The Sensory Thief Part 9

The thud from above felt final. It vibrated through the floorboards and into the victim's core. The heavy collision of meat to floorboard made the basement smile. The Sensory Thief was down. Silence followed, but it wasn't empty. It had weight, then something new broke through. It was a high-pitched wail that sounded like a wounded animal, or perhaps a child. The sound wasn't language, but it was definitely another soul trapped in this sick and twisted playground.

"Don't scream," a voice whispered, not from the stairs, but from within the wall behind the victim’s head. It was a dry rasp that felt like a distant hope. "Just talk normal. I can hear you. I’m going to help you." It said.

The victim froze; his sightless eyes searched the black void. He wasn't alone. Another witness. Another victim who had survived the torture was here.

"Who are you?" croaked the victim in incoherent gags and sputters. His voice, a throated useless thing, hurt. His unused throat muscles screamed with much effort. He swallowed to soothe the fire in his throat, only to irritate it even more.

"A friend," the wall breathed back. "I’m the one the house forgot," the victim could almost feel the vibration of its words against his skin. "I’m the shadow in the walls. I’ve watched him take your sight, your hearing, your very sense of being, but he’s out now, and the child upstairs won't stop crying until it’s fed. This is the moment the crack has opened," the voice scraped against the back of the victim's skull. "The surgeon is dreaming. You must move."

The surge of hope was a lie that the victim’s mind inhaled like oxygen. "How?" A small blood clot escaped the victim’s mouth with his question. He spat out the curdled tissue and spoke once more. "I can't move. I'm broken." The hope that built up was now lost, the fight was gone, and the victim accepted his bleak fate.

"You are alive!" The wall shouted. The blue liquid within the shelved jars jolted and swayed from the force of the shout. Even the victim was affected, the sharp sound startled his body into a jump that sent a wave of life throughout his being. "He has taken much of you, but you have much more. Your teeth, my friend, you must use them to free your bonds. It won't be easy, but you must. I'm here, we cannot, we must not let him win, not this time. You are stronger than you know. I see that now."

Tears escaped from the victim's hollowed eye sockets, and he craned his neck into an impossible position that placed his teeth against the straps that held down his broken arm. Minutes passed as he chewed bit by bit through the leather strap until it broke free. The second strap that held his other hand was much easier, and when it too broke, the victim’s spirit grew. His head flopped back, and he laughed out solid chunks of coagulated blood that spattered out of his sore mouth. His teeth hurt, but the pain was worth the effort.

"I knew you were the one. There is no time to rest. You must move quickly; you are so close." The voice fell silent, and the victim's fingers fumbled over the bonds that held his torso in place. As soon as the last strap fell free, his body toppled to the concrete floor. There was no time to feel pain, no time to be hurt, it was time to crawl. His fingernails dragged his body across the cold concrete, and every inch was a battle against the stone silence. Above him, the floorboards groaned under the Thief’s unconscious weight, a slow, drumbeat that timed with his escape. After a few painful feet were gained, the voice spoke from across the room.

"Follow the sound of my breath," the voice urged. The voice shifted to the far corner where the coal chute met the foundation. "There’s a gap in the stone, a place where the mortar has rotted into dust. Reach it. Reach deep into the bones of the house."

Once the victim reached the far corner, he pushed his hand into the darkness of the wall, his fingers brushed against something that felt like matted hair and cold, brittle bone. He didn't recoil. He couldn't. The voice in the wall gave him strength. It was the only strength he had left in a world that wanted him dead. His newfound strength soon turned into desperation when his hand gripped the hairy mass within the wall.

"Further, you must reach past the filth," the voice hissed, a command that made the victim’s heart hammer against his ribs like a trapped bird. "The Thief is stirring. I can hear the shift of his lungs. You have to hurry, or you’ll become just another jar on his shelf, a memory he’s already forgotten."

The victim almost panicked, he pushed his arm further into the gap past the hairy mass until the rough stone bit into his shoulder. A slow trickle of blood that smelled like failure escaped through his fresh wound. His fingers brushed against something that wasn't stone or wood. It felt like a metal hook.

"Pull," the voice commanded, "I hear his heart slowing in his sleep, I sense the change in the air, and fear he can smell the blood you’re leaking."

The victim gripped the hook and pulled with all his might. It didn't give like a lever; it tore like old meat. A sudden rush of stagnant air hit his face, which smelled of a century’s worth of trapped dust and fermented hair. The wall opened, and he had breached the inner cellar, the hollow space between the vanity of the house and the rot of the earth.

"Good," the voice cheered, almost licking the shell of my ear. "Now, crawl into the hollow, and hide. Become the splinter. The monster thinks he owns your senses, but he doesn't own the gravity of your spirit. If you can reach the vertical wall behind the kitchen, you can hear the click of the gas line. You can turn his sanctuary into a hellish blaze and end this."

The victim dragged his body into the suffocating crawlspace, the darkness pressed against his sightless eyes until he saw flashes of static purple, and red sparks of his own dying nerves. The wall closed and hid his body from the light.

Above him, the Thief's breathing changed. It wasn't a snore anymore; it was an investigative sniff. He was tasting the breach in the air. Then, without warning, his eyes snapped open, and the hunt had moved from the jars to the very skeleton of the house.

"He's awake," said the voice, "Can you feel his footsteps through the house? He’s looking for his favorite jar. He’s looking for the piece of you he hasn't taken yet." The victim’s mind fractured. The voice in the wall wasn't helping him escape the house; it was guiding him into the darkness of the house, to camouflage him from the Thief. The same space he had been tortured in was now a sanctuary. The force of madness was the only thing keeping his heart from seizing in the dark.

The floorboards shrieked, a warning that the architect of agony had returned to life. The voice in the wall went silent, the dry, papery rasp vanished as if it had never existed, leaving the victim orphaned in the suffocating crawlspace.

The first thud. The first step on the cellar stairs was heavy, a sharp strike that shot through the joists.

A second thud. He moved with a slow deliberation. The sound of his boots against the wood was like a fist hitting a coffin lid. The victim pressed his face into the cold, cement wall, his sightless eyes burned with the effort to see the monster's face through his memory.

"I smell the change in the air," the Thief’s voice rumbled that lacked any human warmth. "I smell the copper of your fear, little jar. I sense you’ve moved. You’ve tried to crawl out of your own skin. I love that you have more fight in you."

Thud number three. He was halfway down the stairs now. You could hear the clink of his keys, the metallic teeth that locked the basement from the real world. The child upstairs had stopped crying, replaced by a loud silence that felt like a predator holding its breath. The victim’s heart hammered like a drum that he was sure the Thief could feel. He was a living crucible of panic. He was trapped in the skeleton of the house while the Thief reached the bottom step. The key slapped the lock open, and the door soon followed. Then, the light switched on and snapped the dark away, which made the victim flinch with fear.

The Thief scanned to empty room before he stepped inside. "Where are you, little jar?"

The victim covered his mouth and tried to silence his breath. His body quaked in an unnatural vibration that made the dust in the crawlspace stir.

"Stop your fear." The voice in the wall whispered. "Control it. You must control it." The victim held himself like a scared child and tried not to weep. He curled up into a ball and made himself as small as he could. He tried to imagine himself in a mother's womb. He needed to feel safe to survive.

"I can feel you, little jar," the Thief’s voice groaned toward the gap in the wall where the victim cowered. "Did the whispers tell you there was a way out? They lied. There is no escape. There are only; the jars."

To be continued....

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