returned.
“Where are you?” he asked Abigail as he navigated his way through horrified pedestrians and sluggish vehicles.
There was no answer on the other end.
* * * *
CHAPTER 12 — Abigail
Abigail lifted her head and opened her eyelids to a swath of angry shadows cast in a blood-red blur.
She was sitting upright in a chair, arms fastened behind her, and thick cord chewing at her ankles. Somewhere above her, soft cinnamon lights cast the dark room in a sinister blush. She nearly jumped when she saw the hazy image of someone sitting directly in front of her, also bound.
She pretended not to notice the other person, while slowly attempting to calculate her surroundings before her captors grew wise to her awareness; a lesson well learned during her time in the monster’s closet. Her new cage was maybe twice the size of her closet, yet it still felt cramped.
A dull ache shivered through her body as she tried to squirm free of her bindings. They were too tight.
Only once her mind’s fog started to recede, did she realize the other prisoner was just her own reflection in a large mirror that ran up and down the length of the wall. In the reflection, she saw a concrete wall with another smaller mirrored window and a door with no knob — just a deadbolt.
Prisoner again.
The last thing Abigail remembered was the van door sliding open. Immediately before that, the thing she would never forget — the murder of the cop. She remembered looking down and watching in horror as his blood sprayed across her arms and the front of her jacket. The jacket was now missing. She was in the tee shirt and pajama bottoms she’d been wearing, with the stench of sweat and blood coating her like dry mud.
Abigail struggled again to loosen her binds, but her muscles spasmed in painful protest. She wiggled her toes against a cold floor which had neither tile or carpet, dressed instead in the slightly powdery feel of unfinished concrete. Using her toes, she found just enough leverage to push her chair back a bit. The chair screeched, and she was certain whoever was watching her, probably from the other side of the mirror, had heard the sound.
She looked directly into the mirror and smiled.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked in a voice that wore an unwavering veneer of false courage.
Silence met her facade.
A sudden fear rippled through her body as Abigail wondered which would be the worse fate, to be left alone in a room to die or held prisoner by the men who stole her. She had only seconds to stew in the alternatives before she heard the sound of keys jingle against the other side of the door.
The lock clicked and the door swung open.
A tall bald man wearing all black materialized in the reflection. He appeared to be in his late 40’s, but truth is always more difficult in the dark. His face harbored no color and his cheeks were sunken. Two black pits bounced against the mirror toward Abigail from the grey pools sunken in the man’s face. He smiled, perhaps the creepiest smile she’d ever seen — even worse than Randy’s. He made her think of a drawing of a scarecrow she once saw in a book.
The man in black disappeared from the doorway for a moment before Abigail heard a long, drawn out scraping sound coming up the hall.
Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape…
What the?
She watched the mirror, her heart beating loud enough to echo as she tried to imagine the source of the din.
Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape…
The man reappeared, dragging a heavy looking black wood chair slowly and deliberately behind him, his eyes never leaving her reflection; the crooked smile never leaving his face.
Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape…
“Hello,” he said, his voice so smooth it was almost soothing, which only added to its menace.
The scraping grew louder as he circled her with the chair before coming to rest just a few feet in front of her. He yanked the chair up, surprisingly quick and Abigail flinched. His smile widened.
He then slammed the chair
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