hidden

by Tomas Mournian

  Chapter 91

  “Get up.” Kidd tugs on my tee shirt. “We’re going down.”

  I sit up.

  “For what?”

  “New stove.”

  “Going down?” Another game. Hide-’n-seek. I’m tired of playing. Maybe Kidd’s trying to trick me. I look over the bed’s edge. During my nap, seven lives were erased. The safe house is empty.

  “Wait up.” I climb down, nervous about being left out (or, left alone). The front door’s open. Everyone waits in the hallway. I hesitate. I don’t see Marci. “Where are we going again?”

  “Basement.”

  “I thought we were supposed to stay inside.”

  “Inside the building,” Peanuts says.

  I pull on my orange kicks. By daylight, the corridor looks the same as it did the night I arrived. Only now, I can see the filthy carpet, scuffed walls and burned-out fluorescent lights. It’s a bad horror movie. I walk out. Behind me, the door clicks, shuts. We’re locked out. Single file, we follow Kidd. His legs take the steps two, three, even four at a time.

  “Wait.”

  The line stops. I bump into Peanuts. Kidd creeps down to the first floor and looks both ways. He motions, waving us down.

  “C’mon, move, move it!” One at a time, people turn a corner and disappear. It’s a The Sound of Music moment (at the end, when the kids walk offstage just before the Nazis catch them).

  My turn. I step down. Light flashes on the lobby walls. Beyond the glass door and metal gate, I see the Real World. “You can always leave,” Sugar said. I remember her words.

  “Hey!” Peanuts shouts, pulling me back. “Come on!”

  S / he stands in the doorway, between light and dark. I’m tempted to turn and walk away. “Leave,” Sugar said. “You can always leave.” Peanuts holds the basement door open. I look at the street. It’s bright, filled with life. I look back, at Peanuts, standing at the entrance of the underworld. Stay? Or go? No, I realize the question is not here or there. It’s whether I’ll ever stop running. And find home.

  “Come on!”

  S / he must have read my mind. “I don’t want to leave the light. I want to leave this place. I want to go home.” I feel squeezed between my desire for safety and for freedom. Better to live my life with mistakes than live someone else’s life perfectly.

  “Hurry up!”

  I turn and walk away. As I step down, and leave the daylight to enter the gloom, I’m aware, painfully so, I’ve made a choice.

  Chapter 92

  The basement door slowly closes and … shuts.

  Click.

  Peanuts is gone. I’m alone. I inhale stale air. If it’s not exactly death, then it’s something close to. Cold and alone, it’s awful here. My instinct tells me to turn and run.

  “No!” Peanuts hisses. “This way!”

  S / he stands there, invisible in the dark. S / he grabs my hand and pulls me down. Truly, s / he believes this is being “helpful.”

  “Wait,” I say, trying to buy time. “Let my eyes adjust.”

  Cautious, I put out my foot and I step down. Wood creaks. I take another. And another and another and soon I’m at the bottom, swallowed up by the dark. Halloween II, I’m Persephone headed off to greet her guy, Hades, and hang out for the winter.

  I try to remember something from one of my stepmother’s self-help books. Haifa bought them by the carload. I “walk into my fear.” Two steps, my body stops. This is a test, I tell myself. Or, to use one of my father’s favorite expressions, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I often thought about that in the days leading up to my abduction. It’s only true if—and it’s a Big If—“it” doesn’t kill you. I step off the flat wood. My foot touches concrete. I’m blind. I reach out. My hand touches stone. It’s cold. At least the Crypt is air-conditioned.

  Squeak! Squeak!

  I want to think otherwise, but I know the squeaks are not a dog’s toy. I shudder. Squeaks mean rats.

  “No, go away!” I shout. I’ll scare them. Of course, this is when I would remember the animal trainer on a talk show who said, “Rats are the most difficult animals to train because they’re most like humans.”

  I squeeze the thin metal tube. I forgot—I have a flashlight. I press the button. A tiny beam lights my way. I move it over rough concrete walls and bare floors. Rusty pipes and cobwebs crisscross the ceiling.

  Sound bounce off walls; they’re faraway and close. The human noise pulls me toward a doorway. Laughter and voices. I’m surrounded by thousands of ghosts.

  I step forward. A voice takes shape. Kidd.

  “Why can’t you just love me?” he asks.

  I stop.

  “You keep backing me into a corner,” J.D. says.

  “Where am I supposed to go? Listening to you two?”

  “So wear earplugs,” J.D. says. “I don’t remember asking you to sneak around, eavesdropping and shit.”

  “You don’t even know,” Kidd pleads, “how hard it is.”

  “Yeah, I know.” J.D.’s voice is laced with boredom, the filing your fingernails, rolling your eyes and letting out an exaggerated sigh sort. “I know. You feel bad. You told me and I keep telling—”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Kidd whines. “I can’t escape. I’m stuck. Listening to you two—”

  I can’t get over Kidd’s sad, little girl voice. It sounds like him. But not.

  “You knew what you were getting yourself into,” J.D. says, hard and cold. I take note. Several weeks ago, they were a couple.

  “Sure, ‘No strings attached,’” Kidd says, bitter and bitchy. “Have you told him?”

  “The way he looks at you makes me sick. And you—you—playa, toggling his feelings like a video game.”

  Click.

  Silver glints, flint strikes a hammer, a lighter’s flame bursts. The ciggie’s lit, a red blot on the black backdrop. They’re close. Five feet? Or, two? I might be Bat Boy, but I can still hear.

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Whatever, it’s none of his business,” J.D. says. Again, that voice. Flat and hard. “And I don’t plan to.”

  They walk away, and J.D.’s last words sound less like an answer than a threat: “And you better not either, or I’ll fuck you up.”

  Footsteps.

  I’m not alone.

  Chapter 93

  “I think the question is …”

  I shrink back. You’d think there would be a lot of places to hide in the dark. But, no. His voice is right here. My heart quickens. Kidd scares me. And excites me. I look for J.D.’s cigarette. The red is gone. We’re alone. He steps forward. Oh, shit.

  “Would you still fuck—”

  I step back, using my hand to guide me around a corner. Escape. Maybe I can duck down, slip away from his grasp, run.

  “Someone—”

  Streetlight, a bitter yellow, pours through an overhead sewer grill and cuts through the dark.

  “If you knew—”

  The figure steps out. I bite my lip, muffling my cry.

  “They were going to—”

  Now, Kidd’s voice is low, husky.

  “—die?”

  A flashlight pops on. He holds the bright beam under his chin, throwing ghoulish shadows up over his face. Kidd’s gone native. He belongs down here. My body seizes up. Shivering body. Chattering teeth. Dry throat. “He knows, he knows,” I think. “Now he’s going to punish me. Rape me. Kill me. Leave my dead body. He could. No one will look down here. I’m neither present nor accounted for. The milk carton said, MISSING CHILD. Kidd’s not just strong, he’s smart. He could pull it off.”

  “Ben?” he’d say, casual as a hello. “Don’t know. Must have got lost. Or left. Yeah, he was the type. Always had his eye on the door, ready to leave.”

  “Hold your ground,” I tell myself. “He’ll use any sign of weakness against you. He’s a bully.”

  But I can’t help it. I inch back. Now I get it. When my step-mother(s) fled—and they all did,
eventually—in the middle of the night, they took everything except the self-help books’ advice. That, they left behind, untouched, because they didn’t work.

  “This is part of the game.”

  “Yeah.” He points the beam in my eyes. I close my eyes, imagining I’m a Saint. The flashlight clicks off. I open my eyes. Blind.

  “You know …” He strokes my head. I shudder, creeped out. “That blond looks like shit. Fake. But then, I guess that means it’s perfect for you.”

  He turns and walks away. I realize, I’m lost. I run after him.

  “Are we—you—meeting up with the others?” Now, my voice betrays me. I’m the one who sounds like a scared little girl.

  “Bitch, step off. Find your own way.”

  “Please?” I beg. Humiliating. I’m more scared of being alone in the dark than being alone in the dark with Kidd. He doesn’t answer. I don’t care. I follow him. I count the steps. One. Two. Three. Four Five Ten. Then … Voices. The others! We’re close. I’ll ditch Kidd and run to J.D. Kidd turns another corner. I don’t follow.

  “Hey! Hey! Her—” I shout. “Over—”

  A hand covers my mouth and muffles my voice. I fight. I struggle to escape. But Kidd’s stronger and bigger. He lifts me up, carrying me away from the voices.

  “I heard this story once,” he says. Hot, stale breath blasts my ear. “About this guy on a hospital unit. All he heard was the fan. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Drove him crazy. Pretty soon, he thinks this fan’s talking to him. And this fan, you know what it tells him? What he should do?”

  I shake my head, No. He holds me up, arm stuck in-between my legs.

  “You like that, huh?”

  I love it. Or, my body does. Without asking permission, my body’s excited. My pelvis rolls over his hard, muscular forearm. Fear? Sex? Pleasure? Pain? Emotional overlap. I’m confused. Is he going to kill me? Or, fuck me? Logically, I know Kidd’s a horrible, evil person. But he’s sexy, too, and my body can’t resist. In the quiet, I hear my heartbeat. It’s loud, fast as hummingbird wings.

  “Kill, the voice told him,” he says. “Kill that kid. There’s another one with him in that room.” His lips tickle my ear. “You know what happens to you? Down here? If you got lost?”

  He sets me down, removing his hand from my mouth.

  “S-s-s-ome—someone—would find me.”

  “Oh, you think.”

  “Yeah. Or the rats will eat me.”

  “Hee-hee.” He points the flashlight beam in my eyes.

  “Hey!” I hold up my hand and block the light. “Knock it off!”

  He switches off the beam, drops me and walks away. Fast. I scramble to stand and run to catch up. My foot catches. I stumble. “Turn around, fool, run back.” I have no idea why, but I run, desperate to catch up with Kidd.

  I’m slow. He’s gone. I’m lost, truly, with no way out. I wait. I know he’ll come back.

  “Please, come back,” I whimper. “Please.”

  Chapter 94

  “Iknow the rest of that story!”

  My voice echoes in the tunnel, “I know, I know, I know …”

  “You do.”

  He steps out the shadows. He was there all along. He walks. I run to catch up.

  “Yeah?”

  “After the guard does the midnight check, the kid took a soda can. Aluminum one. He bent it over and over until it broke. Sharp, like—”

  He grabs my wrist. Metal’s drawn along the skin. He’s going to cut me, bleed me, kill me.

  “Hey!” I try to yank away. “Don’t cut me!”

  I stick my finger in my mouth. I expect to taste blood. The skin is dented. He pressed the metal hard—but not hard enough to cut.

  “Fan, fan’s still talking to him. Telling him, ‘Cut that guy. His finger.’”

  “He’ll die,” I say. “The other guy wakes up. And believes the fan’s talking to him. He goes ape shit, cuts the other guy open and pulls out his heart?”

  “There’s the other part. He pulls out the other guy’s eyes ’cause he thinks they’re grapes?”

  “No,” I lie. I’ve heard the whole story. Several versions circulated around Serenity Ridge. In one, the do-it-yourself heart transplant is followed by eye surgery (“The eyes! The eyes!”).

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have to ask. He’s a legend. Are you—”

  “Yesssssss!” He lets rip a ghoulish laugh. Maybe, now that he’s “scared” me, he’ll take me back. The others are gone. He walks away. Fast. I jog to keep up.

  “Wait,” I say. “Are we walking away from the first room?”

  “Ahahahahahahahaha.” Another voice cackles. I grab his shirt.

  “Don’t. Clutch.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  We turn the corner. A fire lights up a dark nook. A figure’s hunched over the flames. Kidd ignores it and keeps walking.

  “Who was that?”

  “Mole people.”

  “Mole people?” I ask. “Like genetic mutants?”

  “Naw, just people with nowhere to go. They live down here. It’s safe.”

  I need to keep the conversation going. Engage Kidd. I know my survival depends on it.

  “I guess J.D. told you that we found Oskar?”

  “You did,” he says, trying to act blasé-blasah.

  “Yeah,” I say, hoping to bait him. “On the Internet. But wasn’t Oskar J.D.’s boyfriend, you know, back home?”

  “Never heard of him. ’Sides, why would you care?”

  “Coz, um …”

  “I know you were back there, lurking, all stalkerish an’—”

  “Why you hate me?”

  “Because,” he says, turns and jabs a finger against my chest. “You don’t give a shit ’bout nobody but you.”

  “Like you’re any different.”

  “What’s that s’pposed to mean?”

  “It means—never mind. Who cares.” I wish I had the courage to walk away and find my own way back. I have a flashlight. We pass under another sewer grill. This is my chance to escape. I look: ladder? I’m so desperate, I would crawl up and climb out a pothole in rush-hour traffic. Cars could smash my head, pumpkin style. But there’s no ladder or, if there is, I don’t see it. There’s no chance to take. I stick with—or, am stuck with—Plan “A,” Kidd.

  “You know the way back, right?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “You wanna get back to fuck J.D.?”

  The tunnel splits. Kidd stops, looks left. Then right. He’s deciding. Or, acting like it. He torments me, making me wait.

  Keep up the dialogue, I tell myself. Maintain the connection.

  “You never told me.”

  “Told you what?” He holds up the flashlight, moving it left, then right. “This way? Or that?”

  I know it. There’s no way out. We’re lost.

  “How you got here.”

  Abruptly, he walks away. I don’t move. I cast my bait. “You couldn’t handle it if I told you.”

  Chapter 95

  “Wrong. Fact, I’ll do you one better. I’ll tell it.”

  “What?”

  “Your story. And if I get it right, will you show me the way out?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You probably started out in a hospital. You’ve been hospitalized on and off since you were five. Or six? At least, up until you escaped?”

  “Eight. I was eight when they sent me away.”

  “Twelve or thirteen, you were depressed. The meds stopping working. They gave you electroshock. ‘Hey, kid.’ That’s what they’d say. Coz you couldn’t remember your name and it stuck.”

  He’s silent. I was right.

  “There,” he says. The flat voice makes me nervous. Either I’m wound him up or we’re about to bond.

  “You got older. You couldn’t remember your family’s face. When you dreamed, you dreamed about escaping the social workers and foster homes. You were sick of being a case number. Tired of moving
from one place to the next. You thought about—”

  I pause. “What doesn’t kill you …” True, I think, but sometimes there are warning signs. And it does kill you.

  “Keep going,” he says.

  “But escape scared you. They’d brainwashed you, told you couldn’t even think about—”

  “What. Think about—”

  “Escape.” I pause, make him want it. “Because you were doped up on one thing or another. They’d drop random questions. You worried you might slip. ’Cause it was hard to think fast enough to lie.”

  I know Kidd’s story, but telling it’s exhausting. There’s so many Kidds, all with the same story. The walking wounded. Trapped, ’cause they’ll never understand. I’m no different. I’ve just fooled myself into thinking I know more because I write it down. Or, stripped of specifics, our stories are all the same. We’re all throwaways, locked out, lost. Doomed to wandering without knowing what really happened because knowing would destroy us.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I think. “Save the world another time. He’s your ticket, he knows the way back. Say anything.” There isn’t a “way back.” Marci calls it “long term,” but the safe house is temporary. A band-aid and—

  “You were dreaming about—”

  “Running,” he says. “Dreamed about running down the streets. Of the town. The last one. Away from those foster parents. I lost count. There’d been so many. I was running away from them, all of them. I dreamed—in my dream, I felt my sneakers hit the pavement. Cold air on my face. Night. Street lamps. Month, month and a half after I started having these dreams, I sat in another social worker’s office. I don’t know why it was that day, but it was and I decided. I’m gonna change all this. I had enough.”

  Overhead, sunlight hits his head and turns his hair a deep, indigo blue. He walks fast. He could be running in the dream of the night. I run to catch up. The sunlight hits my blond hair. Nobody sees it, but I’m still embarrassed. He’s right. It’s not beautiful. It’s fake.

  “What made you think you could change everything?”