Питер Мэй - A Silent Death

— Well, answer it, then, and we’ll find out just who it is.

Ana reaches towards the panel of switches on the table and fumbles unconvincingly with the rocker. ‘It’s not working.’ Then feels Cleland brush her hand aside, before the vibration on her chest tells her that he has successfully unlocked the door below. ‘Don’t harm him. Please.’ It is out before she can stop herself.

— Who is he?

‘Just a friend.’

— We’ll see.

Then nothing. She feels the heat of Cleland’s body recede and is only too painfully aware of the tread of Sergio’s feet on the stairs. Never has the silence and darkness that traps her felt so imprisoning. She wonders about calling out a warning. But would Sergio even understand? It would make no sense to him, until it was too late.

She is aware that the door has opened, then nothing.

What is Sergio doing? Where is Cleland? Has Sergio seen him? Are they speaking?

And then she feels him crossing the floor towards her. The heat of his body. He is very close. The scrape of a chair vibrating faintly through hers, his now familiar scent. Then suddenly his lips on her forehead. She recoils, startled. A quite involuntary response. She can almost feel his hurt.

Several long moments pass before he takes her hands in his. His signing is hesitant.

‘I’m so sorry, Ana. I was held up at the bank. I should have been here ages ago.’

All she can think is that he won’t hear Cleland if he approaches him from behind. She turns her head in desperation, as if looking for her captor. Where in God’s name is he?

‘Ana, what’s wrong?’

She can feel through the hands his distress at sensing hers.

‘GO, SERGIO!’ Her hands sign urgently on his. She is more used to others signing for her than she signing for them. But if she speaks aloud Cleland will hear her. ‘LEAVE NOW. DON’T ASK WHY. YOU ARE IN DANGER.’

She can feel his consternation. If fills the air around them, as tangible as if she could reach out and touch it.

Then suddenly his hands are gone. She feels a deep vibration run through her body. Something heavy striking the floor. She cries out.

‘Sergio!’

But there is no response of any kind. Nothing. Just the darkness and the silence of her world. There is the sense of someone close. The faintest warmth in the cool air of the room, then it is gone.

She sits trembling, tears spilling silently from stinging eyes. Something awful has happened. She knows it. But she daren’t speak, hardly dares even to breathe. And she waits, as she has waited half a lifetime, for the world to come to her. It seems like an eternity before she feels the vibration against the skin of her chest, and raises her fingers to the screen with dread in her heart.

— What were you doing with your hands?

‘Where’s Sergio?’

— Don’t worry about Sergio. Tell me what you were doing with your hands.

Ana can barely draw enough breath into her lungs to allow her to speak. ‘Touch-signing.’

— What’s that?

‘It’s a way of communicating letters and words by touch.’ Then, ‘Where’s Sergio?’

— He’s gone. Don’t worry about him.

‘I don’t believe you.’

— I don’t care.

‘Don’t hurt him, please.’ Her voice breaks as she pleads with the dark. She cannot hear her own sobbing, but feels each sob tearing itself from her chest. Then pain fills her world. A stinging, burning pain on the side of her face. He has slapped her again. She feels his breath in her face, tiny specks of spittle on it as he shouts at her. It smells rank and she almost gags on it.

Then nothing once more. For several long seconds. Before she senses the other chair being drawn in close, Cleland’s heat, his earthy masculine smell. Another vibration at her chest.

— Show me.

She doesn’t understand how he can be typing when he is sitting next to her. Then conjures a picture of him with the keyboard on his knees. It is wireless, so perfectly possible. ‘Show you what?’

— How to touch-sign.

She feels her breath trembling as she fills her lungs to try to stop herself from sobbing. All she can think is, what has he done to Sergio ? Her voice catches in her throat. ‘You can’t learn to touch-sign just like that. It takes weeks, months.’

— Ana, I have all the time in the world. A pause. At least until Cristina comes again. Will she be here tomorrow?

‘I... I don’t know.’

— I think you do, Ana. But don’t worry, I have endless patience. I learned at school that revenge is a dish best served cold. It’s a maxim I have lived my life by.

She doesn’t know what to say.

— I want you to teach me to touch-sign. It was intriguing, what I saw passing between you and Sergio. It looked... A longer pause while he searched for the word. Intimate. I want that, too. I want to be intimate with you, Ana.

She could not stop the shudder that shook her body. A wave of disgust. And she wonders if it shows.

— But not right now. I have to leave for a while.

Her heart leaps. If he leaves, then somehow, some way she will be able to raise the alarm. A call to the operator. An email to Cristina. But his next words send fear spiking into her soul.

— He’s a nice kid, your niece’s boy. What’s his name, Lucas? And such a good school they send him to. What a shame if anything were to happen to him. You’d be to blame. You know that, Ana, don’t you? If that little boy were to come to any harm. So you’ll just sit here quiet and wait till I get back. Or do I have to tie you up?

With lead in her heart Ana knows that she will do exactly as he wants. The threat of harm to Cristina’s little boy binds her more efficiently than any rope he might use to secure her. But if Cleland has patience, then so does she. She’s had twenty years to nurture it, to make it a virtue. Her time will come. Of that she is now determined.

Sophia stood at the top of the staircase watching him as he lifted one weary leg after the other and climbed towards her. He had been waiting so long for this chance to tell her how sorry he was about the concert, to put his arms around her and hold her close and tell her he loved her.

He wouldn’t say anything about her unfriending him on Facebook, but he would watch his page for her friend request to reunite them again across the ether. It was just a temporary huff. She couldn’t hate him for ever. Could she?

He was almost there. Three steps, two steps. He reached out his hand towards her. She turned and fled across the landing, into her room, slamming the door behind her. He summoned all his strength to reach it before she could turn the key in the lock. But even as his hand closed around the handle, he heard the click of the deadbolt slipping into place.

‘Sophia!’ His own voice sounded distant, desperate.

Hers on the other hand thundered in his head. ‘Go away!’

‘Sophia, let me in.’

‘I hate you!’

As tears came to his eyes he started hammering on the door with his clenched fist. ‘Sophia!’ Nothing. No response. He hit the door harder. ‘Sophia, please...’

He sat bolt-upright in the darkness, heart pounding in his throat, the echo of his own voice dying around him. He was soaked in sweat, bedsheets twisted about his body, sticking to his legs and chest. But the banging on the door had not stopped. His confusion lasted for only as long as it took him to realize where he was. A room at the top of the Hostal Totana in Marviña. And someone was banging on the door. He heard Cristina’s voice from the other side of it.