Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

  “I don’t know,” was that last thing I heard him say before I fell comatose.

  The next time I woke up, the sun was already setting.

  I was feeling better, rested, though my joints and muscles ached from the lack of movement. As for the bump on my head, it was only sensitive to the touch of my fingers—there was no more throbbing. My hair on the other hand was a tangled mess; my head felt naked when my hair was down. I searched my pockets and then the barren room for anything that I could use to tie it back. The only thing I found was the glass of water that had been refilled, and that I greedily gulped down.

  The bedroom door had been left open, and hollowed sounds from a TV could still be heard. As soon as the smell of food tickled my nose, my stomach grumbled. The last meal I had eaten was the stale peanut butter sandwich I’d gobbled down on my lunch break from work; how long ago was that? My brain was still too foggy to count back the hours—or the days.

  Letting my stomach do the thinking, I got out of bed and shuffled to the door on my white-socked feet.

  The darkening hallway had many doors, all the same as the one I had just walked through, and all closed. The only source of light came from the other end of the hall. I passed a small, white-tiled foyer … and what looked like a front door, or a way to escape. The door had five different locks on it: I kept going while I tried to calculate how long it would take me to go through all those locks before I was discovered. A tiny knot loosened inside of me when I noticed my worn, familiar sneakers neatly placed next to the pile of large shoes that were on the floor.

  In the living room, the big kid, the one that looked like a big Chucky doll, was sprawled on one of the couches, remote control in hand, looking utterly bored.

  The tattooed man was sitting erect on the edge of an armchair. He shot up and stood as soon as he saw me; his venomous stare unimproved.

  The kid followed his colleague’s gaze and narrowed his eyes, as he scanned me head to toe.

  “You look like crap,” he remarked, his lethargic gaze returning to the TV. We had just met; as far as he knew, I could have looked this awful every day.

  I scowled.

  “Thanks.” My voice was still throaty.

  “Hungry?” asked the only voice that I recognized. I turned to see Cameron strolling out of the kitchen, a cardboard box with red symbols in one hand, the other stuffing a heap of noodle-laden chopsticks into his mouth. There was something decidedly different about him. The worried creases on his forehead and around his eyes were lessened.

  I couldn’t stop my heart from thudding. He was handsome … for a kidnapper.

  Meatball was at Cameron’s feet, slobbering and eyeing with anticipation every mouthful of food, hoping that some would fall his way.

  Feeling the weight of the tattooed man’s stare, I tucked my hair behind my ears. Cameron’s smile almost reached his eyes. Sticking his chopsticks into the box, he took something out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was my rubber band. My face flushed while he watched me put my hair up—but I felt better, less naked, as soon as my carrot locks were pulled back.

  With a nod of the head, Cameron directed me to follow him through the small kitchen to the kitchen table. He pulled a chair out and left to fix me a plate. I had hoped to get away from the tattooed man’s stare; regretfully, I sat in clear view of the living room. I kept my eyes down to the table. When I looked up again, the tattooed man had found the edge of his seat again and turned half his attention to the TV. The spiderweb on the back of his neck was all I had to contend with.

  Cameron placed an overfilled plate of Chinese takeout in front of me; there was no way I would be able to finish that. But I started loading food into my mouth anyway while Cameron watched from the kitchen doorway. Every time I looked up from my plate, his eyes were on me. There was something unsettling about eating—with clumsy chopsticks no less—under someone else’s scrutiny.

  “Do you feel better today?” he asked.

  I swallowed.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He paused and read my face. His eyes narrowed—unsatisfied with what he found. “How’s your head?”

  I doubted he knew what a loaded question that was. “My skull is fine.”

  “Do you feel dizzy?” he asked quickly.

  I brought the chopsticks to my mouth. “Not anymore.”

  He waited, and then he continued, “Any throbbing?”

  “Just a little bit,” I answered truthfully but quickly before he chose to poke and prod my head to catch me in a lie again.

  He paused and watched.

  “Good,” he said finally with satisfaction.

  I breathed a sigh of relief; I had passed his assessment. I looked down at my plate with surprise—one more chopstick-full and it would be polished off.

  “More?” Cameron asked with amusement when I took my last bite.

  I thought about it, but shook my head. He took the empty plate back into the kitchen. With Cameron’s easy mood and food in my stomach—a lot of food—my shoulders were starting to unclench.

  It didn’t occur to me why Cameron was so relaxed until he came out of the kitchen and announced his decision, “Kid’s going to take you for a drive.”

  My full stomach dropped to my knees, and Kid’s head snapped up, at last finding interest away from the TV.

  “I am?” he asked, echoing my own thought—though mine was more of a horrified gasp than a question. The tattooed man also looked surprised by this announcement; apparently Cameron hadn’t shared his plan with anyone else.

  “Yep,” Cameron said with confidence, turning to Kid. “You’re taking Emily to the farm tonight.”

  At this announcement, the big kid let his head fall back in annoyance, like a ten-year-old child being asked to clean his room. “Tonight? Are you kidding? It’s already getting dark! It’ll take forever!”

  I still had hope: Kid—with the now noticeable strangler-sized hands—was too lazy to kill me today. But Cameron offered incentive: he grabbed a set of keys from the kitchen counter and adeptly threw them across the room to Kid, who adeptly caught them with his monster hands, which were attached to his humongous arms. His eyes lit up.

  “Seriously? You’re letting me take your car?” he said, his voice squeaking with joy.

  The tattooed man stared at Cameron in disapproval, but kept silent.

  Not needing any further encouragement, Kid hastily got up, glanced in my general direction and headed for the door. “Let’s go, Red.”

  My stomach was now down to my toes. Was taking someone “to the farm” some kind of code word along the same lines as having someone who “sleeps with the fishes”?

  Tears sprung to my eyes. I couldn’t breathe.

  I turned the full focus of my pleadings to Cameron. “Cameron, please don’t do this. I won’t talk … I’ll do whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  But my beautiful kidnapper’s easy mood turned to ice, and his lips spread thin. “Your shoes are at the door,” he said sharply.

  I looked down, my teeth biting into my quivering bottom lip. I went to the front door and slid into my still soaked sneakers—not bothering to lace them up.

  By the time I made it out of the apartment, Kid was already down the hallway at the elevator, impatiently pressing the button over and over. I looked back once—Cameron’s back was turned, and his arms were tight to his side—and I closed the door.

  The hallway was bright, with brick walls painted white and plush carpets—not the kind of carpet I expected to find in the hallway of an apartment building but the expensive kind that your feet sink into and leave footprints behind when you walk on it barefoot. There were only two doors on this floor, the one I had just exited, and the door to the elevator I was about to enter. The apartment, I noted, must have been the penthouse.

  Going down the elevator, Kid was silent, squirmy, eagerly spinning the key ring around his index finger, clearly indifferent that I would be joining him, even if it woul
d only be for a little while—until I was dead. The elevator doors opened, and we stepped out into a closed-in garage, with a garage door at the front and a laneway only big enough for cars to tightly enter and exit. There were four vehicles in the garage: one was a newer model black pickup truck, and two were beaten-up, rusty cars. The fourth car was an Audi, sleek black with tinted windows.

  The Audi beeped as we came closer. Kid jumped right in and started it up. I hesitated, casting my eyes in search of an exit that I might have missed.

  He rolled down the window and stuck his head out. “Are you coming or not?”

  I wasn’t dumb enough to assume that he was really giving me the choice.

  My heart pumping through my ears, I climbed into the passenger side, the Audi’s locks clicking shut as soon as I closed the door.

  The kid excitedly gripped the steering wheel and side-glanced me. “Put your seatbelt on—this is going to be fun.”

  I did as I was told, and he hit the red button on the rearview mirror, which caused the garage door to slide open.

  We drove out onto the gloomy street. Kid didn’t let go of the gas pedal until we were driving well above the speed limit. Darkened street signs flashed by. He sped through a red light, swerving around a car that was patiently waiting its turn. What was the point of making me wear my seatbelt if he was planning on killing us both by crashing the car?

  With an extended grin, he weaved us in and out of traffic.

  Eventually we moved away from the city streets and onto a country road. We picked up more speed, but at least there were no other cars to play chicken with. I was able to unclench my teeth and my stranglehold on the security bar against the door, using my free hand to wipe my newly dampened cheeks.

  With little distraction and the car’s novelty having worn off, Kid remembered that I was sitting next to him.

  “Sorry about hitting you on the head like that yesterday,” he said, his eyes still on the road. “I didn’t think that I had hit you that hard.”

  Unprepared for this discovery, I kept quiet. What was I supposed to say? Getting hit on the head seemed insignificant compared to what was coming.

  “How did you manage to sneak right by me?” he asked, like he was nervous with my silence.

  “I didn’t sneak by anyone,” I hissed, my eyes shooting daggers at him. “I was just trying to get home.”

  “Who runs alone, in a dark cemetery, toward danger? It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I had to look away to keep my temper under control long enough to come up with a plan.

  When I was in eighth grade, our teacher fell ill after consuming the glue that had mysteriously found its way into her morning coffee. We spent the rest of the day sitting in front of the TV while the principal scurried to find a substitute teacher at the last minute. Of the multitude of educational videos we were forced to watch that day, one had been a bad reenactment of an attempted kidnapping. I didn’t have to rack my brain too long to remember the first rule: never get in the car with a stranger who offers you candy.

  I started to panic when I noticed the yellow road signs with pictures of crumbling rocks flashing by us. We were heading into the mountains … the largely uninhabited mountains. And then my panic triggered something—a hazy survival tip from one of those crime shows: make the attacker see that you’re a real person, not just a nameless witness to a murder, or something like that.

  “My name is Emily,” I announced.

  He looked at me like I was crazy.

  Right. I’d forgotten that Cameron had already mentioned my name.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, my full stomach lurching as the Audi sped into a curve.

  He considered this while I gulped the takeout back down my throat. “You can call me Sexy Bull.”

  My head was buzzing, and a bead of sweat lined my forehead. We were going to bond whether or not he wanted to.

  “My mom’s name is Isabelle and my dad’s name is Burt; it’s short for Bernard. And I had a teddy bear called Booger when I was a kid—he lost an eye after I tried to flat-iron his fur. And my middle toe on my left foot is longer than my big toe. And when I was four—”

  “Jesus, what’s wrong with you? Are you still high?” There was incredulity mixed with an edge of worry in his voice.

  “And when I was four—” I continued, but the Audi was rushing through curves and up and down hills. The shadowed landscape was flashing by. Suddenly, as the car aggressively looped around a cliff, I felt a knot in my throat; my heart started racing, and my body temperature went up a thousand degrees.

  “Oh God!” I yelled.

  “What now?” he sighed, annoyed.

  “You need to stop! I’m going to be sick!”

  “Stop? We’re in the middle of the mountains! There’s nowhere to stop!”

  I started heaving, my hand in front of my mouth.

  “Hold on! Keep it in!” He swore and, in flailing panic, blindly fiddled in the backseat with his free hand, his eyes never leaving the road. He pulled out a plastic bag, emptying its contents before throwing it at me.

  I pulled the bag open and I threw up immediately, repeatedly.

  “That’s so gross!” he gasped, opening his window and sticking his head out. “It still smells like chow mein.”

  The fresh air rushing in from his opened window made me feel better—and I had nothing left in my stomach to puke up anyway. After a few minutes, I pulled my face away from the bag and glanced up.

  He was glaring at me, holding his nose and wincing. His face had gone from rosy-cheeked to pale and sickly.

  “Throw the bag out the window,” he ordered.

  “I can’t do that!” I said. “It’s a plastic bag. It will take over a hundred years to disintegrate. I don’t want to pollute.”

  “Emily,” he said, carefully enunciating every syllable, “if you don’t throw that bag out the window in the next second, I’m going to be sick too.”

  I sighed and reluctantly threw the bag out my window. But I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty as I watched him breathe through his nausea.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to not mock him, “I guess my bruised head’s still not quite right.”

  He looked at me with revulsion. “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. Now I’m kinda glad we didn’t take my car. Who knew one girl could be such a pain …” His voice trailed back into his head.

  “Ugh!” he groaned dramatically a few seconds later, “It really stinks in here.” And he stuck his head out his window again.

  I’ve never had an iron stomach. Once a guy on his bike crashed next to me, and a broken bone in his right calf pierced through his skin. As any Good Samaritan would do, I insisted on waiting with him until the paramedics showed up. He spent the next twenty minutes holding my hair back while I puked on the side of the road. I couldn’t remember if he ever thanked me for waiting with him.

  I thought about telling Kid about this life event to further solidify our kidnapper-hostage bond, but I was worn out. I let my head fall back into the seat and closed my eyes.

  Chapter Five:

  The Farm

  I was awakened by the sound of gravel crushing against the Audi’s tires.

  Kid glimpsed at me from behind the steering wheel.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” he muttered.

  We had turned off the country road onto a narrow, gravel, side road where the blackened branches of trees hovered too close, trying to grab hold of the Audi, trying to consume us. Kid was absentmindedly drumming his fingers against the wheel to a Britney Spears tune that was cracking through the radio in broken waves. The darkness beyond the headlights … it besieged us.

  He was wrong. This wasn’t the land of the living. It was a dead zone.

  “Where are we?” I croaked.

  Kid stretched his arms, pushing against the steering wheel, and sighed, “Almost there, thank God. Cam totally owes me for this.”

  My throat wa
s raw, and my body emotionally exhausted. I could feel the dark isolation seeping into the car like a deep depression. I just wanted this to be over, but he seemed to be going through great lengths to drag out the inevitable. Maybe breaking my spirit first was part of the preparation.

  After a while of the tires bouncing us around on the road, the trees moved away, and Kid slowed down. My eyes were beyond tired; I was even starting to see man-sized shadows stirring in the woods. I focused on the speck of light that shone ahead. I couldn’t have imagined that—it grew bigger as we drove closer.

  The car came to a stop. Kid turned off the ignition and was out in a flash, breathing in the fresh air repeatedly, overdramatically. I waited, rubbing my eyes, forcing them to adjust to the refrigerator-sized light that had come on inside the Audi.

  Kid eventually came to rest his hand against the frame of his opened car door. “I don’t know how you can stand being one more second in that car. It really reeks in here.”

  I glanced up through weary eyes. “Am I supposed to get out of the car?”

  His face scrunched. “You’re so … weird,” he mumbled, shaking his head and walking away. His kidnapping methods were confusing to me; or possibly, most people would already know what to do in these types of situations. I took his obscure response as a yes and climbed out of the vehicle.

  The air outside the car was crisp and clean—too clean; I wasn’t sure my city-infected lungs could handle the pure stuff. The night sky was unbelievably clear, which I guessed was how it must always look when the city lights weren’t there to distort it. Of course I had seen stars before, but not like this. It was like every imaginable constellation was shining above. It took me a while to find the dippers—big and little were the only ones I knew; but in this perfect sky, they weren’t the only superstars.

  The sound of a door creaking open and the flood of light that followed knocked me out of my reverie. A man walked through the earlier guiding light that, as it turned out, was a door with a window of carved glass.

  My legs went numb when I noticed that he was carrying a long-barreled shotgun over his shoulder.