All or Nothing (3 page)

FOUR

Rupert Shaw hadn't moved for fourteen minutes.

He wasn’t sure as to why, whether it was the acceptance of defeat or because he was finally out of the room and his claustrophobia was no longer an issue. Maybe the adrenaline had worn off and now he was going to revert back to his normal shy, cowardly self. Rupert Shaw shook his head and placed it between his hunched knees.

Fuck...stupid coward
.

The mystery behind the chasm gnawed at his consciousness.

How wide, how deep, how long was it
?
he wondered.

How many spikes were in it
?
Who'd put such a pit there
?
Why was he so scared to come to terms with this situation
?

Rupert wondered if he could cross it at all. The spikes were touchable from his position so the drop couldn’t be that far. Maybe he could slip into the chasm between the spikes and make his way round them until he reached the other side?

Maybe I would break both my legs just climbing in.

Maybe the spikes aren’t the only dangers.

Perhaps there are snakes, spiders, scorpions or poisonous frogs or wild animals?

No
, he thought.
This is the United Kingdom, you fool, they don’t have those creatures here.

Well,
he went on thinking to himself
. You thought they didn’t have bamboo spikes either. Or grass indoors. The United Kingdom doesn’t prevent people from roaming free, and it’s not a country where you get slammed up inside cages and allowed to go on random escapades in tunnels with no shoes on!

On the other hand, suppose he wasn’t in the United Kingdom
?

The thought sent more chills up his spine.

Rupert Shaw thought he might begin to cry again. The prickly heat behind his eyes told him so. But he held back, reasoning that crying would get him absolutely nowhere.
Don’t be such a pussy all your life
, he thought,
embrace this, do something about it. Here is your chance to redeem yourself for once.

He stood up and leaned against the safety of the wall behind him. He toyed with the idea of climbing into the pit beside the spikes and working his way through. It was a good idea, a genius idea.

Only one thing bugged him.

Removing his watch, he crept to the edge of the chasm and stood poised. He took a breath and dropped the watch into the chasm. He expected a clunk, within seconds, to signal the bottom of the chasm was only five feet below him.

He heard nothing.

For about fifteen seconds, silence greeted him. Then he heard a faint clunk as his watch touched ground.

What a waste of a good watch.

His heart sank. Quarter of a minute is a good depth: for a watch of that weight to reach the bottom, it had to be about a couple hundred feet, if not more. If he climbed in, he would die hitting all the shafts on the way down before his broken corpse hit the ground.

He was trapped.

Rupert Shaw dropped to his knees.

And began to cry.

Old habits die hard.

There was no possible way out of this situation. He would die here today, tear-stained and alone, (and shoeless, don’t forget shoeless), his body would be discovered maybe a year from now, maybe two, maybe five. Hell, maybe never.

Maybe he wouldn't be missed by anyone he knew, not least his mother, who, let’s face it, since she was likely to be on a drip for the rest of her life, probably wouldn’t even notice he was gone. He never visited anyway, he wished he had now. He would do anything to be next to his wheezing old mum now, holding her cold, motionless hand, watching her still body at so much peace yet having to cope with so much pain. He would even change places with her right now. At least he would know his fate.

Rupert sat down and rubbed his aching cold feet. His tears had started to subside now. Resigning himself to death, alone, hungry and in total darkness apart from the mystery diamond shape in the impossible distance, he started to think of what he enjoyed most in life.

Ah, what was the point, he would never again get to enjoy those things anyway, and thinking of such luxuries now would merely torture him. And his last memory would be of torturing himself because he was too dumb and too shy and too cowardly to do anything about his situation.

There isn’t anything I can do!
He thought.
I'm trapped!

Rupert rubbed his feet one more time before standing up and moving about, keeping himself active. He needed to keep warm. Making sure he kept on the grass -
where there is grass
, he reasoned,
there is soil, and where there is soil, there is solid ground
- he walked in small concise circular motions. He folded his arms, and he suddenly realised how chilly he was. Goosebumps pricked the flesh on his arms and he found himself thinking,
why do they call them goosebumps?
Surely geese had feathers, which was why you couldn’t see their skin, and surely they didn’t get cold because of the feathers’ qualities of insulation.

He made a note to find out if he ever got out of this mess.

Rupert was jumping and jogging about now to keep himself warm. If he was going to die in here, fine, he was okay with that, but he wouldn’t die cold and freezing. He refused to. Being a coward was one thing, but being an idiot was completely different.

His toe erupted in a blinding flash of searing agony.

OUCH!

GODDAMMIT!!!

Rupert collapsed, holding his left foot in both hands. He rubbed feverishly before the pain filled his brain. It was too late.

Rupert screamed.

The noise shattered the ominous silence in the tunnel, and echoed beyond the chasm and off the high ceilings. The shadows only gave the noise a weird kind of chill, lent a threatening tone to it. Rupert felt as if he was in a horror film.

The captive felt around his foot with his hands. His big toe and the second and third were split, and small cuts on the skin oozed blood. The big nail was cracked too. He felt the warmth of the crimson liquid against his fingertips. A wooden splinter stuck out of the second toe. Around the wound, small pockmarks started to bleed. Whatever he had stubbed his foot on was wooden, that was for sure. The damage was done.

Rupert leaned forward and moved his hand blindly in the darkness. He felt nothing. Moving closer, he groped at unseen darkness for what seemed like an eternity. The wait was painstaking. Finally he gave up, his hand not finding anything at all. Frustration built up inside him before he spat in anger. For a second, Rupert did nothing. Then he lowered himself, kneeling lower and stuck his hand out again. Once again, he found nothing. Just black emptiness in front of him. His hand waved about meaninglessly in the shadows.

His knuckles tapped wood. Only slightly, a glance at most, but he felt something like timber. The panel was there for half a second and then it was gone. Rupert moved closer, still aware of the chasm and its danger and, as he tapped, he felt wood again.

Joy overcame him in a wave of euphoria.

He held his hand against it. Still wary of the death-trap in front of him, Rupert edged closer to the wooden pole ahead. As he ran his hands up and down it, he discovered that the pole couldn’t be more than three feet in height and three feet in diameter.

What interested him, however, was the fact that rope was bound around the bottom of the pole. It was a thick, dusty, coiled rope. In fact, he could have sworn it was thicker than the pole itself. And dusty with age. The dust of years maybe, probably decades.

Smiling, Rupert slid to the right and found another wooden stub, identical to the first - well, maybe not in looks - but darkness did not permit such a comparison. Seconds later, he realised what it was. With bated breath he inched forward and placed his hand down.

He didn’t feel sharpened bamboo poles.

He was touching wooden slats, thick dusty splintered wooden slats.

Rupert laughed, loudly at first.

A bridge!

Praise the Lord!

Pushing his hand further forward, he found two slats, then three, four, and five, all placed next to each other. His fingers found the small gaps between them, below which there was nothing but thin air.

The bridge held when Rupert leaned all his weight on it. Dusty creaks emerged from several sinister areas in the darkness in front of him. Then silence enveloped him once more.

Rupert held his breath, stood up. Smiled.

He took another step. Same groans, same creaks. The bridge was flexible, Rupert could feel it swaying beneath his bare feet. The bridge held.

Rupert smiled again.

Then he ran, as fast as his legs would take him. Groans and creaks and moans emitted from the bridge’s structure as the soles of Rupert’s feet pounded the wood. His feet met solidity for a few moments before he realised he had passed beyond the wooden slats and was once again on cold concrete and grass.

YES!

I'm across!

Rupert dropped to his knees once again in triumph. He cried with joy and stood up, brushing off his knees. Sitting on his rump, Rupert relaxed a little, realising that the worst was over.

For now.

Warning bells rang in his head. If there were bamboo spikes, there had to be a human presence. If there was a bridge, that also suggested the presence of people. But why would anyone put a bridge over a chasm that was designed to kill him?

Sighing, he turned and looked for the familiar sight of the diamond-shaped light.

Focusing ahead, his eyes picked up the talisman that had eluded him for so long. He trod towards the light slowly, his feet aching from the running. The back of his hand wiped his sweaty brow.

“Hang on?” He startled himself by speaking.

Rupert’s feet came up against a concrete step. He placed the soles of his feet on it. He felt deep satisfaction, knowing that his footing was secure, as he climbed more steps. He peered at the diamond of light, which was now inches from his nose. The sudden strong light hurt his eyes for a few seconds as they became accustomed. He put his fingers against the diamond shape and felt. The darkness ended beyond this...window?

It seemed as if it was a window, embedded in painted wood. Running his fingers down further, his hands came across a shape, not part of the woodwork, something nailed to it after the window frame’s manufacture. His fingers traced it and he made out a cross shape, his suspicions confirmed when he felt the blob of metal attached to its epicentre. It was the shape of a man nailed to a cross. Jesus on the crucifix.

This was a door with a crucifix nailed to it. A religious person’s front door. Was this a sign? And who the hell has a tunnel like this leading towards their front door?

Rupert’s eyes had become accustomed to the light now, and he found that the window - or whatever it was - had a picture in its centre, silhouetted by the light behind it. It was a number. Tracing his fingers around it (using his sense of touch seemed more efficient than ever now, since his eyes remained useless in these conditions), he discovered the outline of the numbers six and four.

Rupert caught his breath.

Shaking his head, he stood back away from the light, which he now saw was certainly a window.

There's no way
.

He had seen enough front doors in his life to know what this was. The problem was that the door was very familiar. So much so, it hurt him to recognise it. The shape and feel of it, the significance of the numbers and of the pane itself. The smell of it, the rhythm as you climbed the steps below it.

There's no way in hell! 

The number 64. His favourite psalm. Psalm 64 spoke of protection from the conspiracy of terror. He knew it off by heart, had memorised it when he was fifteen, when he realised what he had wanted to be when he grew up. Saying the words in his head only made it worse. His personal life had now come back to haunt him.

This was his front door.

The Reverend Rupert Shaw was home.

***

Impressive.

The first man clapped his hands together once and returned them to his lap. Staring at his monitor, he was both appalled and proud of what he had just seen. Appalled because of the stakes, impressed and proud because for a man to do what Rupert had done in pitch blackness was both immensely exciting to watch and breath-taking to witness. A hint of comedy sprang to mind as he remembered seeing the man wave his hands blindly for minutes before discovering something as humble as a block of wood and some rope.

The man removed his spectacles and wiped them with the silk handkerchief he kept in his breast pocket. He put them back on his nose. He smiled and lifted his tumbler of red wine to his lips.

It was getting exciting now.

His victim stepped through the door he’d been standing in front of. The interior view of the well-lit room behind it filled the monitor. The camera’s angle changed the screen’s view to show the same man from a different angle, walking into a vast room. No darkness here.