by Ezra Blake
“I’m sorry,” Chris says. There’s something wrong with the way he forms words. The flow of his speech is rickety, lacks rhythm. “Are you leaving?”
“I’m worried about Ash.” He steps to the side, putting some distance between them. “It’s raining.”
“I can see that.” Chris watches him for a moment, his expression blank, and then he smiles and gestures to the dining table. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Have a seat. Your coffee’s still hot.”
Jake reluctantly pulls out a chair. It’s the sort of antique he shouldn’t touch without washing his hands. This place is too old. A thousand previous occupants linger in the spaces between stones, all of them dead and silent.
“Do you guys have a car? Maybe we could drive around real quick. I’m worried about him.”
“Don’t be,” Ivan says without turning around. “Herr Latzke is involved with everyone in a five-kilometer radius. He’ll stumble across civilization eventually, and when he does, they’ll send him back to us.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
He glances to Chris, measuring his reaction, but gets stuck on his eyes again. Ivan sets a platter of fruit on the table between them.
“I really think I know you,” Jake says. “It’s kind of driving me crazy.”
“You might have seen our photos in the paper,” Ivan says. “I spoke to a handful of journalists last year.”
“About what?”
“Jacob,” Chris says, “your coffee is getting cold.”
He lifts the mug to his lips and pretends to take a sip.
“I spoke about an incident at the college where I worked.” He rests a hand on the back of Christopher’s neck, and Chris bristles like a porcupine. “Brown. In Providence.”
In an instant, Jake becomes hyper aware of his posture, his facial expression, and what he’s doing with his hands. It’s like the first time he got stoned in front of his parents.
“Doesn’t ring a bell, but whatever.” He grins. Once he starts, it’s impossible to relax his facial muscles. “I need to find Ash.”
He grins his way to the front door and tries to remember how walking is supposed to look. His voices murmur under the downpour. His shoes are on his feet and his hand is on the doorknob when Chris catches him with a light touch on his waist. Jake spins around.
“I’ll come with you,” he says.
“It’s fine, I’ll just—”
“Please. I insist.”
And what can Jake do but step outside?
The rain soaks through his hoodie and into his bones. By the time they’ve reached the tree line, his shoes squelch with every step and the colors are dripping down his t-shirt. It’s a remnant from Clothes, his short-lived streetwear brand. At one point, it was an illustration of an eyeball emblazoned with the words look what I can do. Now it’s a blur. He should have outsourced the screen printing.
They walk in silence for fifteen minutes. Jake is transfixed by the image of Ash’s abandoned shoes by the front door. He’s barefoot or he’s dead. Either way, they’re in some serious shit.
“Chris,” he says.
He’s walking ahead and doesn’t turn around. He can’t hear over the rain.
“Chris. Let’s go back.”
“You don’t want to find him?” Chris shouts.
“I don’t think he’s out here.”
Without a word, he turns on his heel and starts trudging back the way they came. Mud splatters his shins with every step. By the time they reach the clearing, Jake is shivering, though he can’t feel the cold. Chris stops him before he reaches the door.
“Take your clothes off.” He pauses much longer than necessary, staring, and then adds, “Ivan won’t want that shirt dripping inside.”
After a moment of hesitation, Jake unzips his hoodie. Chris removes his jacket and watches through clumps of wet hair. His eyes slice up and down Jake’s body.
“The cat,” Chris says. “Was it yours?”
Jake strips off his bleeding t-shirt to reveal the eye-shaped smear where the ink has stained his skin. “I shouldn’t have told you about the cat.”
“You’re trusting. It’s not a fault.” He removes his shirt and they face each other. Faint scars mar his torso. “Pants, too.”
Jake peels the jeans off his skinny chicken legs. He tucks his thumbs beneath the old elastic of his briefs and says, “It’s Dour, right? Christopher Dour?”
Chris bites his lip, closes the gap between them, and cups Jake’s flimsy bicep in one palm. It takes every ounce of resolve to stop himself from flinching.
Jake says, “I really admire your work.”
His hand glides over Jake’s collarbone and down his chest, following the trail of hair to his waistband. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“I had a poster board collaged with all the newspaper clippings. All their photos were out of date. Like you weren’t interesting enough to photograph until they started turning up bodies.” It’s half confession, half sales pitch. If he ran into the forest, would he reach civilization before he starved?
“I wish I had the guts to prove I’m worth remembering.”
For a moment, he’s sure Chris will try to kiss him, and he doesn’t know what happens after that. But Chris opens the door.
Inside, something is wrong.
The lights are off. The carpet is ruffled up and knocked askew, and though the table is set, Ivan isn’t here. Three raw eggs fill the frying pan.
“Stay calm.” Christopher’s voice is close behind him. “He always has a plan.”
An arm locks around Jake’s neck. They stumble forward. His wet feet slip against the stone, and then the ground rushes up to smack him in the side of the head. He drags in a breath. Chris swings a knee over his hip and grips his throat.
Jake doesn’t think. He kicks.
Chris makes a pathetic hnng sound and curls forward to cup his balls, and that’s enough leverage to flip him over. Jake reels back to punch him, but an invisible force catches his fist in mid-air.
Chris is crying.
Within seconds, the low whine devolves into sniveling: teeth bared in anguish, eyes squeezed shut. Jake lowers his fist. “Jesus, what?”
“I’m sorry,” Chris chokes. “Don’t hurt me, please, I’m sorry!”
Jake stares down at the soggy, snotty mess beneath him. “What?” He repeats. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“You don’t understand, it’s not me! I didn’t want to hurt anybody, but he’s—he never stops—”
He sits back on his haunches and says, “Dude, pull yourself together.”
“I’m s-sorry.” He sniffles and wipes his nose.
When Jake first saw his blurry face on the news, Christopher looked like the devil. It made sense. Evil comes in a pretty package; naturally, he wore a mask. Now, things aren’t so clear-cut. He offers Chris his hand, pulls him up, and leads him to the couch where he sits, biting back tears. Jake sits in the chair opposite him. Damn the upholstery.
“It isn’t me,” Chris says. His voice is quiet and strained. “Ivan is the Butcher. He groomed me, Jake, he tortured me—look.” He tries to roll up his pant leg, but when the wet fabric catches, he abandons the effort and strips them off. “Look,” he says, propping his left leg up on the table. “He did this.”
Jake stares at the rubber prosthetic.
“Without painkillers. And do you know what he did with the leg?”
He slowly shakes his head.
“He cooked it. He ate it—” Christopher’s voice cracks “—and he fed it to me.”
Rain smashes against the windows. Rain batters the wind chimes against the side of the house.
Jake stands. “Help me find Ash. We’ll grab our shit and run.”
Rain pours off the roof and floods into the room. Rain creeps up his trachea, fills his sinuses.
“What if Ivan comes back?”
And he is drowning, gasping, breathing water.
Messiah, help us! Find us!
&
nbsp; Christopher’s blond eyebrows crease. His foot, the real one, is scarred leather. He says, “If someone has to die tonight—”
Jake skitters into the hallway. He peeks around every corner before passing any threshold. He once harbored the delusion that he was on the shortlist to play the next James Bond, but in consensus reality, this is as close as he’ll ever come.
The giant rug is folded over itself. Elliot’s sheets are halfway off the bed, exposing the silvery-blue mattress. His bag is open.
“What are you looking for?” Chris asks from the doorframe.
Jake rifles through the bag and tugs on the first items of clothing he finds—Elliot’s baggy gym shorts and a t-shirt that makes him look like he’s cruising Woody’s for a sugar daddy. Better than making his escape naked.
They whisper: Hurry, hurry, hurry...
He dumps the bag on the floor and checks every pocket. Elliot took his pills while he was sleeping. There were five—as many as he felt safe smuggling onto a plane—and Elliot sniffed them all. The rest are in Ash.
And Ash is dead.
Lower. Lower. Listen...
Jake drops to his belly. The wardrobe’s trim moulding descends within an inch of the floor. It’s dark under there. Only someone tiny would think to look beneath.
Jake slips his hand under and—praise Jesus—brushes against the plastic baggie. He slides it out after several attempts. Four pills.
“Yes,” he breathes, already pulverizing the bag. “Okay, where is—”
When he turns around, he sees floor. Chris is standing there in his underwear, holding the floor open. He says, “I think I found them.”
Elliot brushes his teeth, pulls on slippers, and shuffles into the kitchen. Somehow, Ivan hears him over the rain. “Good afternoon,” he says. “I hope you slept well.”
He flips off the stove burner and leans against the counter. Without the flame, the only light is from the cloudy chandelier. This is what he once dreamed college lecture halls might look like, grand and slightly gothic, with arched beams, a chandelier, and scattered architectural novelties. He’s not sure where he got the idea.
“Pretty well.” Elliot yawns. He took an Adderall this morning which barely thinned the fog. He’d take another, but they need to be careful. He doesn’t know where the next batch will come from. “Where is everyone?”
“Christopher has taken the others into town for groceries, but we didn’t want to wake you. If there’s anything you need, I’d be happy to call him.”
Elliot shakes his head. “Just coffee, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Ivan is ready with a steaming mug. Elliot takes a sip. Every cup of coffee he’s ever forced into his body has been means to an end, but this was brewed to be savored—smooth, rich, the perfect temperature for drinking.
“What time is it?” Elliot asks. “When did we go to sleep?”
“It’s noon. You and Ashton retired to your room around eight last night, but Jacob and I spoke until—ah, it must have been eleven or twelve. At risk of offending, he had plenty to say about you.”
He takes another long sip of coffee. Ivan steps away from his uncooked eggs and saunters around the table to lay a hand on his shoulder. Elliot’s throat tightens. He’s struck by a pang of nostalgia for something imaginary.
“They don’t trust me,” he says.
“They have every reason to distrust you. You’ve already proven yourself to be a sadist.”
His head snaps up. “Excuse me?”
“Not an indictment, I assure you. I share your proclivities, more or less.”
Elliot drinks coffee and frowns. Given enough Adderall, he can drill into any statement and map out its implications, but now, he’s stuck on the surface. “Um,” he says. He lifts the mug to his lips and finds it empty.
“Or perhaps I’ve missed the mark.” Ivan smiles wistfully. “My sincerest apologies if so. It’s so rare to find a kindred spirit that I often conjure them from thin air.”
“A kindred spirit,” he repeats.
“I was so impressed by Jacob’s account that I called Herr Latzke this morning, and he filled in with the rest of the details. You have an eidetic memory, you’re an excellent student, you’ve performed a successful nephrectomy and nullification, and you broke your friend’s finger to—I assume—prove a point of some sort?”
A coiling, hot sensation is building in Elliot’s stomach. He says, “It was to show the gate agent he has a connective tissue disorder. He doesn’t, it was an excuse, but mostly—”
“You saw an opportunity, and you took it.” Ivan says. “You wanted to know what would happen.”
Elliot leans closer. A drop of cold sweat rolls down his neck.
“Curiosity is my greatest weakness as well. Even something so benign as a passion for learning can become twisted.” His eyes darken. Elliot can’t look away. “Though I’m sure you have many motivations for your crueler actions, curiosity is always among them, isn’t it? You’re a scientist. You experiment.”
He extends his hand. Elliot hesitates.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Ivan leads him out of the kitchen and toward the long hall to their bedroom. He moves with a comforting, assured grace. He knows what he’s doing. “There’s a certain experiment I’ve been dying to try, but I doubt any board would approve it,” he says. “Do you read the literature on pain management?”
“Sometimes,” Elliot hedges.
“You might be aware of a recent push to reduce post-operative opiate medications. Capsaicin has proven surprisingly effective in that regard.”
“Capsaicin, uh.” He blinks the floor into focus. “Like in chilis?”
Ivan smiles. “The very same. When concentrated doses are dripped into open wounds, the resulting analgesia can last for days or even weeks. The pepper numbs the pain, thereby reducing opioid requirements. Do you follow?”
“You want to try it in humans?”
“I have. It’s already used in surgery, but we err on the side of caution. When we overshoot, numbness can last for months.” He stops in the doorframe. “Why not find the minimum effective dose?”
Though Elliot sees the obstacle, his reflexes are too sluggish to stop himself from crashing into Ivan’s chest. Ivan catches him before he falls backward, his wrist against the small of Elliot’s back, warm breath on his scalp. He guides Elliot to the bed to keep him from falling. Even with his head on the pillow, he can’t see straight. Ivan’s two faces swim into view, grinning.
“Tell me,” His thumb slips under Elliot’s chin and tips it upward, coaxing him into intense, unbreakable eye contact. “Why can’t I perform the experiment?”
Elliot’s thoughts float in molasses. Why can’t he?
“It would hurt,” He says. As he speaks, Ivan is slipping his arms under Elliot’s hips and shoulders. “You can’t just…it’d be…” He’s screaming—like a nightmare—but only words come out.
“It’s unethical.” Ivan lifts him out of bed and nudges the carpet out of the way. He sets Elliot’s limp body on the floor. “I could never publish, but if I put my findings into practice, the literature would follow.” He’s bent over the keyhole, turning, grasping.
“Is that what you do?” Elliot slurs. “For Latzke? You run experiments?”
“I pay him for the privilege.”
Elliot blinks and blinks. “Pay for…the drugs?”
“No, darling.” Ivan smiles. “For the subjects.”
The trapdoor swings open.
In the grainy darkness, every shadow is a shape, and every shape is threatening. Jake stares down the black hallway into oblivion. He says, “I thought this was a basement.”
Chris punches a wall switch. A series of dim cage lights flip on one by one—further, further, until they reach a bend in the tunnel. The walls are corrugated metal, rusted through in some places, and Jake has changed his mind. He doesn’t want to be Bond anymore.
“Maybe you should put a shirt
on,” he says. “It’s cold down here.”
Chris grabs his hand and tugs him forward.
The air is heavy and smells like the sort of dirt even worms won’t touch. A deep roar reverberates from somewhere in the distance, vacuuming every thought from his skull. The floorboards drop into place with a soft thunk, and in that instant, there is no before and there is no after. There’s only stone and metal, leading ever forward in a uniform, infinite loop.
“Have you been here before?” Jake asks.
For a few moments, there’s no sound but the terrible, rhythmic echo of their steps. Once or twice, he thinks he hears Chris speak—you’ve been here—but it’s only noise. It’s only meaningless patterns in the distant roar.
At last, Chris says, “Not alone.” His voice bounces off the concrete floor and he repeats himself five, ten, fifty times. They shuffle over dirt, stone, metal grates. The lights grow fewer and further between as they approach the bend in the tunnel. Beyond, the path forks in two. Jake pauses.
“How do you remember where to go?”
“I don’t,” Chris says, and presses forward.
He’s frozen. The path behind is the path ahead, and he has the uncanny feeling that even if he turns back, they’ll eventually run into each other again.
“Come on,” Chris shouts. “Don’t you want to find them?”
“How do you know he’s down here?”
“How do you know he’s not?”
Jake wraps his arms around himself and takes a careful step forward.
Goosebumps blanket his entire body. He scans the hallway as he walks but there’s nothing to see—no markers, no clues, just rusted metal and lights in cages.
“Talk to me,” he murmurs to himself. “Please.”
But with every step, the rushing grows louder and louder. They answer, cackle, bellow and scream, and nothing penetrates the deafening roar. He catches a glimpse of Christopher’s ghoulish form, the faint sheen of his skin, and then the path turns again, and he disappears. Jake lags behind, scanning the cracks in the floor for anything other than dirt and concrete. Plants, bugs. Anything alive.
There: a sparkle. A drop of silver.
He stoops down and holds the pair of broken glasses up to the light. They’re round. One lens is missing and the other is cracked; the frame is bent, the nose pieces knocked out of place. He’s never seen them before.