Chapter 19
Paige raced back to the kitchen window, turned her head away, and slammed the broken rocker leg against it. Bam. The wood made a flat sound as it struck. A few splinters of wood flew from the end of the leg. She swung again putting all her anger behind the blow. Bam. More splinters. She let out a guttural growl of frustration. Not a single blemish appeared on the window. It couldn’t be glass.
She laid the chair leg on the counter, turned on the faucet, and cupped cool water to her lips. She turned, surveyed the interior of the house, again looking for something she might have missed, looking for another way out.
Two doors, two windows. Not many options.
She’d already tried one of each, finding only a locked door and a window that wasn’t made of glass. Paige wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, picked up the chair leg. That left the large bay window in the living area, no doubt made of the same material as the kitchen window, and the bathroom door Edward had left cocked open.
The blonde woman. She had forgotten her. The woman had followed Edward into the bathroom and hadn’t emerged.
Paige shuddered at the thought of what might be behind that door. If Edward had killed the woman, mutilated her body in some grisly fashion while Paige had struggled for her own freedom, if she found the woman’s body floating in a bathtub, then Paige didn’t know if she would be able to handle it. And she certainly didn’t want to have that kind of guilt or image scorched onto her mind. It would be too disheartening.
The door could also lead to her escape. Then again it could be a gateway into a bloody, hellish slaughterhouse that would leave her screaming away her sanity.
She closed her eyes and shrugged away the image of the woman’s dead, floating body. What if she wasn’t dead? What if she was just hurt? Needed her help?
Odds were the woman was dead, that Edward, having brought Paige home as some sort of replacement, had cut her up for his pleasure. Otherwise the woman would have come out. Otherwise the woman would be crying out for help. Otherwise Edward wouldn’t have left the door cocked open to pique her curiosity. The woman hadn’t come out and there were no wet moans of pain issuing from inside. There was just an eerie drip, drip.
He wanted her to see what was inside the bathroom. She could feel it. And for that reason alone she wasn’t sure she wanted to go inside. But what choice did she really have? She had to see if the woman was alive. Help her if she could.
The chances of finding a way out of the house through the bathroom were impossibly small. She knew that. But small was better than none. If the blonde woman did happen to be okay, then she might be an invaluable source of information. Information that could save Paige a lot of time and time was something she didn’t have a lot of. Sure, Edward had left, but that didn’t mean he wouldn't return within a few minutes. The psycho might have just popped down to the local hardware store to replenish his supply of hammers or nails or knives or God knows what.
Paige hastened to the door, put her free hand on the handle, and then pulled her hand away. The steel handle was unnaturally warm. She raised the leg of the chair. The piece of wood trembled in her grasp. She pushed against the door with the end of the leg, shoved the door open.
The bathroom was large and white. Paige saw no blood. No grisly scene of murder and mayhem. No windows or doors leading to another room either. The floor was white ceramic tile and the walls were made of what looked like hard plastic rather than sheetrock.
A large semi-sunken Jacuzzi bathtub, which looked carved from a single piece of white marble, was at the far end of the room. The blonde woman was nestled within the confines of the bathtub surrounded by pink bubbles and the aroma of hot soap. Paige was mystified. The woman wasn't dead or hurt. She was taking a bubble bath.
The woman sat up, but made no move to cover herself or speak. Her skin looked smooth and clean as milk. Large breasts and a glistening curve of the snake peeked out from the bubbles. Again, Paige was struck and intimidated by the woman’s beauty. She wasn’t sure what to do. Covered by nothing but the throw blanket, walking in on another woman taking a bath, Paige had intruded on this woman’s privacy. The woman looked at Paige but continued to bathe as if a stranger hadn’t just stumbled in on her.
Feeling somewhat like she had stepped out of a horror movie and into a bad porno, Paige began to back out of the bathroom, it was the polite thing to do, but then she stopped. She decided to hold her ground, be direct as possible, even though the woman didn’t seem at all interested in striking up a conversation. What else could she do? She couldn’t very well sit around and wait for the woman to finish taking her bath. She didn’t have time for that.
The woman wrapped her shoulder-length hair around her fingers and wrung some of the water out.
Paige rushed forward to the edge of the tub. “How do we get out of here?” she asked.
The woman considered Paige’s question for a moment. “If I knew that I wouldn't be here. Would I?”
There was a raw condescending attitude and hard tone in the woman’s voice Paige hadn’t expected, but she also thought she heard an underlying nervousness. She needed to make friends with this woman. She needed her help.
“Good point.” Paige stuck her hand out to the woman in the tub. “I’m Paige.”
The woman pulled a wet hand from the tub and shook Paige’s hand. “Christina. But I prefer Chris.”
Paige caught her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. An ugly bruise colored her left cheekbone. Her hair was a mess, damp and wild. She raised a hand, patted it down. A lump had formed on the right side of her head. It was tender. She sat down on the lid of the toilet to avoid the mangled image staring back at her in the reflective glass. Somehow she managed to force a smile.
Chris leaned forward washing one foot then the other.
Paige’s eyes locked on the forked tongue and beady eyes of the snake scar on the woman’s back, just below her neck. She pulled the throw blanket tight around her body.
“There has to be a way out of here,” she said.
Chris ran her hands over the tops of the pink bubbles, which were thinning out. “None that I know of, but you’re welcome to try. He expects you to. That’s part of his game. But you won’t find a way out, and he knows it. This house was made to be a prison. He had it custom built. Told the builder he was tornado proofing.”
Paige realized then exactly how clever and patient and devious Edward was. It wouldn’t be easy for her to find a way out. He’d obviously spent a lot of time and money planning this, and he’d built his life around that plan. This made the information Chris had about the house even more valuable. “No phone?”
“No phone. Nicholas carries a cell with him, but there isn’t a phone in the house.”
So, his real name was Nicholas and not Edward. Assuming he hadn’t lied to Chris as well.
Chris looked her up and down. “No wonder he likes you,” she said. “You’re perfect.”
Paige felt her face flush. She wasn’t used to compliments, especially from other women.
“Thanks. But I’m not perfect. I have flaws. Major ones. And now that he knows about them, he is going to kill me. I need to find a way out of this house.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. He won’t kill you. You’re beautiful. Stunning. I don’t see any flaws.”
“We really don’t have time for this,” Paige said. “We need to get out of this house. He could come back any minute.”
“I told you there’s no way out of the house,” Chris snapped. “I’ve tried. You think I’m too stupid to have found a way out if there was one?”
“Of course not,” Paige said. “I’m sorry.”
Chris shrugged. “If you want to clean up, take a bath. I’ll be finished in a few minutes.”
“No. I don’t want to take a bath. I just want to get out of here.”
Chris reclined, lifted a l
eg from the water, and pressed a small button in the wall with her big toe. Pink bubble bath foam pumped into the tub from small holes on both sides. Within a few seconds fresh shiny bubble froth covered the top of the water.
“I haven't talked to anyone other than Nicholas in a long time,” she said. “That’s part of why I didn’t come right out of the bathroom to talk to you when he left. I wanted to, but I was afraid. And I had to bathe first.”
She splashed water on her face.
“He gets very upset if I don’t do what I’m told. He has cameras everywhere.”
“Cameras?”
“Sure.” Chris nodded at the corner above the door.
Paige followed her finger, tilted her head up, saw a small camera sitting within a plastic globe. The eye of the camera was trained on the tub. Sick pervert. The man had set up his own private twenty-four hour voyeuristic fantasy. If there were cameras, then there might be microphones as well. It explained Chris’s laid back behavior. She knew he was watching, listening.
“I think I know what’s going on here better than you,” she said. “You know, I used to be just like you. And let me tell you something. You’re wasting your time. You can’t get out of the house. There are no phones. No one is coming to rescue you. Nothing exists for you anymore but Nicholas and this house. That’s my world. And now it’s yours.”
The way the snake on her body moved, the way parts of it undulated as her body swished back in forth in the bubbles, it appeared as if she was bathing with a live creature.
She pointed a finger at Paige. “You need to accept it. The sooner you do the better off you’ll be. Otherwise you’re just going to piss him off, and you don’t want to do that. I promise you. You don’t want to piss him off. He’ll make you do things.”
“There isn’t just Nicholas and this house anymore,” Paige said. “We have each other. Maybe you couldn’t get out of this place on your own. Maybe I can’t get out on my own. But maybe if we work together we can find a way out. Four hands can do things that two hands can’t do.”
Chris shook her head, pressed another button with her toe. The whirlpool jets whirled to life.
“Nicholas would be very angry with me if I tried. You can try to escape if you want to. Like I said, he expects you to try. It’s part of his game. He likes you. But I can’t risk it.”
Paige wondered if she was wasting what little time she had. Time that could be spent trying to escape or find a weapon. Nevertheless she was riveted to the toilet seat. This woman could help her if she wanted to. Paige could feel it.
“He’s going to kill you anyway,” Paige said.
Chris shrugged. “Maybe.” She rolled over on to her stomach, stuck her feet out the top of the water, and began blowing at the bubbles. “Maybe not. Maybe having two is better than one.”
Paige realized Chris had a point. After all, what psychopath wouldn’t prefer two playthings to one?
“What happened to you? How long have you been here?”
Chris quickly rolled on to her back, fixed her with a hateful stare. Paige felt, almost saw, a great wall come up between them.
“I’m no one,” Chris said. “I was once. I was married. We had a home. A nice home. But, like you, things went bad, and I left all that behind.”
Paige wasn’t sure what to make of that. “What do you mean? Things went bad? Like me?”
“What do you think it means? I left my husband, Nick. I left our home. It was hard, but it was something I had to do. I wanted my life to have purpose. I needed support, direction. Nicholas gave me those things. He saved me. Things are better now.”
“That’s bull,” Paige said.
Chris shook her head back and forth. Her eyes brimmed with a wetness that had nothing to do with bath water. “No, it isn’t,” she mumbled. “My old life was bull.”
Paige let it go. She didn’t want to push too hard. She felt Chris might be as fragile as a thin plaster sculpture. “What happened to your husband?”
“Nick is dead,” Chris closed her eyes and whispered. “Nicholas chained him to that tree. Cut him and cut him and cut him...”
The sorrow in Chris's voice made Paige’s own eyes well up.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t know what else to say. The woman had been through too much. More than any woman should have to experience. It was a miracle she’d held up as well as she had. Paige didn’t know if she would have handled it as well. She reached out to comfort Chris, but Chris pulled back and away from her, rubbed at her eyes with her hand.
“Don’t be,” she said. “It was my fault. It’ll be worse for you. And Eddie.”
Paige’s tongue stuck in her mouth, and it took her a moment to get it working again. “What do you mean?”
“Your husband. His name’s Eddie isn’t it?”
She nodded suspiciously wondering how Chris knew her husband’s name. Was he involved?
“That’s where Nicholas has gone, after him. To bring him here. To kill him. He’ll use the razor. He’ll make you watch.”
Paige slid off the toilet onto the floor. The coolness of the tiles quickly penetrated the thin throw blanket covering her. She shivered. Nicholas was going to kill Eddie.
Chris batted at the bubbles in the tub. “Sometimes I still hear Nick in my sleep. It always wakes me up. Makes me feel cold.”
Paige looked at the wall, fought to bring back the image of the Indian Blanket wildflowers with their yellow tipped petals. The same flowers she’d thought of while hanging on the tree, that she’d painted when she’d met Eddie. She focused on the image, blocked out the room, the sound of the whirlpool jets, the splash of Chris in the water, the sound of her own breathing. She let her mind go. Let go of everything she was feeling. Fear. Shame. Hopelessness. Guilt. Her eyes welled up, and the flower image melted from her sight. She broke down, cried, and did something she’d never done before. She closed her eyes and prayed.
God, please don’t let him die.
She didn’t want him to die. If one of them had to die then she wanted it to be her, not him. She’d put herself in this position. Eddie had done nothing. If he died, she would be consumed by guilt, more guilt than she could carry if she lived for an eternity. She would be responsible.
God, please don’t let him die.
She could think of no reason why God would listen to her. She’d never been to church even though she’d always believed on some level. Never tithed. Never read the Bible.
She wasn’t praying for herself. She wasn’t trying to bargain with God. She wasn’t asking for forgiveness. She was just asking for Eddie’s life.
God, please don’t let him die.
“Maybe you won’t have to watch,” Chris said.
No. She wouldn’t watch. That was for sure. No matter what he did to her she wouldn’t watch.
“But he’ll make you listen. You can’t close your ears like you can close your eyes.”
She couldn’t even imagine listening to Eddie die. It would drive her mad. She had to do something. Paige stood up, reached into the bathtub, and flipped the drain lever.
If Nicholas wanted her to play a game, she’d play. She’d play harder than anyone he’d ever met.
“Hey what are you doing?” Chris complained.
Paige approached the camera. She stared up at it then mouthed the word, “Bastard.”
She swung the chair leg with all her strength bashing the bottom of the plastic globe. It cracked with the first impact of the hard wood and fell to the floor with a clatter.
Nicholas wanted to destroy the thing she cared about most.
She swung again, this time hitting the tiny camera, and it broke free from its small mount. It bounced off the wall, dangled from the ceiling by its wires. Paige grabbed the camera, gave it the finger, and jerked the wires from it. Then she hurled it against the tile floor where it shattered.
> The least she could do was try to return the favor.