Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
Brian
‘No, you’re being ridiculous, Tabby. Really, Aunt Claudia?’ Brian glanced back at the screen. ‘We know she gets alerts when there’s someone at the door. She just guessed at the dog being on the bed. You know she hates animal fur, it gets up her sinuses.’
‘She guessed, huh? She’s a good guesser in that case. I don’t buy what you’re saying.’ Tabitha stared at the screen. ‘Come on, Aunt Claudia. Jokes over.’ Tabitha folded her arms and leaned back in the chair, casually half spinning back and forth.
He nudged her and whispered, ‘Why did you do that?’
She shrugged. ‘Because there’s nothing to be scared of. Our aunt is teaching us a valuable lesson about online safety in the most hideous of ways.’
He raised his brows and stared. ‘A woman has been murdered, Tabby.’
Tabitha laughed so loud, he almost reached for his noise cancelling headphones, then her laughter turned to tears. ‘It has to be her. We have to be okay. Tell me it’s all okay, Bri.’
He passed her his box of tissues. He couldn’t reassure her.
Tabitha wanted to believe that all they’d been through was harmless but they both knew they were in huge trouble and they had no way of getting out of it.
Curtis would be home now, trying to do something but Brian knew it wouldn’t help.
Nothing would help. He went to grab his phone to message Curtis but left it.
There was no point. OpenMeSmiler was watching their every move.
They flinched as a short video popped up on the screen.
‘Press play, Brian,’ came the robotic voice.
Brian felt Tabitha stiffen next to him. With wide eyes, they stared at the screen.
‘Don’t then, but you will watch. If you move from your seat once I press play, you know what will happen. A certain video will travel the globe immediately.’
Tabitha buried her face against his arm and OpenMeSmiler didn’t try to tell her to watch as the play tab was pressed.
Bile rose up Brian’s gullet as the young man on-screen with the holey top was being prodded with a knife by OpenMeSmiler.
The muffled, blood-curdling screams coming from behind the ball gag sent his fingers shaking.
Brian couldn’t decipher any words but he knew the victim was begging for his life.
The man in the morph mask came into shot, right behind the victim.
‘Is it over?’ Tabitha asked, her voice quivering.
‘Keep your eyes closed, Tabby.’ He tried to look away but he couldn’t. He glanced down at the stream of comments from earlier that day.
Do it, Smiler.
No mercy.
Bad things happen to bad people.
Slash his gullet open.
Brian’s throat began to close up. He hyperventilated and gasped for breath, trying to suck in precious air that was about as satiating as sucking on ice when you were starving. Tabitha wrapped her arms tightly around him, not helping at all.
OpenMeSmiler came from behind, removing the ball gag. He reached over, forcing the man’s mouth open before popping a couple of tablets down his throat. He then poured what Brian thought might be vodka down his throat. The man spluttered as he swallowed.
‘Noooo,’ the man yelled as he squirmed in the chair.
Brian’s heart banged so hard, he was sure he felt it forcing its way up his throat. He gasped again and again as the morph masked man brought the knife above the victim’s head. Brian screamed and the video stopped with the knife in mid-air.
‘Did you enjoy the show, Brian?’
‘You’re sick.’ He forced Tabitha’s hands off him and sucked in a full breath of air.
‘That’s where you’re wrong. Society is sick.
The human race is sick. You know why?’ OpenMeSmiler didn’t want an answer so Brian listened.
‘Just look at the world. The worst of the worst get away with everything. Bad people rise to power and they run the world as we know it. The people with the least morals are the ones who people follow en masse. They’re the ones who have the most influence.
We are mere pack animals, we follow and sneer at the weak, and there’s no need to deny that. You, Brian. You are the problem.’
‘What the hell am I meant to have done?’ How could the weight of a bad and evil world be on his shoulders?
OpenMeSmiler was a lunatic, hurting innocent people.
Brian certainly wasn’t a pack animal and his friends were good people.
Except Abel, maybe, but they weren’t friends anymore.
Was all this down to Abel? He wore that stupid smoking emoji top.
Was it a smiling emoji? No one deserved what the man on the screen was going through.
‘I’ve been watching you. I’ve been watching you all.’
‘Spying you mean.’ He flicked the computer lens with his finger.
‘You hang around at the shops with Curtis and the others. I’ve been close enough to smell the bacon scent that clings to your clothes when you’ve just finished a shift at the café.’
Tabitha sobbed on his arm.
‘We’ve met. In real life?’ He swallowed.
‘Yes, Brian. Not that you knew but how do you think my card got into your pocket. I’m everywhere you don’t expect me to be but you don’t see me, no one does.’
It wasn’t Abel who lured him in. Abel may have been lured in separately. They’d all been played. Curiously lured into an exciting new world that had now become his worst nightmare. ‘Who are you?’
‘An intimate stranger.’
Tabitha stood and ran out of his room where she loitered by his door.
‘Tabby, come back.’
‘It’s okay, let her go so we can have our little chat.’ Demonic laughter filled his room.
‘How do I end this?’
‘You don’t. You have no control, so get used to it.’ Then silence. Brian jumped as OpenMeSmiler came back. ‘You did the one thing I asked you not to.’
He frowned while picking his nails under the desk.
‘You can pretend to look innocent but a short while ago, someone used your login to access OpenMeSmiler and all the time you were here, right where I could see you. So, here’s the deal.
In your bedroom, there’s a bomb. The front door is also rigged.
You will have three minutes to find the bomb and press the cancel button from when I say go. ’
Brian stood, his legs almost buckling. He needed to get Tabitha out of the house. He pointed to the stairs and she didn’t waste a moment in running down them. He just about heard the kitchen door slamming. Run far away, Tabby. She knew he’d want her to survive this. He’d die for his little sis.
Demonic laughter filled his bedroom. ‘Fool, it’s not a traditional bomb. It’s the bomb of your life exploding. Unless you find the device, your personal little video and your sister’s photos will be released to the world.’ OpenMeSmiler paused. ‘Time starts… now.’
He tipped his mattress up, threw all his books off his shelves and emptied the contents of his drawers into the middle of his room.
A huge timer came up on his screen, red numbers against black.
His life depended on him finding some device and he had no idea what it looked like or where it was.
He pulled his bedside table over – nothing.
Nothing anywhere. Clothes flew, old leads and gaming equipment tangled in a heap and again – nothing.
The timer kept going.
‘I can’t find it.’
OpenMeSmiler did not answer.
‘Ninety seconds… seventy seconds.’
Brian grabbed his hair, pulled it and screamed.
Quick, think. There was only one more place to look.
He pulled the picture off his wall and his heart almost stopped as he heard a key in the front door turning.
‘No.’ He ran onto the landing just as someone entered and slammed the front door.
‘You… you…’ It was too late. His life as he knew it was over.
He sat on the floor with his hands over his ears and his head tucked between his knees waiting for his life to explode.