The Keeper

by Luke Delaney

  Now he was in the cage with her, the cattle prod once more held firmly in his hands, pointing straight towards her. She felt close to fainting as she remembered Karen’s body twisting and contorting each time he’d stabbed the prod into her bare flesh, her screams of agony. She couldn’t let that happen to her. Her mind suddenly flashed with false hope, that maybe he had let Karen go free – had taken her into the woods or city and released her, that the drug he had given her was purely so she wouldn’t remember where she’d been kept, that Deborah had been wrong about her body being found, or that it had been the body of someone else. ‘Please,’ she begged him, unfolding her arms and offering both to him, each upturned and ready to be injected. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll do as you say. I’ll do anything you say.’ He was so close, moving slowly towards her, his mouth slightly open, revealing his crooked, stained teeth, his eyes narrow and cruel.

  ‘Too late for that,’ he hissed at her. ‘I know what you are, you little whore.’

  She was about to speak, but the electricity that the cattle prod poured into her body jammed her jaw shut as she fell on to her side, every muscle wracked in spasm, the pain etching itself into her brain. The convulsion lasted a matter of seconds, unlike the longer-lasting effects of the stun-gun, and she felt her body begin to relax only to be punished again by another shot from the prod and then another and another, in her spine, her stomach and thighs, until she lay exhausted and motionless.

  He stood over her, watching for signs that she was still capable of resisting him, the deep scratches in his face reminding him to be cautious, even of fallen prey. He kicked her without venom several times in her ribcage, causing her to moan slightly, but barely stir. Satisfied, he knelt beside her, resting the cattle prod on the floor and removing the syringe from his pocket, taking her arm in his other hand and searching for a useable artery, but her dehydration made it impossible to find one. He clasped the syringe in his teeth and began to slap the crook of her arm, trying to raise the blood vessels, until finally he saw the traces of a blue line running beneath her skin. Quickly he clamped her arm just above the elbow with his fingers and waited for the blood to dam and make the artery more prominent, watching without emotion as it swelled to an almost normal size. He took the syringe from his teeth and laid the needle across the blue line in her arm before bringing it to a shallow angle and pushing its sharp point through her thin, pale skin, sinking it deeply into the blood vessel, drawing the miniature plunger backwards first, pulling a few millilitres of her own blood into the syringe, the red liquid swirling and mixing with the alfentanil already inside. Then he remorselessly pushed both blood and drug into her arm, the beat of her own heart rushing it to the far reaches of her body. He pulled the needle from her artery and waited, listening for the sigh he knew would ease from her mouth, a sigh that would mean the anaesthetic had worked and she would now be unable to resist his will. After a few seconds he heard what he was waiting to hear.

  Looking down on Louise Russell’s prostrate body he watched her chest gently rise and fall as her half-shut eyes flickered, quiet moans coming from her mouth, her arms lying behind her, above her head. He watched as her breasts rose and fell, her lips opening and closing, as if she was speaking silent words that only he could hear, telling him she wanted him, needed him, making his already stiff penis harder than he could bear. ‘I know you do, you little whore. I know you desire me.’ Hurriedly he pushed her legs apart and kneeled between them, pulling his tracksuit trousers halfway down to his thighs and releasing himself, swollen and grotesque. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ he chastised her. ‘You’ve made me as disgusting as you are. As weak as you are. You’re nothing to me now,’ he told her, his face twisted with contempt.

  Deborah had been looking on, transfixed in horror, but knowing what was coming she could watch and listen no more. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, clamped her hands over her ears, but she couldn’t block out the sound of him grunting and whining, she couldn’t block out the involuntary cries and moans of his victim. Humming to herself as loudly as she dared, she waited until the terrible sounds of Louise’s torture relented before summoning the courage to look back at the other cage, watching as Keller pulled up his trousers. He knew she was looking but he seemed unable to meet her eyes, panting and breathing heavily after the effort of his assault.

  ‘See what you made me do,’ he asked Louise. ‘Well, you’ve tricked me for the last time. You won’t cheapen me again. You’re the little whore now, not me.’ His voice was flat and mechanical, devoid of emotion. ‘It’s time for you to go. I don’t want you here any more.’

  He hauled Louise to her feet and hauled her from her cage. Deborah tried to speak, to scream at him to stop, to leave Louise alone, but no words came from her open mouth, the terror of knowing what was going to happen to Louise striking her dumb. She looked on in silence as he half-dragged and half-assisted the partially anaesthetized woman across the cellar floor, pulling the string that returned the cellar to near darkness as he passed it. Still Deborah couldn’t speak as she listened to him leading Louise around the corner to the stairs, the sound of their shuffling, unsteady feet more awful than anything she’d ever heard.

  The metallic clang of the door being closed and locked was followed by silence, broken only by the sound of running water. For the first time since he’d taken her, Deborah was alone. But for how long?

  Louise’s terribly prophesy had come true. It was her turn now – her turn to become Louise Russell. To become Karen Green.

  Deborah sank to the floor of her cage and hugged herself, rocking and crying in the twilight of the cellar. Alone.

  12

  Sean drove through the virtually deserted streets of south-east London to his modest terraced home in Dulwich, the empty roads making the short journey a fast one. He enjoyed the peaceful eeriness of the streets at dawn, a nether-world that few other than emergency service workers ever saw, at least while they were sober. It reminded him of his early days in the police, a young uniformed officer driving home after a night-shift, tired but content, watching all the bleary-eyed commuters driving in the other direction. It made him feel different – unique. He parked as close as he could to his house and walked the short distance to the front door, his footsteps heavier than he would have wished in the quiet of the night, although thankfully a gusting wind disguised his approach. As he unlocked the door he was pleased to see Kate had followed his often repeated instructions and had used the dead-lock as well, not just relying on the far more easily opened latch-lock. He eased the door open and stepped into his home, the warmth and comforting scent of his family temporarily chasing away the daytime demons. Kate had left a small lamp on for him, her own experiences of arriving home in the dead of night making her appreciate a little illumination when first stepping inside your own house, while at the same time not wanting to turn the more powerful overhead lights on and risk disturbing the rest of the family while they slept. Police and doctors, firemen and nurses – eternal teenagers who would never be allowed to grow out of sneaking into their own homes in the middle of the night, forever fearful of capture.

  He closed the door behind him even more carefully than he’d opened it, slipped his shoes off and tiptoed to the kitchen, where he turned on the lights of the overhead extractor-hood to help him navigate his way around. Next he emptied his pockets on to a newspaper on the kitchen table, its density nullifying the sound of his phone, keys, wallet, warrant card and assorted coins as they hit the surface. He hung his raincoat and jacket over a chair, loosened his tie even more than it already was and headed for the cupboard where he knew he’d find a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a short, fat glass. He poured himself what he thought he could get away with and still be able to drag himself out of his bed in little more than three hours’ time and sat at the table, sighing loudly as he felt the pain in all his joints at once.

  Three hours’ sleep wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to allow his body and mind to regroup. He tried to work
out how many hours he’d been awake for, but exhaustion made the problem almost impossible to solve and he soon gave up. The clock hanging on the kitchen wall warned him it was nearly 2.30 a.m. He gave another sigh and stared into the drink in his hand, the bourbon the only thing he could think of that was going to slow his thoughts enough to allow any sort of sleep to come. He drank it in one go, burning his throat and chest as it headed for his empty stomach, the lack of food making the effects of the alcohol instant and satisfying.

  He heaved himself out of the chair, left the kitchen and climbed the stairs. As he passed his daughters’ bedroom, he tried to resist peeking in through the gap in the door but failed, the faint blue light from their night lamps somehow making them look even more alive than they did in natural light, although he could barely remember the last time he’d seen them in daylight. Two little girls who before he knew it would become young women – just like the young women the madman had taken. His eldest daughter even had the same name – Louise.

  Sean chased the thoughts away as quickly as they’d come – they had no place in his home. He eased his head back through the gap and sneaked into his bedroom, Kate’s shape clear underneath the duvet, still and silent. He undressed in the dark, draping his clothes over the only chair in the room, and slipped into bed, the bourbon acting like an anaesthetic, like the chloroform the madman used on his victims. Again he chased the thoughts away, thoughts that had no place in his bed as he lay next to his wife.

  Kate’s voice startled him – not the voice of someone who had been asleep and then woken, but the voice of someone who hadn’t been able to sleep – the voice of someone who had been waiting for him. ‘If you’re home, then I assume you haven’t caught him yet. You haven’t found the women.’

  ‘No.’ His heart was still racing from the surprise. ‘Not yet, but it won’t be long. I’m sure of it. We’re coming to the end. I’ll be meeting him soon.’

  ‘How d’you know? Have you found something?’

  ‘No,’ he answered, ‘but I will. The answer’s there, just waiting for me to see it.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said, giving him an idea.

  ‘Kate.’

  ‘Uhhhm.’

  ‘What do you do when you’ve got a patient who is critically ill, one you’ve tried everything on, done everything to try and save them, everything that should have helped them recover, yet their condition goes on getting worse and worse? What would you do?’

  She thought in silence for a while before answering. ‘In that scenario I would assume I’d missed something. I’d go back over everything I’d done and double-check I hadn’t missed anything.’

  ‘And if you hadn’t?’ he asked. ‘What then?’

  Kate rolled over to look at him, her face little more than a silhouette. ‘If that was the case,’ she said, ‘then the patient would die and we’d all feel really bad, even though there was nothing we could have done.’

  She kissed him on the cheek and rolled over to sleep, leaving him to stare at the ceiling in the darkness. Alone.

  She stumbled through the trees, arms wrapped around her torso in a futile effort to keep out the cold, her only clothing the same soiled underwear he’d given her days before – how many days she couldn’t be sure of any more. Her bare feet stepped on sharp stones and thorns as she stumbled, her arms untwisting from her body as she tried to steady himself, her head occasionally turning to look at the hooded figure who followed close behind, a stumpy baseball bat in one hand and the cattle prod in the other. Whenever she slowed too much she felt the bat being jabbed into her spine, driving her on to a fate he had decided for her, the alfentanil’s effects making her too weak and uncoordinated to either run or fight. All she could do was beg for her life.

  ‘Please,’ she sobbed. ‘You don’t have to do this.’ Her words were slurred but clear enough. ‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’ Another stab in the back propelled her on, the cold breeze feeling like a gale on her exposed skin. She stumbled again, gathering more lacerations to her feet and body, as if the trees were his accomplices, cruelly bending to lash her with their thin branches. ‘I have a husband,’ she pleaded. ‘My children need me,’ she lied, desperate to try and reach the man trapped inside the monster.

  ‘Liar,’ he said. ‘You don’t have children. You shouldn’t lie about things like that. If you do, I’ll know.’

  ‘You were watching me,’ she accused him. ‘You’ve been watching me for weeks.’ She stopped and turned to face him, expecting the stab of the bat in her spine, but it didn’t come.

  ‘I thought you were the one,’ he told her. ‘I thought you were her, but I was wrong. I have no need of you now. You were a mistake.’

  ‘No,’ she tried to reach him. ‘Maybe I am her? You need to help me be her. I can be her. I know I can – for you.’

  ‘No,’ he barked. ‘It’s too late. Keep moving.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she pleaded, leaning with her back to a tree. ‘No more, please. No more.’

  ‘Just a little further and you can go,’ he promised. ‘I’m not going to kill you. Just a little further and you can go.’

  She knew the hope he had given her was a false hope, but it was all she had and she clung to it. ‘You’ll let me go?’ she asked breathlessly. He nodded in the moonlight. ‘You promise?’

  ‘Just a little further.’ He pointed deeper into the woods with the bat.

  Louise pushed herself from the tree, brushing the thin branches away from her face with her outstretched arms, closing her eyes in silent prayer, feeling her way through the trees until she sensed she was in a clearing, the ground softer under her feet where invading sunlight had allowed grass to grow and all around her an eerie flapping sound, as if hundreds of birds were trapped in the surrounding trees, unable to escape, not matter how hard they beat their wings. She opened her eyes and walked into the open space, looking for the source of the strange sound, but couldn’t see it in the darkness, feeling him behind her, getting closer, and she knew, she knew this would be where he killed her. If he was going to let her go, he would have melted back into the woods by now, a ghost disappearing into the waiting shadows, but he hadn’t. He’d known this clearing was here and he’d known this was where he was going to bring her. This would be the place where she took her last breath.

  Panic and the animal will to survive swept away most of the effects of the anaesthetic, her body becoming aware and alert. She sprang forward into the clearing, her bare feet pushing off the soft ground strongly, but he was ready, as if he’d anticipated she would try to run. Within four strides she felt her legs kicked from under her, sending her unsupported body flying through the air until it crashed hard into the ground, knocking the wind and fight from her, leaving her disorientated and confused. She gave herself a few seconds then rose to her knees, looking around, trying to get her bearings, a new direction to run in, but before she could do either the dark figure stepped in front of her, each hand still clutching a weapon. She gazed up at him, blinking, trying to focus on the blackness inside the hood where his face should have been. ‘Please,’ she pleaded. ‘Please.’ He tossed the bat to one side and slipped the cattle prod inside his trouser pocket, still standing above her, staring down.

  Millimetre by millimetre his hands moved from his sides, stretching out towards her, reaching for her throat as she watched through her tears, her own hands slowly rising to meet his, her fingers curling around his wrists, but barely able to resist at all, as if she was guiding his hands to her, strong, thin fingers coiling around her neck as his thumbs sank into her throat, slowly crushing her trachea. The blood supply to and from her brain fell to nothing, her eyes bulging under the pressure and her swollen tongue protruding from her mouth searching for oxygen. For a brief second she thought she could see her husband, hear his voice, see the children she’d so often imagined having, their presence encouraging her to frantically claw and scratch at the hands clamping her throat, but she had grown too weak and he too strong. F
inally her resisting fingers slowed and slipped away from his, her arms becoming too heavy to hold up any more as they fell limp at her side, and an ugly hiss leaked from her mouth – the last sound she would ever make.

  He kept his hands wrapped tightly around her neck, staring at the dead creature he held kneeling in front of him, glad he hadn’t knocked her semi-unconscious with the baseball bat before squeezing the life from her. The sudden overwhelming desire to see her slip from this world to the next had been impossible to resist, to see her full life-force leave her body, not just the remains after he’d partially caved her head in as he had with Karen Green. This had been so much more rewarding.

  He held her for a long time, watching until her dead staring eyes began to mist over, then he released his grip and allowed her to slump to the ground, falling in an almost foetal position, except for her arms, one of which was trapped under her body while the other had fallen behind her back in a pose only the dead could bear. Still he stood over her, wondering why it felt different to the last time. Then he realized that the difference was he had actually felt something this time – something calm and powerful.

  The freezing breeze blowing into his face slowly drew him back to the real world, the dead woman at his feet inconsequential. It was time for him to leave. He crouched next to the body and awkwardly removed her underwear and bra, rolling them together and pushing them into the pocket of his hooded top before returning her limbs to almost exactly the same position she had fallen in without knowing or considering why. He looked at Louise Russell one last time then turned, striding back into the trees heading towards his car and home. Tomorrow was Sunday. He would rest for a day – get things ready – clean the cage and her clothes, once he’d taken them off the woman who was wearing them now. Then on Monday, after work, he’d rescue her. He already knew where she lived and how she lived. He’d been watching her a long time, just like he had the others, but this time he was sure she was the one, even if she didn’t know it herself.