The Devil's Staircase

by Helen FitzGerald

  That’s where it ended, the plan, and it had gone perfectly well at first, but after that, he’d had to make it up as he went along.

  She woke up earlier than he expected, but he was ready. He was wearing his chosen face – a gimp mask – jeans and an old T-shirt. His mouth seemed to gleam through the custom-made holes in the taut, shiny black leather. Big eyes stared at her. Huge eyes, opposite her, in the corner of the room. Gagged and tied to her chair, she woke. He watched her face as the fear swept over it. Her eyes wide and white. Her forehead deeply lined from the pressure of silent yells. Her mouth dribbling. Legs red-raw with wriggling, rubbing, trying, begging.

  A few hours later he touched her gently on the side of the head. She was less rigid and the cries had moved downwards to pound in her stomach. He took to his seat again, nervous that after all the effort it wouldn’t work. He took a few breaths, in and out, slowly in and out, and then unzipped his trousers. Watching her eyes widen again, he took his soft penis in his hand and held it. Then he began. Slowly . . . make it good . . . this is it . . . up and down, concentrate, nearly there, nearly there. She was wriggling, and he liked that. He focused on her legs, clad in Lycra and ankle socks and he noticed for the first time that she only had one shoe. Fuck.

  He zipped himself up, ran up the staircase, opened the door to the hall, tripped on a floorboard, picked himself up in a frenzy, fumbled with the front door-handle, and walked onto the street. He searched awkwardly in the new daylight for the evidence, bent down and looked under a car, banging his head on the way back up, and finally – thank God – found the shoe under the metallic blue Honda Jazz that was parked ten feet from the front door. He picked up the shoe and checked the street until he felt confident that he hadn’t forgotten anything else. He was about to return to the task at hand when he noticed someone walking towards the Kensington Gardens end of the street. He panicked, tossing the trainer into the bin beside him, then went back inside.

  He was a little annoyed after the whole shoe incident, so when he got into the basement room he didn’t even sit in his chair. He unzipped again, knelt beside the shoeless foot, the toes wriggling a protest against his left hand’s strokes, and tugged twice, unbelievably, just twice, before it happened. Ah, he said, opening his eyes. Ah, ah, he said, licking his achievement from the sock-clad foot.

  15

  When she’d woken, Celia had assumed it was a dream. Like the one where she’d forgotten to feed Johnny, where he’d become so thin and boggly-eyed that she’d screamed in horror and thrown him against the wall. Or the one where she’d slept with Greg’s best friend and he’d found out and left her. But she didn’t wake up, didn’t roll over to her husband to say: ‘Greg, I had a bad dream, do you still love me?’ Or to her little boys, to say: ‘Good morning, my beautiful little boys! Are you hungry?’ But she couldn’t move her hands to slap or pinch herself, and no matter how hard she looked the boys weren’t there, the bed wasn’t there, Greg wasn’t there, and it came to her that this was real. She was in a dark room. Her trousers and pants had been pulled down to her knees. There was a hole in her chair and a bucket underneath it. She was tied and gagged.

  She’d never imagined coping in such a scenario, so she had nothing to draw on. No inner resources to help with the first few hours, where she’d tried her hardest to get a noise from the inside of her to the out, all the while a masked man three feet from her, watching, just watching. The noise didn’t come. It got stuck somewhere in her throat, dribbles of it dampening the material that dug deep around her mouth. She didn’t give up as such, but after hours of internal screaming, of banging and rubbing against the ties, she rested, just for a moment, to gather her strength. He smiled at her as she drooled, poised like a rabid dog with mouth guard and chain.

  It was a long time before the people moved in above her. During this time, she’d made a rule that she must concentrate on survival and not on him, what he did to her. So each time after he left she pressed her chin to the locket round her neck – a silver heart-shaped locket on a chain, with a picture of her family inside. She touched it with her chin for strength and luck, and then resumed her projects with focus and determination.

  She was tied to a chair in the middle of the small, square, low-ceilinged windowless room. A plastic-coated bicycle chain was looped through one of the slats on the back of the chair and then padlocked tightly to a metal ring that was bolted to the floor. Her hands were bound together behind her back. Each foot was tied to a chair leg. Thick rope was wound around and around her legs and torso. A polyester bandanna tore into her mouth. A lamp, which he always turned off when he was finished, sat on a metal table in the corner. There was a small grate at the top of the right wall. A bucket of her by-products was under her chair. Just outside the room, she’d caught glimpse of a staircase that led to the real world. She didn’t know what world it was. It could have been Bulgaria for all she knew.

  She decided the only way to loosen the rope was to wriggle fingers, toes, feet, to rub and squirm and move as much as she could. She did this for hours each day, first the hands, then the feet, then the whole body. Wriggle and rest. Wriggle and rest.

  She peppered this plan with others, so as to not lose motivation. The gag. Get it off, and yell. She pressed her head against her shoulder and rubbed. She bit and chewed at the polyester.

  She rocked the chair. Back and forth, side to side, to try and move it, loosen the bicycle chain. But the chain was securely locked.

  She tried to bang the chair on the ground, lift the front two legs, bang it down. Make a noise. The noise it made was tiny, pathetic, and she came so close to making the chair fall over that it panicked her. If she fell over, she decided, she would be in an even worse position.

  In those first terrible weeks, Celia’s concerted efforts had not paid off. Her ropes were still secure, her gag unloosened, and her chair in the same position.

  ‘You’ve not been washing, have you? You’re a smelly girl,’ he’d said during one of his twilight visits. ‘We’ll have to think about a bath.’

  After the bath comment, Celia spent hours stretching her feet towards the bucket underneath the hole in her chair. It happened during her third shift, as she’d taken to calling her long impassioned efforts. The bucket swished onto her feet and all over the floor. She then rocked and rocked so hard that her chair fell to the ground with a bang. It knocked her out, but when she woke she smiled underneath her gag, because it had worked. She was swimming in her own waste, would marinate in it for days, and now she would definitely be in need of a bath.

  16

  Fuck, he hadn’t meant to do that.

  He’d come in after his trip to the all-night Asda and found himself doing something he hadn’t meant to do.

  For a week it had been excellent.

  He’d visited her each night at the same time. He would get impatient as the working day drew to a close, excitement pumping through him. He found the normal evening tasks almost impossible to bear as he waited for the right time to enter the basement. He went in through the back garden, climbing over the high wall, creeping across the small patch of grass, opening the kitchen door, walking into the hall, and then opening the cupboard. It had a lock and a door at the back that was hidden by wallpaper and piled up cans of paint. He had put padlocks on this inner door, and made sure to pile the paint high each time he left, just in case. Beyond the second door was an old wooden staircase that went down to the basement. There were two rooms off the small, concreted hall, one locked, one without a door.

  Despite his clumsiness, the first night had been the best, crawling through the garden, opening door after door after door, then finding her just as he’d left her that morning, a parent seeing a newborn baby waking for the first time. He smiled as her eyes opened wide, very wide. His girl, still fresh, in white socks and trainers, Lycra trousers. Fit and feisty and . . . he kissed her on the cheek and on the nose. He licked her left ear, then under her right. He put his tongue in her right ear, as f
ar as he could, then swept it across her forehead, tasting the salt of her fear. She sat still, her eyes closed now, tightly, as he rubbed himself around her face until the ‘Ah’ meant that it was all over, all over her chin.

  Seven nights in a row. Ah, nearly there, nearly there, then he’d take her gag off, put a knife to her throat to stop her yelling – although he wasn’t too worried, really, no one would hear. He’d feed her with a spoon, water her with a straw, chat about the day’s events, put the gag back on, the light out, then leave through door after door after door to the real world again.

  In the second week the smell of the bucket really began to make him queasy and he decided to come every second day. She remained in the chair, and he wondered how she had managed to get into such a state, just sitting there.

  Only one visit in the third week. He’d been busy and when he came back to see her it was less than excellent. She’d spilt the bucket and her chair was lying sideways on the ground in a puddle of shit and piss. He gagged. She’d let herself go, needed to take better care, so he made a deal with her as he placed the chair upright: ‘I’ll untie you if you’re a good girl. No yelling, no trying anything, I just need to clean you up.’

  She’d nodded with her once-pretty face, and he unlocked the padlock that secured the chair to the metal ring on the floor. He picked up the chair and placed her on it. He then carried her and her chair away from the wet brown stench. He took off her bandanna. Her mouth stayed in the same position for a while, as if the cloth was still there, but eventually he saw the face that had appealed to him on the street. The dark brown eyes, the straight black hair, the optimum weight and height, health and muscle and freshness and fitness.

  He put his finger over her mouth and she obeyed, remaining silent as he untied her for the sponge bath.

  He wiped her left arm first. The trickle as he squeezed the dirtied water into the basin made a sound that reminded him of when he’d been ill, and his Mum had cooled his forehead.

  He held each of her hands gently as he cleaned to the elbow, and then he pulled her T-shirt up above her breasts. He unclipped her bra and cleaned each breast with the soapy sponge. He took her hands and helped her hold them up so the T-shirt could be taken off. He helped her stand so that he could take off her Lycra track-pants and socks and wipe the parts that had been naked since that first day, when he’d kindly pulled everything down to the knees. He put her clothing in a black bin bag and wiped slowly – up, around – then wiped the seat that he had carved a hole in before she’d arrived. He guided her back to her sitting position. He wiped her face and eyes with the sponge and then he bent down to wash her feet.

  And that’s when it happened. After he pressed the wet sponge between her big toe and the one next to it, she kicked him. He fell to the floor. His nose was bleeding. He watched for a moment as she ran out of the room and towards the stairs. She clambered up one, two, three, four steps. He stood up as she fumbled with one of the inner locks he was always careful to secure after entering the hidden door. She bashed at the padlock and chain with her hand, over and over, as if this would break it. She held the door handle and pulled at it, yelling HELP. He stood up, walked up the stairs slowly, towards her naked, banging, yelling body. She turned around and faced him.

  He smashed her in the right cheek with his fist. She fell down the stairs, her naked limbs bumping until they landed untidily at the bottom. He walked back down the stairs and kicked her before she had a chance to get up. Then he kicked her again. And again. He couldn’t stop his foot from booting her in the side, in the leg, and then in the head. It was an oversized foot-tick, unstoppable, and he fell to the floor beside her, exhausted, when it finally stalled.

  He opened his eyes at the same time she did. Fuck, he hadn’t meant to do that. She was now not only stinking and filthy, but also cut and swollen. Her muscular legs were covered in blood and, from several angles, even looked flabby. One of her finger bones was sticking out of its skin. Her face was barely a face, her back bony and bruised.

  He tied her limp, naked body to the chair, the blood from his nose dripping onto her stomach and legs. He could hardly look at her. She was disgusting. A favourite porn vid gone fuzzy.

  When he left the basement room with a bin bag of shitty clothing, he hadn’t fed her with a spoon and watered her with a straw, hadn’t gone over the events of the day, hadn’t placed the bucket under her scrawny arse or chained the chair to the metal ring in the middle of the room. He hadn’t even tied the ropes very well.

  As he quickly concealed the secret door with cans of magnolia eggshell and matt, he wondered if he would have the stomach to visit her again.

  Bayswater was turning out to be the perfect place – vigorous youth all round, in the hostels, the bars, the park, the leisure centre down the road. He was so excited by what was on offer that he almost managed to forget all about this last mistake, this thing who had a life and people who were looking for her. He could do that, couldn’t he? Ignore the sick feeling, drown it with a glass of cider? Start over again, with that one in the netball skirt perhaps?

  Then one evening, after walking back from the park, he noticed someone fiddling about at the doorway. He watched from behind a tree as the girls ran inside giggling. Shit. They’d gone in. He watched as they went out again, then carried mattresses and junk back in through the front door. Shit. He felt desperately ill. They’d moved into the house. He took stock. She was underneath. The cupboard was locked and the door well disguised.

  But shit. The place had been empty for months, and they had to pick now to take it over. He gulped nervously as he watched, wondering what it meant for him. Could he stop them? What could he do? He was always so careful, so thorough, and this was a terrible snag. He would have to sort it out, that much was for sure. The question was: How?

  17

  Celia woke when she heard the footsteps. Light and darkness had come and gone. Terror, pain, boredom and anger had consumed the slow minutes. He’d not visited for a long time, she wasn’t sure how long, but it was long enough to allow her to move more than she’d managed before. She’d been beaten badly and had a fractured finger and cuts and bruises all over but she kept her focus – think about escape, nothing else. In his anger and frustration at her attempt to run away, he’d done a poor job of tying her up. While her gag was as secure as before, her hands were in front of her now, tied together but not to the chair, and her legs felt a little looser. Most importantly, the chair was no longer chained to the metal ring in the middle of the room and could be moved an inch at a time if she zigzagged carefully.

  Her first expedition was to the drainpipe adjacent to the grate. The pipe was leaking a bit and she desperately needed water. She’d learned at college about dehydration and starvation, and knew how long she had: about twenty days without food, three or four without water. She was naked except for her necklace. Her gag was still secure, and it was driving her crazy. The lack of water had made her lips crack, her tongue swell, and she felt like vomiting. She knew if she did vomit she would die, choke on it and die, so she moved inch by inch over to the drainpipe and held her mouth against the dripping metal. It took almost an hour to soak the gag, but eventually it was sodden and she sighed with relief as she sucked the cloth to wet her mouth. She had bought herself some time.

  Her second expedition was to get out of the room and into the small hall. The room she’d been trapped in didn’t have a door, but a piece of wood was still hammered into the ground where the door once was, and it took about four attempts before she managed to bump the chair legs over it.

  The hall was about five feet square, with a staircase at one end, her doorless room to the right of it, and a locked door to the left. She couldn’t get up the stairs in her chair, or into the second room, and otherwise the hall was completely empty. The expedition proved fruitless and the hall stank even more than her shit, so she moved back into the room she now thought of as her room.

  Her next project was to saw through her h
and ties using the corner of the metal table that had the lamp on it. She was making her way towards the table when she heard the noise upstairs. Assuming it was him, she straightened herself and looked back towards the staircase. Funny, she almost wanted to see him. He might take the gag off to feed and water her, like in the good old days.

  But he didn’t come down the stairs. And the footsteps got louder. And there was more than one set of them. There was laughter, squealing, the moving of furniture.

  A frenzy of activity overtook her. A party was going on somewhere in the house – there were many voices, loud music. She rocked the chair from side to side, banged her head against the drainpipe, moved over to the table and pushed it with her chair to make a loud scraping noise. But the party upstairs was so loud that no one could hear her. She banged her head against the wall . . . and knocked herself out.

  When she woke it was light and quiet. She cried waterless tears. Her focus was weakening. She slept.

  It was dark again and the voices were muffled and distant. She soaked and sucked from her gag and waited for the right moment. She could hear someone entering the room above her, moving around, going quiet, talking to herself, alone. It had to be her bedroom.

  Celia scraped her chair along the ground. Then she scraped it back again. She could hear someone getting up, walking across the floorboards directly above her head. Celia followed the shuddering boards with her desperate eyes. A door above creaked open. Feet left the room; floorboards stopped shuddering. Celia’s eyes flickered from side to side. Where had they gone? Had they heard? Were they coming down to save her?