At the bottom they came to a heavy wooden door. Seeing it was cracked open, Natalie crept up and peered through. The room on the other side was lit by a single, flicking candle on a table near the door, but peering into the deep shadow around it, Natalie didn’t see any mysterious figures lurking around. She eased the door open, wincing as its hinges creaked slightly.
The room the girls entered was, undoubtedly, where Mr. Watson had kept his victims between their abductions and when he smuggled them out of town to be sold. Aside from the small wooden table the candle sat on, and a matching chair, much of the space was taken up by a number of heavy iron cages. Four of them were lined up along one wall. They were about four feet cubed, with wide, flat bars, hinged doors on the front.
Opposite them was a single, larger cage. It had no back, but was bolted directly to the stone walls. The wall was broken by several openings which curved up to what looked like smooth stone chutes, doubtless leading to trapdoors higher up in the house. Inside the cage, old, moldering straw provided some cushioning to the unfortunate victims falling down them into the cage.
Natalie felt another chill, wondering what it must have been like for those poor girls, snatched from their beds and imprisoned down in this dark tomb, awaiting their terrible fate, praying for rescue that would never come. Then she realized she didn’t need to imagine it, because the real thing was right in front of her. The cage furthest from the door they had come in held a figure, shrouded in the shadows of the bars. Approaching, the trio turned their flashlights on the cage and saw, to a mix of horror and relief, it was their missing friend: Joan!
Their relief was that the teen didn’t seem to have suffered any harm apart from a fright. Worryingly, whoever had snatched her through the secret door had evidently not been satisfied in caging the poor girl. Joan sat against the back wall, legs out in front of her. The others could see her ankles had been tied with rope. Further up, more rope circled her torso, holding her arms trapped behind her back, where her wrists were crossed and bound as well. Finally, a band of cloth had been tied across her face, covering her mouth, from which quiet, piteous ‘mmpphh’s of distress emerged as she struggled feebly against her restraints.
Much as the three would have loved to help their friend, they soon saw it was impossible. “This isn’t original to the house.” Sam commented, turning her flashlight to the cage door. Though the cage certainly looked old enough to match the house, the lock had evidently been replaced at some point with a shiny new modern padlock.
Betty, meanwhile, reached through the bars and managed to get the knots of Joan’s gag undone. The captive girl spat out a wadded up rag the gag had been holding in, with a groan of relief. Quickly, she filled the others in on what had happened to her.
Joan had been watching Natalie start her speech and didn’t even realize the wall behind her had slid open until the power to the lights was cut. An instant after things went dark, she’d been jumped. A gloved hand was pressed over her mouth while the other arm wrapped around her middle, pulling the startled teen back through the secret door into the slaver’s passageway. Joan had put up as much of a struggle as she could, but the figure was bigger and stronger than her and managed to wrestle the frightened girl down to the dungeon, where he’d tied her up and gagged her before locking her in this cage.
The teen was unable to give much of a description of her attacker. It had been dark and he was wrapped in a large, old fashioned cloak, but she could confirm he was, at the least, corporeal, not a phantasm, as if the modern lock left any doubts there. The man hadn’t said anything to her, but left by a second door, after locking the cage, doubtless to prepare some other trap for the girls.
“There’s no way to get you out of the cage.” Natalie said, reluctantly. “We’ll have to go and get help, but don’t worry! We’ll be back with the police!” With that, the three girls left their caged friend in the dungeon and returned to the staircase. They went up one floor, then found another secret door. This one opened into what had once been the house’s front parlor.
Nervously, the girls slipped out of the door and crossed the room, sweeping their flashlights into every dark, shadowy corner. The house seemed all the more terrifying now. Far from vague stories about curses, now they knew there really was someone here in the house who meant them harm.
With cries of relief, the girls reached the front hall and the door. Betty, unable to spend another moment in this place, ran for the door. Her relief turned to distress, however, when she tried the knob and found the door wouldn’t open. She fumbled with the lock, but no matter which way she turned it, the door remained stubbornly shut. “I can’t get it open!” Betty cried, tugging at the door in a rising panic.
A few steps behind, Natalie recalled the large cage down in the dungeon, which served as a receptacle for the trapdoor chutes. The teen guessed where one of those trapdoors was likely to be placed, an instant too late. Before she could shout a warning to her friend, a section of floor in front of the door suddenly dropped down and Betty dropped with it. For a second, the girl’s scream echoed up out of the chute before the trapdoor snapped back into place, cutting it off.
For a second, the two remaining girls stared in horror. Thinking quickly, Sam ran to the window and tried to open it, but their mysterious assailant had thought quicker. Like the window in the bedroom upstairs, the shutters remained locked in place. There was no way out for the girls. Just then, the girls heard footsteps, floorboards creaking somewhere impossible to pin down but undoubtedly close. With screams of panic, the girls turned and ran…
***
Heart still racing with excitement, Malcolm sat down at the table and removed the set of night vision goggles he wore. The young man picked up the candle from the table and held it up as he turned to look over the results of the night’s work.
The four girls now occupied the four small cages, side by side. Betty and Sam, who had fallen to a second trap door on the stairs, had been extracted from the larger cage to join Joan and Natali, who’d been grabbed last, stumbling in the dark when her flashlight’s batteries had gone out. The captives all had their hands and feet tied with rope and bands of cloth over their mouths, holding in wads of clothes which muffled their terrified sobs and whimpers. They struggled against their bondage, frantically, but it was obvious they were not going anywhere.
Watching their futile, but amusing efforts, the young man smiled, considering the twists of fate which had brought all of them to this palace tonight. Malcolm had stumbled across a reference to the WS Watson House, many years before and been intrigued enough to delve further into it, not least because he too happened to be in the business of kidnapping and selling girls. He’d come out to visit the site, some months before and discovered its secrets. Then, only a couple weeks ago, he’d been contacted by the four would-be investigators.
Of course, the girls had no idea of Malcom’s connection with the house. During their initial research on the cursed house, someone must have pointed them his way, remembering his own interest in its history. Out of the blue, he received an email from one of the girls, asking for any information he’d assembled.
Doing a little digging into the girls, Malcolm had found some of their earlier videos and seen the opportunity. He could see at once how the teenage girls would be highly attractive pieces of merchandise to some of his usual clientele, so instead of blowing them off, Malcolm had provided some of what his research had uncovered, not the whole story, of course, but enough to feed their curiosity in the place. In the meantime, he’d explored the house and prepared for the night the girls came to visit.
“I should thank you girls for coming out tonight.” He mused to the caged teens. “I’ve got plants for this place…it would be easy enough to fix it up…turn it into a B&B, something to attract young, pretty female guests from the big city. And if a few of them never check out…” he chuckled, evilly. “Chalk it up to the curse! Now with the money I get from selling the four of you…” He added, drawing whimpers and horrified moans from his captives, “I should have more than enough to cover the purchase and renovations.” He smiled. “Thank you girls for contributing to the continuing legends of the WS Watson House!”