Tuesday, September 26, 2000 (time unknown)

       Darkness, so permeable it felt as though Frank could reach out and touch it, surrounded him when next he awoke, his head aching from whatever it was that had been shot into his arm.  Frank shivered as he looked around himself, and then had to remind himself, again, that he wasn’t going to be able to see anything.  The darkness was nothing new to him.  It was just something he had seen everyday for the last three weeks.  The darkness never left him.  He was learning to cope with it, learning to survive when his eyes no longer did their job.

       Frank shifted and groaned when pain lanced through his arms.  The groan came out in a muffle but he knew he was gagged.  His mouth felt like there were a thousand cotton balls stuffed inside it; it was probably a piece of cloth.  Listening, Frank heard the sounds of ragged, raspy breathing, accompanied by a soft groan.  He heard as well the sounds of pipes knocking together.  A moment later he thought he heard the very distinct sound of a toilet flushing.  The dripping sound nearby made him cringe; it was like the Chinese Water Torture?  Frank shifted again, causing more pain to drive up his arms to his shoulders.  At least he could feel his arms.  Now he just had to convince his fingers to work.

       As he closed his eyes, Frank was able to picture things better in his head.  He saw himself, lying on something hard, like a table or, from the unevenness of the surface he lay on, it was something like a few tables or even desks cobbled together.  It felt just wide enough to be the desks.  He tried to feel the surface of the desk with his hands but all he felt in his hands was an unpleasant numbness that meant pins and needles later.

       The sounds, then.  It meant that he was in a basement or in a utility room of some kind.  The knocking pipes sounded like the basement back at High School had, with its own brand of music playing along them.  The dripping was more obnoxious, constant and steady.  From a sink of some kind?  A leak in a pipe?  That would mean more than a simple leak, wouldn’t it?  It must be a leaky faucet.  Again, it seemed to mean a utility room of some kind.  He had seen the one at the High School a few times and knew it had a sink as well as noisy pipes. 

       Frank concentrated on the breathing he heard.  Who was in here with him?  Had they taken Connor too?  Mandy?  The breathing sounded labored, like a person trying to breathe around a gag… or having a hard time breathing because he had been recently poisoned and then nearly killed by induced heart attack.  Was that Joe?  Had they gotten him from the hospital?  How?

       Frank shifted again.  His shoulders ached, his arms felt half-dead from being underneath him for a period of time, long enough to put them to sleep.  Frank wished he could see.  He craned his head around and listened.  If he was not gagged he could speak, try to wake the other person in the room.  He feared it was Joe and that frightened him.  Joe needed to be back in the hospital!  Joe was too ill to be here. 

       A door opened into the room, the hinges squeaking loudly to announce the presence of someone coming into the room.  By the footfall on what was probably a concrete floor, Frank thought it must be a single person and by the sound of the shoes, it sounded like women’s flats or something with a clompy sort of heel. 

       “Frank!” it was Anna and she spoke in a hushed voice filled with fear, or so it sounded to Frank.  He wished he could see her face.  “Oh, Frank, we found you!  We’ve been looking for you!”

       Say what? Frank thought.  Had she gone completely bonkers?  Did she really think he would believe her?

       He felt his gag removed though and he took a deep breath through his mouth.  His tongue felt swollen, his lips like sandpaper.  He sucked in another breath of air as he felt a hand on his chest.  Was she really going to free him?  He turned toward her again and for about the millionth time, wished he could see something, anything.

       “I’ll let you go,” she whispered to him.  “I can let you go but if I do, you have to promise to come with me.  Will you come with me, Frank?”

       Say what? Frank thought. 

       “Come with…? I don’t understand,” Frank said in a raspy voice.  His whole mouth was so dry.  “Anna…”

       “Sssh,” Anna said and he felt two fingers on his lips.  “Ssh, my dear, dear, Frank.  If we want this to work, we have to go now.  But first you have to promise.  You will come with me and stay with me forever!”

       “Anna…” Frank said, feeling suddenly nauseous.  “I can’t.  I…” What did she want from him?

       She slapped him, suddenly, hard across the face.  His ears rang with the force of her slap and the gag was shoved back into his mouth only a second or so later.  He struggled, tears streaming down his cheeks as his cheek began to ache.

       “Well, well, well, look who we have here,” a voice taunted them, a familiar voice.  It wasn’t Anna and Frank was fairly certain it wasn’t the large man.  He should know the large man if he heard him again.  “The Hardy Brothers.  The big men on campus.  What’s the matter, Frank? Cat got your tongue?”

       The voice laughed and was joined by girlish laughter, namely Anna’s.  He thought the other laughter sounded familiar too.  It wasn’t Doctor Rich but someone Frank knew and knew decently well.  Who?  Who was it?  Why was that voice so familiar to him?  His stomach ached, both from the aftereffects of whatever had been shot into his arm and the knowledge that someone familiar to him, a possible friend, was behind the attacks on himself and his brother. 

       Frank felt something brush across his cheek and what felt like a finger run the line along his very dry lips.  He shivered as someone blew into his ear and he was unable to prevent it.  Was that Anna?  What was she doing to him? 

       “I played you,” the voice gloated and Frank was glad he couldn’t see the man.  “I played you both.  Ran you around campus like fools, chasing yourselves, certain you were so wonderful!  I played you both!  And my dear sister here, she was just a gem.  She was perfect, wasn’t she?  Acting the victim, acting the injured girl being sought as a vendetta against Joe.  You never even came close to the truth.  You trusted me up to the very end, didn’t you, Frank?  Oh, yes, you can’t answer me.  That’s all right, I know you trusted me.  I looked so hard for you tonight.  Oh yes, I helped Connor search the dorm for you.  And in the end, I beat you both!  You chased yourselves and never came close to the truth!”

       “What… truth?” someone else in the room rasped past labored breathing.  It was Joe.  Frank’s heart fell.  Joe sounded horrible.  It was too soon, Frank thought, too soon for Joe to be out of the hospital.  It was obvious hard for him to breathe!  “That… you’re… a psycho?”

“A psycho am I?” and Frank heard flesh striking flesh.  Frank flinched for his brother’s sake but the face so close to his own made it impossible for Frank to do more.   

To keep his mind off of what Anna was doing, or thought she was doing, he concentrated on the ropes around his wrists.  He felt along the chords with numb fingers, twisting his wrist slightly to get a feel for the knot tied.  The movement sent another searing pain up through his shoulders.  He stifled the urge to scream, only so that he wouldn’t draw attention to his actions.  He slowly traced the edge of the knot over and under until he thought he had an idea where to begin untying.  The only problem was, he wouldn’t be able to do it when he was still lying on his hands.

Anna giggled in his ear and he flinched.  He had forgotten her all right and she had a hand on his chest and her other hand on his cheek.  He shifted his face again as he felt Anna’s lips close in on his own.

       “Yeah,” Joe whispered, suddenly.  “Still a psycho.  Just proved it again.”

       “Anna should have killed you,” the voice spoke harshly to Joe and Frank heard the gloater hit Joe again.  “I told her to kill you but she always has such a soft heart for the little people.  But she understood, like I did, that we had to get rid of you so our father could return, so that he would have justice.  It was my idea to have fun with you first.  To be your friend and stab you in the back.  I liked that.  And it worked, it worked very well.”

       Frank had to know but he couldn’t ask.  Who was it?  It was right there, the voice so familiar to him.  He should know, blast it!  He should know!   Anna continued to run her finger along his lips.  He moved his face out of the way and she grabbed him with one hand and licked his cheek with her tongue.  The girl was definitely not connecting with all gears.  She was more than an egg shy of a full dozen, too. 

       “You’re the one I really wanted,” she whispered in Frank’s ear.  “I wonder if Jason will let me take you with us.  We’re going to Libya.  You would like Libya.”

       Frank shivered and fought off a wave of nausea.  Now he knew who was the more psychotic of the two.  Anna, who acted sweet and innocent, Anna who acted like she needed to be defended from the whole world, was totally lost in the head.  To continue to keep his mind off of everything she was doing, he continued to work on the ropes and hoped she didn’t notice him if he moved his arms too much.

 

       Joe looked up at Jason Aleman through a fog that seemed to have settled over his head, making Jason’s silhouette phantom like in the process.  He looked over at Frank again and swallowed.  Frank looked helpless.  Anna… Anna kept kissing Frank’s face, kept licking him, kept tracing his lips with her fingers.  Joe struggled against his own bonds, trying to tear free of them so he could defend Frank from Anna.  He mourned the fact that he was unable to help his brother.

       Unfortunately, Joe still felt as weak as a day-old-kitten. 

       “I’m a genius, I know,” the other boy taunted.  Jason.  Anna’s brother.  “And a good actor if I do say so myself.  I got one up on the great Hardy Brothers and they never knew what hit them.”

       “Just… delinquent,” whispered Joe with a glare.  He knew.  He had to let Frank know.  “Jase Aleman… Jason Rich.  Doctor Rich’s… son.”

       “Yes…” Jason hissed and Joe felt another ringing slap on his face.  His vision swam even more but Joe held onto consciousness with sheer force-of-will, his desire to stay conscious long enough to rescue his brother larger than anything physical that Jase Aleman/Jason Rich could do to him.  No, he would allow no one to do anything else to his brother.  He had to be the strong one.  He was the strong one.  Injured, poisoned, whatever, at least he still had his sight!  Frank had his strengths still but they lay in his mind.  Joe’s strength was physical.  It always had been.  He struggled against his bonds again and heard Anna giggle.  She sounded like a ten-year-old torturing a spider or something worse.

       Jase Aleman, his brother’s next-door neighbor, was Jason Rich.  Never in a thousand years would Joe have guessed that Jase Aleman was any relation to Doctor Rich.  Jase always seemed so carefree, like he didn’t have a worry in the world.  Everyone had bought into his ‘college student having fun’ routine.  Why doubt him?  He had been no different than any other student at Bayport University.

       Joe looked back over at Frank.  Anna continued to pet Frank and Joe continued to seethe.  Frank, though it was much harder to read Frank’s eyes now that he couldn’t see, seemed oblivious of what Anna was doing to him.   Frank’s face bore that look he wore when he concentrated, hard, on something else.  Maybe he was distracting himself from whatever sick joke Anna was playing on him.  Joe liked that idea very much, so he went to work on his own bonds, twisting his hands to begin the search for the knot in the ropes around his wrists.  He was going to get free!  He had to get free!

“You ruined my father’s life, you ruined my life and you ruined Anna’s life,” Jase… Jason suddenly grasped Joe by the top of the hospital gown that Joe still wore and lifted Joe up off the bed.  Jason glared into Joe’s face.  “Can you imagine what it’s like, to suddenly lose your father like that?  To know that he can never come home?  That’s what I have had to endure.  I would do anything for my father.”

Jase released him and Joe fell back, hard, on his hands.  He winced in pain but did not cry out.  He would never give Jase that satisfaction!  Never!  Joe held his arms taught as he groped the knot and began to trace it to it’s beginning.  This kind of rope was never easy to free yourself from.  Joe, however, was determined not to give up.

“It was all my idea, to be your friend, to lure you in and you never once suspected,” Jason continued.  Like many a bad guy before him, Joe knew that Jason just had to gloat about his accomplishments over the Hardys.  Jason turned to Frank, who still had Anna practically draped on him.  “Your weakness, Frank, is that you trust easily.  Your trust made Joe trust me.  I knew if I could get you to like me, you would do half my work for me.  And you did.  It was so easy!”

Joe saw Anna nibble on Frank’s ear and gently blow into it.  Frank shook his head, violently, as if trying to get her off but she held him more tightly.  Anna licked Frank again.  Joe swallowed and wondered if Frank would need rabies shots when they were free.  He knew if he were in Frank’s shoes, he’d feel like he needed to bathe for a week!  Frank still looked distracted from what Jason was saying and what Anna was doing.  Joe turned his attention back to Jase.

       “Pan…ko…vic?” Joe whispered, trying to speak louder and betrayed by his own lungs.  It hurt to talk.  He knew he had been speaking out of sheer bravado earlier when he told Connor he was going to help hunt for Frank.  Man, it hurt to breathe, much less try to talk!  But he had to keep Jason distracted so he could get his bonds untied. 

       “I could tell you that,” Jason said and his smile looked positively bestial.  “Or I could leave you to die in confusion.  But since he’s already flying out of town, I can tell you that he’s an old family friend.  An associate of my father’s and one of his operatives.  He’s been working for us since our father had to leave and I think he did a fair job.  You see, our father helped him with his legal problem and helped him get himself declared dead.  He was more than willing to assist us with taking care of you.  He saw it as a challenge, you see.  I knew you wouldn’t be much of one but it made him happy.”

       “You’ll like him,” Anna whispered in Frank’s ear, the words just barely carrying to Joe.  Were they bringing them to wherever they were going?  Libya?  Worse?  No way!  No way, Joe thought.  He’s not bringing us anywhere!  Joe went pulled on one of the loops of the knot around his arms and tried to pull it free.  It was a little loose to begin with. 

       Don’t tell me, he thought to himself. Anna tied me up.  Typical girly knot!

       “The b-boys who at-tacked Anna?” Joe whispered?  Keep him talking.  He already guessed that the boys who attacked were just some boys that Pankovic, Jase or Anna hired to do the dirty work but anything to keep Jase distracted.

       “Oh, old hired hands,” said Jase with a casual flare.  “Old hired hands.  Dupes, idiots willing to fake attacks to make a few bucks.  We used them then we cut them off.  We don’t need them anymore.”

       Joe twisted his wrist again and fought, very hard, to hide a grimace when pain shot not only up into his shoulders but into his chest as well.  He gasped for air for a minute, taking shallow breaths until the pain subsided.  He remembered the doctor telling him he had to stay on a respirator for a day or two; he had not been given that opportunity.

       “And now,” Jason said.  “It’s about time for us to go.”

       He turned toward Anna.

       “Anna,” Jason said in a warning voice and Anna pulled her hand away from Frank’s face.  “We have to go.  Get the matches.”

       “I want to bring him with us!” Anna protested and she put a hand on Frank’s chest.  “I doubt there’s any other interesting boys in Libya!  I want him to come.  He’s blind, he can’t cause us much trouble!”

       Frank blanched at that and Joe tried to get up.  He had to get untied, he had to rescue Frank!  Save Frank!  He had to!

       “Leave… Frank… alone,” Joe whispered in his harsh, raspy, voice.  “Leave him.  Can’t… hurt you!”

       “I know that,” Anna sounded annoyed.  “I don’t want to hurt him, either.  I want him to come with us!  Jason!”

       “Oh, be reasonable,” Jason glowered at his sister.  “We are not bringing him with us!  What, do you want a leash to lead him along, like a puppy dog?  He’s not a pet, Anna, he’s a man and blind or no, he’s dangerous!”

       “I won’t let you kill him!” Anna protested.  “He’s so cute and he’s gentle and he’s kind, you know that about him.  I’ll keep him out of the way, Jason, please?”

       “Anna, please, use the brain you were born with,” Jason said, hostilely.  “I realize that’s hard for you to do, but at least try to use it?  We are not bringing him with us!”

       “Yes we are!” Anna declared, firmly.  “I am not leaving without him!”

       “No, Anna,” Jason said, firmly.  “Father won’t allow it.  You’ll find a boy you like there but we aren’t bringing HIM.  Now, get the matches!”

       Anna looked ready to protest again but finally her shoulder sagged slightly and she looked down at Frank with a sad expression on her face.

       “Just one kiss,” Anna whispered and she struggled to pull out Frank’s gag.  “Just one kiss.”

       She took out the gag and gently kissed Frank on his lips.  Jason barged over, pulled the gag from Anna’s hand and stuffed it back into Frank’s mouth. 

       “Anna!” Jason barked.  “Now!  We don’t have time for these games!  Don’t make me tell Father, you know where he’ll put you!”

       That seemed to bring Anna up short and she pulled herself off of Frank and stood straight and tall, her head tossed back.  Whatever that threat was, it seemed to have a certain effect.  Joe breathed a sigh of relief.  Maybe going with Anna would keep Frank alive but what kind of life would that really be?  He knew Frank would rather stay.

       “Always play your games,” Anna muttered, looking childish, petulant.  “We always get to do what you want.  I just want him!  Why can’t I have him?  Daddy said I could have anything I want!”

       “Yeah, well, you aren’t getting it,” Jason said.  “Dad was talking about jewelry or clothes, not men!  We don’t have time to mess with him and no way to get him out of the country with us.  Too much trouble.  No, he’s got to die with his brother.  Then we can go to our father and live with him!”

       Anna draped her body over Frank’s for a moment and showered his face with kisses before Jason dragged her off and shoved her at the door. 

       Jason stomped across the room and brought back a package of matches and he lit one.  He held it close to Joe’s face.  Joe felt the fire flickering next to his cheek, the heat almost close enough to burn it.  He tried to pull his cheek away but Jase held Joe’s head tightly.

       “See that, Joe?” he asked the younger Hardy.  “Feel it?  Feel the heat across your face?  See the flame as it flickers and burns?  Just think about your skin being like this stick of wood.  Think about your whole body lighting up and staying that way until the fire snuffs out your life.”

       Jason blew the match out with a single puff.  He turned away and walked across the room.  

       “I just wanted to tell you that it was a pure pleasure to play you like we did,” Jason said.  “Being the pal, the buddy, getting in close to the great Hardy brothers and their great minds.  Living in the dorm next to Frank and being oh so helpful.  Yes, I enjoyed that, actually, because I knew… I knew in the end, honor would be restored and justice served.  This will be our justice.”

       Jason lit another match and held it close to Joe’s face again, close enough he felt the burn on his cheek.  Joe pulled his head back and looked up into Jason’s eyes.  He saw no madness there, saw nothing resembling insanity.  Instead, he saw a look filled with ration, reason and so cold!  Joe shivered and felt as though he stared into the face of pure evil.  He remembered a movie he saw once that had the devil in it; Joe would have sworn this man was just as bad as that one had been.

       “This is your prison,” Jason said.  “And this is your death.  I have taken great pains to coat the walls with kerosene.  There isn’t any on the floors so the walls should catch, all the way around you, before the floor finally goes.  The floor is concrete, too.  The flames, however, will catch the roof and in about five minutes you should have hot wood on you.”

       Jason smiled then and he lit another match.  He moved across the floor to the wall on the opposite end of the door.  Carefully and slowly, he let the map fall out of his hands to the base of the wall behind him.  It caught almost instantly.  Joe knew Frank was aware of what just happened, he flinched back from the heat of the flames that they could already feel.  Jason walked slowly across the room to the door and stood there for almost a minute.

       “This is your death and this is justice,” said Jason.  “Match and game.  We win.”

       And the door closed.

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. I've only borrowed them to play with for a while but I promise to return them whenever I've finished with them.  (I make no promises as to condition, that's entirely up to them).  I promise, I'm only writing for fun and I'm not making a single dime off of this (unless you count personal fulfillment).