Double Bind

by Karen Bell

  The first three messages were condolences, invitations and offers of food from church congregants. The next message on the machine had been left four days earlier. It was from someone whose voice Mila didn’t recognize, but the accent was one that was familiar to her, clearly Eastern European in origin, perhaps even Russian. Apparently, Robert had missed a meeting and the caller was not happy, demanding that he contact them as a matter of urgency. There was a familiar passive aggressive edge to the caller’s voice that made Mila’s skin prickle. Evidently Robert was meant to know the caller well enough, since there was neither number nor name left on the machine.

  Mila wondered who would have met with Robert regularly, yet not have known of his diagnosis and subsequent passing. Maybe it was an overseas work colleague. She didn’t know whether Robert had shared an office space but surely someone would have let them know. She didn’t have time to give it further thought because the last three messages were from the Commonwealth Bank, asking with increasing concern if Robert would please contact them.

  The bank had never used Mila and Robert’s home number until now. She assumed that Robert’s mobile had been given as the preferred contact, but then that phone had been switched off for weeks. She felt guilty that she hadn’t yet informed the bank staff of Robert’s death but then she hadn’t known there was any urgency until now, since he’d kept his phone locked and she hadn’t been privy to the code.

  Mila had been worried that once the bank manager knew of Robert’s passing, their accounts would be frozen until probate was complete. It was a term she had only come to know about when her parents had passed but she knew that it triggered a whole lot of red tape. She was not authorized to withdraw funds without Robert, so she had been planning to come home, and then make an appointment to see the manager. She felt reasonably confident that if he met her in person, he would allow her to take out enough cash to last until the estate was settled.

  There was a will that she and Robert had drawn up and signed together after they inherited her parents’ home that she believed to be held both by the bank and the solicitor. In the mean time Mila had been dipping into her small cash stash and thankfully Robert’s parents had insisted on paying all the funeral costs.

  Mila knew that somewhere, Robert had a post box for all business mail including bank statements. The only mail she’d received to their home letterbox was a small drift of condolence cards that she hadn’t yet had the stomach to read. The bank would be closed now and Mila nervously picked up her bag at the front door, all the while assuring herself that in the rush to leave the house she must have forgotten to close the kitchen door.

  She still had an uneasy feeling that wouldn’t settle and was hyper alert in her surroundings as she headed down the corridor towards the laundry, planning to unpack dirty washing before ducking out to buy a few groceries from the supermarket. She was already a metre past the staircase when something she’d seen in her peripheral vision stopped her dead in her tracks and sent a chill from head to toe. She turned around slowly and felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She hadn’t imagined it; the padlock to the basement door was gone. Fighting the urge to scream she dropped her travel bag and fled out the back door of the house and into the garden just stopping short of the back gate.

  Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, she struggled to compose a rational thought, hands over her mouth, paralysed with fear. Every instinct was telling her to keep running and call the police. That was the sane thing to do but then sane people didn’t have dungeons in the basements of their homes. Sons of well-known church ministers didn’t practice discipline and bondage in hidden rooms. What would happen when the police arrived? Of course they would want to look through the place to check if anyone was still there, check for evidence, fingerprints.

  Mila paced nervously around the yard for some time, feeling like a cornered animal and trying to figure out what to do next. Who would want to go into the basement of her home and possibly beyond? Who knew if someone might still be in the house? She just couldn’t risk the police going downstairs and finding the entrance open. If the dungeon was closed at the back, she could allow them to search the archives area at the front, but she had no way of knowing if that room had been compromised. She thought of replacing the padlock with a new one and saying that it was untouched. That was an idea, but Mila knew with a sinking feeling that she would still need to go down there eventually. No matter how she figured it, there was only one option. With a knot in the pit of her belly, she walked slowly back towards the house.

  At the top of the basement stairs she paused to open a cupboard that held a set of golf clubs. She withdrew Robert’s driving iron before closing the door. Club in hand, she went from room to room in the main house noticing small things out of place. Whoever it was, had been in every room and had tried to replace things after themselves. If Mila had not lived in the company of Robert’s obsessive-compulsive disorder she might not have noticed, but as it was, she was struck by the smallest anomalies, a crease in the bedding, a chair out of place. She stopped touching things as she realised her fingerprints could contaminate evidence.

  Admittedly, there was not much to steal. Robert was not into extravagance. Mila had been wearing her mother’s engagement and wedding rings in place of her own since the funeral. Still she noticed her father’s gold wedding band and watch were gone from the bedroom, along with a strand of pearls and Robert’s gold cufflinks. Someone had rifled through his clothes in the wardrobe too. A couple of hangers holding his suit jackets were facing the wrong way.

  She walked to the laundry and using a small screwdriver, opened the motor housing. Feeling inside with one hand she was relieved to find her envelope still there. She had more than earned every cent of that money. Scrimped and saved it a few dollars at a time over a number of years.

  Finally, she made her way back to the basement door, taking a long, slow breath to try and calm herself before opening it. Quickly, she found the light switch and with all the bravado she could muster called loudly, ‘Is anyone there?’ No answer.

  With the club held in front of her like a baseball bat, Mila slowly crept down the stairs. Her hands shook uncontrollably and hers knees felt ready to give way beneath her. It was the first time she had come down here alone and Robert had always made her turn around while he opened the concealed door. She now felt the same sickening sense of foreboding, exposed and helpless.

  She glanced furtively around, noticing folders and archive boxes had been pulled off shelves and left in a state of disarray on the desk and the floor. This was no ordinary burglar, she realized with a sickening clarity. They may not have wanted her to know they’d been snooping upstairs but they were sending a clear and terrifying message down here. What would anyone want with all these old files? What did they think they’d find?

  Mila felt a new wave of panic as she looked to the far end of the room and saw that the shelving unit normally concealing the dungeon was open. Someone had known about that room too and more than that, they wanted her, or maybe Robert, if they believed him to be alive, to know they had been here.

  She thought of all the low-lives that Robert had brought here over the years. Any one of them could have found their way back and broken into the house. But why? Mila had no idea how to activate the concealed door but someone else had managed to find a way around it. Again, she fought the urge to turn and run. Why was she doing this again? Shouldn’t she just attempt to close that room and leave? The realization dawned that she wouldn’t be able to stay in the house until she knew it was empty and until she had changed every lock. Even before Robert’s passing, she had resolved to sell the house in the Spring but now she just wanted out.

  She inched towards the bookshelf, which was pivoted, to a point where she could see a sliver of dim light inside. She kept telling herself that no one was in there but her heartbeat was racing off the scale and she fought to contain her breathing.

  Mila had practiced controlled breathing many times before, e
specially in that room. It was one of Robert’s preferred lessons to stand behind Mila or lay over her back and to hold his palm over her mouth while pinching closed the airway to her nose. He used it as a punishment when he felt she’d disobeyed him and it was a bonus that he found it incredibly arousing. She had learned that he would let go at the point of her losing consciousness, but not before. By not passing out quickly, Mila actually prolonged her own torture but it was beyond her control. Survival instinct had a way of cutting in and forcing her to preserve oxygen. She would take her mind to another place, focus on slowing her heartbeat and allow the spinning to become a part of her. Fighting it, she had learned made it all the more terrifying.

  Just a few steps more and you’ll know, she told herself. She tentatively reached out to turn the shelves just enough to slip inside and as she did so, she began to feel the familiar out of body sensations that were so often a part of her ordeals beyond this wall. Pain had many times led her to another place where she was no longer a participant but an onlooker. Now, those memories, fleeting images, played like a show reel buzzing in her head. Stay in the moment, a voice somewhere in her head commanded. She held the club in front of her ready to strike and slipped into the room, scanning the darkened corners as she did so.

  The dungeon was empty and everything was exactly as Robert had left it – always left it – immaculate and ordered. Mila exhaled and lowered her weapon. Inanimate objects, chains, clamps, dildos, masks, hung perfectly, neatly, obsessively, as if styled for a storage advertisement. But these were not just objects, they were his tools, implements carefully selected by the director as working props for his various macabre scenes in which she had been cast as the lead. It was not the first time that Mila had been alone in this room. Many nights she’d been left for hours in dim light or total darkness; her companions cold and fear, nocturnal creatures that crept out of the walls and seeped into her bones. She recalled how her jaw used to ache from them, how she would count the passage of time, punctuate the seconds and minutes by biting up and down on the hard rubber bit between her teeth until paralysis set in.

  She looked around, trying to remain detached, but it was as if she could feel his presence. She had never heard her own voice in this space. She had never been permitted to speak, let alone cry out. She had heard her own screams many times in her head but never aloud. She’d soon learnt that to vocalize her terror was to show a weakness that only gave her captor more power.

  The place was silent but for the sound of her heart rhythmically hammering behind her ribs and each quick, shallow inhalation catching in her throat.

  Mila desperately wanted to speak out now, to exorcise the demons from the room and from her head. She opened her mouth but still could not find a voice. No words that would do justice to her sense of betrayal. No words to adequately summarise what she’d lost… innocence, trust, faith in God and man.

  Alone in that room, how many times she’d felt like an abandoned child, awaiting an inevitable punishment for crimes she didn’t commit. How many other women and children were locked up right at this moment, somewhere in the world, innocents who may never again see the light of day. At the thought of all that injustice, Mila felt an intense rage welling. It came from somewhere deep in her core and radiated like a mushroom cloud. She felt the sound before she heard it, a primal scream that would not be contained. The shrill of it, as it left her body, filled the room and bounced off the walls. It grew as it was released, taking on a life of its own and filling every corner.

  Gripping the golf club as if possessed by superhuman strength Mila began swinging wildly at everything so perfectly arranged. As if in slow motion, she watched it all go flying: whips, paddles, gags, ropes, cuffs. The projector, still in its bracket flew across the room and into the wall of mirrors shattering them into a million pieces. Still she kept swinging, her screams echoing unchecked, smashing through the very bricks that lined the walls, and engulfing her with the wave of vibrations that connected her with the universe and all the suffering within it.

  Mila stopped only when she could no longer lift the club over her head, when her voice was spent and the last ounce of strength depleted. Then she dropped the club and stood doubled over, sobbing and panting from the exertion.

  Some minutes later, when her breathing had returned to normal, she straightened up and walked slowly from the room, switching off the dungeon light before returning the bookshelf door to its concealed position. She was careful not to touch the folders that had toppled within it, but stood back to reassure herself that it didn’t stand out from all the other bookshelves in the basement.

  Somewhat satisfied, she wearily climbed the stairs and closed the door behind her, only then picking up the phone to call the police.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘Is there anywhere else you can sleep tonight?’ The attractive blonde police constable standing in the living room looked at Mila with concern. ‘Not that petty crims ever tend to return,’ she continued, ‘it’s just that with no sign of forced entry, it would be better to get all the locks changed as soon as possible.’

  Mila thought about it before shaking her head. Her parents-in-law would already be tucked up in bed and she really didn’t want to bother Adie on her first night home with Carlos. The police had been there for a little over two hours, asking questions, taking notes, checking the windows and doors to satisfy themselves as to how access had been gained.

  Sergeant Ryan Blake had been too polite to remind Mila that they had met unofficially some ten days earlier in the police car park – as if she could forget – but she couldn’t help noticing his expression upon seeing her in the doorway when they first arrived. Given the way his eyes had lit up, there was no doubt that he’d remembered their last encounter but the look was fleeting and quickly gave way to an altogether more professional demeanour.

  She also noticed how he looked up from his notes with a softened expression when she revealed that she was recently widowed. He listened attentively as Mila described the small movements in furniture and ornaments that had tipped her off, and his interest was further peaked when she mentioned that the files in the basement had been interfered with. She considered telling him about the unidentified message on the answering machine but wasn’t sure whether it was relevant and decided against it.

  He sat there thinking for half a minute as if weighing everything up. ‘Do you mind if we take a good look around? I don’t want to alarm you, but this doesn’t sound like your average break and enter. We usually see smash and grab in this area. Your average user, busting for his next fix, doesn’t bother picking locks and certainly doesn’t hang around reading files. Are you sure that your husband didn’t have any problems in business, maybe someone who owed him money or anyone that he may have borrowed money from?’

  Mila shook her head. ‘My husband worked as a chartered accountant for PriceWaterhouse for fifteen years and then had his own practice for a range of international clients for the last three. We don’t owe anyone any money and he wasn’t the type to lend money either. Sorry,’ she added as though she hadn’t wanted to disappoint him.

  The officer noticed Mila’s discomfort. ‘No I’m sorry Mrs Taylor, I didn’t mean to pry into personal details, it’s just that it’s not yet adding up.’

  ‘That’s okay, and please call me Mila. My husband was a very private man. He didn’t really share much of his work-life with me so I’ve not been very helpful.’

  ‘Not at all, you’ve been terrific with detail and I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of this mystery quickly.’

  Mila may have been uncomfortable with the line of questioning but she felt safer in her home with the police there, than she had in the couple of hours prior. As they prepared to leave, she began to feel a knot forming in her stomach again. As if reading her energy, the policeman paused to reassure her.

  ‘So tomorrow morning first thing, we’ll get the fingerprint team here to do their thing and then you can get all the locks changed. I
suggest you might want to get an alarm installed at the same time. In the mean time, here’s my card. It has my mobile number on it so feel free to call any time you feel concerned or even if you just remember some little detail that you think might be useful. Of course, if you feel there’s any immediate risk, call emergency services first on 000 and then call me. Any questions?’

  ‘Well I was just wondering are you both working overnight tonight?’ she asked shyly.

  ‘We officially clocked off about an hour ago, but we’re both on day roster again tomorrow so don’t hesitate to call.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mila busied herself unpacking and putting on washing, and then ran herself a hot bath to try and settle her nerves before bed. Instead of switching off, she spent the whole time with ears pricked up for unfamiliar noises in the house and even though she heard nothing, she was no more relaxed when she dried off forty minutes later.

  Next she went down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of chamomile tea but when that did nothing to help, she decided to turn on the TV for company. It wasn’t a cold night, but she felt chilled regardless, and dragged a quilt into the living room before sitting, as she was accustomed, on the floor in front of the sofa. Being there alone, and with the possibility of an impending intruder was altogether unnerving.

  She got up, walked back into the kitchen and opened a drawer in order to select a large carving knife. This time, on returning to the living room, she tried to take a position of more authority, sitting herself awkwardly in the middle of the sofa before inching over to the safety of the corner with her knife, and again tucking the quilt around her. A late night movie had just started and she tried to concentrate and follow the complex plot but she was mindless with exhaustion and took nothing in.

  Finally, at midnight with the movie finished, Mila resigned herself to bed. She allowed herself the luxury of leaving on the stairway light as a deterrent and slipped under the covers with the knife tucked within easy reach under the other pillow. She tossed and turned for a good ten minutes trying to settle, first facing into the hallway and then away. The streetlight was streaming between the curtains and she got up to shut them fully.