Girl, 11

by Amy Suiter Clarke

  Elle:

  What happened the next time he came for you?

  Nora:

  Jessica tried to convince him to take her, but she was vomiting almost constantly. Even though she said she thought the food he gave her had made her sick, by that point I had been there for more than a day with no food, and I felt like I was starving. He didn’t seem to mind letting me see everything when I walked out into the hallway. It was a nice place: big and airy, even though the room he kept us in was tiny. Looking back, I think it must have been a study. The rest of the place was nothing like it. I remember four bedrooms, two living rooms, a big fireplace. There was a Bible on the coffee table in one of the living rooms, a few crosses on the walls. Other than that, the rest of the stuff was all hunting themed: taxidermied ducks in flight, a dozen antler plaques, a full buck’s head. It gave me the creeps.

  He brought me downstairs to his kitchen and told me he would make me something to eat after I cleaned the whole room. “If you’re going to eat my food, you need to earn your keep,” he said. “The Bible says, ‘If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.’”

  I had learned dozens of verses from memory by the time I was eleven, but I had never heard someone recite them with as much spite as that man did. Our pastor used to say the Bible was like a hammer; it can be used as a tool or a weapon—it just depends on who’s holding it. Evil men use it as an instrument of control, and it seemed like he liked to control us.

  He didn’t look evil, though. I remember thinking that; I never would have gotten in the car with him otherwise. It’s been a huge source of frustration that I can’t remember anything specific about his face, but I think that’s partly because he looked so normal. Like he should have been nicer than he was.

  Elle:

  So, you don’t remember anything about his appearance?

  Nora:

  Not beyond what I was able to tell police when I was eleven. They tried a lot of things to help me remember more: hypnosis, therapy, forensic interviewing. But I just couldn’t. The psychiatrist who analyzed me said that I had repressed the memories of him, that my mind had been wiped clean by anxiety to protect itself. Sometimes I wonder if I would recognize him if I saw him on the street, but I’m not sure that I would. I’ve never had a good memory for faces; I don’t know if that’s because of what happened, or if I’m just one of those people. It’s not unusual for me to “meet” someone three or four times because I’ve forgotten our previous interactions.

  Elle:

  I see. What happened next?

  Nora:

  When he left the room, I searched for a way to escape, but there was no outside door from the kitchen and the windows wouldn’t open from the inside. It was getting dark, and all I could see was a thick cluster of trees and snow on the ground. Because I was unconscious when he drove me there, I had no idea how far away from home I was. I was desperate for food, but I had the feeling that he was watching me and would know if I stole any crackers from the pantry. So, I pulled the cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink and got to work.

  I had cleaned before. My mother never spoiled me, even though she wasn’t the typical housewife herself. If cleaning was what I had to do to get a meal, I intended to make sure the kitchen was clean enough that I could eat that food off the floor. I washed the cabinets from top to bottom with soapy water, cleaned the crumbs out of the toaster, scrubbed at the grease in the oven, pulled all of the food out of the refrigerator and wiped down the inside. That was a special kind of torture, moving all that food without eating any of it. But I knew Jessica was hungry, too, and I thought if I did a good job, he might give me enough to share with her.

  There were more Bible-ish things in the kitchen: cheesy quotes about faith and overcoming typed in cursive on floral postcards. The only thing that stood out was a handwritten card stuck with a magnet to the fridge. Exodus 34:21. “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.”

  That was when I knew. I was young, but I had heard rumors about the Countdown Killer at school. We knew he would be coming for girls our age then, and the boys in school used to joke about it—that TCK would come for us if we didn’t kiss them behind the bleachers, like he was some kind of boogeyman. Jessica had told me she was twelve. I was eleven. I kept cleaning, but from then on, all I could think about was how we could get away.

  It took me more than three hours to finish. After I mopped, I sat on the counter while the floor dried around me, and for a second, just a moment, I felt proud of what I’d done. Then the fear and longing for my mother came crashing back down, and I started to sob. I don’t know how long I cried before I heard the man come back in the room. I looked at him and said, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  He reached out, and I knew better than to pull away, so I let him touch me, play with my hair. “Oh, Nora,” he said. “Nora, I chose you. You’re special. You should feel lucky.”

  Then he told me to bring my cleaning supplies, and he took me down the hall to the bathroom. He had changed the rules; now, while I was waiting for him to cook, I needed to clean the bathroom too. I was furious, but I would have done anything to eat by that point. It didn’t take long, and when I finished, I could smell the tomato and basil coming down the hall. He was making me spaghetti. I still don’t know if he knew it was my favorite, or if it was just a coincidence. Either way, I had to force myself to walk at a normal pace to the kitchen. When I opened the door, I think I whimpered out loud at what I saw.

  There was red sauce everywhere—streaking the counters, splattered across the cabinets, even dotted on the eggshell-colored ceiling. Dirty pots and pans were piled in the sink. The man was sitting on a stool at the island, twisting his fork in a plate of pasta. He lifted it and closed his mouth around the food while he looked at me. I still remember those emotionless blue eyes, like a lizard’s.

  After swallowing his food, he smiled at me and said, “Look what a mess you’ve caused. I’m afraid I didn’t save you any. The effort of cooking made me quite hungry.” I will never forget the way he looked at me, like I was pathetic, like he hoped I would cry. Then he told me to clean up the mess, and maybe after, he would give me something to eat.

  But he didn’t. When I finished cleaning again, he grabbed my arm and dragged me back to the room where he was keeping me with Jessica. I was so angry that I tried to pull out of his grasp and run back to the kitchen, but when I saw the state she was in, I forgot all about my hunger. She was obviously incredibly sick, but he didn’t seem to care. I screamed at him that she needed a doctor, and he looked at me like I was an idiot. Because of course, he was trying to kill her, and he was going to kill me too.

  Elle:

  Was Jessica able to help you at all?

  Nora:

  No, she was very sick. It was perfect, really—his system. Break the first girl down and make her paralyzed with fear before you bring in the next one and start the process all over. It makes surviving, fighting back, feel impossible. You’re watching the life drain out of a person, knowing this is going to happen to you next. If TCK is good at anything, it’s knowing how to cause and intensify terror until it’s excruciating.

  I kept trying to convince her she had to come with me, we had to find a way out, but she could barely move. He came and got her once, I think on my second morning there, but he brought her back only twenty minutes later. She was barely able to move. She told me he left really early in the morning for about an hour every day, drove off into the countryside. That was our chance, but the only way out of the room was through a window. It was so small and two stories up, so it didn’t have a lock. He had told us there were vicious dogs guarding the property, that we were thirty miles from the nearest town. During winter in Minnesota, with no coat or shoes, that was a death sentence itself. He made escape seem impossible. I think he’d also gotten a little cocky. No one had gotten away from him before—he assumed he had such a hold on us that we wouldn’t try.

  On my third day, I kne
w we had run out of time. I didn’t know if he would kill Jessica before kidnapping another girl, or if the reason he left that morning was to stalk and abduct his next victim. Either way, I told Jessica, we had to go then or we never would. The girls before us had probably been too big, but both of us were small enough that we could squeeze through the window if we went headfirst. I thought if we stretched, we could reach the drainpipe and shimmy down. I had no idea if it would hold our weight, and once we got down, we would have to contend with dogs and snow in nothing but the pajamas he had given us, but it was the only way.

  [Through tears.] I was wrong. I tried reaching for the drainpipe, but I couldn’t get hold of it before I lost my balance on the floor inside the room. There wasn’t enough space for me to get one leg over the windowsill to hold myself steady. Then, when I was reaching for about the tenth time, just as I started to fall forward, I felt a hand grab on to my clothes. Jessica was behind me, keeping me from falling onto the frozen ground below. I told her no, that we both had to go, but she just shook her head. She didn’t even say anything. All she did was hold my hand and nod toward the window.

  With her holding me steady, I was able to reach far enough to grasp the drainpipe without losing my balance. She leaned out the window, bracing her shaking legs by putting her feet against the wall inside the cabin. She held me until I was able to grip the drainpipe with my feet, and then she let go.

  I didn’t have time to think, time to cry. That would come later. I was already freezing when I hit the ground. As far as I know, the dogs were just another lie he told. I never saw or heard them, but I didn’t stick around. I ran as fast as I could in the early morning dark. Looking back, I think that’s the only reason I survived. If the sun had been up, I wouldn’t have seen the gas station lights. There was enough of a glow in the sky that I knew which direction to go, and it was only half a mile away. Just another one of TCK’s lies—and it saved my life.

  Elle:

  Why have you never appeared in the media before? Surely you could make a fortune by telling your story.

  Nora:

  I don’t want to profit off what happened to me. I want TCK to be caught. I want him to be punished for what he did to me, to Jessica—to all those other girls.

  Elle:

  What do you think people should know about TCK, based on your personal experience?

  Nora:

  There were two things that seemed to be important to him: control and fear. Everything he did, every move he made with the girls he kidnapped and every word he spoke to me when I was trembling in his cabin, fed those two needs. The lore that surrounds him now, the mythical status he has created for himself, I think that has fed his need for the last twenty years. I think that’s why he hasn’t killed again. Not because I escaped and ruined everything, but because he was already getting what he wanted even though he wasn’t killing anymore. By never being caught, he has controlled the narrative, and he is still feared.

  But if that ever stops, if he ever feels like his work or his legacy is being challenged, he will come back. And if he does, it will get so, so much worse.

  26

  DJ

  1978

  Every part of the house was spotless.

  It was a Saturday in late September, more than two months since his brothers had died, and the layers of grief and grime spread throughout the house had been visible in every room he entered. While his father was away fishing, DJ threw open the windows to let in the mulch-laced autumn breeze while he swept and vacuumed the floors. He filled a bucket with hot, soapy water and got down on his knees to scrub the linoleum. DJ even used an old toothbrush to clean out all the grooves and dents that filled with extra dirt. It took six hours to wash every item of clothing and bedding in the house and hang it out to snap on the clothesline.

  Now the house was clean, filled with the scent of sun-kissed linen and glossy wood. He sat on the front steps, waiting for Josiah to come home. His fingers were red, slightly burnt from the harsh chemicals he’d used to strip the bathtub of months of soap scum and mildew. There had been no rubber gloves under the sink when he looked, so he’d borne the pain, dipping his hands into the bucket over and over to refresh his sponge. His body throbbed, but the tub sparkled.

  It was nearly dark by the time Josiah pulled into the driveway, his red truck jolting to a stop at a sloppy angle. The parking brake screeched in protest when he set it. DJ stood, pressing the front of his pants down to get rid of any creases from sitting so long. He had even dressed up, putting on his nice church slacks and a button-up shirt—a “child choker” his brother used to call it, tugging at the collar when he was forced to do up the top button for Easter Mass.

  Josiah flung open the door of his truck and heaved himself out onto the driveway. DJ watched as he shuffled around to the back and retrieved a large white pail. It was only when Josiah was halfway up the sidewalk that he noticed his son on the steps, waiting for him.

  “What’re you doing here?” Josiah asked, his voice slurring. His gaze focused somewhere to the right of DJ’s face. He hadn’t looked his son in the eye since that night two months ago when he had beaten him. He hadn’t touched DJ since, either in affection or anger.

  After a moment, he held the pail out to his son. “Never mind. Take these to the shed and clean ’em, like I taught you.”

  DJ took the pail, the thin metal handle biting into his sore fingers as he carried it back to the shed. When he got to the table his father had set up specifically for fish cleaning, DJ looked down at his shirt. He couldn’t risk getting fish guts and scales on this, but he couldn’t go inside empty-handed. It was still warm, even more so in the shed away from the cool night breeze. Not knowing what else to do, he stripped off his shirt and trousers and hung them over a hook on the door. Then he opened the pail and pulled out the first fish.

  He put his index finger slightly inside the walleye’s mouth to hold it steady before poking the pointy end of the knife in just at the edge of the cheeks. The glassy dead eye stared up at him. His father had taught him to always remove the cheeks first, the best part of the walleye, to make sure he wouldn’t forget later. DJ traced the circumference of the cheek with the blade until he had gone all the way around it. Then he pushed his finger under the broken skin and peeled the meat away, setting it aside. Moving the fin, DJ sliced into the side and then up next to the backbone, his knife vibrating against the bone as he slid it under the flesh from head to tail. Once he had a good fillet, he flipped it over and repeated on the other side before pulling the chunks of meat off both. He discarded the first fish carcass in the garbage can by the workstation and pulled out another, blinking away the exhaustion in his eyes.

  By the time he was finished with all seven fish, DJ’s chest, arms, and hands were flecked with scales and blood. He had a few nicks and cuts on his fingers, but he had a plate full of the most beautiful fillets he’d ever cut, so he walked into the kitchen through the back door with his head high. Finally, he’d get to see how his dad felt about the clean house.

  When he got inside, Josiah was sitting at the kitchen table, beer in hand and hair wet from a shower. DJ put the fillets in the fridge and went to the sink, where he splashed water and soap up his arms. He dried himself off with a towel before turning around to see his father regarding him with the bottle raised to his lips.

  Josiah took a long drink. After he set the bottle on the table, he looked DJ up and down. “Happened to your clothes?”

  “Didn’t want them to get dirty.”

  “So, you just left your Sunday best on the floor of the shed?”

  DJ shook his head. “No, sir. I hung them on the hook.”

  “Don’t sass me, boy.”

  “I’ll go get them.”

  “Nah, don’t bother. They’re already full of dust anyway. You’ll have to wash them tomorrow.”

  DJ sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and looked around the kitchen. It still made his chest swell a little when he saw how good everythin
g looked. He couldn’t remember the house ever being this clean. Charles and Thomas definitely never made things look this good. But Josiah didn’t seem to care.

  After a moment, his father looked at him again. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go get cleaned up.”

  With a nod, DJ walked up the stairs to the bathroom. His mouth fell open when he flicked on the light. The bathroom was splattered with mud; blades of grass and small pebbles littered the floor. The bathtub was empty, but there was a fine layer of sand and dirt sitting in puddles of water at the bottom. There were spots of shaving cream and fingerprints on the mirror above the sink. Josiah had left his wet towel in a heap on the floor.

  The injustice built up inside him like a storm, but he bit the insides of his cheeks to force his mouth to stay shut. Josiah had lost everything. He was doing the best he could, and DJ was all he had left.

  DJ pulled a cloth out of the linen closet, wet it down, and got on his knees to scrub up the mess.

  27

  Elle

  January 18, 2020

  The street in front of Sash’s house was lined with cars. Elle blinked at them in the glare of the early morning sunlight, seeing if she recognized any of the license plates. It was odd, thinking of Sash spending time with anyone other than her and Martín. Besides her and Tina, Elle didn’t really have other friends—sometimes she forgot that made her the strange one.