nice man’s head in his hands. He dipped the ladle to the very bottom of the bucket and brought the cool water to the nice man’s cracked lips. He tried to give sips of water, but the nice man was motionless.
The nice man is…
The nice man is…dying.
Christopher didn’t know what he was doing, but instinctively, he reached out and put his hands over the nice man’s wounds. He closed his eyes. Immediately his head began to ache and a fever ran through his forehead and down his arm to his fingertips. Christopher felt the blood run from his nose and trickle onto his lips. The blood tasted rusty like a copper pipe. It was the nice man’s blood. The fever became too hot and Christopher was forced to let go. He reached out to use the water to clean the wounds. But the wounds were gone. There was nothing but healthy, healed skin.
That’s when the nice man grabbed him.
“Leave me alone! Stop torturing me! I’ll never tell!”
The sound would have brought the hissing lady running downstairs, but the nice man was so weak, his voice was barely audible.
“Sir, it’s okay. It’s me. Christopher,” he whispered.
“Christopher?” the nice man whispered. “What are you doing here? I told you never to come in without me.”
“We have to get you out of here,” Christopher said. “There has to be something we can use to pick the lock.”
“Christopher, it’ll be dark soon. She’ll be able to see you. You have to get out. Now.”
“I’m not leaving without you,” Christopher said.
The stubborn silence hung in the air. The nice man finally sighed.
“The table,” he said.
“Where? I can’t see,” Christopher said.
“The light is above it,” the nice man said. “Reach for the string.”
The nice man took Christopher’s hand and gently pointed him toward the darkness. Christopher crawled on his hands and knees until he came to a cold metal table. He groped in the darkness. His fingers reading the contents of the table like a blind man’s book. It took a moment for his brain to process what all the edges, corners, and points were.
Knives and screwdrivers.
All wet with blood.
The hissing lady…
The hissing lady…tortured the nice man.
Christopher pulled himself onto the table. He stood in the wet blood. Reaching up for the light. After a moment, his fingers found the lightbulb with a long string hanging from it. Like the noose holding the key around the hissing lady’s neck. Christopher pulled down the string, bathing the room in sick, yellow light.
What he saw almost made him scream.
The room was not a finished basement. There was no beanbag chair or wood paneling. There was only a cement floor. A metal table. And four walls covered in saws, knives, and screwdrivers. Every surface was dripping blood.
This was a torture room.
The nice man was chained in the corner like an animal. Covered in dirt and blood and bruises. His skin had been ripped apart and put back together a dozen times. He squinted at the light as if waking from a nightmare. Christopher had seen that look before when he went to the dog pound back in Michigan with Jerry. Some dogs get beaten for so long, they don’t remember how to do anything but flinch.
Christopher quickly climbed down. He grabbed a knife and screwdriver. He rushed back and handed them to the nice man, who began to pick at the lock on his wrist. His fingers trembled with pain.
“How did you find me?” he whispered.
“David Olson.”
“David? But he’s with…her.”
The way the nice man said “her” sent a shudder down his back.
“No. He’s helping us. He wants me to take you both to the real side.”
The news spread across the nice man’s face. Confusion at first. Then, hope. The nice man was pale and drawn, deathly ill from all of the blood loss. But for the first time, Christopher saw him smile.
The hissing lady had ripped out some of his teeth.
The nice man freed one of the shackles. The screwdriver slipped out of his slick, bloody hand and clanked on the cement floor. A board creaked above them in the kitchen. The hissing lady stopped moving. Listening to the basement.
“Yes, Dr. Haskell,” Jill said. “Can I get a referral to a dermatologist? I can’t stop itching.”
Christopher picked the screwdriver off the floor and handed it back to the nice man.
“Can you do it?” he whispered.
“Yes,” the nice man said weakly.
While the nice man picked the locks, Christopher turned back into the basement, searching for a way out. His eyes