by Dan Wells
“You idiot,” said Forman, and then he hit me again, a solid blow to the back of the head that dropped me like a sack of rocks. Radha caught me, dropping to her knees to slow my fall. Behind me Forman was swearing darkly, and I heard something loud and metallic.
“You idiot,” said Forman, “you sick, stupid idiot. You think I can’t do anything to you? Why don’t you ask your new girlfriend there about how fun the pit is, huh?”
There was a loud screech, and Radha pulled me closer, away from Forman. Something heavy fell on my foot, clipping the edge, and I turned and saw that a thick plank of wood had fallen on it. The three barrels in the corner had been moved, and the boards beneath them shifted. Underneath was a wide hole in the concrete floor, with nothing but blackness beyond.
“Never give in,” Radha whispered. “No matter how bad it gets, and no matter what he wants you to do. Never give in.”
Something grabbed me from behind and yanked me backward, pulling me away from Radha and wrenching my foot out from under the plank.
“You’ll love it in here,” said Forman. “It’s a great place for an idiot like you—nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to think about except how much you hate yourself.” He dragged me across the floor and I saw that the hole was full of brown, oily water. I tried to pull away but Forman’s grip was too strong; he pulled me to the edge and tossed me in.
The water was shallower than I thought, maybe a foot deep, and I hit the bottom awkwardly with a painful, unexpected crash. The water was slick and cold. I pulled up, struggling to reorient myself, just in time to feel one of the heavy boards slamming down on my head. I fell face forward into the water and suddenly everything was quiet; sounds were distant and dull, fading away into nothing at all.
I wanted them to fade away forever.
18
“John!” It was a harsh whisper, loud and soft at the same time. “John, are you okay?” The sound was hushed and distant.
I was cold, and my head was throbbing like mad. I shifted slightly, and lances of pain shot through me. Dirty water lapped against my face.
“He moved,” said the voice. “He’s alive.”
“Can you hear us?” said another.
The pain in my skull was centralized; I tried to reach my hand back to feel it, but I slipped under the water as soon as I moved. I put my arm back down and sputtered to the top. The water was deep enough that I couldn’t lie down, so I had to prop myself up on my arms, but at the same time the planks above were so low that I couldn’t sit up comfortably. I balanced more carefully and raised my hand to touch my head. It was hard to twist my body into the right shape, but my fingers brushed a big, throbbing bump. It was huge. I was lucky I hadn’t drowned.
“John?” said a voice. Then softer, to the side, “he did say his name was John, right?”
I tried to answer, but my throat was raw and my voice was an unintelligible rasp. I coughed and swallowed and tried again.
“Radha?” I asked.
“He took her upstairs,” said the voice. “She won’t be back ’til tomorrow. I’m Carly.”
I thought of Stephanie, hanging upstairs, and all the things Forman had done to her. He would do them to Radha now. Somewhere inside of me, Mr. Monster longed to be there when the women were tortured—longed to be a part of it. That was good; if I was aware of Mr. Monster, that meant we were separate again. I was back in control.
“There’s another woman upstairs,” I said. “Her name is Stephanie. He brought her in the same night he brought me.”
“He’ll bring her down here eventually, if she survives,” said Carly. There was a pause, then another voice spoke.
“Where are we?”
I paused. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’m from Atlanta,” the new voice said. “We’re nowhere near there anymore, are we?”
Atlanta. Is that where Forman had lived before coming here? None of these women had come from Clayton, or we would have heard about the disappearances on the news. “No,” I said, “we’re nowhere near Atlanta. Are you all from there?”
“We’re from all over,” said another woman. That was all three, minus Radha. “What day is it?”
I thought back to the previous day, though it seemed so long ago. “Today is June twelfth.”
“Three months,” said one of the women.
“Four for me,” said Carly.
“Almost five weeks,” said the third.
Forman had been in Clayton for almost seven months, but he traveled often. Had he collected these women from all over the country?
“You, from Atlanta,” I said. “He got you there three months ago?”
“No,” she said, “Nebraska.” After a moment she added, “my name’s Jess.”
“Jess,” I said. “And you’ve been here since then?” My head was beginning to throb again, and I shifted carefully to ease up pressure on the bump.
“Not here,” she said, “but prisoner, yeah.”
“There was another house,” said Carly. “Most of us came from the old house, but he wasn’t there a lot. Someone came by once a week to feed us—we don’t know who—but Forman still visited often enough to keep us terrified. About one month later he packed us all up in a moving van and came here. He got Jess at a truck stop.”
“I was traveling,” said Jess softly.
“He got me in Minnesota,” said the third voice. She paused, then added, “I’m Melinda.”
“So he came here about seven months ago to investigate the Clayton Killer, but he still took time to travel all over and kidnap you—plus the four he’s already killed.” It was like an addiction: he couldn’t go for long without torturing somebody; he needed the emotional buzz just like a drug. Could I use that against him? There had to be some kind of way out of this. “Was the pit already here when you arrived?”
“Yes,” said Carly, “and the chains, and the ropes through the rafters upstairs.”
“The walls are reinforced, too,” I said. “It took him a while, but he prepared everything so he’d have a working dungeon by the time you got here. That’s a lot to move.”
“He’s moved it once before,” said Jess, “at least once. Radha remembers a third house; she’s been here the longest.”
Of course she had. Radha was his favorite, because she was a fighter. Every day she chose between fighting and being his favorite victim, or giving up and being killed.
“How long has she been here?” I asked.
“A year,” said Melinda.
A year. After enough time, most people would choose to die. Apparently not Radha.
And then her screaming began, drifting down from upstairs like a prophecy of doom. We all fell silent, and I slid down in the water until it covered my ears and drowned out the noise.
The water was rank and oily; it had probably held several prisoners, and had likely never been cleaned. When I started to feel the urge to pee I held it for as long as I could, but eventually there was nothing to do but let it go. The water grew warm, and I finally stopped shivering.
I drifted in and out of consciousness, always aware, even in sleep, of my head and arms and the surface of the water. I tried to twist my body at an angle, to press against the boards above me, but they were too heavy to budge. The barrels on top were probably full of dirt, or more water.
I ended up perpendicular to one of the walls, my head wedged up against the side and my arms crossed under my head; with my hands balled into fists, one on top of the other, they were just tall enough to keep my face above water. I held myself still, breathing slowly, barely conscious.
I’d had nothing to eat or drink since my date with Brooke. After hours lying in the pit, my hunger made me feel sick and weak, and I was so thirsty I could barely swallow. There was nothing to drink but the water I was laying in, so I sipped it gingerly and tried to sleep.
“Is he still in there?”
“Yeah. He never talks, but we hear the water every now and then, so we know he’s aliv
e.”
“Sleeping, then.” The voice was weak, but familiar. Radha was back.
“I’m awake,” I said, pressing my head and arms more firmly against the wall. The water sloshed around me in tiny waves.
“Who are you?” Radha asked.
“My name is John Cleaver,” I said.
“I know your name,” said Radha, “but who are you? Why are you here?”
“Same reason the rest of you are here,” I said.
“But he’s never taken a guy before,” said Carly.
“And he said you’re a killer,” said Radha.
“I . . .” I stopped. What could I possibly tell them? More importantly, what could I learn from them? They’d lived with Forman far longer than I’d even known him—if he could transform into a demon, they might know about it. “Have you ever seen him Forman looking . . . different?”
“You mean in a disguise?” asked Radha. “I’ve never seen one.”
“No,” I said, “I mean have you ever seen him, I don’t know, grow claws or something? Fangs? Does he ever look like an actual monster?”
Silence. After a moment I heard Radha speak softly.
“He’s hallucinating.”
“The pit does that,” said Melinda.
“No,” I said, “it’s real. One of his friends was . . .” I stopped. I didn’t know if Forman was listening in, and this was information I hadn’t given him yet. That’s the whole reason he had me here, supposedly—to find out what had happened to the demon Mkhai.
Regardless, their confusion had already answered my question—if they had seen him change forms they would have recognized my meaning immediately. There was no point giving away any more info.
“Never mind,” I said.
“So did you really kill someone?” asked Radha.
“I did,” I said. “A friend of his. But I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
Silence again.
“Can you kill Forman?” asked Melinda.
I heard a gasp from the others, and a grumble of protest from Radha.
“Just stop,” Radha said. “Do you have any idea how many women he’s killed for trying to escape?”
“And what’s the alternative?” Melinda demanded. “You just want to let him torture you until you end up dead, like the others?”
“I want to wait for the right moment,” said Radha. “I’ve been here a year, Melinda—a whole damn year. I know how he thinks, and I know what I’m doing. He takes me upstairs sometimes to cook; he trusts me. And some day he’s going to trust me enough to leave me an opening, and then I’m going to take it, and I’m going to get us all out of here. But we can’t move before that happens or we’ll lose everything!”
“And what happens in the meantime?” Melinda demanded. “You let him hook you up to a battery and stab you a few hundred times?”
They were getting too angry—he’d feel it, and he’d get suspicious.
“Quiet,” I urged. “You’re going to bring him down here.”
“He can’t hear us,” said Radha.
“But he can feel you,” I said. “Don’t you know?”
“You said that before,” said Carly. “What do you mean?”
“Forman is like . . . he’s like an emotional vacuum. Anything you feel, he feels. That’s why he gets so scared when he scares you, and that’s how he always knows what’s going on down here.”
“Can you kill him if I get you out?” asked Melinda.
I hesitated. “I don’t know. He might be stronger than we think—he might have some kind of power beyond the emotional thing. Fangs and claws, like I said.” Gears turned in my head, connecting ideas, and I started to form a plan. “But we might be able to surprise him.”
“How?” asked Jess.
“Can you actually get me out?” I asked.
“I can almost reach the barrels from here,” said Melinda, and I heard her chain scrape the floor. “I can probably push one of them far enough out of place to let you move a board.”
That would be enough; I could squeeze out and lie in wait for the next time he came down. But if he sensed anything out of the ordinary—hope, excitement, anticipation—he’d know we were planning something. I might be able to mask my own emotions, but the women needed to do the same.
“Everybody, think about your families,” I said. “Think about how much you miss them, and how long it’s been since you’ve seen them, and anything else that will make you sad. I know it sounds horrible, but you’ve got to be sad. Ignore Melinda, ignore me, just try as hard as you can to be sad.”
“But what are you going to do?” asked Jess.
“Sadness first,” I said. “You’ve got to trust me.”
Silence.
“Please,” I begged.
There was a long pause, and finally Radha spoke. “We’ll do it,” she said, “but when he catches on, I’ll tell him everything. I’m not going to jeopardize the trust I’ve earned.”
“Fine,” I said. “Melinda, go for it—but don’t think about what you’re doing. Just be sad.”
I heard her chain scrape again, and then noise above me—a light tapping, a soft scrape and shuffle, and then a low grating as the barrel scraped across the wood—not far, but it did move.
This will never work, I told myself, trying to dampen any emotion of hope. I’ll never see my family again. I’ll never see Brooke again. She’ll grow up, get a job in the wood plant, and marry Rob Anders—and he’ll beat her every night. I felt myself growing angry, and tried to tone it down. She won’t marry Rob, she’ll die young: hit by a car in a freak accident. Young and innocent, splattered across the highway.
The barrel above me moved again.
Lauren would die too, and Margaret, but not Mom—she’d live on for decades, old and alone. In fact, it was probably her fault that the other two died; she’d blame herself forever. I paused. It wasn’t working. That should have been sad, but I wasn’t feeling sad. Why not?
Because bad things that happened to others didn’t bother me. I was a sociopath.
I heard one of the girls crying; I couldn’t tell which. How close were we? How much longer would it take? The barrel scraped again, and a moment later light flooded into the pit through a gap in the boards. It wasn’t a gap exposed by the moving barrel—it was a long line that stretched the entire length of the board. Someone had turned on a light.
Forman was here.
“How very interesting,” said Forman, almost too quiet for me to hear. He was still far away, but his voice grew slowly louder and I guessed he was coming down the stairs. “A house full of scared, angry, desperate people grows suddenly sad—positively despondent, almost at the drop of a hat. Did you think I wouldn’t notice something like that?”
The women were silent.
“And now I find that someone’s been trying to open the pit,” said Forman, much closer now. “And you all know, rather acutely if I recall, that you are not allowed to open the pit. Isn’t that correct?”
Silence.
“So I figure if one of you was touching the pit, that means you want to be in it, right? Please allow me help you with that.” There was a massive crash above me, then another, and another. The barrels were gone, and Forman kicked away the boards. Light flooded into the pit, blinding me, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Come on out, John,” said Forman, “one of the toys has volunteered to take your spot—and I’m guessing she wants a little bit of the good stuff, too.”
I forced my eyes open and saw him standing by the wall with a long extension cord. The plug had been cut off, and the two main wires had been stripped and separated, leaving two long tendrils tipped with three or four inches of bare wire. He tapped these together and they sparked.
“You already know how much fun this is on your chains,” he said, facing the women. “Imagine how much fun it’s going to be in the water.”
I stood up slowly, grabbing the edge, my legs stiff and painful.
“So all I need to
know,” said Forman, “is which one of you was trying to open the pit?” He paused, waiting, and after a moment he sparked the wires together again. “Anybody?”
I looked at Radha; all of the women were looking at her. This was exactly what she’d warned us about, and it was her time to do exactly what she’d promised. This was her chance to gain Forman’s trust. It was smart. It would take longer, but it would work eventually. She could be free.
Radha caught my gaze, her large eyes deep and clear. She held them a moment, then turned her head just slightly so that her dangling hair hid her face from Forman’s view. I peered closer and she mouthed a phrase: Never give in.
She turned back to Forman. “I did it,” she said.
“Excuse me?” said Forman.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I meant, ‘I did it, you wart-brained bastard.’ ”
What was she doing?
“Get in the pit,” said Forman, as cold as steel.
“Sure thing,” said Radha, “I’ll just pop out of these chains and saunter on over there. Good plan.”
Was she an idiot? She was getting angry—angrier than usual—which was forcing him to get angry back. But why? It didn’t make any sense.
“Out of the pit, John,” he said, throwing down the wires and storming past me. Radha readied herself to fight but he hit her easily, a backhanded slap across the face that sent her sprawling to the floor. She looked thin and spindly, like a starved scarecrow. Forman pulled out his keys and unlocked her chain from around the sewer pipe, then used it to drag her over to the pit. “I said out of the pit, John!”
I stumbled backward, up and onto the filthy cement floor, sopping wet and shivering. Forman threw Radha into the hole and started stacking the boards back on top of her, keeping the long length of chain firmly under his foot.
“Get the barrels, John.”
“No.”
He pulled out his gun and fired at my feet, missing by inches. “I said get the barrels!”
The three barrels were small but heavy, probably filled with dirt. I rolled one onto the boards and righted it, then started back for another when a voice floated up from underneath, strained but defiant.