Just to the left of the window Charlie looked through was a bed with thick, though rumpled, bedsheets. Beyond that was a small table that held a collection of bottles and jars. Charlie had to lean in through the window to see them all.
As he did, a moan nearly made him jump out of his skin. Even more so when the messy jumble of bedclothes moved.
“Who is it?” a young, male voice asked vaguely from underneath the covers.
Charlie pulled back, everything within him screaming that he should get as far away from the cottage as fast as possible. Curiosity got the better of him, though. He swayed back to look inside the cottage again as the bedcovers moved and a disheveled head and naked shoulders appeared from under the thick coverlet.
“Robert? Have you come to help me?” the sallow figure under the covers asked.
Charlie gulped hard. There was something horribly wrong with the young man. Charlie could tell, even though he could only see the man’s head and shoulders. He had golden-blond hair and blue eyes that were huge and glassy. His lips were full and pink, but his mouth appeared bruised. He gripped the bedcovers near his shoulders with hands that trembled slightly.
When the man saw Charlie, he scrambled around to his side. Charlie couldn’t tell if he was fighting with the bedcovers to try to get up or if he wanted to squirrel back under the covers to hide.
“Who are you?” the man asked him, breathing heavily and moving restlessly.
“Charlie,” Charlie gasped out. He gripped the windowsill until his knuckles were white as his heart pounded in terror.
“Charlie?” The young man looked desperately confused for a moment. “I don’t know you. Have you come to?—”
The man stopped and gulped, writhing as if something under the covers was trying to grab his feet and pull him under.
He groaned and sobbed in a way that had every hair on Charlie’s body standing up, then burst into weeping.
“Help me,” he hissed, clawing at the bedsheets as if he didn’t have the power to escape them on his own. “I don’t want to be here. This is not what I?—”
He stopped again, kicking at something under the covers.
Panic and fear like nothing Charlie had ever known gripped him. He was so terrified just watching the young man that he thought his knees might give way. He wanted to run, but all he could do was stand there, watching the man struggle.
“Help me,” the man pleaded with him again. This time, instead of clutching at the bedcovers, he thrashed and threw them aside. “I want to go home,” he wept, sounding equal parts pitiful and horrifying.
“I—I don’t know—” Charlie didn’t have a clue what to say or do.
The young man was naked under the bedcovers. He couldn’t have been much older than Charlie. As he pushed aside the covers and rolled to the side as if he would stand, Charlie gasped at the sight of the bruises that covered him.
But that was nothing to the shackle that clamped around his left ankle and the long chain that extended from it. Charlie followed the line of the chain as it disappeared under the covers. He hadn’t noticed the length of chain that stretched across the floor, into the center of the cottage, then looped back to where it was fastened into one of the legs of the bed.
The young man was a captive. His chain might have been long, but he was chained firmly to the bed.
“Help me,” the young man pleaded with Charlie, struggling to get out of bed.
He wasn’t struggling because of the chain. It was as if his body, though rail-thin, was too heavy for him to move. Charlie could only stand where he was, frozen with fear, and watch him sway on his feet, his hands on his head, weeping.
He wanted to help. Everything within Charlie wanted to climb into the room, tear the shackle from the young man’s ankle, and pull him through the window to safety. The man was in a desperate situation. He needed a savior.
He needed Jonathan.
“I can get help,” Charlie promised him. “My master?—”
“No!”
Charlie had started to turn, like he would push away from the window and go for help, but the young man stopped him. He staggered quickly to the window and grabbed Charlie’s wrists.
Charlie couldn’t breathe as the young man looked him dead in the eyes. They were the same height, and mad though it was, there was something about the other young man Charlie seemed to recognize. He didn’t have the first clue who the man was, but something deep in his gut told him they were the same.
“You have to help me,” the young man said. “I don’t want to be here. They won’t let me leave. I can’t…I can’t…I don’t want to drink it anymore.”
It was terrifying to know the young man was in trouble, but to have no idea what he was talking about.
