by Dan Wells
There was a dresser just a few steps away, covered with an array of tools - not the orderly array of clean torture implements you’d see in a spy movie, but a haphazard pile of kitchen knives and construction tools: screwdrivers, pliers, a vice grip, a hammer. There was a pincushion studded with needles. There was a book of matches, a set of candles and, oddly, a box of firework sparklers. I picked up a pair of snubnose pliers; there was something black and ragged caught in the metal teeth. I set them back down and took up a paring knife, its short blade covered with dried blood - layer after layer of it, as if it had cut a hundred victims and never been cleaned.
Stephanie hung motionless from the ropes on her wrists. Completely still, like a corpse. I held the knife towards the corpse, blade up, like an offering. So many dreams . . .
Gravel crunched in the driveway outside, and I jerked my head up.
‘John!’ screamed the woman downstairs.
I dropped the knife and took a step towards the door, then stopped, went back, and grabbed the knife again. I didn’t know what good it would be against a demon, but it was better than nothing. If I was lucky, I could get out without confronting him at all.
I ran further into the house, stepping lightly and hoping the floor didn’t squeak. There had to be a back door. I found another bedroom, probably Forman’s own, still largely unfurnished but with a closet full of good suits and clean white shirts. Beyond that was a bathroom, the tiles cracked and mildewed, and beyond that another bedroom, locked this time. There was no back door. I could hide in one of the other rooms and wait until he left again - but no, he’d know as soon as he came in the house that I’d escaped. The broken closet door was practically the first thing he’d see. He’d know I was out, and he’d be looking for me.
The front door opened, a distant jangle of locks and keys, and Forman called out: ‘Did you honestly think you could escape, John?’ He paused, then spoke again. ‘That was a new door, John. I’m going to have to get a metal one this time.’
He’d started talking before he was even inside. He’d known I was out before he even saw the door. How?
‘Confused, John? That’s natural. Didn’t the toys warn you that nobody ever gets away?’
I crept quietly back towards the room where Stephanie still hung unconscious. There was a window in there; I might be able to open it and get out before he came in.
‘Ah,’ said Forman, ‘hope. I feel a lot of that at work, but it’s been a long time since anybody felt it here.’ I could hear his footsteps, still several rooms away but coming closer. ‘If you have hope then you have a plan, but you’re not nearly angry enough to attack me, which means you think you can get away. There’s no back door, and the windows are obviously not an option. What could it be?’
I slipped through the door into Stephanie’s room and glanced at the window - it was barred, just like the kitchen. Was the whole house barred shut?
‘Desperation is mounting,’ said Forman, his voice drawing closer. ‘Your plan isn’t working, or I’m scaring you - maybe both. Either way, you’re out of options.’
If I hadn’t been so focused on Stephanie’s torture the last time I was in here, I would have seen the bars on the windows. What else had I missed? I spun around, looking for anything I could use to get away or fight back. There was a small closet in the corner, but the door was missing, and the pile of boxes inside was too small to hide behind. I could go through the drawers of the dresser, but he was too close now - he’d hear everything I did. I was desperate now, searching for anything I could find: the mattress was old, the single light bulb was off, the rear wall was new sheetrock, still bare. There was a—
There were eyes in the wall.
Right about my own eye-level, in the rear wall, there was a hole in the sheetrock with two eyes peeking through. I jumped back, startled, nearly tripping, but it wasn’t Forman - it was someone else, someone dirty and motionless. I paused, waiting for the eyes to blink, for the head to move, for any sign of life. The eyes blinked and glistened; they were crying.
It was another prisoner. Forman had built the new wall around someone, leaving only an eye-hole aimed directly at his torture station across the room. The woman in the wall, mute and immobile, had been forced to watch everything Forman had done to Stephanie last night.
She’d seen everything I’d done in the room, too.
‘Surprise,’ said Forman, standing in the doorway. His gun was drawn and pointed right at me. ‘Shock, really. And both things most likely to shock you are right here in this room. Really, John, you didn’t even make it fun.’
‘Who is she?’ I asked, pointing at the eyes.
‘An experiment,’ said Forman. ‘An upgrade to the dungeon, so to speak. An intensifier.’
‘To intensify what?’
‘Two victims for the price of one,’ said Forman. ‘I can get a similar effect downstairs, of course, but having one actually trapped in the wall adds a distinct touch of despair that I can’t replicate any other way. I’m kind of a connoisseur, as you may imagine.’
‘Of torture?’
‘Of emotions, John. Torture’s a method, not an end.’
Emotions. That was how he’d tracked me through the house, and how he’d read me so accurately the night before - because he wasn’t actually reading me at all, he was literally feeling the same things I felt. That was why he’d been so scared in the car, because I was scared; that was why he’d been such a wreck after torturing Stephanie last night, because he felt all of her fear - and the woman in the wall’s fear - at the same time.
‘Understanding dawns,’ said Forman. ‘You’re putting it all together now.’
‘You feel what we feel,’ I said.
Forman nodded, smiling.
‘Could the other demon do that? Mahai, or whatever you called him?’
‘Mkhai,’ said Forman. ‘And no, he couldn’t. It’s not likely you could ever have killed him if he did, because he’d have known you were coming before you ever got in place.’
‘You can read minds?’
‘It’s not reading, John, it’s feeling - I feel exactly what you feel.’ He took a step forward, the gun level and menacing. ‘If I feel anticipation then I know that someone nearby is waiting for something. Someone’s excited. Then I start to feel a little fear, and I know that whatever they’re waiting for is dangerous, and then I feel something darker - hatred, or aggression, and I know that whoever’s out there is planning to hurt someone because all of a sudden I feel like hurting someone. Which also means that if you ever get up the guts to use that thing,’ he pointed his gun at the paring knife in my hand, ‘I’ll know it as soon as you do.’
I looked at the knife in my hand, then set it down on the dresser.
‘If you feel everybody’s emotions,’ I asked, ‘why do you hurt people? Wouldn’t you spend your time spreading happiness and joy and filling the world with good feelings?’
‘Feelings aren’t good or bad,’ he said, stepping closer. ‘They’re just weak or strong. Love, for example, is weak: someone loves you, you love them back, you’re happy for a while, and then it fades away. But if one of those lovers betrays the other, then you have a real emotion - then you have something powerful, something that leaves a mark you’ll never be rid of. Betrayal is the most delicious of all, but it takes a while to set it up, and fear can be just as intense if you know what you’re doing.’
He advanced on me slowly, smiling slightly. ‘You know fear. When you faced Mkhai you must have felt a fear more intense than most people ever know. Fear, betrayal, anger, despair - lesser emotions pale in comparison.’
I held my ground. ‘I’m a diagnosed sociopath, Forman,’ I said. ‘Wringing intense emotions out of me is going to be a lot more trouble than it’s worth.’
‘You’re not here for fun,’ said Forman. ‘You’re here to tell me about Mkhai.’
‘But you know more than I do,’ I said. ‘You’ve known him for hundreds of years.’
‘Thousands
,’ he said. ‘But forty years ago he disappeared, and now he turns up dead. You know where he’s been during that time, and you’re going to tell me.’
‘And you’re going to torture it out of me?’
‘Nothing you tell me under torture would be of any value,’ said Forman. ‘You’ll tell me when you’re ready. For now, I think it’s time I introduced you to the rest of the toys.’
Chapter 17
Forman tossed me a ring of keys from his pocket. ‘Unlock it. It’s the little round one.’
We were in the kitchen, and Forman was keeping his gun trained right on me. The gun interested me. Crowley/Mkhai never needed one, because he could turn his hands into claws. Could Forman do that? I had assumed that all demons were more or less the same, but apparently not. Crowley had been able to steal parts of bodies and subsume them into his own, but this emotional thing was completely new. Did Forman also have a demon form lurking underneath his human one, or was his body structure more fixed than that?
I found the right key and opened the door. The smell from below was rank and bitter, like a sewer.
‘What’s down here?’ I asked.
‘The toys,’ said Forman. ‘Radha and Martha and . . . no, I think Martha’ s gone now. They all look the same to me, especially after they’ve been in the basement for a few months.’
‘Are you going to lock me down there too?’ I asked.
‘Well, I can’t very well have you running around upstairs any more, can I? Doors are expensive.’ He shoved the gun into my back, a cold metal tube. ‘Now get down there.’
The stairs were steep and narrow, and I had to hold the handrail to keep from falling. There was a small, dirty window at the top of the far wall, but the light from it was faint and my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet. I was completely blind until halfway down the stairs, when Forman flipped a switch behind me.
‘Stop there,’ he said.
The room below lit up with a harsh, yellow light, and four filthy, emaciated figures curled in on themselves like shrivelling weeds. They were women, dressed in rags; three of them were hiding their faces. The room was made of bare concrete, with a sewer pipe in the corner that the women had been chained to, and a series of hooks hanging from the ceiling. The floor looked like it was also concrete, covered with a layer of dirt, refuse and blood. In the corner was a pile of wooden boards topped with a trio of squat metal barrels.
‘These are my toys,’ Forman whispered in my ear. ‘These are the ones who survived the early tests. Our mutual friend Stephanie is not likely to join them.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s too weak,’ said Forman. ‘I’ll grow tired of her very, very quickly. This one, however, is my favourite.’ He pointed at the woman in the far corner - the only one of them who dared to look back. She stared at us angrily. ‘Look at her,’ gloated Forman, ‘practically chomping at the bit. I have to get back to the station, but . . . there’s time. Take the keys and bring her to me.’
‘I’m not helping you.’
Forman shoved me forward with the gun, knocking me off balance. I clutched at the handrail, barely catching myself, but he slammed the grip of his pistol down on my fingers and they opened involuntarily. I fell down the stairs, cracking my head solidly against the wooden steps and then knocking the wind out of my chest as I hit the hard cement floor.
‘You will not talk back to me again,’ said Forman evenly. ‘That is a lesson the other toys have learned well.’
I raised myself to my knees, groaning, and sat there for a few seconds to let my head stop ringing. I grabbed the end of the handrail and climbed to my feet.
‘Very good,’ said Forman. ‘Now bring her to me.’
I walked across the room, stepping carefully to avoid piles of garbage and scattered cans of dog food. Each woman shrank back as I passed. They were dangerously skinny and caked with mud and dirt; their clothes were ripped and tattered, exposing scarred skin stretched tight over bony ribs.
There were four women here in the basement, and at least two more upstairs; the entire house was a pit of terror and loathing that was almost palpable, even to me. How could Forman stand it? From what he’d told me upstairs, his emotional mirroring wasn’t something he could just turn off - it was always on, and he would always feel everyone around him. That was probably why he stayed on the stairs and sent me down for a victim; he’d be so scared down here that he’d be almost useless.
Could I use that against him?
The woman in the corner stared at me as I approached, like the cat in the warehouse. Her skin was dark, though I couldn’t place her race exactly. She looked a little older than Lauren, but given her condition I couldn’t be sure.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ I whispered, kneeling down in front of her.
‘Go to hell.’
‘Who’s the woman in the wall?’ I asked.
The woman looked at me warily. ‘Who?’
‘Upstairs,’ I said softly, unlocking her slowly to draw out the conversation. ‘There’s a woman trapped in the wall.’
‘Which wall?’
I paused. ‘In the torture room.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You have to have seen her.’
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘I’m John Cleaver.’
‘Not any more. You’re one of us now. Or maybe something different.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘We’re just toys; you’re a pet.’
‘Don’t dawdle, John,’ called Forman.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Radha.’
‘Radha?’
‘It’s Indian,’ she spat.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Now listen - we don’t have a lot of time. I think I can kill him, but I need your help.’
‘You’ll fail,’ said Radha, ‘and he’ll take it out on us.’
‘He’ll take it out on me.’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she hissed. ‘You broke down his closet door and who knows what else up there, and who is he punishing for it now?’
I shook my head. ‘He’s not going to punish anyone,’ I said. ‘Now, how does he come to get you when I’m not here? How did he get the others?’
‘Why do you care?’
‘Just tell me - can he come down here?’
She snorted and looked behind me. ‘He’s right there on the stairs. He can do anything he wants.’
‘Yes, he can, but does he?’ I stared straight into her eyes, trying to get her to focus. ‘I need to know if he’s ever come down here before, and what happened.’
She was still gazing nervously over my shoulder. ‘He’s getting impatient.’ Her fingers brushed a nasty set of scars on her chest.
‘Answer me,’ I pleaded.
‘Of course he comes down here,’ she said. ‘You think we just go up on our own?’
‘Does he get scared when he comes down? Does he look jumpy, or does he tremble, or anything like that?’
‘Why would he be scared of us?’ Radha sneered. ‘He’s got a gun, and we’re all in chains. How does an idiot like you possibly expect to stop him?’
She was almost snarling with anger. Aha.
‘It’s you,’ I said. ‘You’re angry - and he focuses on that.’
‘I’ve got a lot to be angry about,’ she said.
That’s why Radha was his favourite - she was strong-willed and angry, and he could use that thread of anger to keep himself going when anybody else’s fear would make him run away. That’s why he had run away from Stephanie last night: she was all fear, so he was too. He’d come to me to calm down.
‘You can’t let yourself get mad,’ I warned her. ‘You’ve got to be terrified - so do I. It’s the only way.’
‘He’s coming,’ said Radha.
‘He can focus in on one emotion and push the others away. That’s how he found me in the house, even with all of you down here throwing out interfering signals. He can push those all away—’
<
br /> ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.
‘I’m saying that I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘He is using me as a pet. He’s using me to calm down after he hurts the rest of you.’
She didn’t seem to catch on. Did she not know that he absorbed emotions?
‘What does that mean?’ she demanded.
‘It means my plan won’t work,’ I said. ‘I need to find another weakness—’
Just then, something hard and fast-moving hit me in the side of the skull, and my vision exploded in a flare of white. I fell to the ground, clutching my head, and I heard Forman’s voice above me, indistinct against the buzzing rush that filled my ears. I struggled to rise, but he kicked me hard in the stomach and I doubled up in pain.