“Good! You’re here. I believe the next visitors are nearly here as well – reasonably on schedule.”
The speaker was one David hadn’t heard before, and the man’s words broke through the horror replaying in the priest’s head.
Oh. They’d stopped moving.
“W-w-why d’ you ‘urt ‘im?”
Innocent’s indignation – in all its clarity and purity – drove back the choking blackness strangling David’s thoughts.
(The boy’s very presence was as comforting and as soothing to the priest’s troubled soul as an afternoon spent in his garden puffing on his pipe.)
David sensed the young man hurrying past him, presumably to Lew’s side. He moved unhindered by the heavies surrounding them.
The newcomer’s voice murmured commands to someone; the blonde replied; then several of the men departed back the way they’d come.
David heard footsteps come toward him, and then the new fellow spoke quite nearby, as though he were standing next to Innocent and Lewis.
“You speak out of turn.”
“‘E’s m-m-m-my frien’!”
There was a pause, a swishing sound, and then a single muted thump.
Lewis screamed, the sound broken.
“Do. As. You’re. Told.”
The words carried a casual yet emphatic menace that stilled and silenced everything and everyone in the room (except Lewis, whose panting had returned to a sawing rasp).
“…Y-y-y-yes s-s-sir.”
Innocent’s reply was scarcely more than a murmur; his uncle’s enjoinder (the new fellow had to be the uncle) had him cowed. The boy’s trembling was audible.
Blind and bound and frighteningly alone in the darkness, the last tendrils of hope in David’s heart vanished.