The Killing House

26

Jimmy Weeks’s eyes fluttered opened to darkness. It swam around him, as impenetrable as a wall. While he couldn’t see anything, he could feel things, minor sensations that seemed to be calling to him from a great distance, like an orbiting space satellite thousands of miles away relaying vital information to an earth base. He knew he was lying on his left side, on something cold and hard and flat. His knees were tucked against his chest. Something had happened to his back; he felt pain between his shoulder blades, and it seemed to be trying to draw his attention, urging him to investigate.

Had he been in some sort of accident? Was he in a hospital and being given drugs? Or was he drunk? He did feel drunk, and a little sick to his stomach. It reminded him of that party at Tim Doherty’s house when he’d chugged an entire six-pack of Milwaukee’s Best within an hour. Huge mistake. He had got so shitfaced that he could barely stand. After he threw up, Tim had brought him to the basement and put him on a sofa. Jimmy remembered how he’d forced himself to sit up, everything spinning around him. Then, mercifully, he’d passed out.

He didn’t feel like he was going to puke. More than anything, he felt tired. He shut his eyes, thinking about the cold trapped in this darkness. Yeah, it was weird, and yes, these tingling sensations crawling all over his body were disturbing, but his brain… it was like it had gone on holiday, leaving a fog in its place. A moment later he drifted off into a restless sleep plagued with fevered dreams.

Like any normal person, he suffered from the occasional nightmare. The ones from his youth — involving a faceless alien creature that roamed the house at night and hooked its tentacles on to him and his family and drank their blood — had been replaced by more typical, standard fare: falling from the top of a building or being trapped inside a strange house full of endless halls and ever-changing rooms. His dreams turned really odd once he’d entered his present oh-so wonderful adolescent phase, with its constant bounty of boners that occurred during class for no reason at all, and acne that spread across his face, back and shoulders like the indestructible crabgrass in his parents’ lawn. Now his nightmares became more personal, more rooted in reality. The one he was having right now involved a recurring fear: public speaking. Principal Shelly told him it was time to address the students and pulled back the curtain. Jimmy walked on to the auditorium stage, his stomach doing flip-flops, and was immediately greeted with gasps and shrieks. Now came gales of laughter. It was at that moment he realized he wasn’t wearing any trousers. Or underwear.

Jimmy resurfaced from the dream, sensing it had been prompted by a real-life event. His mind served up a real memory: showering after last week’s hockey game. The coach, a tiny moustached man named Peter Walsh, insisted that his players take a shower after each practice or game. Why, Jimmy didn’t know, but the guy stood guard like a cop in the locker room to make sure you did. Jimmy had been standing in the school’s big prison-type shower with half a dozen other guys, his buddy Michael Hauptman standing right next to him and soaping up when Haupy nodded with his chin to Jimmy’s crotch and said, ‘Dude, what’s up with your junk?’ Jimmy felt cold all over — the same way he felt right now.

As Jimmy’s eyes fluttered open again to the darkness, he consulted his brain for an explanation. It failed to provide one, so he moved his right hand up and touched his chest. Bare skin. He felt his knees. Bare skin. He moved his hand round to his back and felt his bare ass. His junk was, in fact, exposed. He wasn’t wearing his boxers.

Embarrassment more than terror parted the fog, and he managed to get himself on to all fours. Dizzy and still feeling drunk, he reached out and his fingers got caught in some sort of barrier made of chain link. He grabbed it with both hands and stood. Slowly he turned to his right, feeling the chain link, hearing it rattle. Then the barrier ended and turned to his right. More chain link. He followed it with his fingers and when it ended he felt something cold and hard and rough. Concrete. A concrete wall. He followed it and felt another chain-link barrier.

I’m buck-naked and locked inside a… what? What is it?

At that moment his brain returned from its holiday. The fog lifted and memories started to trickle in. Being pulled over by that undercover woman FBI agent, who’d claimed his father’s car had been involved in some robbery. Sitting handcuffed in the woman’s Chevy SUV, her stabbing him with a needle, and then… He couldn’t remember what happened next, but none of that mattered. A cop wouldn’t inject you with a drug. A cop or an FBI agent wouldn’t strip off your clothes and place you in this -

A flashlight was turned on, the bright beam aimed at his face. Jimmy caught a flash of his surroundings before the light blinded him: he was trapped inside a cage made of the same type of chain link people used for fences. For dog kennels.

The flashlight was turned off. He opened his eyes, bright stars burning across his vision. A shuffle of footsteps approached him and he backed up, blinded. He bumped into the concrete wall, his heart quickening as a door creaked open. He heard moaning — at least that’s what it sounded like, someone moaning in pain, or fear, or both.

The door shut and the sound disappeared. The darkness surrounded him again, leaving him alone with his terror.

I’m locked inside a chain-link cage. I don’t have on any clothes and there’s a throbbing pain between my shoulder blades. He reached around his back with both hands, trying to feel the wound. He couldn’t reach it, but the smooth skin of his forearms rubbed against his head and felt stubble. He rubbed his hands across his head. No hair, just stubble. His head had been shaved.

Jimmy was too terrified to cry. His mouth opened, making blubbering sounds as his mind decided that now was a good time to play clips from all the horror movies he’d seen over the course of his life. He tried to shut them off, but they kept playing.

What am I going to do?

He thought about the moaning he’d heard a moment ago and his insides turned to water. Then the tears came.

What’s going to happen to me?

I don’t know, a voice answered. But you’re trapped in here.

Jimmy hadn’t been raised to practise any particular faith. He didn’t attend church, and wasn’t sure if he believed in God, but he closed his eyes and clasped his hands together and prayed as though his life depended on it — because it did.