Painted Skins

by Matt Hilton

  There were sundry items of junk stacked against the side of the trailer. Nothing that suggested it was the home of a sexual predator, but handy to climb on so she could spy through the windows. Through chinks between the blinds she saw a scruffy, unremarkable home, but nothing to indicate any of the missing women had spent time there.

  She took out her cellphone, and was relieved to find that even out here in the sticks she had good 4G coverage, so remotely logged into a DMV database via Emma Clancy’s office, and input Jesse Randall’s details. Seconds later she had full details on the make and model of his truck.

  But it wouldn’t help her find him if he didn’t drive by.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Fashioning a mallet and awl from a hunk of rusty chain and the twisted rim of a bucket proved impossible. Elsa slipped the edge of the folded tin she’d finally broken from the bucket under the top of one hinge-pin. But it buckled without budging the pin a hair’s width because brass was tougher than tin. It didn’t stop her trying to lever the pin again, and when that failed she moved to the pin in the second hinge: that was even more resolute. She required something sharper and stronger, which she could hammer with a bunch of links, but there was nothing. She checked the engine block, but it was a single solid hunk of rusted iron. On hands and knees she scraped up pebbles from the dirt’s cloying embrace, but all were rounded. Even the padlock her captor had failed to lock proved useless as a lever, the edges being beveled, too thick to get under the head of the pins. She wouldn’t give up, she promised, but she’d gone beyond hope to futility by the time she heard the monster return to the hallway.

  After laying the chain over the block, as if it was still secured beneath the rusting weight, she scurried back to her usual position, placing her back to the door. Head bowed. Cupping the wedge of broken tin against her abdomen.

  The flap covering the slot in the door clanked open, followed by a thud on the dirt floor.

  The slot was sealed again as equally briskly, and the monster moved on. Twice she heard flaps open and close, as the other captives were briefly visited. Elsa waited, expecting him to return, but all she detected was the faint tapping of his boots in the corridor as he followed other unknown errands. Uncurling, Elsa peered through the dimness and her lips cracked in a feverish grin as she spotted the bottle of water dumped through the slot. She scrambled for it and snatched up the crinkling recycled bottle, barking her palms in her haste to twist off the cap. There was no Evian for her, only flat tap water, but her thirst was so desperate she sucked on the bottle to extract the last drop. She felt heady, and for a second feared he’d drugged the water, and sat down dully on her backside. But it was only the reaction to the sustenance she had craved for so long. Her stomach cramped, but she was never so thankful to experience nausea.

  The pint of water wasn’t enough, but it took the edge off her desperate thirst, and, once the euphoria had subsided, she could think a little straighter. It was a waste of time attempting to prise out the hinge-pins. She saw that now, but all of her efforts hadn’t been for nothing. She gathered in her chain. Her hands were still shackled, but looping it around the links between her wrists, she folded it into three-feet lengths and knotted the free end to the shackle. The hunk of tin she kept cupped in her palms, as she squatted and waited.

  She had no way to measure time passing but for the light through the chinks in the ceiling. She watched the spear point tips of greyness move down the walls, lengthening, then across the dirt floor, longer and fainter still, until they began to retract and supposed it was past midday. Periodically she eased up, chewing her lips against the moans she wanted to emit, as she worked out the kinks in her muscles. After the beating she’d sustained she was surprised to be moving at all, and thought that her earlier efforts had served purpose beyond offering her some base weapons.

  She waited some more. Her body must have absorbed every drop of moisture from the bottle, because she felt no urgency to relieve herself. Her skin felt brittle and slack where it wasn’t swollen or scratched. The older scars on her left hand and throat felt as if they hung from her in loose folds. She remembered the scalding with hot oil she’d endured as a child, and how she’d believed there could be no greater agony; well, she’d nothing to compare to then. The aching within her chest and the fierce pulsing of blood through her skull was enough to want to explode. And that was the plan.

  He came back as the light began to track back up the cell wall, when her vision had hazed out while watching dancing motes of dust, and she was about to fold. She hadn’t heard his shuffling progress through the tunnels, so she might have dozed.

  The flap over the slot clanked open without warning. A flashlight flared inside the cell, and her shadow was cast on the wall, a squat, ugly toad-like presence amid a halo of yellowish light. The muscles tensed in her thighs, and she shivered.

  His orders were explicit, though whispered in barely audible sibilance.

  ‘Do not look at me.’

  Elsa didn’t look.

  ‘Do not speak to me.’

  She didn’t speak.

  The locks and bolts rattled and clicked, and the door swung wide on the hinges that had thwarted her.

  ‘Put that on.’

  A familiar contraption rattled on the dirt beside her: a buckled leather strap, and heavy rubber ball.

  Elsa didn’t move.

  ‘Put it on. Now.’

  Elsa nipped the folded metal between her knees, and reached tentatively for the gag. The beam of his flashlight remained centred on her back, and she hoped it would stay there, and not track back to the engine block. She pulled up the gag, and inserted the rubber ball between her teeth, her lips cracking as they stretched wide, then halted.

  ‘Buckle it!’ His voice had risen, and she knew she was courting a vicious attack, but to buckle the strap behind her head she’d have to lift her shackled hands over her head and he’d spot the bunched links of chain.

  She spat out the ball, and it fell at her feet.

  ‘I … I can’t lift my arms,’ she croaked. ‘You … you broke them, I think.’

  ‘What did I tell you? What are the fucking rules?’

  ‘I can’t obey your rules and answer you,’ Elsa reasoned as she fed her hands between her knees and clasped the twisted metal.

  The flashlight beam snapped up and down, and Elsa knew he was coming. She’d dared defy him again. And that ensured swift retaliation. In her mind she urged him forward, because if he even glanced at the engine block, she was done for.

  She uncurled.

  In the moment she experienced the twisting and pulling of her tormented muscles, and it was as if she moved through thick sludge. An age must have passed before she turned, but apparently not. As she whipped around he was still mid-stride a couple of arm lengths away, with his flashlight held aloft in his right hand, and his left trailing the rubber hood he would have next forced over her skull. As his foot came down, and his momentum brought him forward, her arms followed the swing of her torso, and arcing behind them the flailing chain.

  He was backlit, his muscular body in silhouette, but the backwash from his flashlight lit his features. It was the first time she’d glimpsed his face, and she understood why he demanded his slaves never looked upon it. His face was horribly scarred, a deep and poorly healed furrow splitting him from brow to chin, intersecting the bridge of his broken nose, and the right corner of his mouth. His right eye was milky, the eyelid warped. His other eye, bright with surprise, opened wide and he jerked to a halt as Elsa’s screech split the air.

  The chains slashed into him.

  His upraised arm saved him a crushing blow to the face, but not all injury. His arm was battered against him, the flashlight knocked from his hand, and the loose ends of the chain flayed his shoulder and neck. He staggered sideways, a gasp of pain hissing from him.

  Elsa saw the open portal.

  But he was still between her and freedom.

  She yanked free the chains, but his arm
whipped after them and grabbed at the final few links. He shouted wordlessly as he snatched her off her feet. She was weightless. Borne aloft, and into him. He snapped fingers at her hair, but the rubber hood encumbered him. It slapped her face, momentarily blinding her. Elsa tried to duck below his arms, to flee, but a snap down on the chains he gripped sent her to her knees. His body rode over her, and a boot heel drove down her thigh, scoring the skin. Off balance he stumbled past, but he wouldn’t release the chain and Elsa was tugged after him. She fought to stand as he fought for stability.

  Elsa could feel the tightness in her face, hear the hiss of wildcat defiance between her lips, as he rebounded from the wall and spun to confront her. Her knees almost exploded as she pushed up and at him. He helped, yanking her tether, and she spearheaded the catapulting force with her hands thrusting at his throat. The hunk of twisted metal in her hands furrowed his collarbone, bending, but still formidable as it raked under his chin, springing clear below his right earlobe.

  He howled, his disfigured face more distorted by terror. Blood poured from his new wounds, and he dropped the chain to clasp both hands over his opened throat. Elsa fell down, kicked backwards on her butt. His hands fluttered and danced, and his mouth hung open at one side, streaming saliva. Elsa had seconds before he realized he wasn’t in mortal peril. She’d failed to cut a vein or artery, his cuts were painful but superficial. She grabbed the flashlight. It was two feet long, tubular steel, and as he bent at the waist, checking his hands for sign of his ebbing life, she rose up. His gaze went from his palms, rose up to meet hers, and she brought down the flashlight in a blur from behind her right shoulder.

  The first blow sent him to one knee.

  The second face down in the dirt.

  Screeching in combined hatred and terror, Elsa smashed him a third time.

  She stood over the downed brute, the flashlight ready again, but he wasn’t moving. His arms were splayed, his face pressed into the slimy muck. There was nothing more she wanted than to keep hitting him, to pulp his skull into the filth, except one thing. Get out, get out, get out! Before he gets up again and kills you!

  She dropped the flashlight and ran, naked and terrified, her chains now flailing behind her with every step, no sense of direction other than away.

  Behind her the other captives screamed, banging at their cell doors, but in her frantic haste to escape, those inside her head buried their cries. Elsa simply ran, caroming off walls, tripping up steps, taking corners at random, as long as it was away from the scarred man, the whispering devil of her nightmares.

  She fell, tripped by her chains. She fought loose of the links wound round her ankle, but stayed shackled at the wrists. Finally her thoughts began to crystalize, and she pulled the chain into her embrace as she ran again. She was in a narrow passage, walls dotted with black mould and flaking paint encroaching on her. Overhead lights were dim, their covers thick with dust and grime. In the distance there was a brighter glow. She ran for it as if it was a gate to sanctuary.

  She smashed into stacked tin sheets. The glow was a reflection from her right. As the sheets collapsed, an edge cutting viciously at her feet, she stamped over them and fell through a door into an echoing space. Again she forced up from her knees as she searched for a way out. She was in a cavernous room, dimly lit by overhead striplights, most of which had long burned out, some flickering madly, her mind unable to make any sense of the ancient machinery on all sides. Electrical conduit and metal pipes were strung from the ceiling and angled for the floor, some adjoining one machine to another, forming cages between others. There was no obvious path through the maze of rusting machinery, so she took the first direction that beckoned. Her bare feet slapped on crumbling concrete.

  On more than one occasion during her captivity she’d fancied she was stuck in a labyrinth, like the one through which the Minotaur once stalked its prey. She twisted and turned, sometimes having to turn back and retrace her frantic steps, before finally she spilled out on to a wide concrete platform, tripped over its edge and fell four feet on to a worm-eaten wood trestle that collapsed beneath her. As she struggled to rise, she was almost consumed by despair. She had run the wrong way. She had descended lower into the bowels of some ancient, decommissioned factory, and now stood at the edge of a huge space in which there were deep trenches. Dark, filthy water filled the trenches almost to their rims.

  ‘Where in hell am I?’ she moaned.

  There was a faint cry from her left.

  Was it the voice of one of the other captives? Had she run almost full circle? In her blind panic she had no idea of the number of turns or directions she’d taken. For all she knew a single wall separated her from where she’d once been imprisoned, though she was down a level at least.

  She peered around, seeking exit from the cavernous space, and her gaze fixed on an old green pickup truck, and beyond it a huge roller shutter door. Without hesitation she sprang towards them, skirting the nearest pit. Chips of perished concrete dug painfully into her soles, but she ignored the gnat-bite stings: compared to what she’d suffered her latest injuries were nothing. Ignoring the truck, she crashed up against the steel shutters, and rebounded. She stooped, got her hands under its lower edge and tried to lift, but she’d have had more chance of overturning a mountain. The doors were of industrial size and required motors to shift them. A man-sized portal was to her left, but it was padlocked shut. Futilely she slapped her palms on the door. The thrum echoed through the vast room.

  Another faint cry.

  Elsa turned around, gawping in the dimness.

  ‘Elsa! Over here!’ called the voice from somewhere beyond the truck. ‘It’s me! Jasmine! Help me!’

  Disbelief caused Elsa to walk in faltering steps towards the voice. As she approached its source she began to speed up and she fell against the door, panting out in a mixture of shock and joy. She had truly believed Jasmine had been murdered, her tongue sliced out and her body fed into the furnace she’d conjured from her imagination. Yet Jazz was alive!

  ‘I … I’ll get you out,’ she croaked.

  But she couldn’t. Not immediately. The door was secured as formidably as her cell had ever been. Padlocked bolts, and a huge steel bar were locked across the door. A small slot in the door allowed her to feed in her fingers, and Jasmine held on to them like a lifeline.

  ‘I’ll get you out,’ Elsa said again, the promise heartfelt, but impossible.

  ‘You can’t.’ Jasmine bent so she could lock eyes with Elsa through the slot. ‘Not without keys or tools. So don’t even try.’ Her hand pushed through the slot, flicking to the right. ‘There, that door. It’s where he first brought me after I was snatched. He stripped me there, took my belongings from me. My cellphone, Elsa, find it and call for help.’

  Elsa craned to look at the door Jasmine indicated.

  ‘Hurry, Elsa, before he comes.’

  ‘I … I killed him,’ she croaked. ‘I hit him, again and again.’

  ‘Are you certain he’s dead?’

  ‘Yes. N-no. I’m not sure.’ Elsa clawed at her own face. ‘He could still be alive …’

  ‘Then hurry!”

  She turned for the door, her chain again loose and rasping along the floor behind her. The door was unlocked but she was afraid to enter.

  ‘Elsa! For God’s sake!’

  She pushed inside.

  It was an old office. There was a desk and a collapsed wooden chair. A table, on which were stacked clothes. She knew hers were on the table, mixed among the clothing of the monster’s other victims. Handbags. She couldn’t see hers, so grabbed for the first she came to and upended it. No phone. She ignored the others and instead pulled open the desk drawers. There were sundry items, stripped from the girls, jewellery, credit cards, and parts to phones. A mix and match potpourri from different models, batteries and SIM cards scattered in the bottom of the drawer. She stared at the parts forlornly. Ordinarily she wouldn’t be fazed by the puzzle presented to her, but in her overwr
ought state the individual bits looked like alien technology.

  ‘Elsa! Hurry!’

  Jasmine’s frantic warning made her jump. She grabbed pieces, pulling them from the drawer, and dumping them on the desk. Scanning, she saw two as parts she recognized as belonging to a Blackberry. Her hands felt numb and useless, as if she wore boxing gloves, but she scrabbled about and hooked a SIM card with her nail, and by more luck than design slotted it into its holder. It took more tries to get the battery to slide in place, but then she had an entire phone. Please, please, please work …

  She depressed the power button, holding it down and to her relief saw a red light flash on the phone, but the screen remained dull matt black. Please, please, please. She held down the button, and the Blackberry logo sparked to life.

  ‘Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you.’

  The logo blinked off, and Elsa gawped at the screen.

  But in its place a rounded square appeared and a pale blue serpent began eating its way around the perimeter as the phone began to initialize.

  ‘Elsa!’ Jasmine shrieked. ‘Look out!’

  The door behind her crashed shut, and Elsa knew she was too late to summon help. She dropped the phone, and ran screeching at the scar-faced brute in one final desperate attempt at killing him.

  His powering fist met her jaw.

  She must have been knocked unconscious, because her next lucid impression was a worm’s eye view from flat on her back. She blinked as a shadowy form crouched and snatched something from the ground, and peered at it quizzically. Cognisance swam in and out of focus, but she knew it was him and that he was checking the Blackberry’s screen. He snorted, looked down at her and his ugly mouth twisted up at one side.