“It’s me. His daughter,” the voice said softly.
Again with the “his daughter” bullshit, like I was supposed to know who he was. Captive or not, I was in no mood for guessing games. What was happening to me was no game by any stretch.
“What’s your name?” I asked, working to keep the edge from creeping into my voice. I remembered how frightened she’d been of us and didn’t want to scare her away. That strange girl was my only connection to the outside world.
My question remained unanswered so I gave it another try. This time being as clear as I possibly could.
“What…is…your…name?”
“I’m his daughter.”
His daughter.
That was it. I couldn’t control the outburst that followed. I slammed my fists into the coffin lid, ignoring the pain ripping through my white knuckles. The heels of my tennis shoes pounded the wood beneath me as I kicked it in frustration. A full on tantrum. And just like a child, I even screamed with all I had, the bulging veins in my neck be damned.
“What is your fucking name?”
I continued thrashing around, wasting a lot of energy. I couldn’t help myself. Fear and rage had become one animal, replacing common sense and rationality. Violent energy bubbled up inside me, demanding to be released.
I kept going for a good ten or fifteen seconds. When that energy was finally spent, my aching hands fell to my sides. My tight shoulders sagged and my entire body went limp from exertion. Sweat mixed with tears and ran down my cheeks, into my hair. Despite how good it felt to get it out, none of this was doing me any good. I needed to maintain control and think. I tried to relax, slow my heart rate and just listen. Eyes closed, I breathed deeply through my nose until I felt the tightness in my temples start to loosen. I noticed that all was quiet outside the coffin once again. Damn it! I’d scared the girl off.
The silence settled around me like fallen leaves until finally, I heard a whisper. “I’m not sure.”
The words came so softly, so hushed I wasn’t sure I’d even heard them. It could have been my mind playing tricks on me, for all I knew. Hearing what I wanted to hear. “Not sure of what?” I asked loudly in case it had been real.
“I’m not sure what my name is,” the girl answered. She was real, but her statement threw me, and I didn’t know how to respond. I took a moment to try and understand, but I just didn’t. Was it even possible? Could someone her age, a teenager, not know their own name? But, the more I thought about it, the more the reality of the situation told me it was possible. In fact, these circumstances were just screwed up enough for anything to be possible.
“Can you let me out?” I asked. I was sure I knew the answer, but much like giving the lid a shove earlier, it didn’t hurt to try. The silence from my new friend gave me a spark of hope. She was considering it.
“No.” The flat tone stamped the spark cold.
“Please,” I pleaded, elbowing away a wad of filthy clothing that I had just noticed was touching my arm. “Please let me out.”
“I can’t. He would be so angry.”
Even in the darkness, my eyes still shut down. My chin trembled. I was getting nowhere. The anger inside me was receding and fear was settling back into the void left behind. The girl was not going to let me out of the coffin. But I couldn’t give up. Maybe, just maybe, she could help in another way. I needed some answers, at least, some reasoning behind it all. With understanding comes possibilities. And I needed some possibilities.
Most of all, I needed a reason to hope.
“Why is he doing this?” But, as soon as the question passed my lips, I realized something. The “why” didn’t even matter. The “why” was pointless. The fact was it was happening regardless of why. The real question was how was I going to get out of it.
Patience. With understanding comes possibilities.
“It’s his work,” the girl answered after a moment.
“What is?” I asked. She was talking so low now. Barely above a whisper. I was having trouble hearing her hushed voice through the dense wood. “What is his work?”
“The harvest.”
My stomach knotted, remembering the words repeated across the chalkboard. For the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe. Every muscle in my body tensed again. Had I heard her correctly?
“Harvest what?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. Seconds ticked by like hours, marked only by the beating of my heart and the humid breath from my lungs.
“Bones,” came her whisper.
Bones?
“What about bones?” I questioned.
“The harvest,” she said again. “He harvests bones.”
“But what does he need with bones?” I squeaked out as the all too familiar fear raised my voice an octave higher.
No answer. I waited, being as patient as anyone could in my situation. The last thing I could afford was to scare her off. Given this new information, I needed this lifeline now more than ever.
“Does he want my bones?” I asked. The question came out very calmly, perhaps because I couldn’t get my head around it. Why would anyone harvest bones? This was either some sick joke … or just sick.
“I don’t know,” came the soft voice.
A shuffling sound came from beside the coffin, quickening my pulse. Had she left me? I held my breath and listened until I heard a quiet cough. I imagined she had just sat down on the floor beside the coffin. At least I hoped so. It would be a good sign if I were right. It meant I had her attention, and that was something. An opportunity to build hope.
I raised my head slightly and strained to see something, anything through the slit where the light was filtering in. But, it was still no use.
“You’re a boy,” she said. “He always uses girls.”
Girls.
I’d been so wrapped up in what was happening to me, that I had completely forgotten about the girls and the drawings I’d seen. Despite my own dire situation, I allowed myself a bit of optimism that maybe I had found them. That maybe they were still alive, being held captive somewhere in this church, just like me.
“Uses them for what?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but she’d changed topics and I needed to keep up.
“For the harvest,” she said, her voice taking on a sing-song quality.
The harvest. Harvesting bones.
As quickly as it had come, the optimism disappeared, only to be replaced by crushing despair. The girls were dead. Killed for their bones by some sick bastard and his defective daughter.
No. I didn’t know that for certain. I needed to hold onto to at least some degree of hope.
“The girls,” I started, refusing to give up. “Do you know where they are? Megan, Hannah and Becca? I saw their names in that room. Was that you?”
The echo of my words faded without an answer, only a soft humming sound remained. A few bars in, I recognized the tune, and that’s when my hands balled into fists, the muscles in my jaw set, and the anger returned stronger than before. The girl was humming a lullaby. I couldn’t believe it! I was locked inside this fucking coffin, with her telling me about her deranged father’s bone collection like it was a common hobby everyone indulged in, and this demented girl was humming a fucking lullaby? The insanity of it shifted something in my brain and I wanted to wrap my hands around “his daughter’s” throat. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to silence her stupid humming.
The thought chilled me. Could I actually do it? Could I wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until she was silenced? Yes, I could. All doubt disappeared, and the clarity of that truth shined bright. If I ever got the chance, I could kill this girl. I actually wanted to, in fact. I’d do it because of what was being done to me. What was undoubtedly being done to Garrett and may have already been done to the girls. The realization of my capabilities both empowered and scared me.
“What did he do with the girls?” I asked, this time failing to keep the anger out of my voice. There
simply was no hiding it now. But, the humming continued, and I still wasn’t given an answer to my question, which only pissed me off more. What the hell was she doing? Playing with me? Trying to torment me? Or was she really just so screwed up that she didn’t even realize how very wrong all of this was? As much as I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, I found that very hard to believe.
“Where is he?” I asked, the fury in my voice surprising even me. “I want to talk to him!”
Finally, the childlike humming stopped. Just like that, the agitation I felt softened just slightly, and for a second, I was afraid I was going to get my wish. I didn’t know if that would be a good thing or not. Then, that familiar voice returned. That voice with a little too much matter-of-factness in it.
“He went out to the shed. To get some tools.”
And for the first time since the conversation started, I regretted getting an answer. Get some tools? The images of red hot tongs and rusty saws racing through my head were cut off quickly by another voice, his voice.
“You better not be in there, girl,” he growled from somewhere in the distance. “Better not be meddling in my work.” The booming voice seemed to be coming closer. It carried more menace than any I’d ever heard. “You know what happens when you disobey me!”
I heard the girl scramble to her feet. And just as quickly, my anger faded. I wanted to shout out to her, plead with her not to go, but the threatening tone of the man’s voice stopped me. Moments later, the lonely sound of her feet padding away was accompanied by the nerve-rattling cadence of a hammer striking a nail.
Chapter 27
She leaned her back against the door and tried to catch her breath for the second time in an hour. She’d been so wrapped up in talking to the boy in the coffin that she hadn’t even heard Father come back inside. He would have been so mad if he’d caught her. The very thought of his punishments made her wince. She wasn’t even supposed to be downstairs, much less talking to that boy. But he hadn’t seen her. Only suspected.
That boy. It was his fault. The first boy she’d talked to since she’d stopped going to school. Easily over a year now. Maybe two. She wished she’d been able to talk to him longer. Find out more about him. Ask him his name. Not that it mattered. It was better not knowing. That’s what Father told her. Names only complicated things, made things harder.
Still.
It was true, what she told the boy. She hadn’t lied. She really didn’t know her name anymore. She knew what her name used to be. Everyone use to call her “Belinda.” Her grandfather had called her that before he died, her mother before she went away. The teachers at the school where she used to go. All called her by that name. Belinda. But, for a while now, Father had been calling her “Rosemarie.” Her mother’s name. For a couple of months now, ever since she’d gotten her monthly visitor. That’s what he occasionally called her when he first started crawling into her bed some nights. Now, he called her Rosemarie all the time. Whispering it in her ear as he cuddled with her, then louder when he was between her legs.
She walked over to their makeshift dresser and let her finger trace the spot in the dust where her mother’s picture used to sit. Before Father got rid of it. Around the same time he started lying with her. The frame was still in one of her drawers, though, along with her mother’s assortment of makeup and perfumes. She wasn’t about to get rid of any of it. Never would. She missed her mother. Wished she would come back. Her mother had just up and disappeared one day. Father had been out of that place for only a couple weeks. Personally, she had been happy to have him back. She’d already lost one father. But, her mother had been uneasy with his return. And there were the fights. The oh-so scary fights.
The only good times during those weeks were early in the mornings when Father was still asleep. She would shuffle into the kitchen in her pink princess pajamas and white fuzzy slippers with those raccoon eyes that she hoped to never grow out of. Her mother could usually be found at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and reading one of her dirty books. At least that’s what her father called them. Dirty books. The ones with the beautiful men and women on the cover. They always looked so in love. She often wondered if her mother had ever felt the way the people on the cover looked. She doubted it. Doubted it very much.
And then one morning, she’d gone into the kitchen, but her mother wasn’t there. Her mother wasn’t anywhere. That was the same morning Father made her pack. Only what she could carry, he’d said. Then he brought her to the church. Their new home. She had the run of the old church, but he made a big deal about keeping the door to the basement locked. A few days later, the dark curtains appeared over the freshly painted windows. She’d been sad when that happened. When the pretty stained glass disappeared beneath a layer of black. It wasn’t until several months later that he started leaving the basement door unlocked. It tempted her, which was probably his plan, but she never bit. Eventually, he took her down with him and showed her what he spent so much time doing.
His work.
She’d been terrified at first. Repulsed. Vomited more than once. But then the lessons began and there was no more time for that foolishness. Now she understood the importance of what Father did. Must do. It was how they survived. A simple hunter providing for his family. For her. Because she was now his only family.
With her fingertip, she drew a heart in the dust on top of the dresser and allowed a grin to pull at her cheeks. Her mother used to draw hearts on things just to let Belinda know she loved her and was thinking about her. The bathroom mirror in red waxy lipstick. The napkins she would pack in her lunch before sending her off to school.
Slowly, the grin faded. Those days were gone. And so was her mother. With the same finger that had just drawn the heart, she drew a large X over it. Then, not wanting her father to see either, she wiped the whole thing clean with the edge of her hand. In its wake, it left a sweeping path of brown wood showing through the layer of grey dust.
She shivered from the isolation of being very much alone, then shook her head. It was a silly thought. She was far from alone. The church was more full now than it had been in years. Definitely more full than it had been since she’d arrived. It housed people again. A congregation even. Besides just her and her father, there was now someone in the shed out back. Someone in that dirty coffin in the big room.
And then there was the basement…
Chapter 28
The hammering had stopped within the hour, by my best guess, and the church had gone quiet. I’d lain still for a long time, not knowing where the man was, until my thoughts drifted to the missing girls. Were they being held somewhere in this church, too? Had Megan, Hannah or Becca spent time in this very coffin? I shifted my body and something jabbed at my leg. It was only then that I remembered I had a pair of needle nose pliers in the lower pocket of my cargo shorts.
Anytime I went fishing, I carried a pair of needle nose pliers in my pocket, just in case a fish swallowed the hook and I needed to retrieve the barbed piece of metal from its gullet. It was good practice. Most fishermen carried a pair in their tackle box, at least. I, however, carried mine in my pocket, because I seemed to always need them handy. More often than not, actually. If I caught ten fish, eight of them would probably have swallowed the hook. I often wondered if I was doing something wrong, but Garrett didn’t do anything different, so I had no way to tell.
I wrestled my hand down into my pocket until I felt the familiar rubber of the orange handles. Once my fingers wrapped around them, I let out the deep breath I’d been holding ever since remembering the pliers. I pulled them out of my pocket and held them in front of my face. I couldn’t really make out their profile in the darkness of the coffin, but just holding them was enough to restore some sense of optimism, something that had been significantly fading over the last hour. Lord knows what I was going to do with the pliers. I just knew that having them was certainly better than not having them.
Scenarios involving the pointed tool began runnin
g through my mind. I imagined myself stabbing the man in the eye with them when he opened the coffin. Ramming them through his hand as he went to grab at me, possibly even pinning his hand to the side of the coffin and giving me a chance to get away. Maybe even drive them into his chest and end this whole ordeal right then and there.
If the circumstances hadn’t been so dire, my situation so frightening, I probably would have smiled at my thuggish posturing. I would never be confused with a tough guy. I’d never even been in a fight, but I could feel something changing in me with every passing minute I spent in that coffin. Dark thoughts suddenly seemed normal. Thoughts of violence. It was a realization, really, of what I could and would do, if need be. And those thoughts were birthed by one thing and one thing only.
The will to survive.
After plotting out a few more ghastly scenarios befitting a Tarantino movie, another idea entered my mind that wasn’t violent at all, but much more practical, at least in my present circumstances. Maybe I could use the pliers to get myself out of the coffin before the guy even came back. This should have been my first thought but, like a psycho in a hockey mask, murderous thoughts were now coming all too easily to me.
I laid the pliers on my chest and ran my hands along the seam between the wooden coffin and its lid, searching for locks, hinges, anything. Maybe I could use the pliers to unscrew some bolts, or pull some pins. Whatever it was that was holding the lid secure. But, as my fingers explored the ins and outs of the coffin, I didn’t find anything like that. Just lengths of brittle silk that had long since lost its luxuriousness. And the occasional splinter.
Bone White Page 9