only to find it was too sturdy to be rattled.
He punched the shutters and winced. This wasn’t glass – this was metal. Thick, impenetrable metal.
And, without having to see any more windows, he knew they were shut in.
“Luke!” came the scream of Amber’s voice, his own name barely distinguishable in the screech of her panic.
“Amber! Amber, where are you?”
Luke dashed from door to door, opening each.
He turned a corridor, stumbling as his sprinting legs skidded, and finally found his sister.
She was on the far side of this corridor, on her knees, crying and shrieking in front of an open door.
“Amber!” Luke cried, running toward her. “Amber, what is it?”
Luke slid to his knees, halting next to her and pulling her close. His arms tightened, his hand gently pushing her head into the dip of his shoulder.
“Amber, are you okay?”
He knew it was a stupid question as soon as he asked.
She was evidently not okay.
But, amongst her weeping and fretting and huffs of hysteria he could not make out why she was so frenzied.
She couldn’t have seen the shutters yet.
Was it guilt?
Was she finding it so difficult to fight between saving their mum and doing something immoral?
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Luke told her. “We are doing this for Mum, just remember that. It’s our only choice. This guy doesn’t need everything he has.”
“No…” Amber managed, making a visible effort to calm her crying. “No…”
“What do you mean, no?”
“That’s not it…”
“Then what’s the matter?”
She pulled her head from his reassurance and looked at him, red bags forming beneath her eyes.
“We have to leave,” she said, suddenly so coherently and so confidently. “We have to leave – now.”
“Fine, we have what we need, we can go.”
“No, Luke, you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand? What is it?”
Amber lifted a drooping finger and directed it toward the door behind her.
“Is he in there?” Luke asked, jumping to his only logical explanation.
“No… No…”
Luke took his arms from around Amber, slowly letting her go, and pushed himself to his feet.
“What is it then?” Luke inquired.
“Don’t go in there… Don’t look…”
Of course he was going to look.
He crept forward, stepping into the room, his hand searching the wall for a light switch. He had to take a few more steps in until he found one.
The ugly glow of an artificial light brightened the room.
Luke’s eyes were immediately drawn to a sight that he knew he would be seeing in nightmares for years to come.
He backed away.
Turned off the light.
Shut the door.
Looked to Amber, wanting to start weeping and fretting with her.
“Holy shit…” he gasped.
Robbing this place didn’t matter anymore.
They could rob somewhere else.
They were shuttered in.
There were bodies in the room.
Then Amber muttered the only words that could make it worse:
“The car… He’s here… He’s inside…”
28
The man crouched before Gray, like you would when about to pet a cat or ask a child about the knee they’d just wounded.
“How many of you are there, Gray?” the man asked.
Gray’s lips stuttered over syllables that dropped to the tiled kitchen floor without and coherence.
He didn’t want to give away Amber and Luke’s presence.
At the same time, he really didn’t want to die.
“I’ll ask you again – who are you here with, Gray?”
“N– n– nobody… I’m alone…”
Despite overflowing with terror, he felt a little pride in the bravery he’d just shown by lying.
Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the guy bought it. The man nodded, briefly closing his eyes, as if to say, so that’s how we’re going to play it?
The man stood. Gray tried to use the opportunity to run, but the man simply thwacked the sole of his Salvatore Ferragamo Moccasin size twelves into Gray’s face, effortlessly repeating this action until Gray’s head dizzied upon the impact of the hard kitchen floor.
The man took a pair of pliers from a drawer.
Gray thought it was an odd thing to keep in a kitchen drawer – but, from the look of the other utensils in the drawer, it didn’t look like where the man kept his cutlery.
The man knelt before Gray again.
“Give me your hand,” he instructed, ever so calmly, ever so confident.
So confident, in fact, that Gray was tempted to obey – but he didn’t. He didn’t move his hand out the way either – it was as if, by keeping his hand exactly where it was, he was neither demonstrating refusal nor defiance.
“I said, give me your hand,” the man instructed again.
“N– no…” Gray whimpered.
The man’s hand had clamped around Gray’s wrist before Gray could realise what was happening. He was starting to feel more and more dizzy, and he wasn’t sure if it was from concussion or a constant state of anxiety.
The man clamped his arm over Gray’s elbow, causing Gray to twist into a position where a slight bit of pressure on the elbow would cause him an exceedingly large amount of pain.
The man held Gray’s fin
gers firmly and locked his pliers onto Gray’s thumbnail.
“Who else is here, Gray?” the man repeated.
Gray did not know what to do. Should he object to the pain? Give away his siblings? Be brave and keep claiming he was alone?
His thought process took too long and the man didn’t hesitate. The pliers clamped around Gray’s thumb nail and the man pulled with a violent yank. It took a few more yanks – three to be precise – but, after shifting the nail a little further each time, the bizarre sight of a nail-less thumb appeared amongst a pool of gushing red.
Gray saw his own nail thud to the ground, almost hidden in a pool of blood that fell like water from a gutter. He screamed and he wept and he protested, though he did not threaten – instead, he begged for it to end. He could feel the thick, warm moisture of blood sticking his fingers together, and the violence of it was provoking his gag reflex.
“I’m going to ask you again,” the man said, as Gray felt the pliers clamp over the nail currently attached to his forefinger. “Who else are you in here with?”
Gray considered his options again.
But, just as he felt pressure to his nail and a slight pull was applied, he spilt the beans like a clumsy chef.
“Okay, okay! There are two more!” he cried out, hating himself – but his desire to escape torment outweighed his self-hatred.
“Tell me about them.”
“Er, erm,” Gray frantically attempted to think of what useful information he could give. “A girl, a boy…”
“How do you know them?”
“They are my brother and sister.”
“And what are their names?”
“Amber and Luke.”
“And where are they?”
“They– they– they started on the top floor!”
The man let go of Gray’s arm and stood, placing the pliers on the side with an arrogant thud.
Gray took his thumb in his hand and stared at the stump of gooey red skin where his nail used to be. He wasn’t sure what was more agonising – the pain, or the sight of his thumb without a nail.
“Thank you, Gray. You have been most kind.”
“Please, please don’t hurt them.”
The man said nothing. He just smiled a sneaky, slanted smile.
“We only did this to save our mum.”
