“Don’t be so jumpy, there’s nobody here.” Jessie smirked. “At least we have some party tunes now.”
Marla ignored her, glancing at a mess of grubby melted stumps of candles lining the lower shelves nearest to the mattress. Behind them stood a couple of liter-sized bottles, one uncorked and empty but the other almost filled to the top with clear liquid, cork intact.
Jessie saw it too and grasped it, excitedly twisting at the cork stopper and taking a tentative sniff. A look of evil delight spread across her face like a gleeful shadow. She held the bottle out to Marla, inviting her to take a sniff.
Marla leaned forward to inhale, curious about what was inside the bottle. As she did so, she noticed a ream of tattered papers lurking on the dusty shelf behind the empty bottle. Breathing in alcoholic fumes from the mouth of the bottle, Marla’s senses reeled at the sudden vapors of aniseed and pure booze that cut through her nostrils like some kind of nefarious cold remedy.
“Ouzo,” Jessie said.
Peering into the space behind the empty bottle, Marla began to make out what lurked there on the shadowy pages. As the vapors insinuated their merry way up towards her brain she realized she was looking at a section of thigh, a trio of folded breasts and a series of parted legs—the pages forming a lurid gynecological catalog for whatever deviant had occupied the corrupt sheets atop the stinking mattress. The printed pornography looked so incongruous amidst the children’s toys that Marla grimaced suddenly. Jessie laughed, mistaking her look for one of distaste at the scent of the ouzo. In sympathy she corked the bottle again and, pausing only to pick up the kiddies’ tape player, swung her flashlight in the direction of the stairs.
Words of bafflement and disgust stuck in Marla’s throat, choking her like pollen on hot day. She followed Jessie dumbly, desperate to be away from the dank basement, the foul mattress, and the excretions of whoever, or whatever, used it as a bed. Marla almost stumbled on the stairs as a fathomless panic seized her. She climbed the last steps two at a time, all the better to be away from that subterranean nightmare.
The cellar air felt like a cold, clammy breath on the back of her neck as the door swung shut behind her. Only when she and Jessie had walked the narrow corridor back to the high-ceilinged space of the games room, could Marla breathe again. The sound of her exhalation joined the howling chorus of wind as it whistled around shutters and walls only inches thick, but miles away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Through the trees surrounding the huge wood, metal and glass structure, over the headland and toward the rocks, the same fearsome wind buffeted Vincent as he made his way to the lighthouse. The door banged and squealed as loud as a wild boar as he rounded the crumbling base of the tower and began his tenuous climb up the rust-mottled steps. He tumbled over the threshold, his insides straining against the confines of his ribcage, piercing pain shooting through his middle as he coughed into dirty bloodstained fists. The smell of the earth on his fingers confused him for a moment—was he adrift, dreaming again in the depths of the muddy hole he’d dug with his bare hands? But the sound of the wind rattling the windows in the moldy library above was too palpable, too true for this to be a dream. He gripped the handrail and, as he hauled his knackered old frame up the winding stairwell, the welcoming scents of rust, decay and stale coffee told him he’d come home.
Home. That was the name he’d given to his prison long ago. Even so, he had to admit to himself he was glad to be back in the old place. He found himself longing to fold into the chair that had been sculpted to support him, chiseled as it was by his backbone, which was becoming as bent as the spines of his oldest books. Vincent felt wetness beneath his feet and looked down to see the overturned bucket Fowler and his cronies had left behind. Unwelcome memories of their tortures flashed in front of his eyes bright as fireflies, their inane questions ringing in his ears like dull bells pealing from across the dead ocean outside. The sensations caused his legs to buckle and the old man limped blindly to his chair, almost falling short of the mark as he sat down, clasping a clammy hand to his forehead. A great shuddering tremor passed through his body from his gut to his head and the floodgates opened. Tears streamed down his face as the delayed shock from the last few hours was given full sway by the very act of coming home. Salt water leaked from his eyes and splashed onto the cold floor, mingling with gobbets of his own dried blood and making dark islands around fragments of ruined fingernail and chipped tooth. He sat like this for an age, cycles of tears and remorse squeezing the very moisture from him, futile snot bubbling from his nose as he wept on and on. Into this vale of despair he fell, further still, until he was weeping in his sleep. Finally his tears subsided, their tracks beginning to dry on his wrinkled face like shame.
Shadows moved across him as he woke and he peered out through stinging eyes to find what had disturbed him. He struggled into a seated position on the chair and scanned the room. Pietro’s body had gone to God only knew where, the stained and crumpled blankets lining the cot bed the only evidence he’d ever even been there. Vincent’s eyes followed the slow rhythmic dripping sound of the leaky faucet above the sink. There, a shadow! His heart pulsed into life at the sight of a small pale form crouching beside the sink cupboard.
“Son?” he murmured in confusion, for the face of the little white boy was awful familiar.
Then, with revulsion, Vincent saw the kid’s grubby fist was clasped around its fat little penis, kneading it like a water balloon. The child’s tongue flicked out across dry, cracked lips leaving a snail trail of slimy wetness on their scaly surface.
“Eric? My child—is that you?”
At the sound of his name the child hissed like a wildcat and, releasing his engorged member from his hand, lurched back into the shadows and scuttled beneath the panoramic mountain of books lining the windows.
Wide-eyed and shaking with fear, Vincent was about to stand up and go look for the boy when a great, light-canceling shape filled his vision. Trembling, the old man looked up to identify this new terror and saw a monolith of a man standing over him. Tall as a wave and dark as the night ocean, the shape carried Pietro’s limp body over one shoulder as though it were merely a sack of feathers. Foul sulfurous breath emanated from the impenetrable black depths where the giant’s face should have been. Empty eyes bore down on Vincent like black light, causing him to clamp his eyes shut in denial of these phantoms come to visit him in his home. Agonizing, breathless seconds passed as the old man listened to the dull thud of great footsteps. The monster was coming for him, to snap his neck and put out his eyes, hollows ready for the aberration that looked like his child to penetrate them with filthy digits and hook out his brains. But the great booming footsteps were fading and then they were gone, echoing into nothing as the lighthouse door clanged shut far below. Vincent sat there, terrified, with his eyes clamped shut until he heard the obscene crablike scuttling of tiny wet feet moving across the room and down the stairs. When he finally summoned the courage to open his eyes, Vincent felt warm metal in his hand and realized he’d been clutching onto the pistol for dear life the whole time. Vowing not to let it go of it until his work was done, he rose and clambered over the books to try and locate the control panel. If, with God’s good grace he could remember how, he’d make good on his promise and light the lamps.
Light the lamps one last time.
Chief of Security Fowler still felt as mad as a bear.
Unknown to him, Adam’s predictions had panned out just as he’d described them to Marla and Jessie; the security detail faced a long and arduous task if Fowler wanted them to haul ass back to the Big House with the cutting gear in tow. And, true to form, that’s exactly what he’d ordered them to do. Relying on his computer guys had been a mistake, Fowler understood that now. Whatever technical mojo the cocksucking hippie girl had worked in the guts of the island’s network was far too complex for his team to undo without a careful review of the defenses she’d put in place. His best option was to bust the bitch out of the mansion house and put her to work on the problem she’d created, under pain of death if she resisted. Something stirred in his loins, partly a need for violence and partly a manifestation of his vitriol at being duped by a bunch of fucking subordinates.