The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 17

Find your happy place.

Isn't that what they always say whenever you're trapped in the dark, alone, frightened and desperate for some small chink of light to help guide you out?

Well I used to have a happy place. Not anymore. 

Thoughts of our home, our marriage, our life together were all swept away in the flood, as if some great tsunami of blood came and destroyed everything I had ever cherished. Now that was gone and in its place was nothing but a lie. Now, in its place was nothing but pain.

And that is how I awoke. In pain. In fear of pain. And I don't know what was greater, the pain itself or the certainty that I was about to experience more than I could ever imagine. More pain than when I was writhing in a vampire's basement, saying farewell to my human life and feeling my organs fail one by one, feeling my own heart stop beating, feeling nothing but death as it triumphed over my broken body.

It was the music that roused me from my enforced slumber. It was loud, too loud; the volume vibrated the speakers and the noise hammered at my skull as soon as I began to regain consciousness. It was fast, violent and angry and in the dim recesses of my mind I recognised it.

"You like this kind of music?" I had asked Brandon, when he turned up outside the college gates in his brand new Golf, all sleek black chrome and pounding bass.

"You don't like The Prodigy?" Brandon had grinned, brushing the curls off his forehead. He'd hated the curls back then and used to cut it short at the back, trying to tame what I had loved about him from the first moment I had laid eyes upon him. "You'll grow to love them, trust me."

I hadn't, but had always pretended otherwise. Hearing them again now was like a kick to the stomach, another slashing blow to the memories I had once held dear. But the music seemed fitting somehow, with its relentless aggression and skull-splitting beats. Waking to that noise, to that song in particular, threw me violently backwards in time.

Of course, the stark reality was quite sobering. This wasn't college days. This wasn't back-seat teenage kicks on silky smooth leather upholstery. It was the alarming realisation that I was strapped to a chair, my wrists bound tightly behind me, my thighs wide and my ankles tied to the wooden legs. It was the shame of knowing I'd been stripped to my underwear. It was the blow to my skull that made my head throb, the blood that had seeped from the wound congealing in my hair. It was the all-encompassing fear that a blow to the skull was now the very least of my worries and probably the very lower end of the scale of what I was about to endure. And finally, when I pried open my lids and even the dim light from the one naked bulb hurt my eyes, I realised immediately that I was not alone and prayed for a quick end to it all, yet all the while knowing that I had run out of luck the moment I had foolishly decided to run towards my own fate.

The room was small and dark and I blinked once, then again when I thought I saw the walls pulsating, ripples appearing across the surface, the paint cracking and peeling onto the floor. Disorientated and dizzy, I looked again but this time the walls did not move. I clearly saw the smears of blood though, great splashes of red and swirls of brown like some nightmarish work of modern art. Closing my eyes and inhaling, I sucked in air that was fetid with their stench, an overpowering sickly odour that seemed to clog my airways and make me want to retch.

It was like a furnace, so suffocating and claustrophobic as if the heat was emanating from the brickwork and as my eyes grew quickly accustomed to my surroundings, I saw a number of shirtless figures, their muscular torsos already glistening with perspiration and I was reminded of Garrick's underground gym, the boxers weaving in and out, dancing around inside the ring. I watched through heavy lids as they flexed and stretched, cracking knuckles and rolling their heads about on their shoulders, as if warming up for a work-out. My own head drooped onto my chest, darkness trying to pull me back under, but a sharp slap to my cheek brought me quickly and painfully to my senses. My eyes popped open and my head snapped to one side, my skin stinging with shock.