The Cave

Extremely dark. This isn't a fic, but rather a review of a psychological thriller that was based on a true story. It deals in graphic depictions of torture; physical, emotional and otherwise. This is *not* for the faint at heart. **The review itself doesn't get too graphic-just the book.

*Notes: This is a seriously *kick ass* book.. It will totally blow your mind, even if you've never heard the term 'psychology' before in your life. The story is a total mind-fuck. Trust me, I spoil the hell out of it, and you'll *still* be all kinds of shocked when you read it.

A psychologist named Helen went on vacation to a cabin in the mountains, and when she got there, she found a man with a knife hiding in the back of the pantry.

Pretending she hadn't seen him, she attempted to leave, only to find that her keys had mysteriously disappeared.

When she tried to get to the dock and the boat there, the steep stairway that used to hug the cliff was lying in pieces 50 feet below on the rocks.

Miles lay between Helen and the nearest town. Up the mountain was Kevin's cabin. Only, Helen didn't know where it was. Just that it was two miles north of the cabin she rented.

Knowing she didn't stand a chance in her dress shoes and skirt hiking down the mountain, Helen returned to the cabin and tried the phone. Of course, the line had been tampered with. When she dialed 911, there was silence except for the sound of breathing. He knew she would pick up the phone.

With nothing else at her disposal, Helen started talking. She tried to personalize herself to him, telling him of her family. She talked about her children, who were grown, but were expected to visit in a few days. She talked about her career, trying to convince him that she could help his pain go away so that he didn't need to use others' pain to make it stop.

After several hours, she realized that he was fairly smart. He was using his silence to torture her.

When she went to get a glass of water, he snuck up behind her and knocked her unconscious.

When she woke up, she was naked, and rushed to the bathroom, examining herself for signs of rape. But, he hadn't violated her. All he had done was draw a red line in the spot where a woman would be cut during a caesarian.

When she opened the bathroom door, there was a polaroid of a woman tacked to the opposite wall. The woman was lying on a stone floor naked, obviously screaming, with an incision in the exact spot where Helen had been drawn on. The woman was bleeding. Hurting. Dying.

He had killed before, and he was showing Helen what fate awaited her at his hands.

Beginning to panic, Helen rushed to her bedroom, wanting nothing more than to get dressed and run down the mountain to safety.

But, the man was more than just fairly smart. He was clever, too. And he had slashed all of her clothing. He'd left nothing intact except for a pair of flip-flop sandals and the bed-sheet.

Wrapping the sheet around herself and donning the sandals, Helen snuck out the bedroom window and began running in the direction of Kevin's cabin.

She could hear the man chasing her. But, he could have caught her easily as many times as she had fallen. He was *letting* her run. This is a game to him. He was going slow, waiting for her to fall and not get up.

When she reached a clearing, the man suddenly quickened his pace, his breathing ragged, as if he had suddenly realized that she wasn't going to stay down. This gave her a burst of energy, and she rushed toward the cabin she'd sighted at the other side of the clearing.

The door wasn't locked, and she went inside. But, she couldn't lock the door, because it was a keyed lock on both sides.

She started screaming for Kevin, and he came out of the back of the cabin. But something was wrong. He was breathing heavily. He was smiling strangely.He had been the one chasing her.

She had just been herded like a stupid cow. He chased her right into his lair.

That is when she realized that not only was he smart and clever. He was also very intelligent. He had outwitted someone who had spent their entire life studying the human mind. He had made her do exactly what he wanted her to do every step of the way.

Instead of killing her immediately, Kevin gave her food and water. He started a fire to warm her. And Helen began to think that this man was brilliant. A genius.

Because after the fear, and the chase, he was being kind. His tenderness was helping to break her as surely as violence could. Her mind, the wonderful human machine she had studied her whole life, was beginning to desert her.

When they talked, she realized that when she became too compliant, he got angry. Then he hurt her. He hit her, sometimes. One time, he seared her with a branding iron.

Then came the handcuffs. With her hands behind her back, with no clothes, she was truly helpless. But, if she didn't fight him, he hurt her. He seemed to enjoy it when she kicked him.

Helen suddenly knew that when he had broken her, the game was over. Then she would die. So, she could not break. She could not let the game end.

When he put her in the basement, he gave her a penlight and uncuffed her. Then he left her alone in the dark.

When the sun began to rise, she found hope, because there seemed to be light coming from one side of the basement, where the wall didn't quite reach the top of the room. Was it the outside?

Kevin came down and told her that he would start at eleven a.m. Start torturing her physically.

But, he didn't tell her what time it was then. Because the anticipation would be torture by itself.

When he returned, she lashed out with everything she had, she hit him, scratched, bit, and kicked. By some miracle, she was able to down him long enough to move a bench near the unfinished wall. She climbed over, thinking she had escaped.

But she discovered that she had just prolonged the chase. Because the light didn't come from outside, as she had hoped. It came from a single dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling of the cave.

When Kevin dropped down 15 feet from her and smiled, Helen knew that she had allowed herself to be herded again. He *wanted* her to go into the cave. It was all part of the game.

Almost able to smell defeat, Helen realized that she would die here. That was a foregone conclusion. But, she would die running. She would die fighting.

She hid in a crack in the cave wall, feeling hope surge as he ran past her. She could follow him to an exit.

But, an hour later, he seemed to realize that he had passed her. He was coming back. And she had been coming toward him the whole time.

She hid again. And when he shone the light on her, Helen knew that he had planned this, too. He'd known that he passed her. He'd planned for her to hide the first time. He'd given her the false hope of escape on purpose, because he didn't want her to quit yet.

So, she didn't quit. She was learning the rules quickly. The longer she amused him, impressed him, the longer she would live.

She slid further and further into the crack she was hiding in, crawling through the nesting of rats, trying not to squash their young as the crack became narrower and narrower. When it became so narrow that she nearly broke her hips sliding through, mercifully, she reached another cave.

But, he was there, with his flashlight. And he was beside himself that she'd crawled through the rats. He said that no one else had been brave enough.

He came toward her and she lashed out with her foot on instinct, breaking his flashlight. But, not before she'd realized he was naked, and excited.

Both of them in the dark, they talked more. She promised she could help him lose the pain. She would heal him, but they had to leave the cave and put him in a clinical setting, where he would be safe, and she could help him.

He cried, and she held him. He said he wanted to be healed. He knew he was broken, and he just wanted it to stop. He let her help him to his feet, take his hand. He agreed to go to a hospital.

But, he wanted to show her something, first. He turned on another flashlight and pointed it to the bound and gagged form of another woman. She was barely alive. She had been there for days.

Helen realized this was part of the game. To make her think that she had reached him, to let her exult in the fact that she had survived and that Kevin would never hurt anyone else. Then, he crushed her joy savagely.

That was when she knew he was a genius, and that he wasn't insane at all. He was not crazy. He simply had no morals, no conscience whatsoever. He was a sociopath.

He warned her of the underground river when she got too close, but she didn't care. She plunged into the icy depths because no matter how he planned, the water had to go somewhere. That somewhere had to be outside.

The water reached the top of the tunnel, and her eyes began to lose the light from the penlight he'd given her. Then, her head broke the surface. Air.

She was elated for a moment, then she realized she was still in the cave. But, there was a golden glow in the water at the other end of the cavern she was in.

Kevin jumped into the water behind her and she knew that once again, she had done exactly what he wanted her to.

Panicking again, she submerged and swam toward the golden glow. When she resurfaced again, she was outside. And he wasn't behind her. He couldn't follow.

Dragging herself out of the water, Helen reached the dock and looked up, recognizing the cabin she had rented perched above the broken stairs that led to the dock. She was back exactly where she had started.

When she headed toward the boat, she saw Kevin out of the corner of her eye, crouched not two feet from her in the rushes. He'd come out of the cave another way, knowing where she was the whole time.

She threw herself into the boat and rowed away frantically, unable to accept that after everything she had been through that she would still lose. She was not going to die!

Kevin reached the boat and grabbed her ankle. Helen screamed louder, relieved when the other boat yelled back.

Swatting at Kevin with the oars, she managed to keep him out of the boat, though he kept grabbing her ankle. This was still a game to him. Still his game.

As the other boat drew nearer, he cursed her, screaming that she was supposed to be his doctor, she was supposed to help him, she was a bitch, a lying bitch. She was supposed to help him!

He grabbed her ankle again and yanked, hard. She slid off of the seat of the rowboat and her head cracked the side of the boat with a sound like a gunshot.

*The Cave was written by Anne McLean Matthews and can be found at your local public library, Barnes & Noble, Hastings, Borders, and Amazon.com.