Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Brian
‘Watch it again, Brian, then you will take a walk down the dark path once more. The young man is waiting.’
His knuckles itched to smash his computer to smithereens.
The man in the video was next and he didn’t want to see him suffer.
When all this was over, he was quitting all things tech and going off-grid forever.
He’d live in a forest if he had to. Tabitha lay snoring on his bed.
How she’d managed to sleep was anyone’s guess, but at least he’d moved his bed so the perve behind the mask couldn’t watch his little sister.
He shook with frustration. If only he’d not pulled the Plasticine off the camera with her in the room, but he hadn’t thought that one through, and now the sicko behind OpenMeSmiler knew what she looked like. She made him jump as she snorted.
‘Aww,’ he yelled. ‘Sleeping Beauty snorts like a little piggy.’
‘Shut up.’ His yell left Tabitha stirring and stretching.
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
‘Eleven.’
‘I’m missing school,’ she said in a whisper.
He shrugged, played it cool, knowing that they weren’t alone. He wrote, remember they can hear us, on a piece of paper and nudged it off the desk towards her. She leaned over the bed and picked it up then she grabbed the throw from his bed, pulled it over her head and walked out of his room.
‘I thought we were all having so much fun…’ the voice said. ‘Watch it again, Brian. Go on, click. You know you want to.’
He shook his head and looked away.
‘So now you don’t want to. The other day you were having a ball watching all these saddos going on with their very boring lives. Okay, they’re not always boring, sometimes they shag or…’ The figure laughed.
Brian knew exactly why and he needed the video of him to be destroyed forever but he didn’t know what to do.
Was he next? He closed his eyes. The images of the poor boy they’d been watching filled his head.
Then there was the video. The way he was chained to a chair, just like the woman had been.
He couldn’t see the boy’s face very well in the dark shadows but he was sure it was the same boy he’d been watching on the live stream, the one who always wore the bar through one of his ears.
His heartbeat quickened. The game. What was the game?
Was it to torture Brian with sick images and the threat of exposure, or was it much more?
Was Brian going to end up in a chair with a ball gag in his mouth, and what happened after?
He still had to believe it was all staged and no one was actually getting hurt.
Tabitha waved her arms from the landing and spoke on the phone.
He could just about hear her loud whispers.
‘I’m sick so I didn’t go in. I didn’t know who to call…
no… it’s probably the pizza that Brian cooked last night…
no, you don’t need to come home. I’m starting to feel better…
okay… okay…’ She ended the call. ‘The school phoned Aunt Claudia but it’s okay, she’s calling them to say I’m sick.
’ She began scrolling through her phone before pausing and slowly opening her mouth. She beckoned him over.
‘I, err, I need to piss.’
‘You leave that chair now and I’ll press the button and your life is over. You will take the dark path now.’
He scribbled, what is it? on a sheet of paper and discreetly threw it in Tabitha’s direction.
She crawled into his room, avoiding the camera on his computer and then stood against the wall, holding her phone up. He scrunched his brows as he struggled to see her screen.
‘Come, Brian. You’ll regret making me wait.’ The speakers crackled and went off, at least it sounded like they’d gone off but he didn’t trust the person behind OpenMeSmiler. It could be a test.
He looked away, leaving Tabitha waiting as he went through the motions of following the dark path and taking the room to the tavern.
With trembling hands, he waited for the fake chatter to die down and the door at the far end to open.
He didn’t need to click or guide it, his virtual captor did that for him.
It was a live stream and the boy was squirming and trying to break out of the chair, none of his words decipherable as he recoiled from the tormentor in the morph mask.
The captor removed his hoodie and dropped it to the floor, revealing a crisp white vest and not once letting go of the knife he used the weapon to slice through the holey black jumper that the boy wore and once removed, he took out a professional camera and began taking photos.
‘Smile,’ he said, the voice still robotic. ‘Let me see those teeth.’
The boy screamed from behind the gag, his face contorted as he shifted from side to side in the heavy wooden chair he was chained to – all to no avail. Brian gasped. Tabitha had moved her phone screen to just above his monitor. He glanced at what she was showing him.
The body the police found was that of the woman, Mindy, who they’d been watching. He had no doubt that the boy on the screen was the next to die.