The Keeper by Luke Delaney

waited for the flood of light to sting her eyes, but it never came and she remembered it was night. A thin beam threw a circle of light on to the floor at the bottom of the staircase. As the soft footsteps made their way down towards them the ray of light bounced around. He stepped into the room and swung the torch slowly and deliberately from one side to the other, ensuring everything was as it should be, exactly as he’d left it. Temporarily blinded, Louise could no longer see his silhouette, only the harsh glare of the torchlight touching her skin, making her shudder as surely as the touch of his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but she was sure he was smiling.
    A minute or two later the light behind the screen clicked on, the string cord swinging after he released it. Louise squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds while she prayed this was all a nightmare, an unusually long and realistic nightmare, but one that must end soon. If she could only chase the sleep away and wake herself then this would be over. It would leave her shaken for the rest of the morning, but by lunchtime it would have faded like a watercolour left in the rain. But when she dared open her eyes again he was standing there, peering into her very being, a torch in one hand and a tray in the other with a happy smile on his face.
    He carefully placed the things he was carrying on what she assumed was some kind of table behind the screen and began to nervously approach her, one or two small steps at a time, his right hand outstretched in front of him palm up, as if he was approaching a stranger’s dog. ‘It’s OK, Sam,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘It’s me. I didn’t wake you, did I? I didn’t mean to disturb you. I only wanted to make sure you were all right.’ He fell silent as if expecting her to answer. She didn’t. ‘You should be feeling a lot better by now, the effects of the chloroform should pretty much have gone.’ Still she didn’t answer him, but she watched him, watched his every tiny move. He gestured to the tray hidden behind the screen. ‘I’ve brought you more food and something to drink, a Diet Coke – I remembered it’s your favourite.’
    Some deep survival instinct told her she had to answer him or soon she would become to him what Karen Green already was. Had that been Karen’s failure, her damnation, that she hadn’t been able to answer him? ‘Thank you.’ She forced the words out, her voice sounding weak and broken.
    A wide, relieved smile spread across his face. With his new-found confidence he moved too quickly towards her cage, startling her. He froze for a second, aware his impatience had frightened her.
    ‘Don’t be afraid, Sam,’ he almost begged her. ‘I would never hurt you, you know that. That’s why I brought you here, so I could look after you, protect you from all those liars, all those liars who told you all those things about me to keep you away from me. I always knew you didn’t believe them, Sam. And now they can’t hurt us any more. We can be together now.’ More silence as he waited for her to answer.
    ‘I need the toilet,’ she told him, the thought and words coming from nowhere.
    He stared at her for a while, his mouth still holding a thin smile, but his eyes darted around in confusion and fear. ‘Of course,’ he eventually answered. ‘I thought you probably would.’ It wasn’t how she’d expected him to answer. ‘I’ll have to let you out,’ he continued. ‘Where you won’t be as safe from them, Sam. They’re still in your mind, you see. All the things they did to you, they’re still in your mind. They might try and trick you, get you to do something you don’t want to do. They might try and make you hurt me.’
    ‘I won’t,’ she forced herself to say. ‘I promise.’
    He pushed his hand into his loose tracksuit bottoms and fished around awkwardly for something, before finally tugging the black box free and showing it to her. She recognized it immediately,