by Chris Dolley
“You know why?”
She moved slightly – maybe a shrug. It fitted with the thoughts he was picking up. Confusion and conjecture. She wanted to ask Daddy what the bell was for, but was fearful how he’d react.
If only he could see her face. He wasn’t sure if he was being played. She sounded sincere, but so much was riding on his interpretation. If he got it wrong...
He tried another tack.
“Do you remember a time when you didn’t live in this room?”
“I’ve always lived here. You know that. This is my home.”
There was pride in her voice. This is my home.
“Not a prison?”
Now came anger and surprise. Why are you speaking like this? This has never been a prison. This is my home!
“I’m Sacrifice. This is where I have to be.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to go outside.”
“No!” The shape moved, growing. Or was it coming closer? He had no confidence in his depth perception. He couldn’t hear her feet on the floor. Her thoughts were becoming garbled and confused.
He transmuted his flesh, hopefully invisibly, meshing his skin with an impenetrable heat-resistant barrier.
The Sacrifice shape stopped four, five feet from the doorway. He could smell her now, sense her. “You can’t send me out there,” she pleaded. “I’m needed here. I’m Sacrifice. You told me!”
Everything about her screamed brainwashed victim. She didn’t want to leave. She hadn’t tried to harm him. He could read her mind. She’d even confirmed hearing an alarm bell an hour earlier when he’d lost his eye.
But was she playing him, feeding him all the things he wanted to hear? Look at me. Look how innocent I am. I don’t want to leave. It wasn’t me who robbed you of your sight. What would be next? Okay, I’ll come with you. Take me to your home. Hide me. Give me a new face.
‘Behind you!’
Brenda’s voice screamed a warning inside his head. If it was Brenda. Sacrifice could be trying to get him to turn his back.
The cell door slammed shut in front of his face. Then he was moving towards it, face first and fast. A blast of air had lifted him off his feet and was propelling him forward.
Smack! He hit the door with his forehead and hastily thrown forward hands, then he was moving again, backwards this time, picked up by some unseen force and tossed towards the far wall.
He teleported, stepping into the ether and killing his momentum. Now he was really blind. No bat sonar to ping off walls or objects. No sound, no smell, no feelings at all. Just a fuzzy pink static in a sea of sensory deprivation.
He had to return. Brenda was in there alone. With Daddy or Sacrifice or God knows what. He grew his ears and nose, then materialized, crouching and dropping as he did so, filling the air with hundreds of high frequency shrieks. There was a large shape in the center of the room. It smelled like Daddy. Another shape crouched by the foot of the steps.
‘Brenda? Is that you? Show me what you see!’
He rolled as he landed, keeping moving, trying to get a sense of the room around him. Was Sacrifice still in her cell? And was that Daddy who’d attacked him?
‘He can teleport!’ screamed Brenda. ‘He came out of nowhere.’
He could do a lot more than teleport. A blast of air caught Brian, picked him up as though he was no weight at all, and smashed him into the wall. Brian rolled with it as best he could, healing his cracked and broken ribs as he did so.
‘Think harder,’ he called to Brenda. ‘Keep your eyes on Daddy and show me what you see. I need your eyes.’
Daddy was still a shape to Brian. He knew where he was, but not what he was doing with his hands, or where he was looking.
Stroboscopic images flashed into Brian’s head. Stop start pictures of Daddy as glimpsed from the foot of the steps. Daddy had his back to Brenda. He was looking at the other Daddy – the bat-eared, serpentining Daddy. He made a sweeping motion with his right hand and...
Brian was lifted off his feet again and smashed into a wall. How was he supposed to get close to Daddy?
And when would Daddy turn his attention to Brenda?
Brian picked himself up, waited for an image from Brenda, then memorized it. He teleported, nudged himself what he hoped was a few yards forward and a few to the right, then re-materialized. Crouching, he fired off another series of bat sonar squeaks, worked out his bearings, then teleported again, aiming this time for a place a yard or so behind Daddy and to his right.
He materialized. Not exactly where he’d expected, but close enough. He charged, head down and arms ready to grab and slice. He extended his fingers, changing them to talons, razor sharp and strong.
He smashed into Daddy’s back, lifting him off his feet, grabbed him with his left hand and slashed at his legs with his right. His talons bounced off. He’d expected to have opened up a sizeable gash in the man’s thighs, but Daddy’s skin was somehow impervious.
Something incredibly powerful grabbed Brian’s left forearm. A hand like a vice. He could feel his bones cracking and grinding to powder beneath the grip. And suddenly he was swinging through the air again, even faster than before and – smack – he found the wall.
This time he took longer to get up. More bones needed to be set and – smack – there he went again, into the wall, then out, spinning this time, impossibly fast, like a spin drier out of control.
He teleported. The spinning didn’t stop. Physically it might have, but his brain felt like mush – terminally disorientated mush that had lost the ability to know or care what was up, down, back or forth. He was going to be sick. He was going to fall over. He was going to do both at the same time.
But he had to get back. Brenda wouldn’t stand a chance.
He materialized, collapsing as he did so, trying to clear his mind, trying to roll, trying to pick up an image of his surroundings from Brenda. And then he was picked up and moving again. Up this time – against the ceiling – then down much faster, smashing into the rough concrete floor. He could barely move.
‘I’ve switched off the light,’ screamed Brenda in his head. ‘Use your sonar!’
He rolled. He teleported. He changed position, materialized, fired up his bat sonar, worked out where Daddy was and repeated the process, stepping in and out of the real world. Twice a blast of air almost caught him, but Daddy was firing blind, turning this way and that, and Brian was working his way in closer.
Brian morphed both hands into cone shaped daggers. He’d punch through Daddy’s skin somehow and rearrange the guy’s atoms.
He materialized above Daddy’s head and fell on him, punching down at the man’s neck with all the power he had. His dagger hand bounced off, sliding ineffectually to the side.
He dematerialized, thinking fast. If he couldn’t penetrate the man’s skin by force he’d try by stealth. He thrust his right hand out to where Daddy’s body had been and tried to materialize. Nothing happened. His right arm started to tingle, but he couldn’t force himself into the physical world. Something was preventing him. Then he was falling. He’d materialized, but Daddy must have moved. He hit the ground hard.
Daddy fell on him. A giant hand closing around Brian’s left wrist. Brian tried to teleport, but couldn’t. Daddy had to be blocking him somehow. The giant hand closed tighter. Bones cracked. Concentrate! He focussed on his skin in contact with Daddy’s, imagined it growing microscopic filaments, each of the filaments pushing out, looking for an opening, a pore, some way of pushing inside Daddy’s skin.
Nothing. No pores, no microscopic cracks. He tried to make a microscopic crack, brought the full force of his attention onto Daddy’s hand and tried to transmute it to paper, to jelly, to something he could work with!
Nothing. And Daddy’s other hand had closed around Brian’s neck.
Blind limb-thrashing panic. He couldn’t teleport. He couldn’t penetrate Daddy’s skin. He hadn’t a fraction of Daddy’s strength. And any second now his magic would be used up and he’d no longer be able t
o regenerate his broken body.
o0o
Brenda was halfway up the steps wedged against the wall. Her eyes were gradually becoming accustomed to the dark again. She could make out the two figures fighting but, worse, she could hear the bones cracking. And there was nothing she could do!
There were no weapons to hand. There were no...
That’s when she remembered the drugs cabinet and the needles. She didn’t know what the drugs did, but a cocktail of all three couldn’t be good. Especially when injected with force into the eye or somewhere vulnerable.
She crept down the steps, cringing at the noise from the center of the room. She skirted around them, following the wall to the cabinet, hoping that Daddy would be too preoccupied to notice her. She eased the cabinet door open, felt for the biggest, meanest looking needle she could find. Then moved to the drugs, opening one box after another, filling the syringe, her hands shaking, adding a good measure of air, even if the drugs weren’t lethal an air bubble might be.
Then she was moving across the floor.
‘Brian? Can you hear me? I’ve got a syringe full of drugs. Can you make your skin fluoresce so I don’t inject you by mistake?’
He didn’t answer. He didn’t fluoresce.
‘Brian!’
A scuffling, creaking noise sounded from above. It was coming from the trap door! Light began to bleed in from the room above. And flashlights, their narrow beams criss-crossing through the murk.
The fighting stopped immediately. Daddy teleported out, leaving Brian lifeless on the floor. She dropped the syringe and threw herself on top of Brian.
‘Teleport now!’ she shouted, gripping him tightly. ‘I don’t think they’ve seen us.’
“Police! Freeze!”
Shit! They weren’t teleporting and light was streaming in from above. The police had thrown the trap door open. Someone was running down the steps. Cones of light cut through the air. And Brian felt strange – not like a human so much as a badly stuffed dummy – lumpy and lifeless.
‘Brian! Are you all right?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m hurt and running out of magic. It’s up to you. Be a hostage. Talk your way out. Daddy’s the demon. Sacrifice is innocent. I’ll find you as soon as I can.’
He rolled on top of her. His body felt weird, lumps were moving and growing together. Was he shapeshifting on top of her?
Suddenly her face started tingling.
‘You’re changing my face!’
‘I have to.’
His hands had moved to her neck. He was strangling her!
“Step away, or I’ll shoot!”
Light stung her eyes. She was blinded. People were shouting. Boots clattered on the steps.
Then gunfire. Two shots and she felt Brian relax his grip and fall away.
She lay there, eyes screwed up against the dazzling light, breathing hard. Was Brian all right? He could take two bullets, couldn’t he? ‘Brian? Are you there?’ He didn’t answer.
Someone must have found the light switch at the top of the steps because the quality of the light suddenly changed dramatically. Flashlights no longer shone in her face. She could see again. There were half a dozen men crowding around, some head to toe in SWAT black, some in vests...
Why’s everyone looking at me like that? That’s the second man to grimace and turn away the moment they saw my face.
Oh, crap. I let a blind man mould my face! I’ve probably got a nose on my forehead and three ears!
Her hands flew to her face. Her skin felt rough. He’s given me scales! At least the nose was in the right place. A bit on the large side and ... squashed? And what’s that huge lump on my cheek!
“Medic!” shouted one of the officers. “I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.”
Oh God was it that bad? Everyone’s grimacing!
She looked at her hands. Was that blood on her gloves? It looked like blood. Was she bleeding? Had he opened up an artery by mistake? Turned her face inside out?
“Don’t worry, lady.” Another officer was kneeling beside her now. He turned his head and shouted towards the steps. “We need that bus now! Two down!” He turned back to Brenda. “Look at me. What’s your name?”
What’s my name? Does the Elephant Man have an ugly sister? Slap! That was the inner Brenda giving her host a mental slap across her hideously deformed face. Snap out of it, Brenda, and concentrate! Everything hinges on you now. You can either rescue the situation, or turn it into a farce.
Farce sounded a good bet.
Slap!
“Jane Smith,” said Brenda. “I’m Jane Smith and ... he abducted me!”
She stabbed a finger at the motionless body beside her and screwed up her face, feigning pain while she thought of what to say next. Jane Smith had been a good sensible start. A nice common name at last. Jane Smith from New York. That ought to buy her some time.
“This door’s locked,” said a voice behind her. “The key’s in the lock, but it’s not working.”
It was the door to Sacrifice’s cell. Daddy must have sealed the door somehow when he slammed it shut.
“There’s another girl in there,” said Brenda. “Mary Alice something. He told me he took her from a park in Stamford when she was only four. He’s sick. He said he was going to build me a home here in the cellar where we’d live like a family.”
‘Brilliant,’ said Brian’s voice in her head. He sounded exhausted. ‘And don’t worry about your face. I ... I had to give you cuts and bruises to ... to reinforce your story that ... you’re a victim not an accomplice.’
“Break the door down!”
“Be careful,” said Brenda. “She’s been in there for thirteen years. She’s brainwashed.”
They smashed the door off the lock. Sacrifice was terrified. She stood at the back of the room, pressed up against the wall.
“Mary Alice? It’s all right. We’re here to help you.” said one of the officers.
“Don’t call me that! I’m Sacrifice. Where’s Daddy?”
“That’s what he forced her to call him,” said Brenda. “He’s Daddy and she’s his Sacrifice.”
“Do you know what these drugs are?”
Brenda swung her head round. Another of the detectives was standing by the open drugs cupboard. “No idea,” she said. Then she remembered the syringe on the floor. “He was trying to inject me with something and I managed to grab it off him.”
Another box ticked. She’d explained the syringe. She’d named Mary Alice. What was left?
An alibi for Daddy. She had to make sure Kayla’s murderer wasn’t given a free pass. When was Kayla murdered? Sunday morning around breakfast time?
“He took me Sunday morning. I was jogging in Central Park. Are you writing this down? It was just after eight. In the middle of New York. He’s had me for three days!”
She turned away, feigning tears. She’d given them enough – any more and she was bound to contradict herself.
Sacrifice started screaming.
“No! You can’t take me away! Where’s Daddy? Daddy!”
There had to be half a dozen officers in the cell with her. All male, all armed, all wearing vests or full combat gear. It had to be intimidating, even for someone who hadn’t been locked up and brainwashed for thirteen years.
“It’s all right, Mary Alice.”
“My name’s Sacrifice! What have you done with Daddy? Take your hands off me! I’m not leaving. I’m Sacrifice. I have to stay here or people will die. I’m the only one who can save them.”
She was becoming hysterical.
A clattering from above heralded the arrival of a doctor and a couple of paramedics.
“Gunshot wound over here,” said one of the detectives. “Looks bad. The woman need attention and there’s a girl in there.”
The medical staff dispersed. Brian was pronounced alive but critical; Brenda had her face prodded and a pen light shone in her eyes; and a paramedic was sent to see if he could quieten Sacrifice.
&nbs
p; “What are you doing with that needle?” she screamed. “Are you going to kill me? He said it wasn’t time?”
“Time for what?”
“To save the world. I’m Sacrifice. You must know that! Without me the devil wins. I have to die so the world can be reborn.”
She sounded crazy. The whole story sounded crazy but... there were all those Sacrifice ghosts. Something was going on. Brenda didn’t have a clue what, but he hadn’t held her prisoner for thirteen years for nothing.
Chapter Thirty-One
Brenda was helped to a waiting ambulance. Now what? She’d done all she could to manipulate the police. If she stayed any longer, things could only go pear-shaped. The three bottles of drugs in her pockets for instance. No one had thought to search her, but very soon they would. And they’d want to know her address and phone number, where she worked, where exactly in Central Park she’d been abducted from.
Should she try and escape, or would that throw into question everything she’d told the police?
And where was Brian? He’d been stretchered out earlier, but she couldn’t see him anywhere outside.
o0o
Brian was strapped down on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. He’d heard there were two ambulances at the cabin, so Brenda had to be in the second. Which wasn’t ideal. His reserves were already far too low. He wasn’t sure how much magic he had left. Enough for a single teleport. Maybe a trick or two. If his head didn’t explode first. Already the migraine flashes were illuminating his vista of Barbie pink static.
And whatever he was going to do, he had to do it quick. The ambulance was already moving. Any surgeon who tried to open him up was going to find a hell of a lot more than two bullets.
Teleporting was out of the question. He had a paramedic and a detective in the back with him and both were watching him intently.
So he extended a finger, driving it down and through the bed, transmuting on contact any metal or fabric that blocked its way. He had to find the petrol tank and ensure neither of his watchers noticed a thing. He found the tank, rooted around until he found the fuel line, snapped it, retracted his finger and waited.
The engine began to splutter.