dungeon.
Instead, I was standing in the middle of what looked like the foyer of a typical suburban house.
'What the hell…?' I whispered.
The hardwood floors had been recently sanded and polished, and the carpeting on the stairs was white and clean. Several framed paintings hung from the walls. A crystal chandelier hung above me, and a family room with a large-screen television branched off to the left.
There was a doll with braided hair lying on the floor, next to what looked like a scattered set of a child's building blocks. Everything was clean. I didn't know what to make of it.
'Amanda!' I yelled. There was no response.
I sprinted to the other end of the hall, then took the stairs two at a time to the upper floor.
I ran down a narrow hall. There were three doors, both closed. I opened the first one. It was a bathroom. Hand soaps. Clean towels. No window. No Amanda.
I approached the other door. Pushed it. It opened into what looked like a master bedroom. A king-size bed sat in the center, with a floral comforter cleanly tucked in.
Oddly there were no photos anywhere, as though the place had been disinfected of humanity.
I looked around. Didn't see anything.
Then I went to the other door. Stopped in front of it.
This one was different. It was painted white like the others, but the paint seemed duller. I touched the surface, immediately recoiled. The other doors were wooden. This one was metal. And I knew right away that one of the keys on my chain would open the dead bolt.
I thrust the key inside, got it on the first twist, but then froze when I heard someone coming up the stairs.
The lock unlatched and I pushed the door open.
And then I was standing in what looked like the dream room of any young girl. There were toys everywhere.
Coloring books. A large dollhouse filled with tiny furniture. Tapes and CDs and games were stacked high in a corner. Pink wallpaper, and every book a child could ever want to read. And there, sitting on a made bed, her face a mess of fright and relief, was Amanda.
She jumped up and threw her arms around my chest. I winced as she pressed on the cigarette burn, then took her arm and said, 'We need to go. Right now.'
Then I noticed something. On the floor. A small scrap of paper. I picked it up, unfolded it. It was a receipt. It was from a store called Toyz 4 Fun. I clenched my jaw. At that moment I knew where we were. I knew what this house was.
Panic welled inside me as I shoved the receipt into my pocket, grabbed Amanda's hand as we went for the door, still slightly ajar. I heard someone running down the hall, shouting, 'Ray, where the hell are you, buddy?'
I waited until the footsteps were right outside, then I slammed the heavy metal door closed as hard as I could.
There was an audible oomph as whoever was on the other side was knocked flat off his feet.
I flung open the door and ran past, my heart hammering when I saw that the man I'd just knocked down had a gun in his right hand.
We sprinted downstairs and toward the front door.
Turned the knob. It was locked. One more key left.
I inserted the last key in the lock, let out a breath when it caught, then turned the handle and opened the door to the outside.
As soon as we stepped onto the front porch, Amanda let out a bloodcurdling scream. There was a body in the driveway. It was lying in a pool of blood. The beard gave it away. It was Dmitri Petrovsky, and he was very dead.
'Run!' I shouted.
We ran down the driveway, and I recognized that we were in the exact same place that we'd cornered Petrovsky. The high brick walls and trees obscured the view beyond the house. There was nobody to hear us scream.
We sprinted around the bend, wind whistling past us, and saw the metal gates up ahead.
They were closed. And I had no keys left.
When we reached the brick wall, I knelt down, cupped my hands and said, 'Climb on.'
Amanda stepped onto my hands.
'One, two, three. '
I heaved up as she jumped. Her hands caught the rim of the wall. I pushed from below as Amanda pulled herself up, managing to straddle her legs across the wall.
'Come on!' she shouted.
Just as I got ready to jump, I heard a loud bang and a chunk of brick exploded right beside me.
'Come on, Henry, they're shooting at us!'
I jumped up, managed to get hold of the wall. Amanda gripped my wrists and began to pull. I got a small foothold in the chunk of wall that'd been blown out, then pushed off and hoisted myself up. Another shot rang out, and brick flew apart right where my foot had been.
We toppled over the wall, landed on the other side in a tangled mess. I leaped to my feet, helped Amanda up.
Then we ran as fast as we could, until the woods swallowed us.
We arrived panting at the road we'd turned off of when we followed Petrovsky. Huntley Terrace. It was dark out.
I had no idea where we were or what day it was.
'Come on,' I said, taking Amanda's hand again. I thought back to the last time this happened, the last time we were both running for our lives. Back then Amanda was fleeing with a man she didn't know. This time, for better or worse, she knew what she'd gotten into.
We jogged down the dark road, continually looking over our shoulders to see if we were being followed. I heard nothing, saw nothing. My body felt numb. I was still shirtless, and my side ached. Amanda suddenly stopped, put her hand on my chest.
'Is that a burn mark?' she said.
'We don't have time,' I panted.
Then out of the darkness a pair of headlights appeared. My eyes widened, and I ran forward waving my hands like a crazy person. I was in the middle of the road, and I only prayed the driver could see well enough not to run me over.
It was a gray Cadillac. It pulled to a stop a yard in front of me. I ran to the driver's-side window, gasping for air.
The driver was a woman of about forty, a DVD from
Blockbuster on her front dashboard.
'Don't…don't hurt me,' she said. Her eyes were frightened. I could only imagine the sight in front of her.
'Please,' I said, 'my friend and I were attacked. If you could just take us away from here and call the police…
Please, they're trying to kill us.'
She reached for the shift, prepared to drive away, then saw Amanda huddled next to me, shivering in the lights of her car.
A minute later we were in the backseat of the Cadillac, heading away from one nightmare.
Then I felt the receipt in my pocket, and knew that another nightmare had just begun.
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