by R. J. Garcia
The more I heard, the more confused I became. I asked, “Did she ever mention Sarah, or a girl named Princess?”
“’I’m not sure.” Her eyes became wide and curious. “Why? Who’s Princess?”
“My mom said Princess was her older sister that my grandparents deny ever having. Even my Uncle Holden says she was just the babysitter.”
I had no real way to connect my grandparents to Laney and her missing baby or Silence’s mom. I was sure they were. How many crazy killers and kidnappers could there be in one small town? “I’m going to do a little more research at home. Go check on your mom and go back to Annie’s. I don’t want you here alone with Polar Bear unhinged.” I needed to know she would be safe.
“I just wish my mom would come with me. She wants to stay in her hoard. It’s like she’s burying herself.” She glanced toward the house. “Her real baby’s that stupid doll.” With her flattest voice ever she said, “I was a jealous bitch when I threw it in the woods.” Silence gave me a half smile. “I had Annie convinced it was possessed. We went into the woods and I threw it out.”
I couldn’t smile back. It all seemed so sad. Then I thought of Annie. She was innocent, maybe gullible. I hoped Simon wouldn’t use that to his advantage.
Silence nudged my shoulder, saying, “Let’s go swimming.”
“What?” She’d taken me off guard. “Swimming? I don’t even have a bathing suit.”
“You’re in luck, Annie’s cousin, psycho Ryan, left his swim trunks at her house.”
She walked, and I followed. “I can’t. I should do research. And think more about this Polar Bear thing.”
Silence turned around putting two fingers to my lips. “All I hear is blah, blah, blah.” She told me. “You’re going swimming, for a half hour. The world will still be messed up and then you can fix everything.”
It was so hot; Silence didn’t even have her hoodie on but was only wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt. I exhaled. The water would feel nice right about now, I thought. “Okay, but just for a half hour.”
I had met Annie’s mom, Barb a couple of times before. She seemed laid-back like her daughter yet had none of Annie’s girly quirkiness. Her salt and pepper hair was cut short, but there wasn’t much plan past that. Her other mother was a beautician and working today.
Barb handed me a pair of orange swim trunks and I went to the bathroom to change. I slipped into them, trying not to think about Ryan’s junk being in there at one time. On my T-shirt was a cartoon hand holding up a peace sign on it. It read: Choose Peace, Not War. It seemed a little corny and political for my liking, but Annie had bought it for me for my birthday.
Once I took it off, I saw the pale expanse of my shoulders, arms, and stomach in the mirror. I turned around this way and that. What had I expected? So far, I had spent the summer at the hospital, visiting Finn. I put the shirt back on. I stalled, looking in the mirror and moving my hair around.
As I exited the bathroom, Annie’s mom told me, “The girls just went out.” She pointed to the patio door.
“Thanks.” I went out onto the small deck. Silence sported bikini bottoms and had also elected to leave her T-shirt on. She stood next to the railing which was decorated with a row of brightly colored Tibetan Flags.
Next, I looked at Annie. She had on a polka dot bikini. Despite her waiflike appearance, her lean stomach revealed her ab muscles. There was something about a girl with a six pack that messed up my young brain. Her small breasts were perfect, and her long legs were shapely. A heat flooded my neck and face, as my mouth briefly dropped. Seeing her like that had taken me by surprise. She was profoundly hot. “Annie, you’re… here.”
She looked confused, “Of course I’m here. It’s my house.”
“Huh! Tommy thinks you’re hot!” Silence blurted out, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
Annie scrunched up her face, which was so Annie. The questioning tilt of her head suggested her just-born innocence. “He does not,” she asserted. My face felt warm and Annie turned a little red, too. We just stood there, lingering in the awkward moment.
Once in the water Silence pulled her T-shirt off to reveal her one-piece suit. The cooling water glistened in a clear blue and the smell of chlorine enveloped the air. The weight on my chest lightened and I halfway floated.
I watched Annie. She flayed her arms around watching her self-made waves. Silence clamped her nose shut and dived under, her golden hair glittering beneath the water before she crashed back up to the surface.
Annie asked, “Do you know who the first hippie was?”
“Um.” Wait, I said, Um, but Annie never made me nervous. Now I felt a fluttering in my stomach. “It started with Greenwich Village and Beat Poets. Maybe Allen Ginsberg?”
“I don’t know who that is,” she admitted. I guess most normal teenagers wouldn’t know. My mom was a wannabe hippie
“It was Jesus.” Annie explained, “He had long hair and went and told the drunks everything was fine. He preached about peace and love.”
I liked that. I wondered, “Do you go to church?” I might have signed up if she had.
“No, but Summertime Theater put on Jesus Christ Superstar and my mom took me. Can you teach me about the best poets?”
“It’s the Beat Poets.” I smiled. Wow, someone was interested in my useless trivia. I was a little excited about it. Just then Silence started splashing us.
Soon the girls not only persuaded me to take my shirt off but to pretend I was a shark and chase them around the pool. Annie looked terrified when I caught her, so I let her go. We again floated toward one another, face-to-face, smiling and blushing. Silence said, “Why don’t you two get a room.” And broke us out of a spell. Annie glided away, embarrassed. All the sudden I got the feeling of precious time slipping away. I couldn’t keep getting distracted and playing around.
I told the girls I had to go.
“But you haven’t caught me,” Silence complained, treading water.
I emerged from the pool and started to towel off, explaining, “I want to call Finn. Make sure he’s okay.”
Silence popped up out of the pool. “Okay, but he’s my boyfriend. I get to talk to him first.”
Chapter 41
When Evening Comes
Finn
My friends called to tell me they went swimming, further evidence the world was going on without me.
I asked Silence if I could to talk to Tommy. I told him that I was worried about my mom and hadn’t heard from her for a while.
I tried to occupy myself. I channel-surfed. Nothin’ could keep my attention. When I found one of those home video shows, I left it on. That was when I finally nodded off. An unexpected feeling came over me. I blinked myself awake to see Polar Bear by my bedside holding the call light, swinging it back and forth in a pendulum-like motion. “There’s someone here to see you,” he said. His low voice poured out soft and sweet like saccharine. His hatred for me was visible in his half snarl, half smile.
“Not Mudget,” I said in protest.
“No. Someone better than Mudget.” I knew that by “better,” he meant “worse.” Hell, no one was worse than Mudget, besides Polar Bear himself. What was he up to? He strutted over to the door, whispering to someone right outside the room.
“Just go. I don’t want any visitors,” I yelled toward the door.
A tall, dark figure, holding a shovel with both hands entered the room. And suddenly I remembered everything, the moment before the attack rushed at me. The sensation of being struck and falling took my breath away. I sat up in bed, gasping for air. How had I’d ever forgotten that face? His eyes appeared to be in a wild frenzy. There were several gashes on his face that had been crudely sewn up with thick black stitches. Stitches I hadn’t remembered being there before.
I yelled for the nurse, but both men kept towering, soaring over my bed. The fear poured through my system and seemed to stretch time itself.
I woke up, for real this time, fighting my bed sheets. T
he ginger-haired nurse stood over me, reassuring me, that I was okay.
“Don’t leave me!” I pleaded.
I experienced a tingle at the base of my skull. The image of my attacker that had been lost in some dark corner of my brain was now found. He was reassembled from fragments of my mind. Now, I wished I could forget him.
I concentrated on the nurse with the cute face and apple cheeks. My face flushed hot, humiliated from being scared and thrilled to be out of that nightmare. Feeling shaky and embarrassed, I tried to play it off. “Marry me. We can have a couple ginger kids and get a dog.”
This made her giggle. “You’re not quite up to getting married yet.” She took my vitals and said, “Look me up after you finish high school.” She joked around and fooled me into thinking everything was normal, and she started to walk out the door. I again felt nervous.
“Please wait.”
“Listen, it’s only seven o’clock. I’ll be here all night. Buzz if you need me.” She attempted to give me a reassuring smile before leaving the room.
Polar Bear could come back at any second, or the maniac who attacked me. I was a sitting duck. What about my mom? She wasn’t safe. Why hadn’t I asked the nurse to call my mom? I needed to check on her. I had a restless feeling like something bad was going to happen.
Chapter 42
The Haunted Lady
Tommy
I was surprised to find Finn’s garage open and even more surprised to see his real dad, Roy, there working on the dirt bike. The fresh air mixed with the smell of gasoline, and I kind of liked the smell. I sidestepped an orange extension cord, which lay strewn across the floor. Heavy wooden shelves of cleaning supplies and tools stood against the wall. For the most part, things were as meticulously organized as Polar Bear had left them
“Hey,” he said when he saw me. He had the same easy-going warmth about him that Finn did. He rubbed his greasy hands on a dirty-looking cloth.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
Roy told me some technical things he needed to do to get the bike running. I pretended to understand. “I’ll probably have it running by next weekend.”
“Very cool. So, are Jana and the little ones inside?”
He threw the rag under a table that had tools and car parts neatly laid out on it. “Actually, I dropped the kids at my sister’s house. She’s gonna watch them.” He blushed a little like an idiot schoolboy when he said, “Jana and I are going out to dinner.” He tried to sound casual. “I should go and get washed up.”
Finn’s dad was hanging out at Polar Bear’s house. He was going out with Polar Bear’s wife. Part of me was happy about this, but it seemed a little dangerous. I bit my tongue.
Back home, Reese slipped a fresh piece of battered chicken into the sizzling oil. She carefully turned a chicken leg over, using a pair of metal tongs, quietly humming to herself.
“Reese, can I talk to you?”
“Of course,” she warmly replied.
“It’s about Holden’s parents. I don’t think they’re right.”
She tore off a sheet of paper towel, positioning it on a large glass plate for the chicken.
“You mean your grandparents. Okay, your grandmother can be a little annoying, but they’re good people.”
“No. I don’t think so. For one, I think Grandma drugged me and Isabella last night.”
“What are you even talking about?” Reese loudly asked, rolling her eyes, and told me, “Don’t start, Tommy.”
“I never sleep good—”
Reese corrected me, “You mean you never sleep well.”
“I haven’t slept well for nights and then I sleep like a baby after I eat my grandmother’s cookies.”
“Tommy, do you even hear yourself? You hadn’t been getting enough rest, so it makes sense you would crash. You were probably exhausted.” She put the golden chicken leg on the plate, and another, throwing me a glance afterward.
“And Isabella vomited,” I reasoned, pushing the words at Reese.
Reese inserted a firmness in her tone. “Yeah, because she ate too many cookies.”
“No, she only took a couple bites. I warned her not to eat them. And there’s more than that, I think my grandparents kidnapped girls.”
“Oh, my God. Please, Tommy, you shouldn’t be filling Izzy’s little head with this nonsense,” Reese snapped. Her voice softened. “Listen, you’ve been through a lot. Maybe you should talk to someone.”
Talk to someone? Great! She thought I was nuts. “Just forget it.”
I heard the sputtering sound of Holden’s car pulling up on the gravel. I didn’t say another word. I just watched Reese fry the chicken to a golden-brown perfection and my uncle came in with a cheerful hello.
“Hello, honey,” Reese said.
I said, “Hey.”
“We are going to talk about the gun on the fridge,” Reese told Holden.
I looked up and sure enough, there was a handgun on top of the fridge. How had I not noticed it? Holden had even mentioned this before.
She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. “What about the kids? Are you crazy?”
“Yeah, Tommy, don’t touch the gun,” Holden said as if it was that casual and Reese gave him a hard look.
He went over to her and pressed a kiss on top of her forehead and added, “It has the safety on it.”
“Wait. Where’s Isabella?” I sat up straighter.
“She’s resting. You can go wake her. Dinner is almost ready,” Reese said.
I watched the two share a short, predictable kiss and left the room.
On my way to Izzy’s room, I got a text from Simon. He said he would come and see me next weekend and had made plans with Annie. His text went on to say: “If I’m going that far, I might as well get some.”
A new kind of panic set in. What? Had Annie said yes to going out with Simon? Her parents agreed that she could go on a date with an eighteen-year-old guy from Chicago? This was a girl who was too innocent to even understand a dirty joke. If it were Isabella in this scenario, I would card the guy, fingerprint him, and run a background check and still not let her go.
I walked into Izzy’s room. “You okay, Boo?” It was my mom’s nickname for her. It slipped out. I flopped down on the bed.
“I’m okay, I guess.” She rubbed her eyes and slowly sat up. She didn’t quite look like herself.
“You should go swimming with me at Annie’s sometime. It was fun,” I told her.
Izzy clenched her teddy bear to her chest and slid over to me, climbing up on my lap. “Okay, but I don’t want to go back to Grandma’s house.” She chewed on the teddy bear’s ear, something she hadn’t done in a long time.
“Me, either,” I admitted. “Did anything weird happen last night?”
“Grandma was mad at me for being sick, I think.”
My worry began to pound in my chest. “What did she say?”
“I don’t know. Stuff.”
Reese peeked her head in. “Dinner’s ready, you two. And remember, Tommy, your grandmother loves you both.”
I wondered if she had been eavesdropping. As soon as Reese left, I questioned Izzy more, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. I hoped that I was a paranoid freak and my grandparents weren’t pure evil.
Around midnight, I crept up the stairs, to do research. I was leaving the darkened kitchen and heading to the computer when I saw Holden rip a page out of a spiral notebook. He crumpled the paper into a ball and bounced it off the computer screen and desk before it landed on the floor. The screensaver of lighthouses was on the computer, so it didn’t seem like he was really doing anything.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked, trying to keep it friendly. I was feeling a little self-conscious around him tonight. I was sure Reese told him what I’d said about his parents. Those strange and sinister people had kept Holden clothed and sheltered. This would be hardest for him to accept, or so I thought.
He picked up his beer bottle and guzzled it. “If you deny something
enough, you can will it into nonexistence.” He set the bottle back down, admitting, “I don’t know.”
I just stood there, not saying a word.
“This is going to sound crazy… But I almost remember Princess, but there’s a wall there. Mainly, I remember your mom talking about her. But I remember a … haunted lady.”
“My mom said something about that, too.”
“Yeah, late at night, Jenny and I would hear a lady crying from somewhere, or we would imagine we heard her. I even thought I saw her once.”
I came closer to listen, to hear anything and everything he would tell me.
“As I got older I’d thought I imagined it, but since you and your mom have been asking me about Princess, I’ve been thinking, remembering.”
“Please tell me what you saw.”
“We weren’t allowed to go in the basement. My mom said there were rats down there and asbestos, so it wasn’t safe. And they kept it locked... But one day, I was maybe eight and Jenny was eleven, we picked the lock. Jenny waited, but I, I went down. I had a flashlight. The memory of it is soundless, surreal. But she was there in the basement.”
I was pacing and listening, working my fingers through my hair. “What do you mean, ‘she was in the basement’?”
Holden leaned back in his chair, briefly, before he turned to face me. “A shaft of moonlight from a small block window cut across a dirty mattress on the floor. I could see someone there. I shined the flashlight on her. I saw chains. Then I brought the light up to her face. She had blood streaked across her pale skin, and hair. Her mouth was taped shut. I screamed and dropped my flashlight, tripping up the steps,” he told me, “Later, my dad went down and said there was nothing there. My parents told me it was my imagination.” Holden’s eyes were teary and dazed. “It wasn’t.” He turned to ask me. “Who was that lady?”