The Keeper - Luke Delaney

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speaking. ‘OK,’ he said, and moved towards her cage slowly and carefully, his eyes never leaving hers. Within a few short steps he was at her cage, almost as close to her as he’d been when he took her, his pallid skin and stained crooked teeth clearly visible, his arms thin, but sinewy and strong, the arteries and veins blue and swollen. He took a key carefully from his other tracksuit pocket and tentatively held it close to the lock. He considered her again, then gave a broad smile, pushed the key into the lock and turned it. A slight moment of hesitation and then he swung the door open, the hinges squealing and the wire of the cage reverberating. He stepped back, the stun-gun in his hand at his side. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘this way,’ and pointed towards the old hospital screen.

      Louise walked in a hunched, squatted gait towards the opening, the pain of her muscles cramping matched only by the fear that made her heart send shock waves through her chest. She paused for a moment at the entrance and waited for him to take a few more steps back, at last pushing herself through into the room, stretching her sore, stiff body, straightening for the first time in a day and a half, but all the time careful not to let the duvet slip from her shoulders and show him her nakedness. ‘Behind the screen,’ he instructed her. ‘You can get cleaned up there and there’s a toilet you can use. It’s only a chemical one, but it works well enough.’

      ‘Thank you,’ she forced herself to tell him, when all she really wanted to do was spit in his face. As she rounded the screen she saw her facilities – an old, stained sink barely attached to the cellar wall; rusty, limescale-crusted metal taps and a new-looking chemical toilet set low on the floor. She guessed he had recently installed the toilet, but clearly he had been planning for this for some time. Her eyes searched around for anything she could fashion into a weapon. There was nothing. She swallowed her disappointment and her rising tears.

      She could feel him on the other side of the screen, watching her through the thin fabric, waiting for her to drop the duvet, his imagination removing the barrier, his eyes flicking across her skin. ‘Are you all right in there?’ he asked, as if she was in a separate room.

      ‘Yes,’ she stuttered in reply. ‘Just getting things ready.’

      ‘The hot water tap’s the one on the left,’ he warned her.

      She let the water run hot before putting the chained plug in the sink and allowing it to fill, looking over her shoulder at his silhouette behind her, allowing the duvet to slip to the floor, leaving her standing naked and vulnerable in a way she’d never felt until now. Quickly she began to wash, using the sliver of soap he’d left on the sink to try and cleanse her skin of as much of him as she could. All the time she knew he was watching her, watching her hands moving over her own damp, shiny body. She rinsed herself clean of the soap and looked around for a towel, a sense of panic rising as she realized there wasn’t one next to the sink, the panic easing when she saw it on the table by the tray of food he’d brought. Hurriedly she patted herself dry, the stale smell of the scratchy towel making her want to retch. She could hear him, breathing heavily as he watched her. Pulling the duvet over herself, she stepped out from behind the screen.

      ‘Take the tray,’ he said. ‘It’s all for you.’

      She studied the tray and the items on it suspiciously. A white-bread sandwich, some crisps emptied into a plastic bowl, a few biscuits and a can of Coke. The emptiness in her stomach and the rasping dryness of her throat told her to take it. ‘You’ll have to eat it in your room,’ he instructed, his eyes pointing to her cage. ‘I’ll get the tray later.’

      She did as he wanted and walked as quickly as she could back to her prison, almost relieved to be behind the wire again, a barrier between her and him, even if she knew it was a barrier he controlled. ‘I’ll bring you clean clothes in the morning,’ he said as he closed her cage door and replaced the lock. ‘You need to get some sleep, Sam. We have so many plans to make. I have to go now.’

      He was moving towards the light cord when a weak voice stopped him.

      Karen’s head raised slightly from the floor. ‘Please,’ she asked desperately. ‘I need a drink and I’m very hungry. Can I have something, please? I promise I’ll be good.’ The room waited silently for a reaction, Louise looking from Karen to him and back, praying he wouldn’t hurt her cellmate, praying she wouldn’t have to watch again.

      ‘What?’ he demanded, the friendliness in his voice replaced with a quiet menace. ‘You want what, whore?’

      ‘Please,’ Karen pleaded, her voice trembling, her throat almost shut with dryness and terror. ‘I’m so thirsty. I don’t feel very well. I need some food. Please. Anything.’

      ‘Lying whores get nothing!’ he shouted.

      ‘No, no,’ Karen sobbed. ‘Please, I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t know why I’m here. Just let me go, please. I swear I won’t tell anyone what you’ve done.’

      ‘Shut up,’ he screamed, agitated, behaving as if he was the one who was trapped, as if he was the one in danger. ‘You’re trying to trick me. You’re trying to fuck with my head again.’ He was pointing at Karen, accusing her, close to tears himself now. He turned to Louise. ‘See what they do, Sam? See what they’re trying to do to us?’

      ‘Just let me go,’ Karen was almost shouting. ‘Please, let me go.’

      ‘Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Make her stop, Sam!’

      Louise covered her ears with the palms of her hands, pressing so hard that her inner ears began to hurt under the pressure. She couldn’t stand to listen to this a moment longer.

      ‘You’re a whore, a lying whore! She tried to pretend she was you, Sam. She tricked me. She made me bring her here, but I found out she’s a liar. She’s one of them, trying to ruin everything for me.’

      ‘That’s not true,’ Karen pleaded with him through the strings of saliva that webbed across her contorted mouth. ‘I’ll do anything you want me to, I swear.’

      ‘Shut up, lying whore,’ he shouted in her face through the wire, holding his stun-gun in front of her so she could see clearly. ‘I know what you’re trying to make me do, it’s what all you whores want me to do to them, but you won’t make me.’ He looked back at Louise, a smile mixing with his fear, his face shining with the sweat of anxiety. ‘Sam’s with me now. You can’t stop us.’ He began to walk backwards, silently, his eyes never leaving Karen’s, wagging his finger at her as if warning her against doing whatever it was he imagined she was about to do. He pulled the light-switch cord, sinking the room back to its deathly gloom as he stepped behind the wall of the staircase and out of sight. They could hear him breathing, deep and panicked, but calming once he couldn’t be seen, then they could hear him no more. They waited a few minutes until the torchlight returned with a click, followed by his familiar soft footsteps climbing the stairs. A metal door being pulled open and then swung carefully shut; the locked padlock clanging against the sheet metal. Then nothing – silence and darkness. Nothing.

      Shortly after ten on Wednesday night Sally squeezed her hatchback into virtually the last parking space in the street. Even the necessity to display your residents-only parking permit couldn’t keep the road clear of vehicles abandoned for the night. Her neighbours had been home for hours, most already thinking about sleep before the dawning of another day exactly like the one they’d just lived. Sally almost envied them. She waited in her locked car, lights on and engine running, until she saw some other sign of life in the street. A young couple appeared in her wing mirror, walking arm in arm along the pavement, the man muttering and the woman giggling. At this time of night it would have to do. Sally quickly turned off the lights and engine and jumped from her car, locking it without looking as she walked towards the smart three-storey Victorian terrace her new flat was in: a two-bedroom place on the top floor. By the time she reached the front door she already had her house keys ready and she entered the house quickly and quietly, the way she’d practised hundreds of times. No one could have followed her inside.

      She heard the young couple walk past outside, reminding her of one of the many reasons she’d chosen this flat, in this house,

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