Luke Delaney - The Keeper

Panic spread through Louise’s body as she realized why he had come in the dead of night. She scuttled around inside her cage like an animal sensing it’s about to be put down, looking for an escape she knew didn’t exist, a weakness in the metal wire she knew she wouldn’t find — watching him with horror as he strode back to her cage, moving around to the small hatch and unlocking it, placing the prod on top of the cage while he took the syringe from his tracksuit bottoms and removed the safety cap.

‘Give me your arm,’ he demanded, his voice strong, but cold and lifeless. She wrapped her arms around her in a futile attempt to save them from the inevitable. ‘Give me your arm or you know what’ll happen,’ he warned, resting his free hand on the cattle prod as a reminder of Karen Green’s fate.

‘No,’ she pleaded. ‘I can’t. Please. I can’t.’ Tears streaked down her dirty face leaving clean tracks through the thin layer of dust that had settled on her skin over the last few days during which she hadn’t been allowed to wash. He stood and watched her for a while, then closed the hatch, replacing the safety cap on the syringe and returning it to his pocket, recovering the prod and moving around to the main door of the cage. Louise’s terrified eyes followed him every inch of the way, watching as he held the prod under his armpit while he fumbled for the padlock key in his pocket. Her heart pounded uncontrollably as she watched him slot the key into the lock and jiggle the padlock free, her eyes darting from side to side. She felt her bowels and bladder loosen as he slowly eased the door open, a trickle of urine running down the inside of her legs.

Now he was in the cage with her, the cattle prod once more held firmly in his hands, pointing straight towards her. She felt close to fainting as she remembered Karen’s body twisting and contorting each time he’d stabbed the prod into her bare flesh, her screams of agony. She couldn’t let that happen to her. Her mind suddenly flashed with false hope, that maybe he had let Karen go free — had taken her into the woods or city and released her, that the drug he had given her was purely so she wouldn’t remember where she’d been kept, that Deborah had been wrong about her body being found, or that it had been the body of someone else. ‘Please,’ she begged him, unfolding her arms and offering both to him, each upturned and ready to be injected. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll do as you say. I’ll do anything you say.’ He was so close, moving slowly towards her, his mouth slightly open, revealing his crooked, stained teeth, his eyes narrow and cruel.

‘Too late for that,’ he hissed at her. ‘I know what you are, you little whore.’

She was about to speak, but the electricity that the cattle prod poured into her body jammed her jaw shut as she fell on to her side, every muscle wracked in spasm, the pain etching itself into her brain. The convulsion lasted a matter of seconds, unlike the longer-lasting effects of the stun-gun, and she felt her body begin to relax only to be punished again by another shot from the prod and then another and another, in her spine, her stomach and thighs, until she lay exhausted and motionless.

He stood over her, watching for signs that she was still capable of resisting him, the deep scratches in his face reminding him to be cautious, even of fallen prey. He kicked her without venom several times in her ribcage, causing her to moan slightly, but barely stir. Satisfied, he knelt beside her, resting the cattle prod on the floor and removing the syringe from his pocket, taking her arm in his other hand and searching for a useable artery, but her dehydration made it impossible to find one. He clasped the syringe in his teeth and began to slap the crook of her arm, trying to raise the blood vessels, until finally he saw the traces of a blue line running beneath her skin. Quickly he clamped her arm just above the elbow with his fingers and waited for the blood to dam and make the artery more prominent, watching without emotion as it swelled to an almost normal size. He took the syringe from his teeth and laid the needle across the blue line in her arm before bringing it to a shallow angle and pushing its sharp point through her thin, pale skin, sinking it deeply into the blood vessel, drawing the miniature plunger backwards first, pulling a few millilitres of her own blood into the syringe, the red liquid swirling and mixing with the alfentanil already inside. Then he remorselessly pushed both blood and drug into her arm, the beat of her own heart rushing it to the far reaches of her body. He pulled the needle from her artery and waited, listening for the sigh he knew would ease from her mouth, a sigh that would mean the anaesthetic had worked and she would now be unable to resist his will. After a few seconds he heard what he was waiting to hear.

Looking down on Louise Russell’s prostrate body he watched her chest gently rise and fall as her half-shut eyes flickered, quiet moans coming from her mouth, her arms lying behind her, above her head. He watched as her breasts rose and fell, her lips opening and closing, as if she was speaking silent words that only he could hear, telling him she wanted him, needed him, making his already stiff penis harder than he could bear. ‘I know you do, you little whore. I know you desire me.’ Hurriedly he pushed her legs apart and kneeled between them, pulling his tracksuit trousers halfway down to his thighs and releasing himself, swollen and grotesque. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ he chastised her. ‘You’ve made me as disgusting as you are. As weak as you are. You’re nothing to me now,’ he told her, his face twisted with contempt.

Deborah had been looking on, transfixed in horror, but knowing what was coming she could watch and listen no more. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, clamped her hands over her ears, but she couldn’t block out the sound of him grunting and whining, she couldn’t block out the involuntary cries and moans of his victim. Humming to herself as loudly as she dared, she waited until the terrible sounds of Louise’s torture relented before summoning the courage to look back at the other cage, watching as Keller pulled up his trousers. He knew she was looking but he seemed unable to meet her eyes, panting and breathing heavily after the effort of his assault.

‘See what you made me do,’ he asked Louise. ‘Well, you’ve tricked me for the last time. You won’t cheapen me again. You’re the little whore now, not me.’ His voice was flat and mechanical, devoid of emotion. ‘It’s time for you to go. I don’t want you here any more.’

He hauled Louise to her feet and hauled her from her cage. Deborah tried to speak, to scream at him to stop, to leave Louise alone, but no words came from her open mouth, the terror of knowing what was going to happen to Louise striking her dumb. She looked on in silence as he half-dragged and half-assisted the partially anaesthetized woman across the cellar floor, pulling the string that returned the cellar to near darkness as he passed it. Still Deborah couldn’t speak as she listened to him leading Louise around the corner to the stairs, the sound of their shuffling, unsteady feet more awful than anything she’d ever heard.

The metallic clang of the door being closed and locked was followed by silence, broken only by the sound of running water. For the first time since he’d taken her, Deborah was alone. But for how long?

Louise’s terribly prophesy had come true. It was her turn now — her turn to become Louise Russell. To become Karen Green.

Deborah sank to the floor of her cage and hugged herself, rocking and crying in the twilight of the cellar. Alone.

Sean drove through the virtually deserted streets of south-east London to his modest terraced home in Dulwich, the empty roads making the short journey a fast one. He enjoyed the peaceful eeriness of the streets at dawn, a nether-world that few other than emergency service workers ever saw, at least while they were sober. It reminded him of his early days in the police, a young uniformed officer driving home after a night-shift, tired but content, watching all the bleary-eyed commuters driving in the other direction. It made him feel different — unique. He parked as close as he could to his house and walked the short distance to the front door, his footsteps heavier than he would have wished in the quiet of the night, although thankfully a gusting wind disguised his approach. As he unlocked the door he was pleased to see Kate had followed his often repeated instructions and had used the dead-lock as well, not just relying on the far more easily opened latch-lock. He eased the door open and stepped into his home, the warmth and comforting scent of his family temporarily chasing away the daytime demons. Kate had left a small lamp on for him, her own experiences of arriving home in the dead of night making her appreciate a little illumination when first stepping inside your own house, while at the same time not wanting to turn the more powerful overhead lights on and risk disturbing the rest of the family while they slept. Police and doctors, firemen and nurses — eternal teenagers who would never be allowed to grow out of sneaking into their own homes in the middle of the night, forever fearful of capture.