by JB Duvane
When I let go of his body, Jeffrey’s head fell to the side, but I could still see his chest moving up and down. I was more concerned with finding Abby and making sure that she was ok, so I left him there. I knew I could never gain her trust back after everything I had let happen, but I had to help her get out of this goddamned house.
I looked out into the hall and didn’t see any sign of her, so I turned to the right and went to the elevator at the end of the hall. I checked to see what floor it was stopped at and realized that she had to be in one of the rooms on this floor since the arrow was still pointing at four. I made my way back towards the room where I had left Jeffrey and figured he must still be lying on the floor since I hadn’t seen him come down the hall. I quietly opened doors and whispered Abby’s name, but I wasn’t sure she would even want to see me. When I opened the door to my old bedroom I noticed a light streaming in from the adjoining bathroom. I wasn’t sure she was in there but I as I stood quietly and waited I heard a jar being gently set down on the counter and I knew it had to be her. No one else was in the house.
There was a part of me that hoped Abby would just go out Jeffrey’s bedroom door into the hallway so I wouldn’t have to face her but also didn’t want her to run into him when she was alone. I had been a coward for far too long and I knew I had to face the one thing I was most afraid of right now, the look of hatred I knew would be in her eyes. As I started to walk across the room that I spent so much time in as a child, everything that happened to my brother and me flashed back before my eyes. The beatings and the torture and the loneliness. I wished I had never come back, that he hadn’t forced me to come back by bringing Abby here. I had told Jeffrey over and over that I was done with everything, that I just wanted to be free of him and this house and everything that it reminded me of. Everything in this room brought back memories of the pain and humiliation our father imposed on us for years, and as I looked around the room it all came flooding back.
My breath caught in my throat when I saw a shadow moving through the bathroom doorway and towards me. I glanced up at her for just a second but couldn’t bear to keep looking into her beautiful eyes, I was just too ashamed.
“Jake?” she asked as she walked towards me in the dark. “Are you ok?”
My eyes filled with tears as I felt her moving closer to me. I couldn’t believe she was asking me how I was, after everything she’d been through.
Chapter 12 - Abby
I reached up and wiped away a tear that had fallen down Jake’s cheek. I didn’t know what to say or do, but I just couldn’t be angry with him.
“Is Jeffrey dead?” I asked.
“No. I went a little crazy on him for a minute, but there’s no way I could kill him. He’s my brother, and even though he’s done some terrible things…what he’s been through is even worse, Abby. You have no idea. I’m not trying to erase the horrible things he’s done to you. But I can’t justify hurting him any more than he already has been,” he said as his voice cracked. I could tell that this was hard for him and I wanted to know more, to understand what was going on between them, but I knew that would have to wait.
“What is this place, Jake? Where are we?”
“It’s the house I grew up in.”
“House? It seems more like a mansion to me. And the place I was in earlier, the old hospital, is that in this house too?” I asked as I moved closer to him, trying to understand the expression on his face. He was still keeping his gaze on the floor but some of the pain and sadness that had darkened his face since the night I left seemed to have lifted a bit, at least temporarily.
“Yes, it’s in the basement. My father was a doctor and he had his own clinic built down there before my brother and I were born. The main floor of this house, the one above the hospital, held his offices and the nurses and servants quarters, and the third and fourth floors are where my family lived. My brother and I shared this floor mostly. This was my bedroom from when I was born until I left to go to college, and I still used it when I came home for vacations, but once I was out on my own I never came back here…until now. My brother and I shared the bathroom between these two rooms and the room with the monitors on the other side is his. I guess he still uses that room as his bedroom.”
“Is this where you’ve been sleeping since I’ve been here? Have you been staying at this house with him?”
He was quiet for a moment and kept his eyes lowered to the floor.
“I…I’ve been sleeping in that room behind the mirror. I just wanted to be near you Abby, and to see you when the light came in through the window in the morning. I wanted so badly to believe that I could stand up to him and get you out of here. Each day when I saw you laying in bed so peacefully I swore it would be the last day he would get his filthy hands on you. I fought with him every day to get him to see how what he was doing was wrong. So incredibly barbaric and sadistic, and so much like our father. But I just didn’t try hard enough to stop him. I’ve been almost paralyzed by my fear of him for a long time and I don’t completely understand why. I know what I did is unforgivable and that I’m a coward. I hate myself for the way I let him treat you. I’ll never be able to forgive myself…and I know you can’t forgive me. I don’t expect you to…but I just didn’t…I couldn’t…”
Jake stopped short and looked up at me in alarm when he heard Jeffrey's bedroom door open. He grabbed my hand and quietly opened the door that led out into the hallway, then pulled me out with him and to the right. We slipped into another room across the hall that looked like an office of some sort. It was lined in bookcases and had a large desk in the middle of the room. There were two chairs in front of the desk and a couch with a coffee table that was covered in magazines off to the side. I glanced down at them and the dates on the magazines were all over ten years old.
“I think I know what rooms he has monitored and I should be able to get around all of the cameras. The only thing we might have a problem with is the elevator. I know that he has a camera in there.”
“Is there any other way down?” I asked, holding Jake’s hand and, for some reason, feeling safe for the first time since I’d gotten to that horrible place.
“Yes, there’s a back staircase that goes all the way down to the basement on the other end of the hallway, but I’m pretty sure he’s got cameras on that too. There is a third way down, but it might be a little riskier. Each one of these rooms on this side of the fourth floor is adjoined by a door. They’re a series of libraries my father had created for us because he expected both of us to follow in his footstept and become doctors, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with him or his work.”
“But Jeffrey did? What kind of doctor is he, Jake?”
“He’s not a doctor. He never went to medical school. There was an…accident when we were twelve and our father died. After that, Jeffrey spent all his time reading every one of our father’s books and journals. He went through all of the notes our father had taken for different laboratory experiments he had executed in the basement and developed some of his own experiments based on them. After our mother died from liver and kidney failure when we were twenty-one, Jeffrey started up the medical practice again. I don’t know how or where his staff or patients came from, and I never questioned him. I’ve just always turned a blind eye to Jeffrey's behavior because of everything he’s been through.” Jake stopped as a visible look of pain spread across his face, then took a deep breath and squeezed my hand.
“What we need to do right now is get you out of here. Beyond this door is a string of libraries. There’s a room in the very center that’s made up of a four-foot landing that wraps around the perimeter of the room and a stairway that goes from it to the third floor. I’m not positive, but I don’t think there are any surveillance cameras in that room, or in any of the libraries. They’re his domain and he usually doesn’t let anyone else in them. We should be able to sneak through and make it to those stairs without him seeing us. Then we just have to get down one more flight and
out of the front door.”
Jake still had not made eye contact with me and I knew it was because he was so ashamed of everything that had happened. I still didn’t quite understand the power his brother held over him, but it was obvious that it had been hard for Jake to go against him. He had to be pushed to the brink of murder in order to break free of the hold his brother had over him. I decided I wouldn’t bring anything up though or ask him any questions until we were safely away from this place and from Jeffrey, and even then I figured it was up to Jake. He would tell me if and when he was ready.
“Ok, let’s go,” Jake whispered as he opened a door in front of us. I could tell that he was still very nervous and probably still scared of his brother, and to be honest, I was too. There was no telling what Jeffrey was capable of. We passed through the first library room and it looked much like the one we had just left, only without the huge desk. It had chairs and a couch and every wall was filled with books. The next room was the one that Jake had told me about. Instead of a room with furniture scattered around the center, it had a beautiful, hand carved railing surrounding a gaping hole that allowed the entire room below to be seen from above. We made our way to the other side of the room and just as we approached the staircase that would take us down to the third floor Jeffrey appeared through another door in front of us.
Chapter 13 - Jake
I remember the first time our father beat Jeffrey. We had been asleep in Jeffrey's bed because I was afraid to sleep by myself that night. We were only five years old. I woke up to our father yelling at Jeffrey and pulling him out of bed, and by the look on Jeffrey’s face, he had no idea why he was in trouble. My father told Jeffrey to pull his pajamas down and bend over one of the big chairs and that what he was about to do would stop his soldier from standing at attention and keep him from playing with it. I remembered that part because all I could think of was that I hadn’t seen Jeffrey bring any toys into the bed with him.
My father looked at me before he started beating Jeffrey and he told me that he wanted me to watch so that I would learn the lesson too, and that if I looked away or even blinked that I would get what Jeffrey got, only worse. He did come after me more than once throughout my childhood, but for some reason it was Jeffrey that took the majority of the abuse. I would watch in horror as my father beat Jeffrey until he was screaming, then he would walk out of the room and leave him there on the chair. After he was gone I would run up to Jeffrey and put my arms around him until we both stopped crying, then we would get back into bed and lay there, staring at the door for the rest of the night. We were both terrified that he was going to come back in and beat one of us again.
Throughout all that time, through all of the years of the beatings and the torture and the things he did to Jeffrey that I was forced to watch, the most horrifying thing of all was seeing him standing in the doorway to one of our rooms, because we never knew what was coming. But we knew it was going to be bad.
That feeling came rushing back to me when I saw Jeffrey standing in the doorway of the library that Abby and I had just snuck through. We were approaching the staircase that led to the third floor when the door in front of us flew open and there he was, smiling at us just like our father used to.
I never understood why our father smiled when he was beating and torturing Jeffrey. In the beginning, it made me think that maybe what was going on wasn’t so bad, that we deserved what we were getting, even though I knew by the way my stomach felt that it was all very, very wrong. Then, I thought for a while that maybe he was smiling because he believed what he was doing was right, but eventually, sometime around when Jeffrey and I were ten, I knew that our father was just completely insane.
That’s what I’d wondered about Jeffrey these last few weeks, and it scared the hell out of me. I had that same feeling in my stomach as I had when I watched my father beat him, and it was like I was experiencing it all over again. It’s this house, and the memories and the guilt of never having done anything to stop it before. Maybe, as much as we want them to, things just don’t really ever change.
Jeffrey came towards us and I pushed Abby behind me. I would die before I let him get his hands on her again.
“Oh come on, Jacob, you’re not actually going to do something, are you? You’ve never done a goddamned courageous thing in your life, with your limp dick and your fucking tears,” Jeffrey said with a smirk.
“If I were you I’d just dive over that railing there, Abby. This hotshot isn’t going to save you. All he’s capable of doing is watching. And if you’re lucky he’ll get a hard-on after you hit the floor and break your neck.”
Then everything became a blur, with Jeffrey ranting like a lunatic and threatening both of us as we tried to reason with him. But the more I heard, the angrier I got until I just ran at Jeffrey with my hands aimed at his eyes. I wanted to claw them out and shove them down his throat so that I never had to see them or hear his voice again. For years I had to listen to him insult me and berate me and tell me that I owed him for everything he went through, all the beatings and torture he took from our father. There never seemed to be anything I could do or say, no amount of anything I could give of myself to him that would make up for what was taken away by our father.
I lunged at him, but before I got a grip Jeffrey had already moved toward me and tackled me, knocking me onto my back. Then he was on top of me, smiling that insidious, soulless smile of our father’s with his hands wrapped around my throat.
“I’m going to kill you now, Jake. You’re going to be sorry you didn’t finish what you started back there.”
“Jeffrey…please don’t do this…I love you…” I whispered, gasping for the air that wasn’t coming through my windpipe anymore.
Jeffrey's hands tightened around my throat and his eyes went completely dead. I had known this day was coming, even though I was never sure if he actually had it in him to kill a second time. But by the look in his eyes, he wasn’t even the same kid he was 20 years ago and it looked like I was next.
My vision of Jeffrey's face hovering over mine was fading as I started to lose consciousness, but just before I blacked out the pressure around my neck was released. I turned on my side and coughed, pulling in as much air as I could, and when I opened my eyes again I watched in shock as Jeffrey fell backwards down the staircase.
Chapter 14 - Jeffrey
“Oh, come on. You’ve never done a courageous thing in your life, Jake. Is this some kind of act to impress Abby? I’m pretty sure she knows what to expect from you by now.”
I watched my brother stand there, all limp and pathetic, as usual. He really must have thought I was just going to let him walk right out the front door with her.
“Jeffrey, just let her go. You can do whatever you want to me, just please let Abby leave.”
“It’s not that simple, Jacob. Abby is staying. You’re the one that needs to go, and if it’s not by the front door I have plenty of other ideas.”
“Jeffrey, come on. This has all gone on long enough. Just let Abby go.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Now that she’s here do you really think I’m going to let her go? She’s mine now, Jacob. She belongs to me. She left you, Jacob. She doesn’t want you. You don’t get the girl this time.”
“What are you talking about? What does that even mean? I’ve never taken anything away from you, Jeffrey. Besides, don’t you think Abby should have some say in this?”
“I can’t very well just let her go now…so, no, that decision does not rest with her. As far as whether you’ve taken anything away from me, if you think back far enough some events from our childhood may ring a bell.”
“What are you talking about, Jeffrey? What did I ever take away from you? I did nothing to you!”
“That’s right, Jake, you did nothing. You never lifted a finger to help me in any way. You just sat there watching and laughing. You think I don’t remember?”
“Jeffrey, The last thing I would have ever done is laugh, you
know that!”
I can see it in his eyes, he’s still laughing at me.
As usual he was still pretending to care, still acting out the part of my brother, the only person I’d ever truly loved and trusted, but he was mocking me. I could see it all over his smug face.
“It’s too late now, Jake. I’ve heard all of your excuses. It’s over.”
“What excuses? What are you talking about?”
“I’ve had it with your bullshit, Jake. I’ve put up with it for years. You, begging me for help then turning right around and blaming me when things would all fall apart. And now you’re telling me that I’m the sadist and I’m the one that has gone too far. You may have thought that you could fool me, but I’ve always been able to see exactly what you think of me. If you think that I don’t realize what you’re saying and thinking about me…that you judge my work here and what happened when our father died…you’re crazier than he was.”
I could tell he was trying to come up with a response that would get him and his little slut out the front door, but there was no way I was going to let that happen.
“What do you want, Jeffrey?”
I looked over at Abby in all of her bullshit sincerity and actually contemplated answering her question. But the thing was, I didn’t actually know what I wanted anymore. At first, when I was standing in for Jake in my usual role as his dick, I thought she was a pretty perfect submissive, really. She had that sad, self-deprecating thing going on where she would do anything for a guy just so she felt wanted. And then, when I fucked her the second time, I knew I wanted her all for myself. I did the work of setting everything up and getting her here, and it was just dumb luck that the elk jumped in front of her car when it did. But ultimately I knew that if I brought her here, Jake wouldn’t be able to stay away. I wanted…what I really wanted…