“You can come in to the sitting room,” a strong voice startled him from the darkness. “No one is here to hurt you.” Carson recognised the voice but it took a couple of seconds before he could place it. When it hit home, however, it was like a thunder stick to his head. It was the killer who’d been washing his hands in the bathroom in Vito’s! The man who had set him up!
“Who is it?” Carson called, knowing he was discovered but trying to buy some time.
“You know who it is,” the voice said, “Well, perhaps not my name, but we have met before and only very recently.”
Carson’s head began to swim as he backed a little towards the bedroom he’d been sleeping in. It was a good thing he was up against the wall as his legs felt suddenly as though they were made of jelly and wouldn’t hold him up for much longer.
‘What the fuck is happening to me,’ he thought; was he having an anxiety attack or something? He’d never felt like this before in his life. The back of his neck felt hot and as though an insect bite was starting to make itself known. He ran his hand over the skin and scratched at it.
“The effects of the injection I gave you should be kicking in around now,” the voice from the living room came again though it sounded much farther away now. Carson’s eyes were blurring and the hallway grew and extended in length and width as he tried to get his bearings.
A man, a huge man appeared at the end of the hallway and Carson tried to see his face. It was no use though and he couldn’t focus on it at all. He heard warped laughter and the man was coming towards him now and there was nothing Carson could do about it at all. He felt his back sliding down along the wall.
“Don’t worry,” the man said and this was the last Carson knew before losing consciousness completely.
Chapter 31
THE HOUSE, OR SHOULD she say basement lockup, was abuzz with the news. There was another new one coming to the house today. Eric had come into the common room with the news which had been delivered in a note thrown down the shaft the meals come from.
“Who is it?” Megan asked, curious to think it had been like this that day she came here, which wasn’t all that long ago.
“We never know that until they arrive and tell us,” Suzanne said. There was a clip to her tone as usual and Megan saw Ellie roll her eyes and shake her head at it.
“It doesn’t say when, but all the rest of us here arrived after dinner on the days we came,” Eric said musing.
“They day we ‘arrived’!” Megan scoffed, “You make it sound like a good thing.” Eric cast a bitter look at Megan but ignored her words; there had been enough arguments with the new troublemaker already.
“Well, hopefully our new housemate will be of a more optimistic bent than the last ‘delivery,’” he said and she knew he’d changed the word for her benefit. Megan didn’t rise to the bait. She planned to get out of here and didn’t want to spend her last days arguing with these brainwashed assholes. Her spine tingled at the idea of getting out. She’d found a way, or at least was close to it. Ellie agreed.
Behind the shaft where the food came down there was a mechanism that controlled the lift. It was a basic design that wouldn’t require much maintenance, if any at all, but when Megan had collected the food a few nights ago, she felt an air flow coming. It was not coming from above but from behind the pulleys and weights. She was sure there was an open area, or crawl space behind it that led to outside and that was where she and Ellie were going to get out. She’d told Ellie about it already and when it was her turn to get the food, she nodded in agreement with Megan’s evaluation when she came back to the rest of the group. It was hard to sit through that meal without a smile beaming all over both their faces.
The day carried on as normal with the exception of the growing excitement of a new person coming. Megan wondered how many people it would take, shoved down here in an ever shrinking space, before the others would accept it as a bad thing. There probably wasn’t a number so long as they were still alive and getting fed every day.
Megan was on one of her many daily walks around the basement rooms when she heard a thumping noise and then the sound of someone having the breath knocked out of them. She went to the room with the slide from upstairs, the same one she’d been sent down here on and sure enough, a man lay on the ground trying to catch his breath. Without thinking Megan started to run up the slide but the door was already closed and she stepped back down to the floor.
“Who are you?” Where am I?” the man asked. He was sitting up now and looking at her, his back pressed to the wall on the far side of the room. She saw him looking her over for weapons
“Don’t be afraid,” she said, “This is probably the safest place you’ve been for a long time.”
“Where is ‘here’?” he asked, getting to his feet slowly, his eyes roving the room.
“You're in the basement of a farmhouse I don’t know where exactly, but you are a hostage of a serial killer called Dwight Spalding, just like the rest of us.” Megan surprised herself with how coolly she described their joint predicament.
“Serial killer?” The man looked suddenly very panicked. Who could blame
