by Willow Rose
Betsy Sue walked to the bed and sat down. I closed the door behind us. “Was this your room when you were younger?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. I wondered if the Hawthornes had simply removed everything that reminded them of their daughter when she disappeared. Would I do that myself once I was forced to realize my child wasn’t coming back?
I wasn’t sure. But, then again, life has to go on at some point, right?
“So do you have any of your toys from back then? Maybe a teddy bear?”
Betsy Sue looked at me, and then shook her head. I walked to her and sat down on the bed.
“You like cards?”
Betsy Sue looked up at me with a smile.
“Do you want to play Black JACK?”
She almost yelled my name and it startled me, since it was a lot of sound coming from a girl who hadn’t said anything at all while I was there.
I looked into her eyes while wondering what to answer. I hadn’t played Black Jack for many years, not since I was in my early twenties. It had been a problem for me back then. I became addicted to it. I couldn’t stop. Not till my parents interfered. By then I owed a lot of money. They paid everything and took me home to live with them till I got back on my feet. Cost them a huge part of their savings. I hadn’t held a card in my hand since then.
But I couldn’t tell Betsy Sue that, and this was her way of reaching out to me. This was an opening; she was actually speaking and communicating with me. How could I say no to that? What harm would one game do?
“Sure.”
The girl picked up the cards and started shuffling them in the same way I remembered the dealers did at the casinos. I stared at her, completely baffled at her way of handling the cards so professionally.
“I take it you have played before?” I asked.
She didn’t answer and started dealing. I looked at my cards. A five and an eight. “Hit me,” I said. She turned a card. The queen of hearts. “Argh.”
“Bust. House wins.” She collected the cards.
She dealt new cards. I asked for another hit. “Who taught you to play this?” I asked.
“The Doctor,” she said.
“Would the Doctor play with you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Who else would you play with?” I asked, while she gave me another card. “Hit me again.”
She put down another card, leaving me on twenty.
“I stand,” I said.
She shrugged and gave herself another card, making her hit precisely twenty-one. “Sometimes I could convince Miss Muffit to play, but she always lost.”
“Miss Muffit liked to play too? Who else liked to play?”
“All the girls liked to play,” she said. “It could get really boring at the house sometimes.” Betsy Sue looked at me. “House won again.”
“You’re good,” I said, making a mental note that there had been several girls, more than just Miss Muffit. It made my heart throb, thinking that this doctor apparently had kidnapped many girls and kept them hidden.
“One more, please. So, who would you say you liked the best of the girls at the house? Who was your best friend?”
“Millie. She was fun to play with.”
“Millie, huh? Why was she fun to play with?”
Betsy Sue shrugged, then dealt another round. I asked for a hit again.
“Who else was there with you?” I asked.
“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” the girl said.
“I’m curious. Did you like it there at the house?”
“I guess. It was my home. It was all I knew. I was born there.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “You were what?”
“You need to get those ears checked,” she said. “You always ask me to repeat things.”
“Okay, you’re right. I heard you the first time; I just found it hard to believe. I mean, your parents say you were born at a hospital and that you lived with them for your first five years. Did the Doctor tell you that you were born at the house?”
Betsy Sue shook her head. “No. Rachel told me; she took care of me when I was a baby.”
“Aha. Rachel. Is that one of the other girls at the doctor’s house?”
Betsy Sue laughed. “No, silly. She used to live there.”
“What do you mean? She escaped like you did?”
Betsy Sue shook her head. “No. She can’t leave the house.”
“So what do you mean that she used to live there?” I asked, annoyed. This was making no sense at all.
“Are you playing cards or what?” Betsy Sue asked.
“Of course, sorry, hit me again.” I looked at the card, but didn’t really pay attention and asked for another hit. “So what did you mean when you said she used to live there?” I repeated.
“She lived in the house till her dad killed her.”
Again with the ghost stories! I need answers! Damn it. I need to find my son.
I fought the urge to get mad at Betsy Sue, but held it back. I had to remember what she had been through. Of course she had a hard time dividing reality from fantasy. This doctor had held her hostage for five years. It was vital that I kept her talking now. She was the only one who could lead me to this doctor.
“So, tell me more about the Doctor,” I said. “What did he look like?”
Betsy Sue shrugged again. “House wins,” she said, and gathered the cards before she added. “Again.”
She dealt us new cards and I realized she wasn’t going to answer my question.
“What can you tell me about the house you stayed in? Was it a big house?”
Betsy Sue nodded.
“How many of you lived in the house? How many girls were there when you were going to sleep at night?”
Betsy Sue started counting on her fingers. “Thirteen,” she said.
I almost dropped my jaw. Thirteen? Thirteen girls? Could they all have been kidnapped? It was almost too much to believe.
“Is that counting the ghosts as well?” I asked.
“No, silly. Ghosts don’t sleep. They don’t have to.”
“Of course not. Hit me again.”
She turned a card and I folded. “Bust again. House wins.”
“Do you miss it there?” I asked, as she shuffled the cards again. “Do you miss being at the Doctor’s place?”
“I guess,” she said.
“So, why did you run away?”
“I told you I wanted to see the ocean.”
“But why now? And why didn’t you just go back after you had seen the ocean?”
She shrugged and looked at the cards.
“I didn’t want to become a ghost myself.”
31
May 2016
I chewed on her last sentence for quite some time, wondering if there was any other way to interpret it other than that the doctor was going to kill her. Was he going to kill the other kids as well? Had he killed this Rachel? Would he kill Tyler?
“How do you even become a ghost?” I asked, my voice trembling slightly at the thought of Tyler in that house with that man. I pushed it back. “I always wondered about that.”
“Rachel told me she was killed with a knife,” Betsy Sue said. “But the boy at your house died of a fever.”
“Yellow fever? Did he tell you that?” I asked, thinking about what our tour guide had told us about the several outbreaks of yellow fever in the town in the eighteen-hundreds that killed thousands of people. How did Betsy Sue know about this, being locked up the past five years? Had the doctor taught her?
“No, he hasn’t told me how he died yet. I recognized the yellow color to his skin. I’ve seen it before. We had one girl in our attic that had died of the same. His name is Billy, by the way. The least you could do is learn his name, now that he is so fond of you.”
“All right,” I said, chuckling. I liked her imagination. It was quite impressive, but I guessed that it had to be, to keep her alive these many years trapped inside that house with the doctor. Could it
really be that he had thirteen girls there with him? Or was that part of her imagination too? It was hard to tell. I sincerely hoped it was just her making up stories. “I’ll try and remember that.”
“Good. Ghosts like it when you remember their names.”
“But you said you didn’t want to become a ghost. Why were you afraid of that?” I asked.
“Because it was my turn.”
“Your turn? What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “It just was. When the doctor brings you this dress and brushes your hair and sings this song for you, that’s when you know that you’re going in the chair.”
“What chair is that?” I asked.
“The chair on the top floor. Hit or stand?”
“So the doctor makes you sit in a chair? How is that dangerous?”
“Hit or stand?” Betsy Sue said.
“Stand,” I said. “The dress that he brings you, is that the one you’re wearing right now?”
Betsy Sue didn’t answer. I guessed it was. “Do you think you could find the house again, if I drove you around town?” I asked.
Betsy Sue didn’t look at me and didn’t answer either.
“We could do it just the two of us, if your mom and dad will let us.”
Still no answer.
“We can bring Shannon? I’m sure she would love to come,” I said, playing on the fact that Betsy Sue loved Shannon and her music.
But she still didn’t answer me.
“You see, I really need to find him.” I grabbed her arm and tried to make her look up, but she kept staring at the cards in her hands.
“He has taken Tyler.”
She gave herself another card. Then she finally looked up at me. Her eyes sparkled in the light from the window. I thought I saw tears in them, but I wasn’t sure.
“Player wins.”
32
November 1990
The blood was everywhere. In her mouth, on her cheeks, and even in her nostrils. Kimberly whined and wiped her face with a towel, then continued to wipe Rosa as well, who was also covered all over her face and dress.
“What is that, Mommy, what is it?” she whined.
“It looks like blood,” Kimberly said.
“Why? Why did blood come out of the sink, Mommy, why?”
“I don’t know, Rosa. Stand still.”
Joseph, who had heard the screams, came up from the basement, a cigar in the side of his mouth. “What the heck are you doing up here?” he asked, chewing on the cigar. “What’s with all the noise?”
“There was blood coming out of the sink, Daddy,” Rosa wailed. “It sprayed all over us.”
Kimberly had the taste still in her mouth and spat in the sink, then grabbed some water and tried to wash her mouth out, but it still remained. Blood had sprayed on all the cabinets as well.
Joseph approached them, looking at them with terror in his eyes. “What on earth…?”
Kimberly’s hands were still shivering as she pointed at the sink with the garbage disposal.
“We ran it and seconds later we were covered in it.”
The cigar changed position in Joseph’s mouth. Now it was hanging from the other side. “I’ll be…”
He walked to the disposal and looked down. Blood was all over the sink as well, and the stench coming from it was unbearable. Joseph took off his suit jacket, rolled up the sleeve of his white shirt, and put his hand into the hole. His hand moved around for a bit before he finally pulled it back out, holding the remains of a rat. It was completely shredded to pieces.
Rosa screamed. Kimberly turned around and threw up in the sink next to it.
“That’s it,” she said when she was done.
Joseph was still holding the animal in his hand, and she felt sick to her stomach just watching it.
“I want out of this house.”
Joseph took a baffled look at her. “What? Because of a rat that crawled into the garbage disposal and died there?”
Kimberly opened the faucet and let the water run so she could wash her mouth again. She gurgled and spat, then gurgled again. “It’s not just the rat. It’s everything, Joseph. I don’t like it here.”
Joseph rolled his eyes while the cigar changed position in his mouth again. He took it out and held it in the hand that wasn’t holding the rat. Smoke emerged from his mouth when he spoke.
“Not that again? I love it here. So does Rosa, right Rosa?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“You can’t seriously tell me you want to move out of this wonderful house because of a stupid rat?”
“This house hates me!” Kimberly yelled. “Everything has been going wrong since we moved in here. All these bad things keep happening, and then there’s you. You’ve changed, Joseph. You’ve changed a lot.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Since when do you wear a suit? Since when do you smoke cigars or play cards? Who do you even play with down there?”
Joseph shook his head. “What are you talking about? If anyone has changed since we got here, it’s you. You keep walking around in the kitchen talking to yourself or to the birds or whoever it is you talk to, and you tell me you hear all these things at night that I don’t. Now you say that the house doesn’t want us here? What does that even mean? Since when do houses have emotions or opinions? I say you’re the one who is changing. For your information, I love it here. This house is awesome and I am staying. I think Rosa is with me, right Rosie?”
The girl nodded. “I like it here, Mom. There are so many hiding places and there’s always something to do. I love to play with the birds in the attic. They bring me things if I feed them.”
“Guess that settles it, then,” Joseph said, and placed the cigar back in the side of his mouth. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a rat to get rid of.”
33
May 2016
“Betsy Sue has agreed to go for a drive with me around town to see if she can recognize any of the houses, and maybe we can figure out where she was kept.”
I looked at Heather and Ron in the living room of their immaculate home. Betsy Sue had followed me downstairs to talk to them.
Heather’s eyes stared, terrified, at me.
“No,” she said with an air of finality. “She can’t do that. It’ll be too much for her.”
“This could be of great help in the investigation,” I said. “We need to find this guy. According to Betsy Sue, he has other children there. Other children who have parents that miss them and want them back. It is vital we find them before they’re hurt. You, of all people, should understand.”
“Listen,” Heather said. “We know about your son. We understand why you would think our daughter could help you, but it’s not okay for you to come here and…”
“How do you know about Tyler?” I asked.
Heather looked at Ron. He cleared his throat. “It was on the radio just now.”
My heart dropped. Shannon. Our cover had been broken. They knew we were here. And even worse. They knew about Tyler.
“I know it must be hard for you, believe me, I do, probably more than most people,” Ron said. “And I understand that you might think that Betsy Sue can somehow help you, but there is no proof that it is the same person who took your little boy as had Adelai…Betsy Sue for all those years. It could just as well be some crazed fan or someone wanting a ransom.”
“Betsy Sue promised me she would go for a drive, please…” I said.
“How do we even know she has agreed to it? She hasn’t spoken one single word to us, or to you while we were present. How do we know you’re not just making all this up?” Heather asked.
“She speaks to me. She really does,” I said.
“Say something, Betsy Sue,” Ron said. “Talk to Detective Ryder.”
The girl stared at them, but no words came out.
“There you have it,” Ron said definitively. “She doesn’t speak. Not to you or anyone else.”
I felt like exploding with rage. Bu
t the fact was, they could deny me the right to ever see her again, so I had to hold it back. I had to keep my cool.
Ron put his hand on my shoulder. “I think you should go back to your fiancé. I have a feeling she needs you right now.”
“Please…” I said.
“I don’t want her going through all this,” Heather said. “She’s been through enough. Right now we’re trying to forget the past around here and figuring out how to be a family again. She doesn’t need to keep ripping up the past like that. Besides, the doctor said she can’t have too much sunlight. Her eyes and skin need to get used to it. We let you talk to her, didn’t we?”
I knew I had lost. I knelt in front of Betsy Sue and looked into her light eyes. “Do you remember anything about the house you were kept in?” I asked. “Anything that could lead me to Tyler? Please?”
“Mr. Ryder!” Ron said. “I need you to leave now.”
“Please?”
The girl stared at me like she was deciding what to do. I sensed she wanted to help me, but that she didn’t want to speak when her parents were in the room. I wondered why that was. She had told me she spoke to me because she trusted me. Did that mean she didn’t trust them?
Betsy Sue leaned over very close to my ear, then whispered:
“The girl screams at night.”
34
May 2016
So far, I had little to go on. I knew he was a doctor, I knew he was holding thirteen girls at his house that I suspected he had kidnapped, even though I found it quite incredible that someone would be able to kidnap that many girls and not be found by the police. I knew he lived and kept the girls in a house here in Savannah, that he had killed some of them, that he played Black Jack—oh, yeah—and that he liked country music and that one of the girls screamed at night.
It sure wasn’t much.
I drove around downtown Savannah, looking at every house I passed, wondering if this could be it, if my dear baby Tyler was somewhere behind those walls. I worried that this doctor had him and, at the same time, I worried that he didn’t. That I was following the wrong lead and that Tyler had, in fact, been taken by some crazed fan or for a ransom, like Mr. Hawthorne suggested. I couldn’t help thinking that the doctor had only taken girls before, never a boy. Why would he take Tyler?