by Andrew Hart
I was glad it was dark because even though I spoke with a hint of defiance, it felt like a confession. I was reminding everyone that while they worked with their brains, their talents, while they had money and glamour or a sense of purpose, I checked invoices and filled shelves and reported Joey Mansetti to HR for missing his shift, and was in bed by six in the evening.
“OK,” said Simon. “Though all I really need is for you to hold the flashlight while I pour the gas.”
“I’ll stay here and protect the womenfolk,” said Brad.
“My hero,” said Kristen beside him.
“Be quick, there’s a love,” said Melissa. “Sitting in the dark is going to get pretty fucking tedious fast.”
Simon made a noise that might have been a sigh and might just have been a breath. I felt my way into the kitchen, located the sink, and dropped to the cupboard beneath it. My eyes, already bad, were exponentially worse in the gloom, but my hands found the heavy rubberized barrel of the flashlight. I snapped it on, a good bluish brightness that made the shadows around me leap.
“This way,” said Simon, reaching for it.
I gave it to him and followed close as he led me round to the tower steps at the end of the open foyer.
“There’s a stairwell down here,” said Simon, opening a door I had assumed was a cloakroom or closet on the wall opposite the tapestry hanging. It looked like it should lead to a tasteful little half bath, but inside was only a cramped hallway with a stone floor and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was dingy inside, and the corridor was less than ten feet long, ending in a much heavier and unfinished wooden door that gave the impression of having been there a very long time. It was barred with iron, and its joints were reinforced with large square-headed nails, black with age.
Simon gave the flashlight back to me and worked the bolts free while I guided its beam, and then he shouldered the door open. Behind it was a spiral staircase down into darkness, the steps a mixture of old stone and concrete. A heavy rope running through rings set into the walls provided a handrail. The stairwell smelled old and musty. I wouldn’t have liked it even in daylight.
“This is the less classy part of the house,” said Simon.
“No kidding,” I said, trying to mute my unease.
“It’s OK,” he said. “There’s some pretty extensive cellarage for a house this size, but the genny is just round this corner.”
He led the way down a dozen steps that turned slowly like a corkscrew into the ground. At the foot of the stairs, before you entered the room proper, was the scuba gear, the air and oxygen tanks carefully stacked, the masks and fins hanging from hooks on the wall.
“Through here,” said Simon.
We emerged in a low-ceilinged chamber piled with old crates, gardening implements, and rusty tools. Coiled around a stand of ancient mattocks and shovels was a bright new garden hose, green and glinting like a python. It was the only thing down there that looked less than half a century old. I played the flashlight around the room, which was maybe fifteen feet square, the walls and floor stone and draped with cobweb. At one end were five or six steps down to a metal-framed door made of heavy wire mesh, like a cage.
“What’s through there?” I asked.
“Unused storage rooms,” said Simon. “Cellars. The place was closer to a castle than a house, once upon a time.”
Something about the antique door sent a cold thrill through my back, so I turned my gaze to the opposite corner. The generator—new, cartoon yellow, and shiny, as if just out of the box—looked like an alien device by comparison.
I didn’t know the model, but I had seen similar units. It was the size of a couple of stacked suitcases and sat in a purpose-built cage with wheels at one end. There were four gas cans next to it: two plastic and two old metal ones mottled with rust that looked vaguely military. As Simon checked the manual, which he removed from a plastic sheath, and examined the exhaust tube that ran up and through a hole in the external wall, I unscrewed the cap from the generator’s gas tank. We filled it, draining two of the four jerry cans, watching the level rise to almost full, then checked the oil.
“The owner said it’s only tied to the kitchen and living room circuits,” said Simon, checking the connections. “So we’ll still have no power upstairs, and I’ll shut it off over night to conserve fuel. There’s candles and some battery lanterns in the kitchen, though. Look right to you?”
“You have to open up the fuel line first,” I said, reaching in. “And disconnect the battery charger. OK. You’re good to go.”
He flicked the red power switch, then pushed the starter. The generator rumbled to life. It was lawnmower loud in the tight basement, and I didn’t hear what Simon said as he plugged in the main cables, but he gave me a thumbs-up and we went back upstairs, closing the doors behind us, and cutting out most of the noise, though you could still sense it buzzing through the stone foundation, part sound, part vibration.
In the little hallway between the cellar and the living quarters, Simon closed the door to the stairs but didn’t bolt it, and he turned to me before he got the other door open.
“Thanks,” he said. “Knew you’d be able to get the job done.”
The remark struck me as odd, and for a second I felt uncomfortable with him so close in the tight, windowless corridor. It felt like the airlock on a submarine. He stood there, as if waiting for something or trying to decide whether to do something or not. I gave a kind of dismissive laugh and reached for the door handle behind him but, for a split second, he didn’t move, and the smile on his face, distorted by the inconstant beam of the flashlight, looked . . .
What? Menacing? No.
Just . . . not like him.
He half opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and grinned amiably.
“Better join the others and see how we did,” he said, as if nothing had happened.
He opened the door and I stepped out quickly, breathing in the air as if we had indeed been trapped in some kind of airlock, leaving him to close the door behind me as I moved swiftly back to the others.
I found the kitchen and living room lit up as if nothing had happened, Melissa bent over the stereo and Gretchen toasting us with her wineglass, looking impressed and happy. The others turned to applaud us, and Simon bowed in the doorway.
“Actually,” he said, “Jan did most of the work. I was ready to blow us all up.”
“Yay, Jan!” said Kristen. Marcus beamed at me and I smiled back bashfully, like an underappreciated schoolgirl singled out for praise by a teacher. Of the strangeness I had seen in Simon, there was absolutely no trace, so a minute or two later I was sure I had imagined the whole thing.
Chapter Seventeen
I try twice more to reach the nail or whatever it was I had touched before, but I can’t find it and the pain in my wrist has become unbearable. I reinspect the sandal and find it as useless as before, the misery of which makes me throw it—stupidly, pointlessly—against the far wall, but the soft flop of its impact on the wall tells me nothing. I try to sit on the ground, but the awkwardness of having to hold up my left arm is too much, so I climb back onto the mattress and sit with my back to the wall and my knees drawn up to my chest, tears running down my face. I am still scared and confused, but now I also feel defeated, and that drains all the energy and will to resist out of me.
As I imagined some sort of sensor pinpointing the nail I couldn’t reach earlier, I now imagine a stopwatch ticking down to the moment the door will open and my captor will return, questions and blade at the ready, snorting from huge bullish nostrils, his great horns spread wide as the door . . .
Stop it.
He’s a man, not a monster.
The two may not be mutually exclusive, I think.
After all, those myths grew out of something ordinary, something human. Maybe the Athenian tribute to the Minoans in Knossos involved some form of gladiatorial combat or bull fighting forced upon slaves or war prisoners. Maybe
the root horrors of the labyrinth were military, economic, and political rather than supernatural, but they probably still involved bloodshed and people behaving like beasts, even if they didn’t actually look like the bull-headed Minotaur that Theseus slew. We don’t need to look to mythological creatures to find terror and brutality. People can do that all by themselves.
Stop it, I tell myself again and this time, I do. I have other things to think about.
I can’t unlock the manacle, and I don’t think I can break the cuff itself. The chain feels strong, and the ring in the wall seems both solid and well anchored. That leaves getting my hand out.
The manacle is old. I’m sure of that. That means the mechanism is simple. There’s no adjustable ratchet that clenches the cuff to the wrist so that it fits snugly regardless of who is wearing it. Once, a year or so after Marcus and I had started dating, we were at a party and won a pair of handcuffs as a gag gift. They were real enough and came with a pair of little keys on a ring. One night a week or so later, we decided to take them out for a test run. I can’t say either of us really enjoyed the experience. It was thrilling for a while, but Marcus wasn’t comfortable as either the captor or the captee—if that’s a word—and we both got embarrassed and started giggling.
Anyway. I know how handcuffs work, and the one I am chained to now is nothing as sophisticated as those with which we had played. It is locked in a single position and, I think, designed for wrists slightly thicker than mine. I can work the forefinger of my free hand under the cuff all the way to the second knuckle. The whole thing slides over my wrist as far as the heel of my hand, but when I try to move it all the way off, it lodges hard against the spur of bone at the base of my thumb just below the joint. I pull at it experimentally, and my swollen wrist groans again, as if the pain is something alive that has been sleeping but now wakes and stretches.
I stop, and almost immediately I hear movement beyond the door. Footsteps. Then the door creaks open, and for a second I see a vague gray halo around the silhouette in the doorway. My eyes are too bad to make out details, but there’s no doubt that the figure looks strangely misshapen, its head too big for its frame.
I gather my knees up and shrink as far away as the chain will let me, and then the door is closing again and the darkness thickens. For a whole minute or more he does nothing and makes no sound so that I can almost believe he didn’t come in, but then I hear his strange, magnified breathing.
He does not speak.
“Listen,” I say, “there’s been some mistake. I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to have done five years ago, but I really can’t think of anything. Just tell me what I can do. What you need to let me go . . .”
He sits as before, slumped forward and still, so that almost immediately he could be a trick of the darkness—a piece of furniture, a pile of old clothes. I can hear my heart thudding fast and hard. He makes no sound at all except for the sibilant hiss of his deep, regular breathing, and then the little light comes on again: first red, then green.
“Jan,” he says again.
The voice is as before, heavily distorted and slowed down so that the sound seems dragged up from a pit deep below the floor. It’s an electronic sound, but it feels liquid and thick as tar.
“Yes,” I say. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Five years ago—” he begins, but I cut him off.
“I told you, I don’t know!” I say. “I don’t remember. I didn’t do anything!”
“Five years ago,” he says again, as if I hadn’t spoken, “you came here. You saw something. Something you shouldn’t have.”
The last two words were almost sung, the first high, the second low, like the tail end of a nursery rhyme. My skin tightens and creeps. My eyes widen. My hair stands on end.
He is playing with you.
“I . . .”
My voice is unsteady and the words won’t come.
“I . . . I didn’t . . .”
“Come on, Janice,” sings the voice, as before. “You can tell me. You have to. After all, you have been very naughty, and we can’t have that, can we?”
Still the lilting clownish tone. It drives the breath from my lungs and threatens to stop my heart. I can’t speak or move.
“All kinds of trouble you have caused me,” says the voice, unwinding out of the darkness like a snake. “Not acceptable. Not permitted. This is your last chance to say sorry. Tell me everything: what you saw, what you know, and whom you told. That last one is very important. Who did you tell, Jan? Tell me and, if you are a very good little girl, I might still let you walk out of here.”
My breathing is back now, but it’s rapid and shallow, a thin panting that sends tremors through my whole body.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I stutter. “But I need to know what it is you think I know. I’m sorry, I really am, but I don’t know what you are referring to and . . .”
I sense his sudden movement a fraction of a second before I feel the gloved hand that thrusts me against the wall. My head bangs against the stone, and fireworks go off under my eyelids. I lash out with my free hand and connect with something hard and unyielding where his head should be, but then the blade I felt on my thigh is against my neck and I go very still.
His dragging, hissing breath is all around me, but I smell only oil, gasoline, and something under it that I can’t immediately place.
“This,” he whispers, “is very disappointing.”
And suddenly he has let go, and I’m free and breathing again. When the voice comes next, it’s from the door, which is opening.
“Think about it, Jan,” he says. “This is your last chance. When I come back, you tell me what I want to know, or—and I promise you this is true—my voice is the last thing you will ever hear.”
Chapter Eighteen
Simon was right about the generator. It ran smoothly and quietly, and the lights in the living room didn’t so much as flicker as the storm outside gathered and eventually blew itself out. Even so, it was a short evening. Whether it was the lingering effects of jet lag, the swimming and walking around, or the heavy food and constant drink, we all faded fast, particularly after Simon and Melissa decided to call it a night.
“I’ve got some reports to read,” said Simon, following Melissa to the stairs on their side of the house. “I’m beat, but my body’s not quite ready to sleep. I’ll give it an hour and then come shut the genny down before I crash.”
“I can do it,” I said. “Save you coming back down.”
“Nah,” he said. “I promised the owner I’d take care of it. He pretended he was worried we might burn the place down, but I think he’s more concerned I’ll mess up his shiny new generator. If you’re all in bed by the time I come down, I’ll see you in the morning.”
We said our good nights and then dealt with the sudden realization that the five of us would now have to deal with each other without the couple who was the social glue holding us all together.
“So, Gretchen,” said Brad. “Who are you exactly?”
We laughed a little crazily because we had all thought it, but Gretchen just smiled and shrugged in a way I had already started to see as familiar. When she looked abashed, as now, she lost all her superficial resemblance to Melissa, who could show every emotion but embarrassment, and she shed at least seven years, maybe more. She was still pretty, but she looked lost and vulnerable in ways I found disquieting, and I found myself wondering again how someone so conventionally good-looking could, beneath the occasional party-girl persona, seem so insecure.
There’s trauma there, I thought. Somewhere in the past.
“I told you, silly,” she said teasingly, like she was reprimanding a toddler, “I’m a friend of Simon and Mel’s.”
“Well, yeah,” said Brad. “And I’m a Beatles fan, but I’ve never met Ringo.”
“Ringo?” said Gretchen, befuddled. “That’s a person?”
“How did you meet Simon and Melissa?” said Kristen before Brad c
ould say anything else.
“I went to high school with Mel,” said Gretchen.
“Really?” said Marcus.
Gretchen gave him another look of innocent puzzlement—she had a sack full of them—as the rest of us processed this. For all the physical resemblance, Gretchen and Mel were different in the way that animal species were different: Mel a jaguar, all grace and presence and power. Gretchen was . . . I don’t know. A stick insect. A fruit fly. Something from another continent entirely. A different planet.
“She was older than me,” said Gretchen. “Two years.”
“Still is, I assume,” said Brad.
“What?” said Gretchen. “Oh. Right. You’re funny. You should be on stage.”
“I am,” said Brad, reaching for the wine bottle. “And my club has an eight-drink minimum.”
“So, high school, huh?” said Kristen.
“We weren’t really close,” said Gretchen. “Not like now. You know how it is at that age. A couple of years is like . . . a really, really . . . a lot. But we got back in touch after college.”
“You’re a legal secretary,” said Marcus.
“Office administrator,” said Gretchen, correcting him with a hint of pride.
“Right,” said Marcus.
“And I’m taking night classes for my paralegal certificate,” she added with feigned casualness. “So . . . you know.”
“What?” I said.
“Sorry?”
“You said, ‘You know,’” I said. “We know what?”
Marcus shot me an uncertain look.
“Oh, just a figure of speech,” said Gretchen. “Should be a big step up when I get there.”
“Next stop, Supreme Court,” said Brad.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Gretchen.
“I think he was kidding,” I said. Another look from Marcus, with a touch of warning this time.
He was right, of course, and I colored slightly. Why was I being such a bitch? The girl was not that bright, but she was pretty, pleasant enough, and seemed to be doing OK for herself.