He had gone. He just left me, left my lying there utterly alone on that cold hard ground. My body was beaten, bruised and bloodied.

  Waves of pain rippled through me relentlessly, each one leaving me gasping for air. Everywhere that lash had struck, burned as if searing hot flames licked at me. My breathing was fast and shallow, and with each breath came a fresh stab of agony twisting like a knife inside me. My skin felt cold and sticky, my own blood mixing with the clear liquid weeping from my wounds.

  This couldn’t be happening to me, I wrestled with the impossible truth of what Lars had done to me. Despite everything that had occurred, even with my injuries still raw, I refused to believe that he was capable of this sort of brutal cruelty. But the memories kept flashing back before my eyes like reflections in the broken mirror of my shattered life. The brutal crack of the switch and the agonising pain that followed it, every sensation still vivid in my mind. The look on Lars’ face, his twisted smile, the cold glint in his eyes, the enjoyment that he seemed to be getting out of torturing me. The sound of my own screams, still ringing shrilly in my ears.

  Did he even see me as human anymore? Was I just an object in his eyes? The dog food, the lash. He was trying to strip away any scrap of humanity that there was left in me. He was trying to reduce me to little more than an animal in a cage.

  I lay there, unable to move. My joints were swollen and seized, my muscles contracted and cramped with any attempt that I made to move them.

  I felt my stomach clench and twist, turning itself into a knot as a wave of nausea washed over me, the taste bile rising bitterly in my throat.

  I remember a sudden feeling of light headedness, my vision blurring as my surroundings shifted in and out of focus. The pain, the constant stabbing, the agony of a thousand knives all over my body, it was still there but it seemed different now. It was duller, muffled is perhaps the best way that I can think of to describe it. The ground underneath me started to shift and sway back and forth. A feeling of extreme exhaustion crashed over me like tidal wave.

  My body grew heavy as the ground below me seemed to evaporate and slowly I began to sink downwards into nothingness. Colours swirled before my eyes, the constant, drip, drip, drip faded into a distant and muffled murmur.

  My thoughts began drifting and unravelling, my eye lids fluttering until they eventually closed and I slipped into the blackness.

  As I slipped into unconsciousness, I became trapped in the black void of my own mind.

  They were there in that void, those creatures from the darkness. Those red flickering eyes, spiteful and cruel. Their sharp, razor edged teeth, white, long and jagged, glinted in a cold light. They crowded around me, in that place they were emboldened, they had no reason to be afraid of me, no reason to hold back. I had no form, no body, I had no arms to swat them away or legs to kick out at them as they swarmed over my soul. A shudder passed over my shapeless being as I felt them, claws scampering over me, scratching, teeth biting at me, snapping at my very sanity.

  I screamed out a silent scream, desperately trying to wake myself, desperately trying to claw my way back to the world of the living. To return to that smashed and broken body of mine, to the pain and the agony. A torment that was infinitely more tolerable than the place of horrors that I had found myself in.

  Was I dead, had I already crossed over? Was this Hell? A chilling thought that lingered on in my mind.

  In desperation I reached out. I had no physical body but arms that existed only in my imagination extended, groping in the impenetrable blackness. Finger tips, just whisps of thought clawed at the void, desperately trying to find a way out. The darkness was infinite, it stretched out into eternity. It was endless yet it constrained and confined me. A smooth, cold, ice like wall, surrounded me, holding me trapped in the dark recesses of my own subconscious.

  There were no cracks, no fissures or texture, nothing to get a grip on, only the smooth, unbreakable barrier that held me firm.

  The creatures mocked and taunted me, their soft hushed voices surrounded me with their whispers. Whispers of the evil, dark and depraved things that they would do to me, of torture, of worse. They hissed accusations, reminders of the things that I had done. Their wheezing laughs constantly tormenting me as their teeth continued to gnash at me.

  And then came the silence. It came suddenly, one moment it was all clashing teeth, scrabbling, scratching claws and the rustling hiss of their voices and then there was nothing. Nothing except a heavy, oppressive silence that pressed down on me. The creatures’ eyes still flickered, still watching me but there was no sound as they dissolved, slowly back into the darkness. It was an unnatural silence, there was nothing, even my own breathing and heartbeat was absent. Of course, in that place I had no breath, no heart, in that place I was neither alive nor dead.

  It was then that the smell hit me, a smell sharp and acrid. A smell that felt familiar, a smell that assaulted my senses, it spun my head with a rising nausea. It was a smell from my darkest nightmares.

  It was a smell that conjured up a sense of dread and horror. My eyes darted from left to right, up and down searching in the shapeless void, peering deep into that thick blackness, a blackness that was punctuated only by the flicker of red eyes, eyes that watching me expectantly.

  That smell grew stronger, more intense, more sickening. That was when I saw him. With his eyes glowing a deep crimson red, eyes that were in stark contrast to the scattered red flickers of the lesser things. Unlike the creatures, his eyes were steady and deep, burning hot with a fierce intensity. With a face that was dark and featureless he turned towards me, his gaze fixing on me, a predatory focus that burrowed deep into my very being. Soundlessly the Shadow Beast began to drift towards me, wispy tendrils of darkness following silently behind him as he moved.

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  A cold wave of terror crashed over me. A scream tore from me, a scream that was soundless in the vacuum in which I floated. Hands that didn’t exist here frantically scrabbled against that glass like barrier which constrained me tightly, a barrier that was beyond the endless horizon.

  The Shadow Beast towered over me, his shapeless form filled my vision with its blackness. It was an unholy blackness, a darkness that seemed to suck in any small slivers hope and strength that remained within me. I could feel the frigid cold which radiated from his being, a stark contrast to the searing heat that emanated from the burning, glowing coals of his eyes.

  His ghostly hands thrust out towards me, groping forwards. He grabbed my shoulders with hands that solidified as he touched me. A touch that was both a biting cold and a blistering heat. Bony fingers dug into my flesh, pressing through to my bones.

  Desperately I sought escape, feeling for any crack, any weakness in the barrier which held me in this unholy place.

  The weight of him pressed down upon me, pinning me firmly down to the ground. A ground that couldn’t exist here but nevertheless, was.

  “Heidi!” his voice hissed, his breath hot on my face, stinking, sickening and pungent.

  I needed to escape, I needed to find a way out of that place.

  I could feel him, I could feel his hands touching me, slowly running over me.

  My fists, fists that weren’t a part of me but somehow were pounded hysterically at the divide. It was solid and unyielding.

  Striking out at it, I pounded on it in desperation. Suddenly my ethereal hand felt something different. A patch in the barrier, while still hard and firm, felt different from the rest. Somehow it felt hollow, a fragile point in the impenetrable wall.

  The Shadow Beast’s face moved closer to mine, the full weight of him now bore down on me oppressively.

  Striking out again and again at that fragile spot, I threw all that I had into it. With one final, desperate blow I felt something shift. A hairline fracture, it was small at first but then it began to spread, widening into a crack. One crack became two, two became three until a spiderweb of cracks crawled out across the wall.

  Suddenly the image of my surroundings splintered in front of my eyes, fragmenting into broken shards in my mind.

  The raw heat of pain flooded over me, my muscles once again burning, bones again aching as I crashed back into reality. My mouth opened, gasping for air, air that was stale and damp. My eyelids flickered, revealing the sight of the deep red of the late evening sun, forcing its way in through the small grubby window. Light that cast long shadows across the ground, shadows that reached out at me, clawed towards me across the concrete floor.

  The red glow gradually faded to purple and then black as night fell and the room descended into darkness.

  It was a sleepless night that offered no solace. Even if I’d wanted to there was no way that I would have been able to find rest. No position was bearable, always that hard, unforgiving ground would be pressing on something, a bruised rib or a sore on my hip. Each movement, every attempt to find comfort brought a fresh wave of torment, a reminder of just how broken I was. Joints, swollen and stiff creaked and protested, my muscles cramped in painful spasms and wounds that were dry and crusted, broke open releasing a fresh trail of warm blood.

  And then, as it always was when the night fell and the shadows engulfed that room, the creatures would come out. Those flickering eyes, surrounding me, their dry, rustling voices whispering to each other. They whispered about me, spoke of the things that I had done and the things that I would do. They tormented me constantly, hissing names at me, Lars, Lela. Names of those that I had hurt and betrayed. But on that particular night it wasn’t them that I was afraid of. My eyes scanned the darkness, straining in the inky blackness. A flutter of apprehension writhed deep inside me. No, it wasn’t them, it was the Shadow Beast that I feared. He was out there somewhere, he was out there hunting for me, stalking me just as he always had. Sooner or later, I knew that he would find me.

  I knew that I couldn’t let myself sleep. Sleep would just mean a return to that dark place inside my head, the place where the Shadow Beast knew that he could always find me.

  Time crept on, minutes turning into hours, the drips from that tap like the ticks of an old grandfather clock marking out the passing of time, second by slow, agonising second.

  Eventually, the black of the darkness began to lighten into the dim grey of the morning. The sharp pains of my injuries had dulled overnight somewhat and settled down into a deep ache.

  I slid myself back across the rough ground, wincing as the concrete rubbed abrasively on my damaged skin. Back until I could rest up against the wall. I didn’t try to stand or walk, I didn’t trust my legs to carry my weight.

  The grey light of the morning pushed the shadows back into the darkest corners of the room, and with the shadows, retreated the creatures. Their voices were little more than a soft swish. If I hadn’t known better, I could have mistaken that sound for the wind brushing against the window pane. But deep down I knew what it was, it was them.

  The morning broke, but while it gave me some relief from the torment of those creatures, it brought with it a darker promise, something far more terrifying. Soon, I knew that there would be a click in that old lock, the door would open and Lars would return to feed me.

  My gaze absently drifted to a bowl that was sat on the floor in the middle of the room. A plastic bowl filled with dog food.

  Thinking of him brought back the memories of yesterday’s attack. My body quivered, shaking as the images came back into my head, images of Lars swinging that lash, the sickening crack as it struck my flesh, the unbearable agony as it bit into me.

  What mood would he be in today? How would he react when he saw me? They were questions that I just didn’t know the answers to. He had always been unpredictable, his moods could shift wildly from one day to the next. Some days he was friendly, I would almost allow myself to believe that he cared about me, wonder if there was some hope that we would be able to repair our fractured relationship. On other days, a chilling darkness seemed to descend on him, leaving him threatening and intimidating. Often, he was just silent and sullen, he would simply come in, put down my food in front of me and walk away without so much as a word. But, yesterday had been different. Yesterday was something very different. I had never seen him like that before, the rage and the anger in him was raw and primal, an overwhelming torrent of fury and hate.

  While the injuries that I had woken with after the months that I had been held, drugged and sedated. Injuries and the fragmented memories of that time, memories that I still couldn’t piece together all suggested previous violence. This was the first time that I possessed a clear and direct memory of the horrific extent of my brother’s cruelty. It was undeniable now.

  Something had changed in him, the cold, unreadable mask that he usually wore had slipped, revealing behind it a darkness and malevolence. Had his mind finally cracked? It would be some time before I would learn the truth, learn what had happened to finally shatter my brother’s already fragile mind, to learn what he had done.

  My tongue felt thick and rough, like sandpaper on the parched, dry roof of my mouth. The hollow, burning ache of hunger gnawed away at me from inside.

  My eyes fixed on the dark passageway, I waited for the lock to click and the grating sound of the old, heavy door opening. He would be different today, he would be kind, caring. He would look after me. Those thoughts went round and round inside my head, I desperately tried to convince myself, desperately told myself that it would be alright.

  But the voices from the shadows, they called out to me, taunted me. “Lars! Beat you! Kill you!”

  The light in the window brightened slightly as the day began to draw on, a fresh chill settled on that room and shivers rippled down my spine. I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. My skin was a patchwork of bruises, purple, blue, red all streaking across me, the colours crisscrossing each other.