“FUCKING STOP!!”
Breaks squealed. I went flying backwards, smashing into the other wall. All movement ceased. A door opened somewhere and slammed shut. There was coughing outside.
The doors parted and in front of me a face appeared lit dimly against the backdrop of the night. His tall, muscular figure silhouetted. He was like a shadow, dressed all in black. The road was underneath the arms that were spread Christ-like, but I could see nothing else.
He lifted his knee up. He was climbing in.
“FUCK OFF! GET OUT! LET ME OUT, YOU CUNT!!!” I screamed.
His figure crawled forward, like a demon, and I edged back into the wall and kicked. I caught him flush in his face, I think on the nose, but he hardly flinched. He came again. He had something in his hand. He grabbed my arm and pushed his weight down on top of me. I wrestled and writhed but he was too strong. He lifted up my sleeve. I felt a stab of pain in my bicep. Then a cold liquid. My eyes closed on the blackness…
Chapter 69
T he sound of dripping water brought me back. I opened my eyes to the same pitch darkness. I blinked several times but couldn’t make out a thing. For a moment I thought I was blind.
The only sound was amplified- the drip drip drip into a puddle somewhere on my left, bouncing back with a hollow echo every five seconds. It must have been a small room. And it was cold, the dampness was seeping through my clothes and into my bones and I realised I had no jumper- it had been removed. I could feel my sweat-soaked t-shirt sticking tight against my belly. My bare forearms too were plastered against my face- forearms that were held above me. I tried to move them and a hot, searing pain shot down from my wrists and made me cry out.
I froze, terrified. But no sound returned my cry. No footsteps, no cough, no talking. The black, damp air was thick about me. I could feel the dustiness and dirtiness too. I’m underground, I thought.
A throbbing ache replaced the sharp pain in my wrists. My ears were pulsing. I had pins and needles in my fingers. My fast, heavy breaths overdubbed the dripping water. Calm, stay calm, I told myself, and tried to stop myself hyperventilating. Then I noticed my shoes had been removed as well. And I could feel muddy earth beneath my bare feet. It must have been a basement.
I tried to stay composed but when I moved even slightly the pain in my wrists was unbearable. The shock of it burned through every nerve. My hands were stuck, I realised. I bit my lip and tried to bring them down again and heard metal chinking against metal, and what sounded like a chain. They were bound. Handcuffs, I panicked. They have me handcuffed.
I writhed my spine desperately against the curved metal object that I was locked into, some sort of pipe that came up from the floor and must have went up to the ceiling. The agonising pain shot into my shoulders and down my arms. My ears pounded with my racing heartbeat. I screamed as loud as my lungs would let me, “HELP!! HELP!! PLEASE! HEEELLP!”
Nothing.
I was in the car when it crashed, I remember that- and then I was in some sort of van. The man injected me, with sedatives? I woke up here, and now here I am. Where am I though? And why did they remove my jumper and hat and shoes and socks? I’ve still got my jeans on though, at least, thank God, but, oh fuck. What are they going to do? No! No. No. Not that. Not again.
“HELP!” HELP!” I thrashed. My left wrist cut against a bolt fixed into the pipe, that the handcuff chain kept catching on and was keeping my arms up and suspending my body. My eyes nipped with sweat, my face was clammy with it. The cuffs ripped deeper into the raw, exposed flesh and I jerked and wriggled and kicked out a leg and suddenly a yellow light flashed on and lit up the room.
It was a basement. Twenty by ten feet walls of red brick, a mud floor, and the knee-high electric light to my left connected to a small generator- which was placed to shine directly on me. I gasped. In the middle of the room- straight in front of my face- was a long, black ladder leading up to a manhole cover in the ceiling.
My head rolled back and I almost fainted. A wave of nausea rushed up from my belly. Is this what that vision in Inverness was? I thought in alarm. The ladder reached up to the closed metal cover and I remembered seeing the figure banging at it and banging at it and trying to get through. Was that supposed to be me? What kind of sick God let’s this happen? I cried. And the darkness had been scary, but this was even worse. The way the light was shining upon me, my arms tied above me, my jumper and shoes removed, and me left hanging there in my jeans and damp shirt like I was a prize object waiting to be gifted. I twisted frantically and my wrists screamed for me to stop, and when I eventually did, through tiredness, the light shut off and the room again plunged into darkness. I kicked out my leg once more. The light was motion censored, but only lasted thirty seconds.
I tried to break the chain. Tried to dislocate my shoulders. But I was trapped. I prayed to God and begged and begged, and the spirits had forsaken me, and
