Follow You Down

by Bradley, Michael;

  “Help! Get me out of here!”

  No one was there to hear him, and even if someone was, he knew they wouldn’t help him. Neil was alone. Just him and the alarm clock, counting down the seconds with an incessant ticking.

  He’d lost track of how long he’d been shouting. Perhaps thirty minutes, maybe more. They had to be gone. Even though Neil hadn’t heard any cars drive away, the utter silence in the house drove home the fact that he was alone. Despite all that had happened and all that was said, he still clung to the hope that this was all just a prank, and they’d be back any minute to release him. But as the clock continued to mark the passing of time with its irritating regularity, his hope diminished.

  As the first few hours passed, Neil remained confident that he’d beat this. He’d recalled many all-nighters from his time at Harvard. Being up for twenty-four hours or more cramming for a big exam had sometimes been the norm for him. He seemed to remember thirty-six hours being his all-time-record . . . without drugs. With drugs? That was a whole other story. Back then, he hadn’t been averse to taking a little speed to keep himself going. What he wouldn’t give to have some now.

  Defiance permeated his every thought through the first hour. He wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of dying. In twenty-four hours, he’d walk out of this cabin with his head held high, knowing that he’d beaten them. He may never be able to avenge himself, but Neil would stand strong in the knowledge that he’d survived.

  As the second hour passed and the third began, he felt the first cracks in his own bravado begin to show. His defiant determination began to fade. His stomach churned loudly, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since the previous day. His mouth had long since gone dry, leaving his tongue feeling pasty. He’d moved beyond just being thirsty to being desperate for some water. Like food, Neil hadn’t had a drink since the prior evening’s whiskey. The thought of that last drink caused him to shudder, remembering how it had gotten him here.

  With each passing hour, the physical toll of Neil’s suffering was becoming more and more evident. His lower back ached from having to stand erect for hours. The coarse rope binding his hands scraped at his wrists to the point of bleeding. His arms and shoulders were stretched to their limit and sore. Neil’s toes had been numb for hours, and muscle cramps had forced him to alternate from one foot to the other. Making matters worse, the small stool on which he was forced to stand wobbled every time he shifted his weight. More than once, the stool had almost slid out from under his feet, and only with some fancy footwork was Neil able to shift it back into position. As noon approached, he was feeling less certain about his chances of survival.

  By one in the afternoon, Neil was forced to wet himself, and would have to deal with the indignity of facing the police with soiled shorts. The smell of urine was strong, acting as a constant reminder of the humiliation he’d face. But there was nothing he could’ve done. By two, he found himself nodding off, either from lack of food or the interminable boredom. He wasn’t sure which. His eyelids were heavy, with each blink holding the potential to become something more. Falling asleep meant facing the grim reaper. Despite his weariness, he’d been lucky enough to catch himself each time, but as the day progressed, he grew more concerned.

  Shortly after four, Neil broke down, unable to control his emotions any longer. The tears flowed freely down his cheeks, under his chin, and soaked into the rope around his neck. The physical strain, combined with the very real possibility of his own death, became more than he could handle.

  From the window across the room, Neil watched the day pass, and then turn to night, the darkness beyond the glass being absolute. With the sun gone, his only light was the small lamp on the bedside table. The dim bulb burned beneath the white frilly shade, casting shadows throughout the room. He was grateful that they’d left the light on. He wasn’t sure if he could have faced the night in utter darkness.

  Sometime after eleven, Neil closed his eyes for a second. The second turned to ten seconds, and then to twenty. Just a moment’s rest was all he needed. Just a quick moment of sleep. The rope’s sudden contraction around his neck jolted him awake. He gasped for oxygen, but the coarse cord crushing his windpipe impeded his attempt. His body spasmed violently, fighting to cling to his last visage of life. I’m going to die, he thought.

  Cutting deep into his neck, the rope refused to give against the downward pull of his weight. Pain shot down his neck and into his spine. He felt as if, at any moment, his head would be ripped from his body. What would kill him first? Suffocation or decapitation? His feet flailed desperately, searching for something—anything—to use to relieve the pressure on his neck. As he grew more desperate, the spasms grew more violent. While his lungs burned, Neil thought of Chris Bateman. Is this what he endured in his last moments? Is this how it felt to be hanging from that tree? The room was growing dim, his vision becoming blurred. Is this the blackness of death come to swallow me up?

  Ready to give up all hope, Neil prepared to face what he’d come to realize was an inevitability. The spasms were beginning to subside, and his vision had all but gone dark. In another moment, he’d be dead. Then his toe touched something hard. Moments later, Neil was once again standing on the stool, his body trembling as he drew in long deep breaths.

  That had been the closest he’d ever come to death. He must’ve fallen asleep, just long enough for his legs to relax. The tears streamed down his face. Death had knocked on his door, and Neil had almost answered. His body ached from the ordeal, especially his neck, which felt like it had been ravaged. His thoughts returned to Chris Bateman. Did he struggle as he hung from that tree? Neil wondered if Bateman had had a last-minute change of heart but couldn’t find a way to save himself. Or did Bateman simply allow the darkness to swallow him up?

  How much despair must Chris have been in to reach the point where hanging was his only option? The question that had been swirling around in Neil’s head for hours could finally be ignored no longer. Did he drive Chris Bateman to suicide?

  He recalled putting the boy through hell for three summers, the final one being the worst. His mockery had been relentless, not giving the poor kid a moment’s peace. When he’d reflected, forty-eight hours ago, on the things he’d done to Chris Bateman, he’d laughed. Laughed at his cleverness, at Bateman’s humiliation, and at the boy in general. He’d rejoiced in his own sadistic cruelty, in the wretched way that he poured out his scorn upon Bateman. Feeling smug wouldn’t begin to describe how Neil had felt. There had been an egotistical self-satisfaction that bordered on the extreme, one that revealed the true depths of his sadism. He’d laughed with amusement at every memory. But he wasn’t laughing now.

  He could deny it no longer, and to do so, he realized, would just have diluted his soul even further. Unlike in the courtroom, the burden of proof wasn’t falling on the prosecution, it fell on him, the defendant, to prove that his actions had no influence on Chris Bateman’s decision to take his own life. Neil’s soul was on trial, and he was his own judge and jury. His heart became the prosecutor while his mind the defendant. The emotional versus the logical. The case against him was clearly spelled out, his acts of inhumanity paraded before the so-called court. With each, the prosecutor—his own heart—connected the dots one by one, drawing a direct line between his actions and Chris Bateman’s death. There was a clear path leading to the inevitable conclusion that he couldn’t be more guilty than if he’d placed the noose around Bateman’s neck himself.

  Neil’s mind, unhampered by emotions, launched into diatribe of legal rhetoric, attempting to dismiss each piece of the prosecutor’s case against him. It cited precedent after precedent, and challenged the evidence as circumstantial at best. His mind quoted statistics about suicide and worked to build an image of a mentally unstable boy who simply couldn’t hack it in life. Could the accused be expected to take the blame for the death of someone who was obviously troubled to begin with?


  After the closing arguments and a brief deliberation, the verdict was in. Guilty. Neil’s heart, although hard for most of his life, had finally succumbed to the emotions that he’d kept in check for many years. His soul was convicted, and he was forever to be damned. His mind tried to appeal, but he knew the truth. His own actions had contributed to Chris Bateman’s suicide. If he had not treated the kid like he had, Bateman might have been alive today. Chris Bateman hadn’t deserved Neil’s mockery or ridicule. The poor kid had done nothing to deserve the scathing conduct that Neil had so cruelly engaged in at Bateman’s expense. There would be no acquittal. Now, Neil was serving out his sentence. Twenty-four hours of his own personal hell.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Around midnight, Neil began to recount out loud the events of the past forty-eight hours to keep himself awake. The details were still fresh in his mind, some still too raw to dwell on. As his solitary narrative unfolded, he wondered how he’d missed all the signs that pointed to the truth. How could he have been so foolish—maybe self-absorbed would be more appropriate—not to see what was coming, not to realize that he was being set up? Neil simply accepted everything his friends had said and gave no thought to any possible deception. He recited as much of the conversations that he could remember, and those that he couldn’t, Neil made up with words that he thought seemed appropriate.

  Trying to remember every detail in order was challenging. The level of emotional turmoil he’d experienced left the events a bit jumbled in his mind, and it took some effort to get them straight.

  As the hours passed, and the sleep deprivation worsened, Neil found it more difficult to focus, often losing track of what he’d been saying. Words, sometimes, were hard to come by, and he found himself repeating the same thing over. His bleary eyes were dry and itchy, but he could do nothing to relieve the discomfort. He’d urinated on himself a second time, filling the room with the nauseating odor of urine. Some had run down his legs and soaked into his socks, adding to his irritation and humiliation. Perhaps that was their aim all along, to humiliate him in the worst way. He’d worked hard to cultivate a reputation for always being in control of every situation. When news of this got out—and it would get out—that reputation would be tarnished. There would certainly be whispers and laughs behind his back, and even a few to his face. Neil would have to endure a humiliation that he was unfamiliar with, but one that he’d too freely been willing to dispatch on others. There was no point in trying to fool himself into thinking that nothing would come of this. Word spreads fast among the attorneys in New York City, and this would spread like wildfire. Neil may survive these hellish twenty-four hours, but this would only be the beginning of a far worse hell that would begin when he returned to the city.

  The hands on the clock said 7:29, telling Neil that his nightmare was almost over. His head was spinning, his back ached, and his legs were numb. He was beyond the point of exhaustion, sliding toward delirium. Hours before he’d considered his best course of action when he was released. He realized that no one could ever know what really happened this weekend. Not Sheila. Not the police. No one. His friends had been right. His forthcoming partnership in the law firm, as well as his career, were too important to throw away simply to punish them for this weekend. For him, it would be a quiet return to New York, trying to forget everything. He’d live with the humiliation, hoping that no one asked too many questions. If he was lucky, it’d all blow over in a few months. Of course, there would be a police inquiry, but he’d just feign ignorance of the identity of the culprits and explain it all away as being a random event by an unknown assailant. Now with his ordeal coming to an end, Neil began to giggle uncontrollably.

  As the clock hands reached seven thirty, he tried to calculate how long it would take for the police to arrive, but the numbers all seemed to run together. It can’t be too long, he figured. Although exhausted, he was certain he could hang on a little longer. What’s an extra few minutes compared to the past twenty-four hours?

  Outside the window, all he could see were the thick intertwined tree branches. Neil couldn’t see the road, the driveway, or anything else. It’d been all he had to look at for the past twenty-four hours.

  He wondered where his friends were. How far away had they gone while he hung there? If everything they’d told him was a lie, there was a good chance that none of them lived anywhere near the camp. One could drive a long way in twenty-four hours. He could hire a private investigator to track them down, but what would that accomplish? Even if he could find each of them, what would he do? Exact his revenge? Neil knew, perhaps better than anyone, that he’d be hard-pressed to prove anything that happened over the weekend. It’d be his word against theirs. Five vs. one weren’t good odds. It might be best to just let sleeping dogs lie. He gave the clock another look. 7:33. If they’d made the call at exactly 7:30, the police would be on their way. It was just a matter of waiting. Not long now. He giggled again.

  The click seemed extraordinarily loud in the otherwise silent cabin. It was followed by a creak. His senses snapped back from the brink of delirium. Perhaps a door opening somewhere downstairs.

  Someone must be in the house, Neil reasoned. That was faster than he’d expected. He couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. It would all soon be over. There’d be awkward questions to answer, but he’d had twenty-four hours to come up with a story. It was plausible, if not a bit simple, but Neil figured it would be enough to satisfy any of the country bumpkin cops in these parts.

  Anxious to be freed, Neil decided to save his rescuers the time it would take to search the house. “Up here!” His voice was a bit hoarse, but he hoped it was loud enough. “Upstairs! Upstairs!”

  He heard footsteps moving around the first floor. Why aren’t they coming upstairs? They must not have heard him. “Upstairs!” The noose was making it difficult to shout any louder.

  The footsteps stopped. They must have heard him that time. Just to make sure, he shouted one more time. “Upstairs! The back bedroom!”

  The footsteps were moving again, sounding like a slow, methodical trek around the first floor. He couldn’t tell where in the cabin they were. The kitchen, maybe. But they were down there somewhere. He wondered why they hadn’t come upstairs yet. Surely there wasn’t the need to search too hard. There weren’t that many rooms downstairs, or even in the entire cabin. Neil had shouted as loud as he could. He couldn’t believe that they hadn’t heard him.

  The footsteps grew louder. It sounded like they were headed to the front of the cabin, toward the stairs. Then he heard them mount the stairs. They moved slowly, seeming to take each step with deliberation and care. Neil grew impatient. To be so close to rescue and have to wait was intolerable. Why were they moving so slow? Couldn’t they pick up the pace? Didn’t they realize that he’d been here for twenty-four hours? Each footstep’s deep thud sounded heavy, leading him to believe that his rescuer was wearing boots. One set of footsteps, one person, one cop. It didn’t surprise him. Police departments out here didn’t usually have many officers. For all he knew, this could be some part-time rookie, barely out of the police academy.

  The footsteps reached the top of the stairs. Neil heard them outside the bedroom door but couldn’t understand why they’d stopped. “Come in and cut me down!”

  Everything went silent. No movement at the door, no footsteps. What the hell’s going on? “Sometime today! I’ve only been hanging here for twenty-four hours!”

  Still, there was no response. “Did you forget how to open a damn door? Just turn the knob!”

  Nothing. Not a sound. Neil was certain someone was standing just outside the door. What were they doing? Waiting for a personal invitation? He didn’t know who this cop was, but he’d be sure to report this to his superiors. He gave another glance at the clock. 7:36. “I know you’re out there, just come in and cut me down!”

  The door knob clicked. Neil tried to twist his head around t
o look at the door, but the tightness of the noose made it impossible. He heard the door creak open, and a faint draught crossed his shoulders, chilling his neck. “Thank god! Cut me down from this.”

  The footsteps crossed the room, stopping behind him. Neil sighed. “Thank god you’re here. You’ve no idea what I’ve been through.”

  There was no reply. Just silence. Neil heard slow, rhythmic breathing behind him. He knew someone was there. Why hadn’t they spoken? His anger intensified. It was outrageous that he should be left hanging there when a police officer was standing right behind . . .

  His thoughts paused as a new realization crept into his conscious. What if that wasn’t the police standing behind him? His friends could drive a long way in twenty-four hours, but why? If there was a guarantee that Neil wouldn’t finger them for the crime, why would they have to flee? But why come back? Maybe to see if he survived? He wondered if one of them had a change of heart and came back to release him. If so, their timing couldn’t be worse. Why couldn’t their sense of responsibility have kicked in hours ago? He wondered which one had succumbed to their guilt. He couldn’t turn his head to see who it was. But perhaps he could catch their reflection in the window.

  At first, he wondered if he was hallucinating. Neil recognized the face, but it was impossible. Older and heavier than he remembered, eighteen years had not been friendly to the man standing behind Neil. “You!”

  The reflection continued to stare, first at the back of his head, then at the window so that their eyes met. The man remained stoic and expressionless. Not saying anything, just staring. “You were dead!” said Neil.