The Takers and Keepers

by Ivan Pope

  I’d never been hit, I’d lived a very quiet life, but I had walked into a post once, so I knew the feeling. I was a kid really. I knew nothing about violence and control or about sex, though I’d thought about it, we all did. My friends and I used to talk about doing it, but we hadn’t done it.

  I learned the rules and I only talked to him by writing notes. We didn’t have much of a relationship.

  Not that we ever did, really. What came later, you couldn’t describe it as a relationship. But it became something.

  I’m not going to talk about that.

  At the very start I thought he’d torture me and then kill me. I’d been watching horror films with my friends.

  At first there was one book down here, so I read that book again and again. It was not a very nice book, but it wasn’t really a horror book like we passed around at school. It was feeble. That girl in it would never act like that, all arty and clever. She’d be so scared she’d wet herself and also that he would never be like that, like he’d want to rape her on the first night. Then he’d probably get a huge knife and stab her to death when he found out she didn’t love him.

  Like I said, I read that book so many times I know most of it backwards. In my head I wrote my own version of it, where it was me in the cellar. What I would do. Different.

  Although I was not allowed to talk to him, he talked to me. One day he took me upstairs and out into the world.

  You might ask how he could take an abducted girl out of the cellar that he makes her live in and out into the world. Why didn’t I scream and run away? Well, it was about eight years after he got hold of me and by then I was not the person I had started life as. It became crucial to my survival, before I got my children, that I wasn’t connected to Abby before the start. Abby before he caught me. I would not allow myself to make any connection with that life I had left behind. If I found myself trying to remember things from my previous life I had to stop immediately. Then I could continue, but only on the basis that it was someone else I was thinking about. The things I remembered had happened to someone else.

  Below

  Fifty minutes passed before she realised that the man she had sent down to the flat hadn’t come back up. He might just have left, she thought, after seeing the flat. But he had the key. Her husband would be angry if he’d gone off with it and she hadn’t even asked his name. She didn’t want to upset him, he’d been calmer since he retired and she worked hard to keep it that way.

  They’d had some bad tenants down there, although her husband had always dealt with them. Treat them harsh, he said. If you give them an inch, they take a mile. It had never really been any of her business and she’d never intervened. She’d really prefer not to let the flat, it wasn’t as if they needed the money, Roger’s pension was more than adequate and the money from her parents’ house could provide any luxuries they needed. But it was his house, she supposed, since he was the one who’d inherited it. It had made a lovely family house, and they’d been very lucky to live right up here on the hill. It had made her feel privileged, even when they were young. It had made-up to some degree for a husband who didn’t pay her much attention and who had his own interests, his own life, almost.

  Her husband walked up the hill slowly, heavily. He hadn’t expected to be back so early but his meeting with an old friend had been unexpectedly cancelled. He hadn’t found out until he arrived. Now he was upset and grumpy. How could people be so hopeless? His breathing was heavy as he strained to reach the top of the hill. He thought again about selling up, about moving to a bungalow by the coast. Maybe it was time.

  He turned into the garden, unlatching and then latching the gate behind him. His step was hardly light though he had few cares in the world. Everything was going well. Retirement suited him, it gave him more time for his hobbies. Except for his wife. He wasn’t really so happy to see more of her, but he kept himself busy and out of her way and she out of his. Damned wives, sometimes they didn’t really conform to type. Now she wanted to go off cruising in Norway, the fjords or some such, but he had things to look after. It was a busy time. Years of effort had paid out, now he wanted the rewards. They were destined to spend their declining days together yet apart. He knew that was the best he could expect.

  When he reached the house the front door was ajar, another of her annoying habits, as if there was no danger in this part of London. He certainly didn’t feel safe. He hated the insecure and insincere way her attitude came across – he preferred locked doors and locked emotions.

  She stood in the hallway, tea towel in hand, wringing it nervously. She smiled. ‘Hello.’

  He nodded at her, sweat beading his forehead. Then he looked at her again. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘A man came to look at the flat,’ she said. ‘I gave him the key, sent him down.’

  ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘He hasn’t come back. I’m afraid he might have gone off with it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look.’ He made his way quickly out of the house again.

  The basement flat was accessed by a side gate. He quickly unlocked the door and strode around, getting the measure of it. Nice place to live, Allen thought, wondering what the fuck he was doing here. If this was Roger’s house, then there must be some connection between this place and Emily. But not this neat and tidy and altogether elegant and light-filled flat. This wasn’t a place for keepen.

  Two small bedrooms. A kitchen with a very small window directly under the entrance of the house above, a scullery with an old-fashioned screened window and then a large living room with a window that overlooked the hillside. Nothing here. Nothing that led anywhere. The flat had that strange odour of neglect, he thought. Maybe some cheap air freshener.

  The air was stale. He looked at small drifts of dust on the windowsills and tried to imagine what had been placed there until not so long ago. Time slowed and he edged around the space, looking at fragments of tack that had held pictures to walls, pin holes, dust in corners, grime on windows. The place was clean but not immaculate. It was strange how a life had been removed, expunged. He ran his fingers along the edge of the sink and sniffed the air again.

  He realised he was listening to something, a sound he knew. A very low bass hum in the distance, something he’d heard before. He struggled to place it, to attach a noise to some remembered event, but the harder he tried, the further the thrum drifted into the background until it was as if the very effort of trying to hear it drowned it out. He stopped thinking about it and the sound returned.

  He closed his eyes and swayed on the balls of his feet and as he did so it came to him. An air pump, he thought. Circulating air. But not in here, in here there is no air circulating. It’s down. Below me. In the floor. Allen lay down full length on his side and put his ear to the floor. Then stood up, and down again.

  He lay for a while, a cheek pressed against the grubby beige carpet, holding his breath. He moved forward and then, raising himself to a semi-crawling position, he scuttled across the room to the corner and lay down again full length. Now he could hear it. He thumped on the floor with his fist. Concrete. Then he kicked down with his foot. Floorboards.

  He reached out and gripped the edge of the carpet. With a loud rip it came partly away in his hands. He pulled at the underlay to reveal unbroken concrete screed. He scrabbled at the edges of the screed, pulling at a wooden edging but nothing would come loose. When he stood up the humming stopped but when he put his ear back to the floor he could hear it clearly. He looked around for something to bang with, but the flat was empty. Eventually he found a stick next to the back door and, walking around the flat, he banged the end of it on the carpet. In the kitchen the floor was lino. The floor here sounded different, it reverberated, slightly hollow. Drop, ding. Drop, ding. Drop, thud. He tore at the edge of the covering and ripped pieces out until the floor underneath was revealed and there at the side of the room, hard up against the wall, a clear rectangular shape, a di
fferent texture to the rest of the floor.

  He went to the window and pulled it open. Looking out he noticed there was a small window set into the wall just above the ground, and jutting out from that window, the outlet of an air vent.

  Abigail

  I worked out the size of my prison. I made a plan of it in my head. I could draw it for you now. I memorised it on purpose in the first few months, so that if I was rescued I would be a good witness. Where did these things happen, was it in the first room or the side room? Or the back room. Which room was the bed in? Where did the water leak in? Where were the light switches? How many cupboards were there?

  I paced the space and measured it all in foot spaces. Sometimes I did this in the dark, sometimes in the light, when he let it be on. I learned not to fear the dark, not to imagine anything else in there with me. Just me, being me, born anew into this dark place, my world.

  I didn’t try to remember anything, certainly not my family and my friends. Or the sky and the sun and the rain. Or the sea and the beach. Or my dog, or my rabbits. They all moved into a huge grey hole that was called thentime, and which I could not think about.

  It’s quite easy when you work on it to close off part of your life if you want to survive. The truth is, I did start to forget all that stuff and I didn’t want to think about it. And I did become me and not Abigail.

  Anyway, after a time I did start to believe that I wasn’t Abigail, that I was someone else. I didn’t know who I was.

  I think he drugged me. What am I saying, I know he drugged me. He drugged me and he raped me again and again and again. I never had a chance to make any sort of decision about what happened.

  Sometimes he brought me books and newspaper cuttings, magazine articles, about people abducted and forced to live underground for whatever reason. He intended to scare me, but I relished the reading material and these real stories of real people never frightened me – it was only the story of myself that had the power to scare me.

  I was isolated in the way those people were isolated: locked in underground chambers on the whim of a powerful autocrat whose word was law. But he didn’t have a scurrying team of helpers who had convinced themselves that this had to be done. With us there was only me and him, me down here and him up there.

  I long remembered that last day of sunlight, though I knew that over time my memory had been replaced by a memory of a memory and the sunlight I remembered had become a memory of sunlight.

  I wasn’t scared much and the sex wasn’t a problem. Well, let’s put that a different way. The first year was very scary, there wasn’t a day really that didn’t contain horror. But that was because I didn’t understand how things would work and what might happen next. You can’t be afraid of what you know. Being stuck in a cellar with no light, with rooms full of things that you can’t see, and waiting, always waiting, for a monster to come back down. That’s fear and that’s horror. But even that first year got better as it went on. I realised that not every day was going to be bad. After a while you can’t sustain the fear, you just can’t.

  The sex was another thing. I got used to that after a while. I never got to like him and the first two years were very bad. But you have to remember I was a thirteen-year-old girl, I’d never had a boyfriend and even if I had nothing would have happened.

  Everyone wants to know when it started. And they have their ideas about what might have gone on. But I can tell you, the sex started on the first day. It was the whole idea of taking me, of locking me up. Even I could see that, and I was a baby. I knew what sex was, I wasn’t stupid, but I never had to think much about it for myself. Until that day. But it did start on the first day and it went on and on while he was around. Then there was a lot of time when he wasn’t around, so I’d sort of forget about it all.

  I never thought about babies. I didn’t have my periods for the first year. Then they came, and obviously he and I both thought about babies. He wouldn’t use the johnnies mostly and I didn’t think I could get a baby from this man that I hated. Looking back, I know he wanted a baby. A baby for his baby. And pretty soon he got one, there wasn’t much I could do about that. Of course, my baby, my babies, they are what saved me in the end. He didn’t care while they were little, he left us alone. I had to look after them alone. I’d had them alone, in this hole, on my own, so looking after them was easy. And he did feed us, I’ll give him that. He is a provider.

  I used to lie in the dark and dream of my friends in the up world, what were they doing. And the sex, I’m sorry to admit it, but I thought a lot about sex. Not as something that happened to me. What happened to me was conditioning and punishment, breaking in, like a wild horse from the prairies. I wondered what had become of my friends and their boyfriends. Whether Tracy had gone all the way with Freddie. Whose mother had read their diaries. I used to wonder about what they would think of me now, if they knew how I’d ended up. My thoughts were stalled at a stage when I had friends and dreams. But that life was not my life, it was a fantasy that I could use to keep myself entertained. It was a Disney film or a big fat book on a rainy day, not memories of a life that I used to have. Because after the event I didn’t have any life.

  Just him coming to fuck me night after night. Him and his beard and his ideas.

  After she had listened for what seemed like hours to the process of slowly escalating sounds, of somebody descending through a deep and hidden passageway, and the tension in the basement got tighter and tighter until she thought she might scream, the steel door crashed open. Emily sat on her haunches and took deep breaths, willing her heart to slow down. Through the gloom the man emerged again. Emily stared at the shadow he formed as it advanced into the space until it stood in front of her.

  She could barely see him in the dark, the low watt bulb cast strange, disconcerting shadows into the corners. The air was thick with moisture. She stared at him with wide eyes, willing herself to stay still. Behind Emily, through a metal grill, another face, white and immobile, watched him, unblinking.

  Emily stared with the slightest smile on her face. She didn’t move, she clenched her hands into fists at her sides until the knuckles whitened. Inside her, her heart still beat furiously.

  ‘My boyfriend will kill you. He will find you and he will get us out of here and he will kill you,’ she whispered to him. Then the tears came freely, flowing from her as she realised the futility of that statement, the fact that Allen could be anywhere, she could be anywhere, he would never find out where she was kept.

  He extended his arm from the elbow towards Emily. ‘Stand up,’ he said. She got slowly to her feet, keeping her eyes fixed on his. He shuffled half a step forward.

  ‘We’ve been together a long time, me and her, and I’m in her power,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t want to return to the surface. She doesn’t want you interfering. She has no ability to function up there. She has a life down here, a family, she wants for nothing.’

  ‘She was taken when she was a child. You took her.’

  ‘She loves me as a father and as a husband,’ he said, taking another small step forward. Emily took a step sideways.

  She swayed; the man blinked hard. This is it, she thought.

  He stepped forward with unexpected speed and grasped her hands, pulling her towards him. ‘Stop,’ she screamed as he tugged at her.

  As if her scream was a signal, in the blackness behind them a door clicked softly and a shadow emerged, fluttering as if dancing. It approached and performed a strange, ritualistic movement in front of Roger, flitting left then right, moving so fast in the half-light that they could not follow the movements of this sparrow figure. Like a film projected at the wrong speed, the wraith, jerky in the half silver light, shadow-fluttered over him, stepped to him, over him, onto him, reached out and touched him and then, with the lightness of air, floated away back into the darkness. The man let go of Emily and she fell backwards onto the floor.

  He stood still for a long moment then reached for his chest and made a serie
s of small gasping sounds, sicked up a long, thin stream of vomit, and fell backwards onto the floor. He made no further noise but lay full length in the shadows. Emily could see his feet in the pale puddle of light that a small bulb cast. Apart from that the place was in darkness. The gloom seemed to settle tighter around her. She turned. She could not locate Abigail but could hear the children crying in the distant darkness.

  Emily walked confidently to the cell door and yanked it open. From inside the small, white-faced family, the children and the ghost of their mother, looked up at her in wonder.

  She looked at the woman. ‘We did it. What now?’

  There was no reply, just silence and the realisation that she was locked in with a family of spectres and a corpse.

  Exeat

  The call came through at 11:18 precisely in the morning, routed by the emergency number operators to West Hampstead police station.

  ‘Police.’

  ‘My name is Mrs Standen. I live at 37 Chilcot Road. My nephew has gone missing.’

  The person who had answered the phone was bored. The last thing she needed was a dotty old lady with a missing nephew. After taking a full name and address she asked, ‘How old is your nephew.’

  ‘He’s fifty-two,’ Mrs Standen said.

  ‘Could you tell me why you think he’s gone missing?’

  Mrs Standen was pretty sure. ‘Because he didn’t come back. He went to feed his snakes last night. He does every night, and I know it sounds a bit funny, but he really does love those lizards. I don’t like them at all, I have told him many times I won’t feed them when he’s not there, but he says he has it all under control. Anyway, he went down last night to feed them and he hasn’t come back. I’ve just checked his room and it doesn’t look like he ever came back in. And now I’m worried.’