Page 68 of The Taskmaster
“Talk to me,” I urged, and she knew better than to argue, despite giving a cute little huff to protest.
“When I was little, I used to get upset a lot,” she said. “I hated that my dad worked such long hours, and he was always working nights. The house didn’t feel safe without him there. And most nights, I played my mum up, refusing to eat dinner or go to bed, you know, the usual bullshit we pulled as kids.”
I didn’t know. When I was a kid, I’d wished I had a room to myself that I could hide in and lock the door at night. As for food, I was lucky to get any. But she didn’t need to know that.
“Anyway,” she went on. “One night, when my dad was home, he came to my room and sat on my bed. He told me I needed to be better behaved for my mum when he was away. He said it wasn’t fair to her that I caused trouble, and he felt guilty for not being there. But he told me it was important for him to be out of the house doing his job. He was a police officer and people needed him. He said he was like a superhero... and then he told me about the boy in the cupboard.”
My heart stuttered, and there was pain in my chest as the air in my lungs felt like it’d been violently ripped out.
“What was the story?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know what she knew. One hundred percent sure I didn’t want to take a trip down that shitty memory lane, especially not now, lying here.
“My dad told me about a crime scene he’d had to attend, where a couple had been killed. Well, he didn’t tell me that part when I was little, but I figured that out when I was older. He said he was doing a routine sweep of the house, checking for clues, as he called it, and he opened a cupboard door, and found a little boy. The boy was dirty, malnourished, and smelt really, really bad. He was sitting on a filthy mattress that’d been shoved into the bottom of the cupboard, and Dad said it was soaked in piss and shit. Actually, he used the words bad stuff, but I knew what he meant.
“He said if he hadn’t been there to save him, that little boy might’ve died. And that was why he had to do what he did. That’s why he had to leave me for a while, because other little boys and girls needed him. He apologised for me having to share him, but after hearing what he said, I kind of got it. I still didn’t like it, but I understood.”
“You have nightmares because of a boy in a cupboard?” I asked, waiting for the ball to drop, because that couldn’t be the reason she was shaking in my arms. That was years ago. A memory I preferred to keep in the past.
“No. It’s not just that.” She took a deep breath. “I went into his office one day, when he’d forgotten to lock it. I saw a folder on his desk, and when I opened it, I saw pictures, photos of the boy in the cupboard.”
What the fuck?
There were photos?
Why didn’t I know that?
“They were close-ups of the injuries,” she continued. “And there were notes too, describing the things that’d happened to him.”
“The girl who breaks into people’s homes, ties them up and stabs them is scared of a child neglect case?” I know I sounded unsympathetic, and she had no idea it was me she was talking about, but I couldn’t help but make light of it. It was my way of coping.
“It wasn’t just child neglect, Isaiah. The things that boy went through were... sick. And reading stuff like that can fuck you up. I haven’t thought about it for years. But lately, I can’t stop having these dreams, these nightmares where I’m the one stuck in the cupboard. The walls are closing in. I can’t get out. I can’t breathe. And then I see it...”
“You see what?”
“Him.”
“Who?” I sat up, the duvet falling off my chest as I leaned over her, and I put my hands either side of her head. This was why she was having nightmares. We were getting to the crux of it all. This wasn’t about my abuse, but something far more sinister. This was about her. “Who do you see, Abigail?”
“No one.” She turned, pushing my hand aside, forcing me to lie back on the bed. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Why not? I want to know. Tell me who you see.”
“You don’t have to know everything. Just accept that there’s some things I don’t want to talk about.”
“You didn’t seem like the type to shy away from anything tonight, so what’s changed?”
“I do have feelings, you know. I’m not a monster. I can’t just switch off my humanity and pretend I don’t feel.”
I could. My problem was the opposite. I had trouble feeling anything. It was a curse that was changing dramatically nowthat I’d met her, but still, I couldn’t understand why she was so affected and why she wouldn’t tell me.
“I get that,” I told her.
I didn’t.
But a few little white lies never hurt anybody.
“But I just want to help you,” I added.
“Maybe this time you can’t. This one isn’t going to burn to ashes or disappear into a lake.”
