by S. T. Boston
Seth Horner stood over her smiling and dressed all in black. Black trousers, long sleeve black shirt with brass snap buttons, and black DM style boots. “He’s just fine,” he answered coldly, then ran a hand through his dark hair, it was brushed back off his forehead today highlighting the thick black frames of his glasses. “You’re both our very special guests,” he added. “More water?”
Ellie took a second bottle from him. Now with her thirst partially quenched her stomach began to grumble. She unscrewed the cap and drained half the bottle before screwing it back on and wiping the back of her dirt-smeared hand across her dry, cracked lips. She placed the bottle on the floor by her mattress. She doubted this was where she got set free and she’d no doubt be in need of it later; if she indeed had a later and that nasty little thought made her guts churn. “If I’m a guest,” she said, that anger starting to grow in her once again, “then you won’t mind if I just leave.”
Seth Horner swept his arm toward the door in a go-ahead gesture and said, “You’re free to go now if you want, Ellie. The only trouble is,” he creased his brow, feigning regret, “that without you, Ellie, your brother will be of little use to us and we will have to kill him.” His voice remained calm, almost kind sounding in some odd way, and the ease at which he mentioned killing her brother both chilled her and enraged her at the same time.
“You sick, fuck,” she spat. She wanted to launch herself at him and smash his skull into the dirt floor and not stop until she felt it crack like an egg, the kind of thing that would normally repulse her, but not here, here the idea thrilled her and that scared her nearly as much she feared for her brother. Unfortunately, Seth Horner was taller, larger and not suffering from god knows how long shut in a dark cell. Instead, she opted for, "Why?" and kept a lid on her fury.
Seth smiled coldly. “I don’t want to ruin all the surprises, Ellie,” he said as he dropped to a crouch next to her. He reached a hand out and she flinched back instinctively, but the wall stopped her backing away. Softly he brushed a strand of her bedraggled hair off her face, then ran the back of his hand gently over her cheek and said, “And there are so many wonderful surprises waiting for you.” His skin felt cold and the contact made her want to retch. “You and your little brother have a very special part to play here in Trellen in a few days, it’s really quite exciting.”
"I want to see him," Ellie demanded. She could feel hot tears welling up in her eyes and she tried desperately to fight them back. Inside her, fear was in a battle with anger and right now the fear was starting to win. She knew it was pointless trying to fight with Seth Horner, the smart move was to try and placate him, to acquiesce. She knew that over time some captors even grew to depend on those holding them, Stockholm Syndrome it was known as. Ellie wasn't sure she'd quite reach that point, nor ever would, but it didn’t hurt to play along.
“Of course,” Seth exclaimed. “Right this way.” He stood, and Ellie heard his joints crack. She shimmied herself to her knees, Seth offered his hand in support and begrudgingly she took it and got to her feet.
Seth led her from the cell and out into a stone-walled corridor where she pulled her hand back. Ellie rubbed it on her leggings as if Seth were the dirty one and she clean. Her legs felt shaky, but it was good to walk again. The same wooden planking that lined the ceiling of her cell lined the corridor’s, too. The same uneven stone lined the walls. Every twenty feet or so an antique looking oil lamp hung on a wrought iron bracket, their flames casting the passageway in that warm orange glow that, now her eyes had adjusted, was soft and not in the slightest bit harsh.
Ellie had no idea how long the passage was, it stretched off into the distance like a mine shaft. Here and there doors were set back into the stone on both sides, the doors were made of solid looking oak with no windows or hatches. As she walked the dirt floor beneath her feet felt cold and occasionally small stones bit into her bare soles, but she ignored the pain. The want and need to know that her brother was still alive was too strong.
“Where am I?” Ellie asked.
Seth looked back at her, those cold eyes flickered with something that she couldn’t quite judge. He was a very different Seth to the one she’d met and even liked at the BBQ. A change almost akin to that of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “Trellen, of course,” he answered. “Just a part of the village that only our special guests see. Henry is right down here, he’s quite fine as you will see.”
“And Lindie, was she your special guest?” Ellie spat, her mind recalling the dream that had led her to this nightmare.
Seth Horner stopped in his tracks, wheeled around on his heels and took hold of her by the shoulders, his hands were strong on her and she felt the bones of her shoulder blades crunch until it made her wince. “And just how could you know that name?” he asked and fixed those cold eyes on hers, as if just by looking at her he’d get the answer.
“I know what you sick fucks did to her, too. You raped her, likely abused her and got her pregnant and then killed her baby. Just like you did to Sarah, Lucy and all those other girls in some kind of sick ritual. Is that what you want to do to me?" The anger was winning again, and she used the pain in her shoulders to feed it. "Is that what you want me for?" she cried at him. "Is your wife going to watch while you do me, Seth? Is that her thing? Does it get her off to see you rape young girls?”
Seth released his grip on her, that odd smile returned to his lips, “You have the sight, don’t you Ellie?” He backed her against the wall tightly, his strong body pushing against hers. He took hold of her chin between his thumb and forefinger and lifted her face toward his and Ellie had no doubt he'd now feel how hard her heart was hammering away in her chest. "Yes, that's it," he said more to himself as he looked into her eyes. "Interesting, we've never had one with the sight." As he spoke his grin spread. "That will make your spirit all the sweeter for the darkness to consume. He nodded in agreement with himself and said, “Yes, this is definitely going to be interesting.” He released her as suddenly as he’d taken hold of her, turned and then as if nothing had happened carried on down the long passage for another twenty yards before stopping outside of another of the non-descript solid timber doors. “He’s right in here,” he said, producing a lone key from his pocket and unlocking it.
Henry was laid on his back on what looked like a hospital bed. A three-rung metal guard rail stopped his small body falling off and dropping the three or four feet to the floor should he roll over; the other side was pushed tightly against the stone wall. A drip bag of water-clear solution hung on a hook over the bed, gravity-fed fluid was steadily flowing via a slim tube that ended in a canular secured into the back of his right hand with white medical tape. Unlike Ellie he had covers and a pillow and the room was dimly lit by an oil lamp of the same style as she’d seen in the passageway. This lamp, however, was turned down lower, the flame guttered in the air that had been disturbed by the door being swung open. Above it, the thin gossamer threads of a long-ago abandoned spider web danced on the warm air expelled by the lap. Laid the way he was on his back, his face still and peaceful looking and almost like white marble in the dim light, made him looked dead. For a few horrific seconds, until she saw the shallow rise and fall of his chest beneath the black covers, she thought he was.
“Hen,” Ellie called, trying to shove past Seth and into the room. He blocked her entry and held her at the door, a strong hand on her shoulder once more.
“He can’t hear you,” Seth said calmly. “He has been asleep since you were both taken, we thought it would be less distressing for him.”
“You drugged him?” Ellie asked accusingly. “He’s five!”
“No, we have no need for such things as drugs. There is much you don’t understand, Ellie. Your brother is under a sleep spell and he will remain that way until it’s time. The drip is no more than a saline solution to keep him hydrated.”
Seth swung the door shut and Ellie caught one last glimpse of her brother before it closed completely. “Time for what?” E
llie rubbed the tears away from her eyes with the backs of her dirty hands. “What are you going to do to him?”
Seth looked at her and smiled and for a second there seemed to be some kind of genuine compassion in his cold eyes. “Your brother is blessed, Ellie. He has been chosen for great things and you are going to help him become.”
“I – don’t – understand,” she said shakily.
“As I said, there is much you don’t understand.” He spoke the words softly and took her by the wrist. “For now, you must go back to your room and wait. Patience, Ellie, patience is the key.”
“No,” she pleaded. “Just let us go, I won’t say anything. I’ll say I took Henry, we got lost, anything.” Ellie’s mind turned at a thousand miles an hour. Right then and there she’d have agreed to just about anything to secure their freedom. She wanted to get her brother out of that room and away from this place, she wanted to feel fresh air on her skin and the warm summer breeze in her hair, and more than anything she didn’t want to go back to the blackness. She pulled back against Seth, but he tightened his grip, pulling her back toward the cell. She could see the door stood open like a gaping mouth waiting to devour her. As she pulled back, Seth tugged her along, the way a parent might drag a disobedient child around a supermarket.
“If you struggle, I will be forced to hurt you, Ellie. You don’t want that, trust me!” he said, glancing back as he spoke.
“P-please,” she begged, and now the tears did fall, one ushered the rest like the onset of a flood. “Just not the dark again, please let me have a light. I’ll go back but not in the dark.” Ellie hit out in a blind panic with her free arm, her hand forming a fist as she swung. It caught Seth square around the side of the head, her eternity ring, given to her by her mother on her eighteenth birthday, sliced the skin on his ear open. Seth howled in pain and surprise and instinctively raised his hand to the side of his head as he let go of her arm. When he removed his hand, Ellie saw that it was covered in blood. She backed up, knowing that she’d taken it too far. Her eyes scanned the long passage behind her for any means of escape but before she could break into a run, he snatched her up by the wrist, grabbing and twisting the hand that had hit him.
“Fucking bitch,” he spat as he lifted her arm high and twisted it painfully behind her back making her cry out in pain. He wheeled her round so she was in front of him, then frog-marched her along the passage and hurled her forward into the cell. "If they didn't need you the way you are, I'd spend the next few hours doing things to you so horrific that by the time I’d finished you would wish you were dead.” Ellie went spilling to the floor and fresh pain flared in her other wrist as it took the weight of her fall.
“Please, not the dark,” she begged, her face now redden and streaked with more tears.
“You need to get used to the dark you little bitch,” he fired back as spittle flew from his lips, his bloodied hand reached up to his torn ear once again, felt the sticky wetness of the wound, then withdrew it and looked at his crimson fingers with furious eyes. “Where you’re going you need to be used to it,” he growled, looking at her once again. “So best get used to it now!” He swung the door shut, slamming it so hard that the bang reverberated through the cell and cast out the light in an instant.
Chapter 33
“You’ll die if you go in there, Mikey, you – Scotty and your whore. I’ve got so many beautiful things to show you, ALL OF YOU!” the deep voice growled from the throat of Shelly Ardell.
Mike creased his brow in confusion, feeling the grip of intense déjà vu. He’d been here before. Heard those words before. He looked in puzzlement around the hospital room, it was empty. Last time he’d lived this a man had been here, Shelly Ardell’s husband, and upon his lap had been the child in a rabbit onesie, her face angelic in peaceful sleep as she nestled safely in the comfort of her father’s lap.
Mike looked back to the bed. Shelly Ardell’s lips peeled back, as they had done before, only this time they revealed black gums that held terrible jagged teeth, teeth that would have looked more akin to something you’d see in the mouth of a shark, pointed and razor sharp. Teeth of nightmares designed solely for ripping and tearing through living flesh. He tried to stumble back, but as he moved his attempt to get away from the bed proved futile, for Shelley Ardell, or the thing that had once been Shelly Ardell, but was now something wearing her body like a suit, shot a hand from beneath the covers. When he’d lived this before, Shelly Ardell had been gripped by paralysis, a paralysis brought from her broken neck. Now, here and in this version, whatever possessed her gave her the reflexes of a feline. The hand grasped his forearm and pulled him toward the bed.
Mike awoke with a start in his room back at the Travel Lodge. It had been no more than a dream. He took a deep breath and tried to slow his pounding heart, and that was when he realised, he couldn’t move. His arms and legs felt numb, dull and like old rubber. He tried to will any part of his body to move but couldn't. Through the moonlit gloom of his hotel room, he saw something moving, crawling on all fours across the carpet and toward the bed. He knew what that thing was. Shelly Ardell! Former wife, mother, police officer, now a living nightmare. It reached the side of the bed and with a weirdly disjointed dexterity it sprang from the floor and landed upon his paralysed body, pinning him to the bed. The Shelly-thing was now astride him; she still wore her hospital gown only now it was smattered with blood and covered in filth as if she’d crawled all the way to his room from her private bed in Derriford Hospital. The bandage that had been on her head was gone and Mike could see the injury on the top of her head, the skull partially caved in. Through the dim light he could see the blood that caked and clumped her dark hair together, it looked black.
For the briefest of moments, the image of his own daughter’s dead body took him again, the crushing cranial trauma that had taken her life not a million miles from that of Shelly’s. Her pale and deathly face met his, just inches apart, so close that in his paralysed condition he could do nothing but meet her eyes, eyes that were as black as two rounds of coal. Unable to fight her off he watched as she reached up and placed her hands around his neck, the skin of her palms the ice-cold temperature of death on his own warm flesh. Their purchase on him found, those dead hands begin to squeeze and choke the life out of him. It’s a night terror, old hag, Mike said in his brain whilst trying to fight the feeling of blind panic that threatened to take him. Sleep paralysis and nothing more, and yet it felt so real, so very real. The weight of Shelly Ardell on his paralysed body felt impossibly strong and as the grip on his neck tightened like a vice, he felt his body sinking into the mattress, sinking more and more as if the bed below him was now no more than quicksand or soft soil and she had the ability to push him down through it to whatever waited below.
Slowly, surely and bit by terrible bit the room began to shrink away and now a knowing smile peeled back her pale and thin lips. Behind those lips were the same black gums, the same teeth that had no business being inside a human mouth. Her jaw widened, stretched and yawned to an impossible angle, and for the first time, he saw the blackness that dwelt within her. It transfixed him and he felt an odd separating sensation. As his physical body sank into the mattress he felt as if his soul, his very being was being drawn up and into that darkness. It wanted him. Mike felt a scream rise inside like pressurised stream. It needed to escape. He felt it rush from the pit of his stomach, up to his strangled throat where it stalled. That mouth drew closer, closer, and he could smell the fetid stench of rot now, it clung to the Shelly-thing like an invisible cloak. The scream built further, but with his throat closed off by those dead hands there was nowhere for it to go, it needed to escape, or he felt as if he would explode. That gaping hole of a mouth with its rows of razor-sharp teeth were just inches from his face now, it yawned wider still, ready to consume him, and then the scream did break free….
“NOOOOOO,” Mike cried snapping awake. The sound of his own voice reverberated in his head and instinctively jolted
his body to an upright position in the bed, the paralysis gone. His body was caked in sweat and the thin sheet beneath which he’d been sleeping now clung uncomfortably to him. Mike raised a hand to his throat, it hurt but that could have been from how tightly wound his muscles had been wound when he’d awoken. Mike moved his neck from left to right, loosening it, making sure this time he really was awake, and this was not some new nightmare level to the dream.
Next to him Tara slept. She looked momentarily concerned from the depths of slumber, she stirred and then settled once more. Mike took a few moments to just watch her sleep and moved a hand to her face, enjoying the warmth of her smooth skin beneath the tips of his fingers.
She’d come to him earlier that night, half an hour after she and Scotty had left for their separate rooms. Mike had been settling in to surf the channels for an action film that didn’t require too much thought. What he liked to call a take-your-brain-out-and-just-enjoy kind of thing. He’d needed to try and take his mind off the hospital trip to Plymouth. It wouldn’t work though, and he’d known it. For the briefest of moments back in that room on the Fal Ward, something else had been in control of Shelly Ardell, something had come through her. A phenomenon he’d read about and seen in countless horror films. One of the most famous examples being that of Janet Hodges who during the investigation into the haunting of her council house in Enfield in 1977 had spoken in a voice that many claimed could not possibly have come from the voice box of an eleven-year-old girl. Mike had never truly believed it possible, until now.