I Hope You're Listening

by Tom Ryan

  My ascent into the air is stopped midjump, and I fall heavily to the ground, knocking a lamp onto the floor. He’s on the ground too, not letting go of my ankle, dragging me back into the room as he pulls himself up and into a crouching position, and I reach for the lamp and throw it. It careens wildly, missing him by a mile, but it’s enough to make him pull back. I use the opportunity to flip around and use my free foot to kick him square in the chest.

  He lets out an oof and staggers back into the room, and I flail, trying to find my center of gravity, trying to discover enough awareness of the space to stand. I stagger to my feet and catch myself as I run for the door to the hallway.

  He’s on his feet again though, and he reaches out and grabs me roughly by the shoulder as I try to get away, into the hallway, to the front door. His thumb pushes painfully into the back of my neck, and he presses down on my shoulder at the same time, forcing me to the ground. Quickly, he twists my arms behind me and presses a knee onto my back, squeezing the air out of me.

  Upstairs, doors are opening, lights are coming on.

  “Barnabas?” a voice yells from upstairs. “What’s going on?”

  I do the same thing I did when Sibby was taken. I go slack, I let the fight leave me, and I slump beneath him. He’s still holding me tight, but I can tell that he registers the shift in me. He loosens his grip and sits back, and I know he thinks he’s won this fight.

  But he hasn’t accounted for the main thing: I’m not the same person I was back then.

  I’m big enough to fight back.

  I let my face press to the floor. “I thought I could do something,” I whisper, letting myself sound defeated.

  He relaxes away from me a bit more.

  I flip onto my back and whip my right leg up with as much force as I can muster, whacking it directly into his nuts.

  He drops backward, screaming, and I manage to wriggle out from under him. I know I only have two or three seconds to work with, and I spin on my foot and rush for the front door. It’s locked, but I grab the deadbolt and twist it, and yank the door open. I can hear him behind me, moving again, and feet are already pounding down the stairs.

  “You bitch!” he yells after me, as I run into the night.

  I hear the dogs barking as soon as I’m outside, and although at first it’s obvious that they’re inside some building somewhere, the noise soon gets louder, telling me they’ve been let out. I chance a glance behind me and see that the lights in the outbuilding have come on.

  The floodlights in the yard are on as well, and as I race across the brightly lit expanse between the farmhouse and the top of the driveway, I hear voices calling out, but they are still back at the house, which tells me I have a decent head start.

  I face a new problem once I’ve skittered beneath the barrier. The forest presses up against the narrow gravel lane from both sides. Do I run into the woods, hiding in the shelter of the trees as I try to make it to the road where Sarah is waiting before they do? Or do I continue on the driveway, which will be faster but leave me in full sight of my pursuers? I hear barking behind me, rapidly getting closer, and I realize I’m going to have more trouble than I expected if I don’t think of some way to handle these dogs.

  Raven arrives first, barking and snarling at me, and Snowman is close behind.

  I know dogs well enough to know that I can’t let them see me scared, and I have an advantage: they already know me. I’ve been a guest in their house.

  “Stay,” I say in as commanding a voice as I can muster. Their teeth remain bared, but to my relief, they stop.

  “Look!” I say, and I point at the woods. Both dogs turn quickly, then catch on to the trick and turn back to me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that they looked irritated.

  “Sit!” I command.

  The dogs hesitate, shuffling uneasily as they try to figure out if I’m really in control. Behind them, lights scan the ground, rounding the bend in the drive.

  “Sit!” I say again.

  This time, they both sit, and I almost laugh with relief.

  “Stay,” I command, and then I quickly scan the ground for a stick. When I find one big enough, I raise it into the air, and both of their heads follow its motion. With one hard, fluid movement, I whip the stick through the air toward the flashlights. It’s heavy, and it goes far, and I hear someone yell in surprise as it lands. The dogs are also off, disappearing toward the stick and the people, and I take advantage of the opportunity to turn and begin running down the driveway.

  My heart is in my chest and all I can hear is blood pumping and my hard, pained gasping for air. I taste blood, and behind me, I can hear the sound of footsteps.

  “Stop!” someone yells.

  Then, ahead of me in the predawn gloom, a light catches my eye and I realize that it’s a car driving slowly up the driveway toward me. Sarah!

  Somehow I pick up my speed and run faster toward her car, and as the headlights pick me up, it comes to a crunching stop on the icy gravel driveway.

  I can tell from the sounds behind me that my pursuers are gaining on me, but the Nova is closer, and I race to it, reaching out to slam my hands onto the hood, stopping myself. I skid, frantic, around the side and wrench open the passenger door.

  I’m only barely aware of Sarah’s shocked face as I throw myself into the car and yank the door closed.

  “Dee!” she says. “What’s going on? Are you okay? I waited at the end of the road but—”

  “Drive!” I say, cutting her off. “We have to get out of here!”

  A shot echoes in the night, and we both turn to look out the windshield. In the glow of the headlights, four figures approach the car, two of them holding flashlights.

  “We have to go, Sarah,” I say. “Now.”

  She doesn’t move, seemingly frozen in her seat. “Dee,” she says, her voice a croaking whisper, “who are those people?”

  As they get closer, the flashlights drops to the ground, and I can see that it’s Barnabas, Noah, Pearl, and Pierre. They stop, brightly lit by the headlights, snow swirling erratically around them.

  Noah steps to the front of the pack. He lifts the shotgun and points it at us.

  “Sarah!” I say, reaching forward to slam on the dash. “You need to go now! Back up!”

  She seems to snap out of her trance and reaches over to shift the car into reverse. The car lurches backward and begins to accelerate, as the sound of a gunshot fills the air.

  “Hurry!” I yell, and the gun is fired again, this time pinging off the hood. We both scream, but she’s picking up speed. I know that we’re almost at the road, and they’re sprinting after us now. I can see Noah in front, stopping to take aim, and he fires the gun again, this time hitting one of the front tires, blowing it out, just as Sarah spins us into a hard backward turn and skids onto the main road.

  Sarah’s face is grim, and she kicks the car into first gear and presses on the gas. I turn to see our pursuers running out from the driveway onto the open road.

  Noah lifts the gun again.

  “Duck!” I yell, grabbing for Sarah and pushing her head down, as he fires another shot, the rear windshield shattering.

  “Not today, you bastards,” says Sarah, and she pulls the car into third and we accelerate away. Barnabas and his henchmen have turned and are running back up the driveway.

  “They’re probably running to get into their trucks,” I say. “We don’t have much time.”

  “We can’t make it far like this,” says Sarah, and I listen to the sound of the busted tire dragging and scraping along the icy gravel road.

  Ahead, the classy Victorian farmhouse emerges from around a corner.

  “Pull in here,” I say. “We can ask them for help. Barnabas said that they’re neighbors, but I don’t think they get along.”

  Sarah skids off the road and up the driveway, pulling around to the back of the house. We jump out of the car and run to the front door, knocking furiously. After a few moments, lights come
on upstairs and, after another pause, downstairs. A curtain in the window draws back, and someone peers out at us, then the door opens and a tired, confused-looking elderly man appears.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, and I’m relieved that he looks concerned, not angry. “How can I help you girls?”

  “We’re being chased,” I say, frantic.

  “Chased?” He looks taken aback, and his grip tightens on the door. I worry that he’s going to shut us out.

  “The people at the farm,” I say, rushing to get the story out before the trucks appear. “Barnabas.”

  His eyes narrow at the name, and he turns to call back into the house. “Ginette! Will you come here?”

  A moment later, an old woman comes down the stairs into the room. “What’s all this about, Bill?” she asks.

  “Barnabas,” says the man, and his face takes on a new look of grim understanding.

  “Come in out of the cold, girls,” says the woman.

  “We need to hide the car,” I say. “They’ll know we’re here.”

  The man and woman exchange a look. “We don’t want any trouble from Barnabas and his crew,” says the woman.

  “We can’t leave them to fend for themselves, Ginette,” he says. “They’re just girls.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” she says. “We can call the police.”

  “We will,” he says, “but we need to do something first, or a bad situation might turn into a worse one. There are guns involved. I always knew that man would end up digging himself a hole. I just don’t want to end up at the bottom of it.”

  He looks past us into the driveway. “Is that your car?” he asks.

  “Yes!” says Sarah. “They shot at us!”

  “We need to hide it before they arrive,” he says. “They’ll be after you.”

  He steps into a pair of heavy boots next to the door. “Do you have the keys?” Sarah hands them to him, and we watch as he hurries out to the car and starts it, then drives around the corner of the house and up to a large shed. He gets out of the car and runs up to the doors, then opens them, gets back into the car, and slowly moves the car into the shed.

  The woman moves to the woodstove in the corner of the room and opens it, begins stoking the embers. “Come in out of the cold, girls,” she says, as she shoves some logs into the fire.

  We kick off our boots and step gratefully into the kitchen. We stand next to the stove, waiting for it to heat up, trying to get warm. The yard outside is still dim, but brightening into early morning, and through a window above the sink, I can see the man coming back down through the yard toward the house. The car is nowhere to be seen.

  I pull my phone from my pocket. No service. “Can we use your phone?” I ask, just as the back door opens and the man steps onto the porch, stomping to get the snow off his boots.

  “I’ll call Sheriff Taylor,” says the man. “Tell him that Barnabas is up to his tricks. More runaways.”

  “We aren’t runaways,” says Sarah. “We’re looking for someone.”

  “Did one of your friends join with those goddamned hippies?” he asks. I turn to Sarah, willing her to be quiet, but she doesn’t notice my expression.

  “Not exactly,” she says. “We think they might have kidnapped a child. Years ago.”

  The woman’s eyes widen and she turns to look at her husband. “Kidnapped!” she exclaims.

  Her husband shakes his head again, angry, and strides into the kitchen and through a door into what I assume is their living room. A moment later, we can hear him speaking into the phone.

  “Diane, it’s Bill Drummond from down Brewster Road. We’ve got a situation here, and I’d like you to ask Taylor to come down here with a man or two as soon as possible. Barnabas and his crew are up to no good again.”

  There’s a pause. “Yes, that’ll be good. Thanks, Diane.”

  He returns to the kitchen. “Cops are on the way,” he says. All four of us turn as we hear the sound of a vehicle on gravel. Sarah steps over to me and grabs my arm as Bill walks over to look out the window.

  “It’s Barnabas and Noah,” he says. “We’ve got to hide you two. Ginette, get the girls down into the basement. I’m going out to talk to them.”

  “Be careful,” I say. “They’ve got guns!”

  He waves away my concern. “I know how to handle Barnabas.”

  Ginette hurries us from the kitchen into a long, dark hallway. She unlocks a door that’s set into the back of the staircase that leads down to a half-finished basement. A workbench and tools are set up along one side, and a door along one wall leads into a small carpeted room with a shelf full of fabric and preserves and a sewing table set up along the opposite side.

  “I’m sorry, girls, it’s a bit cold down here,” Ginette says. “Keep your coats on, and there’s a space heater in the corner if you need it. I’ll be back down as soon as I find out what’s going on.”

  She leaves, closing the door behind her, and I follow Sarah to the tiny window set into the wall at the top of the room, just above eye level. We stand on tiptoes and peer through the window into the driveway, where we can see the boots of several men standing around.

  “Can you hear?” asks Sarah. I shake my head; there’s muffled conversation, but nothing distinguishable. After a minute, the boots start moving, away from the truck, around the house.

  “Oh my god,” says Sarah. “They’re coming in! I hope the cops arrive soon!”

  But something else has caught my attention: the sound of a bolt sliding into place on the other side of the door. I rush to the door and yank on the handle, but it does no good.

  We’ve been locked in.

  39.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” asks Sarah. She’s not hysterical—I don’t think Sarah does hysterical—but she’s definitely panicked, and I know that there’s plenty to panic about.

  I look around the room, trying to figure out what we’re supposed to do. Along the edge of the wall, there are two small windows at ground height. There’s no way in hell that I’d squeeze through one of them, and although Sarah might have a fighting chance, there are bars across them both, bolted into the cement foundation from the outside.

  The door is solid, and I’m pretty sure it’s metal, aluminum maybe. There are two bolts instead of one, and the handle is also locked.

  “Shit,” I say. “We’re not getting out of here.”

  Sarah doesn’t respond; she’s moving stuff off an old kitchen chair, brown vinyl padding on the seat, and moving it across the room, underneath a tiny air vent.

  “Sarah,” I say, as she climbs onto the chair. “That thing is like four inches wide. You wouldn’t fit up there in a million years.”

  She gives me a look like I’m a complete idiot, then puts a finger to her mouth and stands on tiptoe, twisting her head sideways to point her ear toward the hole.

  I finally get what she’s doing, and I move to stand next to her by the chair. Together, we stand as quietly as possible and strain our ears.

  There’s a heated conversation going on above us, somewhere in the room above. The energy of the words is obvious, but the words themselves are harder to make out.

  Let them go drifts down at us, and we exchange a hopeful glance, only to be shattered by the stomp of a foot and a deep, authoritative bellow. Absolutely not! They’ve seen—

  The words break off abruptly as someone, I assume inadvertently, moves and a foot blocks the air vent. The voices become completely unintelligible, a dull mutter from above the ceiling. A few moments later, the foot moves, but the voices move with it, and footsteps move across the ceiling and away from us, toward the front of the house. Soon, there are no voices within earshot, and we’re left to mull over what we’ve heard.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” I say, “but the cops are not on their way. He just pretended to call.”

  “Shit,” says Sarah. She gets down from the chair and sits wearily.

  “We should mo
ve that back,” I say. “In case they come down and see what we’ve been doing.”

  She nods but makes no move to stand up. After a moment, I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “It probably doesn’t matter,” I say.

  At some point, the door unlocks, and Ginette pushes it open, carrying a tray. I glance at Sarah and know we’re both thinking the same thing. She’s old, and although she looks healthy enough, it would be easy for the two of us to overpower her.

  “Don’t waste your energy,” says Ginette. “Bill is at the top of the stairs with his rifle. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if we have to.”

  There’s no way to tell if she’s telling the truth, and I put my hand on Sarah’s arm to tell her to stay where she is. Through the open door, I can see the workbench, and a set of steps leading up to a cellar door, like the one from The Wizard of Oz. Another exit, if we could only get to it.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Sarah asks.

  “We’re trying to figure that out now,” she says. “Now eat something and try to get some sleep.”

  She puts the tray on the table and turns to leave.

  “What do you know about Sibby Carmichael?” I ask. She stops, and her back stiffens.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she says after a brief pause. Then she walks back out the door and closes it, and almost instantly, we hear the soft metallic snip of the bolt sliding into place.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say. “There’s no way they’re going to let us go after this. They know something about Sibby, and they know that we know. There’s a reason they didn’t call the police.”

  “How?” asks Sarah. “There’s no way out of here.”

  We spend the next couple of hours doing our best, but it turns out she’s absolutely right. The tiny window is too small for either of us to crawl out of, and after a couple of attempts, feet appear, and a moment later a piece of plywood is pressed up against our only view, and we can hear it being drilled into place.

  The door is even more of a barrier. It’s steel framed and locked tight. It makes me wonder if anyone else has ever been locked in here.