The door opened smoother than Marcus had expected. Helen held her breath and wished for her eyes to close, but they refused. The door swung open and there he was, standing before her. Luther, his suit neat and freshly pressed; he had chosen pinstripe just for this special reunion. His gleaming blade was sharpened to the point where it no longer looked like a scalpel. It wasn’t a surgical blade at all, but a cut throat razor, opened to full length. He had added an additional attachment on the other side; another blade, sharpened to a needle point.
The world around Helen went black as Luther was picked up by a large spotlight. His mouth opened and he hissed at her, bearing his teeth like an angry dog. His head dropped lower onto his shoulders before he threw it back, jaw stretched open a hundred and eighty degrees. He bellowed at the top of the closet. Blood erupted from his mouth, jumping in spurts as Luther gargled with the iron fluid. It was a rich red, too red to be real blood, and the longer he gargled, the taller the bubbled spurts became. Blood splattered against the walls and ran down his throat, staining his suit. As Helen watched, the blood turned from red to maroon and finally to black, no longer blood but a thick sludge. The gargles changed to choking sounds, and when Luther’s head snapped back to face Helen once more the flesh was gone. What remained was the wet, meaty face of a partially rotted skeleton. The mouth began to close, but before it did a burst of the foul smelling waste shot towards her.
Helen screamed and covered her face with her hands. Her heart hammered in her chest. She braced herself even in her blind panic for the impact of the slimy liquid. Nothing came. Against her better judgment she spread her fingers, peeking through the gaps like a child watching a scary movie. The cupboard appeared empty, but Marcus stood looking at her, his attention diverted from the task at hand just long enough for the person who had been hiding there to spring out from behind the other door. The woman leapt through the air, her hands curled into claws, her sharpened nails ready to do damage to whatever they came into contact with. Marcus caught her with ease, his reactions quick enough to stop her before she did any damage, but not quick enough to shift his balance, and so the pair tumbled backwards, and once again Marcus found himself on the floor. Marcus moved fast, his body a writhing shadow: he pushed the woman – whether he knew it was a woman at the time Helen didn’t know – away from him. He was on his feet and had her arm twisted behind her back in a simple yet painful looking hold. He pulled her from the floor and drove her forcefully up against the wall. The woman soon stopped her struggles and as soon as Marcus released his hold on her she fell to the floor.
“Just get it over with, please, just kill me now. I don’t want to go through all this anymore. I can’t,” The woman wept, her words stumbling over themselves, half drowned by the tears and ragged, gasping breaths.
“Relax. I’m not going to hurt you,” Marcus said to her, resisting the urge to crouch down to her level. The stranger raised her head and looked at him; her eyes were purple, swollen from tears and fear, while her face was pale and soaked with sweat. Her hair was different, longer, and black, jet black. It was plastered against her head. Despite the swelling around them, it was the clarity to the eyes that proved to be the best part of the disguise. It was she who saw it first.
“You,” she said before passing out, as if the sudden rush of safety she felt and saw was too much for her brain to handle.
V
“You know her?” Helen asked as Marcus carried the unconscious Becky Ponting away from the cupboard. He placed her gently on the bed. Marcus made another observational note to himself, that the bed in this room was made up and turned down, as if it had been expecting an occupant all this time.
“Yeah, she...” Marcus paused, trying to think of the best way to say that this girl looked nothing like the girl she was – or had been, at least. “She doesn’t look anything like she did then,” he started, and when his words faltered Helen finished the sentence for him.
“She’s the woman who got you killed?” For a moment Marcus said nothing. He heard Helen’s words and nodded his response. He stared at Becky as if she were a piece of art, unable to avert his gaze. “Wow, then maybe we should rethink why we are here. Is this like some revenge chamber...a test or something?” Helen got a vision of every horror film she had seen released over the past few years. A chill so thick and heavy ran down her spine that it felt like an avalanche tumbling between her shoulder blades.
Marcus didn’t answer her; he was too busy studying Becky, checking not only to see if she was still alive – if alive is what they were – but also how she had changed. Her clothes and hair were obvious, but the sparkle in her eyes was so bright, it shone through her fear, and he knew what it meant, and another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“She’s clean,” he said suddenly. “She’s not here to kill us or for me to take revenge on. Besides, it wasn’t her fault. She died, too, trying to protect her child.” Out of the corner of his eye Marcus saw Helen lower her own hands to her stomach. “She’s been in the same place as us, and long enough to be forced through it cold turkey. I think this house led us to her. We were supposed to find her. Feel free to tell me why, because I’m drawing a blank. There must be a reason for the three of us being here.” Marcus rose from the bed and spoke in a lowered voice. Becky’s eyes began to flutter and when they opened they were an intoxicating shade of green.
For what felt like an age, Becky just lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, afraid to even blink. Eventually, she sat up. She stared at Marcus in horrified silence. Her jaw was clenched, and her eyes wide with fright. Then, slowly, a look of distant recognition washed over her.
“You,” Becky repeated as she scrambled to her feet. In her hurry she fell from the bed and scurried backwards across the floor on her hands and knees.
“It’s okay. Stop, please. It’s okay, we’re trapped here, too,” Marcus said, trying to find the right words to make her understand. He backed away from the bed, holding his arms out before him, palms facing her. He saw her shoulders drop (relax), and he finally let out the breath he had been holding.
“Wh-what do you mean?” she whispered through clenched teeth, afraid of being overheard if she spoke in louder tones. “Trapped? You got in here; you can get out,” Becky snapped. “If there is something going on then I don’t want any part of it. I’m out. I’m not going back.” Becky rose from her knees and stood hunched over, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Not jonesing for a fix, but ready to run back into her safe house.
Marcus made to walk closer to her; Becky shifted her weight ready to jump. It was Helen who spied the mark on her bare shoulder; the tank top she was wearing showed a clear palm print complete with four fingers and one thumb, although the ends of each digit were lost beneath the fabric. Rather than calling out, Helen nudged Marcus in his side with her elbow and whispered to him.
“I think you know you can trust me,” he said, turning around to show Becky his identical tattoo. The smaller window in the room seemed to increase the range of the yellow beam, which had gathered above their heads like a cloud of cigar smoke over a poker table. “You seem like someone who has made her fair share of bad decisions in life. Look at them now, and then look at me. Look at us. Helen here is in the same boat. If you think we are a threat then okay, we’ll leave and give you no more problems,” Marcus said with well-practiced diplomacy, his words soothing even to Helen, who watched the strange reunion from a distance. Having heard Marcus’s tale once before she was surprised to see how her image of the prostitute...the girl had been so accurate.
Convinced, Becky got to her feet. Her hands relaxed from the claw-like shapes that they had been cramped in for the last...God knew how long she had been hiding in the cupboard, sitting in the dark, listening to the whispers that floated through her head, hiding from whatever had been outside waiting for her. The only thing that didn’t change about her was the gaze she held on Marcus. She studied Marcus, looked him up and down, before she fell into his arms and burst into tears. She flung her arms around his shoulders, buried her face into his neck and sobbed.
“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I’m so sorry.” She repeated this over and over until Marcus pulled her away from him, cupping her head in his hands so that he could look her in the eyes before speaking.
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill me. You had nothing to do with it. It was my job, and you are just as innocent as I was,” he said, but after everything that he had been shown in the judgment room, the word innocent tasted stale on his lips, like a glass of water left out overnight and drunk the next morning.
“I’m not innocent,” she said with a broken voice; yet her eyes burned fierce and proud. “I saw everything...the people I abused. I abused them, offering them my body. I stole from them, and I abused my child. I deserve to be down there. Being tied to those tables was too good for me. I deserved much worse. They explained it all to me...made me see. I sent my own daughter to her death the moment I gave birth.” Becky broke down once again and it was Helen who moved forward and put her arm around the woman who, despite everything she had been through, was still so young.
“None of us are innocent,” Helen said, feeling embarrassed when both Marcus and Becky – although at that point, Helen still thought of her simply as ‘the woman’ – looked at her. Her cheeks flushed; she could feel them glowing red with heat.
“That’s right. We’ve all done things we regret, but you have turned it around. You’re clean now, you survived that...and you survived wherever you were sent. So you’re not innocent. Nobody is, not in the real world, in real life. Deep down we all know that. I want you to listen to me now.” Marcus didn’t speak again until Becky turned to face him. “You had nothing to do with my death; my conscious is clear on that, and so should yours be. Now what do you say we find a way out of here?” Marcus stood up straight as he spoke, and both women felt safer.
Becky nodded her head and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand.
“Marcus, how do we do that? I mean, we checked this place, there is no doorway here,” Helen said. Now that the confrontation was over she was happy (not comfortable) to speak again.
“There has to be something,” Marcus said, turning around, surveying the room, looking at everything closely.
“Marcus?” Becky asked, still somehow unable to break her stare at the man. “And Helen, right?” She pointed at Helen. “I’m Becky; Becky Ponting.” She already seemed more at ease in their presence, and stood up amongst them. She offered her hand out to Marcus, who took it without question, and then did the same to Helen. She was more apprehensive but took it nonetheless.
“It’s nice to meet you, Becky.” Helen flashed a half smile as she spoke in the hope that it would mask the apprehension she felt.
Marcus turned, opening his mouth to speak, when it hit him: an idea of such clarity that he felt himself recoil as it came into his mind. The yellow ‘balloon’ – it wasn’t a cloud over them; it was showing them the way as it had been since the start.
“Watch out,” he said as he bent down onto the balls of his feet. He grabbed the legs of the bed, and in one powerful movement pulled it from the floor and threw it out of the way. Dust billowed up from beneath it – no, not dust, but dullness; the same strange chalky mist that had covered their previous room also. The sudden nature of Marcus’s action kicked up a small storm and for just a second, the true colors of the room were revealed to them.
The women both jumped and shrank away from Marcus as he threw the bed. His chest tensed, and his shoulders bulged as he threw the bed. Becky let out a small shriek; she had been around enough violent men in her time to become sufficiently scared of the consequences if you get in their way.
“There, look,” Marcus said, panting.
His time in the judgment cell and hotel room had left him weakened. He had no idea how long it had been since he had last eaten or drank anything, and it wasn’t until that point that he realized how his throat ached for a sip of water or how his empty stomach flapped around inside his body like a windsock at an airport, desperate for some meager level of sustenance.
The women stood together and simply peered forwards, craning their necks, neither one wanting to move any closer until they knew what it was they were supposed to see. It was Helen that saw it first: a faint outline on the floor.
“A trapdoor,” she said in a voice filled with wonderment. She took a step away from Becky but found her gaze moved from the floor to Marcus and so she stopped. She didn’t know what it was about him, but he made her nervous.
“Now we just need to figure out how to open it.” Marcus began to plan things out. Stepping closer to the trapdoor, he crouched down onto his haunches. He placed his hands on the floor in the center of the faint – but now that attention had been drawn to it – clearly visible square.
“What are you talking about? I don’t see anything,” Becky said. Her arms were crossed, but she no longer hugged herself.
“Come here and you’ll see. Don’t worry, I don’t bite.” Marcus looked directly at Becky as he spoke from his squatted position and he saw her face change, relax. “I saw your face change when I moved the bed. It’s a face I’ve seen one or two times before, you know. It’s fine, you don’t have to say anything, but just know that we’re in this together, alright?” he continued, holding her gaze so that she could see his words were genuine.
With memories of rash decisions still lingering in her mind, Becky moved closer, until she stood between Helen and Marcus, leaning over them, not wanting to crouch for fear of not being able to stand up again. Her body was weak with hunger; her legs trembled, and visibly, she guessed, for Marcus rose and steadied her by placing an arm around her shoulder. She looked, squinted at the ground – she even tried crossing her eyes like one of those magic eye puzzles that she had never been able to see as a child, but she just couldn’t see it.
“It’s here.” Helen pointed at the ground, tracing the outer edge of the square with her index finger.
“I see it!” Becky squealed with delight. A childish smile graced her face. She stood with slack-jawed amazement as a bold black line appeared before her eyes, travelling along the floor like the lines of an earthquake in a cartoon. The line wasn’t much thicker than a hair’s breadth, but she saw it. She could see the shape and that made her happy; she wasn’t the one left behind this time.
“It’s hot – ouch, really hot,” Helen exclaimed as she stood up, shaking her right hand as she did. She put the burnt finger in her mouth and felt it throb against her tongue.
The trio stood side by side. Marcus loosened his arm around Becky and when he felt her stand on her own he removed it completely.
“Is it just me, or is anybody else starving?” Becky said at the same time as her stomach gave a loud, lengthy growl.
“Oh, God, I could eat a horse sideways,” Helen remarked as she continued to suck on her burnt digit. None of them had even thought about food until they got close to the trapdoor, but now the hunger grew inside them like a parasite.
“I think we’re getting close,” Marcus offered. “It’s our bodies catching up with us, what has happened, how long we have been gone,” he reasoned. And while he was aware that it sounded as if he knew what was happening, the reality was that it was all guesswork. If anything came out in some sort of sensible order it was pure coincidence. Nothing that had happened to them had been normal in the terms that they had been raised to believe, and so why should this time around be any different? If they felt hungry it was because they hadn’t eaten in a long time.
“How do we open it then?” Becky asked, looking around the room, struck by a sudden feeling that something was watching them. Not in that creepy mansion sense of the eyes in paintings moving, but rather like being in a police interview room, all of them hidden behind the mirror watching her every move. She was sure of it even before the hairs on the back of her head stood on end.
“No idea. I think we just have to wait. The last time...it appeared when it was ready,” Marcus answered. His left arm was crossed over his body, while his right rested with its elbow on his forearm. He stroked the thick layer of stubble that had appeared on the lower half of his face as he thought. He knew they were being watched, but there was nothing he could do about it.