by Alex Lake
Jean turned a dial on the baby monitor.
‘Don’t need this on anymore,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to know when you woke up.’ She tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans. ‘Been very handy over the years,’ she said. ‘I doubt Jack thought it would have so many uses when he bought it. He was surprised, actually, when he found out I was using it. He assumed Karen had thrown it out, but she hadn’t. Like most moms she was sentimental about her kids’ stuff. Wanted to preserve the memories. Waste of fucking time, if you ask me. Didn’t do her much good, in any case. But useful for me.’
Useful? Sarah thought. How were baby monitors useful when you didn’t have babies?
‘What do you mean, useful?’ Sarah said.
Jean stepped forward and her face came out of the shadow. Her expression was impassive, distracted almost.
‘Oh,’ she said. She took a drag on her cigarette then exhaled, long and slow. ‘You’ll find out. But for now we have other things to talk about.’
‘Where are we, Jean?’ Sarah said. ‘Where the hell is this place?’
‘My house,’ Jean said.
Sarah shook her head. She’d been in Jean’s house thousands of times. She knew every inch of it. There was no way she would have missed an entire room.
‘It can’t be,’ she said.
‘But it is. You’re so certain, Sarah. So rational. So sure that what you see is all there is. You think because you haven’t seen it, it can’t be there. Well, it is, like I am. You didn’t see me coming, either. Did you?’
‘So what is this?’
‘A former owner built this as a bomb shelter during the Cold War. Everyone was building them back then. None of them were ever needed, of course, so it was all a waste of money. But it turned out well for me. The door’ – she pointed behind her – ‘opens on to some steps which go up to a bulkhead in the corner of my basement. I keep a box of old clothes on top of it.’ She leaned forward, pointing the cigarette at Sarah. ‘Stop prying eyes from seeing things they shouldn’t.’
So, it was a fallout shelter. Built in the fifties, at the height of the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was the thing keeping people up at night. Now it was extreme weather or water security or terrorism; there was always some source of impending doom. People were programmed to worry, to constantly be alert for threats. It was a useful survival mechanism; it kept you on your toes, made sure that if anything was going to go wrong you got ahead of it as soon as possible.
It hadn’t helped her. She hadn’t seen this coming. Should she have? Could she have figured out it was Jean?
Probably not. Jean was right: she trusted what she saw. She found it hard to believe – even now when she knew it was actually happening, when she was a captive in a Cold War era fallout shelter she never knew existed, she found it hard to believe Jean was doing this.
Which was exactly the reason Jean had been able to do it.
There used to be a lot of these shelters. She’d seen one, years back, at the house of one of her dad’s colleagues. It was at the end of his backyard, a low, grass-covered hump under a large oak tree. He’d opened the metal door.
Want to go down? he said.
The air coming out was cold and smelled stale. Sarah shook her head.
What if the bomb fell and something landed on the door? she said.
He smiled. They thought of that. There’s a back door. Opens into a tunnel leading to another entrance a few yards away.
Which meant there was another door here. She glanced at the hatch in the corner. The padlock was large, and rusted.
‘Don’t get any ideas,’ Jean said. ‘Even if you could open it, there’s no way through. It used to lead to another exit, but we built the garage over it.’ She chuckled. It was a cold, mirthless laugh. ‘You’re going nowhere, Sarah,’ she said. ‘This is the perfect place for you. Soundproof, too.’ She held up the baby monitor. ‘Which is why I need this.’
‘What the fuck is going on, Jean?’ Sarah said. ‘What are you doing?’
Jean ignored the question. ‘It’s lucky I have this little set-up down here,’ she said. ‘Or I might have had a problem. I had not planned to have you down here.’
Sarah had not, until that point, wondered why Jean had chains in her basement, although she was starting to get a horrible feeling she might be able to guess. There were more pressing concerns, however.
‘What did you have planned?’ she said.
‘Not this.’ Jean said. She took a step toward Sarah. ‘I might tell you later. But since you only believe what you see for yourself, I want to show you something. Put your hand on the floor.’
‘What are you going to show me?’
‘Put your hand on the floor.’
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘No, I won’t.’
Jean sighed. ‘Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be,’ she said. ‘It’s not worth it.’
‘I don’t care. I’m not doing it.’
‘OK.’ She sounded totally matter of fact, as though they were having coffee and Sarah had said she was going to the ladies’ room. ‘Don’t blame me. I told you not to do this.’
Without any warning, she stepped forward and swung her foot in an arc. It connected with Sarah’s right temple and sent her sprawling to the ground; as she hit the floor, the chain snapped her back and she scraped the side of her face on the rough concrete. She held her hands up to protect herself. Jean moved toward her, but did not kick her again. She did not touch her at all. Instead she bent down and grabbed the chain in both her hands then yanked it upward. Sarah jerked into the air, her cry stifled by the metal collar crushing her throat.
It took a few seconds for the pain to register, and then it was all she could think of.
‘OK,’ Jean said, slowly, the cigarette dangling from her lips. She was breathing heavily. ‘Put your motherfucking hand on the floor. Palm down.’
Sarah stared at her, her cheek against the rough concrete. Before she could speak, Jean kicked her again, this time in the ribs.
‘Palm down,’ she said, frustration mounting in her voice.
Sarah put her hand on the floor. It was level with her nose.
‘What were you going to show me?’ she said, hoping to distract Jean.
‘I was going to show you,’ Jean said, ‘exactly what the situation here is.’ Jean placed her foot on Sarah’s wrist and pressed down hard, then she took the cigarette from her mouth, leaned down and ground it into the back of Sarah’s hand.
The pain was searing, a hot, stinging burst of agony. Sarah screamed, the smell of burning flesh filling her nostrils. Jean pressed it harder into her, then, suddenly, let go of it. It stuck upright in the melted skin.
‘There,’ Jean said. ‘Get it? Did my demonstration work? I’m going now. But I’ll be back.’ She nodded at the cigarette. ‘That’ll help you remember me while I’m away.’
And then she was gone, and the room was only darkness and pain.
5
Sarah lay still, making a mental inventory of the areas of her body that were in pain. Her right temple throbbed; her left cheek felt raw where it had scraped on the rough concrete floor. Her neck was a mess of pain; she tried to swallow; the constriction of the muscles in her throat made her shudder.
And then there was her hand. Bizarrely, it felt huge, as though it had needed to swell in order to produce so much pain.
Sarah reached out and plucked the cigarette butt off her hand, then threw it across the room. In the darkness she pictured the wound: an angry red welt, raised and bubbled, dark ash embedded in the burnt flesh. Normally she would have swabbed it with rubbing alcohol then dressed the damaged area but there was no chance of doing that. At least it was unlikely to be infected – yet – as the heat would have killed any pathogens.
But fuck, it hurt.
The pain, though, was secondary. She was starting to realize Jean was only tangentially interested in causing her pain. Whatever she was doing was much worse. Once again, the panic rose u
p; this time the deep breaths she took had no effect.
She started to scream. Over and over and over. She lifted her hands to the chain and tried to rip it from around her neck, yanking her head from side to side as she did. The chain held fast, and in fear and frustration she slammed her fists on the floor, scraping at the concrete as though she could dig through it with her bare hands. When her nails split and tore and the pain became too much she fell to the ground and sobbed.
Eventually she calmed down. She took a deep breath, then sat up, her legs crossed, her injured hand cradled in her lap.
She had to think, to try and understand what was going on. She needed to lay out all the pieces and see what she could glean from the picture they made.
She was trapped – chained – in a secret basement in her oldest friend’s house. Whatever the reason, and whatever Jean’s plans, this was the latest installment in a scheme which went back at least six months.
Six months in which Jean had stalked her online, sent messages purporting to be from her, forged letters to her husband, and all, it seemed with one goal in mind.
To make her look like she was insane and suicidal, and then kill her.
It was all there in the suicide note Jean had been writing.
Sarah let out a cry, in part shock, in part anguish. She had been planning to kill her, and make it look like suicide. That was what all of this had been aimed at. Jean wanted people to think she was unstable, so they would believe she had taken her own life.
But then Sarah had woken up, and so Jean – as she had said – had been forced to change her plan. The choke-hold she’d used on Sarah would have left bruises if she actually killed her, and that would have put an end to the suicide theory.
So here she was. But what did Jean intend to do now? Kill her? Then why not do it right away? Sarah didn’t know, but she did know one thing. One ugly, important fact was staring her in the face.
No one knew where she was. So Jean was free to write whatever suicide note she wanted for Ben to find, and she, Sarah, could do nothing to stop her. It would be about her disappearing, and when he read it, Ben would believe it. The cops would ask him how Sarah had been these last few months and he would tell them she’d been finding it hard. She had ordered books on depression and coping with parents with bipolar. All kinds of inexplicable things had been happening – the letters, emails, photos on Facebook – and one explanation was that Sarah had been doing them herself.
An explanation that looked all the more likely, now – according to the note – she had been driven to take her own life.
She closed her eyes. So now what? What could she do?
Her scream was almost involuntary, and once she started she couldn’t stop. When her throat was raw – more raw – she looked up into only darkness.
‘Jean!’ she shouted. ‘Jean! Come back! Please, Jean! Help me!’
But the words went unanswered. Only silence followed.
Sarah lay on her side, curled up like a fetus, and quietly cried.
She was woken – it was amazing she had fallen asleep – by a pressure in her bladder and – worse – in her bowels.
She guessed it was morning. It was around 2 a.m. when Jean had come into her house, and, although she had no way of knowing, she assumed, after Jean strangled her, she had not been out for very long. To cut off the oxygen to someone’s brain for long enough to leave them unconscious for hours would probably have left some permanent damage, if it hadn’t killed them outright. Add to that the conversation with Jean and the short sleep – it felt short – and it was a reasonable guess that outside it was dawn.
And then there was her need to go to the toilet. Most mornings were the same; wake up, drink coffee, move bowels, then get ready for work.
So the fact she was feeling the need to go now was a pretty reliable clue it was the beginning of the day.
Except there was nowhere to do it. Only the floor. Which she was not going to do.
The pressure in her bladder grew. She blocked it out. Maybe Jean would be back soon and she could ask her for – for what? A bucket? An opportunity to go upstairs and use her bathroom?
It didn’t matter. She’d tell Jean she needed some kind of bathroom facilities. She wasn’t going to go on the floor. No way.
She sat and waited.
At first, in an attempt to keep track of time, she counted the seconds.
One thousand, Two thousand, three thousand.
When she got to five hundred thousand – a mere five hundred seconds – she stopped. It was harder than she had expected – her mind kept drifting – plus it was boring. She was already losing track and she’d only got to five hundred seconds, which was not even ten minutes. What if she was in here for hours? Days? There was no way she could keep it up.
She planned what she would say to Jean when she came back.
Look, she’d say. I don’t know what this is about, but whatever it is we can fix it. Let me out and I’ll forget this ever happened. We’ll draw a line under it and move on. You can have money, whatever you want. I won’t tell the cops. I just want out.
But Jean didn’t come.
And the need to go to the bathroom grew.
She had to go. She had no choice. It was becoming painful, and the more she thought about it, the worse it became.
But only a piss. The other could wait. She was not ready to do that yet.
She moved as far as the chain would let her and squatted, then pulled her pants – loose fitting pajamas – down. The stream of urine jetted on to the concrete; she was glad it was dark so she couldn’t see it spread. When she was done she pulled her pants back up and moved as far away in the other direction as she could.
She shivered. It was cold.
She waited.
As she waited, she heard a click from the door.
6
The handle creaked as it turned. The door opened.
Jean stepped into the room. She looked at Sarah, her arms folded, then reached down to pick up the packet of cigarettes. Evidently she kept them down here so no one found them in the house.
‘Well,’ she said, nodding at the pool of urine. ‘I see you found the bathroom facilities.’ Her voice went up in tone at the end of the sentence, as though she was making an amusing observation.
Sarah didn’t see anything funny about the situation. ‘I need the bathroom,’ she said. ‘You can’t treat me like this.’
‘Looks like you already went.’
‘I mean for a’ – she paused – ‘for a number two.’
Jean laughed.
‘A number two? How prim! I can see how you’d think I couldn’t be so awful as to make you do a number two on the floor when you don’t even want to say the word “shit”. But here’s the thing: I can treat you like this. I can do whatever I want to you. And this is your bathroom. So fucking get used to it.’
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘I won’t do it here.’
Jean laughed again.
‘Fine. But it’ll happen eventually. You know that; you’re a doctor.’
She took a headlamp from her pocket and put it on her head. It was the same one she’d been wearing the night she came to Sarah’s house, and now Sarah remembered where she’d got it from, remembered the day Ben had given it to her in the kind of brotherly gesture he often made toward Jean. He’d upgraded his to some new ultra-low-energy and high-output one, a headlamp he didn’t need and rarely used but which some sales associate at LL Bean had persuaded him was worth the extra fifty bucks he’d paid, which was typical of his naïve enthusiasm and one of the things she loved about him. And now Jean was pointing his old one at her in a secret fallout shelter.
Jean switched on the headlamp and closed the door.
‘Don’t want the smell to get in the house,’ she said. She lit a cigarette. She put the lighter back in the box and placed it on the floor behind her. ‘Some always gets out though, but only into the basement.’ She looked up. ‘There’s a gap somewhere.’ She shrugged.
‘But no one will know. Only I go into the basement. The kids hate it.’
The beam of light blinded Sarah; she could not see Jean at all.
‘Can you point that to the side?’ she said. ‘It’s dazzling me.’
‘Sure,’ Jean said. She turned the beam so it faced the wall to Sarah’s left. It was studded with two by fours, as though someone had planned to convert the room into a finished space and then given up. Sarah stared at them. They weren’t much to look at, but she’d been in darkness for God knew how long, and they were the only thing in the room that wasn’t rough concrete.
Sarah shook her head. This was ridiculous. ‘Jean,’ she said. ‘What’s going on? What the hell are you doing?’
‘First I have a question for you,’ Jean said.
‘I’ll answer if you let me go to the bathroom.’
Jean frowned. ‘You mean upstairs?’ She laughed. ‘Fucking hell, Sarah. You really don’t get it, do you?’
‘Get what?’
Jean swept her hand around. ‘This is for real. You’re not down here for laughs. Your world has changed, Sarah. You don’t get to negotiate. You don’t have rights. OK? So, my question.’ She folded her arms. ‘How come you woke up when I came to your house?’
‘Because there was an intruder in the middle of the night.’ Sarah held her palms upward in a gesture that said Why are you asking such an obvious question. ‘It would be more of a surprise if I hadn’t woken up, Jean.’
‘You didn’t drink the wine?’
‘No,’ Sarah said.
‘Your glass was empty.’
‘I poured it away. I’ve been drinking too much.’
‘Why did you tell me you drank it?’
‘Because it seemed to be important to you. You wanted me to taste your special—’ Sarah froze. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘It was important to you, but not because Carl had given it to you. It was because it was drugged.’
‘Yes,’ Jean said. ‘It was. That was my plan. You take some sleeping pills, drink some wine. Write a suicide note explaining it all to your family – you love them, but you can’t go on. You read it; you know.’