Читать книгу The Jerusalem Puzzle - Laurence O’Bryan - Страница 16

Susan Hunter prayed. She prayed for her husband waiting for her back in Cambridge and she prayed for her sister. And at the end she prayed for herself. She wasn’t used to praying. She hadn’t done it since she was eight years old. And she’d never been into it that much back then either.

But she had every reason to start now.

The basement was perfectly dark. She knew how many steps away each wall was, fifteen one way, twenty the other, but some times it felt as if the dark was endless, no matter what her brain told her. Her hands were pressed tight into her stomach.

Pain was throbbing through her.

She was doing all she could to ignore it.

She wanted to cry, to wail, but she wasn’t going to. He might be listening. And he’d enjoy it too much. That much she knew.

Where he had the microphone placed in the basement, she didn’t know, but its existence was irrefutable.

He had come down after a period of her whimpering and played a recording of the noises she’d made to cheer her up. That was how he’d put it.

But the sounds hadn’t cheered her up. They’d chilled her until her insides felt empty.

And then he’d taken her upstairs. The pain then had been horrific. And in the end he’d made her say things, which he recorded.

Then he told her he’d enjoy burning her again, if she didn’t do exactly what she was told every time he asked.

The thought of how he’d said that, his certainty, was enough to set her praying again.