Shackles (4 page)

I bent for a closer look at the cartons on the floor. In the one of kitchen miscellany there was a dented saucepan, an enameled coffee pot and matching cup, another stack of plastic glasses, a packet of batteries that would likely fit the portable radio. The magazines in the second carton were rumpled back issues of several different titles; the paperback books were a similarly mismatched secondhand assortment. It seemed these things, too, had been carelessly swept off thrift-shop shelves.

That’s what he did, I thought. Went into a thrift shop somewhere, bought all this crap at once, transported it up here with the provisions. Just for me. Built this little corner, this little cell, just for me.

Why?

You may want to commit suicide after a while….

I shook my head, shook the words out of my mind. Pawed through the stuff on the card table without finding anything I hadn’t noticed earlier. The light in there was starting to fade, and when I glanced over at the window I saw that the snowfall had thickened, was blowing now in swirls and gusts out of a sky that seemed to hang blackly above the trees. I leaned over to flip the switch on the floor lamp. It worked all right; light from a twenty-five-watt bulb chased away some of the shadows. Was the cabin hooked into a main power supply? Or did the electricity come from some kind of portable generator? It made a difference in how high up in the mountains, how isolated, this place was.

I left the lamp on—small comfort—and paced for a time, with the idea of strengthening the muscles in my legs. Ten paces toward the front, turn, ten paces toward the rear. But it wasn’t long before the weight of the dragging chain began to do more harm than good to my leg muscles. I stopped moving finally, lowered myself onto the cot.

At first I just sat there, mind blank, listening to the wind work itself up into a frenzy and hurl snow against the window glass. Then the cold began to seep through my clothing, to bump and ripple the flesh along my back. I got up again, shook out one of the folded blankets, wrapped it around me like a sarong. I switched on the space heater, too, and moved it so that when it warmed up it would throw its heat against my legs.

I sat huddled inside the blanket, and pretty soon I thought again:
Why?
The question filled my mind. No shying away from it now. Time to deal with it, and with all its implications.

He was somebody with a killing grudge against me, that was certain. So much of a grudge that instead of murdering me outright, he wanted me alive and suffering a good long time—weeks, even months. That was what this little cell was all about. There couldn’t be any other explanation for the foodstuffs, the magazines and books, the access to toilet facilities. And yet, why give me a selection of food, things to read, a radio, blankets, the heater, the bathroom? Why not a
real
poverty cell, a makeshift Inquisitor’s dungeon where I would be forced to survive in squalor rather than in relative comfort?

If I knew who he was, what his grievance against me was … but I didn’t know, I didn’t have a glimmer of an idea. All I knew was that I must have had direct contact with him at some point. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so coy about letting me see his face, wouldn’t have kept asking me if I remembered him.

Playing head games with me. Psychological torture. This place, these shackles—they were part of it, too. He had to be unbalanced, no matter how rational he seemed on the surface, but this wasn’t a random persecution any more than I was a random victim. He had a reason, a purpose for all of this. Revenge was at the bottom of it, but there was more to it than that—nuances of motive and intent that I couldn’t even begin to guess at now.

Jesus, I thought, he must really hate me. And that made what he was doing all the more terrifying: someone hating you with enough virulence to plot a thing like this, someone whose life had touched yours in a way that was so meaningless to
you,
you might even have forgotten he existed. It was the stuff of nightmares, of gibbering paranoia. If you had ever made an enemy in your life—and what person hasn’t—could you ever feel completely safe?

Where was he now? Still around here somewhere; I felt sure of that. Sleeping in one of the other rooms, maybe—he’d admitted to being tired when we got here, before he administered that last dose of chloroform. I felt sure of something else, too: He wasn’t going anywhere without talking to me again. That was also part of the psychological torture. Now that he had me here, chained up in his little cell, he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to watch me squirm.

Wait him out, then. And no more speculating, because that was what he wanted me to do—that was playing right into his hands. Sooner or later he would show himself. And when he did, I would find out at least some of the answers.

I sat swaddled in the blanket, bent forward at the waist so that some of the warmth from the space heater reached my upper body. And I waited, mind empty—a big white vegetable, because vegetables have no emotion, vegetables are not afraid.

It was almost three when he finally came.

I was lying on the cot, still wrapped cocoonlike in the blanket, eyes closed, not sleeping but not quite awake either. Drifting inside myself. When I heard the door open and then close, it seemed an unreal perception, part of a vaguely formed dream. But then I heard his steps, one, two, three, and in the next second I was sitting bolt up-right, blinking to get my eyes clear.

He was there, on the other side of the room. In one hand he held a chair, a straight-backed chair, and he put it down and stood beside it. Average height, slender. Wearing a bulky knit Scandinavian-style ski sweater, dark trousers, some kind of boots.

Wearing a ski mask.

It covered his entire head, hiding everything but his eyes—and I couldn’t see those in the half-light beyond the reach of the pale lampglow. The mask and the gloom gave him a surreal look, as if he were some sort of phantom I had conjured up out of the dark recesses of my subconscious. I stared at him for long seconds in the room’s cold silence. And the fear came back, not all at once but in a slow, thin seepage like liquid flowing through cloth.

Finally he moved the chair a little, scraping its legs on the floor, and said, “Taking a nap, were you?” He was still speaking in the whispery voice, and the ski mask muffled it and added another dimension of surreality to him.

“No.”

“Well, I had a good long one myself—in one of the bedrooms. Did you suspect I was here in the cabin all this time?”

“The possibility didn’t occur to me.”

He laughed. “Tell me, how do you like your new home?”

“I don’t. Is this your cabin?”

“It doesn’t matter whose cabin it is.”

“I’d like to know.”

“Of course you would. But I’m not going to tell you.”

“Tell me where we are, at least.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t think I will.”

He sat down on the chair in a posture that was almost formal: legs together, back straight, hands resting palms down on his knees. I tried to look at the hands, to see if there was anything distinctive about them, but they were just pale blobs in the weak light.

For a time we sat motionless, watching each other. Then he said. “I see you put the heater on. Work all right, does it?”

“Yes.”

“Better use it sparingly. It’s old and the coils might burn out on you.”

“How long are you going to keep me here?”

“Well, that’s up to you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?” There was a sly edge to his voice now.

“No.”

“It all depends,” he said. “There is enough food on those shelves behind you to last thirteen weeks. But if you’re careful, eat only one or two small meals a day, you might stretch it out to, oh, four months or so.”

“And then?”

“Then you’ll starve to death. Unless, of course, you decide to take your own life before that happens. I haven’t provided you with a knife, but the lid from one of those cans would be sharp enough to open the veins in your wrists.”

The words were calculated to draw a reaction; he leaned forward slightly as he said them, anticipating it, because he could see my face clearly in the lampglow. I made sure that he didn’t get it. The one thing I would not do, not now, not at any time, was let him see my fear.

I said, “I’m not going to kill myself. And I’m not going to starve to death either.”

“Really?” He laughed again and sat back, not quite as stiffly as before. “You can’t possibly escape, you know.”

“Are you a hundred percent sure of that?”

“Oh yes. You must have already examined the leg iron, the chain, the wall bolt. Escape-proof, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“The brave exterior—just what I expected of you. But underneath you must know the truth. The padlock on the leg iron is the strongest made; it can’t be opened except with the proper key. And I’ve given you nothing you could use to saw through the chain or remove the bolt from the wall.” He paused, and then said matter-of-factly, “You
could
try cutting off your leg with one of the can lids. The equivalent of an animal chewing off a limb caught in a trap. But I imagine you’d bleed to death long before you were free. Besides, a can lid won’t cut through bone, will it?”

I didn’t say anything. I thought: If I could get my hands on him right now, I’d kill him. No hesitation, no compunction. I would kill him where he sits.

He said, “Your only other hope is that someone will come and rescue you. But that won’t happen.”

“What makes you think it won’t?”

“This cabin is isolated, more than a mile from its nearest neighbor. No one would have any reason to come here in winter. No one but me, and once I leave I won’t be back until after you’re dead.” Another pause. “I have a burial spot all picked out for you. And you mustn’t worry—I’ll dig your grave deep so the animals won’t disturb you.”

I said in a flat, emotionless voice, “How long are you going to keep me company?”

“Not long. I’ll be leaving this afternoon, as soon as we’ve finished our talk. Did you think I would wait around and watch you suffer? No, that wouldn’t be right, that isn’t the way it’s done. You’ll be here alone, all alone, until the end comes.”

He waited for me to say something to that, and when I didn’t he went on in his sly way, “I wonder how you’ll stand up to it. The aloneness, I mean. Some men would go insane, chained up as you are, all alone here for three to four months. But you’re not one of them … or are you?”

“No. But you’d like it if I were.”

“That isn’t so. I wouldn’t like it. I’m not without compassion, you know.”

I said nothing.

“Well, I’m not,” he said. “That’s why I’ve given you the radio, the books, and magazines. The paper and writing tools, too. Why, with all that paper you could write your memoirs. I’m sure they would make fascinating reading.”

I had nothing to say to that, either.

“At any rate,” he said, “if I hadn’t provided all those things to occupy your mind, you surely
would
go insane. So you see? That isn’t what I want at all.”

“I know what you want,” I said. “If I stay sane, then I suffer even more. Right?”

“Suffering is what punishment is all about.”

“Punishment. All right, why? Why all of this?”

“You still don’t know?”

“No.”

“Think hard. Try to remember.”

“How can I remember if you don’t give me some idea of who you are, what you think I did to you?”

“What I
think
you did to me?” Suddenly, violently, he came up out of the chair, almost upsetting it, and pointed a shaking finger at me. “Damn you, you destroyed me!” he said in a voice shrill with rage—his normal voice, I thought, but still too muffled by the ski mask to be recognizable. “You destroyed my life!”

“How did I do that?”

“And you don’t even remember. That’s the kind of man you are. The kind of
detective
you are. You destroyed me and you don’t even know who I am!”

“Tell me your name. Take off that mask and let me see your face.”

“No! You’ll remember on your own. Sooner or later you’ll remember and then you’ll know and then you’ll be dead and I’ll have my peace. That’s the only way I’ll ever have my peace, when you’re dead, dead, dead, dead!”

He spun on his heel, half ran across to one of the closed doors, yanked it open, disappeared into the room beyond. Reappeared seconds later, and he had his gun—a snub-nosed revolver—upraised in one hand. He stopped alongside the chair and pointed the gun at me. I saw his thumb draw the hammer back and heard the click it made, saw the way his arm was shaking, and I thought in that moment he was going to shoot me. Thought he’d lost his tenuous grip on sanity, forgotten his purpose in bringing me here, and in a matter of seconds I would be dead. It took all the will I possessed to sit still, keep my eyes open, keep the fear dammed up so it wouldn’t leak through to where he could see it when he pulled the trigger.

But he didn’t pull the trigger, just stood there holding the revolver extended in his trembling hand. It was several pulsebeats before I understood that he wasn’t going to use the gun, had never intended to use it, had himself back under control despite the shaking or maybe had never lost control in the first place. That behind the ski mask he was probably smiling. That this, too, this little charade, was part of the psychological torture.

He let it go on for another half minute, wanting me to break down and beg for my life, hungering for it with a kind of feral lust that I could almost smell. I sat very still, showing him nothing, hating him with some of the same visceral hatred he had for me, and waited him out.

When he finally lowered the revolver he did it in slow segments, inches at a time, until the muzzle pointed at the floor. Then he said, still carrying out the charade, “No. No, I won’t do it, I won’t make it easy for you. I’m not your executioner. I’m only your jailer.”

He wanted me to say something; I said nothing. There was a hot dry burnt taste in my mouth, like ashes fresh from a stove fire.

I watched him pick up the chair with his left hand. “It’s time for me to leave,” he said, and he turned, carrying the chair, and went across to the same door and then stopped again and turned back—all of it calculated, like the game with the gun. “One more look at you,” he said, “one last look at the condemned man. Do you have anything else to say before I go?”