Reckoning Point, стр. 69

Just asking for it.

Well, she asked, she got.

But it pains him, because she’d been so sweet at first, before he knew her story.

Yes, it is painful, so he should get her out of the way first, and quickly. And then, with the other two, with her gone, he will be able to enjoy exacting his revenge.

He opens the small doctor’s case that he keeps down here. Casts his eye over the instruments. He doesn’t clean these ones, he has no need to. Gently he caresses a scalpel that is almost as old as he is. The skin on the pad of his finger moves bumpily over the rust that coats the blade. Plucking it out he holds it up and turns to face the girl.

For the first time, before he’d even registered that something was wrong in his basement, he realises how quiet she has been since he came down the stairs. Now, seeing her chair, overturned and empty, he knows why.

She has gone.

Lev gives up concealing his attempts to free himself as the doctor stalks up and down the basement. He kicks out at Elian’s chair.

“Where is she?” he spits at Lev. “Where is the girl?”

Lev shakes his head helplessly. “There was nobody there when I woke up,” he says, desperation clear in his lie.

“Rubbish!” shouts the doctor. “Absolute, plain, nonsense!”

Even when he is angry, when he is utterly, downright furious, his language is that befitting the persona he puts on, thinks Lev. But he’s about to blow, and I’m still–

Lev’s thoughts shudder to a halt as his hands burst free. He wants to bring them round to his front, to examine them, to rub at his wrists to get the blood flowing again, but he suppresses the urge, links his fingers behind his back instead, trying not to let the elation show on his face.

Instead he sits, as calm as he can manage, wondering when to make his move, wondering what the doctor is going to do, for surely he is going to do something. To Lev the doctor looks like a pressure cooker, his feet are moving on the spot in a strange dance, his arms and head are twitching.

Something’s gonna happen, thinks Lev, I need to be ready, because any second now the doctor is going to do someth–

Again Lev’s mind goes blank as the doctor finds an outlet. Raising his hand, Lev sees the scalpel that the doctor clutches for the first time. And oh, thinks Lev, that’s the end of that old fantasy, with that blade that is practically dripping with rust. But what is he going to do? Lev’s body tenses of its own accord as he mentally prepares himself for the blow, and when it doesn’t come another thought comes, a magical one, that maybe the doctor will turn the blade on himself.

But the doctor spins around, fury coming out of his mouth in an odd ‘yak-yak-yak’ sound, and the doctor turns, and plunges the scalpel into what he thinks is the already dead form of Roland.

Oh no, thinks Lev, as Roland’s eyes fly open and his mouth forms a tunnel from which a silent scream emerges. Oh no, oh Jesus Christ … this is where it ends.

Roland finds his voice as the blade pierces his shirt just above his stomach, and of all the noises in all the violent ends that Lev has witnessed, he has never heard a sound like this one. And the doctor, stunned by the dead man who has come back to life, is stilled.

Lev lurches to his feet, knowing this is the time, the only time, and even as he is moving across the room something tells him that the doctor may have locked the door at the top of the stairs, and if Lev reaches it and can’t get through, he’ll have to come back down, and the doctor will have had time to hide in the shadows with his scalpel hand at the ready. And Lev can’t believe he thought all of that in less than a second, and he knows he is functioning on pure adrenalin now, and so he heads for the tiny door which Elian had escaped through earlier, knowing that he will be letting the doctor know their escape route, but he can’t see any other way, and like Elian before him, he feels like he is flying too as he covers the few feet between his chair and the door.

He clutches at the side of the door and pulls it with all his might, not expecting the trapdoor to be as light as it is, realising he is almost falling back towards the doctor who seems paralysed. Feet scrambling like a cartoon Lev clears the low step into the tunnel. Should he close the door behind him or will it waste precious time?

Forget it, just … fucking … RUN, he instructs himself, screams at himself and he doesn’t know if he shouted the words or if they are in his head.

But collect yourself a little, says a soothing voice inside him, because you are fucking panicking and you will run straight into a wall and knock yourself out and when you wake up he’ll be standing over you with that dirty scalpel, slicing, slashing …

“Wooooo,” shrieks Lev, the thought doing nothing to make him more careful, instead lending wings to his feet that are already carrying him faster than they ever have before.

And as he turns the first dark corner, he takes comfort in the fact that he cannot hear any footsteps behind him. The only sound he registers is the noise of his own heavy breathing, and Roland’s screams of agony that chase him down the tunnel.