The Chamber Read online

each other’s. They were indeed the same. Steel gray with a black band. Nathan stood there for a second, thinking over this latest twist. Then a thought began to coalesce in his brain.

  “Let me see yours,” he said to Jason.

  “What?”

  “Just let me see it,” he repeated.

  Jason walked over and held up his arm. Nathan didn’t know exactly how he knew, but he was sure what he would see before he looked. The second hands of the two clocks ticked in perfect time. A quick look at the others confirmed it. Every watch was synchronized.

  “Midnight,” Cathy said. Nathan looked at her, and she could see that he was confused. “You said a quarter past midnight, but then you said it might be noon. No, it’s definitely midnight.”

  Nathan stood there for a second, and then he merely nodded.

  “And I have a feeling it’s no coincidence that we all woke up at the top of the hour,” Jason added. “I don’t know what’s going on here,” he said, turning to the mirror, his voice rising. “But when I get out of here somebody’s head is gonna roll!”

  Nathan looked around the room again, looked at the four people that were there with him. None of it made any sense. None of it. They had nothing in common, nothing he could imagine at least. A child, an old man, an angry young turk and two thirty year olds. It was all so random. And the room itself. It was like something out of a movie, and a sci-fi one at that. There could be no crazy thoughts at that moment, and he even let himself consider the possibility that they had all been abducted by aliens.

  No, this couldn’t be happening. This was a dream, or a nightmare. He had dropped acid once. Just one time. It had been a strange ride, a bizarre multicolored roller coaster of madness. It terrified him, and he swore he would never do it again. He had heard it could come back, that it screwed up your brain and that some people could feel its effect even years down the line. It must be that he thought. This was all some bizarre hallucination from a drug addled mind. He cursed his college roommate. But then, even in that moment, he smiled. What an utterly ridiculous thought. No, this was all too real.

  “This can’t be happening,” Cathy said, apparently reaching the same conclusion he had just abandoned. “It can’t be real.”

  “Oh it’s real, all right,” Jason said. He would have continued, but Nathan gave him a look that stilled his tongue.

  “Let’s just think this through,” Nathan said. “Maybe there was an accident.”

  “Or a terrorist attack?” Ashley said, almost hopefully. “Maybe there was an attack and we all got knocked out and they brought us here.” Jason simply rolled his eyes.

  “I think it’s best,” Jake interrupted, “if we try and be as reasonable and rational as possible about this. We’ve been taken. I think that is clear to all of us. Who did it, I don’t know. But there was no accident, no terrorist attack. They knocked us out, they drugged us, whatever. Then they brought us here. They put these watches on our arms, for what purpose, I don’t know. And then they left us here, safe in the knowledge that sometime around midnight, we would wake up.”

  “But who would do that?” Cathy asked.

  “Oh come on people,” Jason said. “You want to be rational? Logical? Well let’s cut the bullshit. Look at this room. You think the local Barney Fife’s threw this together? You think this is the drunk tank in the local fuckin’ jail? Look!” He yelled, pointing all around the chamber. “There’s no damn door! No, this is the feds,” he said, finally calming down.

  “But why?” Nathan said. Jason jerked his head and glared at him. “Say it is the feds,” Nathan continued, holding up his palm to Jason before he launched into another nicotine starved rant. “Why would they do this?”

  Jason looked at him like he was a fool. “How the Hell should I know?”

  “Well you seem to know everything else,” Nathan spat, finally losing his cool.

  “Look,” Jason said, trying to calm the situation he had obviously inflamed, “I’m just calling it like I see it. A room like this is either built by the government or the fucking Martians. Why? I don’t know. Why do they do anything they do? But I know I’m not a terrorist. I’m Catholic. And what about her?” he asked, pointing to Ashley. “Is she hiding a bomb in her pom-poms?”

  “I think,” Cathy interrupted, standing up, “that Jason is right.” Nathan simply stared at her, and even Jason looked surprised. “There’s no point in guessing and arguing about it. We are here, why we don’t know. But somebody will come and tell us eventually.”

  “What if they don’t?” Ashley asked, voicing a concern that had begun to percolate in the back of even Nathan’s mind. He suddenly shuddered at the thought, the four of them, slowly starving to death, until one, probably Jason, was overcome by hunger, and they went to eating their own. But no, he thought, bizarrely comforted. They would all be dead of thirst by then.

  “They will come,” Cathy assured her. “Like Jason said, a place like this doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. And someone brought us here.”

  And with that thought, they fell silent. Nathan looked down at his watch. It was a quarter till one. For the next fifteen minutes, they all stood there without speaking a word. Nathan paced about, they all did really, shuffling around the room, unable to stay still, but with nowhere to go either. But then, suddenly and without warning, it was one o’clock.

  The silence in the room was suddenly shattered. There was a great, thunderous boom, the sound of a giant bell tolling somewhere above them. They all stood there, dumbfounded, staring up at the steel ceiling and bright, blinding lights above. That sound echoed through the chamber for a moment. But then Nathan heard something else. It was a small noise, the almost imperceptible screech of metal sliding against metal. But nothing moved, nothing he could see at least. And then another sound, like a strong, sudden, short, puff of air. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement.

  Ashley had been standing ten feet away, staring up at the ceiling like they all were. But even though he was looking towards an unseeable sky, he still noticed the unnatural jerk of her body, noticed as she swayed to the side, and then, just as he turned his head, saw her body collapse. They all stood there for a second, stupidly, like animals who had no ability to comprehend what had just happened.

  Cathy moved first. She ran across the room to where Ashley now lay. Nathan followed. As he reached her, the pool of blood had already begun to grow underneath her body.

  “Ashley!” Cathy cried as she fell down beside her. Nathan, Jason, and Jake were close behind.

  “What the hell happened?” Jason screamed.

  Nathan looked down at Ashley. Her eyes were still open, but he knew immediately that there was no life there anymore, and as he watched, her pupils slowly dilated. It was then he noticed the tiny hole, the impossibly small entrance wound of a bullet squarely in the center of her right temple. It couldn’t be denied. She had been shot.

  “Oh my God she’s been shot,” Jake said, falling backwards.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Cathy said, now rocking back and forth. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.” She repeated, looking up at Nathan with half-crazed eyes. “I do this every day, but I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s OK,” Nathan said. But it wasn’t OK. It would never be OK again.

  Nathan reached down and closed Ashley’s open eyes. Cathy simply sat there, crying a little, but remarkably composed as she removed her jacket and spread it over the young girl’s body.

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” she almost whispered to no one in particular. Nathan looked at her, and as he did, he saw something snap. Cathy leapt to her feet and ran over to the mirror. She smashed her body against it and then began to beat maniacally against the glass with her fists. He didn’t know what came over him, what urged him to act, but soon he was at her side, screaming madly, poundin
g away at his own glowering image. Soon they all were. They didn’t stop until exhaustion overcame them, until the blood was running from Cathy’s still clenched fists.

  In the end it was no use. The glass remained—hard, implacable, uncaring. Whatever was behind it obviously didn’t care either.

  “Sons-of-bitches!” Jason screamed. “What do you want from us! Why would you do this!”

  There was no response. No answer. Nothing. Everything in Nathan’s soul called out for the anger to continue, for his rage to take physical form. But his body was tired, exhausted really. He looked down at his, no, the watch. He knew now why he had no energy. An almost solid hour had passed. An hour of hatred and rage. It was almost two. Almost two.

  He looked up with a start at Cathy. She was looking at her watch too. She glanced up at him, and in her eyes he saw the same cold realization. And then the hour struck. Above there was the same tolling of the bell, the same loud boom. And then all three of them—Cathy, Jake, and Nathan—all three of them looked at Jason. Somehow they knew.

  “What?” he said, as the second boom sounded. And then his eyes said he knew too. They never said anything else.

  Nathan heard the soft puff of air and a split second later watched as Jason crumpled down to the ground. From beside him there came an awful sound. It started small, deep