Chapter Forty-Seven
Forty-Seven
Elsie grabs the shears from the floor and cuts the cable ties. Enid’s wrists are raw and weeping where the plastic has gnawed into her skin.
The car’s engine roars closer.
“We need to get out of here,” Elsie cries frantically. “You’re going to have to help me get her up, Bev.”
“Hurry!” Margot screams down from the top of the stairs.
“Margot, get out of here!” Elsie yells. “Leave the back door open for us.”
There’s silence as Margot hesitates. Then they hear barking, footsteps moving through the house, pausing briefly before there’s the sound of the back door opening.
The engine noise has come to a stop, and Beverley prays not to hear the car door slamming, the key in the front door.
She and Elsie take Enid under the arms, holding her weight on their shoulders. She is frail, and it takes a while for them to lift her and get her to the bottom of the steps, but they have to hurry. Roger will be in the house soon.
“I can do it.” It’s the first thing Enid has said, and her voice is hoarse but determined.
Elsie goes ahead, telling Enid to rest her hands on her shoulders. Beverley follows behind, wincing with each step as they slowly make their way up to the first floor of the house.
Beverley watches as Elsie reaches the top of the stairs, then turns and holds out her hands for Enid.
Beverley’s feet are wet, she realizes, glancing down to find them slippery with blood.
Everything is losing its edges. She wonders for a woozy moment if she might fall backward, but she looks ahead, forces her focus to sharpen, commands her muscles to move.
Then she slumps. She cannot help it. It’s as if the bones in her legs have crumbled to powder.
Every ounce of strength has abandoned her.
Her vision swarms with red. At the top of the stairs, through the haze, she sees Elsie call out to Margot.
Then she conducts Enid toward the back of the house, yelling at her to run.
Elsie returns to the top of the stairs, silhouetted by the sunlight spilling into the house, frantically holding out an arm, beckoning for Beverley to move—screaming at her to move—up the stairs.
But Beverley cannot shift a centimeter. The whining in her ears blares more loudly, reaching a hypersonic pitch.
She feels her heart—feels it—pulsate, slower, slower.
Her vision is ringed now with black. She moves her head up slowly.
She can see Elsie, still screaming at her, still holding out her arms, but she cannot hear her.
She cannot hear anything but the strange, discordant whining.
Elsie’s head whips around then. Beverley can see the fear in her posture, her hands raised in defense.
She sees another figure appear at the top of the stairs, sees it raise an arm and land a blow directly on Elsie’s skull.
She sees the eyes roll back in her friend’s head as she tumbles backward, out of sight.
Then Roger turns and fixes his sights on her.
Beverley tries to scream, tries to beg him to leave her alone, to tell him that she knows who he is, what he is. No sound comes out but the wet mewling of a kitten. Roger is descending the steps, drawing closer. She has never seen him like this, never seen him so cold, so reptilian.
She imagines what the girls—what Cheryl, Emily, Diane, Sarah and Kate—must have felt when they realized what was happening to them.
Roger says nothing. He simply bends and seizes Beverley’s arm, hurling her body clean off the step. As she tumbles backward, seconds seem to pass, drawn out by the motion of falling, until the crash. Her body lies limp, functionless on the cold basement floor.