Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE TASKMASTER
“Don’t pretend you don’t know who the fuck I am or why you’re here. YOU FUCKING KNOW!” I shouted through the microphone as I watched Gabriel Tolley squirm.
He was currently sitting at the bottom of the huge glass tank I’d dumped and chained his drugged, naked body into a few hours ago.
The fucker was fast asleep on his couch when I broke into his home earlier today after leaving Abigail.
It was the easiest target I’d had so far, and I had to admit, I’d let myself down in that respect.
I usually liked the thrill of the chase.
To hunt them down and work a little for my prize.
But today, I just wanted this fucker in my warehouse and in my game.
I wanted to get shit done so I could go back to what was holding my interest more these days. Abigail.
“I... I have... nnnno idea,” he spluttered as he cried. He hung his head as he tucked his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them tightly. “Please,” he begged, snot streaming down his pitiful face. “Let me go. I have money. I can give you anything you want.”
“Money is no good to me, although I’ll take that too when all this is over,” I assured him, and then I moved closer to the mic and reiterated, “What’s my name?
Say it. Tell me you remember every fucked-up thing you did to destroy my life.
Or are there too many of us?” I cocked my head. “Did you lose count?”
He sniffed, rocking back and forth as he chanted, “No, no, no.”
“Then let me take you on a little trip down memory lane, Gabriel.”
He shook his head, like he didn’t want to hear the words that were coming at him. Like he could shrug them off. But he couldn’t. This was his reckoning. He would hear what I had to say.
“They found me in a cupboard in my parent’s bedroom. Do you remember, Gabriel? Do you remember hearing about it, reading in my notes how they picked me up off the floor and carried me past the dead bodies of my parents, then dumped me in a hospital with more sickos just like you?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. He knew who I was, but he kept making a fucking annoying, weak howling noise that was really pissing me off.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I screamed, and he jolted, lifting his head as tears and snot clung to his bloated, shiny face. “YOU WILL FUCKING LISTEN TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY. YOU OWE ME THAT, GAbrIEL. YOU OWE ME FUCKING EVERYTHING!”
He quietened a little, and so I went on.
“You met me in that hospital. Pretended to care about my fucking welfare. It was your fucking job to care, but you didn’t, did you?
You just sat by while they treated me like shit, traumatising me even more than I already was, and then you turned to the hospital staff and you said, ‘Hold my fucking beer. If you think that’s traumatising, wait till you see what I have in store for him,’ and you sold me out, didn’t you, Gabriel?
Took my hand like you were a good Samaritan and led me into the depths of hell.
You knew exactly what’d happen to me when you took me to Clivesdon House, didn’t you? ”
He shook his head vehemently. “I didn’t. I don’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“CUT THE CRAP, GAbrIEL!” I shouted, tilting my head from side to side to ease the tension in my neck.
Then, in a calmer, more calculated voice, I said, “I wasn’t the only boy you abandoned there.
It must’ve been quite the payoff for you, to feed them a steady stream of new boys every month.
There aren’t many social workers I know that live in a five-bedroom house like yours, and holiday four times a year.
I’m pretty sure you’re not getting that lifestyle from your council pension. ”
He didn’t answer. He knew he couldn’t.
“Tell me, Gabriel, how much did they pay you to give them little boys to feed their sickness? I hope it was worth it, because today, you’re gonna have to face the consequences.”
“They’ll find you,” he said, trying to sound confident, though his voice was wavering with fear. “I have things set in place. If I go missing, they’ll be notified and they’ll find you.”
“I hope they do. I’d love to play with some more worthy participants. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? This is your time, Gabriel. Let’s focus on you, yes?”
I paused, and then sighed into the mic, asking one last time, “My name, Gabriel. Tell me what’s my name.”
“I don’t know,” he answered weakly, and I lost my head.
“STOP WASTING MY FUCKING TIME. ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION.”
I curled my hands into fists, nails digging into the skin of my palm to keep me grounded, and I asked one last time, “What. Is. My. Name?”
He spluttered and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then said, “Ghost boy.” He’d broken sooner than I’d expected.
“Ghost boy?” I laughed. “Is that the best you can fucking do?”
“The... They called you ghost boy,” he went on.
“Because I didn’t speak,” I added.
“No,” he replied, and I stopped talking. Here’s the rope, Gabriel. Now fucking hang yourself.
“They called you ghost boy because you didn’t exist.”
The fucker stopped there, which really pissed me off.
“YOU’D BETTER START FUCKING TALKING!” I screeched, and he started to take deep breaths as if he was having a fucking panic attack. If he didn’t start spilling soon, I’d give him more than a fucking panic attack to worry about.
“I don’t know any more,” he said, which was a fucking lie.
“Shall I tell you what I know, then?” I hissed, gripping the edge of the metal desk I was standing in front of, feeling like I wanted to crush my fingers through the steel and destroy everything in front of me.
“I know you did fuck all to find me a safe home. You kept me there as long as you could so they could take me to that fucking basement every night to do what they did.”
Another pause.
This part always felt like I was gouging my own heart out, shoving my hand into my chest and ripping out my insides, so I’d feel a different kind of pain. Different to the memory of the pain of what they did to me.
“You brought other boys to the home, I saw you. But they didn’t stay as long as I did. They got out. You came back for them and sent them to new homes. Better homes. But me? I had to get myself out.”
“I thought you were dead,” he gasped.
“That’s what I wanted you to think. But not a day has gone by that I haven’t replayed it over in my head, the way you inserted yourself into my situation and used me. You’re as guilty as they are, even if you didn’t go to that basement. You knew what they were doing. You knew what I was there for.”
“I didn’t—”
I cut him off right away. “Don’t bother with the bullshit. We both know what’s gonna happen today. And I want answers. Maybe if you give them to me, things might not be so bad for you.” They would be. But a little hope sprinkled his way wouldn’t hurt if it helped to get him talking.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, his head dropping forward again, and so I let the games begin.
“Let’s start this the right way. I invited you here as my guest, and I’d like to play a game.
You might know me as ghost boy, but now, I am The Taskmaster.
Tonight, you have a task ahead of you. You may have noticed that you’re sitting in a tank.
In a few minutes, that tank will fill with water.
You’re chained to the floor, so as the water rises, your chances of survival will fall. ”
He started to sob. He knew what was happening here.
“But you have the chance to stop the water. Remember, this is a game, and if you play by the rules, you will win your reprieve.” For a few seconds, but he didn’t need to know that.
It was more fun to show him. “To stop the water, all you have to do is answer the question I ask you truthfully. Is that clear?” I asked, and he slowly and reluctantly nodded his head as he sniffled and sobbed.
“Are you ready to begin?” Another nod and I pushed the button that made the water rush into the tank.
As the water began to fill the bottom of the tank, he cried out, trying to shift his body, but he couldn’t move from the crouched position he was in. The chains he was tied to the floor with made sure of that.
“What is your name?” I asked, starting with something simple to get him into the swing of things.
“Gabriel. Gabriel Tolley.”
I pressed the button to shut the water off, and he shuddered from the chills the cold water gave him. I didn’t give him long to relax into things though. Immediately, I pressed the button to start the water flowing back into his tank.
“What’s my name?” I asked.
He sobbed, but managed to say, “Isaiah Dalton.”
He’d used my previous surname. I didn’t go by Dalton anymore, but I wasn’t going to split hairs over a minor technicality.
“That’ll do, I suppose,” I replied, and shut the water off again.
A few seconds ticked by, and then the game resumed with a rush of water through the pipes.
“Why weren’t there any records for me at Clivesdon House?”
“I don’t know.”
I kept the water going.
“You fucking do. Now tell me, why weren’t there any records? Why did they call me ghost boy?”
He lifted his head, trying to sit taller as the water reached his chest. “There weren’t any records of you anywhere,” he gasped, and I shut the water off, giving him chance to compose himself, and give me what I wanted.
“Go on,” I urged.
“There were no records,” he stated breathlessly. “Not at the home, with social services, not anywhere.”
“Why? Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was because...” He faltered.
“Speak,” I snapped, and he took a deep breath.
“You had no records to begin with.”
“You’re not giving me anything here, Gabriel. I already know I had no records. I want to know why. Someone knows something, and I think that someone is you.”
He was blubbering, shivering with the cold and mumbling incoherently, and it was pissing me off.
“You knew my parents. There were police records about what happened to them. Are you telling me they didn’t register my birth? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think they could. I think... I don’t know. I have no idea. They didn’t tell me.”
He was talking in fucking riddles now. Really shitty ones that made no sense.
“What the fuck do you mean?” I growled.
“I don’t know,” he sobbed. “I don’t know anything. I wasn’t important to them. I didn’t have that kind of information.”
“So who did?”
He was silent for a beat, and I lost my shit.
“WHO THE FUCK KNOWS, GAbrIEL? I NEED A NAME. WHO KNOWS WHERE MY RECORDS ARE, AND WHY I WAS KEPT THERE, HIDDEN AWAY LIKE A FUCKING PRISONER?”
I was shaking. My finger hovering over the button as I tried to contain my fury.
“Q,” he replied.
“Who the fuck is Q?” I’d never heard that name mentioned before, not even when I was at the home. This was new information to me, and I needed more.
“I don’t know. No one told me his full name. I never met him. But he was the guy at the top. He’s the one that’d know.”
“And you expect me to believe you don’t know who he is? They paid you all that money, trusted you with shipping their precious cargo, and you didn’t know who they were? Bullshit. Give me a name. Now. Before I come in there and rip your fucking head off, and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!”
I pushed the button and let the water fill the tank again, reaching his shoulders and then creeping up his neck as he pleaded, “Please. I don’t know anything. I’ve told you everything.”
I watched him on the screen, gasping for air as he craned his neck.
And then the screens showing Abigail’s apartment caught my eye.
I saw her half-drunk wine glass on the coffee table and her body lying on her sofa.
When I said I’d left something else at the same time as I left that twenty-pound note on her floor, I wasn’t joking.
There was a generous helping of sedative in her bottle of wine.
But when I’d put it there, I had every intention of using it to drug her, take her, and bring her into one of my games.
But I didn’t want to do that anymore.
And seeing her comatose on the couch wasn’t the reason I was about to break every one of my teeth with how hard my jaw was clenched.
No.
It was the dark, hooded figure that was on another screen, standing outside her door, trying to break into her apartment.