FicWad

“Bob,” Frank began with a nervous edge to his tone, “you’re not going to actually use this on me are you?”
Bob smiled, innocently at first then drawing his lips thin into a sneer. Taking on a threatening tone, he explained:
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” rising from his knee, Bob leaned over the guitarist menacingly. “I’m going after Gerard next and he’s going to end up impaled on those viciously sharp spikes of the iron maiden, after that Ray is going to feel the crushing pain of thumbscrews, hot pokers and manacles and dear sweet Mikey will find out what it’s like to be locked into that gibbet over there and hung from the ceiling over a blazing fire. Then you, my dear Frankie, will grow steadily taller as I stretch you out on this contraption until you snap!”
Frank’s mouth fell open and he visibly shook with fear.
“Bob… please… it’s the house… you’re not like this! We’re your friends!”
“The house?” Bob shook his head and laughed. “What is it with you guys? This place is not, I repeat, not haunted! Ghosts don’t exist.”
“But… then why…?” Frank’s anxiety grew significantly worse as he now believed Bob was going to kill them out of choice. The drummer could see the look in his friend’s eyes and realised he’d gone a little too far.
“Frankie,” his voice softened, “of course I’m not going to use it on you, you idiot! You think this phoney haunted house has somehow turned me into some sort of psycho? You’ve watched far too many bad movies!”
Bob laughed at Frank’s new expression – indignant.
“Then why have you tied me to this thing?” he demanded.
Bob shrugged. “I needed somewhere to put you, the cell’s got a way out, this place is soundproof and it seemed to be by far the most appropriate and amusing option.”
“Amusing to who?” Frank snapped.
“Me!” Bob returned with a broad grin. “You had your fun, now I’m having mine.”
Frank pulled hard on the ropes but it was useless.
“Bob!” he pleaded as they held firm. “Come on, you got your revenge, now let me go.”
“One hour.”
“But what if it starts to work?”
“It can’t work on its own and besides, it doesn’t really work anyway, the ratchets only move until they detect the slightest pull, then it stops. None of these things work. Do you really think they’d let you hire out a place that had lethal instruments of torture on display?”
“But the iron maiden,” Frank shook his head, “Gerard inspected the spikes, they were real enough!”
Bob shook his head. “I checked it out, as you close the door, they retract. But of course, Gerard doesn’t know that!”
“You can’t do that to him!”
“I can, and if you try to warn him or any of them, I’ll find a way to get this rack working and I won’t stop stretching you till you’re taller then me! Got that?”
Frank nodded, pouting. He felt foolish, ridiculed and lacking. The joke was most definitely on him.

*
Gerard pushed the kitchen door open again and stepped inside. He felt his mood alter as he walked towards the table. There was, in addition to the unnatural chill in the air, a very real sense of foreboding and gloom. And, he realised, a combination of unbearable sadness, guilt and anger. The air was electric with an undisclosed tension and he knew immediately why Mikey had refused to enter. It felt uncannily similar to the atmosphere at The Paramour and Mikey had been particularly receptive to it.

“What are you doing?” Bob muttered to himself as he observed Gerard on the monitors in the control room.

On the screen, Bob saw Gerard slumped over the kitchen table apparently crying. He had heard the conversation, Bob knew that Gerard was looking for him and yet, half way through the search of the kitchen, the young singer had flopped down on a seat at the table and, resting his head in his arms, begun to cry. The sounds were soft at first as he wept gently onto his sleeve, but to Bob’s alarm, the sounds grew increasingly louder and Gerard’s whole body shook as wrenching sobs poured out of him.

Bob grew tense as he watched him. There was no way this was related to him and it all seemed so out of character. Something was wrong, very wrong. Something was affecting Gerard and he knew for certain that it wasn’t anything that was artificially created in the control room.

Gerard finally lifted his head, from the angle of the camera, Bob couldn’t see his face, but his bearing – hunched over with head hanging and wringing his hands – told the drummer that still Gerard wasn’t himself. Bob gasped as his concern was confirmed to him when Gerard reached forward and plucked out the knife still sticking into the centre of the table.

There was no time to question what was running through Gerard’s mind; Bob was already running down the secret passage to the kitchen. Pushing aside cobwebs as he ran down the dimly lit corridors, not even caring to be careful over his footfalls. Gerard was somehow in danger from himself. Bob didn’t understand how, but he didn’t care about that now, what mattered was Gerard.
The passage door was only half way open as Bob pushed through and raced towards Gerard still sitting at the table but now with the knife point pressed to his heart. Both hands were on the hilt ready to push. Bob felt the oppression in the atmosphere and to him it felt like he was running in water. Everything felt slowed down and the slightest movement ten times more difficult. Finally, after what felt like an age, he was there, at Gerard’s side, tearing the knife from his hands and throwing it to the floor.

“What do you think you’re doing!” Bob cried, shaken by the realisation of what he had just prevented.
The singer turned his head and glanced upwards. Bob’s eyes widened as for the briefest of moments it seemed as if the transparent image of another face overlaid Gerard’s own. In a split second it was gone and with it the terrible atmosphere in the room.

“Bob?” Gerard said quietly, then louder. “Bob!”
Bob frowned. He didn’t understand what had just happened but he knew he had to get Gerard out of there. Neither did he now feel all that comfortable about leaving Frank on his own, tied to the rack in the dungeon. Grabbing the still slightly dazed and shaken singer by his arms, Bob dragged him to his feet and through the still open passage door. He had to find out what was going on and that meant speaking to Frank – the only one of them who had researched the history of the house.