We're Not Strangers Anymore

Chapter Twenty Nine - Smile

Mr Manley stared deep into Charlie's eyes, placing a cold, veiny hand on his shoulder.
'But you can't leave. Not yet. I haven't shown you my little collection.'
The latter sentence was cold in tone, rolling off of his tongue with a bitter sharpness that sent chills through Charlie's entire body.
'I want to go, Mr Manley.'
'Please, just feast your eyes upon this.'
As the light grew brighter, everything suddenly came clear. He had been right all along, and there were bodies in the basement. Several bodies.
In the far corner of the room stood a little boy, no older than eleven or twelve. He was bleeding profusely, his feet and hands nailed to the wall.
'Bercow's boy,' Charlie whispered. 'It's him.'
Mr Manley started to chuckle. The laugh soon became a cackle, and eventually the cackle became a shriek.
'That's right, Charlie. Little Bercow. Bercow Junior. Heir of the Bercow estate!'
Charlie glanced over to the opposite corner of the room, where there now stood a middle-aged woman; she too was bleeding.
The woman started to smile, only to herself, and as her seemingly peaceful smile grew wider, so did the cuts in the corners of her mouth.
A Chelsea smile. It's that thing again.
Her head turned towards Charlie. The woman's neck, he observed, had been impales with some sort of wooden spike. She began to smile wider, a Cheshire Cat style grin exploding onto her face, and as her twisted smile slowly blossomed, her face and lips were being ripped to shreds.
Charlie jumped, coming extremely close to breaking the wooden chair that sat in his bedroom. He was back in reality now, and for the most part, he was safe.
'Son?' Irene Broomer called from downstairs, her voice loud and shrill.
Son, Charlie thought, man that word makes my skin crawl.
'Are you coming down? I know you're not well today, but I've made you a bit of breakfast. Don't want it going cold!'
Charlie sighed and moved away from his desk.
'Fucking creep,' he muttered under his breath, still thinking about the delusion he'd just experienced.

The terrifying thought of Mr Manley's basement was a difficult thought to shake, and throughout the hour that Charlie spent eating at the kitchen table, he hadn't quite managed to get rid of it.
'Breakfast all right, love?' his mother asked, caring as ever.
'Always is,' Charlie replied, still anxious.
Irene Broomer pulled the living room blinds open, which filled the room with an immense ray of sunlight.
Oh my God. That woman. That mad woman with the pins in her face.
Charlie began to shake.
'Son? What's the matter?' Irene asked, putting down the dirty plates that she held in her arms.
'I'm okay,' Charlie said, 'really, I am. I'm just cold, that's all.'
'Oh I don't know, I do worry about you sometimes son.'
'I'm fine Mum, honestly. I appreciate the concern, though.'
But he wasn't fine. Not really.
'Well you need to start wrapping up when you leave the house, sweetheart. I wouldn't be surprised if you had some sort of nasty flu after leaving the house, especially in this weather. Bitter as y'like.'
Charlie raised his eyebrows in agreement, placing his hands under his thighs.
As he wolfed down his breakfast, filling his face with as many clumps of scrambled egg as possible, he started to think.
Flashbacks played on repeat in the centre of his mind, particularly the image of Mrs Bercow's only son being tied up and left to rot in that dingy basement; shivers crawled down to the core of his spine.
For the rest of the morning, Charlie struggled to eliminate the images from his clouded mind - one persistent image was that of Mr Manley, his slick, jet black hair blowing uncontrollably in the wind. The cold smile he possessed so frequently, a smile that seemed to hide a strong element of terror.
What's really down there?
Whenever his Mum smiled at him, all he could see was Mr Manley. Irene's legs, Irene's body, even Irene's shoulders, but Martin Manley's face.
Charlie pushed his plate away; the hunger had disappeared almost as quickly as the anxiety had arrived.
'Not very hungry, son?'
Urgh. Son. That word again.
'Sorry, Mum. Not as hungry as I first thought.'
'That's okay,' Irene said quickly, 'I'll finish it off. Still not feeling like school today?'
Charlie sat back in his chair, allowing the wooden frame to dig into his back, somewhat therapeutically.
'Nah. I think that's why I haven't finished my food. Threw up a little in the night, don't feel great.'
'That's fine,' Irene said peacefully, tapping him twice on the head like you would a dog. 'How's your friend Jamie? Haven't heard his name in a while.'
Charlie's eyes widened.
'We're still friends,' he answered, desperate to brush the question under the carpet. 'He's busy with his geography class, and I'm busy with Emily.'
Oh fuck. Did I just say that out loud?
Irene sat down next to him, and Charlie instantly regretted opening his mouth.
'Emily? Who's this Emily then?'
'Just a girl that I met, that's all.'
'Where'd you meet her?'
'School.'
'You share a class together or something?'
'No.'
'How did you meet, then?'
'Bumped into her at lunchtime, just got chatting really.'
Irene scoffed, shaking her head.
'You kids nowadays.. you don't just "bump into someone at lunchtime", not at your age anyway. At least wait until you're eighteen, nineteen before you start lying to me mister. That's when the rebellious lies really start to flow, when a young man hits eighteen or nineteen.'
She held a stern finger up to him.
'I'm not lying,' Charlie protested, 'honestly I'm not. Why can't you ever just believe me?'
'All right mister defensive, calm down will you? And lower your tone, I won't be spoken to like that in my own house, thank you very much.'
Charlie stood up, heading towards the door.
He later came to regret what he had shouted, and he knew that this would happen before he'd even shouted it: 'I wish my Dad was still around!'
The sentence had rolled off of Charlie's tongue with a harsh undertone, and Irene put her hand to her chest as if severely and physically wounded. Her heart sunk hearing this, and she began to well up with tears.
'Charlie, come back here now!' she began to sob through an eyeful of tears.
But it was too late. Charlie had gone.