Page 120 of Finding Noah

“Hey!” I called out again, switching gears and deciding to take a different approach. “H-hey, listen. I know you're there, all right? You got me chained up. I can’t do anything here. I just wanna talk. Please. Why are you doing this to me? Can you just tell me why you're doing this?”

A door creaked open from the far left, and still, I saw nothing. Whatever that door led to on the outside of this room—a cellar maybe—it was as dark as the space I was being held within. But thanks to the limited light cast by the moon, I could make out the shadowy figure as he entered.

I willed my heart to settle, but it didn't seem to listen as the door was closed behind the figure. The heavy beat resounded in my ears, and I was certain he could hear it. How could he not? That frantic drumming, the evidence of my fear, filled the room as he grabbed something from a corner and pulled it over to where I laid. A chair, I noted, as the figure sat down.

“I wasn't sure what to think when I realized someone was comin' around, askin' about my dad,” he began, and with that statement, the breath froze in my lungs. “Especially when I heard it was the cops. No … I didn't know what to make of that. Not at all.”

My jaw flapped a few times before I managed to stammer, “Y-you're … you're B—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Tomas's son, Benjamin, reprimanded in an eerily calm tone. “This is my turn to talk. You'll get your chance—I can promise you that. But first, you're gonna listen to me—you understand?”

I swallowed and clamped my lips shut, my head jittering with an aggressive nod, although I doubted he could see.

“Nuh-uh. You tell me. Tell me you understand.”

“I-I-I understand.”

“Good boy,” he praised, causing a shiver to work its way through my bones. “Good, good. Now, what was I saying? Ah, right … the cops.”

His voice. Where have I heard it before?

I've met this man. And not when we were kids twenty years ago. I've met him recently. But where?

“Why, oh why, would the police be lookin' for dear old Dad? My dead-for-twenty-years dad?”

The chair he sat in creaked as his shadowy form leaned closer. I could feel his hot breath on my face, could smell the rancid stench of his breath, but I couldn't yet see his eyes.

“Now, I'm not a smart man. I can admit my shortcomings. Took me a while to figure it out. At first, I thought maybe this cop was trying to catch Daddy's killer, but … no. No, that didn't make sense. Why now? Why now, all these years later, did the fucking cops finally give a single fuck about my fucked-up, criminal, junkie father? But then—”

A popping sound filled the room, and I gasped with a start.

His fingers. He snapped his fingers.

“It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the cops weren't really lookin' for my daddy. No, no, no … maybe they were lookin' for me.”

A bright cone of light was turned on. My eyelids slammed shut instantly, and I turned away from its blinding assault. I tried to move away, tried to hide my face against him. But a hand reached out and grasped my chin, then forced my head back to face him.

“Open your goddamn eyes,” he demanded.

Comply, comply, comply.

God, I didn't want to. I didn't want to look into the eyes of the man I'd been searching for, the one who'd outsmarted me and made me his prey. The one who'd undoubtedly end my life whenever he was done doing whatever the hell he wanted with me in this cold little cave of a room.

But despite every warning telling me not to, I did comply, and I did open my eyes.

A flashlight was positioned at his chin, shining upward to illuminate his face in ghastly planes of shadows and light, like a kid sitting around a campfire, telling ghost stories. It took a moment for me to focus, to take in his features, his appraising smile and the wickedness in his eyes, but when I did …

“The coffee shop,” I muttered in horrific awe.

His smile grew. “Like seeing a ghost.”

He'd said it before, I remembered. I knew I'd seen him somewhere. I knew I'd recognized him. But it wasn't him I had seen in his glare. No … this man might be younger, this man might have all of his teeth, but …

“You look just like your dad,” I commented without a second thought.

He barely nodded, his hands still on the flashlight and my chin. “That's funny, isn't it? Because, oh boy … you sure do look like yours.”

Then he released me, and the flashlight was switched off.