by Logan Fox
Gabriel brings me in front, an arm around my waist to keep me tight, a hand over my mouth to keep me silent. He forces me down the stairs one at a time. I struggle as much as I can, despite the fact that we could both take a tumble and land up with broken necks.
Especially when the sagging metal frame of my old single bed comes into view. Because then I know a broken neck is the only winning hand in this game.
I’d wondered about the lock on the basement before—the pilot light is down here, so we’d be stuck if he wasn’t around to light it again if it ever went out. But who was I to question Dad’s wisdom? His quirks and his rules? How could I, when Mom didn’t?
I’ve never been down here before. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed in the passage back there. The space is surprisingly small, until I realize the walls are soundproofed. Someone closed up this space on purpose. Turned a massive basement into a much smaller, more intimate space.
Someone? You know exactly who did this.
But my mind rejects the thought.
My old mattress is still on that rusting bed frame. There’s even a sheet over it, but its moth-eaten and stained.
And then I see my old potty trainer.
And then I see the ropes still attached to the bed frame.
I start kicking up my legs, twisting and wriggling, but it doesn’t help. Gabriel holds me with ease. His voice doesn’t even sound strained when he speaks.
“No better place to look for the light,” he murmurs into my ear, “than down here in the dark.”
And then…then I see the video camera.
Chapter Fourteen
Trinity
I wish I knew a bible verse by heart right now. Or lots of them. Then I could choose the perfect one. Something Old Testament about going to hell for your sins.
Probably wouldn’t have helped. I mean, Gabriel’s a priest. He knows the bible back to front, and not one verse ever swayed him toward the light.
He shoves me away from him. My hands fly out and barely catch me against the plastic sheet lining the floor.
I scramble onto my back, ready to kick out if he comes close.
The room is small, claustrophobic even. The bed takes up most of the space. If I can distract him, I can try and get past him and up to the stairs.
Like I haven’t tried that before.
“What do you want?” I try to keep my voice calm in case he lunges at me to keep me quiet. Or maybe it doesn’t matter down here with all this soundproofing.
I’ve certainly never heard sounds coming from the basement. Or had I dismissed them as my imagination?
Gabriel lifts his hands, showing me his palms. As if he wants me to trust him.
What a joke.
“You said you want to find the light.” His voice is tight and unsteady, like he’s barely keeping it under control. “Many boys have found the light down here.”
I shake my head before I can stop.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Dad would never—”
Gabriel’s bitter laugh cuts me off. He walks up to me, dodging effortlessly when I kick. Then he grabs me by the hair and hoists me to my feet, shaking me mercilessly.
His other hand grabs my chin, turning my face and forcing me to look around the small room.
“Who do you think built this place?” he hisses in my ear. “It wasn’t me, child.”
If I could shake my head, I would. The things he’d said after I hobbled up to his room at Saint Amos and told him I had to show him something in the bell tower…
But my mind rejects what he’s telling me.
“No,” I murmur. “Dad was a good man. A holy man. He would never—”
“Your dad?” Gabriel croons, mocking me. He’s becoming unhinged again, like he did back in the bathroom.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “I’m sorry, Father, I didn’t mean—”
He shakes me into silence. “Always blameless,” he whispers as he drags me close against him. “No one ever suspected. Not even you.”
Of course not. Why would they? My dad kept to himself and both my parents were quiet people. But they loved the church. They loved people. I never heard them say a bad thing about anyone. Oh, they’d fight behind their closed bedroom door, but I wasn’t idiotic enough to believe they had a perfect marriage. Dad was gone a lot and Mom didn’t like staying home to look after me. She never said it, but I could see she missed him when he wasn’t around.
When I was younger they’d sometimes go away for a week or two, but that stopped as soon as I hit puberty. It was Dad who told Mom to stay at home. He probably thought I would lure a boy back home or something. He seemed to think I was a whore as much as Gabriel did.
I always thought he was strict because of his faith, but maybe he was actually trying to protect me from people like him? Deviants and pedophiles who would see me in a short skirt and obsess about what they could do to me if they had me to themselves?
Somewhere hidden. Somewhere secret.
A dark, soundproofed room like this.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please stop.”
I can’t let him destroy my past. It’s all I have.
“Forgiveness requires confession, child,” Gabriel says, his lips brushing my ear. He shakes me again, kisses my temple. “Only through confession can we be cleansed of sin.”
“P-please.”
“I told your mother that so many times. But she wouldn’t listen, just like you.”
My heart stutters in my chest.
Mom knew?
Oh Lord, who am I kidding? Of course she knew. But logic doesn’t ease the pain of realizing my mother kept Dad’s secret.
I stab my elbow into Gabriel’s stomach.
I get lucky. He’s distracted, and I manage to hit him hard enough, and in just the right spot, that I knock the air from his lungs.
He doubles over with pain, his grip releasing just enough for me to wriggle free.
I make a dash for the stairs, for the door, for freedom.
My foot lands on the first stair, and then Gabriel kicks it out from under me. I fall face first, my chin slamming into the wooden step. Blood leaks into my mouth from the cut my teeth sliced into the inside of my cheek.
But I’m already scrambling up, ignoring the pain, ignoring the sound of Gabriel’s furious breathing behind me.
I don’t reach the door.
Halfway up the stairs, Gabriel latches onto the back of my sleeping shirt and tugs. I go flying down the stairs, missing all of them. I land on my back on the plastic sheeting with a loud crump.
Air gushes out of my lungs. I roll onto my side, groaning as a dull ache spreads through my body from the impact.
When I force my eyes open, they fix on Gabriel’s loafers.
He grabs my hair and drags me over the floor. My scalp is on fire where he’s pulling, hurting more the harder I fight.
The bed squeaks when he throws me down, and I scream in panic. I try to roll off, but he slaps me so hard I see stars. There’s a violent yank on my arm, the rough kiss of a rope, and then I’m bound.
Like he’s done this a thousand times before.
I start sobbing with frustration, fear, desperation. “P-please!”
“That’s it,” he says, voice menacingly low. “Keep begging. That’s just how he liked it.”
What. The. Fuck?
I kick and lash out, but it’s as if Gabriel is made of steel. He doesn’t even blink when I rake my nails through his skin hard enough to draw blood.
“Help!” The yell burns my throat.
I was right about the soundproofing. Gabriel doesn’t give a fuck. He grabs my foot and lashes it to the bedpost.
My toes catch his chin, sending his head snapping to the side. There’s a hush, a pause as he straightens his head.
His brown eyes resemble those of an animal head hanging above some redneck’s fireplace.
There empty. Dead.
He grabs my other foot, lashes it down. I try and untie th
e knot on my left hand while he’s busy, but it’s so tight I don’t make any progress by the time he’s done.
And then he climbs on top of me, straddling my stomach.
Terror pours ice through my limbs. I go stiff, panting as tears leak from the corners of my eyes.
He grabs my chin, his fingertips biting cruelly into my jaw. Then he snaps my head to the side like he can’t bear looking at me anymore.
A giant sob wracks me as he ties off my last wrist. He settles back, crushing my stomach with his weight, and studies me.
My head is still to the side, and I don’t dare look at him. Instead I squeeze my eyes shut and start praying.
Our father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy—
“Look at me.”
—name. Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on earth as—
“Look at me!” he roars.
His fingers wrench my head to face him, but I keep my eyes squeezed closed. It’s stupid, it’s fucking juvenile, but it’s the only way I can defy him now.
I’m not going to lie here and take this.
“Trinity.” His voice is soft now, sinister. “Open your eyes.”
“Fuck you.”
A slap sends white spots dashing through the black behind my eyes.
“You like it, don’t you?” he rasps. “The fight. The struggle. The pain. Got that from your whore mother.”
My eyes fly open. I stare up at him in shock. “How dare—”
He slaps me again. “Is this the only way you’ll let me in? Is this what it will take? Because I’ve done worse.” His voice catches. “I’ve done so much worse for so much less.”
My heart thunders in my chest. What the hell is he talking about? His shoulders move back, hand raised for another slap.
“No! Stop! Please!”
He pauses, but his hand stays up.
“I don’t know what you mean. Please…” A sob cuts in, I force it down best I can. “Just…just talk to me, Gabriel.”
Pathetic, trying to reason with a mad man. But my head aches, and my cheek’s on fire, and I can’t take anymore. I’m so close to surrender, I can already feel his hands on me.
His chest rises and falls, exaggerated. His hand drops, but barely an inch.
“Please. Just talk to me. Tell me…” I have to swallow hard before I speak again. “Tell me what you want.”
“What I want,” he repeats woodenly.
His hand falls to his side. His eyes move off me, staring at nothing. Or maybe only something he can see.
“Yeah,” I manage. My voice rebels, but I push out the words anyway. “Let’s talk, Gabe. Just you and me.”
His eyes slide back to mine.
I squirm under him before I can control myself because that blank face of his ratchets up my fear a thousand notches.
“So you can use me like he did?” he murmurs. Shakes his head. His voice drops to barely a whisper. “My fault. I let him use me. I let him control me…”
The hand he’d been about to hit me with curls into a fist. But instead of slamming into my face, he leans on it, putting his head close to mine.
He stares into my eyes from an inch away. I can feel his breath on my face, still a little too hard, too hot, from our struggle. My flesh writhes beneath my skin like I have a thousand worms burrowing through my body.
“It was his idea.” Gabriel laughs, sending a puff of warm breath over my lips. “But no one will ever believe me. Know why?”
His eyes skitter over mine, searching. I keep my face neutral. Try and keep my eyes locked on his.
“Why?” I manage.
He draws back a little, and then his eyes fall to my lips. “Because he’s a clever fuck, that’s why.”
Gabriel taps my temple hard with a finger. “Always ten steps ahead of me.”
My entire body vibrates how hard my heart’s beating. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “He shouldn’t have used you.”
“No!” he agrees, breath painting my lips again. His eyes are locked on mine now, so intense I can almost feel his pain. “No, he shouldn’t have. Not if he loved me like he claimed he did. But you know what, Trinity? I realized something a few years ago.” He glances away for barely a second before his eyes are back on mine again. “Still can’t believe it took me so long, but I realized, of course he didn’t love me. He’s not capable of love. He’d just pretend. Just like he’d pretend to be normal.”
He grabs my chin, shakes my head. But not violently this time. Almost gently.
“Had everyone fooled, didn’t he?” He smiles, bitterly, cruelly. “Me. You. Everyone.”
My head sinks into the dirty mattress when he pushes back to sit. He drags his hands down his face and then slowly climbs off me.
Relief floods me with heat, then cold. I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’m walking a tightrope, and one wrong word could send me plummeting to my death.
Literally.
But I don’t need to. He’s gone off on a tangent, and I’m merely his audience.
“I was such a fool back then,” Gabriel purses his lips. “I was so infatuated with him, his plan sounded…logical. If his urges, his compulsions, only became worse when he repressed them then he had to find an outlet for them.”
My skin grows cold. I swallow hard, and then force myself not to fixate on Gabriel, or the words spilling out of his mouth. Instead, I tug surreptitiously at the knots lashing me to the bed, trying to find a little give in them. Something. Fucking anything.
“We tried everything, Monica and I. Sick things. Things you couldn’t wrap your head around. But it was never enough. The two of us? We were never enough for him.”
He points at the bed, and I freeze. But he’s so far lost in the past, I doubt he even sees me anymore.
“I’d strap her down for him. Hurt her for him. Ropes, whips, knives. We’d fuck her raw, but it was never enough for him.”
My guts twist as I glance down at the mattress I’m lying on.
Lord, don’t let this be the same one they—
My eyes flutter closed as I will my nausea to settle down.
“It became a game, in the end.” Gabriel walks up to the bed, stares down at me. When he reaches out and grabs a lock of my hair, curling it around his finger, I do my best not to pull away or puke. “But Keith always won.”
My body sags.
I’m not getting out of these knots. I doubt I’m even getting out of this basement. Not after I see the look in Gabriel’s eyes.
Defeat.
He knows there’s no coming back from this. You can’t tie up your daughter in a basement and still expect her to love you.
If that’s even what he was after. It’s night and day with him. Like a faulty switch that keeps dimming and brightening a light even when you’re not touching it.
“You’re crazy,” I say quietly. Not with malice. Just stating a fact, that’s all.
Gabriel smiles as he huffs out a breath through his nose. “Yes.” He agrees through a sigh. “I am.” Then he releases my hair. “But not always. Not at first.” He points at himself. “He made me like this. With his tricks and his games.”
He’s nodding over and over again, like he’s stuck. “They did this to me.”
“You can’t keep blaming him. He’s dead.”
At this, he throws back his head and laughs.
The sound is more terrifying than when he was on top of me, slapping me into submission.
“Oh, God.” A last laugh. “Yes.” Another sigh. “They both are. They are so very fucking dead.” He dips his head a little. “God answers our prayers in his own way,” he says, placing a hand over his heart. “It only took a few thousand of them before he answered mine.”
I grit my teeth at him. “It’s karma. It’s what happens if you’re a bad person.”
His face turns to stone, but he doesn’t try and stop me.
“Think you’ll get away with it? You won’t.” I lift my head, pushing my chin
out at him. “And I hope God punishes you. I hope you die a slow and horrible death. Because that’s more than what you deserve for what you did to those boys, you sick fuck!”
The silence that comes after my pronouncement seems much too quiet, like the walls in here are still soaking up every stray sound wave.
Gabriel tilts his head to the side. Takes a step closer. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
I cringe away the closer he comes, but there’s nowhere for me to go. Tied spread-eagled to this bed, I can’t do anything to protect myself.
“I had nothing to do with those kids. Nothing!” He points a finger to the side, then stabs it into his chest. “He blamed everything on me. He set me up when I told him I’d take you away from him. And he couldn’t have that, could he? Oh no.”
Gabriel gives his head a furious shake.
“You were the only reason Monica stayed. You were the glue that held your dysfunctional family together. Monica wouldn’t leave him, because he told her he would hurt you if she tried.”
My ears are singing. Not hymns, but dirges filled with despair.
Gabriel lets out another bitter laugh. “And that was my fault.” He lunges forward, grabs the front of my shirt in a fist. “I’m the reason you’re alive. I’m the reason he had something he could use to control her with. To control us with.”
His other hand cups my cheek. “He used you to turn her against me. And when I threatened to expose him, he made it look like I was the one who arranged everything. All those boys, for all those sick men? Me!”
My mouth is open. My eyes wide. But I can’t digest the information flooding my mind.
“He found a film of a young boy.” Gabriel’s eyes are wide, his face sickly pale. “He made us watch it. Me and Monica. Told us that was what he needed. That was the only cure for his sickness. Just one boy. One boy, and he wouldn’t prey on anyone else again.”
“N-No, pl-ease,” I manage, but sobs cut up the words.
“Who do you think it was, found that first boy for him? Hmm?” He leans close again, twisting the fabric of my shirt. Pushing me hard into the mattress. His fingertips dig into the side of my face as he forces me to look at him.