Part I - Part II
”He asked that?” AJ screeched.
Her crackly phone voice exuded so much emotion. I could picture her facial expressions. Her brow was probably burrowed, and I imagine her teeth were bared. She wanted blood.
“I don’t know what to do,” I cried.
“I’m already on my way to yours,” AJ explained. “Don’t worry, it’s a hands-free call. Nothing dangerous.”
“Just go home. I’m fine,” I quietly sobbed.
“Twenty minutes away,” AJ said, ignoring my comment.
When she arrived, I burst into tears. She put a warm, protective arm around me and led me to the sofa. I lay on her lap and explained the events of the night in harrowing detail, whilst AJ lovingly stroked my matted, unkempt hair. I must have looked a dishevelled mess.
“The police officer said they take threats of stalking very seriously, and they’ll look into it,” I explained.
“So, they’ll do fuck-all, basically,” AJ sighed. “Nobody does anything until it’s too late. And even then, they don’t do enough.”
I didn’t say anything. I simply sunk deeper into AJ’s lap, and her jeans were quickly dampening with my tears.
“Sorry,” AJ said. “That wasn’t very comforting.”
I smiled, shook my head, and sat in an upright position.
“Right, time for Milo’s bedtime routine. After that, do you want some food?” I asked.
AJ grinned. “I thought you’d never offer, my gracious host.”
An hour later, once I was certain that Milo had fallen asleep, I ordered two curries from my favourite local takeaway. We laughed and talked for hours, barely paying attention to the film we’d chosen. I felt safe. Even if the man were to return, I thought to myself, AJ would protect me.
“Can I ask you something?” She suddenly enquired.
“Sure,” I replied.
“Is there a vibe between us?” AJ tentatively queried.
I paused. My cheeks burnt with a perplexing mixture of joy and embarrassment. My lips opened and closed like a ceaseless sea-saw. I was about to reply.
Wailing.
“Of course,” I sighed, peeling myself away from AJ. “I suppose I’d better go and check on him.”
As I strolled into the main hallway, the ocean of endorphins in my brain slowly evaporated. I returned to reality. Something primal woke in me. I sensed danger. This was more than a maternal instinct. Every day, Milo cries numerous times, but this was unlike any feeling I’d experienced before.
Something was there.
I sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, not stopping to turn on any lights. I tripped on the last step, banging my knee on the floor, but I quickly scrambled to my feet. Hearing the thud, AJ called to me.
“Are you okay, Lucy?”
I didn’t respond. I charged down the dark hallway, bursting through the second door on the left. Milo’s room.
He was in his cot and manically rolling from side to side, screeching incessantly. I was so fixated on my baby boy that it took a few seconds for me to notice the source of his distress.
There was a silhouette behind the curtains. It had the shape of a man. I sunk into the floor, utterly paralysed. It could only be one person, of course. Not a person. Something.
I flew across the room without a moment’s hesitation. Bunching up a handful of each curtain, I yanked them apart.
Nothing.
There was no man outside.
I knelt down, panting uncontrollably, unable to suppress the dread that was filling me to the brim of my body. I dipped my hands over the edge of the cot, stroking Milo and trying to soothe him. After twenty or thirty minutes of consolation, he eventually started to settle, resuming his peaceful slumber.
I released a sigh of pent-up frustration, terror, and exhaustion. Bracing myself on the side of Milo’s cot, I hoisted my weak knees upwards and stood upright. I faced the window.
I could see the man in the reflection. He was standing directly behind me.
My unbridled scream pierced the night with such ferocity that I half-expected the window pane to smash. I shivered as the man tenderly wrapped the cold, dead fingers of his right hand around my shoulder. I spun on my heel to face him.
Expecting to face the dreadful man, I was initially relieved to find myself staring into darkness. After a moment of reflection, I realised that my surroundings had simply vanished. All that existed in the never-ending void was a neat row of three cardboard boxes.
I strolled over to the ominous boxes and knelt down. Sweat trickling down my face, I stretched my trembling hand towards the first box. I peeled the lid open and braced myself for a horrifying sight.
Inside, there was a plate. A white, red-rimmed plate. Nothing frightening about that. Still, I knew that this malicious entity was playing a long, slow game of torture. I knew it was the third box which should intimidate me. The first two were merely there to set the scene.
With a little less trepidation and much less alertness, I ripped the second box open.
Suddenly, the box swallowed me, and I was engulfed by darkness, falling in a ceaseless pit. As I tumbled and screamed, overcome with horror, haunting shapes surrounded me. The bodies of my loved ones were falling with me. Flesh was melting off their bones. Their wails pierced my eardrums.
Then, I was staring at something haunting in my palms. A beating heart. Mine, it dawned on me, as I looked down and saw a bloody cavity in my chest. I wailed at the top of my lungs, my throat cracking and breaking. With a gentle thud, I found myself back on my knees, staring at the final box. Tears streaming from my eyes, I gingerly reached towards it. As I opened the lid, my eyes followed suit.
When I woke, I realised I was lying on the floor of Milo’s room. He was still crying, and AJ was kneeling beside my collapsed body. I explained to her what I saw, then I rose to my feet and lifted Milo from his cot, comforting him. AJ searched the house, but there was no sign of the man. There was no sign of forced entry. There was no sign of anything.
“I think…” AJ said, embracing me tightly. “I think that you’re terrified and exhausted. You need some sleep.”
I eventually soothed Milo back to sleep and returned to the sofa with AJ. Once again, I found myself crying in her lap. She was trying her best to console me.
“I’ll stay awake,” AJ assured me. “It’s safe to sleep, Lucy. I promise.”
Yet again, she offered the warm and comforting embrace of the logical realm. She was right, I told myself. It was just a nightmare, surely? A man cannot simply be there one second and gone the next. There was no endless abyss. My loved ones had not perished. I had imagined it. I was exhausted and traumatised from my encounters with the stalker. That was all. He was just a man. I needed to stop giving my supernatural fears any credence, I told myself.
I think I did manage to close my eyes for a brief second. Perhaps it was longer than a second.
I woke to the sound of a brief yelp.
Milo.
It was followed by booming creaks of the upstairs floorboards.
I bounced from the sofa, startling AJ awake. She apologised for dosing off, but it was my fault. I had lowered my guard for a moment. Just a moment. But I suppose that’s all it takes.
I found myself bounding up the stairs for the second time that night. I expected to apprehend the man and block his only exit. I’m not sure why I expected that. I knew he was not a physical being. He could come or go as he pleased.
I did not see him. I did not see or hear anything, in fact, but I wouldn’t process that until later. I simply ran for Milo’s room.
The door was wide open. The cot was empty. There was no sign of entry or exit, and there was no sign of the man. I released an inhuman scream into the night.
My baby was gone.
I don’t remember much after that. There’s a blank window of time in my memory. I think AJ called the police. I vaguely remember their questions.
“When he first asked that, had you already told him your child’s name?” The police officer asked.
“No. He saw it on Milo’s beanie,” I cried in frustration.
I had already discussed the topic with so many police officers over the two days since the man first approached me. I was tired of repeating myself.
“We looked up the name ‘Finley Gaskell’ and couldn’t find anyone who matches your description,” The police officer explained.
Of course. He didn’t exist, after all. He wasn’t a man. Not really.
“Only a parent could understand,” my mother used to say, when people tried to console her after her miscarriage. On the night that Milo was taken, I think I finally understood what she meant. To have one’s baby wrenched away is a pain that I cannot quite put into words. It annihilates your purpose. Giving birth is the act of opening Pandora’s Box. A mother never stops being a mother. Without Milo, I was nothing. My life was over.
“Miss Woods?” The police officer pressed.
I had not heard her question.
“I think she needs some time alone, officer. I’ll take you up to the room,” AJ said, stepping in for me.
I stayed in the lounge with several police officers and crime scene investigators. When AJ finally came downstairs, she embraced me. I was a husk of my former self at this point, but AJ whispered a sentence into my ear that changed everything.
“There was a note on the floor,” She said. “I didn’t show the police, but it says, ‘Milo. Tunnel. Alone.’”
My heart soared. He was alive. My baby was alive. And I knew where to find him. I had never been so awake or alert in my life. My entire body was flooded with adrenaline and, once more, purpose.
“I can’t be here,” I proclaimed to the room, dragging AJ by the hand.
“Miss Woods…” One of the police officers began.
“I’ll be staying with my friend,” I interrupted, motioning my head towards AJ.
The police officer was about to say something, but her colleague shook his head, as if to say, ‘Let the grieving lady leave.’ I was not grieving. There was nobody to grieve. Milo was alive. Nobody would hurt him. I would not let any harm come to my son.
“Lucy…” AJ pleaded, as I dragged her to her car. “What are we going to-“
“Have you got your keys?” I asked.
“Yeah,” AJ replied, as we hurriedly strolled across my driveway. “But think about what the note said. ‘Alone’.”
“I know. You’re going to wait for me in the woods,” I said, tucking my hands into AJ’s pockets and fishing out her car keys. “If I scream, come out and find me. If it comes down to Milo or me, save my baby. Okay?”
Keys in her hands, AJ locked eyes with me, and I saw a tear trickle down her cheek. I was not the timid woman she had known for two years. She seemed unsettled by the deranged look in my eyes. Good. I was tired of being timid.
“AJ!” I screeched, pushing her to make a decision.
“Fuck!” AJ cried. “Okay. Let’s go.”
When we reached the familiar main road I had found earlier that same night, after running from the man in the tunnel, I pointed at a small patch of dirt alongside the edge of the woods.
“Pull over here,” I said. “It’s only a short walk.”
AJ seemed well past the point of arguing with me. She complied, nodding her head, and pulled over to the side of the road. We leapt from the vehicle and began our descent down the wooded hill. I stormed ahead, trying to focus my phone’s flashlight on the ground before me, so as not to catch any horrifying glimpses of the menacing man who I assumed to be lurking somewhere between the trees.
“You should wait here,” I said, when we reached the path that led to the tunnel. “He can’t know that you’re here.”
AJ didn’t say anything. She merely stared at me with teary eyes, squeezing my hand in a futile attempt to keep me with her. It was no use, of course. This wasn’t about her. It wasn’t about me. I would scorch the earth beneath my feet for Milo.
I sprinted towards the tunnel entrance that loomed in the distance. Every second without my child seemed to stretch into oblivion, but I covered ground quickly. A few minutes later, I was standing before the tunnel entrance.
The passageway was fully-lit, but it was also empty. I wandered down the long, empty stretch of nothingness, waiting for the lights to extinguish. But they didn’t. I could see nothing out of the ordinary. Instead, I heard something.
Whistling.
The tune, this time, was Little Boxes.
“Little boxes on the hillside,” A disembodied voice whispered. “Little boxes all the same.”
The lights did not extinguish. Instead, much like my surroundings, they faded into blackness. I found myself reliving that horrifying morning in the bank. The world collapsed on itself. I found myself standing in a void. There were footsteps behind me.
I twisted around, but there was nobody there. I shuddered, as the incomprehensible gravity of the situation began to dawn on me.
“Milo…” I croaked. “Where is my baby?”
“How much for Milo?” That same jaunty, charming voice whispered.
“Please…” I begged.
I fell to my knees. All I wanted was my boy. If it would’ve saved my baby, I would’ve eternally encaged myself in that lightless, soundless prison. The unknown state of Milo was the true source of my terror, no matter what else the man did to me. And I think he knew that.
“Little boxes…” He sang again. “All the same.”
“What do you want from me?” I screamed into the nothingness which encompassed me.
“Little boxes. All the same. People fit a mould,” The man whispered. “But not all moulds are the same. What makes you different from others, I wonder?”
I heard a creak emanate from the darkness behind me. I spun around to see a white, wooden door, standing in the midst of the infinite void. I had no other option, so I walked towards it. I twisted the door handle and pushed it open.
Behind the door was a white-walled room. I had expected to find myself faced with more darkness. More tricks. But this was the end of the road. I could feel it. This was the culmination of the entity’s awful game.
“Hello, Lucy,” The man said.
I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the two wooden chairs in the centre of the room. I was looking at the two people who were sitting in them.
“Patrick or AJ?” The man asked.
My two loved ones could not speak. They were not tied or gagged. Not in a physical sense, anyway. Their lips were simply gone. I could hear their muffled screams from behind the walls of flesh that covered what used to be their mouths. Their eyes were swimming with tears. And as for their hands and legs, they were rooted to the floor, much like the man had rooted himself to the ground in the forest.
“You didn’t come alone,” The man said, tutting. “Now, my price has doubled.”
“What price?” I meekly cried.
“The price for your baby,” He explained.
“Where is Milo?” I sobbed.
“That is up to you,” The man replied, repeating his question. “Patrick or AJ?”
“I don’t…” I trailed off, closing my eyes, trying to end this ghastly nightmare.
They wouldn’t close. He wouldn’t let me close them.
“What are you?” I asked.
“I am humanity’s limits,” He responded.
“Just show me Milo. Show me that he’s safe,” I pleaded.
“Will you pay the price?” The man asked.
“Yes! What do I have to do?” I screamed.
“That isn’t the right question,” He said. “How much for Milo?”
“What…?” I whimpered.
The man smiled. At long last, he had abandoned any semblance of warmth or kindness. His lopsided grin had a hint of malice to it. Since that first night on the train, before the entity uttered a word to me, I had sensed its true nature. Call it mother’s intuition.
“How much for Milo?” The man repeated. “How much are you willing to take for Milo?”
“Take? I don’t understand,” I said.
But I did. The jigsaw was complete. I could see the full picture. This was a test. It had always been a test. And I had reached the final round.
“Patrick or AJ?” The man asked.
“What am I choosing?” I quietly asked.
“A heart,” He explained, brandishing his predatory teeth.
My own heart thumped, as dread encompassed me.
“Whose heart will you eat?” The man nonchalantly enquired, as if he were simply asking for the time.
Patrick and AJ, my mouthless loved ones, began to wriggle and squirm more desperately in their chairs. AJ leant forwards, putting her head in her lap and moaning loudly.
“Please…” I cried.
“Oh, you want the third option?” The man asked. “I consume Milo’s heart.“
I did not answer. I could not answer. The man was not offering a choice. He was offering Hell on a plate. AJ was sobbing into her lap, but my brother was eerily calm. Tears were gushing from his eyes, but they had a resolute stillness to them. I knew the look. It was the look he gave when he offered me his favourite toy animal. It was the look he gave when I begged him not to tell our parents that I’d sneaked out of the house at three in the morning. It was the look he gave when my family was in the hospital waiting room, following Milo’s birth.
It was a look that expressed he would do anything for me.
Patrick nodded. He nodded to say that it was okay. I shook my head defiantly, but my brother continued to nod.
“No, Patrick…” I sobbed.
“Do it!” He screamed.
I hadn’t understood anything else that Patrick or AJ had been saying, but I understood that. I looked to the man in the black trench coat, who was grinning at me. With tears in my eyes and horror in my heart, I pried my lips apart. I gave my answer.
“Patrick,” I whispered.
AJ’s head lifted up. She hadn’t seen the silent conversation that just taken place, and she was perplexed. I don’t think she expected me to actually answer. She couldn’t understand the lengths to which I would go.
“Final decision?” The man asked.
“Don’t make me say it again,” I cried.
The haunting spectre smiled at me once more, and he nodded.
“Patrick Woods,” The man announced. “It is time to offer your heart for Milo.”
The man tore my brother’s shirt, revealing his rapidly-undulating chest. Patrick attempted to conceal his fear, for my sake, but he was frozen in unimaginable terror. AJ squeezed her eyes closed and unleashed a screech. I wanted to do the same, but he wouldn’t let me.
“You must watch,” The man hissed.
Without warning, the vile entity plunged his fingers into my brother’s flesh. Patrick wailed at a volume that I didn’t know a human could reach, and I don’t want to imagine how it would have sounded, were he unmuffled.
As if the man in the trench coat were merely plucking a vegetable from soil, he rooted around in the cavity that he had created in my brother’s chest. Blood oozed from the wound in relentless ribbons.
“I can feel your fear,” The man whispered to Patrick, latching onto his heart.
I watched my brother’s teary eyes start to roll backwards. His moans started to fade. The hellish creature wrenched the organ from my brother’s chest. I truly believe, for one fleeting second, Patrick gazed upon his still-beating heart in the entity’s hand. Finally, his eyes closed, and his body lay still.
AJ continued to bawl. I found myself in a state of detachment. All I could process was the heart in the man’s inhuman palm. The beating slowed, slowed, then stopped. Triumphantly, the entity snapped the veins and arteries that were still tying the lifeless organ to my brother’s desecrated carcass.
“Eat.”
That was all the man had to say, as he displayed my brother’s heart on his outstretched palm. He waited patiently. I was trembling. My mind and soul were scrambling to the surface of my body, begging to be let free. They did not want to experience what my body would soon endure.
I took the heart from the creature’s palm. As I held it in my right hand, I accidentally squeezed a little too tightly. Blood started to flow down my wrist. In a dazed state, I watched the damp pool that was starting to starting to stain the sleeve of my jumper.
“Take a bite,” The man urged.
Wrestling with the urge to empty my guts all over the organ I held before me, I thought of my baby boy. I thought of my brother, too. I had come too far. I couldn’t allow his death to be meaningless. So, trying fervently to disconnect myself from the real world, I closed my tearful eyes and delicately placed the edge of Patrick’s heart in my mouth, lightly grazing the surface with my teeth.
I’m not sure how long I spent preparing to sink my teeth into the organ, but I finally took the plunge. The squelching sound sickened me, but nothing was quite as horrifying as the blood and mush that swirled around my mouth and slipped down my throat. I still feel it there sometimes. I still feel the vomit that immediately rose to the surface of my throat.
I aggressively gulped, swallowing the ghastly mixture of stomach acid and gore that was lingering at the back of my throat. Not wanting to pause and prolong the unspeakable act, I hurriedly took another bite, vomiting once again, and gulping once again.
“Milo is so close,” The man whispered, as I sobbed. “Can you taste him?”
As I took my third bite, my body began to groan in sheer agony, violently rejecting the atrocious meal that I was forcing upon it. I ignored the piercing pain in my gut, pressing onwards. It felt as if a blade were slowly twisting in my abdomen, but I knew it was nothing compared to the agony that my brother had just endured for my baby boy. This is for Milo, I reminded myself, eyeing what remained of the heart in my hands.
“One more bite,” The man promised.
Wobbling on my feet, eyesight obscured by tears, and mouth filled with a combination of vomit and things I’d rather not describe, I eyed the last mouthful and quickly pushed it into my open mouth. After several trembling munches, I swallowed.
There was a moment of silence. I looked at my blood-stained hands. Patrick’s heart was gone. My insides were on fire, but, for a short while, adrenaline made it easy to ignore that. It could not, however, help me to ignore the horrific sight of my brother’s mutilated corpse. It could not help me to forget the psychological torture I had just endured. I wish my mind had simply erased that traumatic memory, but perhaps that was just another gift from the insidious entity which had inflicted this suffering upon my loved ones and me.
The man offered his unsettling smile one last time, before everything faded into darkness.
When I woke, I found myself staring at the grey dashboard of AJ’s car. Blackened scenery rushed past the window beside me. A small, familiar bundle wriggled in my lap. With my eyes drowning in silent tears, I looked down.
Milo.
He was rolling around, eyes wide open, and giggling. I tried to capture that moment in my mind. I tried to focus on his glistening hazel eyes. But now my baby was safe, the adrenaline washed away. All I could picture was my brother’s body. All I could feel was an excruciating pain in my stomach. I knew I was moments away from being sick. There was the faint sound of struggled breathing beside me.
Body tensed, I slowly twisted my head to my right, expecting to see some haunting spectacle that the man had orchestrated.
It wasn’t him. It was AJ. She was driving. Everything was fine.
I beamed brightly for a brief moment, but my smile quickly faded when I realised that she refused to meet my gaze. She did not speak. Her mouth had returned, and her limbs had been restored, but she simply stared at the road ahead. Her eyes were still swimming with tears, and her upper lip was unsteady. She had a white-knuckled grip on the wheel before her.
“AJ?” I whispered.
No reply.
I couldn’t stay in that town. There was nothing left for me. Patrick’s body was found in the woods, but the police investigation produced no murder suspects. I couldn’t bear to look my parents in the face, knowing what I’d done. I showed my face briefly at my brother’s funeral, of course, but that’s the last time I saw them. AJ didn’t reply to my texts or calls.
I understand, but it had to be done.
There was no other way.