No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  The Russian speaks. ‘Such a poor girl,’ he says. He makes a tsk-tsk sound. ‘Poor, poor, girl. If you had listened to us, she would be safe. She’d be in school, enjoying homework and dating, like we promised. But you do a bad job. We gave you instructions, and you failed. You are a stupid girl. He does not believe you. He does not trust you. You must do better. Next time, you will not like what you see.’

  The Russian’s prediction is terrifyingly accurate. The third and last video is the most disturbing thing I have ever seen. The girl is still alive – they’ve apparently made a point to keep her that way – something that couldn’t have been easy. There’s not much left of her, mentally or physically. She doesn’t look like the pretty young girl of the first video. She looks hardly human at all. Within what was once her face, her eyes are white and bright and open, but they no longer seem to see.

  The Russian, off-camera, says, ‘Do you see what you’ve done? Do you know why we’ve hurt her? Because of you. All because of you. He still does not believe you. This is your last warning. Our next movie will have a new star. The star will be you.’

  From behind me comes Libby’s voice, startling me. ‘What are you doing, Jimmy?’ she asks.

  I turn. She stands in the doorway of the foyer, clutching the wall for support. She is soaked with rain, her hair clumped in wet strings. She doesn’t sound angry. Just exhausted. Maybe even relieved, that I’ve finally found it. ‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t have looked.’

  ‘Who is that girl?’ I say, pointing at the TV, as if there might be doubt about which girl I refer to; but the video has ended, and the screen is black.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘You don’t understand what you’ve done.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Please, stop.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Jimmy—’

  I yell: ‘Who the fuck is it?’

  She opens her mouth to answer, then stops. She looks at me, considering, and then turns and walks away.

  I find her upstairs, in the bedroom. She is staring out of the window.

  ‘I found the picture frame,’ I tell her. ‘I know that you work for Tad.’

  She remains still, with her back to me, not turning, not speaking.

  ‘Who was that girl?’ I ask.

  When she doesn’t answer, I say gently – more gently than she deserves, ‘Libby, please. Tell me. Who was she?’

  She turns. Her skin is pale, thin like paper, and I see blue veins beneath her eyes. Her lips are pressed together. She looks cold. She answers, just a whisper, ‘My daughter.’

  ‘Your... daughter?’ I shake my head. ‘You don’t have a daughter. You never had a—’ I stop. ‘You had a child before me.’

  She says nothing.

  ‘Why were they doing that to her?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s a long story, Jimmy. And I don’t think we have the time any more.’

  ‘I have plenty of time.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘Everything was a lie,’ I say, as understanding dawns at last. ‘Your past... everything you told me... it was all a lie. Am I right, Libby?’ When I say her name, I think about that night in the restaurant, and the woman who insisted my wife was called something else. ‘My God. Is that even your name? Libby?’

  Her eyes move slowly across the room, as if inviting me to follow, and they stop at the ceiling fan. It spins lazily above us, churning the stagnant air.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help you.’

  ‘Help me?’ She laughs. ‘No, Jimmy, I’m quite sure you can’t help me.’

  ‘Who made those videos? They’re blackmailing you. Why? What do they want?’

  She stays silent, but it doesn’t matter. I understand now. ‘You don’t work for Tad,’ I say. ‘You work for Ghol Gedrosian. You’ve always worked for him. Where is he? He’s here, isn’t he?’

  She puts a finger to her lips. ‘Shhh.’ She whispers, so softly that I can barely hear the sound through the pelting rain on the roof. ‘Don’t say his name.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I ask, raising my voice. ‘Where is Ghol Gedrosian?’

  Silence.

  ‘I trusted you. How long have you worked for him? How many years?’

  She stares at me with a strange, inscrutable expression. What is it, exactly? Anger? Hatred? Fear?

  No, I realize, with a creeping unease. No.

  It’s pity. She pities me.

  ‘You still have no idea what they’ve done to you,’ she says. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Why is he blackmailing you? What does he want?’

  She walks to me and takes my hand. She leans very close. I feel her breath in my ear. It’s our last moment of intimacy, I know, our last moment as husband and wife. She whispers, ‘We have to leave here. If you want to live, we have to leave this house. Right now. You have to trust me.’

  I shove her in the chest. She stumbles back. ‘Trust you?’ I shout. ‘Get away from me!’

  She looks disappointed in me and, for the first time... afraid. Her eyes flit to the ceiling fan.

  There is something about that fan – something evil. It is like an eye – a lazy, leering, winking eye – taking in this sordid spectacle, this final conflict between man and wife, surely their last.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ I ask. ‘Why do you keep looking—’

  I stop.

  I go to the nightstand, grab the first thing I see with any heft – a brass bookend, cast in the shape of an elephant head, the size of a brick – a knick-knack that was in the house when we arrived. I climb onto the bed, stand at the edge of the mattress, lean out to the fan.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

  I swing the bookend with all my might against the centre of the fan. The plastic eye cracks open. The entire apparatus – teak blades, centre eye, metal mounts – is knocked from the braces in the ceiling. It drops three inches, snags on electrical wires, then hangs limp. White plaster dust rains down. I peer into the fan’s centre. There is no mistaking what I see. In the middle, behind what used to be smoked plastic, a camera lens stares back at me, unblinking.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I yell. I swing the bookend again. Wires snap. The fan crashes to the floor, leaving a fine cloud of white dust hanging in the air.

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ I point accusingly out of the bedroom window, through the rain, at the dark house across the street. ‘He’s the one.’

  ‘Jimmy, listen. Let me explain what’s going on.’

  ‘He’s Ghol Gedrosian,’ I say, finally understanding.

  ‘No, Jimmy – You’re wrong. Listen... We have to leave this house! They’re coming. They hear you.’

  I ignore her. I jump from the bed, push her roughly out of my way, and run from the room, gripping the heavy metal elephant in my hand.

  She calls after me, ‘Jimmy, don’t do it! They’ll kill you.’

  I bound down the stairs, into the living room. Now, everywhere I look, I see hidden cameras. The grandfather clock in the corner of the room. How many times have Libby and I lain on that couch, directly in front of it?

  I peer into the clock. The glass reflects my own face: dark circles under my eyes, wet hair, the bump of my broken nose. I see no camera, but instead see an insane man filled with rage. I lift the metal bookend and swing it at the clock face.

  Glass shatters. A shard flies, missing my eye by an inch, nicks my cheek. Like a Saturday-morning cartoon, springs literally fly out of the clock. Then I see it: behind the clock hands, behind the warped metal facing, is the dark staring eye of a camera lens.

  ‘Jimmy, listen to me.’ Libby has appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She glances at the bookend in my hand. ‘They’re going to kill me, now. You’ve just signed my death warrant.’

  ‘Who is going to kill you?’

  ‘You know who.’

  ‘Say his name.’

  She sha
kes her head.

  I march past her, into the foyer, and out of the front door. She yells behind me, ‘Jimmy, no!’

  I stomp onto the porch, and down into the rain.

  I pass Libby’s Mercedes, which she parked behind my Ford. It’s askew, uneven in the driveway, parked in a hurry. She left the convertible soft-top open. Rain pours in. I keep walking. The water pelts my scalp and face and eyelids so hard that I can barely open them enough to see. I march in a straight line, through thunder and sheets of rain, and I cross the street. In the distance, a set of headlights cuts through the rain. I ignore them. I clomp across my neighbour’s yard, my feet sinking ankle-deep into mud.

  I climb his stairs, onto his porch. On the patio, at last I’m shielded from the storm. I pound the door with the metal bookend. The sound is loud and violent, a Gestapo knock at midnight. The metal leaves deep gouges in the wood.

  ‘Let me in!’ I shout. ‘Let me in!’

  The door opens. My velociraptor neighbour stands there, blocking the doorframe, looking at me curiously. He wears a wife-beater undershirt. Up close, he seems lean and toned, much more muscular than I remember, with the tapered torso of a professional athlete.

  ‘Yes?’ he says. ‘May I help you?’ His accent is Russian.

  ‘I’m your neighbour, Jim Thane,’ I say, not sounding particularly neighbourly. ‘Let me the fuck in.’ I shove him in the chest with my fist, which surprises him as much as me, and he stumbles back and away from the door, giving me entrance.

  His house is a mirror image of mine – with his living room to the left of the foyer instead of to the right; and beyond it, a staircase spiralling up to the bedrooms.

  I glance past the velociraptor. He seems tentative, maybe even afraid. I stare into his living room. I can’t believe what I see.

  In my version of the house – the one across the street, where I live – the living room is cluttered with: a couch, an entertainment centre, a TV, a grandfather clock in the corner, and a coffee table where I sometimes rest my can of Sprite and a crossword puzzle.

  In this mirror-image house, the one owned by my neighbour who looks feral and carnivorous, the living room is filled with: audio visual equipment.

  Just audio visual equipment.

  Rows of it – electronics and machines – enough to fill a small recording studio. Because that is exactly what I am looking at. A recording studio. Consoles run along the edge of the room. Twelve large television monitors line the walls, all high-definition screens displaying different images.

  ‘What the fuck—’ I start, but don’t get very far, because I stop speaking the instant I see the images on the screens.

  They are images of me. And of Libby. And of our house.

  Frozen on one monitor, paused perhaps so that it can be enjoyed, is the picture of Libby on her knees, giving me a blow job. I recall the night that happened – it was weeks ago – the strangeness of those events, the way the sex turned violent and mechanical, not at all erotic. On other monitors I see more recent images: a close-up of me – which I recognize as taken from the point of view of the grandfather clock, just minutes ago, right before I smashed it. On another screen, a running video, with a time-stamp ticking off seconds in the lower-right corner: infrared video of me searching our bedroom, from an hour before. On- screen, my ghostly green blur rummages through Libby’s underwear drawer, then walks to the closet to continue the search.

  I turn to the velociraptor, who is looking at me now with a strange expression, one of amused anticipation, as if he sincerely is interested in what my reaction to all this will be.

  ‘Who are you?’ I say. ‘Are you Ghol Gedrosian?’

  He laughs. ‘Mr Thane, please. You have it all wrong. I can explain everything.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Explain everything. Start by explaining this.’ I wave my hand to indicate the screens. I grip the heavy brass bookend in my palm and step towards him. He doesn’t flinch. He stares at me, very still, watchful but unafraid.

  I hear something outside, through the open door. A bang, then a woman’s scream. It’s Libby. ‘Jimmy, help!’ she yells.

  I run back into the foyer and out through the front door.

  Behind me, the Russian is following, calmly saying, ‘Mr Thane, please listen. This is all a very funny misunderstanding. I want to explain it to you before you get the wrong idea.’

  I run from his porch, into the rain. Across the street, in my driveway, a set of high-beams cuts through the gloom. I see two dark figures pushing someone into a car. A muffled scream tells me it’s Libby. I run across my neighbour’s yard, towards my own house. At the edge of the yard, my shoe slips in the mud, and I slam down on my ass. Pain wracks my ribs. I sink deep into the wet dirt, and lie there, catching my breath. A rivulet of water sluices past, washing over my hands and legs. I scramble to my feet just as the tyres in my driveway spin, kicking out gravel, and then the car pulls away. I run towards it – an anonymous black sedan – but it speeds off, past me, just an arm’s length away – and down the street.

  ‘Stop!’ I yell after the car. But it disappears into the rain.

  ‘Mr Thane, please, come back inside,’ the voice behind me calls. I turn to see the velociraptor. He’s standing on his porch. I notice he’s dressed now in a waterproof navy windbreaker. His right hand rests in the jacket pocket. ‘There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,’ he calls, over the rain. ‘And I would like to take the opportunity to explain exactly what is happening.’

  He edges towards me as he speaks. He does so slowly, almost imperceptibly.

  I look to my own house. The door is open, and the light from the foyer – yellow and welcoming – spills onto the porch. The velociraptor is coming closer, walking slowly down his stairs, into his yard. ‘This is all very interesting, you see,’ he says, ‘I would like to explain it to you over a hot cup of coffee, yes? As neighbours, yes? Would you join me for some coffee, please?’ His hand is in his windbreaker, but now he’s close enough for me to see that there is too much bulk in that pocket to be explained by a hand alone.

  I turn and run, across the street, my feet splashing ankle-high water, which is overflowing from storm sewers; then I run up the incline of my own yard. I glance over my shoulder, and I see the Russian break into a run after me. So much for conversation over coffee. I slip on the wet grass, hydroplaning, losing my footing. I am about to flip onto my ass for the second time. But at the last moment, I regain my balance, and keep stumbling forward. I run up the wooden steps of the porch, and into the house. I slam the door behind me, just as the Russian, racing after, reaches for it.

  I bolt the lock. I lean my back against the door, catch my breath, then remember the bulky thing in the man’s pocket. I edge away from the centre of the door.

  But the knock, when it comes, is gentle – almost neighbourly. The man shouts through the wood, ‘Mr Thane, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you, OK? You have my word as a gentleman.’

  I look around the foyer. Libby’s wet car keys lie on the side table. I pick them up and slide them into my pocket.

  ‘Mr Thane,’ comes the voice through the door. ‘Let’s sit down and have a drink together, yes?’

  ‘Go away,’ I shout through the door. ‘I don’t want a drink. Just leave me alone.’

  I know that I am safe as long as the Russian is on the other side of this thick door, and as long as I can hear his voice, and as long as I know exactly where he is.

  ‘Just go away!’ I shout again.

  No answer this time.

  I step to the door and look through the peephole. The porch is empty. The Russian is gone.

  I take a quick inventory of the downstairs. In the kitchen, I see windows, securely closed and locked. But in the living room, the patio door is slightly ajar. I make a dash for it, across the foyer, into the living room, and past the couch. I grab the door handle and shove it closed. The tiny lock clicks. Outside, a flash of lightning illuminates the sky, and lights up the Russi
an, standing just inches from me, on the other side of the glass. His fingers are on the door handle. He tugs at it. ‘Please, Mr Thane,’ he says, his voice muffled by the glass, ‘let me in.’

  I see another shadowy figure moving around in the vegetable garden. And there’s a third man, on the other side of the house, marching past the kitchen window. At least three of them – maybe more – only moments away from swarming into the lower floor of the house.

  I run back to the foyer. As I pass the front door, I see the knob jiggling. I race up the stairs and into the bedroom and slam the door. My fingers flit across the knob, searching for the lock. But there is no lock.

  Voices in the foyer below. ‘He’s upstairs,’ someone says. ‘In the bedroom.’

  How the hell did they know that so fast, I wonder. I look around the room. The ceiling fan has been smashed and probably no longer works, but I see at least two other suspicious objects. The clock radio on Libby’s nightstand – weirdly bulky, with a Chinese-sounding brand name I am unfamiliar with. A bookshelf, filled with books – any of which could house a camera, or a microphone. I grab the telephone from the cradle on the bureau. My fingers, wet with rain, jam the keypad. I bang out 9-1-1.

  On the line, there’s a ring, a click, and a voice. Male. With a Russian accent. ‘Mr Thane, please listen to us. We’re coming into the room now. We don’t want you to get hurt—’

  I slam the phone and back away, as if the Russians might reach through the receiver to grab me. But it turns out that there is no need for this bit of magic, because they can do it the old-fashioned way. Like this: the doorknob is turning, and the bedroom door is opening.

  I run to the veranda door and tug the sliding glass. The door is heavy, and sticks in the track, and I open it just enough to squeeze through. On the patio, in the rain, I pull the door closed. I peer through the rain-slicked glass into the bedroom. Two men trudge past the bed, looking around.