“Nothing else?”
“No,” Annie said. “But you’ve been here longer than me, I think. And what if . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“If?” Marnie prompted.
“What if they’re saving me for when they’re finished with you?”
Marnie hadn’t thought of that. She sat and listened to Annie as she started to cry softly, and couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Time passed, and the silence held. Marnie was frozen, horrified at the thought that Annie might be right, and she was meant to be Marnie’s replacement, ready for when she was all used up – and presumably dead.
Annie herself didn’t seem to want to intrude, leaving Marnie to her thoughts – for now, at least. Marnie was grateful for that. She tried hard to remember the events that had led up to this incarceration – and could only remember walking home from a night out with Cal, then a sudden blow to the back of her head. Then the cellar. She thought about her injuries, tried to catalogue them. There was a bump that felt the size of a mountain on her head; her ribs ached in several places and she still couldn’t breathe deeply without a sharp, stabbing pain in her side – probably a broken rib, and she could only hope it wasn’t digging into her lung. No coughing yet, so she guessed she was okay so far. Her back was sore, too – part of this was probably the prolonged period spent sitting on the hard floor (her tailbone was sending bolts of pain up her spine every time she tried to shift her weight a little), part of it was probably down to landing like a sack of coal when she’d been hit on the head.
She couldn’t feel anything else, other than the ubiquitous pain in her wrists. She leaned back, and hissed as they complained at this renewed pressure on them.
“What’s the matter?”
Annie sounded much more guarded now, and Marnie wondered how much to tell her. “My wrists are sore, that’s all,” she said. “I daresay yours are, too.”
Annie’s reply was a non-committal “Mm,” and Marnie wondered what was wrong. She tried to crane her neck to see her companion, but Annie had shifted to one side and Marnie got no more than a glimpse of dark hair at the level of her own shoulder before she lost sight of her companion.
Silence fell again. Annie didn’t seem interested in talking, and Marnie was running recent days through her mind, looking for a reason for someone to do this. She let her thoughts roam to her boyfriend, Cal, and a smile teased the corners of her mouth. Three days ago they’d been at a party, dancing close, laughing and – as always, with them – talking. She couldn’t even remember whose party it was, other than some friend of Cal’s. She closed her eyes and pictured Cal as he’d been that night; happy – green eyes crinkling at the corners in the way she loved when he laughed. Dancing had never been a strong point for either of them, and she smiled as she remembered his emphatic apologies when he’d trodden on some girl’s foot. Cute thing, small and dark, and dancing way too close to Cal for that not to happen.
She opened her eyes. Cute, small, dark. Something shifted at the back of her mind, something she couldn’t quite fix. Annie moved, and Marnie tried not to flinch. Then wondered why.
She’d had no warning, this time, of darkness falling. One moment she’d been thinking about. . . what, exactly? It had started as a nice memory, she was sure of that, but then. . .
It was gone, no use trying to get it back now. Her head felt bruised, her whole head, as if someone had bounced it around, banging it off walls and floor whilst holding on by her ears, which now felt huge and very hot. Not possible, she knew, but the pain was impossible to ignore – or to explain.
“Annie?”
No answer.
“Annie? Are you there?”
Something shifted overhead, and Marnie froze. She listened, breath held for what seemed an eternity, as footsteps roamed over her head. Her chest was burning now with the effort of holding it all in, but still she couldn’t bring herself to let out any air – what if she was heard? Then she couldn’t wait any more, and let out a sob as everything escaped. She stiffened in terror, sure she’d bring someone down to investigate the noise.
Nothing. No one heard, or if they did they weren’t about to come downstairs, and she was grateful for that. Still, she breathed now – short, shallow sips of air that she could let out with little or no discernible noise, even by her.
There was a sharp bang from overhead, making her jump, and then a scraping noise – and Marnie was ashamed to realise she’d wet herself. She sat there, the warm fluid spreading beneath her, and started to cry. Had she really sunk this low, after what couldn’t really have been very long locked in a cellar?
Apparently she had. The scraping noise stopped, and Marnie heard a groan – a man’s voice, she was sure, and strangely familiar. Muffled voices rose in what sounded like an argument, then there was another thud, and silence fell.
Marnie was starting to doubt her own sanity now. Still no Annie, and the light – what little there was of it – had waxed and waned at least twice. Now she was in darkness again, and no one had been near her for ages. There hadn’t been any further sounds from upstairs since she’d wet herself, and part of her was thankful.
Groaning, she shifted her weight and wondered how long it took for pressure sores to start. Her backside and tailbone ached like a bitch, and her head now felt too big – at least it didn’t hurt anymore. The smell of stale urine wafted up as she moved, and she felt the shame of it all over again. This time intermixed with anger that she hadn’t been allowed to relieve herself, had instead been kept chained like a rabid animal and neglected for God knows how long. Her stomach growled, and Marnie tried to think how long it had been since her last meal – she’d gone from raging hunger pangs to an empty, pinched feeling in her stomach, so she’d guess quite a while. Annie was gone, and had been for some time – Marnie was beginning to think she’d imagined her in the first place, made up a companion to alleviate the loneliness a little.
Something creaked, off to her left, and Marnie whimpered.
“Annie?”
No answer, save for a badly stifled giggle, and Marnie’s fear ramped up several notches.
Something thudded against the wall by her head, and she started to cry. Up to now, most of the indignities she suspected had been inflicted had occurred when she was asleep, or unconscious. Now she prayed that her attacker would knock her out again, showing at least a little mercy.
Something scraped along the floor, metal on concrete, close by – mercy seemed to have run out. Marnie yelped as something prodded her in the thigh, and again there was a giggle – whoever it was didn’t bother to stifle it this time. High pitched and cruel, Marnie recognised the tone. “Annie. I should have known.”
So she had been real, that much was true. But she hadn’t been a prisoner at all. She’d been Marnie’s tormentor all along, pretending to offer a sympathetic ear.
Someone cleared their throat, off to Marnie’s right, then there was a click – and the cellar flooded with light. Marnie clamped her eyes shut, too late; her head throbbed with the impact on her sight after so long. She felt someone fumbling with her chains and heard a click; then footsteps, running upstairs, and a door opening.
Silence.
For long moments Marnie didn’t dare to move. Finally, she unscrewed her face and allowed her eyes to open a crack, then a little more, trying to lessen the pain this new and vivid light incurred.
She was in a cellar; she’d been right about that. The concrete floor was clean, more or less, bloodstains dotting the floor here and there. Looking up, she could see shelves lining one wall, facing her – boxes and paint tins, presumably the usual cellar detritus ranged along their length. Over to her right there was a flight of wooden stairs, a single light bulb swinging over them, making them appear and disappear as it moved. There was another click, and now she could see that the door at the top of the stairs was ajar; someone had turned on the light in the room behind it. She heard laughter, high and shrill, then silence fell once more.
&nb
sp; Marnie waited, aware that she had to gauge her situation correctly here; any mistake could be her last one. For a while she could sense (or maybe imagine) someone waiting just the other side of the door, ready to fall on her when she walked through it.
Still she waited. After a while she remembered the fumbling at her wrists, and tried once more to raise her hands. She was so stiff she nearly didn’t manage it, but slowly her arms rose and she could rub her wrists, crying at the pain as blood flow was properly restored. She groaned again as she put her weight on her hands and attempted to push herself upright. Her first attempt failed, and she slumped back to the floor, demoralised and wary of trying again. Then her new position started to get painful, and she realised she had to.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?” she muttered to herself, and laughed at how alien her voice sounded. Cracked and thin, the result of dehydration and lack of use for what must surely be several days. Something small skittered away at the unaccustomed noise, but Marnie wasn’t scared of that now. After the events of the last few days, a mouse – or even rat – was the least of her worries. She knelt, feeling her knees pop and her back protest, and put her hands to the floor. She paused, then, just for a moment – taking a last look around at her prison, making sure it was safe to stand. Then she pushed up with her hands and hauled herself to her feet. She swayed a little, and almost reached out to support herself on the shelves, but then the floor stopped moving and she started to feel steadier. Her heart was racing as if she’d run the 100 metres, just from the effort of standing up, and she wondered again how long it had been. Would she deteriorate so much, physically, in a matter of days? When her heartbeat started to settle down, she moved forward towards her next target: the stairs.
They were creaky, and she moved up them as quietly as she could – flinching at each creak and crack of the ageing wood. Finally, the door was within reach – and she found she was too scared to push it open. In her head, her attacker was standing on the other side, waiting for her to walk through the opening so he or she could attack, and push her all the way back down – happy to watch her crack her head on the concrete floor, maybe even bleed to death or fracture her skull.
“Don’t be stupid,” she told herself. “You’ve got this far.” Thus cajoled, she reached forward and took hold of the doorknob, her hands quivering as she forced them to do what she wanted.
Marnie’s brain refused to process the image in front of her. She was in a kitchen, that much she could understand, but the sight of Cal tied to a wooden chair in the centre of the room, bloodied and bruised, would not compute. She whimpered, and saw him twitch; some semblance of consciousness remained, then.
“Cal?”
His head lifted slightly, then slumped again. He had no strength to lift it.
Marnie looked at the floor around him, noting the blood that had pooled and dried, and dripped again. How long had he been here, no more than what – fifteen, twenty feet away? She could hear him huffing as he tried to breathe through his nose and failed, having to almost cough his breath out through his mouth before hissing more in.
No one else seemed to be here, but Marnie knew she couldn’t trust that. She inched forward, hoping that Cal would look up, and that he’d know her. That he’d be able to stand, and that they could get out of here.
She tried again. “Cal?”
This time he managed to raise his head a little higher, and Marnie gasped as she saw the extent of the damage to his face. He tried to speak, but managed only to moan, and drool more blood on the floor.
His eyes were puffed shut, and navy blue. His nose was smeared across his face, and thick blood massed around his nostrils, bubbling when he tried to breathe. His mouth was worst, though. His lower jaw was hanging, but at entirely the wrong angle – hanging off to the left, tongue lolling down. That was swollen and bruised, almost purple, and blood was welling from a jagged cut down its side – the cut seemed to have come from the ragged remnant of one of his canine teeth. His teeth were broken, shards of enamel littering his shirt, gleaming white against the crimson stained cloth.
“Oh God, Cal,” she said, and went to him – all thought of danger forgotten now. She went to the back of the chair and saw that plastic ties were sinking into the swollen, puffy flesh of his wrists – the flesh below them already blackening and distended. Looking around, she saw a knife on the worktop a few feet away and grabbed it, trying not to cut him as she worked the blade under the ties and cut through them.
He groaned, but left his arms hanging – she lifted them into his lap, started rubbing them to try and get the blood flowing again.
“Not so pretty now, is he?”
Marnie flinched, and whirled to face the sound. “Annie.”
Annie giggled, delighted. “Ta dah! Bet you thought you were going mad, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
Marnie turned once more, positioning herself between Annie and Cal. Annie stood in the doorway to the kitchen, head cocked to one side as she watched Marnie; eager to see some sign that she’d broken her.
Marnie straightened, stood with her feet firmly planted hip-width apart, and stared right back. “I gave up on that a long time ago,” she said.
Annie’s smile faltered. “I’m sorry?”
“You will be.” Marnie took a step forward, and was gratified to see Annie take a corresponding step back. “I’ve played the nice girl long enough, I think.” She turned and looked at her boyfriend over her shoulder. “Don’t you, Cal?”
She was rewarded by a grin from that broken mouth, which quickly dropped when Cal’s gaze turned to Annie.
Marnie’s mind was clear now. The fog of the last few days had lifted – Annie had drugged her, she could see that now. How dare the little bitch? The flash of memory she’d had earlier returned, of dancing with Cal while a small, dark-haired girl glowered at them – and this time she recognised the girl as Annie. She was a little disappointed that all this was just a jealous ‘screw you’ from some lovelorn kid but she had to admit Annie had potential.
As Marnie watched, Annie seemed to gather herself. After a nervous glance at Cal, presumably making sure he wasn’t able to come to Marnie’s aid, she said – in a voice far braver sounding than she looked – “You had no idea it was me.”
“No,” Marnie said. “I didn’t.” And now her smile was brilliant, making Annie flinch. “I have to admit you were a surprise.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” the girl answered, and now her voice was quavering. “You always seem to get what you want, and you’re so bubbly and pretty. You’re always so nice to everyone . . .” Now her gaze swept across Cal’s ruined face again. “You’re like a flame.”
Marnie followed Annie’s gaze. “And he’s what, a moth?” She started to laugh. “You thought you’d teach me a lesson? Show me I can’t always have what I want? That it doesn’t pay to be nice?” She remembered the knife in her hand, and launched it at Annie, laughing all the more when the girl screeched in fright as it slammed into the doorframe not far from her head.
She ran towards Annie, who shrieked once more and fled down the hall. Gripping the knife by its handle and hauling it back out of the frame, she yelled after her: “Newsflash. I’m not that nice.”
Marnie heard the scrape of chair legs on the tile floor behind her and turned, happy to see Cal staggering to his feet. His face was a mess, but other than that he seemed essentially unharmed, if a little groggy. She moved back to him and stood on tiptoe, kissed his forehead. “Welcome back, lover. Want to play?”
He nodded, sending a spray of blood onto the floor, and grimaced. “Think I’ll take the dentist’s fees out of her flesh.”
Marcie saw the pain speaking caused him, and could barely understand his words. She frowned. “Sounds fair to me,” she said, and moved forward again. “Come on.”
The upstairs appeared deserted. Marnie stood motionless in the hall alongside Cal, listening. She could hear the wind, and from the sound of it rain was co
ming down hard, which suited her mood. It felt like the right time for end of the world weather. A floorboard creaked and she cocked her head – there it was again; no random giving of wood, this. Annie. The sound came again, and Marnie realised it was coming from the second room on her left. Floorboards creaked again, followed by the sound of a door snicking shut, and Marnie smiled. She nodded towards the room, and motioned for Cal to follow her as she moved forward.
She eased the door open as slowly as she could, not wanting to alert Annie to her presence too soon. The room appeared empty; bare floorboards were covered by a thin film of dust which showed Annie’s footprints clearly as they led towards a door on the other side of the room – either an en suite bathroom, Marnie thought, or a fitted cupboard of some kind. Either way, she was trapped.
Cal moved past her and positioned himself to one side of the door so that, if she opened it, he’d be behind her and well placed to grab her and hold her, so that Marnie could go to work on her.
Marnie let out a slow breath that shook with desire. This was what she loved; not the pretence of normality that she had to maintain day by day so that no one would suspect; not the playing nice that ensured people liked and trusted her, and by extension Cal. No, what she loved was cornering the mouse and starting to play, seeing the fear on a victim’s face as they realised both their miscalculation and the fact that their error was about to prove fatal.
A sob, quickly stifled, came from behind the door, and Marnie relaxed into her role. She strode forward and opened the door, revealing Annie cowering in a cupboard, tears etching a path in the dirt on her cheeks.
“I’m sorry!” she wailed. “I didn’t know!”
“That’s an excuse?” Marnie said. “Pretty poor one, if you ask me.” She looked over her shoulder. “What do you think, love? Should we accept her apology?”
“Not much of an apology,” Cal growled. “I don’t think she means it.”
In Times Of Want Page 16