by Lee Thompson
The darkness seemed to press against her like water as she stood. Her equilibrium was off and she stumbled in the dark, arms outstretched, feeling blindly. Her shin banged into metal. She cried out, muffled it, in case her abductor was close by, and groped until she found what had hurt her. A steel table. Part of her wanted to run a hand across the surface and see what lay on top of it, but the other part, frightened, wouldn’t let her.
What if Ethan is on this table? Dead?
She shivered, listened with all her might, focused until the slightest whisper twisted like a thorn in her ear. “Hello?” Cat swallowed and wished she hadn’t. Her mouth went dry. She needed water. Her stomach growled. Her mind whirled between escape and probing the dark corners of this prison for Ethan. No one else is going to help me. I am not going to be a prisoner and wait for whoever kidnapped us to come back.
Bolstering what little courage she had, she swiped a hand across the table. Something cool grazed her palm. It banged on the floor as it fell off the edge, a metallic clatter. Her heart rate increased, pounded in her ears, drowned out all other sound. She knelt and ran her hand slowly over the floor. There. She picked it up, probed its length; two handles meeting the pair of blades, like scissors, only much larger. Garden shears, her gut said. It felt like it should bring a smile, knowing she had a weapon if it came to that, but dread settled upon her shoulders and she nearly buckled under its weight. Cat fought the questions running through her head, the panic she felt building.
Okay, I heard a car. I’m by a road. This is a basement or something. Get this table over to that window. Find a light. Find your son.
Chapter 24
Cat steadied her nerves, but her fingers wouldn’t stop twitching.
Slow steady breaths, girl.
She inhaled deeply through her nose, sorting things as she steeled herself to follow the walls and search for a light switch. The recent scent of food—burger, fries—hung in the air. Her stomach growled, and her lips puckered. Beneath it, a more metallic scent, and beneath that a lingering hint of exotic cologne.
Arms out in front of her, she found the wall, cool brick, and followed it into the deepening darkness to her right, away from the window. She ran her hand up and down, feeling for any switch. When she came to a corner, she hung her head.
Don’t give up.
She moved along the next wall and came to a staircase. On hands and knees she climbed it, saw the faint glow of light beneath the door at the top. Her heart rate increased and vision pulsed. Running her hands over the walls she found a switch above the railing. It clicked, broke the silence. The room remained dark. She tried the door. The knob refused to turn.
Damn it. Come on.
Cat leaned down and pulled her hair out of her eyes, trying to glimpse beneath door and threshold. The gap was too small. She only saw the first row of black and white tiles. After working her way slowly back into the basement—sure now that’s where she was—she went around the staircase and kept following the wall, arms fanning, hands meeting nothing but cold steel shelves, several glass-fronted cabinets. She felt like collapsing, giving up.
Not understanding why anyone would put her here, leave her in limbo, she shivered, unsettled. She’d seen enough of the news, read enough books to know that sometimes people didn’t need reasons for what they did. Some men lived on impulse. It made them dangerous, unpredictable.
And what will he do if he comes back and I’m not cowering in a corner?
She wiped her eyes.
What has he done with my son?
Cat knew it wasn’t her fault, but a seed of doubt sprouted in her mind. She didn’t know if it had something to do with her own secrets, if bad luck had followed her here, finally caught up with her again. She moved to the table and propped her hip against it. Back straining, she slid the steel a few inches, the pruners making a racket on the table. She sucked in a breath and listened.
If someone was upstairs, they’d have come down.
She pushed harder, got the table moving, and kept it going, shoes digging into the floor, her head down, eyes closed, until the steel chimed against the brick wall. Exhausted, but determined, Cat pulled herself onto the waist high surface, her foot bumping the cutters. She jumped up, felt tiny pieces of brick crumble beneath her fingers, her hand a couple feet shy of the window ledge. Her childhood came back to her, all the times her father had goaded her to get involved with sports, and how she’d refused, said they were for people who lacked intelligence, spectator and player alike. Now, she wished she would have tried to be good at something physical, a foundation to leap from. Too late for that.
Sitting, back to the wall, elbows propped on knees, she wrapped her face in her hands. She cried and prayed for her son’s safety.
* * *
Mike passed between the trees he’d last seen John disappear into. He scanned scrub brush, an overgrown marsh of stagnant black water and bright green moss. Covering his nose, he turned around and jumped. Duncan stood three feet in front of him.
“You’re quiet.”
Duncan nodded. “So, where is he?”
Mike shrugged, looked over his shoulder, hoping John would stay hidden until he had a chance to get things under control. “He might have went in somewhere else.”
“Broken twigs there.” Duncan pointed behind Mike.
He’d noticed them, but didn’t want to say anything, fearing the cop would think John had high tailed it through the muck to…
“You see that?” Duncan pointed.
“The island?”
“You did. I bet he’s out there.”
Mike turned to the side and wiped his face. The water ran out thirty feet, and God knew how deep it was or what was in there. “He wouldn’t hide out there. He’s not hiding. Something grabbed him.”
“Says his best friend.” Duncan pointed toward the water. “Get moving.”
“I’m not going out there.”
“Afraid?” There wasn’t ridicule in the cop’s voice, just straight curiosity. And impatience.
“Me and water don’t get along. I don’t like leeches either. Or sink holes.”
“Quicksand out here?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.” Duncan looked at the darkening sky. “Shit.”
“You’re wasting your time chasing him anyway. If he’s guilty I’ll tell you my sins.”
“I’m not a preacher.”
“John’s dad was. And I know you want to know what’s on my record.”
“So?”
Good point.
“You know who we need to drag in, sir. The mayor and Mr. Wallace.”
“Ain’t no we about it. What do you care anyway?”
Here we go.
Mike took a deep breath. “You were in the service too, weren’t you? Where’d you go, Vietnam?”
Duncan’s chin bobbed toward his collarbone. He stared at his hands a minute, as if he just realized how dirty they were from digging to unearth the last of his grief. When he met Mike’s gaze, his eyes were clear and bright. “I was an army brat. My dad drove that shit in my head, like it’d make me into the man he wanted me to be.”
“Did it?”
“What?”
“Make you into the man he wanted you to be?”
Duncan glanced back towards his daughter. Mike wanted to get out of there before the other state boys showed up, wanted to see what hand the mayor—who he’d never liked, not that he favored any type of politician—and Rusty, who wasn’t so bad, just lost in his own past, played in this circus show of death. He cleared his throat and was about to speak when Duncan said, “None of us ever grow up to be what our parents want us to be.” He shrugged. “Forty-seven years old and I can’t tell you if that’s a good or a bad thing. Funny.”
But the look on his face didn’t say it was funny. Mike let him stare a moment longer at the girls. “The mayor might have had a part in their deaths.”
“And you want to ride along.”
“Sure.”
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“Why?”
“If we get to him before your friends do, we can get some answers out of him before he lawyers up and creates an illusion of complete innocence, or passes the buck.” He pointed toward the graves, the pale gray bodies. “That’s breaking my heart, too.” His voice clouded and a tear rolled over his cheekbone, wet his ear. “My sister disappeared when I was fifteen, my twin. She might have shared the same fate, a long time ago.” Not able to turn his eyes away, and unsure why he felt the need to talk about it, at what point it had gone from getting Duncan away from John to this personal bit of long suppressed sorrow, Mike said, “I understand. I know it’s a little different since Angie was your daughter. But at least you’re going to have closure. I never did.”
Duncan pulled him into a bear hug and Mike felt the dam break in both of them, sobbing like children, foreheads on each others shoulders, shaking with pain they didn’t know how to overcome. And that was the hell of it. The pain never left. He could still see his sister playing in the woods, her smile, thin but strong body, a teenager, like these girls. And he thought he heard his mother calling, as he and Duncan drank of the same cup, shared communion bread at the temple of the lost. But her voice faded and in that instant the remaining daylight fled and he thought, I’ve failed her, too. She’s gone.
* * *
I swung my arms out, trying to grab hold of something to take me back to the miniature manor’s living room. I kept rising, through the upstairs floorboards, Mark waiting as first my head, then the rest of me, landed in the last place I wanted to see. My brother knelt and pointed at the mat where he and I lay at the foot of Michael’s king-sized bed. I stared at my feet a moment, at the hands that were no longer a child’s, but a man’s. Michael snored from the bed. The thick quilts on the mat stirred and I saw Mark, a teen again, three years older than me, rise and head for the door—saw myself pull the blanket over my face as if I knew what was coming, and perhaps this wasn’t that first time, or maybe it was.
A floorboard creaked and a shadow spilled over the mat, the boy, the hall light soft, around the corner of the door. Natalie entered. She was every bit as beautiful and intimidating as I remembered. My eyes and mind clouded with confusion. I said to Mark, “What is she doing in here?” When Mark didn’t answer, I watched the hall, waiting for him to return, climb back into our bedding, slip his hand beneath the…
Natalie stood over the bed, her bare feet seemed to glow like wet ivory in the dim light. She knelt, pulled the blanket aside and pressed up next to me. I, standing, remembered how that had felt. How I’d thought that Mark came back and crossed a line. Mark touched my shoulder. “Now you know.”
The blanket moved, half way down, slow, methodical. I felt her mouth on my boyhood and looked away. “All this time I thought it was you.”
“You never looked.”
“I was ashamed,” I choked out, so many feelings clawing around inside.
A few moments later and she crawled out of bed and hurried behind the door as I watched my young teenage self squirm and sob beneath the blanket. Mark came back, stepping quiet. “Where did you go?”
The boy in the bed lay still, pretending to sleep.
“This place always amazed me. There are thirty rooms, all kinds of cool stuff. I’d get up and just look around in the middle of the night. She came in, though I didn’t know it back then.”
A great weight released from my shoulders and I felt something expanding inside me, a light growing brighter. After the young Mark situated himself and stroked the top of my head, Natalie snuck out from behind the door, stepped quietly into the hall, her shadow receding.
“I thought you were trying to apologize for this that day on the river. I hit you because I thought…”
“Life is strange. We miss so much of what’s right in front of us, Johnny. If you want the truth, you have to seize it. No matter how scary, no matter the amount of shame and pain it brings with it.”
I cried as he pulled me close and stroked my hair. “She kept a journal. This paper is from it.” He tapped the rolled up page against my heart. “You want to know why I tried to tell you sorry, that day a week and a half ago? It’s because I’ve sent something your way that I can’t take back. I deserved getting hit in the head with the paddle.”
“Whatever it is, you didn’t deserve to drown.”
“You say that now. But April is going to devastate you. I’m sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me. Someday.”
“What? What’s worse than this shit from my childhood? All the years that I thought you’d molested me, all the love and hate and confusion. Is it this?” I held the key out away from my chest. “Or what’s in the bowl.”
“What bowl?”
“The one you brought to Uncle Red’s.”
I realized it was in Wylie’s truck last, when everything went down at Pat’s. A troubled look passed over Mark’s face, his stance changed, he took a step back. “Wake up. April’s near.”
I leaned forward. “I don’t understand. It’s not. It’s a half a year away.”
Branches rustled and leaves stirred against my flesh, tickling the inside of my wrist. I fell in a vortex, the room spinning.
A million stars blurred overhead.
Chapter 25
I rolled over, shoulder sopping, the stink of swamp water almost suffocating. The roots of a fallen tree tickled my neck. I shook away the remnants of dream, and tried to place where I was, felt the weight of the pistol in my right hand. Considering myself lucky that I hadn’t needed to use the gun in the vision, and consequently blown a toe, or worse, off in this reality, I let out a shaky breath, fighting the cold of coming fall. Night clung tight to every branch. The earth, cool and damp, gave under the weight soaking my knees.
Feeling for Cat’s phone to check the time, I came up empty. I stood, heard voices and saw light stab through the woods. Someone laughed. Inching forward, putting the gun back in its holster and securing the leather strap that held it in place, I moved from tree to tree toward the pulsating glow.
The undergrowth thickened, stood like a wall between me and the path, and I thought, Screw it, I’m already wet and cold, and climbed beneath the brambles like I had as a kid. I saw the cops around the bodies, their arms cocked, hands holding flashlights, faces drawn as a couple men sat on lawn chairs with rainbow-weaved fabric that looked so out of place in the forest, men with clear plastic bags, men filling out paperwork.
Two more men, younger than the rest, slid severed limbs into black plastic bags, one of them with a sharp, angular face scratching his chin with a dead kid’s arm. The other bagger slapped the arm down, said, “Knock that off. Show some respect for the dead.” The cops moved closer, a tighter circle around the hole and the men. The badger-faced one slid the arm into the body bag, but kept grinning like he’d got the satisfaction he wanted from all of their disgust.
I didn’t see Mike or Duncan. Or Rusty for that matter, but that didn’t surprise me. Rusty wouldn’t want to be here. He wouldn’t want to have to face the scrutiny and guilt that came with his participating in this mess and the cover up. But remembering Duncan’s anger, I knew that Rusty was going to get a visit from the state cop.
Knowing that I couldn’t go out there, that they’d have a million questions for me that I didn’t have answers to, I moved back the way I’d come, got on my knees and stood, trying to figure out the best thing to do. My head felt lighter than normal and I shivered in the cold. Even my bones felt weary. Darkness ate at the forest and the swamp to my north. I wanted to find Mike and Duncan, part of me pissed that they’d just left me there.
They might be at Rusty’s.
I took careful steps, trying to avoid calling attention to myself. A branch snapped beneath my weight. I paused, listening for the cops to come tearing through the brush, guns drawn. There was only the rustle of bags, the dead weight placed inside them, the hoot of an owl close by, the raven sitting on a stump. It winked, five feet away. Then it launched itself into the air
and flew northwest, toward town, in a flash of oily wings, landing on the ground and tilting its head at me.
You want me to follow you?
The raven nodded and opened its beak. I wanted to shush it, afraid we were still too close to the crime scene. But the bird remained silent. It coughed up a worm that looked like an infant with wings enfolding its sleeping form. When I got to it, I knelt, touched it with my boot, felt the cold seep through my foot, up my leg, my guts in knots.
I whispered, “It’s stillborn.”
The raven lifted a talon and gripped the worm’s head, squeezed until it popped like a zit, blood and gray matter oozing from between its claws.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The bird smiled, whispered back, “The greatest gift in life is death. Get used to it.”
I lunged at the bird but it cackled and flew high into the branches of a peeling birch. “Whose side are you on?”
The bird scratched the branch and unfurled its wings, a signet of black deeper and shinier than that which surrounded it. “Redemption.”
I remembered what Mike had said, something about Angela, what her purpose was—Redemption—and it left me empty, because I didn’t understand it. I struggled with guilt, different now than before, when I’d thought Mark had broached my privacy. And now this unsettling knowledge that it was Natalie, and that I’d hit Mark, watched him drown, swept away by the river, dashed against the rocks for no purpose.
No, he said he deserved that paddle smack. Because he sent me something that might crush me come April.
I wrestled fear, more confusion. It slithered through me, brought back the serpent man, and men writhing on burning crosses. Suddenly, I wanted to hear Cat’s voice again, or the innocent giggle Ethan produced when he heard my voice. Something concrete, normal.