When September Ends

Chapter 2: Lay of the Land

"Help!"

The ground was a dizzyingly far distance away down the flat face of the English style manor. The green of the rolling grounds sprawling out before him for what seemed like miles before giving way to a copse of trees. The drive his captor had driven down meandered along its merry way, away from the house which had become his prison and towards the road which was barely visible in the distance. Cars drove by, filled with people. Oblivious. Unknowing of his plight. Wind sighed through the trees and slithered towards him across the tips of the blades of grass. Pleasantly cool against his cheeks, streaked with tears of frustration and fear, as Harry hung haphazardly halfway out of the windows of the room that he'd been locked in.

"Help me! Someone, help me! Please!"

It was more of a croak, now, than a yell. He'd been at it for a long time now. Hours, maybe? Definitely. Yes. Hours. Harry had screamed and screamed and screamed his head off in the desperate hope that someone, anyone, would hear him. Sure it was quite obviously private property. Sure, he couldn't see the houses of neighbors within hearing range in any direction. But there had to be someone who would hear his desperate pleas. Someone who had come and help him. A dog walker. A jogger. Someone!

But no one had. No one had heard him, it was nearing five in the evening and even having drained the entire thermos of honeyed tea Harry had almost lost his voice. Soon he'd be seeing the black Jaguar again and Tom would be back.

Maybe he'd have felt greater sympathy for the man who had so clearly short circuited from grief had he not been the one who was being kept like a prisoner in the bedroom of the other man's husband as a result. Now, at the thought of him he could only sneer. The other Harry could very well have died in the very same room he was now stuck in. On the bed he'd slept in.

No! No one died in this room; don't freak yourself out needlessly! That lunatic said something about a hospital, so surely Harry Riddle died in a sick ward. Not here!

He could hope.

"Help!" Now his voice barely carried at all. Huffing and on the razor's edge of being in pain, throat red-raw from all the shouting, he gave up for the time being and pulled his upper body back through the window. He began to circle again, like he'd been doing between the time he'd finished throwing his entire weight against the door and the time he'd started screaming like a banshee in the hopes of being heard.

Around and around he went. Around and around and around until the room-walls painted in pale gentle hues and floor clad in plush carpet-began to pitch and lurch and he collapsed to his knees. Queasy. Head spinning on his shoulders and his glasses askew. Regretting his actions severely Harry lay on his back on the floor and closed his eyes, waiting until the horrific sensation had passed and his stomach had calmed.

The sound of wheels crunching gravel reached him through the still open window before the vertigo could pass, swiftly followed by the sound of a car door slamming. Then the front door of the house opening and closing. Tom's footsteps reached him through the carpet as he pressed his ear to the floor but he did not approach the stairs.

His respite from the presence of his kidnapper would last for a while longer, it seemed. Best to make some use of it and take a look around the room; Harry had been too busy panicking and trying to escape to really bother doing so before now. Pushing himself up onto his hands and knees he looked around.

The walls, which prior to now he had only registered as 'pale' now solidified into a color that was partially between both blue and grey and the carpet underneath him was a spotless white. The bedframe, desk and accompanying chair were all made of dark polished wood. The rumpled sheets were the precise hue of printer paper and the settee was a soft dove grey. The top of the desk was bare of any clutter of paper, pens and other writing utensils separated into ceramic cups by color and type. The door to the closet-filled, Harry felt sure, with clothes that belonged to someone now rotting in the ground-was closed. The bookshelf, pushed against the wall opposite the bed between the window and the desk, was filled with a wide array of well-tended novels and the top of it had been scattered with numerous pictures in little metal frames.