Then my heart sinks. I feel a burning drive to dig deeper into this matter, but as I glance back at the little email address on Liv’s computer, I realize that I don’t have the expertise to follow the rabbit hole further. On my own, the trail stops here, my lack of technical know-how finally catching up to me.
Anger swells within me. Two young women go missing, and what can I do? Sit in their apartment and strut around furiously while the trail gets colder because I don’t know how to maneuver the backdoors of internet and computer systems. I’ve never taken kindly to my rustic background holding me back, an icy chain digging into my flesh no matter how hard I fight against it.
Perhaps that’s overly dramatic; in truth, I really don’t want to reach out to the one man who I know could open those encrypted doors for me.
I pull out my phone as I walk back into the living room, grimacing at the screen as I flick through my contacts to the name I have on my mind. A few times, I think again, putting the phone away and going back to the laptop myself, trying to trace it through a few simple searches and going through the university’s database. Nothing.
A low groan escapes me, and I want to punch a wall as I draw the phone out yet again, staring at the contact on the screen before taking a deep breath.
One push of a button later, I put the phone to my ear and listen to it ring.
9
Liv
We cling together in the darkness, barely daring to breathe. I can feel Maggie’s fingernails digging into my arms, her thin body trembling with fear. A lump forms in my throat but I can’t bear to even swallow, I feel so frozen with terror. A beam of sickly light floods through the open doorway, blocked in part by the hulking mass of a man. He looks like a shadow creature, some kind of monstrous Minotaur come to feast on us, the unwilling sacrifices. My mind runs wild with horrifying scenarios of what he might do to us.
He’s too big and bulky to be Will, and I don’t remember anyone from the party at the bar looking like this guy. In fact, once he takes a few steps closer and turns his face slightly to one side, I have to stifle a gasp of horror.
His face is deformed, or perhaps just badly scarred. He looks like he might be a burn victim — and a bad one at that. Maggie whimpers, shaking in my arms. The man turns back to face us, and even in the darkness I can feel his eyes boring into me. I tighten my hold on Maggie, pulling her closer, as the scarred man begins his slow walk toward us in the dark. His footsteps are heavy and lumbering, slightly uneven as to indicate a limp. I wonder what could have happened to him to make him look this way. Who hurt him?
And is he going to hurt us?
I almost wish he would say something, anything at all, to break the cold silence over the room. In the faint light trickling in from the doorway, I can finally make out where we are, to some extent. Through the open door I can see a set of steep, moldy-looking stairs leading up, hinting that we are underground here, as I suspected. The room we’re in is fairly large, but it’s partitioned off into several sections with floor-to-ceiling chain link fencing. The floor is made of filthy concrete, and my stomach churns at the sight of more than a few large stains that look like they might just be made of blood. What happened here? What’s going to happen to us?
The scarred man stops short in front of the fence separating our particular enclosure, his two meaty hands coming up to rattle the metal links, causing a horrible racket. Maggie yelps and begins to sob as the man’s disfigured face cracks into a wide, malicious grin. He reaches up. There’s a clicking sound as he pulls a string hanging from the ceiling and a single lightbulb illuminates the room. Maggie closes her eyes tightly and burrows into my arms.
I immediately survey the whole room, blinking in the sudden painful light. Yes, I conclude darkly, those stains across the floor are a blackish-red in hue. Definitely blood. And the man in front of us looks even more terrifying in the light, with his rippled, cracked skin, black eyes, and devilish grin. He had to have walked through fire to land a face like that. Some part of me wonders if he encountered that fire in hell.
Flameface walks along the length of the fence, shaking it violently, sometimes punching it, all the while smirking at us with his crooked, yellowed teeth. Then he stops suddenly, staring at us, standing totally still. He waits a long moment, and then reels back and slams his fist into the fence, making the whole enclosure shake and rattle. Maggie lets out a startled shriek and Flameface bursts into cruel laughter, cackling like a madman.
“Ooh, didn’t mean to scare you,” he growls in a heavy accent. “Ozornoy devushki! Are you ready for your nakazaniye?”