Silent, Still Trapped

Sunday May 2019,   Gavin

Utter quietness again.  Not a sound in the building. I can't believe that anyone else is here. They must have gone.  Or perhaps Lucy is dead and the internet troll has killed her.

I decide to risk all. I call her name.

Lucy!
      
No answer.  

Darkness.

Quietly, I cry for the dead.  

For my friends who died two years ago.

For Dawn and Philippa.

Especially Dawn.

She got dragged into the madness through me.
 
***
LUCY

The footsteps start up again, soft, plodding, deliberate footsteps. The jangling padlock. The sound jars on her nerves, warning of the Angel of Mercy's mood swings. The zigzag of scars on his arm, self-inflicted. Her parent's killer, although he claimed not to be.

He will have read the emails and texts on her phone.  He may have guessed her secret, the secret she shared with Maxine and was about to share with Gavin at their planned lunch. So far, he hasn't mentioned Gavin.  

The Angel of Mercy opens a door and a blast of torch lamp cuts through the darkness.  He stands in front of her, angry. 'Who told you about the boy?  How did you find each other?'
Her heart sinks. The past again.  She deleted all mentions of the Boy in her texts and encrypted her emails.

'Your phone contacts,' he goes on.  'Didn't you know it's almost impossible to totally get rid of a contact on a smartphone, especially when you sinc your contacts?  Not quite as clever as you thought, hey? Who told you?'
 
'I worked it out for myself.  He looks like my father.'

'I want a name,’ the Angel of Mercy growls.

'Why?

'A name,' he repeats.  'I dont need to give a reason why.'

Again, his ability to read her mind.  'No one told me. He got in touch with me himself through Facebook. There was no one else involved.'

'Why did he get in touch?'

'He had questions about the fire.'

'When was that?'

'Seven or eight weeks ago. He sent me a private message from his mothers laptop.'

'Why did you respond to him?'

'Because he's my brother, ' she said.

'Rubbish. Stop lying, Lucy.'

'But it's true,' she says. 'I've always sensed I had a brother.'

The Boy got in touch with her through Facebook Messenger a couple of months ago with questions about Dad, and it was good at first. She'd found her little brother again. Her half-brother. She wanted to protect him, look after him.  He confided in her, the Boy. Told her things he didn't feel comfortable telling anyone else about. He was happy at school after a bad start. He had these two friends who kept an eye on him.

But then, everything changed, and the Boy started getting angry and accusing Dad of terrible things. He turned on her too. Kept calling her horrible names and saying he wished he had a different half-sister, a nicer sister. He threatened to hack into her emails and destroy all her college work. She was cruel and horrible, he wrote.  After that, she only communicated with him on public computers and she encrypted emails to prevent him from accessing her personal information or tampering with it. The last time they communicated  Friday at the Cybercafé  she told him off for bunking off school and he reacted angrily, saying he would start another fire. He wanted to be famous, for people to notice him.  She logged off without a word and drove back to Maxine's, furious at his lack of respect towards her father.  His father too. She decided to talk to Gavin about the Boy over lunch in the park near Maxine's flat, to ask Gavin what he thought she should do next.  But the man in the baseball cap got to her first and drugged her and brought her here.

The man laughs now, in the semi-dark. 'Do you remember me, Lucy? he says, in a voice that is both soft and creepy. 'Do you remember me standing by your bedroom window, smiling in at you when you were a little girl?  Do you remember the fire?  The terrible heat and smoke? How I came to your room and rescued you that night, not your father. Your father was a very, very bad man. He started the fire because he was having an affair and wanted to get rid of your mother. That boy is mine, not your father's. He's my son. If you claim he's your father's ever again, I'll kill you and Gavin, slowly but surely.’

No.  She recoils, retches. Thinks she will choke.  Her parent's killer pretending to be her rescuer and the father of her half-brother. Dad's rival.

'You could at least be grateful to me for rescuing you when you were a little girl. I braved the flames for you. I should have left you there, you ungrateful child.'

'Let me go,' she shrieks.

'I will not. You've been very naughty today. No.'

'Listen, you have to let me go. You said yourself, I was a child then. I'm not responsible for what happened. Please -

'They sent me to a psychiatric hospital afterwards, you know. Agnes and Terence. That's how they repaid me. But I escaped. No one messes with the Angel of Mercy.  I'm going now, but I'll be back soon and I'll expect answers.'