It screamed right back at her, its foul breath blowing the hair away from her face. She screamed again, and it matched her, an awful high-pitched howl that hurt her ears. Then the thing smiled at her, and terror overwhelmed her. She had time to see that they were in a long, low room, with stone walls and a concrete floor, had time to think it looked like a cellar or a basement, then her vision turned white, and she slipped back into darkness.
Some time later, she drifted awake into a world of pain.
The cuts on her face and arms were lines of throbbing heat, and her stomach churned with nausea. She opened her eyes and looked around her.
She was lying on a cold concrete floor in a low, bare room. The walls were exposed brick, and the only concessions to domesticity in the room were a pair of armchairs facing an incongruously ornate fireplace. The chairs were empty; she was alone.
At the far end of the room, a rough wooden staircase rose to a trapdoor in the low ceiling. She knew with absolute certainty that the trapdoor would be locked from above, knew that there was no point in even checking, but she got to her feet nonetheless. She could not just lie on the ground and wait for something to happen; she was a pro-active woman, as she had been an energetic and stubborn girl, and it was not in her nature. Not while her son was out there; not while Jamie needed her. She would not even entertain the idea that he could be dead. But he might be hurt, he was almost certainly scared, and confused, and lost, and the thought broke her heart. She took a deep breath and started across the room, treading as softly as she was able on the balls of her feet.
The bottom step was barely six feet away when she heard a bolt slide back and saw the trapdoor at the top of the staircase lift open. Marie stared in horror as a pair of scuffed black boots descended on to the top step, and realised that she was caught. She watched helplessly, frozen to the spot with fear, as the hemline of a grey coat flapped gently through the trapdoor, a pale white hand gently slid down the rough banister, and the man who had dragged her from her home dropped into view. There was a gentle smile on his face, a smile that widened into a grin of pure joy when he stepped off the bottom stair, looked around the room and saw Marie standing in front of him.
He stepped forward so quickly she didn’t even see him move, and gripped a handful of her hair. She screamed in pain, grabbing his wrist with both her hands, but it was immovable. The thing in the grey coat hauled her back across the room without any apparent effort, and she howled as her heels tore across the concrete. She twisted and thrashed in the thing’s grip, she yelled and screamed for it to let her go, but it was useless; she slid relentlessly across the floor, away from the staircase.
The man deposited her in a heap in the corner. She shoved herself back against the cold exposed brick of the wall, looked up at the smiling face peering down at her, and burst into tears. It made her furious with herself, but she couldn’t help it. The helplessness of her situation sank into her; she thought of her son, her brave, fragile son, somewhere out in the darkness without her.
Eventually, the thing squatted down next to her and spoke in a gentle, friendly voice.
“I’d stop that if I were you,” he said. “You’re exciting my friend.”
She forced herself to stop sobbing, and looked over the man’s shoulder. Standing behind him, ten feet away for her, was a second man, this one a huge, hulking creature, lumpy and misshapen like a sack of coal. He had a tiny round head atop his enormous shoulders, and the wide, open face of a child. His red eyes were staring at her, unblinking, and his child’s face wore an expression of open lust. Marie shuddered, and wiped her eyes and nose on the backs of her hands.
“That’s better,” said the thing in the grey coat, then flopped down against the wall next to her as though they were old friends, drawing his knees up and wrapping his long arms around them.
“We haven’t been introduced,” it said, favouring her with a dazzling smile of sharp white teeth. “My name is Alexandru Rusmanov. And you, of course, are Marie Carpenter, wife of Julian, and mother of Jamie. Now we know each other. Now we can talk as friends.”
At the mention of her son’s name Marie’s eyes, which had been half-lidded by tears and downcast with fear, flew open. “Where’s my son?” she asked. “What have you done with him?”
“Your son,” replied Alexandru, with obvious relish. “Your precious son. Tell me; does he look like his father?”
Marie didn’t respond. She was disorientated by the smooth, velvety voice issuing from the hateful thing’s mouth.
Alexandru’s eyes flared red and his arm unwrapped from his knees with the speed of a striking cobra. The long, pale hand at the end of it grabbed her by the forehead, pulled her forward, then sent her crashing back into the wall. Her head hit the bricks with a meaty thump and she saw stars. She felt something warm and wet slide down the back of her head and on to her neck, and she stared blankly at Alexandru, lost in a nightmare she could not wake up from.
“I asked you a question!” he roared, and slammed her head into the wall a second time. “Does he look like his father?”
The back of her head collided with the wall a third time and panic overcame her terror.
He’s going to beat my brains out against this wall unless I answer him. Oh God, what is this creature?
“Yes, yes, he does! Please stop hurting me!” she shrieked.
Alexandru let go of her forehead, his eyes reverting back to their usual dark green, and he sighed, as though mildly inconvenienced.
“I know he does,” he said. “I should have killed him myself. It might have been satisfying.”
A great vacuum opened in the middle of Marie’s chest, a hole where her heart should be.
“He’s dead?”
Alexandru stared at her with great solemnity, then burst into peals of giddy, childlike laughter. Above them, the second man broke into a slow, plodding laugh of his own, a sound like a braying donkey.
“No, he’s alive,” Alexandru replied. “He shouldn’t be, but he is. But that’s what you get for delegating. It’s like I’ve always said; if you want someone murdered right, do it yourself. Haven’t I always said that, Anderson?”
He looked up, pointedly. Hesitation flashed across the small round face of the man standing above them, who was still laughing his metronomic laugh. He stopped, and appeared to disappear deep into thought.
“Yes,” he eventually said, carefully.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, that’s what you always say,” replied Anderson, a small smile of satisfaction playing across the childish features.
“What do I always say?”
This time the look on the swollen figure’s face was pure panic. “I don’t know,” he said.
With a thud, Alexandru flopped back down next to her, and she opened her eyes. She didn’t want to, but she wanted to provoke this monstrous creature even less. He was smiling at her, then he flicked his left hand and something red flew away into the shadows. His tongue, she thought. He pulled out his tongue. My God. She looked up at Anderson. Blood was pouring out of the man’s mouth, and running freely down the front of black jacket he was wearing. His eyes were wide, and his whole body was visibly trembling, in pain, or fear, or both, but he was standing where he had been before the attack, looking straight ahead, at the wall above her.
He didn’t run. Or try to defend himself. He didn’t do anything.
For a moment she felt pity for this pathetic, downtrodden creature, but then the image of his expression as he watched her cry appeared in her head, and she shoved it quickly away.