Highway To Hell (24 page)

Marcus hugged her close to him, and Helen hugged him back; her entire body trembled, and the tears she had kept locked away for so long flowed in a tide.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you; you’re safe now. Look; it’s gone; we’re safe here,” Marcus said, badly shaken himself now that the he had time to reflect on it. He showed Helen that not only had the encroaching void disappeared, but so had the door. Once again they were sealed in a bedroom.

The room they had been lead into was similar to the one they had just left, its decoration just as sparse. It was the mirror image of the room they had just left. Even the pictures above the bed and in the small alcove were exactly the same. While the decorations were the same, the walls were a pastel yellow, with a matching carpet. The only difference that Marcus saw was that the window was smaller than the one in their first room. It was about half the size and framed by long curtains that stopped just short of the floor.

“Let’s split up; there has to be an exit,” Marcus whispered to Helen. “I’ll take this side and the window; you have a look along that wall, and see if we can’t find a door or something.” He gestured with his head as he spoke.

Helen nodded, too shaken to find her voice. Helen ran her hands over the smooth painted finish. The walls felt warm and strange to the touch; they didn’t feel solid, not in the real sense of the word, but rather fluid. Helen had the feeling that if she pushed hard enough she would not break through but fall. And she knew what darkness waited for her.

“I don’t see anything. Do you?” Helen said once she reached the end of the long sidewall. The room was narrow but deep, unlike their own, which had been square. She looked over at Marcus. She watched him pace up and down, staring at the wall as if he just expected something to happen. She noticed that he never passed the window, stopping each time about a foot or so short.
Probably some cop thing, being seen through the window or something,
Helen told herself.

Marcus raised his arm, and without turning to face her he beckoned her to him. From the simple, short way he directed her, Helen knew that she had to remain quiet. Marcus seemed happy to take charge, and she was grateful for it. Helen crossed the room, holding her breath without realizing it.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered in Marcus’s ear like a lover.

“There’s someone inside the cupboard. I can hear them breathing, moving.” Marcus was calm and rational, as if he making a simple observation, such as advising her of the time of day or the date. “You don’t have to do anything. I just wanted you to know,” he added after he saw Helen tense up and the color drain from her cheeks.

“You’re not going to open it, are you?” she whispered at him, sending a glare out to accompany the words. It said volumes;
WAKE UP, MAN. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT? DON’T WAKE A SLEEPING BABY AND LET’S JUST FIND A WAY OUT OF HERE.

Marcus didn’t answer. He moved to one side, and approached the cupboard from the left-hand side. It was the larger of the two doors in the unsymmetrical piece of furniture and with just a big enough angle to allow Marcus’s body to be hidden, and also gave him the maximum space and reaction time should whatever it was decide to jump out at him, or – God forbid – pull him back inside.

IV

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 and 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 only 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.