A Deadly Compulsion

by Michael Kerr

  TRISH shuffled across the dirt floor on swollen, bruised knees, and bobbed her head to sip water from one of the stainless steel dog bowls. She was now shackled with one ankle attached to the concrete block by a long rusted chain comprised of links as thick as her fingers. Her pale body was anorexic-thin, all sharp angles and protruding bones that pushed against taut skin mottled with sores.

  He visited her once a day, removed the tape from her mouth and filled one bowl with fresh water and the other with what looked and smelled like cat food. The rules were simple: if she spoke without being asked to, he removed a fingernail. She had only lost one. He had withdrawn it with pliers, standing on her wrist as he wrenched it from its bed. She had never experienced pain like it before, and had wailed in agony as the nerve endings acknowledged the damage and her brain converted the signals to mind-crushing torment. And he used her as though she were brain dead; just warm flesh to pleasure him with. She had become an object; a non person with no rights, increasingly devoid of any hope or expectation.

  The days and nights became a blur as darkness, light, heat and cold merged in her feverish mind. The skylight high above her was her window on the world; a square that presented an ever-changing vista of colours that formed a rich palette ranging from dawn-grey and robin egg-blue to sunset-red and lampblack. The grimed pane of glass became Trish’s focal point; the centre of her now small universe. It was a gallery of heavenly art. She became aware of the beauty of clouds in all their changing forms and hues, and was excited by the fleeting glimpse of an unrecognised bird, and dazzled and burned by the sun at its zenith. At night a myriad stars appeared as twinkling diamonds, glittering against a black velvet drape. And at times the moon slowly passed across her field of vision like a ghost ship adrift on the high seas. It was as if she were in H.G. Wells’ time machine, looking out from it as the days, weeks, months and years sped by. Time was without meaning as she grew weaker; centuries and millennia could have passed as she lost all focus and was driven by a semiconscious meandering current out into a vast ocean, with no reference points on the horizon to give perspective to her existence.

  The fear of pain and the supposition that she would ultimately be murdered had been unbearable at first. Every time he entered, a hot wire burned in her stomach, and her heart skipped beats, almost stopping, then raced madly, pounding against the cage of her now well-defined ribs. She cringed from him at the end of her chain, hoping that it was only sex that he had come for. She was now anaesthetised to his member pounding into her; could disassociate herself from the act as though it was someone else’s body being violated. She had become desensitised to his cruel acts; just so much numb and bruised flesh.

  On occasion, he would lay out dozens of Polaroids in the dirt and order her to look at them, before showing her the tacker that he had used to staple the pictured girls’ lips together. He would then press the cold metal of the tool to her mouth, trigger it, empty, and snigger at the distress it caused her. At other times he ran the blade of his knife across her throat so lightly that the honed steel could have been the kiss of a feather’s tip.

  “First I use them,” he had said on his last visit, smiling at her, proud to share his secrets. “And then I staple their mouths. While they’re alive I know that my mother inhabits them. I can see her hiding behind their eyes. The bitch comes back again and again, and I make her suffer. Then I cut their throats, hang them up and bleed them out. Once they die, I know that she’s gone for a while. Did I tell you that this barn is full of them? They’re under you, dissolving in lime. You’ll probably join them soon and be under the earth and with them.”

  His threats became hollow. She finally reached a saturation point and her spirit broke. She was no longer the person she had been. The thin veneer of sophistication had been scoured away, and with it all the posturing and affectation she had created to shield her true self. She had cast off her cloak to reveal a naked, tortured soul who had acquiesced to the unremitting horror of her plight, as victims of the Holocaust must have done in Hitler’s concentration camps; the torture, starvation and the palls of greasy, black smoke from the crematoria chimneys reducing them to silent, unmoving beings with staring, vacant eyes, awaiting the inevitable, with their former lives and loved ones gone and with no future to contemplate; all their hopes and dreams behind them. That was how Trish felt. There were odd moments when she was saddened at her predicament, but in the main she now just wanted it to be over with, to have release and eternal peace from the torment. Even the knife had lost its ability to frighten her, as apathy replaced continual fear. She imagined the blade piercing her throat, laying it open, and the sting of the cut and the warm spurts of blood that would rob her first of awareness, and then of life.

  In the darkness, a sharp, stabbing pain pulled her from the edge of troubled sleep. She winced and drew her legs up as another bolt of liquid fire ate into her calf. Lashing out at the hunched form that clung to her, she felt razor-sharp incisors puncture the soft flesh between her thumb and index finger, ripping and tearing, shaking her hand as a dog would savage a slipper. She screamed into the tape and swung her arm against the concrete block, once...twice…three times before the huge, bristling rodent let go and scurried into the corner of the barn, vanishing among the dark pools of shadow.

  Now, jerked back to vivid cognizance by this fresh danger, Trish moaned with renewed terror. She inched her weak body up on to the two-foot-square cube of concrete and huddled on its cold surface, like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, to search the gloom for the new enemy that had found her and judged her to be no more than food. A deep-seated and petrifying fear of being eaten alive revived her flagging spirit, returning her to the harsh reality that she had not wanted to face.

  The sound of the bolt sliding back was almost a relief. He would bring light, and the vermin would be kept at bay...but for how long?

  He lit the hurricane lamp and frowned down at the pallid and gaunt woman who squatted on the concrete, reminding him of a chicken on a perch.

  “What the fuck are you doing up there?” he said, putting down the lamp and ripping the tape from her mouth.

  “R...rats...b...bit me...Want to die...Enough,” she whimpered, her eyes downcast, not able to look him in the face.

  He examined her and saw the thin streams of blood running from the bites on her leg, and the gaping rent in her hand that glistening muscle bulged from.

  “Fucking vermin,” he seethed. “They won’t leave you alone now that they’ve smelt you out and tasted blood. I doubt that there’ll be much left of you by morning; just gnawed bones with most of the marrow eaten out.”

  “So get it over with, you bastard. Fucking kill me and put me out of my misery,” Trish shouted, her voice breaking, but loaded with anger that temporarily outweighed her fear.

  He lashed out and backhanded her across the face, splitting her top lip, whipping her head back and knocking her to the ground. Unbelievably, she began to giggle as though her plight were some dark satire; a fictional two-hander play; the barn a stage in the round with an audience sat beyond the footlights in a hushed and unlit auditorium.

  “Why are you laughing?” he asked her, wondering if she had slid over the edge into madness to escape him.

  She spat blood, which coated her breasts and stomach in a fine spray. “Because if the rats don’t eat me, you’ll butcher me,” she said. “I can’t win, and it’s so fucking sad that it’s making me laugh. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then tough shit. Now, why don’t you just finish it? I think you’ve had your money’s worth for what I called you on TV. Nobody likes a greedy bastard.”

  For a second he fully intended to kill her, there and then. But she had balls. He had stripped her of everything, snatched her from all that had made sense in her glossy, fickle, side-show world. But she had more grit than all the others put together. Her spirit was strong. She had even spoken without permission, and called him a greedy bastard. Even the fear of losing more fingernails could not over
ride her need to talk back to him.

  It was a little strange. He had actually got used to her being around. It had become pleasant to know that when he arrived home, she would be here, waiting for him, reliant on him for food and water...for life itself. Whether she hated him or not, he was now the centre of her small, restricted world. He wanted to keep her. She was the perfect woman, never refusing his advances, however debased and distasteful she must find them. Now that she was at the end of her tether both physically and mentally, he could take the game a stage further, develop it, and by so doing maintain the excitement of having total control over another human being. He would meet the challenge and try to gain her trust; brainwash her into appreciating him. During the lull in his activities this would be a fine distraction. He had decided to wait until autumn before resuming his acts of retribution against his mother. He was satisfied for the moment, and would start afresh with new methods; change his pattern to throw those who hunted him into turmoil.

  Unshackling her from the cement island that stood in the sea of straw-covered soil, he then doused the lamp and lifted her up, noting how little she now weighed; how infirm and weak her body was. It was as though she was a cancer patient, her body hardly more than a shell ravaged by a malignancy that was eating her from within. He tingled with pleasure as her head fell onto his shoulder. She was safe, for the time being. He would care for her as though she was a wounded animal in need of treatment and warmth and nourishment.

  Pushing the barn door closed with his knee, he turned and carried her across the yard into the house and up the stairs to the bathroom, where he sat her on the lowered seat of the toilet. He drew a hot bath, then lifted her again and gently placed her in the steaming water.

  Trish thought that he was going to drown her; push her beneath the surface until her lungs filled like balloons, to burst as she suffocated on the hot liquid. Or maybe he would cut her throat or wrists, to watch as the water turned crimson and she bled to death. Instead, he reached out, picked up a bottle from the low windowsill above the taps and poured fragrant lavender Radox into the bath, stirring it with his hand. He knelt, rested his forearms on the edge of the bath and let her soak for a few minutes, saying nothing, just studying her. After a while he sponged the grime from her body, washed and rinsed her hair under the shower head, and finally sat on the toilet seat, smiling at her as though they were lovers, or husband and wife.

  Trish felt the soothing heat melt the knots in her tight muscles, loosening them and relaxing her. As he gently sponged her, she began to cry softly, hardly able to face the comfort after so much suffering. Her eyelids felt weighted, her body jelly. And as he lathered her hair and massaged her scalp, she had to fight against sleep. She was sapped of strength, still scared, but now somehow sure that this would not be the time or place that he would kill her.

  Helping her to stand, he held her arm as she stepped out of the bath, and then draped a thick, warm, fleecy bath towel around her shoulders. “Dry yourself,” he said, turning to open the mirrored, wall-mounted cabinet and withdraw a new, boxed toothbrush. “Then brush your teeth.” The smell of pet food on her breath offended him. “I’ll find something for you to wear.”

  He left the bathroom, but almost immediately bobbed his head back around the door, locked eyes with hers and just stared, as though looking into her very soul, searching, probing. “Trish,” he said. “Be sensible. Don’t try anything stupid, or you’ll be back in the barn, for good. You’re on trust, do not abuse it.”

  She dried herself, towelled her hair and brushed her teeth; the spearmint-flavoured paste taking away the sour taste from her mouth. She brushed until her gums bled, before rinsing the foam of Colgate and blood from her mouth and chin. The mirror above the sink was fogged. She wiped it clear of condensation with the towel and stared at the emaciated stranger that looked back at her; studied the dull, sunken, lifeless eyes that were highlighted by dark purple crescents beneath them. The chalk-white skin was stretched tightly over the underlying skull. She was still standing, mesmerised by her reflection, when he came back and led her by the hand, out of the bathroom and along a short landing to a bedroom. He sat her on an ottoman at the foot of the bed and handed her a baggy Bart Simpson T-shirt; the character’s stupid yellow face beaming wide-eyed from the black cotton. He then passed her a pair of Union Jack emblazoned boxer shorts.

  “Put these on,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”

  Trish slowly pulled the T-shirt over her head, grunting as her weakened, unused arm muscles shook with the effort. The shorts were ridiculously big on her, but the elasticised waistband kept them up under the T-shirt that hung almost to her knees like a short dress.

  Once more he took her hand, led her out onto the dimly lit landing and down steep stairs, along a hall to a large country kitchen. He pulled a chair out from under the timber built table and motioned for her to sit, then went to a wall unit, returning with a bottle of antiseptic and a wad of cotton wool.

  “This’ll sting a bit,” he said, soaking the cotton, before kneeling, lifting her leg and dabbing at the angry red rat bites.

  The iodine stung as it soaked into the raw, deep rents left by the rodent’s teeth. And when he pressed the wad against her more seriously bitten hand, she sucked in her breath at the deep throbbing pain that set her whole arm aflame.

  He made sweet, hot tea and pastrami sandwiches for them both, and then settled facing her across the table and ordered her to eat. She nibbled at the fresh bread, tasted the filling of thinly sliced, salted beef and began to salivate, ravenous, her stomach growling. It took all of her willpower to take small bites and chew the food properly. She knew that if she bolted it down too quickly she would almost certainly be sick. Savouring each mouthful, she enjoyed the sandwich much more than she could ever remember relishing the finest fillet steak, lobster, or pâté de foie gras.

  “You can speak, as long as you don’t insult me,” he said. “If you badmouth me, the rats will think it’s Christmas come early. Do you understand?”

  Trish looked him directly in the face for the first time in days. His eyes were deceiving; not as she would imagine the eyes of a killer to be. They shone a bright sapphire blue and appeared, erroneously, to be kind, harbouring no evil or the capacity to carry out the horrific acts that she knew he had committed. He was reasonably good-looking and even-featured, with a firm mouth and strong, dimpled chin. His hair was fair, thick, but cut quite short with a side parting. A lock of it fell across his forehead, giving him a boyish look. She judged him to be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-one or two. Although she had known who he was, she had never taken much notice of him in the past.

  “I asked you if you understood.” he said, breaking her line of thought.

  “Yes, I understand,” she replied, nodding as she spoke, her voice now smoother, more recognisable from the gravel croak it had been; although too high, nearly soprano with anxiety.

  “Thing is, Trish, I think you have paid for the slagging that you gave me on TV. The only problem is, I can’t let you go, because you know who I am.”

  “I wouldn’t tell any―”

  “The fuck you wouldn’t tell anybody,” he said, his voice suddenly knife sharp. “Once free, you’d want me behind bars for the rest of my life. So don’t talk shit or I’ll staple your fucking mouth shut.”

  “No…please, don’t. I’m sorry,”

  “That’s better,” he said, reaching forward, taking her uninjured hand and squeezing it gently. “This could be fun. I’ve got no script for keeping someone alive. I’m just playing it by ear, because I really don’t want to kill you.”

  Later, they sat in the living room and he showed her videos of the news reports that had been broadcast following her disappearance. Looking at footage of herself dressed in a power suit, lightly made-up, and with her hair carefully styled, she viewed the faintly smug and in-control anchor woman as though she was a stranger. For the first time in her life she looked at herself with a certain d
islike. The on-screen Trish Pearson was not a person she would want to know. The insincerity that shone through was almost as irksome as the aura of superciliousness.

  “You’re no longer that stupid cow with an attitude, are you?” he said.

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t feel as though I know her. And I don’t like her.”

  “So this has been a valuable learning curve, eh?”

  She didn’t know how to answer that, so didn’t. It had in no way been worthwhile, but it had changed her, radically. She was different, in some basic way unlike the old Trish who she now saw as having as little depth as the two-dimensional taped image on the screen in front of her. How could she have been such a shallow, insensitive person for so long, without even realising it?

  “Time for bed,” he said, yawning as he stood up. “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A door in the kitchen opened on to stone steps that led down to a large and freshly whitewashed cellar. It held only two items of furniture: a single bed and a coffee table, its top littered with magazines and dog-eared paperback novels. In one corner stood a plastic chemical loo next to a large, stained and crazed porcelain sink, its single rusty tap dripping; the patter a heartbeat, echoing around a room that had no carpet to dampen the sound. A single low wattage pearl light bulb hung from the ceiling. It could be turned on or off from a switch in the cellar, or from one above them in the kitchen. The subterranean room was Spartan, but was as appealing to Trish as any suite in a five star hotel, compared to the barn.

  “I work shifts, Trish, so you’re going to be spending a lot of time down here,” he said, sitting on the bed and patting the cover next to him, intimating that she should join him. “I don’t want to have to tape your mouth or shackle you again, so I’m going to leave a voice-activated recorder on in the kitchen. If you start screaming for help, I’ll know, and you’ll be punished.