Disembodied Bones (50 page)

About it there were many locks.

The box was not with key supplied,

But caused two lids to open wide.

What kind of box was it?

It was a slap upside the head.

Monday, July 29th

What has six eyes,

Six arms,

Six legs,

Three heads,

And a very short life?

Leonie stared down at what she’d done to
herself. Perhaps Elan’s hands hadn’t been slender enough, even as a
fourteen year old child. Perhaps it simply hadn’t occurred to him
to break the bones in his thumb. It had been a calculated risk. She
wasn’t sure if a single blow with the heavy porcelain lid would do
it. But bracing her hand on top of the sink with the thumb extended
did the trick. Aiming for the second joint of the thumb wouldn’t
have worked either. She needed to break the bone where the base of
the thumb bones met the hand, nearly at the wrist where the
handcuff was so tightly embedded.

Gray faced, Leonie surveyed her dreadful work
and grudgingly admitted that she had been successful. The bone was
broken and she had to work quickly before the flesh began to swell.
Her head was drowning with pain and she reached over with her right
hand and swiftly moved the thumb’s bones out of the way, pushing it
under her hand. The agonizing movement brought up a throat full of
bile accompanied by a tormented groan.

She made her fingers on her right hand force
the handcuff over the wrist bones and scrape over where the broken
bones were located. There was an instant of doubt, that she might
have broken her own thumb for no reason at all, when all of a
sudden the cuff slid over the thickest part of her hand. The force
of her insistent fingers scraped skin off both sides of her hand
and moved the excruciatingly painful thumb again. She was panting
with the effort now. The blood roared in her ears and she knew she
would pass out if she didn’t finish quickly. She pushed again and
the handcuff and chain clattered noisily to the floor.

Leonie fumbled for the strip of green blanket
and looked around for something to splint her hand with. But there
was only the plastic arm that went inside the toilet tank from the
valve to the trip handle. Stumbling to her feet, she fished for the
mechanism and broke it off with a loud crack as the plastic gave
way. Bracing herself again, she looked at her hand. The flesh
around her hand was beginning to swell up now, looking like a
tennis ball at the base of her hand. She jerked the thumb back into
position and gasped again as the world became awash with twirling
black sheets of darkness. The plastic arm was gently placed along
her broken thumb and the blanket strip wound around repeatedly to
hold it in place. It wasn’t something a doctor would approve of,
but it would have to do. She hesitated and snatched up a sliver of
razor sharp porcelain that balanced on the edge of the sink,
tucking it into the green blanket around her hand.

Leonie? Leonie!
It came like a distant
whisper, a mere whimper of concerned emotion. Leonie’s head shot
up. But she was alone. Then there was something else.
I can feel
her pain.

Gideon?

But there was more pain in her head and she
doubled over with the heavy weight of it. The fear had let him
through for just a moment. The fear at what she was forced to do
seemed to open her mind up no matter what kind of drugs Elan had
fed her. And she had no doubt that they would eventually wear off,
because he had no reason to give her more. He didn’t have to worry
about her finding Keefe now. She knew exactly where he was. Elan
didn’t know about her special connection with Gideon. If she could
live long enough to let it wear off, then she might be able to tell
Gideon what was happening. As the headache began to recede again
she straightened up and tried to find a reserve of strength.

There was a hint of realization that came
with her resolve. The headache wasn’t as severe. The drugs are
really beginning to wear off.
It won’t be long.

Casting a look at the sink, Leonie realized
she had burst one of the pipes. Her feet were splashed in a growing
puddle of water. The bottom of the pit was covered by an inch and
rising. Bits of the pipe were collapsing under the rushing weight
of the water, increasing the flow. She would have stuck her injured
hand under the streaming water but she didn’t know how much time
she really had. She shook her head, casting out the shadows and
lurched toward Keefe.

The child must have weighed next to nothing
and would have normally not bothered Leonie at all. She was used to
lifting heavy antiques, but she was also weakened from the pain and
the drugs. She staggered under Keefe’s weight and fought to remain
upright. He couldn’t stay in the pit, even if the water wasn’t
rising. She had to protect him from Elan.

“C’mon,
cher
,” Leonie murmured, déjà
vu almost frightening her as much as the pain. “We’ll find some way
of escaping this hell.”

Keefe muttered under his breath and shifted
in her arms. Leonie stared down at his flaccid features and decided
the drugs must be wearing off the child as well. She managed to
push his limp body onto the edge of the pit and then pulled herself
awkwardly up. It wasn’t easy because her left hand was all but
useless. But she managed to grasp the edge of the concrete lid and
use it for leverage. The lid teetered dangerously as she went up
and she gasped for breath.

The single light bulb that had so dimly
helped her assess her situation was attached to a block and tackle.
It was a large steel arm that could be swung out from a plain
concrete block wall, in order to attach to the lid and seal the pit
in. The block and tackle was welded to the arm so that it couldn’t
be separated. Elan had built it to show Leonie what it had been
like. He wanted her to know what it felt like to be sealed into the
earth.

So why didn’t he do that?

Because he wanted me to cut off my hand
first
, Leonie answered herself.
He left the lid open so I
would do what he wanted me to do. If the lid was shut and I had no
hope for escape, then why mangle my hand, risking bleeding to
death?

It was a room twice again as large as the
pit. The pit’s opening was in the middle. It wasn’t in the garage
like Elan had told her the original had been. But then Elan had
been thinking about improvements on Monroe Whitechapel’s
arrangements for twenty years. Cement blocks made up the
composition of the walls. The floor was roughly laid cement. The
ceiling was made of unfinished wooden beams and knot-laden planks.
It all had the feeling of being made by hand, perhaps by Elan.

There was a single doorway. It didn’t have a
door. But her eyes finally discerned a camera in the high upper
corner of the room. The little red light was on and it was a
giveaway that he was watching her. Leonie couldn’t prevent the
glance down at her left wrist. Bound heavily with the green
blanket, it was entirely concealed. He wouldn’t be able to tell if
her hand was gone. Would it make a difference if he knew that she
hadn’t had to go to the extremes that he had? She decided that it
would and carefully shifted her body so that the hand was
obscured.

Leonie returned to Keefe and gently picked
the child up in her arms, resting his frame against hers. His head
felt a little hot as it pressed against the flesh of her arm and
she looked into his face. The boy was running a fever now. A little
one, but a fever all the same. Had he been unconscious the entire
time? Lying on his back, unable to walk or take care of himself?
Basically Keefe was clean, his clothes were only rumpled, not
filthy, and even the bandaged arm was devoid of dirt. Elan wanted
to make sure his victim lasted until he didn’t need him anymore. As
he didn’t need Keefe anymore now. He had his prize and she was
trapped in this place.

Walking slowly to the door, Leonie looked
out. It was dark, but dark was tinged by a row of bluish lights
along the ceilings. More concrete block walls lined the passages.
The ceilings were the same as the room she was standing in. Wood
beams and planks. If she’d had the strength she might try to pull
one down to see what was above. But as she stared upward there was
a little something that sifted through the planks and hit her on
the cheek. She shifted Keefe in her arms and felt at her cheek. On
her fingers was a black smudge of dirt.

Underground. This place is underground.
Hidden from prying eyes.

The only alternative was to get to the
riddle, to try to see if Elan would follow through with his
promise. Leonie didn’t think he would, but there might be some
opportunity to escape that he’d somehow overlooked. The man she’d
dated for six months and didn’t really know anything about was a
monster, plain and simple, but perhaps there was compassion left in
him.

My mother warned me about outsiders
,
she thought wryly.
Like Lisette and Varden
…

She took a step into the passageway and
garnered her remaining strength for the terrible journey she was
being forced to make. Her eyes adjusted to the muted light of the
corridor. The height was only a foot or so taller than she was. The
width was no more than an average door’s girth. The floor was dirty
concrete.

Pressing forward for a few feet, Leonie
stopped abruptly. Two things made her tremble anew. One was another
one of those dreaded security cameras with its little insidious red
light on and staring at her relentlessly. The other was that the
passage split into three directions. She could go straight, left,
or right.

All the passages looked the same. Leonie
couldn’t help a semi-hysterical laugh. Another kind of riddle sat
right in front of her, a maze for her to decipher. Elan had created
a maze for her, an earthen maze that would undeniably test her
resolve.
It isn’t a field of corn, so how complicated can it
be?
she asked herself.
It certainly isn’t a field of corn,
so that if I get tired of the game I can cut through the rows.
The harsh concrete blocks gave her a severe disadvantage.

Leonie decided to keep it simple and turned
to the right. She would make right turns until she couldn’t turn
anymore. Then she remembered the taut piano wire strung out over
the top stair of the staircase and the razor blades in the computer
case.
“This house has fangs and will bite.” So too will the
underground trap he’s laid for me.

After twenty or thirty feet of slow progress
she turned right and nearly fell into another pit. Leonie pulled
back with a gasp of horror, teetering on the brink of a black hole.
She clasped the child to her and tried desperately to balance
herself. Her toes felt the tickling cold breath of air underneath
them. She bent forward and shifted her legs back, trying to hold
onto Keefe with all of her might. There was a moment of intense
fear where she knew she would fall. She would fall into the pit and
probably crush the boy in the process, and how horrible would that
be?

Abruptly she found that inner strength that
had gotten her this far and shoved herself back with a keening
groan. There was another noise, the sound of Elan’s icy laughter
resonating on one of the multiple hidden speakers. Landing
awkwardly on her hip, she took a tattered breath as the floor hit
her broken thumb and caused a blinding resurrection of throbbing
pain.

Leonie fought to deny the pain and opened her
eyes up. The weak light showed the outline of the pit. She moved
Keefe off her lap and crept to the edge to look downward. After a
moment she realized the pit’s floor was littered with broken glass
and rusted nails. Perhaps six feet down she would have been sliced
to ribbons. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been enough to kill her
outright, but the suffering that Elan wanted would have been
present in spades. There was no way across the pit, even if the
other side hadn’t been a dead end of concrete bricks.

After another moment, she realized that she
didn’t dare take Keefe with her. She crawled to her feet, retrieved
the little boy, and slowly returned him to the original room. She
could hear the hiss of water as it sprayed inside the pit inside
the room. Leonie placed Keefe in the corner underneath the camera
so Elan couldn’t see the boy and returned to the hallway. She took
a right again, but then ten feet down the passage she took a left.
The corridor went immediately to the right again and then to the
left.

One foot placed in front of her gingerly at a
time. The other would follow, and she wondered to herself what trap
would come next, when would Elan tire of these deadly games and
simply have done with her? Leonie was concentrating on making her
tired aching limbs work that she almost missed the cue that would
save her a nasty fall. There was an eerie sound that echoed down
the narrow corridor and froze her for a moment. Then the floor
began to crumple beneath her feet. She felt it give a little and
she yanked herself back with a cry.

In front of her the floor collapsed in a
rippling sheet of thinly disguised cement. Dirt and wood screamed
as it tore apart and hit a distant floor below with a crack. She
hadn’t noticed the change in texture but as she’d put her weight on
the thin sheets of plywood that concealed the next pit, she’d felt
the give just in the nick of time. Leonie stared downward and saw a
cavernous pit, twice as deep as the others. There was nothing down
there except darkness and without assistance, no way out. And like
the first pit there was no way past.

Leonie brought her chin up defiantly. She
retraced her steps and found herself at the passage where four
tunnels met. One went back into the room where Keefe was
motionlessly tucked into a corner with the green blanket wrapped
around him. One led to the two pits she’d encountered. The third
tunnel was straight across from the original room. The fourth would
take her to the left. Both led into the unknown. One certainly must
lead to the riddle.