Lineage(100)

He pulled his hand back and dropped it to his side. The thought of just stepping into the room to look for a light crossed his mind, and he flung it away in revulsion. He turned from the doorway and walked to the stairs, throwing a look over his shoulder every few steps.

It took him only a few seconds to bound up the stairs to his room, where the shotgun lay. He held it up and flicked the flashlight on. A satisfying jet of white light erupted from the end, and Lance walked back down to the room, prodding at the darkness with the beam.

The room wasn’t deep, no more than ten feet from the doorway to the far wall, which looked to be unfinished stone. As he neared the threshold, Lance shone the light into the crack where the door hinged into the room. Nothing peered back at him from the crevice. He had almost stepped into the room when he stopped. He turned and grabbed a nearby box of books that he hadn’t had the chance to unpack yet. Placing the box directly in the doorway like a wedge, Lance stepped around it and began to sweep the room with the light.

The room ran farther down the edge of the house than he expected, almost twenty feet. An object at the far end grabbed his attention, and his finger tightened on the trigger. When he looked closer, he realized that the form was a chair of sorts. As he approached, swinging the gun and light in all directions to assure he was truly alone, the chair began to take on detail. It looked to be made out of stainless steel. Its shape resembled a fat capital H with its bottom filled in. It had no back for a seated person to rest against, only the two flat armrests. Its bottom was bolted in place, heavy lags disappearing into the wood floor. Two steel shackles were attached to the front of the base, their mouths open, awaiting a meal. Lance shone the light upon the armrests and saw another two shackles bolted there.

“What the f*ck?” he whispered. He stepped to the back of the chair, sidling around it, his face held in a wrinkled grimace. There were no other features in the room save the chair. The walls as well as the floors were bare. He scanned the ceiling and confirmed that there were no light fixtures.

Before he’d realized it, he had circumnavigated the chair and had come to rest where he’d started. Lance looked toward the door. It hadn’t moved, but something caught his eyes as he swung the light back toward the chair. The floor. He retreated a few steps and swung the beam back and forth. The wood looked darker around the chair, almost black compared to the rest of the house’s deeper bronze. A feeling began to form in his stomach, like a cold-water pipe had burst there.

Lance moved his light farther away from the chair. The floor’s color lightened. He walked to the far end of the room. The floor darkened directly behind the chair. Lance licked his lips, an idea taking shape. He felt his heart slam harder within the confines of his chest. He knelt behind the chair, laying the shotgun beside him. Slowly, he leaned forward, bringing his face closer to the floor.

His nose was an inch away from the wood when he smelled it—the distinct tang of rust and copper. He sat up, wondering if he’d imagined it. The thought hadn’t seemed possible, but now he actually smelled it—blood. The wood around the chair was stained with blood. The wood had gathered it there, sucking it thirstily, and somehow held its faint but unmistakable aroma for as long as the door had been shut. Years, at least.

A sound broke his reverie. He sat up, looking toward the door, his ears perked and his eyes wide. The doorway called to him with its light, beckoning him to leave.

The sound came again, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen. It had been the soft noise of air escaping the restrictions of a throat. A sigh. Pleasurable almost. But the worst part of hearing the sound again wasn’t its cause, it was its location.

The sigh had come from inside the room.

Lance swallowed a knot forming in his throat and turned his head toward the far corner, where the gun’s light shone on a pair of bloodless bare feet. They were facing away from him, toward the corner, as if their owner had been sent there for punishment. Lance tried swallowing again and realized all of his saliva had evaporated from his mouth. He felt his hands touching the hard stock of the shotgun, his eyes never leaving the feet. The gun slipped into his hands and he raised it, sliding the light up the form that stood in the corner.

The feet were attached to equally pale legs lined with blue veins, and above them were the sagging buttocks of an old man. As he rose to his feet, Lance could see the sharp line of the man’s spine, the gun shaking in white-knuckled hands. Stooped shoulders rested below a scrawny, wrinkled neck. The head was almost hairless, just a few wisps of white visible in the powerful beam’s throw.