Girl Who Wasn’t There

by Vincent Zandri

  Turning, he returns the cutters to his toolbox and gets back in the truck.

  “We’re in,” he says, with a satisfied smile. “Let’s go get your daughter, Mr. O’Keefe, Mrs. O’Keefe.”

  The pit in my stomach is growing bigger and bigger, pressing against all my organs like a grade-four tumor. Pulse pumps over-oxygenated blood fast enough to take my breath away. But for the first time since this thing started, I feel like Chloe is already back in our arms.

  We drive for maybe three hundred feet over uneven road, two-sided by heavy brush and second-growth trees. When we come to the trailer situated at the end of the drive, I feel the pit in my stomach shift north. It becomes more like a rock that lodges itself in my sternum. My heart beats so fast and loud I can’t believe no one can hear it. Penny takes hold of my hand, squeezes it.

  “Oh, dear God,” she says, “please let Chloe be inside there. Please let her be all right.”

  The trailer is a double-wide, just like all the others. There’s also a porch attached to the front of it. This porch has a roof on it and wall panels fashioned from screens to keep the bugs and black flies out. The place is dark. Darker than dark. Pitch black. It doesn’t look like a place where anyone lives, much less survives.

  I open the door, slide out, the shotgun gripped in both hands. Penny slips out behind me, staying close to me. Gary gets out, comes around the front of the truck. He’s got a gun in his hand. A revolver. A Colt .45 1871 Army issue by the looks of it. Something a cowboy would carry.

  “Let me go first,” he says. “I’ve been here before. I know where he hides the key.”

  I’m going with my gut here. My built-in-bad-guy-detector. Thus far, Gary has given us no reason to doubt his sincerity, and his story about the daughter he lost to some psycho killers. But he never revealed until now that he knew the exact location of Walton’s property. I guess it’s possible he looked at the numbers on some of the mailboxes, but I didn’t notice a number on any mailbox belonging to the now dead chief.

  Penny and I are out of our element here. Or, that’s not right. It’s like we’re suddenly not in control of our every move, right or wrong. So what should we do? How should we proceed from this point forward? Stay close to Gary, but not too close. If he wants to take the lead, let him. But keep the shotgun at the ready.

  We make our way slowly to the stairs leading up to the porch. Gary takes hold of the opener. It’s locked. But without hesitating, he punches through the screen, unlocks the screen door from the inside. Opening the door, he walks on through. Penny and I follow, a few paces behind.

  The place smells bad.

  It’s a kind of sweet, but sour smell. Sickening. Like Walton lost power and all the meat in the freezer and refrigerator has now gone bad. The smell doesn’t seem to faze Gary, as he makes his way across the rough wood porch floor to the front door of the double-wide trailer.

  He goes to open the door. This time, the door is unlocked. He glances over his shoulder at us, his revolver pointed out front of him at the ready.

  “Stay close, folks,” he whispers. “And watch it with that shotgun, Mr. O’Keefe. I wouldn’t want an accident to happen.”

  He opens the door wide, enters. We enter right behind him. Terror is there to greet us.

  CHAPTER 40

  CONFUSION.

  I’m blind in the darkness. But I can feel the shotgun being ripped from my grip and then I feel myself falling. It happens not like two distinct actions, but instead, one quick, swift, well-planned maneuver. The drop isn’t far, but far enough that the wind is knocked out of me when I land flat on my belly. Penny drops on top of me, which I’m glad for, since I’m able to break her fall.

  “What the hell just happened?” she cries. “What did we fall into?”

  … You just fell into your worst nightmare …

  I can’t speak. I’m trying to get my air back, trying to work up the breath in my lungs, get my diaphragm back under control. Then, a bright round beam of halogen Maglite blinds me.

  “Bet you didn’t see that comin,’” Gary says, pleasantly. “He’s standing over the hole, looking down at us, the Maglite gripped in one hand, his cowboy pistol in the other. “I’m a little surprised at you, Mr. O’Keefe. I’d a thought your instincts would be sharper than that. But then, maybe you’re tired. You probably haven’t had a good night’s sleep in forever. Now ain’t that right?”

  I pull myself up onto my knees. Penny grabs hold of my arm, holds herself tightly against me.

  “You sick son of a bitch,” I spit. “Where the hell are we?”

  “You’re right where you’re supposed to be,” he says. “Inside Chief Walton’s trailer.” He pauses for a moment, as if to think about what he’s just said. “Well, that’s not entirely right, since the chief is dead, last I heard, thanks to you. So I guess that makes this place my trailer now.”

  “You broke in here,” I say. “You used bolt cutters to access the place. It doesn’t make sense.”

  He giggles, not like a barrel-chested late-middle-aged man, but like a little boy.

  “I’ve got some serious acting skills, now don’t I? Maybe I missed my calling.”

  The anger boiling inside me creates a fury that’s as palpable as the sweat pouring off my body. I try and leap out of the hole, but it’s too deep, the exposed clay soil moist and slippery.

  “Don’t even bother,” Gary informs. “You’d have to be Jesus to climb out of that pit. And even he’d have a devil of a time.”

  My eyes are locked on him. But in my head, I’m seeing the silhouette of a big man standing on the moonlit beach behind the Golden Arrow Hotel, his hand gripping Chloe’s.

  “Is our daughter here?” I beg. “Is Chloe here?” Then, cupping my hands around my mouth, I scream, “Chloe! Chloe!”

  I listen for a response, but I get nothing.

  Turning, Gary walks away from the pit’s edge and out of our line of sight, such as it is in the pitch darkness. Then, the lights come on inside the trailer. Bright, industrial, overhead lights. Not like this place is used as a home, but more like a factory or warehouse.

  When he returns to the pit’s edge, his revolver is stored in a brown leather holster on his hip, his Maglite nowhere to be seen. He’s running his hands over his white beard, smoothing it out.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Penny begs, her voice trembling.

  “What am I going to do with you, little lady?” he says, running his long pink tongue over his lips. “I haven’t really figured that out yet. But I’ll know it when it comes to me.” He giggles, like a little kid. “And oh boy, is it gonna hurt or what?”

  CHAPTER 41

  GARY WALKS AWAY again.

  A second or two later, I make out the trailer door opening and closing.

  Penny is crying so hard, she can’t speak. She drops down onto the clay floor on her bottom, slams her knees into her chest, and sobs uncontrollably. That’s when I smell the onions. The floor is littered with them—and rotting, putrid potatoes.

  “She’s dead,” she cries. “Chloe is dead. Don’t you see what’s happening, Sidney? Chloe is dead, and it’s all because of me, of my horrible decisions. Soon we’ll be dead, too, and on our way to hell.”

  Something goes snap inside my head then. Like when you break a pencil in half. You sense the tension of it bending in your fisted hands, and then, just like that, it goes snap. Reaching down, I grab hold of her arm, yank her back onto her feet, pull her into me, her face so close to mine we’re swapping sweat.

  “Now you listen to me,” I utter, my words forced, coming from deep inside me. “You are not going to do die. Chloe is not dead. And we are not fucking going anywhere, let alone hell. This hole we’re trapped in … this onion cellar or whatever it is … this is hell on earth. That creep up there, he’s the devil.” I feel a smile growing on my face. “And guess what, Penny? I’m going to kill the devil tonight. I’m going to make the son of a bitch pay.”

  Penny stares into my ey
es. She’s not making a sound, not making a move, her eyes unblinking and startled.

  “All right, Sid,” she whispers. “I believe you.”

  I let go of her arm. She takes a couple of steps in reverse, pressing her back up against the clay wall.

  “Now if only we can figure a way out of this pit,” I say, staring up at the bright, ceiling-mounted trailer lights.

  Then, a voice that belongs neither to me, or Penny, or Gary comes to me from out of nowhere. A faint voice. A child’s voice.

  “Daddy,” the voice says. “Daddy, is that you?”

  CHAPTER 42

  “CHLOE?!” I SHOUT. “Chloe, is that you?!”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Penny cries. “It’s Chloe. Oh, my sweet Jesus.”

  She separates herself from the wall, plants herself foursquare in the center of the pit.

  “Chloe, sweetheart?” she goes on. “Can you hear me?”

  “Daddy!” Chloe says. “Mommy? Is that really you?”

  “Yes, Chloe,” I say. “It’s us. We’ve come for you, sweetheart. Where are you?”

  “I’m in a hole,” she says. “It smells in here, like they use it for storing meat. Susan is with me.”

  A pit for storing venison, I imagine. For smoking fish, maybe.

  Turning to Penny. “Susan. Who is Susan?”

  Her eyes grow wide. “My God, that’s the Stevenses’ daughter. The little girl Chloe was playing with when she disappeared.” Hesitating. “Could it be … ?” her thought drifts off.

  “Either Walton and this creep Gary stole her from the Stevenses, or she was never theirs to begin with,” I point out. “But that’s not what’s important at the moment. Right now, we gotta figure a way out of here. A way out for everybody. Do it now.”

  “Daddy?” Chloe says. “Can we go home now?”

  I can tell by the sound of her voice that she’s shivering. It’s maybe seventy-five degrees in here, but if she’s been wet for far too long, and dehydrated, she could be experiencing the effects of hypothermia. Shivering, slow, shallow breathing, confusion. I’ve got to get her out of here now.

  I about-face, make a three-hundred-sixty-degree scan of the pit, like a ladder or even a rope is suddenly going to emerge from out of the clay walls. I look up. I’m guessing the pit is about twelve feet deep. I’m five feet nine inches. Penny is about five feet four inches. If I put her up on my shoulders, it’s possible she can reach over the side, shimmy herself up and over the top. She can then find something like a rope or an electrical cord, which she can tie off onto something sturdy like a structural bearing beam. I can use the rope or cord to climb my way to freedom. From inside the depths of this pit, it sounds like a bit of a bridge too far, but it’s our only hope. Gary will be back soon, or so I can only assume, and who the hell knows what he’s got planned for us.

  I tell Penny I’m going to put her on my shoulders.

  She nods in agreement. No need to explain the plan. She already knows what to do. Bending at the knees, she climbs up onto my back. Then pressing my body up against the moist clay wall, she slowly, carefully, climbs up onto my shoulders. Penny can’t weigh more than a buck twenty wet, but I feel my knees wobbling a bit, unsteady. It’s not the lack of strength so much as the exhaustion. It tells me we need to succeed at this, or we’re doomed.

  “How are you doing, Pen?” I say through grinding teeth, through the strain.

  “I can get my hands over the edge,” she explains. Then, tiptoeing on my shoulders, reaching, extending herself, “If I … can manage … to get ahold of something … something to give me more leverage. Something on the floor maybe.”

  I feel my load lighten a little.

  “You able to catch hold of something?” I beg.

  “There’s nothing … to grab,” she says, voice stressing, straining. “But if I can manage to press my palms flat on the floor, I can then lift myself up, if you help me.” She braces herself. “Give me a jump, Doc.”

  “Here we go,” I say. “Get ready.”

  Bending at the knees, I then spring up, sending her off my shoulder and farther up onto the pit’s edge. From there she shimmies herself out of the pit, rolls over onto her side on the floor. My heart fills with absolute sunlight.

  Then the trailer door opens.

  CHAPTER 43

  “WELL, WHAT DO you know?” Gary says. “I assumed the onion cellar was a foolproof trap. Never underestimate the power of a mare. You are something special, let me tell you, Mrs. O’Keefe.”

  I’m trying to get a clear and unobstructed look at Gary. But all I can make out are his legs.

  “Here,” he says, crouching, “let me help you up, little lady.”

  “Don’t you touch me,” Penny spits.

  She’s crabbing away from him, or so I assume. But he’s chasing after her, and when he gets his hands on her, he will be too strong for her. Too heavy. Too psychotic.

  “You don’t come near me!” Penny barks. “You hear me?”

  “Now, now, Mrs. O’Keefe,” he says, his voice steady and even. “I’m only trying to help.”

  “Mommy!” Chloe shouts from down in her hole. “Don’t go near that man! He’s a monster! He killed his friend just a little while ago. He stabbed his friend, Mr. Bertram. They had a fight over money. The money that only Daddy can get down in Albany.”

  Tom Bertram. The man who followed us home from the police station. The man who coldcocked me with his .38 snub-nose revolver. The man I nearly beat to death.

  “Penny,” I bark, “just do as he says. He has a gun.”

  “That’s right, little lady. Listen to your husband. He knows what you have to do to survive in this cruel world. He must be smart. I hear he was gonna be a doctor. Be he’s a killer, too. Take his advice.”

  “Get the hell away from me,” Penny repeats.

  That’s when I hear it. Something solid coming into contact with something covered in flesh. I can see it happening in my brain. Penny raising up her booted foot, kicking him in the face.

  I see Gary’s broad back as he raises himself up on his knees.

  “Why, you vicious little bitch,” he snorts. “You are going to pay for that.”

  But she kicks him again, and again. She’s so quick and swift with her kicks, he falls onto his side, rolls over onto his back. He doesn’t have a chance to go for his gun. I make out the sound of her crabbing forward. No longer backing away. No longer afraid. I hear her breaths, her short inhales and exhales.

  I can feel her fury.

  Then another swift kick into Gary’s most sensitive of places. I know this because the big mountain of a man screams like a little girl. Right now, rapid-fire electronic signals are being sent to his brain via synapses at some 265 MPH. Substance P, a neurotransmitter, is being released by the damaged testicles, telling the brain to Please, for God’s sake, send some fucking endorphins into the blood stream to ease this pain! Only that’s gonna take a while, pal. In the meantime, the pain will be accompanied by severe nausea, migraine headache, and gross tearing of the eyes.

  As expected, Gary curls up into himself on the edge of the pit. He’s so close to the edge that, for a split second, I’m convinced he’s about to fall in, and I’d better not be on the receiving end of his massive deadweight.

  But something else happens instead. Penny jumps back up onto her feet.

  “Sid,” she says, “send up your belt.”

  I don’t argue. I pull off my thick brown leather belt, toss it up to her. She does something then that I never thought her capable of. She wraps my belt around Gary’s thick neck, pulling the leather belt back through its metal buckle. She proceeds to yank on the belt with all her strength, so that it chokes him like a noose. He’s in terrible pain from the kick in the groin, but he begins to clutch at the belt now that his airway is cut off. It’s his survival mechanism kicking in at high gear. Pulling with both her hands, like reining in a runaway horse, Penny rears backward, throwing all her body weight into it.

  I see G
ary’s round face go from pink to red, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, his fleshy tongue protruding from his mouth, purple and veiny. He spits and snorts like a gut-shot pig. Until just like that, his head drops face-first onto the floor.

  Penny exhales, drops to her knees.

  She removes my belt from Gary’s neck, tosses it back down to me. For a split second I think about using it like a rope, with her hanging onto one end while I use the other to climb out of the pit. But the pit is too deep and no way is Penny supporting my weight.

  “Just let me catch my breath,” she exhales, panting. “Then, I’m going to find something to help you climb out of that hellhole.”

  I slip my belt back through the pant loops, buckle it.

  “Watch your back,” I say, still not quite believing what I just witnessed. “The monster is down, but that doesn’t mean the beast is dead. Could be he’s passed out from hyper-asphyxiation.”

  She gets up.

  “Wait there,” she says.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  She doesn’t laugh.

  While she’s searching the trailer, I hear the words she’s speaking to Chloe.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” she says. “We’re going to get you out of there in a minute. I need to get Daddy out first since I’ll need his help.”

  “Hurry, Mommy,” Chloe says.

  I’m still standing down here, looking up at Gary’s fat face. His dead—God willing—fat face, I should say. I make out footsteps coming from overhead. Then I see Penny standing very close to the edge of the pit.

  “These creeps were into their rope,” she reveals. “There’s spools and spools of it in a back room. I thought they might have a stepladder for accessing the cellars, but no such luck.” Shaking her head disgusted, disturbed. “There’s something in the bathtub. I didn’t look at it too closely, but there’s blood on the floor. Bloody footprints. What if it’s that man who attacked you behind the hotel?” She can hardly get the words out.