Scott rolled his eyes and watched his friend suppress a chuckle and shake his head as he levelled out what must be the very last shovelful of soil.
A bastard’s grin set firmly on his face, Scott allowed himself a deep breath as he took in Kirk – drank him down whole – before responding languidly and dismissively. As if even talking to Chekov now was beneath him, when ironically he was well beneath them.
“Another stupid sci-fi idea, Chekov?”
When they’d first met the crazy old Yaakov’s nephew, got to know him, made it so that he trusted them – one of the things they’d bonded over was Chekov’s love for that old TV show, Star Trek. Chekov adored it and actually laughing himself giddy at the fact that together they were called Kirk, Chekov and Scott. Although he had to dub Scott ‘Scotty’ to make it really work.
At first they didn’t have a fucking clue what he was talking about, but they nodded along and actually encouraged him when he said he had Star Trek ideas himself. They even egged him on to write down his ridiculous fucking scenarios in a notebook with some kind of star and an arrow on the cover that he kept in his back pocket.
They wanted to be his friend, to be in his good graces, so they could use him to gain some leverage over his crazy old uncle. Now though, leverage be damned! They were killing the fucking loser. Locking him in a box, suffocating him slowly and being done with him.
“No,” Chekov said. There was zero sign of his earlier hysteria in his voice. It was like he was just shooting some amiable breeze. “I have your car keys.”
“What?” The full impact of that statement took a few moments to truly filter through Scott’s brain. His face only really fell as he saw the frown rise on Kirk’s.
“I snagged them while you were wrestling me into this box. Grabbed them from Scotty’s pocket. Just thought you’d like to know.”
Kirk leapt across and grabbed the walkie-talkie out of Scott’s thick hand. He was a head height taller than Scott, a chiselled slice of man straight from the Greek God catalogue. Not a Greek though. Instead blonde hair and blue eyes so damn intense. A bad boy quarterback only ever going all kinds of wrong.
“Listen here, you pathetic fucking freak,” Kirk growled. “Accept that we’ve won and lay off the fucking jokes. You are not getting dug up again.”
“It ain’t a joke. I have your car keys right here in my hand.”
Kirk took his finger off the talk button, but still for some reason felt the need to whisper. “Where are the keys, Scott? I want to fucking see them.”
Scott hated it when Kirk snapped at him. It was all he could do to stop himself actually crying like a six-year-old girl when it happened. Be tough, he told himself, act fucking tough. He was a hard guy, just like Kirk, and he had to show him that.
Across the walkie-talkie, Chekov’s voice chimed out again. “There’s no point looking for them. I have them right here.” And with that there was perhaps a faint jangle in the static.
Frantically Scott checked his pockets. He knew he’d put them in there. Absolutely he knew it. Yet the damn keys weren’t there.
He could feel Kirk’s anger bubbling up as his eyes confessed the truth of it, confirmed his own failure.
A cockerel sounded somewhere distant, but perhaps not distant enough now. Scott watched Kirk’s biceps tense up as he held the walkie-talkie, his fist curled so tight around it like he could shatter the black moulded plastic.
“You little fuck, Chekov! You absolute weasel fuck!”
“What are you going to do?” Even underground they could hear the annoying superior smirk Chekov’s voice got when he thought he was being clever. “Come down here and kill me?”
Scott stared shakily at his friend, not really holding back the tears now. The corners of his eyes moist with frustration and anger at himself for letting Kirk down, for fucking all this up.
But that bastard Chekov just kept on talking, almost cheerfully, as if he might even break out whistling. “You drove a long way into my uncle’s property in your Corvette, didn’t you? The one you put the state of the art immobiliser on. You know, the one you joked was specifically designed to stop bastards like you.”
The two of them were practically snarling down at the freshly dug soil now, so desperate to prove him wrong. Despite each of them knowing they couldn’t. Chekov just kept on chatting away. Not sounding like it was coming from a walkie-talkie, instead like it was just rising out of that ad-hoc grave – a dead man’s mockery.
“Yeah, you went a long way onto his property. A good two or three miles, I’d say. And with the amount of time this has all taken, I’m going to guess that it’s nearly dawn now. My uncle – no matter what else he might be – is still a farmer. An early bird. An angry, hopped-up, early bird who hates finding goddamn strangers on his goddamn land. Except, you two aren’t really strangers to him, are you?”
Panic can tear down a lot of boundaries, and so it was that Scott found himself doing the impossible, and actually reaching across and touching Kirk. Putting his arm around him. Not around the shoulders, not quite the waist, but in-between – clutching hold around his hard, muscled torso.
Kirk was so stunned by this sickening turn that it didn’t seem like he noticed, but it made Scott feel good. It reassured him, made Kirk’s strength so tangible. As if no matter what happened, he could still somehow save them.
Actually, for a moment, it was fucking lovely.
The two of them shirtless and glistening in the morning sun. The two of them touching. It didn’t matter that Scott was so short and doughy compared to Kirk’s chiselled magnificence. For the briefest of instants, it didn’t even matter about the car keys. The two of them together just felt so good.
But of course, that bastard Chekov had to ruin it.
“I’m going to guess he’s up and about and that you two bozos don’t have long left.” He actually chortled to himself. “So if you’re looking for something to do before you die, Kirk, you can let Scotty suck your dick. He so clearly wants to fuck you, Kirk! It’s so ludicrously obvious that I could never decide whether you’re as dumb as a retarded racoon, or the world’s biggest cock-tease.”
That shattered it.
Kirk stared at Scott with sudden revulsion, as if he was realising that they were actually touching. Like he was playing a hundred old moments through his mind and seeing them all in a new light.
His anger was instant and brutal. He knocked Scott’s arm away and then kicked him savagely to the ground. His boot swinging hard into Scott’s mouth for good measure. The blow slashed open his lip and sent his front teeth ricocheting.
With a high-pitched scream Scott stared up at him. The two of them had been friends their whole lives and now, when it mattered most – now that they had to work together to save themselves – it was all gone.
Somewhere, not nearly far enough away, they heard the crazy old bastard Yaakov’s tractor turn over and start up.
And from below, the man who was beaten, locked and buried in an old wooden box, started to laugh lustily on the walkie-talkie.
Isolation
Was he sleeping? Was he alone?
A moment can stretch in the dark, one blink of the eye can last hours. His doubt of whether he was asleep or awake, his confusion as to whether he was the sole occupant of his bed spiralled around him. It grabbed on to every nerve ending, bound him, twisted him, convulsed him.
He tried to open his eyes, tried to close them again – he wasn’t sure which was which. What was this blackness? The dark of the room? Night-time? The inside of his eyelids? It was desolate, empty, he was so alone.
But wait – he wasn’t alone, he could feel something. Who was it? What was it? Where was it?
He reached out his arms and for a second it was like he was in a void. It was just as if he was floating, totally alone – but no, he was somewhere, and there was something else. He concentrated, squeezing his eyes tight shut or forcing them wide open – he didn’t know which. Lying there with his arms at his side he crept out his fi
ngers, slowly, and then found it – his bed. A sigh of relief took him, but that turned into a gasp of panic. He’d been there the whole time – of course he had – yet when he felt the bed, when his arms touched the mattress, it was like he’d just fallen there. It was as if he’d plummeted from high and landed hard on his own ergonomic bed.
For an instant or two he imagined he was trapped there, his spinal cord having severed so all he could do was blink and yell. Could he blink? Could he yell? He wasn’t sure his eyes worked any more and there seemed to be no sound emanating from his mouth. Once again he tried to open it, tried to close it – but weirdly it didn’t seem he had a mouth. His eyes squeezed shut (or he forced them wide enough to burst – the darkness didn’t change, so he had no idea) and he dug his fingers into the sheet beneath, pushing them tight so his nails touched his palms through the linen. It was like he was tearing into the sheet, then digging holes in his own flesh. But that was good as he could feel something.
His nails dug into his hand, the darkness everywhere around him, and then he rolled to his side. He stretched out his limbs and made sure he was alone, Master of his own bed. His left foot was pushed out, then his right foot, his left hand, his right hand – sending them to the extreme corners of the mattress, making sure he was the sole resident. There was nobody else, nothing else. It was just night-time spookiness, just the stress, just the side effects of his medication. There was nothing else – nothing – nothing – nothing.
He forced himself up, from stretched out to sitting fully upright in a fraction of a second. His hand reached to the pint of water on the bedside table, and nearly knocked it over. There was a quick flash of an image – him smashing his fist through the glass, slicing his hand, cutting it off, falling backwards in blood-spurting agony. But it didn’t happen. He’d caught the glass properly, was pouring it down his throat, pouring it down his front. Jesus! He was so wet, every bit of him was shivering with damp.
Swiftly he leapt from the bed, like a man with cramp in every part of his body. He staggered in the dark (were his eyes open?) as if this wasn’t his bedroom, as if he didn’t know every inch of it. With a thud he struck his shin against the base of the bed. His voice found sound as he cursed. It hurt like torture, the pain – even the bruising – seemed to stretch further than his shin, aching every part of him. Stumbling, he fell forward, striking his hand against the light switch, denting his palm.
The light came on and his eyes were open, further moisture squeezing from his tear ducts. He had the strange idea he wasn’t alone, that he was being watched. But by whom? Blinking, he spun around, but there was nothing and he knew there’d be nothing. The clock on the bedside table said 2.31, past the witching hour but still a long time to the new day. He took a few deep breaths and acclimatised himself to the night-time shadows. Stepping forward he looked at his sheets, they were dripping. His hand reached down and checked he hadn’t wet himself. It was all sweat, as if – while he’d slept (had he actually slept?) – his pores had burst and flooded the sheets. They were cold, wet, smeared with salt residue. He peered at his skin, grey and clammy, goosebumps rising like a chickenpox rash.
It was night and so he wanted to be as fast as possible. He opened the bedroom door and clicked on the hall light, taking a moment to examine any shadow. Then he went to the airing cupboard. There was no light inside unfortunately and so he had a need to be extra swift. His hand reached in to grab clean bedding, it trembling as it entered the dark, like there was a real chance some of his fingers wouldn’t come back. Suddenly it was as if The Monster – this figment of his night-time imagination he was now calling, simply, The Monster – was going to swipe out a talon or a claw and take his digits away from him.
He was a grown man panicked by the bogeyman, by sprites and goblins and beasties ready to devour him in his own home. There was no such thing, he was rational, knew these fears were nonsense – but when it’s your hand that might not come back in one piece, you can’t blame it for shaking. Hurriedly he grabbed the sheets and slammed the airing cupboard door shut.
For crying out loud – he was at home, safe, nothing would happen to him. But was he safe? Really? After all – as they’d kept reminding him – there was no evidence that Amanda ever left the flat. Of course she must have as she wasn’t here, but no one had seen her go. It was a proven fact that her coats and shoes were still here, as were her purse and keys. And how could a healthy, strong young woman like Amanda get kidnapped from a block of flats in daytime without anyone noticing?
He didn’t know, how was he supposed to know? When they asked their questions he didn’t answer because he didn’t have answers for their questions, but they kept asking them anyway. They kept asking him, and by the time they stopped – because they couldn’t find evidence for their answers to the questions – everybody else was asking questions too.
Quickly he went back to the bedroom, switching off the hall light and closing the door firmly behind him. So if there was anyone else in his flat – anything else in his flat – he’d know when the handle turned. But what if The Monster had crept into the room when he wasn’t looking? He stopped still, breath held. A man in just his boxer shorts, carrying a pile of sheets, terrified as he examined shadows for – what? A person? An Abominable Snowman? A something? What the hell was he looking for? Why was he doing this?
“Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together.”
It was a mantra he found himself repeating a lot these days. That still seemed odd as he hadn’t previously been a man who panicked, he’d never been this irrational. Maybe it was the medication. The psychiatrist had given him pills to help him sleep, but they clearly weren’t working. Perhaps they were keeping him awake, or alternatively perhaps he was asleep and this was his dream. Or nightmare?
Suddenly it came to him: he had to do something, needed to do something, so in the morning he’d know if he was asleep or awake.
He gritted his teeth with resolve, dropped the sheets and grabbed a red marker pen. It had been Amanda’s. He leapt on the bed and wrote the words “I LIE HERE” in big letters across the wall. A smile crossed his face, the first smile he could remember for some time. And then he looked at the sheets and almost sobbed. What was he doing? What was the matter with him? In the morning, if the bedding was changed, that would prove he was awake. He’d had no need to vandalise his bedroom. Amanda had painted this room.
Wearily he pulled off the dirty sheets. The mattress cover was dripping, the pillow cases were wet and slimy, the duvet cover had been stained by his living corpse. The outline of his body was blurred and white, salt water had pumped from his skin and created an unholy Turin Shroud.
He bent down to change the sheets, and then tried to stand up straight – but it was as if he was suddenly on broken feet, like his ankles had snapped beneath him. Steadying himself he took deep breaths, trying to hold back the vomit when the pain came. But there was no pain, his ankles and his feet were undamaged. His fingers ran across his brow, more sweat – where was it coming from? He wasn’t even dehydrated. Hastily he grabbed the sheets and wrestled them on – not competently, but good enough to last till morning. He’d sort them out then, sort everything out then, just as he was always going to do.
Amanda had thought the flat haunted. But really? A haunted flat? Their flat only had one bedroom, there wasn’t much to haunt. Initially it was a joke for them – of course they couldn’t have moved into a haunted flat, it was ridiculous. But while he continued to laugh, the joke left her. She hated to be there when he wasn’t, would sometimes refuse. It got to the point where she was actually scared of the shadows, frightened of the darkness, loathed even the shape of the rooms. Over time she lost weight, got paler. Her friends and family talked to him about it and he tried to reassure them, but he wasn’t reassured himself. What was happening to her?
Some of her friends and family blatantly saw it as his fault, as if all talk of ghosts was to hide what she was really frightened of – him. He loved her,
wouldn’t have hurt her, wanted to look after her – but they’d bought the flat, how could they just throw it away? He tried to be confident, told her he was sure they’d get past it. They loved each other, it would all work out. And then one day she went away, and he started thinking of ghosts.
With a deep breath he switched the light out, dropping the room into darkness, eliminating all those shadowed corners. Somehow total blackness was preferable to those little spots where something might lurk and hide. He dived to the bed, crawling under the duvet, curling up tight. It was ridiculous of course, but the clean sheets made him feel safer. They smelt like spring meadow and somehow that was a bizarre reassurance. He allowed himself a laugh in the darkness.
It was all nonsense. He was in no danger, he was the only person here and the front door was locked and all the windows shut. Even if he was in danger, pulling a duvet over himself was not going make him secure. It was ludicrous, laughable. Like everything else – ghosts, The Monster – all a product of a spooky imagination. It was only Amanda’s disappearance which wasn’t funny. But then there was going to be some man behind that, a person, and eventually the police would find him and all would be explained.
His eyes closed lighter this time, so they’d open again if need be. He brought his arms to his chest and tried to ease the tension in his shoulders. Lying still, he was calmer – his heart didn’t race away, his brain didn’t speed with insane ideas. Tomorrow he’d buy bright new light bulbs, take away those shadowed corners. Maybe he’d paint the walls. Amanda had a great sense of style, a beautiful eye – but when they painted the flat neither of them appreciated how dark the rooms could get. He’d brighten it up with colours he knew she’d like. Maybe he’d even buy fresh flowers every day, so that when she came back they’d welcome her.
She was going to come back. How would he get through the rest of his life without seeing her again? There’d be no way he’d survive. One day she’d walk through that door and explain it all. They’d laugh together, it was all going to be fine.
Confined Spaces Page 5