by Jack Jordan
‘You don’t mean that. Mum and Dad made you.’
‘They didn’t make me do anything. I was glad to be free of it, of that thing that you put there, growing inside of me. It repulsed me because it was a part of you. I remember everything, I remember it all.’
She could see the memories playing in her mind: how he had controlled her every move, never letting her be alone, and how he had told her what she could wear, what she could eat, who she could see – controlling her entire life right before their parents’ eyes, but they couldn’t see it.
‘The children can hear you. Is that really what you think of them?’
‘They are nothing like you. They are as kind and beautiful as their mother. You’re nothing to do with who they are.’
Her mind wouldn’t stop remembering. She saw her old bedroom, dark with the night, as she waited for Maxim to creep into her bedroom and shut the door behind him. She would wipe the tears away before he came too close. Her parents had had no idea what happened to her when they fell asleep.
‘Mum and Dad thought I was shy,’ she was laughing, a deranged sound in the darkness, and tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘I wasn’t shy; I was terrified. I couldn’t do anything without your permission. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have thoughts of my own, I didn’t have anything. When I walked to and from school, you were there to drop me off and pick me up. When I went shopping, you were right beside me. If I made friends, you scared them away. I couldn’t even be with Mum and Dad without you breathing down my neck, suffocating me. I didn’t have anything or anyone but you, and all I wanted was to escape the hold you’d had on me ever since I could remember. You groomed me into submission as soon as I could talk.’
‘You loved me.’
‘You told me I did – so much that I believed it. I believed everything you told me. You were always right.’
Maxim fell silent. That terrified her more than if he was yelling.
‘Do you know what they did to me, after they sent you away?’ she said, talking to the darkness. ‘I was sectioned. They had me locked up with crazy people for two years. Isn’t that ironic? You raped me and got me pregnant, yet I was the one who was locked up. They thought I needed to be saved from myself, that I was going to harm myself, but that Christianity could cure you. I didn’t need to be saved from myself, I needed to be saved from you.’
‘The doctors made you forget me,’ he said, as though he hadn’t heard a word she had said. ‘When I came back from my first posting in the north, you were pregnant with Ryan’s baby. I had lost you to him. You weren’t the girl I knew anymore, you were a beautiful woman, and you’d forgotten me.
‘I waited for you to see sense, to remember everything, but you never did. I watched Chloe grow up, a miniature you, and finally one day I realised: if I couldn’t have you, I could have her. She was so much like you, Paige. It was like looking back in time. Although I knew she wouldn’t make up for not having you, I thought she could help me fill the void. But even after I had her, I still couldn’t forget that she was only a substitute.’
Paige sobbed in the darkness, and thought of all the lives Maxim had destroyed: hers, Chloe’s, Ryan’s, the lives of their parents.
‘You’re a monster!’
‘You left me no choice! I tried to make you remember. I tried to erase Ryan from your life; I burned his belongings, I cut him from your photos, but still you wouldn’t remember. I have spent my entire life watching you and protecting you. I removed everything of Chloe’s from her bedroom; I taunted you with the home video to scare you in the hope you would come to me yourself – but you wouldn’t, so I burned down the house so you would have to stay here with me. I’ve done so much for you, and still you won’t say that you love me like you used to.’
She hadn’t been going mad – he was mad and she was his prey. He was the man that Ryan wanted dead. Had Ryan tried to kill Maxim with the gun? Could he not go through with it? Or had he been wrong and suspected someone else entirely? Had Ryan really killed himself? Had Maxim used Ryan’s gun to kill their father?
The strip lighting flickered on. She began to see flashes of them: Chloe, John, and Mary, sat on chairs with their hands tied behind their backs, duct tape holding their ankles to the chair legs and taped over their mouths. Maxim approached the bed, appearing closer and closer with every flicker of light.
‘What are you doing?’ Paige cried, shrinking away from him. She felt as powerless as she had all those years ago as she’d waited for her brother to creep along the hall and into her bedroom.
‘Taking back what’s mine.’
Chloe screamed behind the duct tape as Maxim pulled Paige’s ankles so she was lying down on the bed. Paige cried and struggled against him; his hand pressed down on her injured ankle, and then he pinned her down with his body, forcing his mouth onto hers. She bit his lip until blood poured into her mouth. Maxim cried out and pinned her to the bed with one hand around her neck. She freed one leg and launched her knee into his groin. He doubled over and she thrust the top of her head into his. As he fell limp against her, Paige had to fight away the nausea. Her head throbbed, she was dizzy and felt faint, but she wasn’t going to give in. This was her only chance to get free. She spotted his keys on the bed: they had slipped out of his pocket during the struggle.
‘Chloe! You have to get free. The keys to the cuffs and the door are right here on the bed.’
Chloe struggled frantically to free herself from the duct tape around her wrist and ankles. The whites of her eyes were red from crying, and she had a purple bruise on her cheek.
‘Chloe, move back to back with John and he can free you.’
Chloe nodded, shuffled her chair towards John and manoeuvred round so she was sitting with her back to his.
‘John, help your mum out of the tape. Try and be quick, darling, okay?’
Paige watched from the bed, stealing looks at Maxim, who was lying unconscious on top of her.
Maxim began to stir.
John seemed to take forever. Mary was petrified, her big eyes peering around the room while liquid dripped from her seat.
Maxim groaned.
The tape from Chloe’s wrist fell to the floor.
‘Well done, John!’
Chloe ripped off the tape and instantly went to free her children.
It took precious minutes, and although Maxim wasn’t yet conscious, he was beginning to move around.
Once the children were free, Chloe came to the end of the bed.
‘Are you okay?’ Chloe whispered.
‘I’m fine,’ Paige lied, feeling dizzy and nauseous. ‘The keys are here, by his shoulder.’
‘I can’t reach.’
‘You’ll have to climb over him.’
Chloe’s complexion paled. ‘But what if he wakes up?’
‘Chloe, you have to try, he could wake up any moment. This is our only chance!’
Chloe tried to lean over without getting on the bed, but eventually rested a knee on the mattress. She still couldn’t reach. In the end she had to climb onto the bed and reach over Maxim, her body inches from his; she grabbed the keys.
‘Well done. Now you need to unlock the handcuffs.’
Chloe looked down at Maxim below her, and then at her mother. She reached out towards the handcuffs on Paige’s right wrist. After a few misses, the key entered the lock. From the way she had to hold all of her weight on her knees, the key turned painfully slow in the lock. When the lock clicked open, they both sighed with relief. Chloe took the key out of the lock and shoved the keys in her pocket.
‘Well done, Chloe!’
Paige had unclipped her wrist and was beginning to unwrap the tape around the plaster cast when Maxim’s eyes snapped open. He spotted Chloe above him and struck her with all his might. The blow sent her flying off the bed and out of sight.
‘No!’
Paige wrapped her legs around his torso as he struggled to pin her down. She had started to loosen the tape when Maxim’s ha
nd grabbed her free wrist.
‘You’re not getting out of here, Paige! I’m not losing you again!’
She brought her knee up against his chin and heard a tooth crack. He cried out and let go of her wrist to cup his mouth. She freed the cast, struggled to her feet, and jumped over him. Maxim’s hand shot up and grabbed her ankle; she fell halfway off the bed. Paige kicked wildly, and felt the heel of her foot connect with his nose.
As Maxim fell back, Paige dragged herself off the bed and clambered to her feet.
‘Come on!’ Paige said, ushering Chloe and the children up the stairs. Chloe gave the keys to Paige. Her hands shook as she tried to find the right key for the door. They reached the top of the stairs and she slid the key inside the lock.
‘You need to grab the phone in the hallway and get outside. Call 999, and then you need to run. Run down the driveway until you’re far away from here. Do you understand?’
Chloe nodded furiously, terrified of leaving her prison for the first time in ten years, with children who had never seen the outside world before.
‘You can do this,’ Paige said, stroking her daughter’s cheek. ‘You have to – for Jacob.’
Determination filled Chloe’s eyes and she nodded.
‘I love you,’ Paige said, embracing her quickly before she opened the door.
Her father’s body lay on the ground with a gunshot wound in his back, his blood disappearing between the cracks in the floorboards.
Chloe and the children rushed down the hallway, as Paige shut the door to the basement and locked it from the inside.
THIRTY-TWO
I nearly cried when I heard the voice of the 999 dispatcher on the phone. I told her who I was and what had happened, and to send help to the vicarage in the village. I told her Jacob was at the hospital – the missing boy was mine, and only ended the call when the woman at the other end promised that he would be safe until I got to him.
I ran down the lane with Mary held to me with my good arm, and John running beside me. We all had bare feet, and the gravel bit into our skin. Mary and John were too shocked to speak – Mary was too terrified to run, so I had to carry her. The fresh air and the wide openness of freedom must have felt so alien to them, as they had only ever known their world in the basement. John was crying from the gravel cutting his feet, but he knew we couldn’t stop running – he knew we were in danger. John’s first experience of the real world was pain and the darkness of night. Both he and Mary had seen my dead grandfather; their naked feet were stained with his blood. Mary clenched her eyes shut, too terrified to see the new world around her, but John’s eyes were as wide as they could be, as if he had to take it all in, however scary it was. Tears ran down my cheeks: not from fear, but from sheer relief; after ten miserable years, I was finally free – and Jacob was alive.
‘We just need to keep running, John, okay? You’re doing so well, I’m so proud of you.’
We ran down the lane, past the tall, looming trees that lined the driveway.
They don’t even know what trees are. They must be so confused.
My mother had sacrificed herself to save us. I almost ran back to the door to the basement, to beg her to come back, but I knew that I had to keep going to save my children. I had to get to Jacob.
The sound of sirens cried in the distance, and I sobbed with relief.
‘They’re coming, John! We’re almost there!’
John didn’t know who they were. Mary had no idea what was going on. But all of us knew that we had escaped the basement.
We’re free. We’re finally free.
THIRTY-THREE
Maxim stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at Paige.
She had to give Chloe and the children time to escape. It was her he wanted. Blood poured from his nose and stained his skin and clothes. She had never seen him so angry.
‘I just wanted us to be together,’ he said, walking up the stairs. ‘I just wanted to have my girl back. Why couldn’t you let me?’ He reached her, standing on the closest step to her, staring deep into her eyes, still towering over her.
‘Because you took my girl.’
She grabbed his broken nose and twisted it in her hand.
He screamed as she twisted the fractured cartilage. His hands snatched her throat and shoved her against the door. His hold was so tight that she couldn’t breathe. Her head felt as though it was going to explode. She tried to free herself, punching at his chest and ribs, and trying to grab his nose again, but he held her at arm’s length as he squeezed the life out of her.
She fumbled with the key in the lock on the door and turned it just as her vision began to fade. The door flew open.
As they fell to the floor Maxim lost his grip on her neck. She heaved for air, gasping and holding her swollen throat. Maxim lunged on top of her. They writhed around on the floor in their father’s blood, kicking and thrashing, right beside the body. She slammed the heel of her palm into Maxim’s broken nose, scrambled up to her feet as he fell back in agony, and ran towards the open front door and into the night.
He chased after her as she ran behind the house, away from the lane where she had told Chloe and the children to go, and headed for the graveyard.
Paige ran blindly through the night. Her bare feet slipped and slid on the dewy grass. Her twisted ankle was slowing her down; the pain was almost unbearable. She could hear Maxim’s heavy breathing behind her. He was getting closer, trying to grab at her T-shirt, his fingers grazing against the fluttering fabric.
Paige pushed through the pain and darted through the trees, between the dark trunks, stubbing her toes on their raised roots. She could see the light of the moon reflecting off the windows of the church. Her lungs and throat were burning from the fresh night air and the first bit of exercise she’d had in years. Her traumatised throat continued to swell, allowing less and less air into her lungs. If she kept running she would faint. Her whole body ached from fighting, running, lack of food and sleep. She couldn’t keep going for much longer.
Maxim was so close now she could feel the heat of his body and smell the blood from his broken nose.
He used all his weight and strength to shove her straight into a tree trunk. She saw nothing but darkness as she slammed into the tree and collapsed to the ground.
***
Paige faded in and out of consciousness and felt the scrape of gravel against her back. When her eyes opened briefly, she saw the stars in the night sky. She heard Maxim’s groans as he dragged her by her ankles. She coughed and choked every time she tried to breathe.
When she finally came to, she was inside the church, lying on the floor at the top of the aisle. Candles were lit, giving the church a warm glow, but it was freezing. Paige was alone.
Her whole body shook. Her head was aching so much that it brought tears to her eyes. But this wasn’t like a migraine: it was more like trauma to her brain. It was as though she could feel it swelling within her skull, pressing against the bone with nowhere to go. She opened her mouth to groan and blood poured from between her lips and splashed onto the floor. She brought her fingertips to her lips, which came away covered in dark, warm blood. With her tongue, she found a gap in her top row of teeth. She spat and spat, but hot blood kept filling her mouth.
She tried to stand but fell to her knees as everything began to spin. Crawling to the nearest pew, she watched her blood drip onto the stone floor. She climbed to her feet and dragged herself along the back of the pew, heading for the door. She pushed herself towards it, stumbled and fell against it, unable to stop everything from spinning. She leaned her head on the door, looked down to the floor, and vomited. She retched bloody bile, trying not to fall backwards. She attempted to open the door with her bloody hands, but couldn’t. Maxim had locked her inside.
‘Maxim?’ Her voice echoed in the tall church.
The organ began to play, each note blaring out. Paige retched again, leaning against the door. The sounds were like hammer blows to her skull. She
sobbed and slapped her hands over her ears.
‘MAXIM, STOP! PLEASE STOP!’
The church fell silent, and she dared to open her eyes and uncover her ears.
Footsteps sounded up the aisle.
‘They’ll be checking the house, so we have a little time,’ Maxim said, his voice echoing from somewhere in the church.
The police. They will have saved Chloe and the children. Maybe they’ll get here in time to save me.
Maxim came into view. He was wearing his priest’s robes and his cheeks were shimmering from tears. Ryan’s gun was in his hand.
‘It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.’
He hooked his arms under hers and dragged her from the doorway.
‘We were supposed to have so much time together.’ He dragged her down the aisle; a tear fell from his chin and onto her face. ‘You would have been happy in the basement with your daughter, your grandchildren, and me.’
All Paige could see were her limp legs and the trail of her own blood. She had no energy to fight back. She could barely keep her eyes open.
‘But in death, we can be together forever.’
He is going to kill me.
‘Maxim, it’s over,’ she whispered, blood bubbling on her lips.
‘This life will be, but our love will never end. We will carry our love through to the other side, and spend every blissful moment together. You’ll see.’
She cried out as he dragged her up the stone steps to the sanctuary.
‘It will only hurt for a second, and then we’ll both be at peace.’
Maxim sat down with his back to the altar and rested her head on his lap. He looked down at her. She felt the coolness of the gun against her temple.
‘I’ll shoot you first, and then myself.’
‘You won’t go to heaven, Maxim,’ she whispered. ‘You will go to hell for what you’ve done.’
‘The Lord will forgive me.’
‘I won’t. Even when I’m dead.’
She heard him cock the gun.
‘Tell me you love me. Your last words should be that you love me.’
This is it. I’m going to die. He’d rather I die than be free.