Notes From My Captivity

by Kathy Parks

  “I’m sorry,” I say again.

  “Don’t be. The truth is, I shouldn’t have taken you here.”

  “But . . .”

  “No.” He holds up his hand. “This isn’t about anything you did. It’s on me. First of all, I underestimated how wild that river would be this time around. And you’re not a little girl. You’re seventeen, and I was an idiot to take you out here around young guys in the middle of nowhere. An absolute fool.”

  “No you weren’t, Dan.”

  “You were your dad’s little girl, and you’ll always be that. But you’re my girl too, and I’m in charge of you.” He keeps his voice low. His hands aren’t moving around crazily. All the exuberance of his quest has been drained out of him, and it hurts me to see him like this. “I think we should call this off.”

  “No, no, please don’t do that,” I stammer, my heart sinking. “I’ll be perfect from now on, I promise.”

  “But will our guide? Will the river? Those are my questions.”

  “But we’ve waited so long to go on this trip. What about the Osinovs? We’ll never know the truth.” I feel terribly guilty as I say these words, remembering the intent of the article I’ve been writing in my head, the disbelieving one. And at this moment, I honestly don’t know what I believe.

  “I have a family, too,” he says. “And you’re in it. My first job is to make sure you’re safe.”

  He’s got me cornered. And he’s right: How can I say it’s safe out here? But I have to try one more time.

  “Just sleep on it,” I tell him. “Decide in the morning.”

  Silence. He’s thinking, and I don’t want to interrupt him. Finally he says, “Okay, I’ll decide in the morning. But I’ve pretty much decided.”

  “All right,” I say at last. “That’s fair.”

  “I’m gonna turn in. I’m beat.” He presses something into my hand. I look down. It’s the bear spray.

  “Bear spray?” I ask.

  He nods grimly. “For Sergei.”

  I almost laugh. “I don’t think Sergei’s gonna come back and get me or anything. He’s basically a cool guy. And besides, are you sure bear spray works on drunken Russians?”

  “Says here right on the side,” says Dan. I’m confused for a heartbeat, then I realize that Dan has actually told a joke, and it’s actually funny.

  “That’s a good one,” I tell him.

  He nods, smiles tightly, and crawls out. All is quiet for a while. But strangely, the sound of voices outside grows louder, less angry.

  They are laughing. Playing music.

  One of them has an iPod turned way up, and the sound of the Doors fills up the clean mountain air.

  When you’re strange,

  Faces come out of the rain.

  I listen as Jim Morrison sends his warning out to bears and wolves and owls and crickets and wild people, and us.

  Eight

  I’m having that dream again. The dream I’ve been having for seven years, where I’m in the back seat of the sorority girl’s car, watching her run down my father. The girl is going fast, the headlights pick him up, he doesn’t see her, I scream, and suddenly the tiny smiling girl from the tent is standing in the road.

  “Ya tebya vizhu,” she says, holding out her hand, and the car collides with her in a burst of white light as I bolt from my sleep, sides heaving. I don’t know what time it is. The camp is dead quiet.

  I flop back on my sleeping bag and fall back to sleep.

  Dan wakes me up.

  “Almost dawn,” he whispers, lifting the flap of my tent. I crawl out to greet him. He’s slept in his clothes, is rumpled and ready for action.

  “Well?” I say.

  He looks truly crushed.

  “We’re going back, kid.”

  I don’t try to argue with him. I know it’s over. And to be honest, I feel relieved. I no longer have the heart for this. And the article I was going to write doesn’t feel nearly as important. Dan had a dream and I ruined it. Even if there is no family, I didn’t want his great expedition to end this way.

  “I understand,” I tell him.

  He nods and then smiles ruefully. “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “The Russians are passed out on the ground. Right there where they were partying. They didn’t even make it to their tents.”

  We walk over to the dead campfire, where they lie facing the morning sky. They actually look pretty content, considering the hangovers that will greet them once they awaken. Lyubov has a faint smile on her face. Her arm is stretched out, her fingers curved and touching Viktor’s face. Sergei lies nearby, peaceful as a boy.

  Dan taps Viktor’s boot with the tip of his own. “Hey! Time to get up.”

  Viktor doesn’t move.

  Dan leans down and shakes him. “Viktor!”

  Nothing happens. And I realize that Viktor’s eyes aren’t quite closed. Dan touches the side of his face and pulls back in shock.

  “My God,” he says.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I ask frantically. I bend over Lyubov, grab her arm and let it go immediately. It’s stiff and cold.

  She is dead.

  I look at Sergei and I realize his eyes are open.

  Sergei is dead.

  Viktor is dead.

  They are all dead.

  * * *

  I myself thought I knew death, until I saw death. Death was not the way I imagined it to be.

  Sydney Declay

  * * *

  Nine

  I can only stare at them as a wave of pure horror takes over my body. Sergei’s lips are half parted. His skin is light blue. The mountains close in. The low sun burns. I fall to my hands and knees and vomit.

  “I don’t believe this.” Dan moans. He’s running his hands over Sergei’s face and throat. Prying his eyelids apart. He moves over to the others, shakes Viktor.

  “Viktor! Please! Come on, Viktor. . . .”

  I vomit again.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Dan is on his feet, rubbing his eyes with the flats of his hands, his movements jerky. “We have got to stay calm!” He looks down, notices me. “Adrienne, get up.”

  He pulls me to my feet and gives me a hard, desperate hug, then wrenches away and looks around wildly.

  “Help me find Sergei’s gun, Adrienne!” Blindly we both rush into Sergei’s tent, clawing through his belongings.

  His gun is gone and so is his satellite radio. We rush from tent to tent now, throwing clothes and shoes and dried food around. All our cameras, iPods, the other satellite radio, GPS devices, laptops, tablets, phones, even the flashlights—are gone.

  “Oh no.” The moan comes out of my throat as the realization sinks in—we have no weapons and no way to call for help. And we are the only ones left alive.

  We stumble out of the last tent, enter the clearing again with the dead. Dan is wild-eyed, sweaty. The sight of my stepfather coming unglued makes my heart pound in my chest. My body feels like it wants to explode into a million tiny camouflaged pieces that can be hidden among the rocks and trees.

  “Stay calm!” he shouts.

  I don’t know if Dan is talking to himself or me. A cold rush of pure fear starts in my stomach and goes in all directions. I had this same terrible feeling when I was ten years old and my mother came through the door and I saw the look on her face and knew it meant my father’s machine had been turned off. I stare down at the bodies as if they’re going to blink, smile, move, sit up. Congratulate themselves on the prank they just pulled. And yet they do not. Viktor has a little smile. Lyubov’s head is turned. Sergei’s hands are crossed over his chest. His feet are bare and his boots are nowhere in sight.

  “Why are they dead?” I ask. “I don’t understand. Who took the radios? Who took the gun?” The words tumble out and my own voice hangs in the air, high-pitched and quivering.

  Dan closes his eyes briefly. “This is not happening.” He puts his hands to his head and screams at the mountains, “This is not hap
pening!” His armpits are soaked in sweat.

  I have a sudden thought. I run back to my tent, reach into the inner pocket of my backpack, and feel around.

  A chill runs through me.

  The salt packets are gone.

  Osinovs. The name enters my body as though a gash in my skin. Have they done this? Stolen our weapons, our communications, our salt? Who else could it be but them? I always wanted the truth, but now I just want lies: that there is no family, and they have not been here, and they did not kill the Russians. When I crawl out of the tent and try to stand, my legs are shaky. I walk unsteadily over to Dan, who’s wildly stuffing his clothes into a bag.

  “Get your things, Adrienne,” he orders without looking at me. “We’ve got to leave right now, do you hear?”

  “They took the salt.” My voice shakes. It sounds so small and fragile in this wilderness, under those tall trees, near those dead people.

  He glances at me; his eyes are red and watery, his expression wild. He looks utterly lost. “What are you talking about?”

  I take a few deep breaths, try to steady my voice. “I brought a bunch of salt packets. They’re gone.”

  His eyes go dark. “They found us,” he whispers.

  He rises slowly to his feet. “It’s true. It’s true.” I can’t tell whether it’s terror at the thought or some kind of wild, instinctual pride in himself that his theory was right.

  Maybe both.

  He suddenly grabs my shoulders and then pulls me close in a frantic embrace. I can feel the sweat dripping through his clothes and the pounding of his heart. I don’t know what to do. I can’t draw comfort from such a frightened human being and yet I am too terrified to comfort him.

  “All right, then,” he says suddenly, wrenching himself away. “We’re going to get back in the boat and go down the river. That’s all we can do right now. We’ll be safe on the river.” As though anticipating my response, he adds, “Safe from them, at least.”

  We pack the motorboat quickly. We don’t take the time to bury the bodies or even pull branches over them. We are too busy trying to save ourselves. For all we know, the family—if indeed it is the family—could be watching us right now from high in the trees. Eyes peering through bushes. Lurking in the morning mist. Is there a rifle pointing at my back at this very moment? My muscles twitch and tighten at the thought.

  My breath comes fast. My stomach clenches in fear.

  We take only the necessary supplies. We pack the boat like crazy people, grabbing, snatching, throwing.

  When we finish, I can’t help myself. I try to go back to the dead. I want to touch them, say a prayer. But Dan stops me.

  “No.” He’s calm again. He’s pulled himself together. “We can’t help them. Now help me launch the boat.”

  I untie the boat and we both jump in. Dan starts up the motor and we’re off, backtracking downstream. I think about the rapids and the rocks and the branches. I think about the Osinovs. And I realize that we are trading one kind of danger for another. The river is calmer here, but rocks lurk below the surface. I know Dan’s not a river guide. He doesn’t understand its twists and turns and secrets. But what choice do we have? We’d never make it back on foot—even if the Osinovs left us alone.

  Dan keeps glancing over his shoulder and peering out into the trees that line the river on either side. “I’m sorry, Adrienne,” he tells me over the sound of the motor.

  “For what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘for what’? For bringing you!”

  “It’s not your fault. I wanted to come.” I did, but not for the reasons he thought. I was going to join the rest of the world in making a fool of him. He was going to be the collateral damage of my ambitions as a journalist. I never thought the family was real, or real in such a terrifying and deadly way.

  I know the Osinovs exist. The proof lies back at camp in the form of dead bodies and missing gadgets and the absence of salt. I think about a story I’d heard from Sergei and dismissed as pure rumor, of the hunter found upriver sitting cross-legged by a dead fire, a hatchet wound in his head. They had never found the killer. Had their years in the wilderness turned this family savage, made them see every outsider as prey?

  I wonder how they killed the Russians, so silently, so bloodlessly, and I shiver as our boat races down the river, in between canyons where the shadows dominate and the light barely comes through. I don’t know why my stepfather and I were left alive. Had they watched me sleeping? Touched my face? And how did they take my things without waking me? Each time we take a turn around a bend, I wonder if I’m going to see a bear or an entire family five feet away. The way Dan’s source Yuri described them, so long dismissed by me, comes back to me now: the long-haired, glowering sons; the dreamy father whose beard had streaks of white and gray; the stern and quiet mother; the two little girls who look alike and chattered like doves. Will I have time to scream if the river suddenly rushes me to them?

  I don’t know how long a person can exist in this state of fear, the throat tight and the palms wet and the heart pounding. I feel like a belt has been tightened around my chest. I struggle to breathe.

  Stay calm. That’s what my father always told me, whether it was about danger in the woods or a speech you’re about to give or a big test coming up, a million dangers tiny and huge, near and far, things you can do something about, things you can do nothing about: Dad always told me, You must start calm and go from there.

  My father was a calm man.

  My father is dead.

  “Adrienne!” Dan shouts. “You okay?”

  I turn and look at him.

  “I’m okay,” I manage. I meet his eyes. Even in the midst of my terror, I’m impressed by Dan, the way he’s taken charge and gotten us out of there. I remember how ferocious he was the night before—You keep your goddamn hands off my daughter!—and I realize I’ve underestimated him. I thought of him as a fool and a joke. But he was right about the Osinovs. And he’s the only person keeping me alive.

  The canyon through which the river runs has begun to fill with sunlight, showing the red in the short stubble on his face. His hair is uncombed, revealing a bald spot he usually manages to cover. He has the look of a man who just woke up and hasn’t had coffee yet, that period where night and day are still sifting into their separate shakers, salt and pepper, and everything is still half a dream.

  “Are we going to make it?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he answers, his voice insisting on that fact. “I’m gonna get you home safe and sound.”

  “I know you will.” I don’t know that. I look behind me, at the dark shadows that still hang in the canyons before they fill with morning light. “Why did they have to kill them? Why didn’t they just steal our stuff and leave?”

  “I don’t know. They may have felt threatened.”

  “Or hated Doors music.” My humor sounds hollow, goes nowhere, dies. The faces of the dead come back to me in waves. Every burst of birdsong or tweeting insect makes me jump. Every crack in the forest. Every scrape of the boat against a stone. But nature talking and the hum of the engine are the only things that break the silence, and silence would be even more horrible to bear.

  Time is crawling. The seconds and minutes and hours that take us away from camp. I remember Sergei holding my hand, looking out into the water. Sergei was a living, breathing human being with all the good and bad traits humans have. Now everything is gone but his stare and his smile and the way his head was turned.

  I shake the thought away. I can’t think like this. I have to look ahead and concentrate. The river is up and swift again. Some rapids. I remember this as the last bit of excitement yesterday before we made camp. A couple of bumps and a steep drop in my stomach, but it was okay, not nearly as bad as anything the day before.

  I’m not looking at the trees, marveling at flowers or studying the sky and the clouds overhead. I’m not whispering into my recorder. I am no longer an aspiring journalist. I’m a fugitive, and the only story I
want to write is one that heavily features rescue.

  I’m shivering. It’s brings to mind an old feeling . . . one I had during that ride to the emergency room after my father was hit by the girl. My mother was driving. She turned on the radio so there wouldn’t be dead silence in the car. My father had used the car last, and it was tuned to sports radio. Neither one of us would turn off my father’s station. She had not adjusted his seat, and she was leaning forward to reach the wheel. I think she was afraid if she brought it forward, she wouldn’t ever be able to push it back again.

  There were scuffs on the dashboard I’d never noticed before and I studied them, their size and shape, because they were the most ordinary things I could think of. Every nerve in my body was tense. I could barely breathe. Every time a traffic light turned yellow and we slowed down a cramp would run through my body.

  “Adrienne.” The way Dan says my name sounds like he’s been trying for a while.

  I turn around. “Yes?”

  “I asked you how you are doing.”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the motor.” I don’t like the sound of my own voice in the quiet air. I feel like I might draw attention. Here we are, cannibals. Bring your salt shaker.

  “I’m doing okay, I guess.”

  “Just watch for rocks. River’s getting stronger here.”

  “I’m trying,” I say. “There’s one up ahead. Do you think—”

  A sudden loud bang and a shudder, and the boat flips over. The shock of the cold water hits me as I go under.

  The water is swift and dark as night. I’m blind and helpless.

  Dan. Where is Dan?

  Panic and confusion. There is a sky somewhere, but I’m not sure if it’s above or below. This suddenly new and violent world, full of sharp things and hard currents. Something scrapes my face, and when I jerk away, I notice a dim glow overhead, the surface calling. My body and brain struggle toward oxygen and sunlight, my arms and legs flailing wildly, the river so strong, holding me under, slamming me into rocks and skidding me along. I know a place where I can breathe, gulp the morning light, but it’s just out of my reach. My fingers dig up toward it, I beg silently for it to come to me, but the water is too strong, holding me back.