Tell Me a Story

Second Interlude

No sooner had Jake’s story ended the phone resting in Martin’s hand began to ring, causing both of them to jump, and causing Martin to drop the phone in shock at the vibrations. The phone bounced twice on the dirty carpet and landed about half way in between the captor and his captive. Neither of them jumped to answer it.

Martin was feeling guilty over having pushed the boy into telling his story – although there had really been no pushing. The tale had clearly had a horrible effect on the boy, bringing back memories that he should never have to re-live.

The phone stopped ringing and somehow the silence left in its wake was even more shocking than when it had first started shouting at the world, wanting to be picked up. Both Jake and Martin’s eyes landed on the phone but still none of them went for it. They could both see the name on the screen.

Dad.

Once again it began to ring in a tone that Jake had obviously never bothered to change from when he had first received the phone. This time Martin decide he could not take the sound, floating through the air on its unstoppable course. He stood up, meaning to grab the phone and answer it.

“Wait,” came the timid voice of Jake as Martin’s hand closed around the phone. He stopped perfectly still. “Please, don’t answer it,” he said, a hint of desperation creeping across in his voice, “please don’t make me go back. I can’t go back to them.”

Martin looked at the phone, his finger hovering over the little green button, thinking about why he was here. It wasn’t that he had wanted to take the kid. He had needed to. He had needed the money. He still needed the money. So now he felt a kind of connection to the boy – what did that change? In the end, he knew, it changed about nothing physically and everything emotionally.

“I can’t afford to keep you, kid,” he said quietly, “where do you propose to go if not back to mum and dad?”

The boy only shrugged, a single, solitary tear, rolling quietly down his cheek, as if trying to pass unnoticed. Martin could hardly bare to look at it. It made his heart hurt immensely and in ways he had not experienced in a long time. Of course they had all been through horrible experiences – most not as gruesome as the boys, perhaps – but they had all been there, and they had pulled through.

“What happened to your leg?” Jake asked, completely out of the blue, as if he was trying to take his mind off the memories that were filling his head up, blocking it from the normal passage of thoughts, like a drain filled with food, keeping out water. Martin thought it was more than this though as he looked upon Jake’s inquisitive eyes. They were studying a long scar down his right arm – a scar that had been there for a great many years. If he had been able to see under Martin’s clothes he would have seen a great deal more scars, and he thought Jake probably knew this.

“It’s nothing,” he said, too quickly, his mind searching for a plausible excuse. “I was in a car accident,” he said, sounding entirely unconvincing.

“Are you Adam?” Jake asked and, in an instant, Martin was crying, as if Jake had found a switch and flipped it, changing everything in a second.

“How did you know?” Martin asked, pulling himself together very quickly, getting in control of his emotions and fighting back the tears that wanted to keep falling from his eyes like waterfalls. Why had he told that story? Because he hadn’t expected the kid to be so God damn smart.

“The limp, the scar, the violent reaction to my not being scared at the story,” Jake said, simply, looking sympathetic; “you don’t seem like a violent man to me, even if you did kidnap me.”

“I suppose I cheated you a little bit, Martin said with a dark laugh, fed you half truth half made up bullshit. No wonder it didn’t scare you. You told me your horror story and I hid mine from you. I guess you are the brave one, and I suppose after everything you’ve told me, I owe you the truth as well.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Jake said, “what happened to me… I just had to tell someone. I’ve been holding it in for a year now and it’s been killing me. I don’t talk to anyone anymore; I’ve lost all my friends; I’m failing at school; and I’ve contemplated doing things… bad things… to myself.”

“You did the right thing to talk about it,” Martin said, his heart aching once again, thinking about the boy hurting himself. “I’ve been keeping hold of my secret for over twenty years, and I have the strong suspicion that I let it kill me a long time ago. I think it’s about time I got it off my chest.”

Jake didn’t say anything, only sat in silence and waiting, not wanting to push Martin in any direction, instead letting him make his own decision about how much he was going to tell.

“So I was Adam, as you guess,” Martin started, “and when I was 14 years old I had a first date with the beautiful Mary around her house. While I was there, about to kiss her for the first time, we heard a noise – nothing so dramatic as a drum beat, it was more of a soft humming – coming from the garden. It came from her well and everything up to the point I fell in was completely true.

“Once we were down there, and I was lying in a pool of my own blood we found out who had been using the well – and you’re right, it was far more terrifying than a made up monster. It was that night that I often think my life ended, and I allowed myself to fall into a pit that would lead me here, living in a shitty run down apartment, stooping as low as kidnapping a kid to try and get myself out of trouble. The real ending to the story of the first date and the well went a bit like this…”