Chapter Thirty-One

Five

After a long ride in the back of a company Van, a sudden change in the sound of the tires causes her to alert. They have pulled off somewhere, off of the pavement. They stop at something that sounds like a squeaky metal gate and then go for another hundred feet or so before finally parking.

The man driving gets out and slams his door. She has no idea who he is and can only see a very faint haze of light coming through the canvas sometimes. She remembers Gabriel’s voice from earlier and can hear him outside of the van again.

“Alright Barry, so where you want her?”

“In the house, but let’s go through the garage, where we’re backed up. I don’t need anyone seeing us carrying a body like this.”

When they pull her out of the back, it’s not like Mikel had done. When they drop her on the ground, they struggle to even pick her back up. Neither of them seems to have the strength to carry her weight. It makes her think of struggling and trying to break free, but it’s no use, she is bound up tight. When Gabriel drops her head on the ground again, Barry goes off on him.

“You dumb fucker! If you scratch her, I swear to god!”

By the time they get her to a small flight of stairs, Barry has berated Gabriel half a dozen times. If only he had known how Mikel treated her. She feels kind of embarrassed for the two of them by the way they handle her. Barry insists on putting down soft rugs wherever they have to stop and lay her down to rest. By the time they manage to get her up the stairs and into the next room, both are panting heavily.

“Aw! God damn it, Gabriel! You got your nasty sweat all over my suit! You’re a fucking mess, you know that!”

Even though Gabriel is helping abduct her, she kind of feels sorry for him, for the way Barry treats him. She didn’t know people were mean to one another like this too. Suddenly, the tarp is yanked away from her face, and the light blinds her for a second. When she opens her eyes again, she finds herself in a huge and beautiful living room. Barry quickly digs for his wallet and shoves a few hundred dollar bills at Gabriel.

“I can handle it from here Gabriel. This is for your help. Now, you’ve got to go.”

“Shouldn’t I check on…?”

“NO, you have done quite enough already. Now get going before you piss me off.”

“Sheesh. Fine, I’ll go. You’re welcome, Barry.”

When Gabriel finally leaves, Barry hunkers down in one of the big leather chairs in front of his large rock fireplace. It’s even fancier than the one in the apartment lounge. While catching his breath, he takes a silver flask out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and tugs on it a few times. He sits there, staring at her on the floor for a while and then abruptly gets up. He hastily rips the tarp off the rest of her and sits back down again to continue looking her over.

“Now that’s a little better huh.” He continues to stare at her as he did back in his office the other day. “What a beauty they’ve made you into.” He sinks back into the plush chair and takes another tug on his flask. A worrisome glower comes across his face. “You’re not the little sweetheart they all think you are though, are you?”

After Barry’s heavy breathing eventually calms down, he gets up and heads back to the garage. After a few minutes of rummaging around in there, he returns with a bundle of heavy white rope and a pair of red-handled pliers. Terrible thoughts of what he might do start finding their way into her imagination. She helplessly watches as he unravels the rope, all while staring at her.

He takes a heavy padlock, hanging along with a bunch of keys by the door, and ties it to one end of the rope. With a swift underhand swing, he launches the padlock and rope over one of the lumber beams in the ceiling, draping the rope over it. He opens the padlock and snaps it to the restraints binding her wrists and ankles.

With as much effort as he can muster, he pulls the other end of the rope across the room until she is hoisted about four feet off the floor. He ties the rope off on the heavy wood stairwell banister leading upstairs and leaves her hanging. As worn out as he is from doing that, he can barely keep himself upright. Despite that, he still manages to stagger over and have a good look at her before going to bed.

He grasps his hand around her jawline and runs his fingertip across her lips, pulling at the bottom one. He looks into her eyes with a fierce expression, making sure she knows to not resist. Just like Ray had done, he grabs the collar of her shirt and yanks it open at the front. He laughs when she shuts her eyes tight and turns her face away from him.

Without wearing a bra underneath, her breasts drop down freely. He grabs one of them and runs his fingers across her nipple while watching her face. She immediately starts jerking her head side to side and fighting her restraints, trying to do anything she can to getaway. When she tries to scream, he forces her mouth shut with both hands, being careful to not get his fingers bitten. She heaves her breaths through her gritted teeth and nostrils in absolute rage.

“Oh, Five, that is hot! I knew you’d make this exciting.”

Even with her teeth shut, she cannot hold back words anymore. “You’re gonna die Barry, and if they bring you back, I’ll kill you over and over!” She strains against her bonds as hard as she can one more time and finally relents.

“Oh, no you little slut, that’s what I’m gonna be doing with you.”

Before leaving her to hang there for the night, he slides his hand up her neck, grabs hold of it, and gives her a strong and condescending shove that sends her swinging back and forth. He finally leaves her alone and heads upstairs for the night. While he gets ready for bed, she listens to him grumbling about Gabriel’s sweat stinks so bad.

With all the lights out, she can barely see anything at all. The light coming through the tall triangular windows of the gable makes some things glow, and other things completely black in shadow. Other than the creaking of her rope over the beam, she can only hear Barry’s strained breathing while he sleeps.

By the time another half hour passes, everything is completely silent. She tries to squirm a little, to get herself moving again, to see if she can see more of the room she’s in. After coordinating her movements properly, she can get herself to spin slightly. She keeps doing it until she can turn a full circle and see the entire room around her.

Each time she spins around, she gets an unnerving sense that something in the room has somehow changed. Concentrating on the details of her environment, she finds that there is now something big black blotch across the room that was not previously there. The void of light seems to grow larger each time she swings around to face it. She cannot seem to make out the edges of it, or what it is.

When she begins to hear the quiet creaking of the wood floor underneath it, she knows for sure that whatever it is, it’s heavy and that it’s coming for her. She gasps when she thinks about how Aaron had described death to her as if it were a real entity. When it gets close, she freezes, hoping it will just leave her alone. She begins to wish that she had just stayed still.

When she finally stops moving, the blackness is no longer in her line of sight, but she can still feel it there with her. Her mind races and she begins to tremble. Suddenly, she lets out a constricted squeak when it seizes her by the ankles. She is terrified but if she screams or yells out, she knows it’s going to hurt her for it.

She clenches her eyes shut while the thing slowly spins her back around to face it. When the thing lets out heavy, and almost disappointed breath, she hangs her head low. She wants to sob, but she can’t be giving up yet. When she finally dares to lift her head, open her eyes, and look, she can still only see a black shadow in front of her. Every so often a tiny reflection of passing light glints off its eyes. Whatever it is, it’s strong and holds her as firmly as a steel girder. When she focuses on its eyes, she can see that they are angry.

An alarming amount of pressure begins to build at her wrists and ankles. By the feel of it, she is sure it is trying to rip her limb from limb. It starts to hurt more and more until she hears something suddenly snap. At first, she expects the thing has broken her. She feels helpless and can only plead with it now.

“Please, no. I didn’t do anything, I swear.” It says nothing back to her.

When the pain subsides, she can tell that her feet are no longer bound to her wrists. When she wiggles them a little, she can tell they are ok, but something is still holding them up, holding her from dropping to the ground and breaking her shoulders backward.

The thing pulls on the rope holding her up, lowering her by a few inches, but then stops. The rope above her starts to creak as it gets considerably tighter, then the beam in the ceiling, and then the banister across the room. One of them is bound to break, and she braces herself for it. The big solid wood banister makes a thunderous crack and then crashes down onto the floor, making her flinch. Then there is a shout from Barry upstairs.

“What the fuck is going on down there!” The sound of quick stomping feet comes to the edge of the railing. A dim light comes turns on, only showing his paunchy profile. He looks down at her and then to the stairwell. Both of them can now see that the entire post of the banister, and some of the railing, has been broken off of the stairs.

He looks in her direction, but not quite at her. He is glaring at the monster that has hold of her. Her eyes snap open and she takes a quick look up at the dark shadowed figure while she has the chance. It is still fairly dark down in the main room, but she can clearly see the form of a large muscled man beside her. He is all black, with the same skin as Arma. Within a second, Barry turns the light out on her, but it’s too late, she already saw. In the dark, Barry scolds the man.

“That shit was only a hundred years old, Paul! God damn it! I didn’t put you up in my home so you can break my shit!”

In a strange, almost malformed voice, the thing responds to him. It’s calm but authoritative. “What is she doing here, Barry? Why have you humiliated her like this? This is not what we agreed on.”

“Things have changed, Paul. You’re dead, and the project has gone awry. I’ll be teaching this one a little lesson since no one can seem to fucking LEARN!” He abruptly shouts the last word, making her flinch again.

The monster next to her struggles to yell, but can still manage a terrifying growl. “They get their second chance, Barry! I am right fucking down here if you need a reminder that I am not absent! Where is my little girl, Barry? What have you done with HER?”

“Don’t get an attitude with me. You’re not thinking straight, remember? And you’re little girl, she’s in a dumpster somewhere for now, cause she’s nuts, like you! Now, be quiet, both of you! One of us is still an old man and has to get some goddamn sleep!”

She waits for Barry to stomp off into the darkness and plop back down in his bed before whispering to Paul. He used to be nice to her. Maybe he’ll help her. “Paul… please let me go, Paul.” She waits, but it seems he will not speak to her.

When her knees touch the floor, she realizes that she has been lowered to the ground. A strong tugging on the rope sends her scrambling up onto her feet, to relieve the force on her arms being pulled up behind her again. Paul moves away and then drops down into the big leather chair that Barry had sat in. He still has the rope in his hands. Whenever she moves, he pulls on it a little tighter, so she stands there motionless. Angry with her predicament, she looks straight into his eyes, even though she can’t see them.

When she feels the cool air on her bare breasts, it makes her upset that he could be looking at her. She has never felt so naked like this before now. The comment about the little girl, the crazy one in the dumpster, has her perplexed. She wishes Arma were there, to show these creeps a lesson. She can’t imagine why they caller her little though, she’s nothing of the sort. Maybe to Paul she might be. It has to be her they're referring to.