The Shadow in the Dark (Part Twenty One)

 

Let it go, let it go

Can't hold it back anymore

Let it go, let it go

Turn away and slam the door

I don't care what they're going to say

Let the storm rage on

The cold never bothered me anyway

 

I was singing. I was singing along to the fucking song, ‘Let it Go’, from Frozen, as Rosemary gripped my left hand with her stronger right and encouraged me with smiles and little tugs of my hand. 

 

We were watching Frozen for the second time. The first had just been a straight forward viewing of the film, and I had been told to not get too excited and just watch the film. The second viewing was so that I would have the opportunity to sing along when each song began. Rosemary selected an option on the DVD that displayed the lyrics, bouncing along the bottom of the screen with cute frosty animations as the songs were sung.

 

“You’re having so much fun, Ashlee. Isn’t this the best birthday ever?”

 

“It’s really good, Rosemary,” I said. All the doors were locked and I could tell from her grip that Rosemary was a powerful and strong woman. And she was clearly insane.

 

“Have another gooey slice of cake, Ashlee,” she said, beaming as she picked up the cake knife again from where she had returned it to the table. It taunted me with its close proximity to my hand. This would be my fourth big slice of birthday cake.

 

“I’m really quite full, Rosemary, but thank you anyway.”

 

“Nonsense. Birthdays are for stuffing yourself full with cake until you burst.” She pressed another slice into my hands and dabbed with a napkin where a bit of cream had fallen on my skirt when I fumbled with the plate. “Do be careful, Ashlee. It may be your birthday, but I expect good table manners from little birthday girls.” Her happy face suddenly changed to one of a scowling expression. I saw a sudden darkness in her features as she mopped at the small cream stain. “You shouldn’t make me upset with you...”

 

“Sorry, I’m so clumsy today,” I said. For a moment she just stared at me as if I had drowned a kitten in a bucket of cold water, but then her happy smile returned. 

 

“Well, you can scrub your nice dress clean of the stain tonight before you go to bed, can’t you? Scrub-a-dub-dub! There’s probably a song for that? All’s well, that ends well, with a little elbow grease, that’s what I always said to my little Ada.”

 

I nodded and spooned some cake into my mouth. There was still a lot of cake left on the big plate. Rosemary had baked a very big cake. 

 

But during the film, I’d had a chance to formulate my thoughts to some degree. I began to theorise on what was happening to me. 

 

In 1963, post-modernist writer John Fowles launched himself onto the literary scene with his first novel, ‘The Collector’, a tale of an obsessive young man who kidnaps the woman he idolises from afar and imprisons her in the cellar of a remote country house. He convinces himself that he loves her and that, given enough time and comfort, she will come to love him in return.

 

But it was in 1965 that Fowles published his follow up book that would cement his reputation, a book simply entitled ‘The Magus’. The novel followed Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman, Oxford-educated but emotionally detached, who takes a teaching post on a remote Greek island called Phraxos. There he becomes entangled with Maurice Conchis, a wealthy, mysterious older man who lives in near isolation. Conchis draws Nicholas into a series of elaborate psychological ‘games,’ staged performances, and apparent supernatural events that blur the line between reality and fiction.

 

As Nicholas attempts to understand what is happening, he is repeatedly deceived, manipulated, and tested - intellectually, emotionally, and morally. Nothing in The Magus can be trusted at face value. Fowles explores how easily people accept illusions when they align with desire or fear. The novel suggests that reality is not fixed but shaped by perception and interpretation. The book became a seminal piece of fiction that pretentious, self-aware college students went on to idolise and discuss throughout the 1970s and beyond, and, arguably, it was the major source of inspiration for David Fincher’s 1997 film, ‘The Game’. At Mount Holyoke College, both Michael Emery, and, especially, Elijah Bannon, considered the book to be some illuminating gospel of metafictional awakening. They read from it constantly, discussed the meaning behind the symbolism of Maurice Conchis’s ‘God Game’ and the choices that Nicholas Urfe made in response to it. 

 

And now I had come to the inevitable conclusion that Elijah Bannon was playing his own God Game, and for whatever reason, he had chosen me to be his Nicholas Urfe.

 

If I was right, it meant I wasn’t mad, but rather Elijah Bannon was clinically insane. But why me?

 

I recalled how I had rebuffed his advances back at Mount Holyoke. I had been unattainable while I had been paired with his friend, Michael Emery. I think Elijah is the sort of man who expects to have whatever he wants in life, and the fact that he couldn’t have me made him very angry deep inside. I still recalled that final night on Graduation day when…

 

But, no, that can wait.

 

Had he been obsessed with me for all these years since Mount Holyoke? Was I truly ‘the girl who had gotten away’? Was this his revenge? Or was this merely some way of breaking me down, psychologically, until I became the pretty little plaything he seemed to want from women?

 

Clearly, he thought of himself as some postmodern ‘Magus’ – the title bestowed upon Conchis, figuratively speaking, in the book. This had to be a game, but a dangerous one. Just how dangerous, I could only hazard a guess.

 

I had to hold on to what I knew was true: my name is Ashlee Ellis and I AM an FBI agent. 

 

And I had to get out of here, for the other thing I had come to understand is that each time I woke up in that Frozen-themed bed it was because I had been with one of Elijah’s people. Presumably they had drugged me, taken me back to this rural house, and then set the scene for a repeat of the day before. If I could get away, even if I succumbed to some delayed effect drug in the cake or the Coca-Cola, I would at least wake up somewhere where they couldn’t find me. It would genuinely be a new day and I’d have proof I wasn’t going mad.

 

But how was I going to do that? All the doors were locked, and I was pretty well convinced that Rosemary was working for Elijah. How old was she really? Maybe younger than she had been made to appear. For all I knew she was a mixed martial artist cage fighter, capable of taking me down if I tried anything. Elijah wasn’t going to make things easy for me, now, was he?

 

I didn’t understand the rules of the God Game, but it did seem that so long as I played along, nothing too bad would happen. 

 

So far, anyway.

 

It’s only when I rejected the God Game, got angry, got hysterical, that Elijah upped the stakes.

 

“You know, you have such a lovely voice when you’re singing, Ashlee. You’re so talented.”

 

I smiled. 

 

“Between you and me - and my Ada would insist I’m wrong, so please don’t tell her I said this - but between you and me, I think you just sang ‘Let it Go’ better than the original! How about that?!” She nudged me. 

 

I tried to smile again. My eyes glimpsed the cake knife so very close to my hand. 

 

“Oh, let it go, let it go, let it go!” sang Rosemary as she sat beside me on the sofa. “Turn away and slam the door!” She then paused and gave me another smile. “I’m nowhere near as good as you, honey, but it’s such a lovely song, I can’t help but sing along with you. The song always meant so much to my precious Ada. Eat some more of your cake,” she added.

 

I spooned another piece of gooey cream cake into my mouth. “It’s lovely, Rosemary.”

 

“Baked it myself, I did. You can’t trust shop bought cakes, now, can you? Full of nasty numbers. Always stick with home baked, that’s what I say.”

 

I nodded. 

 

“Well, will you look at that, it’s beginning to get dark outside.”

 

I felt a tension in my chest as I saw the autumnal light outside begin to fade. 

 

“But we’ll be all cosy and warm out here, never mind the deep woods, our isolation, and the setting sun, honey. Rosemary’s house will keep you safe from spiteful old Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young.”

 

“What?!” The spoon rattled against my cake plate as I looked up, startled, at those rather unsettling words. ”What did you just say?”

 

“I said, how about Rosemary lights the log burner tonight, hmm? That will keep us warm. There’s nothing like the warmth of a log burner out here in the darkness, especially on your birthday. We can snuggle up under blankets, warm and toasty, and watch Frozen again! Now isn’t that a birthday to remember?”

 

I felt a sense of rising panic, as if the clock was ticking down and the next stage of the God Game was about to begin. “Rosemary, I…”

 

“Tell you what, I’ll just nip out to the Wood Shed and bring in some big fat logs for tonight. Best to do it now before the sun sets.” She patted my knee through my prissy powder blue skirt. “You have some more cake. I won’t be very long.”

 

Rosemary got up from the sofa and walked over to, not the front door, but the rear door at the very back of the house. I heard her fumble with the lock and open it, and then I heard her exit the house.

 

I didn’t hear the back door close.

 

I didn’t hear the back door lock.

 

I felt the tension rising up even further in my chest. I steadied my hands as they began shaking, and then I got up and hurried to the kitchen door, but that was locked. all the knives and sharp implements were behind that door, beyond my reach.

 

But the back door hadn’t closed. 

 

I returned to the living room, assessing my options, evaluating my chances.

 

Was this part of the God Game? Was I supposed to foolishly step out through the backdoor, myself? Was that what they wanted me to do?

 

I could just sit here of course, but was that part of the God Game, too? Were they testing how scared I was now?

 

I glanced out of the window. There was probably less than an hour of daylight remaining. I’d have to make a choice fairly soon. 

 

I felt genuinely scared. I was many miles from any civilization, or chance of help.

 

I tried to remind myself that I was FBI trained and I should be able to cope what this, but the nausea grew and I felt alone and powerless out here. 

 

And then it happened. The picture on the television suddenly changed. One moment it was the film, Frozen, and then suddenly I was looking at the picture from a grainy security camera that must be concealed in amongst the trees facing out along the side of the private road that stretched from this house to the main highway. I turned and watched the video stream. A flatbed truck was driving slowly down the private road towards this house. I recognised the flatbed truck. It belonged to Henry Bryant, the man who had given me a lift to the diner that first night when I had crashed my car. As the truck bumped along the private path, I saw there was an empty cage on the back of the flat bed, large enough to contain a reasonably large animal. 

 

The flat bed came to a stop perhaps three hundred yards from the house. I watched, my palms become sweaty with fear, as the doors to the cab opened. Henry Bryant stepped out from the driver’s side, as another man I hadn’t seen before emerged from the passenger side. Both men were now wearing old boiler suits – a dull grey in Henry’s case, and a dirty blue in the case of the other man. As I watched they both reached into the cab and produced leather full face pig masks that they pulled over their heads.

 

They reached again into the cab and took out a steel machete each. 

 

And then they slammed the doors to the cab shut, adjusted the grip on their weapons, and began walking slowly towards the front of this house.