“If you see me headed into Chuck’s bedroom, then I give you permission to shoot me!” Anne yelled after her.
“Dude,” said Chuck, “I’m sitting right here. I have feelings, you know.”
Anne glared at him. “Shut up, Chuck.”
I hated to push, but I didn’t see that I had a choice. “Greg, I think it’s time we met your wife.”
32
Greg stopped outside of the closed bedroom door upstairs and visibly steeled himself. It was just the three of us, Greg, Anne, and myself. He was carrying a plate stacked high with those frozen waffles that you heat up in the toaster. “Just. Don’t judge me. I did what I had to, for her sake.”
Anne and I exchanged a glance. “We understand.”
Greg opened the door gingerly and stepped inside. “Honey, are you awake?”
“Where were you? I’m so hungry, and you’ve been downstairs eating, haven’t you?”
Greg flipped on the light and stepped inside. “She’s awake, come on in. Valerie, I want you to meet some friends who dropped by last night.”
“I don’t care! What did you bring?”
The room was small and looked like at one time it had been a guest bedroom. It smelled sharply of sweat and urine. In the center of the room was a bed with a vast woman in a stained T-shirt and shorts lying on top of it. The bed had a decorative headboard and footboard made of iron rails, to which four cargo tie-down ropes had been attached, binding the woman’s wrists and ankles. The skin around the smooth, round ropes was angry and raw. The most striking thing, however, was the scarring on her arms, legs, and face. They were crude razor blade cuts in curved lines, some a few inches long, and some disappearing into her sleeves and shorts. They looked like worms, cut into her skin, everywhere she could reach.
Her greasy hair hung limply around her face in long strings as she opened her mouth and strained towards Greg, who was already feeding her the first of the waffles. Her teeth snapped together audibly as she wolfed it down. He dropped the last piece into her open mouth rather than risking his fingers.
“She’s always hungry now. At first, last year, she was just eating more. She gained some weight, but nothing unusual.” He gave a feeble grin. “I’m no lightweight myself, you know. But then about six months ago, it was like she could never get enough. We went to the doctor, and he prescribed some pills that were supposed to suppress her hunger, but it didn’t work.”
“Pay attention, Greg! I’m starving!”
“I’m sorry, baby. Here.” Another two waffles. “One night, I woke up and she had the freezer and the refrigerator open, and she was just eating everything inside. Ketchup, raw eggs, ground meat, everything. I tried to pull her away, and she got violent. I had to call an ambulance and the police. By the time they showed up, she had already ruptured her stomach. She was lying on the ground, crying, and still trying to reach pieces of cereal that she had spilled all over the floor.” He had to stop and get control of himself.
Valerie finished her current waffle and dropped back onto the pillow. “Oh, Greg. I’m so sorry. I try to control myself, you know I do. It’s just so hard. But I’m helping, aren’t I? We’re doing this together, you and me.”
“We sure are, baby. I couldn’t do it without you.”
“Thank you.” A tear spilled out of her eye, and she reflexively wiped it off against the pillow, not being able to use her hands. It looked like she’d had a lot of practice at it. “Baby, can I have some more now? Please?”
He started feeding her another one, still careful of his fingers, despite her polite tone. “Anyway, after she was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, she seemed to get better. She was able to control her eating, and everyone just chalked it up to some kind of temporary chemical imbalance. Everything was fine, until the dreams started. We know that they’re real now, but when it started happening, we really thought she was going crazy again. That’s when she started cutting herself.”
Valerie sputtered around her food. “I can’t help it, it’s not my fault.”
“I know, Val. Nobody’s blaming you.” He fed her the last waffle, which she ate just as desperately as the first one. “She asked me to tie her up here, so that she wouldn’t eat herself to death, and so that she could help us rescue people. If she were back in the hospital, they would just dope her up, and then nobody would get saved.”
“That’s right, I can help people here. I don’t want to be asleep in the hospital with the IV drip, I want to eat. This is better. I help a lot, don’t I, Greg?”
“Yes, baby.”
“I can help right now, Greg. I had a dream last night, a good one. There’s a family out in Oak Grove, over by the movies, you know? They live in a blue house with a tree in the front. There’s a car in the driveway, it’s blue, too, and old. You’ll know the house, it’s on one of those circle drives. I don’t think there are too many of those in Oak Grove. The woman is bad, and the husband is gone. But there are two boys in the house, teenagers. You can save them. You can save them tonight.”
“That’s great, Valerie. We’ll find them.”
“I did good, didn’t I? Can I have a little more, then? When I help, I get more, remember? You said so, and I helped. You know I helped.”
“You did. I’ll get you some more. But not too much, okay? You don’t want to get sick.”
“Valerie?” said Anne. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Anne, I’m trying to help, too, like you and Greg. Can you describe your dreams to me?”
“Oh, yes. They’re very special dreams. I’m up high, and I can see everything. I can see all the houses and I know when one goes bad. And when I see it, I tell my Greg, and he helps the people get out. I keep the town safe.”
“So, last night you just saw the one bad house? Just this family?”
“Sometimes I see one every week, don’t I, Greg? Sometimes the bad people are busy. But we keep up with them, don’t we?”
Anne chewed her lip in thought for a moment. “I’m just asking, because I think I had one of these dreams last night. Up high and seeing into all the houses. But there were lots of bad ones. A hundred, maybe more.”
Valerie’s eyes sprang open wide and she started thrashing around on the bed, jerking at the ropes and making the frame shudder. “No! She’s lying, Greg! She’s a lying slut and she just wants to take you away from me. Can’t you tell? She wants the food, Greg! She wants it all for herself!”
Greg patted her arm, out of the way of her grasping hands. “Val, it’s okay. She’s not trying to get your food. I promise.”
“I’m as good as her, Greg. I’m better. If you want more, I can give you more.” She licked her lips. “But you have to give me more food, okay? If I give you more houses, you give me more food. That’s fair. You know it is, Greg. You can’t trust her. She’s not even from here, she can’t tell you where the houses are, not like I can. Greg. I’m your wife, Greg.” She got louder. “I’m your wife! You don’t listen to that whore, she’s lying!”
“You knew there were more houses? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Valerie began shrieking as loudly as she could. “You want to get rid of me! You want your slut and you don’t want to feed me anymore! I’m your wife! I’m your wife! I’m your fucking wife!”
The ropes thrummed as she yanked on them violently, heedlessly tearing the skin on her wrists and ankles. The bed creaked and swayed, skittering on the carpet. Greg pushed us towards the door. Just as we got there, she stopped abruptly.
“Greg? I’m sorry. You forgive me? You’ll still bring me my reward? I’ll give you another house. Just one reward and I’ll give you two houses, okay? Not even for two rewards. Just one, for two houses. That’s fair, that’s more than fair, Greg. You know it is. Okay?”
Greg paused in the doorway, unable to look back at his wife, tied to the bed, pleading with him. “Okay, Valerie. I’ll send Chuck up right away.”
“I love you, Greg. I l
ove you!”
“I love you, too, Valerie.”
33
I watched the tip of the cigarette shiver as Greg took a long drag. The cherry flared vividly in the weak, sea-colored afternoon light. Overhead, thick bottle-green clouds pressed down on the town, faintly luminous as they hoarded the morning sun above them. The wind smelled marshy and it felt like rain.
Greg’s backyard was small and weedy, enclosed by a gap-toothed wooden fence whose sections sagged haphazardly, either encroaching or retreating from the neighbor’s yards in random stretches. A grimy set of white plastic lawn furniture huddled against the house, crowded onto a tiny concrete patio that butted up to a sliding glass door. Everyone stood clustered around the mildewed table, ignoring the dirty chairs.
Chuck was pissed. “I don’t give a shit, Greg. I’m not leaving kids in a house with one of those things just because your wife was jerking you around. Seriously.”
Mazie hit him hard in the shoulder with a kind of half punch, half shove. He had to take a step to keep his balance. “Jesus, Chuck. Will you shut up? He’s talking about his wife. What’s wrong with you?”
“No,” said Greg. “He’s right. We have to get those kids out. And no matter what else, we have to remember that she’s helping us. One hostage a week is better than none, which is what we would have without her. She’s on our side. We have to believe that.”
“I don’t know, man,” said Chuck, “she loves her rewards, right? If there were houses everywhere, why wouldn’t she give us one every day so she gets more food? I mean, shit, you’d think she’d be all over that arrangement. I can’t imagine her holding off for a whole week for an extra snack, you know?”
Greg’s face went still and hard. “Shut up.”
“Hey, I’m just saying out loud what everyone else is thinking.”
Greg lunged, knocking the table aside in an attempt to wrap his hands around Chuck’s throat. I caught him before he managed to connect, but it took Mazie a good five minutes to talk him down before I could let him go.
Greg shoved away from me and put his hands up. “I’m all right. I’m fine. It’s just, fuck. She’s doing her best, okay? It’s not easy for either one of us, her being sick and all. But she’s helping as much as she can.”
I met his eyes. “If that’s the case, I need you to get her to work with us. Now that we know that she’s been holding back, on purpose or not, there’s no point in her keeping any more secrets now. I need to know where Peter’s operation is. You want hostages? How about the ones he’s got penned up waiting to be bled over his pit? We find that place, and I can end this right now.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Tell her whatever you have to, but this has to end.”
His cigarette had fallen to the ground in the scuffle, and he crushed it out on the stained patio concrete. “I know.”
As he went into the house, Anne’s cell phone buzzed from her pocket. She pried it out and glanced at the face to see who was calling.
“Finally.” She answered and put it to her face. “Hi, Henry.” She listened for a second with her smile fading, and then handed the phone over to me. “It’s not Henry.”
I knew who it was. My breath quickened and I had to take care not to crush the phone as I took it from her. “Hello, Piotr.”
“Abraham. Hello. Did you know that it took years for me to learn your name after we met? It hardly seems fair looking back on it, considering how intimately our lives were tied together that day, and how much about me you must have learned when you stole my journal.” His voice had the soft raspy edge of an elderly man, but his words were quick and clear. There was only the faintest trace of his Polish heritage under his flat Midwestern pronunciation.
“Where’s Henry?”
“You sound angry. I understand that, I’m angry, too. All the time, I’m angry. I think we both want to end this as soon as we can. So. Let’s make a deal. I’m going to get ready for us to meet as quickly as I can, and you’re going to stay put with your new friends, yes? If you do that, this will be over in the shortest possible time. I’m going to close the town shortly and start transporting my … supplies, so just sit tight. If you don’t, then not only will you be dragging things out for everyone involved, but it will go badly for Henry and Leon as well.”
“Newsflash, fucker. Henry is a Ranger and Leon is a Marine. You think they care about your threats? You think I do? Shit, if you put Henry on right now, the first thing out of his mouth would be to tell me to blow your head off and forget about him and Leon.”
Piotr laughed, delighted. “Oh, I know, Abraham, they have said as much to my face. We’re all the same. I served my country just as you and your friends did, in the Armia Krajowa and later in Ludowa when the Home Army would no longer have me. So I know a soldier’s pride. But I know something else about soldiers, too. Sacrificing yourself is easy, sacrificing others is the hard thing. I understand this. You should also know that I’m not threatening them with death. No, I’m going to give them to the Mother as a holy vessel for her children. Then I’ll send them out to find you, and you’ll have to kill them yourself. Or you can get that self-sacrifice that you wanted, delivered by the knives of your friends. I don’t think either scenario would suit you, am I correct?”
“I’m coming to kill you.”
“I know, and I deserve to die. As do you and Henry and Leon and everyone else. We all deserve to die, Abraham. And we will.”
He hung up. A minute later the phone flashed ‘NO SIGNAL.’
34
“Land line is down, too,” said Mazie, slamming the handset down on the ‘All circuits are busy’ recording.
Chuck ran into the kitchen. “I checked with the neighbors, they think it’s the storm.”
Mazie snorted. “They’re idiots, it’s been cloudy like that for weeks, and it hasn’t even rained or anything.”
Chuck glanced out the patio door. “Yeah, but it’s worse lately. And windy.”
“Whatever, Chuck.”
We were in the kitchen, waiting impatiently for Greg to come back downstairs. Anne checked for a signal on her phone for the tenth time, and then turned it off with a vicious stab and jammed it into her pocket. “I hate this. If we go after Peter or Piotr or whatever his name is, he kills Henry and Leon. If we stay here, he wins. No matter what we do, we lose.”
“I don’t think so.” Everyone turned to look at me. “In fact, I think the whole purpose of that phone call was to get things started. He wants us to engage and come to him.”
Chuck snorted. “Seriously? Dude, the man said he’d turn your buddies into worm piñatas if we so much as stepped outside. Yeah, I can totally see how that means to step outside.”
“Why call at all? He dangled a trail in front of me, dragging me halfway across the country, and now that I’m here, am I some kind of threat? Of course not. I have no more idea where to find Piotr than I did two weeks ago, and even a small town is too big for me to search, especially with the way the bag population is throwing Anne off track. The only thing that call accomplished was to give me a chance to follow the hostages to Piotr.”
Chuck wasn’t convinced. “Or, he wanted to you stay out of his way. You know, like he said.”
“Chuck, he didn’t have to call me for that. If I didn’t know that he was about to move hostages, I would have missed it. In fact, I’m betting that instead of putting people in cars that would blend into the normal traffic, he’s going to use something that stands out, just to make sure I don’t miss it.”
Mazie said, “If he wants you so bad, why not just send a bunch of the coerced to get you?”
“Because he has no idea where I am. All he has is Anne’s number in Henry’s cell. He can talk to me, but he can’t find me.”
“Besides,” said Anne, “I doubt Piotr thinks his bags are up to kidnapping Abe. He’s a lot tougher than he looks.”
“Uh, thanks?” I figured that Chuck would make a comment, but instead he just looked thoughtful
. He was probably remembering being tossed around back at the hotel. Even strong people have some give to them when you push back, especially if pushed by a guy with Chuck’s size. I don’t, which probably made an impression.
I changed the subject. “In any case, if Piotr is ready for me to follow his hostages to him, then we need to figure out a different way. The worst thing we could do is to come in when and how he expects us. Besides, if I’m right, he can’t do anything without me anyway, so he has no choice but to wait for us to make a move.”
“You hope,” said Mazie.
“I hope.”
“You know,” said Chuck, “there’s no way that Saint Peter is going to let your friends go. Hell, they’re probably loading up on wigglers as we speak.”
“I doubt it. He’s going to need some kind of leverage for when I do actually show up. It’s one thing to lure a bear into your house, it’s another thing entirely to survive the experience.”
35
The soft gray daylight was fading into gloom by the time Greg made it back downstairs. When he entered the kitchen he was wearing that faraway, glassy look that you see on people waiting around in an emergency room with a bloody towel pressed to one of their limbs. Without speaking, he grabbed a glass and a bottle of something clear and brown from under the sink. After a long communion with the glass, he turned to face us.
“I had to agree to bring up food. A lot of it. And she wants me to untie one of her hands so that she can eat it herself.” Another drink. “I think … I think she might die if I do that.”
Anne gently took the glass out of his hand. “Don’t give it all to her, or at least not all at once.”
“She won’t give me any more information unless I do. That’s the deal.”
“She didn’t give you anything at all?” I asked.
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