‘Dammit,’ he said, and wasn’t surprised at how desperate and shaky he sounded.
His phone light picked up a hefty padlock with a large keyhole. It looked brand new. He grabbed the metal chair and started smashing the padlock as hard as he could. The sound clattering into sharp, awful echoes. All the while he fought against the images in his mind, of what these walls might have seen.
And as he pounded the door, a memory crept back. One of the chilling paragraphs from the Internet article. An interview with a local social worker in the late 90s. The essence of it had lodged in his brain and efficiently replayed itself, just like Larry said it would. Just like he’d said it would stick and never really leave.
Some of the boys used to come back …
After the home and the vaults were shut down and everything was locked, Menham people tried to forget, at first. And the abused kids got transferred to other institutions; or they left altogether and went out into the real world. And some of them did alright, you know? Some of them got jobs and got wives and broke free from all that darkness. But there were others who just couldn’t. They wound up in prison. Now, I’m not saying all of them ended up doing what was done to them … but … there were some that did. And even after all that pain, some of the boys … the men … some of the men would come back. Sometimes even years later. Decades, even. Men in their thirties and forties who’d lost everything down here but we’d find them here at night. Heck, you know something … we still do. We still find a few of those men trying to get back in the vaults. And when we ask them why they’d want to be anywhere near this place they always tell us the same thing. They cry a lot and they say what’s the harm, they say the vaults are empty anyway. And you can tell, and you want to know something? It breaks your heart every single time. You can tell it in the way they look at the place. They think they belong down here.
Matt glanced back at the sheet on the desk. The naked boy with large hands looking up and the name written in pencil above his head.
Jeremy Phillip Marlowe.
And in a circle, words that said: ME … aged 9.
‘Jerry …’ Matt closed his eyes. ‘My God …’
He gripped the chair and pounded the lock with every ounce of strength that he had.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Rachel, still splayed out on the cold concrete, looked up at him. ‘We’ll apologise. Just tell us what we did and we’ll—’
‘It’s just way too late for that.’ The rabbit’s voice was very low now. The melancholy tone had stepped aside, so that anger could come instead. ‘Because you can’t change what you are.’
‘And what are we?’ Kassy spluttered, finally. Struggling at the plastic cable ties trapping her to the chair. ‘Come on, you weirdo. What are we?’
He flicked his head toward her and the rubber ears slapped against his face. He stood up. ‘Now pay attention … both of you … thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’
‘Huh?’ Kassy said, coughing.
The rabbit reached his hand up to scratch his neck. For the first time Rachel saw the fingers disappear under the latex flap of the mask. Because this was a human. This was reality, not hell.
Maybe he could be reasoned with.
‘Can you please tell us what we did wrong?’ Rachel said. Subservient. Polite. ‘How did we hurt you?’
‘You didn’t just hurt me …’ he said. ‘You hurt all those girls. And Holly … the first. You know all this.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You gave her to me,’ he said. ‘You threw her down here and you offered her up.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘On your special night. On Halloween. You gave Holly to me.’
‘… I don’t under—’ Clarity. Bursting like a bubble of vomit in her throat. A low explosion on the horizon of her mind, growing into a giant, terrible mushroom. ‘You were down here? You were down here that night?’
‘You knew I was down here. That’s why you came.’
There was a scream deep in her heart, one which had been assembling itself for half of her life, that now started to fight its way up her throat for light. She started swallowing hard to keep it down, just a minute longer.
‘You came here,’ he said. ‘With your pointy hats and your witches’ capes and you threw her down. And you knew what I was fighting down here. You knew that I didn’t want to do that sort of thing. But you pushed her right under my nose and you made me go over to her.’
Rachel’s eyes were closing and she could feel her jaw starting to tighten. She started to shake her head from left to right, ears scraping the dirt floor.
No. No. No. No.
‘And at first I tried to be good. I tried to turn it all around. You’d left her and she was crying so I held her hand and I told her it’d be okay. Told her I’d get her out of here and take her back to her parents … I … I told her I was lonely like she was and that maybe we could be friends.’ He let out this long groan of regret. The latex hole across his mouth stretched into a gaping ellipse. ‘But then I could hear you up there. The four of you. Laughing and egging me on. And you were putting that spirit in me. The one you’ve been pumping down here for years. Into any man who’s ever set foot in here. And you were making me want to … even though I didn’t want to. I was holding her hand and you made me …’
‘Don’t say it,’ Rachel gasped. ‘Don’t say it,
