The Homestead

  The Homestead

  Quintus H. Gould

  Ancile Press

  First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Ancile Press.

  Copyright © Quintus H. Gould 2022

  The right of Quintus H. Gould to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. Except for that which is permitted under UK copyright law, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781739217204

  eBook ISBN 9781739217211

  Ancile Press

  71 - 75 Shelton Street

  Covent Garden

  London WC2H 9JQ

  ancilepress.co.uk

  For those who have no voice

  with which to speak —

  they suffer in silence,

  casualties of human nature.

  ACT I

  One

  Samantha had never been this hungover before in her life. Despite having been conscious for at least ten minutes, she dared not open her eyes for fear of the inevitable scorching of her retinas that would happen as soon as daylight reached them. Her head throbbed — not a little, but a lot — like a jackhammer had been pounding at her skull for the past twelve hours. Or longer, she thought, whispering even inside her own brain so as not to wince. She desperately needed a drink of water, but that would mean opening her eyes, and she was still not ready for that.

  The pillow on which her cheek rested was soft and cool and smelled like hotel linen. She pressed her nose into the fabric, indulging in the sensation of freshness that was so contrary to her current state of being. She shuddered to think what she looked like, hair matted in clogged drain clumps and last night’s mascara staining both her face and the soft, cool, hotel-scented linen… Wait! Where the fuck am I?

  Samantha had moved back in with her dad three months ago and had not changed the old, cartoon character bedding once in that time. The last time she spent the night in a hotel she had vomited all over the carpet and had not dared return to one since out of shame.

  This wasn’t home.

  She was relieved to discover the room was dark, or at least dim, when she finally convinced her eyelids to lift. Even in the dim light she could tell she was not anywhere she knew. Even if I had gone home with that prick Ryan, his place is a shithole. And certainly, the room in which Samantha found herself was not a shithole.

  It was from under the door that the light came in. It was pure white and somehow managed to interrupt the darkness and cast the room in a dark blue glow. As far as she could tell, there were no windows.

  Directly across from the bed where she lay were a toilet and small basin. They both looked clean, as did the floor, which was covered in generic white tiles. The walls were likewise decorated, tiles extending all the way to the ceiling. Parallel to the floor as she was, she could perceive a slight slope which led down to a drain in the centre of the room. It was all rather practical and made Samantha think of prisons and school bathrooms. Same thing, she thought, not that she had any experience with the former other than through the lens of a television screen.

  The blue glow mundanity of the room was disrupted by a red light in the top, far corner. Perched just above the door, which Samantha now saw was metal, was a small camera. It seemed to wink at her as she looked up at it. Self-conscious, she reached down to pull on her top, a thin camisole, which had risen up to expose her stomach. Fucking pervs.

  Aside from the camera, the bed, toilet and basin, there was nothing else to see. She still had no idea where she was.

  A scream outside the room was the first realisation that she wasn’t alone in the building — or wherever she was. She heard footsteps rush past the door and onwards to some unknown destination. The floor outside was hard and the sound echoed, as did the voices, mumbling, concerned, hushed tones of men and women. With her hand to her forehead, placed there as if to stop her brains falling out, Samantha raised herself off the bed and shuffled across the tiles to the door.

  ‘How far along is she?’ She heard a man ask outside the room. It must have been a corridor from the way his voice travelled. Another voice, a woman, she thought, said something inaudible in response. She heard the scream again.

  Samantha yet again wondered where she was, this time unable to squash the creepy-crawly tingle of panic that raced down her spine. She wanted to confront whoever was outside, find out where she was and demand to know how she had got there. First she had to confront the door. There was, however, one small problem, or rather, quite a large problem: the door had no handle. She tried pushing it, but there was no movement. Next, she ran her hand down the frame, the coolness of the metal nibbling her thumb as it brushed against the door, searching for a button, a lever, something, anything. As far as Samantha could tell, there was no way to open it. At least not from this side.

  Another creepy-crawly tingle down the spine.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, slow and uncertain and not anywhere near loud enough to be heard from outside. No one responded.

  Interrogating the door had fatigued her. She still felt groggy and her sandpaper throat was miserable. She remembered there was a sink in the room and guzzled some water, her mouth angled awkwardly underneath the tap, before returning to the bed to sit.

  Her dad always told her she was a ‘smart girl who had simply lost her way’ and she tried to tell herself that as she dug her fingernails into the edge of the mattress. Tears threatened to pierce the barricade. She didn’t know if she was angry or scared, so she decided she was both as she heard yet another scream reverberate down the corridor outside the room. The sound cleaved her brain in two.

  How did I get here?

  The events of last night were a blur, and piecing them together was painful, physically and emotionally. Her head groaned as she recalled getting a taxi into town from Martha’s house. Her heart flinched as she remembered meeting Ryan at the bar. How many times? She would have told herself ‘never again’, but this time she feared the option to break her own oath had been terribly, dramatically, stolen from her.

  Any attempt at remembering what had happened next was like wading through tar. She had met Ryan and then what? Samantha was twenty-two years old and her memory was usually sharp. Even when hungover. She had never experienced such a malfunction of cognition. The black canyon of missing time terrified her. Another scream.

  She was quite certain the noise was coming from a woman — a woman who was in tremendous pain. The last scream had softened into a low, protracted wail. Outside the room, the footsteps had stopped. The only other sound was that of her own breathing, and even that had become secondary to the screams of the suffering woman. Samantha wanted to go and punch her in the throat. Every sound she made was like a knife being jammed through her forehead.

  Breathe, she reminded herself. Just fucking breathe.

  She wasn’t sure how long it was before the door opened. The woman had not stopped screaming the entire time, that much she knew. The constant sound had incarcerated her on the bed, shoulders hunched, head bent over as her eyes looked, unfocused, at the chipped lavender nail varnish on her exposed toenails.

  When it did open, it did so without a sound. For all its apparent weight, the metal door glided, opening, just enough, for a person to step inside. Samantha was momentarily blinded by the light coming from the corridor outside the room. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. The door was closed and the room was dim again.

  ‘Some food for you, dear.’

  The woman didn’t sound ominous, but she certainly looked it, standing in the half-blocked light by the door. Samantha couldn’t see her face until she approached the bed, a tray of food held in front of her in both hands. She looked to be in her forties. Her face, porcelain white and blemish free, was framed by neat, shoulder-length blonde hair. A strand of pearls hung from her neck and rested on the collar of a delicate blue cardigan. She looked like somebody’s mother and smelled like one too. Freshly baked bread and floral soap. She had walked straight out of a Christmas movie.

  ‘Some food, dear,’ the woman repeated, gently pushing the tray through the air in Samantha’s direction. She took it wordlessly. As she cast her eyes down to inspect the contents of the tray, the woman stood over her watching, smiling. A bowl of what looked to be some sort of porridge and a glass of — what the fuck? The liquid inside the glass was a hideous, unnatural shade of green.

  ‘A vitamin drink,’ the woman said, as if she had read Samantha’s mind. ‘To help with hydration and recovery.’

  ‘Recovery?’ Samantha had to clear her throat before she was able to force the word out.

  ‘Yes, dear. You’ve been through a lot,’ the blonde woman chuckled. She would have come across as charming if it had not been for the scream which cut short her feminine giggle. Her smile flattened. ‘You’ve arrived at a busy time, I’m afraid.’

  Samantha said nothing. She was contemplating whether or not to tackle the woman to the fl
oor. She didn’t look like a threat. She didn’t sound like one either. Before she had a chance to decide either way, the woman stepped back towards the door.

  ‘Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a little longer before the doctor can see you,’ she said as she knocked twice on the door. Samantha heard a metallic click come from the other side.

  ‘Wait — doctor? What happened?’ Samantha managed to ask, her eyes straining to examine the woman’s face. Half in shadow, half in light, she looked ominous again.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Her tone was pleasant and soothing despite the shadows. ‘Everything is alright. Just focus on recovery.’

  The door opened, the light once again dazzlingly bright compared to the darkness of the room. ‘Do eat the food, dear,’ the woman said as she stepped outside. ‘And don’t forget the drink.’

  She smiled and then she was gone. After the door closed Samantha thought that if she squeezed her eyes half-shut she would still be able to see that smile, floating disembodied in the air where the woman had stood.

  ‘No chance,’ Samantha whispered to herself, looking at the peculiar green liquid in the glass. Her voice was coarse, her throat still painfully dry. Even so, the drink was not remotely appealing. She drew the glass to her nose and sniffed. Samantha decided it smelled like wet hay and dog urine. The blonde woman had mentioned a doctor. Perhaps she was in hospital. Perhaps it was a vitamin drink. Still not drinking it.

  The last time Samantha had been inside a hospital was the day she was born. When her dad fell from a ladder at work and broke his leg — or arm or back or whatever he broke — she had been living three hundred miles away pretending to study for a degree. Despite her lack of experience, she still felt quite certain hospitals had windows. And lights.

  Ultimately, it was her stomach that betrayed her. She told herself that she wouldn’t eat it, no matter what, but she was simply too hungry. Even porridge mush was better than nothing, and besides, it really didn’t taste that bad. It wasn’t like any porridge she had ever eaten before. Oaty, watery and cold by the time she ate it, the bowl the blonde woman had given Samantha also contained flecks of something else. They crunched against her teeth as she chewed. The colour was off — so was the taste. Definitely not porridge. Still, she devoured the whole bowl and felt better for it.

  It wasn’t until she struggled to stand after relieving herself on the toilet twenty minutes later that she knew something was wrong. Time felt slower and there was a blurriness to her vision that hadn’t been there before.

  She reached to steady herself on the basin and watched in slow motion as her hand missed the edge of the porcelain. Before she had time to react, she was face down on the floor, her underwear tangled around her knees.

  She cursed under her breath, or at least tried to. The singular syllable came out bloated and disfigured. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth and her arms seemed to stretch all the way to the other side of the room. Her top had risen up again, only now the camera could see her exposed backside as well. If she could organise her thoughts properly, Samantha would have reprimanded herself for having eaten the food. Instead, all she could think about was how her undignified captivity was most likely being live-streamed on the dark web.

  Contrary to what she assumed a lot of people in her life thought, Samantha had never tried drugs. She had been offered them — weed, coke, acid, even knew a guy who sniffed glue during his breaks while working at an old folks’ home — but had never luxuriated in anything stronger than vodka. How she felt as she lay, limbs outstretched, on the cold tiles was a novel experience.

  Inexplicably, the world started to collapse, like a piece of paper crumpled inside a fist. Unable to lift as much as a finger, all Samantha could do was watch as the walls turned in on her. A gargle drooled from her mouth onto the floor — an attempt at a scream. She didn’t want to die, not like this, crumpled inside a paper room. She imagined her dad having to identify her body, rump to the heavens, ensnarled in day old underwear.

  Then, pulled back to their usual position, the walls stopped. Blood pounded in her ears. She shifted her legs and tried to move but they were still held in place. Invisible hands. The hands of a translucent apparition that throbbed and pulsated as it manifested above her. ‘Sam,’ it snarled, pushing her into the tiles. She tried to swat it away with her mind and realised she didn’t feel anything, could not feel anything. The tiles melted away from underneath her and she felt her body fall. It fell deep into a well of unconsciousness.

  When she eventually woke, she thought the whole thing had been a dream. Then she realised she was still on the floor of that strange room. The screaming outside had long since stopped and, for the first time in a long time, Samantha felt at peace. Her mind was unusually silent.

  Pulling herself upright, she wiggled her underwear back up to where it should have been. Her jeans were likewise reinstated.

  There was no way for her to know how long the man had been watching her. When she realised he was there, sitting across the room on the bed, he stood up. The bedframe creaked as he did.

  ‘Hello, Samantha,’ the man said from the darkness.

  She didn’t respond. There was nothing she wanted to say.

  He walked over to her and crouched beside her on the floor. The rubber soles of his shoes squeaked on the tile.

  ‘May I help you up?’

  He had a nice smile. She knew she could trust him. Nodding, she gave him her hands.

  Two

  Sixty-one kilograms. A perfectly healthy weight for her height.

  ‘You can step off the scales now, Samantha.’

  She did as he instructed and returned to the examination couch.

  After helping her from the floor, the man had introduced himself as Robert. He looked to be middle-aged, wore a white coat and appeared immeasurably professional, from his smart, black shoes to the neat comb lines in his hair. When he spoke, he did so with an air of authority that was tempered by gentleness.

  He had taken Samantha to a different room. She had bumbled down the corridor, wincing at the light after being in the dark for so long. He had held her by the crook of her elbow, his grip strong, but not too tight, to make sure she didn’t fall, she supposed.

  The tiles had continued outside into the corridor, colder against her feet than the ones in the room. Subdued and graceless, her head lolled back as she walked. She had noticed the ceiling was made of those hideous fibre board tiles that were a universal feature of hospitals, schools and government offices. Hospital, she had thought, eyeing the man called Robert’s white coat.

  It was a short walk. They had stopped at a closed door, metal, like the one in the room. As Robert had fiddled with a set of keys that were attached to his belt by a retractable chain, Samantha had looked about the corridor. Opposite, a short way up from where they stood, was another doorway. This one was open, and inside she had seen a woman propped up in a bed, red-faced and senseless, her hair dishevelled against a mountain of pillows. At the foot of the bed was a transparent plastic baby crib trolley. The infant contained within slept peacefully as the woman, presumably its mother, gazed ahead at nothing. She had met Samantha’s eyes, or at least she thought she had, only for a second, before drifting back to her nothingness. Before Samantha had time to dwell on it, the door was opened and Robert had ushered her inside.

  Now he was taking her temperature.

  Thus far he had worked with basic efficiency, speaking to her only when necessary, returning to a small, leather-bound journal that sat open on a desk every few minutes to write a word or two. Her height, her weight, her temperature. Doctor stuff.

  Something must have happened after she met Ryan at the bar the day before. She wasn’t in pain, and, as far as she knew, had no visible injuries. Her head was the only thing that hurt. She wondered if Ryan was alright, but the thought was transient.

  ‘I need to examine you some more, Samantha,’ the man in the white coat said. ‘Could you please remove your clothes.’