by Kyla Stone
The door was locked. It was always locked.
She’d beaten her fists against that immovable steel door thousands of times, struck it until her palms bled, scraped at the frame until her fingernails broke off.
She rested her hands on her belly. Felt movement. Quickly dropped to her sides again.
She took a step forward. One, two, three. Ten steps to the door.
It’s not going to open. It never does. Why do you do this to yourself?
She stood in front of it. Bounced on her heels. Fear and apprehension battling with desperation, with a crazed, terrible hope.
The cement floor was freezing now. So was the air. Goosebumps pimpled the flesh on her arms and legs. The cold entered through the soles of her feet and radiated up through her shins, her thighs, her torso. She shuddered.
This was real. This was happening. Without heat, she was dead. Hope or no hope.
She rested her right hand on the handle. Swallowed hard, battling her despair, her own disintegrating mind.
A terrible tightness gripped her chest. Her ears were ringing. Her hands were shaking.
She turned the handle.
The door swung open.
3
Hannah
Day One
It was too good to be true. It wasn’t real.
It was real. This was no dream. It was real and it was happening.
Hannah didn’t know how long she stood there, hovering between two worlds. Her prison behind her and her future before her—unknown and utterly terrifying.
How had the loss of power affected the electronic lock? She had no idea. Maybe it was all connected to the generator—the camera, the security system, the access panel.
It was possible he’d finally made a mistake. After all these years, maybe he’d accidentally left the door unlocked.
And she’d been so beaten down, so despondent and resigned to her fate, she’d stopped checking.
A thought came to her—slow and fuzzy. Back in her old life, a life she could barely recall, one of her college professors had once told the story of the dog who was trapped inside a cage for months. When the cage door was finally opened, the dog remained huddled inside and refused to come out.
His spirit was broken. He’d forgotten what freedom meant.
Had she forgotten, too? Nausea churned in her stomach, acid burning the back of her throat. She nearly vomited.
A thousand what-ifs careened through her brain. If the power hadn’t gone out…If she hadn’t forced herself to try the lock, in complete defiance of everything experience had taught her thus far…if she’d given up…
But she hadn’t given up. She’d opened the door.
And now? Now everything was different.
In a heartbeat, her entire world had changed.
She was out of the cage.
Instead of joy or triumph, fear that gripped her. Her constant, familiar companion. Pressing down on her chest, closing her throat. That choking panic clawing at her throat.
Her breath came in sharp, shallow gasps. Her heart galloped like a jackrabbit inside her ribcage, adrenaline thrumming through her.
What now? Now you run.
The air smelled stale and musty. She blinked in the darkness, barely able to make out the wooden basement stairs leading up to another door with a rim of light at the bottom and sides like a lighthouse beckoning her onward.
It was a normal door. A regular wooden door like in every house she’d ever been in. No metal. No reinforced frame. No electronic keypad.
Just a door.
A door leading to the whole bright and terrifying world.
She glanced back into the room. Into her tiny, cramped prison. Was there anything she wanted to take with her? Her journals? Her notebooks filled with poetry and song lyrics? No. Not even those.
She would leave everything behind, shedding her past self like a caterpillar shed its skin.
It won’t be that easy, a voice in her head whispered.
She ignored it. There would be time for all those thoughts later. Now, she just had to get out.
With her good hand, she gripped the railing. With her bad hand, she cradled her swollen stomach as if that could hold herself up.
She began to climb. One step at a time. Counting with each step. One, two, three. Breathe in, breathe out. Six, seven, eight.
At the top of the stairs, she hesitated. Fear thrummed through her. What waited for her on the other side? Freedom or just another trap?
He could be there, sitting at his kitchen table waiting for her, grinning his Cheshire Cat grin. A cruel trick. Playing with her the way a bored cat played with its dinner. Taunting her.
Hannah wouldn’t go back down those stairs again. She couldn’t. Her mind would crack and shatter into a thousand pieces and she would go away and never come back again. She would shrivel into dust and nothingness.
She wasn’t going back. There was only forward.
She twisted the handle and pushed open the door.
Harsh white light struck her eyeballs. It felt like a huge spotlight shining directly into her face, like needles piercing her brain.
With a muffled cry, Hannah crumpled to the stairs, nearly falling backward. She barely kept her grasp on the railing. Her knees struck the edge of the stairs. Pain stung her kneecaps.
She flung her left hand over her face and squeezed her eyelids shut. Her eyes stung and prickled. Hot tears leaked down her cheeks. Long minutes passed before she could even think past the blinding pain, the shock and confusion.
Daylight. The thought trickled in slowly. Her eyes were used to artificial light but hadn’t seen the sun in years. Her retinas couldn’t take the harsh bright light.
Panic threatened to overtake her again. How was she going to escape if she couldn’t see? She was already weak, crippled, and defenseless. How could she possibly do this blind?
It wouldn’t work. This couldn’t work. He would find her. And when he did, he’d be angrier than he had ever been.
He would break her fingers again, then her toes, her hands, her wrists. He would take his knives to her. Cut off her fingers one by one and watch her bleed…
Stop it! She screamed at herself. Just stop!
She fought back the fog of frantic, jumbled thoughts careening inside her head. She had to think clearly or she would never get out of here alive. She would never reach her son or hold him in her arms again.
She wasn’t blind. Her eyes would adjust. It would just take time.
Time being the one thing she didn’t have.
She had no idea when he would come back. In a week? In a day? In the next hour?
She didn’t even know for certain that he wasn’t already here. Waiting for her, lurking just out of her reach, watching. Or maybe he was out in the yard, and as soon as she stumbled or made a noise, he’d come racing in to haul her back down to that prison.
She stilled, forced herself to inhale a deep breath. The mustiness of the basement was gone. The air smelled fresh—if a bit dusty, cool but not freezing, the temperature somewhere near sixty degrees.
She strained her ears for any noise, any shuffle of footsteps or muffled breathing to alert her to the fact she wasn’t alone, that he was right there with her, watching her every move, just waiting for the right moment to pounce.
Only the roar of her own pulse in her ears. The utter silence pressed against her eardrums. She held her breath, listening, listening.
Nothing. She had to believe that he was gone. If he was here, she was dead anyway. But if he wasn’t…
Every minute that passed was a minute closer to getting caught. She couldn’t stay here. She had to get as far away as possible. She had to get the hell out of here. Wherever here was.
Her eyes still closed, she touched her belly with her good hand. He would come after her. She had no doubt of that. He would need to find her before she found help, before she told everyone all about him.
She needed a head start. She needed every hour and ever
y mile she could put between herself and this place.
Think! Take it one step at a time. Don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t think of the time slipping by, every second, every minute wasted. First things first.
She had to find a way to be able to see. She needed something to deflect the brightness, to shield her eyes. She needed sunglasses. But how to find those when she had no idea where to look—and couldn’t actually look at all?
Her hand was still on her belly, touching the cotton fabric of her sweatshirt. The dark green fabric would block light if she could figure out how to wrap it around her head.
It was also the only thing keeping her warm. She dreaded taking it off. The thick, unwieldy arms would be hard to tie around her head and remain in place.
Plan B. She needed a pair of scissors. Most people kept a pair in a kitchen drawer. Maybe he did, too. She just needed to find the kitchen and could feel her way from there.
She could do this. She could figure it out.
It meant moving into the house blindly, unable to see where she was going, making her way by touch alone. Her temporary blindness made her even more vulnerable and helpless than she already was.
Fresh panic clawed at her, closing her throat. She could hardly breathe, couldn’t move, her arms and legs rooted to the spot. Blackness swirled in her mind and threatened to take her away again. But she couldn’t let herself go away.
Every minute counted. Everything mattered.
She fought to stay present, to push down the mind-numbing fear paralyzing her.
It was either move or die.
Hannah refused to die.
Keeping her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she flailed ahead of her, pushed the door out of the way. She crawled on her hands and knees further into the house. Felt cool linoleum beneath her.
The dog barked, startling her.
Her heart bucked in her chest. She collapsed, cowering beneath the onslaught of overwhelming terror.
He was here. He’d unleashed the monstrous dog, sicced it on her, brought it inside to tear out her throat. The monster of her nightmares took over. The yellow eyes and red slash of a mouth. The claws closing around her throat and cutting off her breath.
Her mind threatened to go away. Blank darkness tugged at her frantic thoughts, stealing them away. No! She couldn’t disappear now. She had to stay present, to fight through it, no matter how terrifying.
She forced herself to count inside her head, to calm down. One, two, three…thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two…fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven…
Think! some small part of her brain cried. That deep booming bark came from outside of the house. The dog was outside, not in here. It couldn’t hurt her. Nothing was hurting her.
She sucked in several ragged breaths until she’d regained control of herself. Focus. Focus on escape. That was all that mattered.
She shut out the barking and listened for noises inside. No signs of life. Nothing, not the soft buzz of the fridge or the ticking of a clock.
More importantly, no squeak of a boot on a floorboard, no sigh of a body shifting or low, steady breathing.
It didn’t mean she was alone.
And it certainly didn’t mean she was safe.
4
Hannah
Day One
Heart banging in her chest, Hannah crept across the floor, her right hand splayed in front of her to feel whatever lay ahead, her damaged left hand balanced on her palm. Her knees still hurt. Her lower back ached. The dull pain in her ruined hand never went away.
She ignored it all. She was used to pain, to the agony of broken bones and the tenderness of slowly healing bruises. This was no different.
Her fingers found the thin spindle of a chair leg, then the thicker leg of a table. She moved around the table and kept going several more feet until she reached a smooth, warm surface.
Wood, not the cool sleek surface of a stainless-steel appliance. A cabinet door.
She reached for the knob of the cabinet, felt higher and found the first drawer. She explored each object with her fingers, her muddled brain formulating the correct objects with painstaking slowness—cold metal spoons, forks, and bread knives.
In the next drawer— the smooth cylinders of spices and herbs. In the next, round rolling pins and wide thin cutting boards.
In the fourth drawer, measuring spoons and cups and a can opener. Her fingers closed over something sleek, cool, and pointed. Scissors.
Relief shot through her veins. She sank to her butt and leaned back against the cabinet, legs stretched out in front of her. She fumbled for the bottom hem of her shirt, feeling for the starting point and fitting the scissors in place.
Eyes still squeezed shut, cautiously feeling her way, she cut a strip of cloth about four inches wide and seventeen or eighteen inches long.
She dropped the scissors, folded the strip in on itself once, then placed it over her eyes like a blindfold. Once she’d tied and knotted the ends around the back of her head, she adjusted the blindfold so that there was a bit of space to peek through at the bottom.
Slowly, she opened her smarting eyes. The darkness offered sweet relief. When she glanced down, she could make out the black and white checks of the linoleum floor through the glaring white light.
It was enough. And it would get better.
The fog in her brain cleared a little more with every minute she spent outside the cramped hellhole of her prison. She was free.
She was free.
She could scarcely wrap her mind around it. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was going to get the hell out of here.
Hannah pulled herself to her feet. What was next? Her eyes couldn’t take looking out the window, not yet. She went still and listened. The dog barked. The sound was closer and much louder now.
She still heard nothing else. No rumbling car engines. No sounds of neighbors.
She was somewhere far from civilization. It only made sense. He would want her somewhere where no one could hear her scream.
And no one ever had.
The nearest town might be fifty miles away. It was the middle of winter. She couldn’t go out in a sweater and long johns and expect to last more than a few hours.
She had to gather as many supplies as she could before she set out.
Using the narrow strip of vision, she slowly made her way through the kitchen and onto a wooden plank floor. She stumbled into a brown leather sofa, almost knocked over an end table covered in books, found a fireplace and a woodburning stove, and finally reached the hallway.
It was dark inside the first bedroom. The blinds over the windows were drawn and the curtains were closed, shielding her from the painful daylight.
She closed her eyes, folded the lower lip of the blindfold, and slowly opened them. It only took a minute to adjust as she took everything in.
Log cabin walls. Gray nubby carpet. A double bed with a blue and navy striped comforter, end tables on either side, a dresser along the far wall beside the double accordion doors of the closet.
Everything clean and neat and orderly.
She headed for the closet. Her gut roiled in revulsion at the thought of wearing his clothes, but it lasted for only a moment. She wanted to live. The knowledge that she was going to steal his own things to escape held a certain satisfying appeal.
Within minutes, she’d found a fresh T-shirt, two long-sleeved waffle-knit shirts, two hooded sweatshirts, a windbreaker jacket, and a heavy, insulated dark brown coat with a furred hood that reached her knees.
She put it all on, dressing in layer after layer. The men’s clothes were large on her slight 5’2” frame, but they would also fit over her distended stomach. The pants were harder. In one of the drawers, she found some long johns and cut off the bottom at her ankles once she’d pulled them on.
She wore a pair of men’s insulated winter hiking pants over them. They were too big for her legs and hips but too snug to fit around the fullest part of her belly. She wasn’t sure
what to do about that yet.
She added several pairs of warm wool socks, then went back to the closet, knelt down, and rummaged around the stuff stored on a couple of shelves stacked on the floor. She needed a backpack to carry supplies.
She didn’t find a pack, but she did uncover a heavy, down-lined sleeping bag rated for winter temperatures. She tossed it on the bed along with two extra pairs of wool socks.
There had to be a place he stored his winter gear. But wherever it was, it wasn’t here. Time to keep looking.
She placed the blindfold back over her eyes, slightly folded up, and cautiously and painstakingly searched the rest of the house. With every minute that passed, the watery glare lessened, and she could make out more details of her surroundings.
She searched the bathroom and then headed back to the living room and kitchen. She opened the pantry. It was stocked with at least a month’s worth of food. Perfect.
There was another door in the kitchen across from the basement. A mud room leading to a rear door. Winter gear and outdoor supplies hung from every hook. Two pairs of boots and some tennis shoes were stacked neatly beneath the hook. A set of men’s skis leaning against the wall and a cabinet next to the washer and dryer.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a small wooden porch outside the rectangular window inset in the door.
Recognition jolted through her. She’d stared at that back porch a hundred thousand times. But always from below.
She was standing directly above her mattress and the barred rectangle window.
She closed her eyes, opened them, forced away the dark sucking panic.
She wasn’t stuck down there anymore. She wasn’t a trapped, helpless thing. She was free and she had to do whatever she needed to in order to stay that way.
The damn dog kept barking.
She dared to look out the back window. With the sunglasses and the partial blindfold, it was bearable. Slowly, the blurry images in all that whiteness shimmered into shapes and objects her brain recognized.