Blake Crouch - Locked doors

The old man was no longer keening and above the distant moan of sirens she could hear hallway doors opening and closing.

Having managed to put the lid on the hamper from inside, her only view of the master bedroom was through a gap in the wicker. But there was little to see. A blue nightlight by the doorway provided the sole illumination.

Footsteps stopped behind the door.

Doorknob turning.

Sirens closing in.

Stay alive one more minute and you get to live, see your children again. He can’t stay once the police are here.

The bedroom door swung open.

“Elizabeth.”

A voice without a shard of emotion.

Through the wicker she could see his legs in the electricblue glow of the nightlight.

“We don’t have much time. Come on.”

The flashing lights of the ambulance passed through the bedroom’s only window, bursts of vermilion streaking across the walls. She could hear the rocks crunching under its tires as it sped down the dirt road toward the saltbox.

“I’m just gonna cut your throat and leave. You’ll be dead in a minute tops. I think that’s very reasonable.”

Beth watched him walk past the hamper, kneel down, and glance under the bed. He rose, moved toward the adjoining bathroom, disappeared inside.

Her heart banging.

Sirens blistering the frozen November night outside.

Reaching out of the clothes, hands on the wicker lid, she heard him rip the shower curtain from its rings.

Go now. Climb out. Go.

A cabinet under the sink opened and closed.

She started to lift the lid when his footsteps reentered the bedroom.

Walk past. Please just go. Leave. Run away. They’ll catch you.

The ambulance parked in front of the house. She could hear its engine, doors opening, slamming.

The man sighed and rushed past the hamper to the doorway.

Oh yes thank you God thank

He stopped abruptly in the threshold.

Paramedics pounding on the front door.

“Almost,” he said. “Almost.”

And he spun around and moved toward the hamper, Beth peering up through the stench of strangers’ laundry as the lid disappeared.

The man with long black hair gazed down at her and smiled, flashing lights rouging his pale and bloodless face.

The voices of the paramedics reached them, yelling for someone to unlock the front door.

What Beth heard next was the sound the blade made, moving in and out of her- footsteps in squishy mud.

He did the work with the casual efficiency he used to clean fish, then put the lid back on and ran out of the bedroom.

Beth heard a window break across the hall. He was escaping through the backyard.

Her heart sputtered, trying to beat, failing, the pain tempered by the expanding vacuum the life left as it rushed warmly and fast out of her throat.

It occurred to her that she couldn’t breathe but she was gone before it mattered.

MY head was clearing, the bleary shapes clamoring back into focus.

Still disoriented from a bash on the head that had knocked me unconscious, I found myself immobilized in an uncomfortably straight chair in a lowlit stone room that smelled of solder and copper and freshly-hewn oak.

Violet had been thrown in a corner onto a pile of sawdust, hands bound with duct tape, another strip across her mouth, tears streaming down her face as she watched me through horrified eyes.

The Kites operated in a tizzy of movement all around me-Maxine cinching the leather ankle restraints, Luther tightening the chest strap, Rufus pressing my head against the tall chairback. He pulled a leather strap flush against my forehead, ran it through the buckle, and said, “Best be pulling these straps tight as can be, cause he’s gonna jerk like the dickens.”

As all six leather restraints were buckled and viciously tightened, I noticed the copper wire running from the chair into a generator.

“What are you gonna do to me?” I asked, my throat tight with dehydration and fear.

“Boy, we’re gonna run electricity through your body until you are dead,” Maxine said, coming forward in a daisy print housedress, her jaw swollen, bright black eyes shining.

“Why?”

The old woman knelt at my feet, and with a pair of rusty scissors, began cutting away my fleece pants below the knee, the backs of my legs pressed against the cold plates of copper. Then she trimmed the sleeves of my shirt below the elbows so my bare forearms made contact with the electrodes on the armrests.

“Why are you doing this?” I failed to hide the tremor in my voice.

“Because we can, my boy, because we can.” Maxine chuckled.

In the corner opposite Violet, Rufus poured a big bag of seasalt into a basin of water while Luther vigorously stirred the saline solution with a wooden spoon.

“Luther,” I said. “Luther, you look at me and tell me why-”

“Where’s that razor, Sweet-Sweet?” Maxine asked.

Rufus pulled a razor from the pocket of his tattered leather jacket and handed it to his wife. She walked behind the chair and I felt the blade scraping across my skull as she shaved a ragged circle on the crown of my head.

Logic told me to shut the fuck up, that nothing I said would make any difference. But I wasn’t operating on logic now.

I saw Maxine reach behind the generator and lift a Carolina Tarheels baseball cap, juryrigged with a chinstrap and a long copper wire curving out of the top.

“Please listen,” I said as she walked over to the basin and dipped the underside of the hat in the saltwater, letting the sponge affixed to the inside saturate. “Look, I’ve done terrible things. I understand how a person comes to be that way, but you don’t have to do this. Let’s find a way to-”

Rivulets of lukewarm water ran down my face, salting my lips as she fitted the skullcap onto my head. She fastened the chinstrap, moved out of the way as Luther and Rufus approached bearing dripping sponges.

“Luther, I apologize. I feel terrible about what happened. You have to believe that. I’m so sorry I left you-”

“To freeze and bleed to death in the desert. I’m sure you are now. But aren’t you curious?”

“About what?”

“How I escaped.”

“Oh, well yes-”

“It was the damnedest thing, Andrew. One of the Maddings’ ranch hands showed up on a snowmobile about an hour after you left. Young man saved my life. Took my place on the porch. If it wasn’t for him, I guess you’d be doing a lot better right now.”

They began to rub my legs and forearms with a peculiar solemnity, sousing with warm saltwater wherever my skin touched the copper plating.

Don’t you dare beg these monsters for your life. It’s what they get off on.

“Maxine, please look at me.”

She looked at me.

“What if it were Luther sitting here? Wouldn’t you want someone to show your son a little mercy?” On “mercy” my voice broke. “I’m someone’s son, too.”

“Not anymore,” Luther said.

There was a can of unleaded gasoline sitting next to a circular saw. Rufus picked it up, unscrewed the gas cap on the generator, and topped off the tank.

“Beautiful, would you christen the chair?”

The old woman picked up a bottle of Cook’s from behind a stack of unused lumber, stepped toward me, and swung the bottle into the chairback. It broke off at the neck, soaking my lap with warm fizzing spumante.

Maxine said, “And we’re operational.”

The Kites applauded, hugs all around.

“Remember, son,” Rufus said, “we don’t have all night. Keep in mind we’re not safe here anymore. We need to be on the first ferry of the morning. Now, Andrew, don’t you worry about little Violet. She’s coming with us. I think my boy has a crush.”