Authors: Savita Kalhan
Back out of the bedroom and into the TV room, where he stopped for a moment. The camcorder was still sitting on its tripod, facing the overstuffed sofa with its plump, overstuffed cushions. He knew how camcorders worked. It didn't take him more than a second to remove the little tape from inside it and stuff it deep into the pocket of his school trousers. He shuddered. It made him feel cold. It made him feel scared.
Knife. He had to find a knife. He was on the move again.
Back down the corridor, swiftly past the doors that stood wide open to the yawning darkness within them. It wouldn't be any good searching through them now. There was no phone. No one at the end of the line. Knife. He needed to find a knife. At the first set of stairs he stopped. The kitchen would be downstairs at the back somewhere. He might be lucky and find it at the bottom of this flight of stairs. They led into a forbidding darkness, but Sam didn't mind that so much now. He headed down.
At the bottom, he groped around for a light switch and flicked it on. He was standing in a corridor, but it wasn't lined with any pictures, or paintings, or anything. It just had plain, unadorned walls. That meant he was close. People who lived in houses like this didn't cook for themselves. They probably didn't even know where the kitchen was. They had cooks and butlers and servants, and you didn't waste nice stuff on them. The first door he got to was a big cupboard full of brooms and mops and polish and rags. The second door was a storeroom with shelves upon shelves of plates and cups and bowls and linens. The third door was the kitchen.
Sam switched on the light and let his eyes travel across the work surfaces. The man had left a mess. Open packets of food and wrappers were strewn on one of the surfaces, and on another were bags of chips and chicken nuggets, and a half-eaten pizza. He spotted the knife block next to the hob. It contained ten knives in an assortment of sizes. Sam found a tea towel and took every single knife. He wrapped them up carefully and hid the empty block in a cupboard. Then he retraced his steps back to Lloyd. This time he didn't leave any doors open, or lights switched on.
He didn't know how much time he had left. He should have checked his watch when the man had driven off, but he hadn't, which was stupid of him and he could have kicked himself for it. Everything hinged on getting Lloyd free and getting out of the house before the man returned. The man would have shut the main gate after he went out, and driven down the long, windy track back to the road. Sooner or later he would realise that a kid couldn't climb the gate and jump off the other side – it would have been a tough task for a grown-up to have done. He'd know he'd been tricked, and then he would come speeding back.
Sam's watch now said four o'clock. Daylight was only a few hours away. They had to get out quick, and find somewhere to hide until dawn. Somewhere safe. But first he had to free Lloyd.
'It's me, Lloyd,' Sam said as he entered the bedroom. 'I've got some knives.'
Lloyd didn't look up.
Sam set the tea towel on the bed and unfolded it to reveal his treasure. He picked a heavy, serrated knife from the collection and started sawing through the knot. It was hard work even though the knife was sharp. Sam sawed faster, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. It was starting to go through the rope. More effort, more speed, that's what it needed. And then Lloyd would be free.
He took a firm grip of the rope, pulling the end that was attached to Lloyd's hand as taut as he could, and then he went faster, his hand a blur of motion, and at first he didn't feel the place where the knife had sliced through his hand and almost taken his thumb off. Blood dripped down and onto the bed, tons of it. He stared down at the sheet paralysed as it gradually went from white to red as his hot pulsing blood continued to flood out of the gaping smile he'd sliced into his hand. And then he felt the pain.
Searing pain, blinding pain, followed an intense agonised cry. Sam had never felt pain like that before. The knife fell from his right hand. He clutched at his left wrist, his body doubled over as spasms of pain shuddered through him. His knees buckled beneath him and he sank down to the floor. He couldn't work out whether he was going to faint or be sick, or both.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the side of the bed. He sobbed until the spasms no longer racked right through him. He opened his eyes and pressed his bloodied hand against the bed, teeth gritted against the pain from the pressure. Then he forced himself to look closely at his wound. His thumb wasn't hanging off by a thread of skin as he had feared. It was still firmly attached to his hand. The wound was ugly but not deep, and Sam was suddenly so angry with himself. How could he have let that happen? How could he have been so stupid? He'd just begun to make progress. He'd been so close to getting Lloyd freed from the bed. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. How had he ended up in this mess? Why him? Why them? Why? Tears ran down his face and he swiped at them not caring that he was smearing blood across his face.
But he wasn't going to let the man win. And he wasn't going to leave the house without Lloyd.
He shook the tea towel free of the knives, letting them fall to the floor, and wrapped the towel tightly around his hand. He picked up the serrated knife with its bloodied blade and began sawing again, sobbing with every stroke of the blade, his left hand clutched against his chest. But it wasn't working like that. He had to use his left hand to hold the other end of the rope. He almost cried out with pain when he gripped hold of the rope and pulled it taut. He started again. And then suddenly he was through. The rope was cut in two and Lloyd's arm slumped to the bed. He'd done it! Lloyd was free.
'Lloyd, get up. We've got to go. We've got to get out of here.'
The same silence greeted Sam. He shook Lloyd's shoulder hard. There was no response. He pulled him round to face him. Blank, empty eyes. Lloyd had gone somewhere deep inside himself. Sam was afraid he wasn't going to come back any time soon.
'Lloyd, please get up. He could be back any minute. We've got to get out.'
Lloyd blinked. It wasn't much, but it was a sign. That's all Sam needed. He began to pull the duvet and the sheets back, but somehow Lloyd moved faster and held on to them tight. Sam stared at him.
'What are you doing, you idiot? We've got to leave. Don't you understand? He's not going to take you home, stupid. He's going to kill you!' Sam shouted into Lloyd's face. 'He's already tried to kill me! So don't be a—'
Lloyd's mouth moved, but Sam couldn't hear what Lloyd had tried to say because Sam couldn't stop shouting.
'We don't have time for this crap. Just get up. Get up!' he screamed, and yanked the covers back. Then he saw why Lloyd wouldn't get up.
Lloyd drew his knees close to his chest, and Sam looked away. He looked round the room and spotted Lloyd's trousers. He brought them back to his friend and placed them on the bed beside him. Then he turned his back.
'Can't find your p—. You know, your other stuff, but it doesn't matter. We're going home, Lloyd. Just as soon as we get out of here.'
Sam heard Lloyd shuffling across the bed and the bedsprings springing back as Lloyd stood up. Sam turned back towards his friend, and said, 'Shit, shoes!' when he saw Lloyd's socked feet. He hunted around the floor and found them tucked under a chair. He helped Lloyd into them and then saw the precious collection of knives on the floor. He pulled his rucksack out from under the bed and chucked them into it. Everything was so much harder with only one hand. His left hand was still wrapped inside the bloody tea towel, which was soaked through. Sam looked round for something else, but couldn't see anything apart from the pillowcases. He tried to get one off, but he couldn't do it without two hands.
'Damn!' he cursed. Sam glanced at Lloyd and knew he couldn't ask him to help.
He gave up the struggle with the pillowcase, and muttered, 'Right, let's go.'
Lloyd didn't say anything but he shambled out after Sam. In the sitting room, Sam spotted Lloyd's coat sticking out of his rucksack and snagged it on the way out. Sam couldn't carry two rucksacks, but Lloyd might need the coat later.
'We have to go a bit faster, Lloyd,' Sam said, stepping up the pace.
The need to get out of the house was overwhelming. The only way out of the house was through the front door. Every other door was bound to be locked, and there was no time to go round checking them now. The front door definitely wouldn't be locked because the man wasn't expecting anyone to go out of it. Sam grabbed Lloyd's sleeve and dragged him along faster. They went flying down the stairs and through the dark corridors. Sam didn't need much light now; he knew his way around this house. Lloyd tripped and stumbled behind him, but kept going as long as Sam led.
They got to the front door. It was shut, which was no surprise as Sam had heard the man slam it on his way out. He opened it a crack and it groaned noisily. Sam winced but opened it some more. The car wasn't back yet. The man was still out hunting.
He took hold of Lloyd's arm again and led him out, remembering to close the door behind them. Then he stopped. His breath formed little clouds of smoke. It had got much colder since he'd been out last. He helped Lloyd into his coat, and then put his own on. He hesitated before hoisting his rucksack onto his back again. It was extra weight. But he decided he didn't want to leave it in the house.
The outside lights were still on, casting long shadows on the lawn, which stretched out towards the trees. He hadn't thought about this bit. He didn't have a plan. He had been so intent on getting Lloyd out of the house that he hadn't thought about what to do next. Where should he take them? Where was it safe? Nowhere was safe, but some places were safer than others.
The woods were good only as long as it was dark. Come daylight the man would scour them easily. They'd have to keep moving, be ahead of him all the time, and in the end he'd see them. The gate. That was the answer. When the man came back and opened the gates, they'd wait until he was through and then dive out of them quickly. He'd only see them if he was looking in his rearview mirror or his side mirror, and what was the chance of that? But what if he did see them? Then they'd be lost. It wouldn't take the man more than a few seconds to turn his car round and head out after them. From what Sam could remember the hedgerows grew really close on either side of the track, which meant they might not be able to find a way through them. There was no way they could outrun a car, not with Lloyd barely able to walk without help, and not with Sam's dodgy ankle. They would be trapped. But they might find a gap in the hedge and be able to squeeze through it and hide. He'd never find them then. But if they didn't find a gap, he would run them over.
Sam looked at the driveway leading down to the gate, stuck in indecision. Then a thought struck him. Where were the garages and sheds and stuff like that? They weren't part of the house so they had to be somewhere in the grounds. The only section that Sam hadn't been through was the bit between the back of the house, from his bathroom window, going left towards the gate. They had to be down there somewhere. He'd take Lloyd there and they could hide out in a garage or a shed and the man would never find them. He wouldn't think of it. He'd search the house from top to bottom before he'd think of going down to the sheds.
Sam stepped out onto the gravel. 'Come on, Lloyd. We're going to find a safe place to hide.'
Sam followed the gravel driveway around the side of the house to the back. A bit further on there was a large building, and as they got closer to it, Sam saw that it was a set of linked garages, their shiny silver doors luminous like sheets of ice. Above the garages was a bank of dark windows. Servants' quarters maybe, or the driver's rooms. Sam quickly decided that they couldn't hide there. For a start, it was still way too close to the house, and once they were inside the rooms, they might not be able to get out. They would be trapped. On the other hand, the man might not even think of looking for them there.
Now Sam couldn't decide. Everything had its pros and cons, but this was not just any decision, this was the most important decision of Sam's life. He had to get it right, didn't he? Their lives depended on it.
The soft purr of a car engine reached Sam's ears as the rain came down. The man was back already. Behind him, Lloyd had begun to whimper. Sam didn't know what to do next, but he knew one thing – if they didn't move away from the garages fast, they might get spotted, especially if the man decided to park the car round the back. He pulled Lloyd along, towards the garages at first, until he saw the path. It ran alongside the building and Sam followed it round to the back and stayed on it as it led them away from the building towards the trees. They were a good distance away from the house now and the darkness was much thicker, but Sam was glad of it. The darkness made him feel a bit safer. He just wished he had a torch. He should have looked for one in the kitchen. Everyone kept a torch in the kitchen. Too late to go back for one now.
He kept to the path, following it into the trees where it narrowed and became a grassy track. The trees sheltered them from the steady drizzle, Sam couldn't hear the car engine any more, and Lloyd had stopped whimpering. The only sound was their breathing and the rustling of leaves as the rain pitter-pattered on them. Sam kept hold of Lloyd's sleeve – he had to because when he let go Lloyd stopped and didn't move. He just stood there and waited for Sam to come back for him.
They came to a clearing where the light of the moon shone through brightly and they could see that someone had used this area to cut logs. There were wheelbarrows, a very large lawnmower, the kind you sit on and drive, and a bunch of sheds huddled around the far side of the clearing.
It was what Sam had been looking for, but now he wasn't so sure about the idea. They would be trapped again, wouldn't they, and in an even smaller, confined space. It had been a stupid plan. Why hadn't he thought that bit through? He slumped down on the stump of a tree. Lloyd stayed standing, stayed silent, waiting. Sam put his head in his hands as he finally realised that nowhere would have been a good enough hiding place. He wouldn't have felt safe anywhere. They would never be safe as long as they were within the wrought-iron, barbed-wire-topped, too-high fence, which couldn't be climbed and couldn't be squeezed through.
He couldn't just sit there and do nothing. Sam looked at the sheds again. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to hide in one of them. At least they would be out of the rain. He pushed off the tree stump and went to have a closer look at them. There were five sheds, two of them double the size of the others, and all of them unlocked. The larger ones were stacked with garden furniture, chairs, tables, umbrellas, recliners, and an assortment of garden games and paddling pools, and gardening tools lined neatly against the wall. Sam didn't bother checking the smaller sheds; no way was he going to hide in one of those. He picked one of the two bigger ones and went back for Lloyd.
Lloyd was standing with his hands hanging beside him, his eyes looking straight ahead, but not at anything in particular. Sam wished Lloyd would look at him, say something, even a nod or shake of his head would have done for starters. He knew Lloyd could hear him though, so he didn't stop talking to him, response or no response. Once Sam got Lloyd far, far away from this hell hole he would be fine, back to his old self again.
'Come on, Lloyd. I've found somewhere for us to hide out,' Sam whispered.
He took Lloyd's hand and led him across to the shed and through the door. He closed the door behind them. It was still and quiet inside, and dark. The shed had two large windows facing into the clearing that allowed the moonlight in, but Sam couldn't make anything out. He had to open the door again while he found a good place to hide inside. He wanted a secret cupboard, a little nook, a concealed space where the man would never find them.
Sam found one at the back of the shed. Behind stacks of chairs and folded tables there was a little cubbyhole just big enough for two kids. It was perfect. There was no way the man would see them unless he was right up close. On his way back to close the door, Sam spotted a cupboard, which he discovered contained stacks of green garden chair cushions. Amazingly they weren't too damp and mouldy. He grabbed a handful and tossed them onto the floor of their cubbyhole, and that's when he noticed the other door.
A back way out. An escape route, Sam thought, glad he'd picked this shed now. But no, not really much of an escape route because if they had to use it then it meant the man had almost caught them anyway. It also meant that Sam would have to watch two entrances.
He got Lloyd to sit down on the cushions, and quickly glanced round for anything else that might be useful, but nothing else jumped out at him. He hurried back and closed the shed door, wishing there was a lock, or a bolt or something. But there wasn't, which was probably just as well because a shed bolted from the inside would have been a real giveaway. Sam thought he must be tired. All his thoughts were beginning to get jumbled up and nothing was making sense any more; he wasn't making sense. He made his way back to the cubbyhole and pulled the stack of chairs closer in once he was inside. Snug.
They sat quietly, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the sound of nothing.
Nothing
can sound very loud sometimes, louder than noise, even louder than a jumbo jet passing overhead.
'You okay, Lloyd?' Sam asked eventually.
Lloyd lifted his shoulders a fraction, but maintained his silence. His eyes were dark pools, unreadable, expressionless, or just wide open because maybe Lloyd was afraid of closing them.
'We're safe here, Lloyd, and we're together, so, you know, it's okay. Everything's going to be okay.' That sounded lame, but Sam didn't know what else to say. 'We'll be fine now as long as we stick together.'
He knew Lloyd was suffering from extreme shock, or something, but he didn't really know what to do, apart from try and keep them safe, and then try and escape, and then try and get them home. There was too much to do. Home felt like it was in a different land, in a different country, and Sam didn't know the way.
Sam's eyes began to close and he struggled to keep them open. Next to him, Lloyd's eyes had finally closed. Sam knew he had to keep watch just in case the man finished searching the house and decided to search the grounds next, but staying awake was becoming increasingly difficult. Even the persistent ache from his throbbing thumb wasn't helping to keep his eyes open for more than a minute at a time. The pain extended from his index finger, across the base of his thumb and down the side of his hand. The pain told him it was a nasty cut. But in the darkness, Sam couldn't see how deep it was, or how bloody his hands were. Sam wondered whether the wound would get infected and he would end up dying in the cubbyhole, his body discovered only years later by new tenants, with Lloyd still sitting beside him.
He fell asleep.
When he woke up the shed was full of light. The sun had come up and dried up all the rain. Lloyd was still sleeping. Sam listened to the silence, listened hard for any sound or noise from outside the shed. He couldn't hear anything. A glance at his watch told him that it was only eight o'clock. Then he noticed his hands, both smeared with dried blood, and the cut, deeper and uglier than he thought it would be. And then the terrible, agonising pain registered in his brain. The wound must have reopened while he was asleep because there was blood on his trousers and on the cushions. The tea towel had fallen off.
Sam hunted around for it, but there was no sign of it, unless it was under Lloyd and Sam didn't think it was there. He'd dropped it. Somewhere. Idiot! What if he'd bled all the way down from the house to the sheds and had left a trail for the man to follow. Little drops of blood, a trail of crumbling children – would he see them in the light of day? Maybe not, but a blood-soaked tea towel would be conspicuous. A red rag – how could the man resist it? If Sam had dropped it on the way down, the man would know where to find them.
No, he can't have dropped it outside; it had to be in the shed. Sam crawled out from the cubbyhole, careful not to wake Lloyd up. Lloyd with the black-blue-purple eye, which had swollen up grotesquely overnight. As Sam left the cubbyhole, a hand grabbed his ankle.
'Don't leave me.'
'I'm not,' Sam snapped as his heart leapt into his mouth. Lloyd had scared him for a minute. He'd thought he was asleep. 'Sorry. I'm not leaving you, Lloyd. I'm just looking for the stupid towel I used to wrap my hand up in. I've dropped it, and I don't know where,' Sam explained.
Lloyd shook his head, his eyes pleading.
'I've got to find it, Lloyd, because if I dropped it outside the shed, he'll find us.'
'It could be anywhere.'
Lloyd was right, Sam thought. It could be anywhere. But if it was inside the shed, then their hiding place was still safe. If it wasn't then they had to get out of there.
'I know, but I've got to take a look. I'm not leaving the shed. Honest.'
Sam crawled out and this time Lloyd didn't try to stop him. He went through the whole shed, from front to back, looking under everything, looking on top of everything, even checking inside the cupboard in case it had somehow got lodged between the seat pads, but he didn't find it. He kind of knew he wouldn't. Luck came and went, randomly. It was gone at the moment, or maybe it was there, and that was what was keeping them alive. No, Sam didn't think it was that. He'd kept himself alive, with a little help from luck; and with a bit more help from luck, he was going to make sure he and Lloyd stayed that way.
Lloyd was already doing better now that he was away from the house. He had started talking again; he'd only said a couple of sentences so far, but that was a good sign. As long as the man didn't come anywhere near them, Lloyd would be fine. And he wouldn't – not unless that stupid tea towel was sitting on the ground outside their shed pointing the way out to him.
Sam crept up to one of the windows and looked out. The glass was smudged and grimy with a host of cobwebs, but that was just fine because Sam liked spiders, the bigger the better, but it also meant that no one could see into the shed easily, and Sam could see the whole of the clearing and would know if anyone was out there.
There was no one there. He watched and waited for a long while, just to be sure there was no one waiting to jump out from behind a tree and grab him. Sam wasn't going to be lulled into a false sense of security because he'd forgotten what the word
security
meant.
Wariness
he knew very well.
Right, Sam, stop procrastinating, it's all clear out there and you've got no excuse. Get it over with.
Because what Sam couldn't see properly was the ground outside the shed, and he knew what he had to do.