by G X Todd
‘Here, clean yourself up.’ He handed her the bottle of water and the shirt. ‘We’re leaving. Get dressed.’ He turned his back to give her some privacy.
For a second he didn’t think she would move, but then there was the sound of the bottle cap unscrewing, a gargling, a spit. Then came a rustling of clothing. Pilgrim walked around the side of the bed and ducked down to search. It didn’t take him long to find his gun, placed under the bed, far enough away from the girl in case she had somehow worked an arm free but close enough if Russ had needed it.
Not close enough, Voice said.
‘I guess not,’ Pilgrim murmured.
He also found her boots.
By the time he came back to the foot of the bed, the girl had cleaned most of the blood off and was dressed. The T-shirt was at least two sizes too big for her. It made her look like a ten-year-old playing dress-up.
‘You OK to walk?’ he asked, passing her shoes over.
She gave a short nod, glancing up at him. She bent over at the waist and pushed her feet into her boots – first her left, then her right, making Pilgrim think that was probably the order she did it in every morning after getting out of bed – and laced them up. Her fingers trembled, but she tied the laces with precise movements and didn’t make a mistake.
‘OK, move it.’ He nodded at the door.
Glancing over her shoulder at the two bodies heaped in the corner, she opened her mouth as if about to say something. She closed it again without uttering a word and stood up. She limped her way to the door and Pilgrim followed. He didn’t look back at the siblings. They wouldn’t be going anywhere.
CHAPTER 10
With the lantern’s help, they found their way up to the ground floor. None of the doors was locked; Nikki and Russ had never expected their captives to break free. The darkness from the basement followed them up, the night having fully settled beyond the windows they moved past, transforming the glass into blackened mirrors. The reflections of a shuffling girl and a tall, shadowed man ghosted by.
They came into the reception room and found the cat on the floor. It was laid out on its side, its chest caved in.
Pilgrim crouched down next to it and briefly rested the backs of his fingers against its neck. The fur was cool, the warmth from the animal having long seeped away.
He stepped over it, pushing out into the night and taking a deep breath as he crossed the threshold. It felt like the first full breath he had taken in a while. The night air was cool in his lungs; it smelled of earth and plants and things that were alive.
The girl appeared beside him. ‘I’m sorry about your cat,’ she said softly.
‘It wasn’t my cat.’
He saw her shrug from the corner of his eye.
‘I’m sorry anyways. It seemed like a good cat.’
She met his gaze when he looked over, and held it, just like she had back at the lemonade stand.
He was the first to look away. His eyes fell on the solitary car parked in front of Room 8.
Eight could be a problematic number. Pilgrim knew this, the same way he knew there were still four hours before the sun would rise, and that the girl weighed somewhere between 95 and 105 pounds. No more than 105, though. These were just things he knew.
‘You’re gonna check out that room, aren’t you?’ the girl asked.
‘Thinking about it.’
‘Is that such a good idea?’
‘Probably not.’
They were silent.
‘What do you suppose is in there?’ she asked.
Both of them stared at the closed door of number 8. From where they stood, they could see the curtains had been drawn.
‘Nothing good,’ he said.
‘I think I’ll stay here.’ The girl hugged her arms across her chest as if the chill in the air had gone bone deep.
Pilgrim nodded absently. He was finding it difficult to look away from that door – the door and the brass-coloured number 8 that hung askew from its front, almost turning it into infinity. The door had a crack running up from the bottom edge nearest the hinge; it looked like the letter Y, the way it branched off at the top. Or like a dowsing stick. Or a slingshot, like the one Nikki had used that had turned out to be a crossbow. Pilgrim’s ear went hot where the arrow had nicked him – Nikki ‘nicked’ him, indeed – and not just hot, but white-hot; he expected to hear the blood sizzle and hiss like a sausage hitting a frying pan full of fat.
He realised he had raised himself up slightly on the balls of his feet and was leaning forward towards that damn room.
‘Hey.’
The girl touched his arm, just above his elbow, and he blinked and felt that yawning grasp let go, and he rocked back on to his heels as the world rushed in around him.
You OK? Voice asked.
‘You OK?’
He almost laughed at the unity of their questioning. He didn’t feel particularly funny, though.
He looked at her, in the too-big T-shirt and bloodied jeans, and nodded. ‘Yeah, sorry. I’m fine. Let’s find your rifle before I get to doing anything. I’d rather have you armed than standing out here by yourself with nothing but your wits to protect you.’
‘My wits are pretty sharp.’
‘Not sharp enough for my peace of mind. Stay here. And yell if that door opens,’ he added, already moving away.
‘You had to go and say that, didn’t you?’ she called after him.
As it turned out, he wasn’t gone for more than a couple of minutes. Their captors hadn’t hidden their stuff. They most likely hadn’t felt the need, not thinking one of them would end up with clippers stabbed into their throat and the other with a cracked skull. Pilgrim grabbed up his pack and, on his way out, snatched the keychain to Room 8 from its hook, pausing next to a drawer beneath the counter. A small brass key was inserted in its lock. He turned it, heard a faint click and opened the drawer. Inside were two sets of key fobs. He grabbed those, too.
There was an obvious relief in how the girl reached for her rifle when she saw it. It reminded him of a cartoon he had watched as a kid, sitting on the floor in front of the TV while a washing machine gently whirred in the background. Someone had been sitting beside him – he had seen them from the corner of his eye – but he’d been riveted by the TV, his head tilted back he was sitting so close to the screen. For some strange reason he could recall the colours of that cartoon vibrantly in his mind’s eye: shocking sports-car reds, deep and profound tropical-ocean blues, greens as dazzling as a newly mown football pitch. The colour of the teddy bear, the stuffed toy the cartoon girl reached out for, was a comfortingly fuzzy tactile brown. The cartoon child had taken that bear and squeezed it tight to her chest, her face screwed up in delight.
The girl in front of Pilgrim didn’t hug the gun or express such a strong emotional reunion, but Pilgrim was sure she was close to wanting to.
‘Keep the gun ready,’ he told her. ‘I’ll shout if I need you to shoot anything.’ He watched her shaking fingers expertly pull the bolt back and check the weapon was loaded.
‘OK,’ she said, keeping it loosely cradled against her chest, just like that teddy bear.
He fished the keychain from his front pocket, clamped the plastic tag of the room key between his teeth and started walking towards the closed door. As he went, he pulled the slide back on his semi-automatic, just enough to see a round already chambered in there. He tried to be light on his feet, but his boots made a hollow clop each time his heel came down on the concrete.
He ducked underneath the curtained window, not wanting his silhouette to reveal his presence to anyone inside. Remaining crouched, his back flat to the wall, he plucked the key tag from his mouth and inserted the key into the lock. With a twist, the deadbolt clunked and disengaged. Leaving the key dangling, he brought his gun up ready, and shoved the door open, going in fast and low.
There were no lights in this room. With the curtains closed, there was nothing to relieve the gloom. The slab of meagre moonlight that shone
in from the open door made shadowy goblins scurry for the darkness under the bed and hide in corners. He briefly considered going back for the lantern, which he’d left with the girl, but disregarded the idea. He wanted to get this done quick and get the hell out.
It took only a second to register all that information. The next second the smell hit him.
Shit.
Sweat.
The heavy iron smell of blood.
It latched on to the back of his throat, making him wish he had pulled his neckerchief up over his mouth and nose before entering.
It was a twin room. On the bed nearer the window, a body was stretched out, its arms raised above its head, presumably lashed to the headboard, legs spreadeagled and tethered to the footboard. The person’s foot was the nearest body part to Pilgrim. He reached out a hand and touched the sole. It was cold.
Dead, Voice whispered.
Pilgrim didn’t answer. His fingers skimmed over cool skin, searching for the pulse at the inside of the foot, by the ankle bone, which he knew wouldn’t be there. He pressed the pads of his first two fingers to the spot for a count of fifteen.
Not a flutter.
Dead, Voice whispered again, a definitive note to his tone this time.
Taking his hand back, Pilgrim continued scanning the room. He could see the outline of two bedside tables, a chair in the corner nearest to him and a long chest of drawers running along the wall to his right, a small TV set on it. An open suitcase lay at the foot of the vacant bed, items messily strewn half in, half out. There were a further two doors opposite him, one to a closet, he guessed, the other leading to the bathroom.
In the end, he didn’t have to choose which door to investigate first. The muffled whimper that came from behind the one on the right decided for him.
He dropped to all fours first and peered under the beds – monsters always hid there – but these ones were clear. If there had been a monster, it had already crawled out into the world.
A second noise came from behind the door on the right: a metallic clanking, followed by a quiet grunt.
It’s probably another crazy sibling. Waiting with an axe.
‘Quiet,’ Pilgrim ordered.
He got back to his feet, his right knee popping. He silently approached the door, his boots cushioned by the thin carpeting. He watched the doorknob, imagining he could see it turning. He made a small, animalistic growl and lifted one heavy booted foot and shot it at the door, kicking it hard, popping it out of its catch. The door slammed inwards, crashing into the wall and rebounding back, but Pilgrim was already shouldering through, the gun up and ready.
He stopped in his tracks at what he saw.
‘Hey! What’s going on in there!’
He didn’t realise he had lowered the gun until the butt bumped against the side of his thigh.
‘HEY!’ the girl shouted again from outside, panic edging her voice.
‘Get in here!’ he called back, without taking his eyes off what was in the bathtub. ‘And bring the lantern!’
It took both him and the girl to manoeuvre the naked woman out of the bathtub. Nikki and Russ had done a good job of tying her up, lashing both her wrists over the top of the shower rail. They’d used the same wire they had on Pilgrim, and it had cut far more viciously into the woman’s wrists than it had his. But then, she had been trussed up for longer.
The sepia glow of the lantern made the bruises on the woman’s abdomen and ribs and legs appear like large black smudges, as if she were drawn with the bold swipes of a charcoal pencil. Dried and encrusted blood sheathed her wrists and forearms like black evening gloves, and her scuffed elbows had dribbled blood down to her underarms like midnight-black candle wax. The woman hissed in pain and whimpered quietly every now and then, but she didn’t utter a word while they helped her step over the lip of the tub. The girl, however, didn’t shut up. But her soothing patter was surprisingly welcome to Pilgrim. He had fewer words to say than even the woman.
‘That’s right, just a little more. Take it easy there, it’s kind of slippy. Man, you’re lucky the Boy Scout here wanted to check this room out, or else . . . well, never mind what else. We found you now and—’ It was the girl’s turn to hiss. ‘Oh, man. Your poor wrists.’
It’s a shame you can’t kill the same people twice.
‘Yeah.’
A step outside the bathroom, they all stopped. Pilgrim was on one side of the woman, gingerly holding on to one arm, and the girl was steadying her from the other. The body on the bed lay unmoving, silent, and yet it held them all in its thrall.
The woman started to tremble.
‘We should get her out of here,’ the girl said.
The girl was as shaken as the woman but hiding it well. He couldn’t see her in the dimness, but he heard her teeth chattering.
‘Do you have her?’ Pilgrim asked.
‘Huh?’
‘Don’t let her fall.’ He let go of the woman and hurried over to the second bed, yanked the top blanket free and laid it over the body, covering it up. But not before he saw it was a woman in her early twenties. Her bloodshot eyes bulged up at the ceiling, and her jaw was slack, bloated tongue sticking out from between purple lips. Deep ligature marks cut into her throat.
He went back over to the girls and carefully took hold of the woman’s arm again. ‘Let’s get outside. I’ll come back for clothes.’
They walked the woman between them across the room and out of the door. For the second time that night Pilgrim inhaled a deep breath, cleaning out the stench of death from his lungs. He left the woman leaning up against the trunk of the car and went back inside for the suitcase. He made a detour to his pack on the way back and gathered his first-aid kit and a tall bottle of water and took them both to the girl, instructing her to clean the woman up and get her dressed. Giving her a job to do would help divert her attention for a short while, at least until they were out of this place.
‘This your car?’ he asked the woman, pulling out the two key fobs he’d found in the office drawer. He jabbed at the unlock buttons on both, but no beeping sound answered.
The woman frowned, glanced at the car she was leaning against as if to remind herself whether she owned it or not, and then silently pointed to the key fob in Pilgrim’s left hand. ‘Battery’s dead,’ she whispered. ‘Need to use the key.’
The key unlocked the passenger door. He passed the fob to the girl.
‘Where are you going again?’ she asked, holding on to the items he had handed to her or, more accurately, clutching on to them.
‘I’m giving the room a once-over. Then we’re getting out of here. I promise.’
‘OK, but can you hurry? Please?’
CHAPTER 11
Lacey watched anxiously as he went back inside. She didn’t move for a tense moment, listening hard, waiting in case he shouted out to her again. While she stared at Room 8, she felt eyes on her back, coming from the motel reception.
She spun around.
No one was standing at the pane of glass watching her.
She peered towards the reception desk, skipping fast over the dead cat, but couldn’t see anyone there, either. She quickly checked each corner of the parking lot, and the windows to each motel room. No one anywhere. A few hours ago she’d been desperate to see signs of other people, and now all she wished for was privacy and a decent place to hide.
She became aware of the woman standing beside her. Naked. And equally as scared, she’d bet.
‘God! Sorry. I was freaking myself out again. Here’ – she transferred all the items the Boy Scout had handed her to one arm and gently took hold of the woman’s hand – ‘let’s get you dressed. You’ll feel better.’
Guiding her to the passenger side of the car, Lacey pulled it open, partly using it to hide the woman’s nakedness, partly to give her somewhere to sit. ‘That’s it. Sit down for second. Careful now.’
The woman was shaky, but she perched on the edge of the passenger seat, sitting sideways so her
legs were out of the car, her feet on the ground. Lacey made quick work of cleaning the woman’s cuts, not simply to limit her suffering but because Lacey found it difficult to look at her wounds for too long. She didn’t want to dwell on what Russ or Nikki had been thinking about when they hurt her, if they had laughed each time they landed a punch or kick, if they liked it when the woman cried out. She didn’t want to think about the level of evil needed to do what had been done in that room, or if she’d have ended up the same way. To think about it might send her mad, might have her begging the Boy Scout to take her back home. No, she had to do this quickly, or else she’d lose the last of her courage.
She murmured apologies as she applied the hydrogen peroxide to the woman’s cuts, wincing each time she flinched under her dabbing, feeling tears come to her eyes and trying very hard not to let the woman hear them in her voice as she babbled away to her, her mouth on auto-pilot, unaware of half the things popping out of it. The night was so quiet, and the sense of wrongness drifted all around her, dusting the air. She found herself glancing over her shoulder time after time, her skin itching. She had cleaned herself off in the basement, but she still felt dirty, contaminated. She wanted to scrub her arms and hands and everything else the siblings had touched, the same way she had after wringing her chickens’ necks and plucking and chopping them up.
And still her mouth yabbered on. ‘God, this is such a crappy way to meet, I know, but I’m so glad we found you. I don’t come across many people, haven’t really been out in the world too much, you could say. But judging from today’s candidates, I’m thinking that might not be such a bad thing. That doesn’t include you,’ Lacey hastily added. She was reaching around the woman’s back, helping her slide one arm and then the other into a shirt, but she paused to meet the woman’s eyes. ‘I don’t mean you,’ she repeated. ‘Or the Boy Scout in there.’
Lacey crouched down to check the woman’s legs for injuries. ‘What I meant to say was I . . . those two gross people in the basement . . . the ones who . . .’ She trailed off, an image of the two bodies down in the basement rising up, brother on top of sister, their combined blood forming a pool around them, most of it pumping from the brother’s sliced neck. It had looked like a second gaping mouth, that gash, opening and closing as the guy tried to breathe. Like a fish’s gill.
