Disembodied Bones (42 page)

“Leonie?” came the voice again. She slipped
down the hallway, looking around her for more cameras. There were
several and if he weren’t watching her, then it was only a matter
of time before he relocated her position.

“Ah, there you are.” The camera directly in
front of her, in the middle of the hall, panned back with a little
electronic whir and squared itself on her figure. A tiny red light
appeared on one side, indicated that it was in use. Another speaker
was well hidden somewhere above her. The words sounded as if they
were coming directly out of the ceiling. “You’ll find that it’s not
exactly like Whitechapel’s house.”

Opening the first door, she found an empty
room. She went to the window and discovered that it was painted
over with black paint. Shutters were locked into place on the
outside. There was nothing inside the room that she could use to
batter out the glass. She removed her black T-shirt and wrapped it
around her hand and arm and punched through the glass. Knocking the
sharp edges out with her cloth-covered fingers, she quickly
realized that the shutters weren’t locked into place. They were
nailed down. If she pressed her face up to the remnants of glass in
their wood frames she could see a bit of the revealing steel shapes
in between the shutter and exterior wall. And no matter how hard
she pushed at the shutter, it was firmly attached. She was left
only with the knowledge that it was dark outside, very very dark
outside. There was no telling how long she’d been unconscious in
this place or even how long it had taken to get her to this replica
house.

Leonie peered over her shoulder at the camera
that had become active in the little room. Another speaker gurgled
with noise. “Explore all you want, Leonie. Don’t, however, pick up
any of the glass there.” The last part was quickly added when she
went to bend down to reach for a jagged piece that would serve as
an adequate knife. “And as lovely as you are in your bra, I
wouldn’t recommend staying half-naked.”

Sliding the T-shirt back on, Leonie
disregarded the glass at her feet. There were a dozen other rooms
on this floor and the anonymous man was playing with her. She
checked the room with Keefe inside of it, and found that the child
was still unconscious. It dawned on her what had happened. This man
had found a drug that would limit her abilities, and furthermore it
would limit the brain waves of anyone else it was used on. There
was a clear reason that she couldn’t “sense” where Keefe Grant was
located. He was drugged with something that made him unconscious
and something that messed with the very mental facilities that
Leonie’s abilities seemed to use. This unknown man had taken time
and money and effort to find such a drug and attempt a test upon
her to see if it was working properly.

How this anonymous person must hate
me
. A festering wound was created as he waited for a rescue
that would never come.

“Why not let Keefe go?” she asked of the
hallway, when she came back out. “You have me now. You can punish
me. I didn’t do what you think I should have done. I’m at
fault.”

“But that would be what you want,” replied
the tinny voice from a nearby speaker, conveniently imperceptible
in the ceiling. “What you want is not something I will give you.
You’ll earn it, or you’ll die trying.”

He wants to punish me
, she thought.
And he’ll punish me by whatever means he can.

The remaining rooms on the hallway revealed
much the same as the first one she’d entered. They were devoid of
furniture. The windows were locked. The shutters were nailed shut.
There were no other exits. No convenient attic doors waited for her
to pull down and escape as she had done was a child.

“You’re right,” she said finally. “It’s not
exactly like Whitechapel’s house.”

“You didn’t try the stairs,” replied the
voice.

“I didn’t think you’d be that obvious.”
Leonie had cast a longing glance at the open stairwell on the one
side, a duplicate of the one that she’d tackled Whitechapel on. It
was open and unsecured; it was as if he wanted her to try to dash
downstairs to the front door and then out that to freedom. In the
other direction, there were the two end doors that looked so
similar to the originals. The larger one should be the staircase
down. The smaller one should be the little staircase that led to
the attic.

It had been the nailed shutters that had
given him away as well as the detail of the house she was now in.
Once Leonie saw the lengths that he was prepared to go, she knew
there wouldn’t be an easy exit. There wouldn’t be an open waiting
door for her. He wanted to play with her. She was merely a tiny
mouse and he the great hulking cat looming over her.

Leonie checked on Keefe again. Then as she
went down the hall to the main staircase, the voice remained
silent, anticipatory in its absence. She hesitated at the top of
the marble steps and peered downward. The carved banisters made out
of some solid, dark wood appeared to be exact replicas. The marble
contained a delicate pattern of pinks and grays that flowed
effortlessly from one stone to the next. The first landing sat ten
feet below her as normal and unassuming as anything she’d ever
seen. But a gaming man, who wanted active entertainment, didn’t
like to be without amusement for long, did he? A man who took the
time to glue razor blades to a laptop to teach her a lesson
wouldn’t be solitary for any length of time, would he?

Her shin touched something as she shifted
slightly. Leonie’s eyes dipped downward. There was nothing there.
Her eyes narrowed and she stepped back. Slowly she knelt and
reached her hand out, slowly bringing it down horizontally. About
six inches off the floor was an extraordinarily thin wire strung
vertically across the top of the staircase. She glanced to the left
and saw where it was connected to the wall. To the right it was
attached to an ornamental wooden rail.

Another little trap
. Leonie twanged
the wire with her index finger, absently reopening the cut there.
Nasty. Could have broken my neck.

“What would you have done if I had broken my
neck?” she asked aloud. “That might have ended your game very
quick. Too quick, perhaps.”

Quietly amused, he replied wryly, “You
wouldn’t have broken your neck. Perhaps a wrist. Maybe an arm.
Falling forward, it’s instinctual to put your hands out in front of
you. At worst you might have broken both your wrists. It would have
made an interesting twist.”

“Do I get to ask questions in this game?”
Leonie mused, almost to herself.

“You can ask anything you want,” said the
voice. “Rest assured that won’t necessarily get you an answer, nor
will it make things easier for you.”

Leonie turned around and went back toward the
attic stairs. The door to the downward stairs was locked. However,
the smaller door was open. It was a tiny staircase, the walls
unfinished sheetrock, a single unlit light bulb hanging from the
sloped ceiling. Near the top was another security camera, trained
on her figure, the little red light on to show he was watching
her.

She checked to see if there were any other
little disturbing revelations, but nothing jumped out. She even
reached up to the pull chain of the light and gingerly touched it
as if it would give her an electrical shock. Almost surprised, it
was only a cold, beaded chain connected to the string of the light
and nothing more. She yanked once on the chain and the light came
on, showing the stairwell clearly. The narrow stairs went up a
dozen steps and did a switchback into darkness. The camera was put
in such a position that it could look up or down the stairs and she
was wondering why he wasn’t speaking to her.

He’s waiting. Waiting for something to
happen to me?
Leonie took her time, picking her way up the
staircase. None of the stairs collapsed. There wasn’t a giant
Indiana Jones-type stone ball rolling down at her to crush her.
There wasn’t even a colossally wicked blade that would decapitate
her a la Edgar Allen Poe.

It was almost disappointing. She made it to
the top and opened the door into the attic. Her heart thundered in
her chest, threatening to burst in a fury of red viscous fluid as
she waited for something to happen. What? For Monroe Whitechapel to
burst out of the attic door with his gun in his hand, with his
other hand reached for her throat. It was as if she had been
helplessly transported into the past and the low electronic chuckle
in the background wasn’t doing anything to prevent that undeniable
journey.

But the door didn’t move. She reached for the
door knob and twisted it quickly. The narrow door opened slowly
with a nudge of her fingers. It swung back on its hinges, sounding
as if it had been freshly oiled the day before.

Darkness greeted her.

There was no distant attic door opening that
allowed meager light to filter upward, and there wasn’t the
silhouetted figure of a threatening man stumbling toward them,
calling out alternating threats and promises. The terror she held
at bay began to weigh heavily at her, spreading like the lapping
edge of rising floodwaters.

Nonetheless she stepped into the darkness,
her heart continuing to pound at breakneck speed as quickly as a
race horse’s hooves out of the starting gates. When something
touched her face she withheld a gasp of apprehension. Her hands
shot up to protect her face and something fluttered there, touching
bare flesh, tickling across her hair, already in a disarray from
being in a fight and carried off to who knew where. The unknown
something slithered across her face and Leonie finally grasped it
securely with her hand. It was another pull cord for another
light.

Still she took several steps backward before
she jerked the overlong cord. The yellow light pooled in the
immediate area in front of her and showed the shape of a
half-finished attic. Tall enough for her to not duck her head, she
doubted that Gideon would pass without bumping his head on the
beams overhead. The floor was unfinished plywood, nailed into the
studs below, to provide an adequate storage area. But there wasn’t
much here.

Leonie took a step forward, inside the attic.
There was something here. She could see a faint shape in the
dimness in front of her. This was something the nameless man on the
speakers wanted her to see. And he remained silent while she went
about discovering what it was. As she moved forward, her eyes
adjusted to the darkness. The low wattage bulb in the light fixture
behind her exposed the bareness of the attic room. The sharply
pitched roof closed in above her, the beams were thick slabs of
wood that showed plywood above them, and hundreds of roofing nails
had been thrust through holding shingles in place that she couldn’t
see.

Another step and she found herself in the
shadows, cautiously waiting for her eyes to further adjust. Her
foot gingerly went forward, testing the waters before she dove in.
She didn’t want to find a shark waiting for her or anything else
with sharp jagged teeth and an avaricious appetite. But there was
nothing and Leonie’s suspicions were aroused.

The shape became clearer. Someone was sitting
in the middle of the attic in a simple rocking chair. Leonie froze
in place, as still as the darkened figure in front of her. Slowly
she looked over her shoulder at the place where she had entered. It
seemed a hundred miles away, and long before she reached it, this
person could easily gain on her, should he simply leap up and reach
for her. She forced a lump of anxiety down her throat with a
feeling akin to horrified dread and wished for a discarded
unicorn’s horn, or anything that might protect her.

However, there was something else that spoke
to her, although it didn’t use words.

It was only a faint whiff of smell. It
tormented her nostrils as she strove to grasp what it meant. The
air was circulating more now that the attic door was wide open.
Dry, musty air was being pulled from within the attic through the
door and down the stairwell. The faded smell floated on air
currents past her and inundated her nose.

Wandering the piney woods around Twilight
Lake as a child, she had come across dead animals. The smell of the
dead was distinctive and unforgettable.

The shape sitting in the chair was dead and
hardly a threat to Leonie. The realization of the other person’s
condition was hardly reassuring to her. She took another step
forward and stared at the figure. It was a desiccated corpse of a
woman who had been there a long time. Her hair was tangled wisps of
gray tainted brown and tattered flesh flaked from her bare arms
onto the plywood floor. One arm crossed over her lap and another
hung helplessly at her side. A simple white shirt had turned yellow
with age and was stained with dark matter and remnants of other
things she could identify. Plain khaki slacks covered her hips and
legs.

Through the whirling dust motes, she saw that
the woman’s throat had been cut. The dried flesh had curled back on
itself like an obscene mouth opening below her sagging jaw
line.

I don’t know this woman
, Leonie
thought. Then she saw one broken strap made to look like alligator
lying in a single stream of light from the distant light bulb. She
bent down and pulled it cautiously with one hand. It came without
reservation and pulled behind it a woman’s purse. Compact and
simple, it was imitation alligator, a yellowy green array of
simulated scales.

Leonie stared at the dead woman. Months and
more, this woman had sat in this attic, waiting for her to appear,
to find her, the dry air of the closed-off room had preserving her
flesh, knowingly or not. He wanted to horrify Leonie by showing
what he was capable of. He was a murderer and he had no compulsions
about murdering again, especially Leonie Simoneaud. Her fingers
fumbled at the purse and before she pulled out the little red
wallet that would reveal the woman’s name, it became as clear to
her as the side of a barn door.
A barn?