Chapter 93

93

The fear was real now. Terror swept through Shannon's body like a blazing fire. She sat alone in the small room – her cell, she called it. The woman had taped her mouth and tied her hands to the bed. She wanted to scratch the pulsing spots sprouting on her body. She needed to relieve the itch. No salve had been offered. She had to suffer.

Her situation was impossible. That word burned and burned without fading. Impossible .

The house seemed quiet. Had they all gone out? She knew he went out at night. Prowling. Hadn't he abducted her on her walk home from the pub? Didn't he have a taxi sign on the top of his car? That was why she'd got in with him. Dumb bitch.

A door opened and shut somewhere within the house. Sounds were muffled. The room must be padded, she thought. A footstep. Outside her door. The bolt being drawn back. A key in the lock. The door opened ever so slowly.

Shannon hoped it wouldn't be the woman. She disliked the constant darkness in her eyes. The dread she caused in her soul. The fidgeting hands when she talked, as if she wanted to throw something at you and would do so if she had anything in her hand to throw.

But perhaps it'd be him. With that browbeaten look he wore in the house. The persona the night he took her was totally different. He was like two people in one body. That was the only way she could describe him if asked. And she knew who manipulated his various transformations.

Or maybe it would be little Magenta, with her soft voice and menacing eyes. The voice that could turn loud and nasty in an instant. The pair had moulded the little girl into something terrible, and though Shannon thought Magenta was her only hope of escape, she realised she was just as terrified of the child as she was of the other two.

She missed her nephew, Davy's soft hand in hers. Missed pushing him on the swing in the park. She even missed her annoying brother. She missed her old life so much, a life she hadn't respected or cherished, and it made her want to cry and cry and cry.

The door opened a crack and someone slipped inside. A shimmer of light shone in from the hallway. A lighter sort of darkness. And then she was plunged into the pitch blackness as the door closed. A soft footstep on the floor. The rustle of clothing. The sound of a breath close to her ear. The smell of something dead. Not being able to see who was so close to her magnified her fear and defencelessness.

She'd have screamed if she could.

But she was powerless in every sense of the word.