Chapter 51
Fifty-One
Brian
‘Brian, snap out of it.’ Curtis punched his arm. ‘The police are searching my house and they’ve gone after my dad. They’re arresting him. We need to do something.’
‘I’ve been destroyed.’ He gripped his legs, still on his bedroom floor in the foetal position.
Aunt Claudia was on her way back. Would she see the video?
It would be on every phone, posted to OpenMeSmiler, on social media and emailed to his boss at the café.
Everyone would be pinged out of their slumber to a video of him masturbating and there was nothing he could do about it.
He didn’t know about being scared of OpenMeSmiler. He wanted to die right now.
‘You’ve been destroyed, huh? It’s all about you, Brian. What about my dad? The police are after him, and they’re searching my house and I ran away from them. I don’t know what to do. You brought me into all this. I couldn’t fix it. It stuffed my computer up.’
Brian lifted his head up. Curtis was right about it being his fault. ‘Have you got any messages?’
Curtis pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘No, but I do have missed calls which I’m guessing are from the very police I ran from. Bri, I’m right in it.’
Brian grabbed Curtis’s phone and scrolled down his messages. There was nothing from OpenMeSmiler. Had he sent the video to everyone in his friends list, Curtis would have it. He glanced at his computer screen and it was still filled with zigzags.
‘See your computer, that’s what happened to mine. It’s stuffed. OpenMeSmiler has to be a virus.’
‘No, no, it’s more than that. Why…?’ It clicked.
‘He told me there was a bomb in my room – well not a bomb – I’ve been blackmailed.
I was told I had to find it. He said the front door was rigged and when you came through, I thought my life was over.
Tabby, she ran out the back, she thought it was a real bomb.
’ He stood and opened his curtains, staring out at the garden.
‘She’s not there. The fence… it’s broken. ’ As he went to run, his phone pinged.
‘Is it Tabby?’ Curtis asked.
He opened the message from the withheld number and read it out loud.
‘If Curtis leaves, the video will be leaked. You have one more chance. I have your sister. Any police – she dies. Any phone calls – she dies. Any attempts to reach the outside world on your devices – she dies. That goes for Curtis, too. Curtis must stay in your room. You must leave now if you ever want to see your sister alive again.’
A photo followed. Brian almost heaved as he showed it to Curtis. Tabitha, bleeding and tied to a chair. Another message pinged up.
‘What does it say?’
‘Leave now, out the back. Go through the broken fence and to the end of the road. If you tell anyone else, she dies.’ He read the next instruction in his head.
He glanced around his bedroom. It felt like OpenMeSmiler knew everything, like he was everywhere and anywhere.
‘Don’t move, Curtis. If you move, Tabby will die.
You’ve seen what this maniac can do to people.
They killed the woman from the dog parlour. ’
‘What if something happens to you?’
He shrugged. He’d give his life for Tabby. When their parents died, he swore he’d look after her, protect her from everything he could and now his promises were to become more than words. ‘I’m going to get my sister.’
‘But the police, they’re coming for me. They’ll find me here.’
‘So, what. Deal with it, but you move and OpenMeSmiler won’t have to come for you. I’ll kill you.’
Curtis slumped into Brian’s gaming chair and folded his arms. ‘Cool, just hurry up.’
Brian went out of his bedroom door.
‘Bri?’
‘What now?’ He peered back around as he pulled his hoodie over his shoulders.
‘What if your aunt comes back?’
He shrugged and ran. He didn’t care. All he cared about was saving Tabitha.
He jumped down the stairs, two-by-two and ran towards the back door.
As he left through the back door, he heard the front door being unlocked and Claudia’s voice calling out.
He couldn’t stop now. He ran across the grass and towards the back of the fence and gasped as he saw the mess.
Wood snapped and crudely broken. A whole fence panel had been bashed in.
He carefully climbed through the gap, checking up and down the dark path for anyone lurking.
His phone beeped again with an exact location and he frowned.
He knew that woodland, right where they all used to take a pee when he hung out with Abel and the others.
He swallowed and ran, passing rows of houses, taking shortcuts through hedges and he jumped a fence over a private garden, just to save several more seconds.
Time was everything. Tabitha needed him now.
The woodland was in sight and police tape billowed in the light breeze.
He stopped, breathed in and out, his breath coiling as its warmth hit the cold air.
His heart pounded from the sprint but it didn’t calm down now he’d stopped.
With trembling legs, he kept walking, further and further into the woods.
‘Let her go,’ he said, his yelling cutting through the woodland.
He fought through a trail of thorny branches, unable to see in the darkness, scared to use his phone in case OpenMeSmiler thought he might be calling the police. ‘Tabby… Tabby…’
The snap of a branch sent him whipping his head around and as he did, it made contact with a piece of wood, so hard he fell backwards in a heap.
Blood gushed from his nose, down the back of his throat.
He spluttered and quickly rolled onto his side before he choked.
He glanced back at the figure above him, in the long dark overcoat holding the plank and the only feature he caught was a smiling mouth that had now been cut out of the morph mask.
‘Smile, you’re on camera.’ The masked figure held his phone out and the flash almost blinded Brian but he did see the plank coming at his face again and there was nothing he could do to stop it.