The Eye Hunter by Sebastian Fitzek

Author:Sebastian Fitzek [Fitzek, Sebastian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781804542378
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

38

Alexander Zorbach

I had passed my lowest ebb, but not in respect of the fatigue that had enveloped me like a thick cocoon since I recovered consciousness: I had passed the lowest ebb of my awareness of pain. As I dragged myself along the passage, my mind was filled with a clarity I’d thought was long forgotten, as if the nightmare through which I was passing possessed a clarifying function, an anaesthetic whose effect consisted in driving away my pain by means of well-aimed shocks to the system. My headache had gone, and even the right-hand side of my body was consenting to obey me better again, even though my knees occasionally buckled as I made my way towards the sound of running water. Sadly, the terror to which I was exposed only dulled my physical sufferings and left my mental wounds untouched. That was why, when I threw open the door of the bathroom to which Frank had summoned me, I was thinking lucidly on the one hand but filled with a mixture of fear and anger on the other.

I couldn’t see a thing when I went in. Hot steam had transformed the bathroom into a dense sea of vapour in which I found it hard to breathe. I flapped my arms as if shooing away a troublesome insect and the curtain before my eyes gradually lifted—to my regret, when I looked into the bathtub.

Dear God, please let me be mistaken...

I felt like a comic-book character who has taken one step over a precipice and is now, as he hovers in mid air before plummeting into the abyss, wondering where he went wrong. Except, alas, that there was no chasm into which I could have plunged.

Let me have succumbed to an optical illusion. Dear God, let my perforated brain be playing a trick on me...

Our bath was a faux antique monster that presided in the middle of the room on brass, ball-and-claw feet. It was big enough to hold two people who had to touch each other while bathing only if they wanted to. Because Nicci had insisted on saving water, it took at least half an hour to fill ‘the swimming pool’, as Julian jokingly called it. At that moment, the bath was two centimetres short of overflowing. Two centimetres that meant the difference between life and death.

I lurched over to the bath and wrenched at the chains that were holding the wretched creature down in it. Frank had done a thorough job. TomTom could neither leap out of the tub nor put his muzzle over the edge. He seemed dazed, probably sedated, which explained why he wasn’t whimpering, far less barking.

The guide dog’s harness, which enabled Alina to control him by means of a rigid handle, had proved the poor animal’s undoing. It incorporated sufficient eyes and loops through which the Eye Collector had been able to thread several thin chains, immobilizing him completely. The golden retriever’s neck, torso and hips were securely shackled to the bath’s fittings,

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