(Hello everyone! I hope those of you that were reading this will still be willing to pick it back up. School started again, and grading quizzes and essays took over writing for pure enjoyment's sake. However, the good news is, getting caught up, the weekend, and Castle coming back seems to have set me writing again! I was going to try to pay you back for your long wait by posting two chapters at once, but the second one still needs some tweaking. Here's this one now, and the other should follow in a couple of days. I still don't own them, but boy do I love them! Enjoy!)
The Walls Fall Down
Chapter Seven: Darkness Closing In
Though she logically knew that it couldn't have been more than a day or two, Alexis Castle felt as though she had been isolated and alone for weeks. She knew that Tyson had not fed her, only brought her water to drink, and that a person couldn't survive indefinitely without nourishment; therefore, she couldn't have been imprisoned for as long as it felt like it had been. Yet, with no windows, no sunlight, no clock, no landmarks, and no diversions to help her pass the time, seemingly nothing but bare walls to stare at for stimulation and entertainment, her frazzled, terrified emotions were starting to overwhelm her rational mind and convince her that she was all that was left and the rest of her world had disappeared.
The cut on her arm twinged slightly, but though it stung and she wished this man holding her captive could have at least allowed her to clean it and bandage it up, she knew it wasn't deep and would soon heal if she didn't disturb or strain it, re-opening the cut and starting the bleeding again. Alexis instead tried to distract herself by being glad that he had not put the handcuffs back on her after moving her from the first place that she'd been held. Her small wrists were still sore and bore dark, purpled bruises from before, but she was willing to be grateful for even the smallest of blessings. Of course, she also guessed that he felt this second location was even more secure, if he was willing to leave her free to move around.
Still, there must be something she could do – some clue she could gather to pass along to her dad and the detectives if she was given even a second's chance. For what felt like the fiftieth time, she began to pace around the small, drab room, feeling that there must be something she had missed. She felt that this was probably the basement of a home or apartment, instead of an empty warehouse, like the first prison had seemed to her. There was a dark walk-in closet, but the light wouldn't come on inside, and by walking in and thoroughly feeling around, she could tell it was bare and empty. The rest of the room was much the same: a broken, three-legged table in the corner was about the only furnishing – nothing helpful or interesting there. Nothing hung on the walls. The only other thing in the room was a dirty, rather ripped-up, worse-for-the-wear mattress on the floor, where she supposed she was meant to sleep. As if she could sleep anyway. She roamed around aimlessly, looking at these same things once more, but found nothing more intriguing or helpful than she had in any of her previous laps.
Frustrated, she plopped back down at what she assumed would be the foot of the bed, if the mattress had been on a bed that is, and let out a little yelp when she felt something hard instead of mattress and springs that gave with her slight weight. Surprised, she stood again, realizing that she had been sitting at the other end of the mattress up until now, closer to the wall and as far from the door as possible for security. Curious and hopeful, she wrestled with the mattress, trying to turn that corner over enough to see what seemed to be embedded inside of its ripped stuffing.
Sure enough, she eventually managed to work a tarnished, metal picture frame out of the tattered material and padding. As she turned it over curiously, Alexis figured that it must have been hidden in the mattress a long time, so long ago now as to be forgotten there by whoever had hoped to hide it. She let the mattress corner flop back down on the bare floor and sat back down upon it before really looking down to study the picture within the frame. It was a cheep silver frame – no frills – one that could have been purchased at any Walgreens or dollar store or anywhere in between. The glass was mostly broken out from all the mistreatment the mattress had probably taken all these years, and Alexis marveled that she hadn't cut herself while trying to work the frame out of what had to have been glass-embedded stuffing all around it. Gingerly, she picked the picture out from behind the remaining shards to get a better look.
The picture was old, tattered at the edges, and creased from being handled or carried around before it was framed, but she could easily see that it was a young boy, nine or ten, with a troubled look on his face, standing close to a pretty, strawberry-blond woman who appeared to be somewhere in her mid-to-late twenties. The boy was oddly not smiling blithely at the camera, as carefree children of that age often do, but instead studying the woman, 'His mother?' Alexis wondered. The little boy's look was intense, as if he were afraid she would brush him off, or she would simply vanish before his eyes. Something about the dark, furrowed brow and those stormy, disquieting eyes was very familiar, leaving Alexis' mind grasping at the illusory, incomplete feeling that she had seen the boy before. Logically, she knew that this was an abandoned home and that any number of people and a vast array of belongings and trash had been through here over time, but she couldn't help also wondering… Was the boy in this picture now the grown man who was her captor?
She had read enough of her dad's Derrick Storm novels to know that many people in law enforcement, such as Detective Beckett, would say that the reason Jerry Tyson fixated on pretty blondes, both brutally strangling them, and then remorsefully arranging their bodies, was because they were substitutes for the mother he both hated and loved in equal measure. Alexis also knew from her dad's research on this case that after Tyson was thrust upon the system, he had been bounced from one foster home to another haphazardly, and that some of those places hadn't been good places for an already troubled young man to land. Could this be one of the places that had made him more disturbed? Or was this one of the few places where he had been safe and comfortable, and he had brought her here to make some kind of point? Was this pretty woman with hair just a bit more blond than her own his mother? Was this the last picture a young, orphaned Jerry had had of the little bit of family he'd ever known? For one fractional second she almost understood his pain, even pitied the boy he'd been for a moment, but that feeling didn't last long.
Before she could set her keen intellect to deducing how this picture helped her, or gave her any clues to where she was, the door burst open again and Jerry re-entered, eyes blazing with anger. Alexis' head whipped around, startled, and the picture fluttered to the floor from her trembling fingers at the reappearance of her tormentor. "What do you think you're doing?" Tyson demanded harshly, striding angrily across the room and snatching up the picture from the floor. "That doesn't belong to you! Where did you even find it?"
Alexis simply looked up at him unblinkingly, without even attempting to answer him, staying resolutely calm and collected through sheer force of will. In the face of his extreme agitation, her silence seemed to send him over the edge, causing him to grab her and shake her violently as if to wrench the answer from her. "You'll talk plenty before I'm finished with you. Do you think you're smarter, better, than any of the others? You're only still alive now because I'm not through making your precious father suffer."
Alexis felt her heart pounding more furiously, and she couldn't help the sharp intake of breath that she drew in, but she still didn't make any audible response. She didn't know what he wanted her to say, didn't know any words to bring him back down to a calmer state, and simply chose not to make things worse by trying. Frankly, there was nothing she wanted to say to this monster anyway.
"Have it your way," he spat hatefully, before beginning to mutter to himself. "Just like all the others, never willing to do the smallest thing when I need them to…" He was almost distracted momentarily, and released his grip on her, allowing her to drop back onto the squalid mattress in boneless relief, while he moved away, running a hand back through his wildly tufted dark hair. Soon, Alexis could see he was dragging a chair back into the room, then bringing out that ominous-looking video camera and tripod again. Furious that he intended to make another video of her to torment her father, knowing what it had to be doing the beloved, kind, witty man who'd bandaged her scraped knees and cherished her dreams with her all her life, she vowed that she was not going to let Jerry do it this time – not without a fight.
When he came toward her a few moments later, right as he reached her and grasped her shoulder, Alexis turned her head, found vulnerable space between his thumb and forefinger, and bit down as hard as she could. As he let out a yowl of shock and pain, she sent her heel crushing into his instep, just as she remembered Beckett once instructing her to do during an impromptu self-defense lesson. She was almost surprised when her small little sneak attack seemed to work, but she didn't have time to think.
Tyson's grip loosened, and Alexis made a dash for the door he had entered through. For one tiny, heartening, thrilling second, she thought she was going to make it. She could almost taste the freedom that waited somewhere outside that door. Jerry recovered quickly though, and she was pulled up short before she could reach her goal. The hand that suddenly caught her by the hair literally jerked her backwards with enough force to make it feel that he had pulled strands out by the roots. "You're not leaving me yet, Princess," Tyson snarled in her ear, shoving her down into the chair he'd intended for her in the beginning, and wasting no time in tying her wrists to the arms and her ankles to the spindly wooden legs. "You're fast, but not quite fast enough. I'm also starting to see that you might be just as brilliant – and infuriating – as your father. Don't think you aren't going to regret that little incident. You've made things a lot worse for yourself. We're just going to let your Daddy watch…"
Alexis' stomach plummeted, and she fought off the sensation of being violently ill at his words. Tyson moved away from her, over to the camera, checking the view and then turning it on. The little flashing light blinking at her distracted Alexis for only a second, because then her eyes fell on the distinctive green and white rope holding her wrists. Her gaze flew back up to Tyson, to see more of the same rope still in his hand. She knew about the rope too, knew that it was a special type that made Detective Beckett and the rest of them sure when a victim had been one of Jerry's. As he came back around from behind the camera and stalked towards her, suddenly cool and predatory, almost pleased, Alexis realized that not only was this maniac back in control, but that this might truly be the end of her.
She had a clue for her dad and his cavalry to come rescue her, like Rapunzel from her tower, but she might never get to share it before Tyson stole her breath and caught it all on film.
