by Jack Jordan
‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ Chloe said, unable to take her eyes off her mother’s face, as though if she dared to blink, she would vanish for good.
‘I can’t believe you’re alive.’
They held each other for a few minutes, and the tears flowed again. They wiped their cheeks dry and both took deep breaths.
‘How did this happen? Why?’
‘I was walking home from school and Maxim pulled up beside me and offered to drive me home. He said he had to stop at his house first, to pick up something for you, and left me in the car outside. He didn’t come back out again, and when I went looking for him, he hit me over the head and I woke up down here.’
Chloe kept talking, divulging everything that happened to her once she woke up in the basement, whispering for the sake of the children.
‘We both lost control of our lives that day,’ she said. ‘I lost my freedom, and he lost himself to his obsessions and desires. He had no more control over his life than I did mine. We were both prisoners from then on.’
Paige couldn’t hold back the tears, they flowed and flowed, but she didn’t make a sound. Her bottom lip trembled, and bile sat at the back of her tongue, ready to lurch up and out of her mouth, but she waited until Chloe was finished with her story before she ran to the kitchen sink and vomited. The children cowered in the corner as she ran.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, with bile stringing from her lips. She ran the tap, drank, and rinsed away the sick from the sink bowl.
‘I don’t know how he could do this,’ she said, feeling Chloe’s hand rest on her back. She stood up and looked around the room, taking in the sight of the concrete walls and floors, spider webs and mice droppings, an old bed in a room of its own. She doubled over and vomited into the sink again. Her daughter had been handcuffed to that bed for three years.
Chloe cleaned her up and ushered her back to the sofa. Paige was shaking violently.
‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked.
Paige shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Chloe flinched and her eyes began to glisten again. ‘How?’
‘He couldn’t take it anymore.’
Paige didn’t need to say another word. Chloe nodded, and big, silent tears fell onto her lap.
‘Why now? Why has he brought you down here now?’
My own brother told me he was in love with me, showed me the shrine he had created in my honour, and touched me, kissed my lips, groped my body, wanting me – his own sister.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will he come for you again? Take you away?’
‘He can’t, not now that I know you’re alive down here. He knows I won’t leave here without you or your children.’
And then she realised: Maxim never planned to let her go. He wanted to keep her down there with Chloe and their children forever.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Maxim paced the room with tears of frustration filling his eyes, as he tried to figure out how it had all gone wrong. Did she not remember the love they used to have? All those nights he crept into her room and made love to her? She had to remember. He was certain that she did. If it hadn’t been for their father, they would still be together. They would have had their own children. He wouldn’t have had to take Chloe. She must see that; she would, with time.
He took a swig of Scotch from the bottle and decided to head upstairs to her room – the room he had dedicated to her. He looked at all of the photos, the candles still lit and flickering. Hundreds of Paiges stared back at him from the walls: they were laughing at him, taunting him. He could hear her voice in his head.
‘You’re sick. You’re sick in the head!’
He hit his head with his fists, and tried to beat the words from his brain.
‘No! She loves me!’
He snatched at the faces on the walls, tore her eyes off him, ripped up her smile, punched a photo of her face until his fist broke through the plaster on the wall. He kicked and yelled and cried, destroying the room he had devoted to her – the one place where he felt at peace – until he was lying on the floor, sobbing like a child, holding the one photo of her that he couldn’t bear to rip: the photo of the two of them, smiling into the camera, her with freckles on her nose from the summer sun, him with the first few strands of facial hair on his chin. She had loved him then. She had beckoned him into her room, into her bed, whispering inside his head, telling him what she wanted him to do to her. She loved him then, and she would love him again; he just had to give her time.
And then the doorbell rang.
TWENTY-NINE
Paige watched as Chloe tucked her children into bed and gave them each a kiss.
There was still no sign of Maxim. It had been at least three or four hours since he had locked her in the basement. She couldn’t even begin to wonder what he was doing up there above them. She’d had no idea he was capable of this – how could she try and figure out what he planned to do next?
She sipped at the mug of tea Chloe had made for her, still attempting to digest it all, and tried to think of a way to escape.
‘They are used to the lights,’ Chloe said as she came back and sat with her mother on the sofa. ‘They nap in the day, we all do; it makes the time go faster.’
‘I can’t even begin to imagine how you’ve managed to cope down here for so long. You’re so strong.’
‘I don’t know, either,’ she said before looking over to her children tucked up in the bed. ‘They don’t know any different.’
‘Is he… good with them?’
‘He doesn’t hurt them. They love him.’
‘But he hurts you.’
‘I’m not you. Even he knows that, however hard he tries to believe it. The truth upsets him.’
Paige stared into space as she tried to fathom her brother’s obsession with her, his mindset, his ability to do what he has done for so long.
‘Don’t waste your time trying to work him out,’ Chloe said, as if reading her mother’s mind. ‘I stopped a long time ago. I don’t even think he understands himself.’
Paige suddenly sat up straight. ‘Did you hear that?’ She looked up at the ceiling.
‘Hear what?’
‘It sounded like a bell.’
Paige got up from the sofa and crept up the wooden steps. She could hear a man’s voice on the other side of the door.
She sat on the steps so her eyes were level with the floor and looked through the crack underneath the door. Shoes passed.
‘Where is she, Maxim?’
Dad.
‘She’s safe.’
‘I want to see her.’
‘You can’t separate us, Dad. Not like before. She’s mine – she always has been. I won’t let you come between us again.’
‘I thought you’d changed… I thought you had got better, overcome these delusions, this obsession—’
‘Obsession? It’s love.’
‘She’s your sister!’
‘You don’t understand what we have. You never have.’
‘We were protecting her when we sent you away, your mother and I, but we were trying to protect you, too. We were giving you a second chance. We shouldn’t have. She is in danger because we let her down; I let her down. I let you get to her.’
‘I won’t let you separate us again.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Somewhere you can’t reach her.’
‘DAD!’ she yelled for him from behind the door, and saw his shoes turn towards the door.
‘Paige?’
‘In here!’
He turned the handle just before something smashed and glass showered down on the floor on the other side of the door. Paige watched in horror from underneath the door as they fought and scuffled on the other side. She could hear punches, groans, falling objects.
‘Leave him alone!’ she screamed from behind the door.
‘No!’ her father yelled.
And then she heard the gunshot.
Her
ears rang so loud that she couldn’t hear herself screaming. Her tears ran from her chin and onto the wooden steps.
Drops of blood began fall onto the floorboards just outside the door. Her father’s face appeared at the crack under the door, hitting the floorboards with a loud thud. His eyes were open and stared at her lifelessly from the other side. Blood pooled beneath him and crept under the door.
Paige screamed and screamed as she stared into her father’s vacant eyes.
‘He can never come between us again, Paige,’ Maxim said from behind the door. ‘Now we can be happy.’
THIRTY
‘We’re getting out of here, Chloe. I won’t let him hurt you anymore,’ Paige said, pacing the room and shaking violently.
Chloe looked at her mother with what looked like pity, as though Paige didn’t understand the situation she was in. ‘He won’t let us leave.’
‘Of course he won’t. We’ll make him.’
‘He said that…’ Chloe looked over to the children, who had managed to fall asleep again after they woke up to the gunshot and Paige’s screams. Chloe lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘He said he would kill the children if I tried to escape.’
‘Chloe, I won’t let that happen.’
‘But I can’t take that chance.’
‘I’m your mother. I will make sure you and the children get out of here alive.’
‘Mum… He will never let us leave – any of us.’
She spoke so surely that Paige began to doubt herself.
She couldn’t escape the memory of her father’s lifeless eyes staring at her through the crack beneath the door; the bloody puddle forming around him. They had spoken of a past that Paige couldn’t remember. What did Maxim do to be sent away? What did he do to her?
They had been waiting for hours for Maxim to come down after murdering his father, but he never showed.
‘I had a third child until a few days ago,’ Chloe said, her face painted with pain.
Had. The word stung at Paige’s chest.
‘Jacob, his name was. He was dying. He was getting worse and worse each day until…’ she hesitated as tears filled her eyes. ‘Maxim took him. The only way we will leave the basement is if we are dying or already dead.’
Paige was speechless. She imagined her brother taking the dying boy from the basement, carrying him up the stairs, and… what did he do with him?
And then she remembered the boy on the front of the newspapers in the hospital. The lockdown. The media frenzy. The boy without a family. Those piercing green eyes.
‘How old was Jacob?’
‘Two,’ Chloe said, wiping he tears from her cheeks.
‘Green eyes? Red hair?’
Chloe looked strange, as though she wouldn’t dare believe that there was hope that her son was still alive. ‘Yes.’
‘I think I know where he is.’
Chloe looked away, as though she wouldn’t let herself believe it. When she looked back at her mother, tears were flowing again, and a smile had spread across her face.
‘Jacob’s alive? How? Where is he?’
‘There was a boy at the hospital. He had been left outside the entrance with pneumonia. His face is featured on the front page of every newspaper in the country.’
‘But what if it isn’t Jacob?’
‘Two years old, no known relatives, green eyes and red hair? I really think it’s him, Chloe.’
Chloe broke down and fell into her mother’s embrace as tears streamed into her relieved smile.
‘Jacob’s alive!’
As she rocked her daughter, Paige’s eyes filled with tears as well.
‘I have to find him. I have to get to him,’ Chloe said, wiping her cheeks; she looked exhausted.
‘You will Chloe, I promise.’
‘When I first woke up here, he left me for a long time,’ Chloe said. ‘I don’t think he will be coming down for a while. Do we wait? Do we rest?’
‘I can’t let my guard down. That’s what he wants.’
‘Do you mind if I rest?’ Chloe asked. ‘You don’t have to sleep, but you could lie with me. I have to be strong and ready to go to Jacob.’
Now that they had been reunited, neither of them could bear the thought of being apart. Paige nodded.
Chloe led her to the bed, the very same bed that she had been handcuffed to for three years. Chloe got on the bed and lay down. She beckoned her mother to join her. Paige slipped off her shoes and climbed onto the bed, unable to forget that it was the bed where her daughter’s children had been conceived.
‘I’ll still be here when you wake up,’ Paige said.
Chloe rested her head on her mother’s lap and closed her eyes. A faint smile rested on her lips, as though she was thinking of Jacob alive and well. Paige stroked Chloe’s hair until she fell asleep.
As Paige sat there on the bed and stared out into the basement, she began planning how she would kill her brother for what he had done. It wasn’t too long before her eyes began to flicker, begging for rest, and she unwillingly allowed her guard to drop and fell asleep.
THIRTY-ONE
The moment Paige walked through the door she knew something was wrong. She could sense the tension in the air, the silence that had fallen on the house the moment the key entered the lock in the front door.
Mum and Dad knew.
Maxim was behind her, standing in front of the open door. He didn’t follow Paige inside at first. He sensed it too.
‘Don’t say a word,’ he told her. ‘Let me handle it.’
He shut the door and they walked down the quiet hallway into the living room. Mum and Dad were waiting.
‘Paige, can we speak to you alone please?’ Dad said.
Paige hesitated, waiting for Maxim’s permission, but he wouldn’t be that brazen – not in front of them. She nodded and sat down on the opposite sofa. Maxim went to sit beside her.
‘We’d like to speak to Paige alone, Maxim.’
‘Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of me.’
‘Maxim,’ Dad warned.
Maxim was nineteen, and had been taller and stronger than their father for some time; they stared at each other, the tension growing thicker. Finally, Maxim stood and left the room, but shot Paige a look of warning before he closed the door. Paige knew he would be listening on the other side.
She didn’t look at her parents, but at the floor, waiting for them to say the words. She couldn’t tell them the truth. Maxim said their parents would cut them out of the family. They wouldn’t understand. She couldn’t lose her parents, so she had to lie.
She heard her dad sigh heavily, sadness hanging heavy in the sound.
‘We know you’re pregnant, Paige.’
Tears began to sting at her eyes. She tried to blink them away. Her face felt hot and red, and her palms began to sweat.
‘Honey, talk to us,’ her mum said.
Paige could only shake her head, and when she did, tears slid down her cheeks.
He was listening on the other side of the door. She couldn’t talk, not with him so close.
‘Is the father a boy from school?’
She shook her head.
‘Who is it, Paige? Who’s the father?’
Her throat was burning from holding back the sob that longed to claw out of her. The truth was there, stuck in her throat, longing to climb up and out into the open, to be heard. Her whole body was shaking.
They wouldn’t give up. Not until they knew. She had to tell them.
She whispered his name.
‘Who? Speak up, honey. We’re not angry. We just need to know.’
Her bottom lip began to quiver. She couldn’t see through the tears.
She whispered again, terrified to say it, for Maxim to hear her. What would he do to her if he heard? Would Mum and Dad really throw them out and never talk to them again?
‘Paige, talk to us.’
She couldn’t breathe. Her throat was tight. Her chest was on fire. Tears flowed
and flowed as she parted her lips to form his name.
‘Maxim.’
Paige jolted awake. All of the resurfacing memories had bled into her dreams, and she had been crying in her sleep. She remembered everything.
How could I have forgotten? How is that possible?
And then she recalled where she was: the basement. Chloe wasn’t beside her.
‘Chloe?’
The basement was as dark as night. She tried to leave the bed, but couldn’t. She was strapped to the bed by her wrists: one wrist in handcuffs, and the other, in the plaster cast, stuck to the bedframe by duct tape.
‘Maxim?’ her voice was timid, terrified. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Sweat covered her body. She was withdrawing from the pills. Her head was pounding and her heart was racing.
‘Maxim, answer me.’
‘It didn’t have to be like this.’
The sound of his voice from within the darkness made her flinch. He was in the room somewhere, taunting her.
‘Where’s Chloe? Where are the children?’
‘They’re here.’
She couldn’t hear them. Either he was lying or they were gagged, or worse.
‘You can’t keep us shut in here forever.’
‘I’ll find a way. We can make it work.’
‘We aren’t possessions, Maxim, we’re people. You can’t keep us locked down here for your own pleasure.’
‘You are all I’ve ever wanted. If only you had cooperated, none of this would have happened. Chloe would have never been born. You would never have met Ryan. It could have been you and me, and our children.’
‘Maxim, I’m your sister. We share parents, DNA – it’s not right.’
‘We had a child before.’
Paige knew Chloe would be confused on hearing this. She had no idea about the life Paige had had to endure before she met Ryan, before Chloe was born.
‘It’s dead. I had an abortion. I got that thing out of me as quickly as I could.’