Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  He stopped exercising.

  A few days earlier, he had awoken from one of his many daily naps to find that the door to the walk-in wardrobe had been left unlocked. Still naked as the day, he and Jess had crept out of the wardrobe and into the unfurnished bedroom, the carpet comfortable beneath their bare feet.

  It had felt like a treat – a reward, perhaps – to have been entrusted to the run of the bedroom; at first they hadn’t wanted to try the door handle. It had been locked. But the bedroom was better than the wardrobe; and under its bare light-bulb, Nero surveyed it with something like self-respect. He had arrived. He’d been promoted. This was his and this was Jess’s. And he would do whatever he could not to enrage his captors, in case they wanted to tie them both up again.

  Such at least was his opinion this hour. These opinions changed often, and Nero had long since realised that he (and possibly Jess as well) was suffering from a sort of captive madness, a cabin fever; he had long since doubted that his mental health was entirely cloudless.

  By way of avoiding more painful decisions, Nero wondered once again if they – Charlie and Massimo – actually wanted him physically fit? Should he exercise again, right now? Or was he simply deluding himself and killing time? (Why would they require him to be physically fit?)

  Confusing.

  The thought of more activity stirred a memory in Nero’s mind – but also in his upper arms and shoulders (muscle memory). Underaged in the HeartLines Gym (he remembered), Nero had worked out with his older brother, crashing weight after weight – curling, shoving – bending those muscles and wanting the fuckers to twang. And now, sitting down on the carpet in the bedroom, Nero thought again about Molecule: really thought. With effort he framed the young man’s face; then he watched an old film of the two of them, in the gym, with Molecule daring him on and calling him pussy for fearing the addition of another half-kilo on the stack.

  Nero smiled.

  But now he was puffed out and aerated as the result of two minutes of squat thrusts. Sweat ran off his (twitching) shoulders in a steady trickle.

  Why hadn’t Molecule found him?

  ‘Who’s Molecule?’ he heard through his highly laboured breathing.

  ‘My elder brother.’

  ‘What about him?’ asked Jess.

  Had Nero misheard the original question? Turning in Jess’s direction, he saw the girl squatting, leaning against the wall, an inquisitive expression on her face. Odder than this look, however, was the query that Nero held in his head.

  Who’s Molecule? and What about him? had been asked in two different voices. While the second had belonged to Jess – no question about it – the first had sounded… masculine. Through the exercise-heated breathing it had seemed normal enough, but now that he examined it, the voice had sounded like a man’s. And Nero hadn’t said his brother’s name out loud anyway. Had he?

  ‘Did you ask me about Molecule?’ Nero wanted to know.

  Jess shrugged. ‘Who’s Molecule?’

  Yeah, who’s Molecule? Nero heard in the original interviewer’s voice.

  ‘Woah!’ said Nero.

  ‘What?’ said Jess.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘Someone said Who’s Molecule?’

  ‘That was me.’

  So who is he? said the man’s voice. You’ve told me your brother, but gimme something else. I need a story!

  Jess looked worried. Inasmuch as she ‘sprung’ anywhere these days, she sprung to her feet. She crossed over to Nero, taking careful steps, as if a layer of black ice had formed on the carpet.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah I’m peachy. Apart from this voice in my head.’

  A beat.

  Jess considered the information and chose not to challenge it.

  ‘What’s it saying?’

  Nero bent a little at the waist; he cupped his hands over his ears – like Molecule used to do when wearing headphones, mixing beats. Nero found that he wanted the transmission: he was urging it on. And it didn’t take him more than a second to wonder why: it was contact with the world outside this room. It smelt of freedom.

  ‘What’s it saying, Nero?’

  ‘Ssshhh!’

  But there were no more words in Nero’s head – not for ten seconds, twenty…

  ‘Shit,’ he whispered, gradually becoming aware of Jess beside him but not wishing to acknowledge her. By allowing her back into his reality (or trudging his way back into hers) the connection would be cut, the spell broken. Nero did not want to hang up just yet: there was something there, wasn’t there? A small sound using his skull as a pathway; a noise of weather – the wind? Yes! It was wind! Nothing drastic, nothing heavy; maybe wind stirring through trees, a light patter of misty rain on leaves. The sensation followed – still in Nero’s head – that the weather was chilly. Not icy, but chilly. Where?

  Nero gambled. Surely the signs had been strong enough, these last days. It wasn’t as if it mattered if he ended up looking like a fool. There was only Jess to judge him… and she had been made to watch while he was raped. The aggressors had taken turns to hold her head still. As a result, there wasn’t much further he could fall in her eyes. So he said:

  ‘Are you there, Chris?’

  Nero waited for an answer – as if he’d shouted next door to one of his brothers (if he’d been shouting for one of his parents he would’ve had to have shouted way loud).

  No response.

  ‘Nero?’

  ‘I said ssshhh.’

  Nothing in words… but that sense of cold present, which Nero attempted to picture. What he saw was the inside of a hut, where Chris had taken refuge. If not a hut, an equivalent haven. Comparatively warm – compared with the outside. Wind like a tongue round a lolly.

  Where was he?

  ‘Nero. I hear something,’ said Jess.

  That same wind? The rain?

  ‘They’re here,’ Jess continued. ‘That was a door. They’re downstairs.’

  ‘Who? Oh yeah. You ready?’

  ‘For what?’ she asked, panicked.

  ‘Jesus,’ Nero sighed.

  ‘Is it Jesus Christ you’re hearing, Nero?’ Her tone was hopeful and large.

  ‘No. I meant Jesus-I-don’t-fucking-believe-you. Are you ready to fight them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, nor am I,’ Nero confessed; ‘but I’m not sure they’ll give us much of an alternative.’

  Footfalls on the stairs.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ Jess confided.

  ‘Do what? Do what comes natural.’

  ‘That’s what I’m scared of doing.’

  One set of footfalls or two?

  Nero wasn’t sure. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he was praying to his new leader, to the distant man named Chris, for guidance and strength. For the wherewithal to know how to brain his captors if the chance was presented.

  He heard Jess hold her breath. Good idea, thought Nero, doing the same thing (but he didn’t know why). Depleted of oxygen, he waited.

  The next thing would be the key in the lock. The door will open…

  Pounce and strike.

  But there was no key in the lock. The handle turned and the door swung inwards.

  How long had it been unlocked? Nero wondered, bewildered.

  And who were these people?

  For neither of his rapists – not Charlie and not Massimo – stood on the landing, peering into the bedroom. In fact, Nero had never set eyes on any one of these three visitors in his life.

  The shock was enough to make him cover his penis with one hand.

  2.

  ‘Anyone know where Charlie is?’ asked Jean, holding one hand over the mouthpiece of her receiver.

  There were three othe
r people in the office, two men and one woman – all of them wearing black suits and lighter-coloured shirts with the necks wide open. Towards the end of the working day, and there was little going on: a bit of filing, a bit of appointment planning. When the phone rang, three of them had gone for the call.

  ‘Gone home early, I think,’ said one of the guys. ‘Something about an anniversary. I wasn’t listening.’

  Jean relayed the news to the caller; what followed was a long period of silence in the office, but with the caller’s words buzzing in Jean’s ear.

  ‘Hold the line, please.’ To the remaining crew she added: ‘Charlie’s dropped a bollock. He was supposed to collect a Mr and Mrs Murphy and take them to the Eggington property for a viewing. They’ve been waiting outside the gate for half an hour and can’t get in.’

  ‘He cancelled,’ said the second man present – a man named Joe, who was arranging appointment notes on his computer. ‘I heard him call and leave a message when I was having a smoke.’

  ‘Well, they’re still outside the house and they’re pissed off. I think they’ve told me four times that it’s started to rain.’

  ‘I’ll take it.’ Joe stood up. ‘It’s on my way to the farm shop – I said I’d pick up some carrots for my neighbour’s Shetland.’ When he crossed the office, the floorboards protested and groaned. He flicked open the key safe and checked the chart.

  ‘One of Charlie’s colleagues will be with you in twenty minutes,’ Jean continued into her phone. ‘Sorry about the mix-up… Okay. Bye.’

  ‘The key’s not here,’ Joe called. ‘Maybe he’s gone there after all.’

  The other man – the one who had answered Jean’s first question – looked up from his filing. ‘No, he definitely said he was getting something ready for his anniversary.’

  ‘Well, it’s not here!’

  Jean unlocked a safe near her desk – it was where the master keys were kept. She asked for the reference of the house in Eggington; the first man clicked a tab and brought up all of the properties on the company’s books. He read Jean the code and she fished out the relevant key.

  ‘Don’t lose it.’

  ‘No, Mum.’

  3.

  The drive to Eggington took Joe twenty minutes, as Jean had promised the potential house-buyers. Preparing to leave the car, Joe brushed crumbs from his jacket’s lapels – he had eaten a sandwich en route.

  Mr and Mrs Murphy were waiting in their vehicle near the house’s front gate. They did not appear happy to see Joe.

  ‘I’m sorry about the mix-up,’ the estate agent repeated on behalf his firm, and of Charlie Eastlight. ‘Let’s get you in to have a look around.’

  He unlocked the gate.

  4.

  Already shocked that the gate had been left open, Eastlight was horrified to recognise one of the two cars parked on the driveway. It was Joe’s. And seeing as the other car was not a police car, Eastlight was forced to accept that his work colleague was showing someone around the house.

  The panic that he felt was rich. It warmed him throughout, then it turned to ice in his organs. There was no conceivable good way that this could go.

  ‘I cancelled you fuckers,’ Eastlight breathed into the rearview, steaming up the glass with his poison and fear. Didn’t anyone check their voicemail anymore?

  To Hell with that. What was he going to do? They were here, that the was meat and potatoes of the fact: they were here. And nothing that Eastlight could do would make them not here. One way or another they would find the teenagers in the unfurnished master bedroom; and sooner or later the teenagers would finger him and Massimo for the kidnapping, for the sex games… even if he drove away now.

  Think!

  But it was difficult to think (he had discovered) with sweat running down into his eyes. It was difficult when his bladder felt fit to burst.

  Eastlight dialled Massimo from the dash. Get him over here, perhaps: it was his mess as well. Actually it had all been his idea! So let him come up with a solution.

  The answering message cut in. Eastlight killed the call and thumped the steering wheel. Seconds were passing.

  Now. Do it now. There’s no choice.

  In a fatman flurry, with no sign of his customary concupiscence, but with movements that read desperate, Eastlight rolled out and opened the boot. He’d been shopping. What he’d bought for Massimo (for their anniversary) lay there in a nest of car blankets and supermarket bags.

  He had not expected to need it so soon, but was sure that his partner would understand.

  5.

  This was work on top of the normal day’s requirements, but Joe was content enough to put on a decent performance and to do a good job. Even though the property was not on his own books, he was certain that Charlie would be grateful if it sold. Despite Charlie’s faults as a human being, he had always been fair when it came to money.

  So let’s sell the fucker, Joe told himself as he led the couple through the rooms on the ground floor.

  In due course they mounted the stairs. The tiniest trace of something in the air, as if someone had been smoking up here… It took Joe another second or two before he recognised the aroma from one student party or another, way back when. It was dope smoke.

  When he opened the master bedroom and saw the two naked youths – the boy dark-skinned, the girl as white as alabaster – Joe wondered if the smoke had really got to him. This had to be an hallucination, after all. They were just standing there…

  ‘My God,’ said Mrs Murphy.

  …the boy with one hand over his particulars, the girl with her wrists by her sides.

  ‘What?’ started Joe.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Who am I?’ Joe challenged. ‘Who are you? What are you doing…?’

  ‘We live here,’ the boy answered.

  ‘No you don’t.’ Joe felt the viewers back away across the landing. ‘This house is for sale and you’re trespassing.’

  ‘Maybe we bought it,’ the girl answered. ‘And you’re trespassing.’

  ‘Don’t muck me about. Get your clothes on and get out before I call the police.’

  ‘We haven’t got any clothes,’ the boy told him.

  Odd that they’d stay in the middle of the floor, not retreating, not advancing. Shameless, thought Joe. They seem shameless and even innocent.

  ‘What do you mean, no clothes?’

  ‘They were taken,’ the girl added… and was it Joe’s imagination or was there a note of pride in these words?

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘By me,’ said Charlie Eastlight, below at the foot of the staircase.

  By taking a few steps back, Joe was able to peer over the banister. He saw his colleague ascend the stairs in a dash. And what was Charlie holding?

  ‘Get in the room with them,’ Eastlight barked as he rose higher.

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Don’t Charlie me, Joe! Get in the room or I’ll use it, so help me God.’

  It was shaped like a truncheon, but the handle boasted buttons and controls.

  Mr and Mrs Murphy moved closer to one another and Joe held up his hands.

  ‘What’s got into you, Charlie?’ he demanded.

  ‘Get in the fucking room!’

  Eastlight had reached the landing; he was waving the weapon like an orchestra conductor. ‘Don’t make me use it, Joe,’ he warned. ‘It shoots between ten and a hundred volts at a pop, and it’s fully charged up and set to sixty. That’s enough to make you soil your cheap suit twice over. So I won’t tell you again…’

  ‘Okay!’ said Joe, stepping into the bedroom and breathing the fug within – a room left unaired for too long.

  Silent but shaking, the Murphy couple followed Joe over the same threshold.

  ‘Into the wardrobe.’

  Murm
uring stunned protests, all five made a twitchy move for the other door.

  ‘Not you two.’

  Five pairs of eyes now on Eastlight.

  ‘You two can guard them,’ Eastlight instructed.

  The boy straightened up, just in the left field of Joe’s range of vision. ‘What makes you think you can trust us?’ the boy asked – a peculiar question, Joe thought.

  Eastlight smiled. ‘The door’s been unlocked for three days,’ he answered, ‘and you haven’t tried to escape. I can trust you.’

  By the time Mrs Murphy had entered the walk-in wardrobe, she was blubbering uncontrollably. Her husband and Joe followed her in.

  ‘Now pretend you’re in school assembly,’ Eastlight went on. ‘Cross-legged on the floor, please; hands on your heads.’

  For the first time Mrs Murphy spoke. ‘I have arthritis,’ she said, ‘in my right knee. I can’t cross my legs.’

  ‘You’ll have worse if you disobey me, dear,’ Eastlight informed her.

  ‘I’m serious! The doctor prescribed Pilates but I couldn’t I couldn’t…’

  ‘Oh all right, stop whining. Just get on your arse and we’ll call it quits.’

  ‘Charlie? Like what the fuck?’ asked Joe. ‘If you’re having a bad day, we can talk.’

  ‘Shut up, Joe,’ Eastlight interrupted, a note of sour fatigue in his voice. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you, okay? It’s unfortunate you’re here but there you go. God’s bowled you a googly. It happens. Now we’ve got to think of a way out of it.’

  Joe grinned. ‘That’s what I’m talking about! We can talk it through!’

  Eastlight fired a bolt of electricity at the wall. A spiky ribbon of blue lightning bounced off the cream paintwork with a sound like a power outage.

  Mrs Murphy squealed.

  Without another word the three new prisoners dropped to their haunches and assumed the requested position. A smell of ozone hung in the still air.