by John Hunt
“They can’t. It’s a steel door.”
Olivia said, “Windows.”
The operator said, “I’ll tell them. Stand back from any windows.”
The girls glanced to the living room off the hallway. A shadow passed in front of the window. A flashlight beam circled the room. A loud snap and the window shook in the frame. Another snap from the back of the house and then a cacophony of sound as officers tried to break the windows.
Jen said, “Some sort of safety glass. It won’t break.”
Lucy snorted and said, “You gotta be fucking kidding me! Cops can’t get in and we can’t get out!”
Jen said, “We weren’t meant to get out. No one was.”
Olivia said, “Give it a rest, Jen!” She said it harshly and wanted to take it back after Jen cringed from her with her stump raised to ward off a blow she thought coming. Only, it scared her, what Jen said. It scared her even more because she was thinking the same thing. The Jackal owned them. He had proven it to them over and over. He would never let them go. No matter how many cops surrounded the house. Stupid thought, paranoid even. Didn’t make it feel any less true. Her dad should be here soon. Please get here soon.
The operator said, “Tactical officers will be there soon. They have a ram, something to break down the door. Hold tight. The maniac won’t come back. Not with the place surrounded by police.”
-10-
The Jackal saw the swirling red and blue lights reflecting off windows and colouring the night sky with undulating waves. He knew what it meant. The show was over. They had found his girls. He felt gut punched. The floor he thought so solid underneath him disappeared. He floated over an abyss.
He had to see. Dangerous and against everything he had taught himself about self-discipline yet the compulsion would not be denied. He made the turn towards the house, his sanctuary. Nearing Christmas, the suburban homes glittered and flashed at him. A neighbour with grey hair and large framed glasses hugged his arms against the cold staring down the street towards all the flashing lights. Where was the Gorilla? He would be the weak spot. Even after all his careful conditioning of him he knew staring at an infinite life sentence could change any man’s mind about loyalty.
He slowed as he passed the house. Three police cars spaced out on the street, lights cycling through the colours. He squinted and saw an officer on the porch. The doors and glass were keeping the officers out…for now. Three cops? He knew most of the officers in this town rode around solo. Could be more though. If not, the rest would be here soon. He felt a sudden surge of rage at the sight of them, standing there like they belonged, like they were invited! Nosing around, talking to his girls, judging him as though given the right to. What did they know about him? Nothing! Did they know how many hours he spent caring for his girls? Bandaging them, showering them, cleaning up after them after they pissed the bed in fear? They had no right to take from him. His knuckles cracked as they tightened on the steering wheel. He could pull over right now and get his carbine from the trunk. He could get pretty close since they were so distracted with trying to get in. He could take them out. He knew it. The police don’t train that often and the one fat cop on the porch looked like he would faint if he ever faced danger. And the Jackal was dangerous. He could empty his magazine into them all before they even drew their guns. He could get his girls. He figured the rifle rounds would penetrate the vests they wore. He could do it. He could get Olivia back. His foot lifted off the pedal as he spied an empty driveway. He exhaled, the air expelling shakily and thought, and then what? Kill the cops and get his girls? For what? To be hunted all over the province, the country? Stupid. Right now, he was free and unknown. He could stay that way if he continued driving. Let his tires eat the road and lay low. Spend some time in a hotel and check the news. See what happened to the Gorilla before he decided what to do next. Right now, his obscurity afforded him time. He would waste that if he went in guns blazing. Better to be the unknown. It hurt to do it, to give them up. He would miss them terribly. Especially Olivia. He didn’t know if he could bear to live without her. He would worry about it later. Right now, he needed to get out of sight.
He turned right and headed towards the highway. His stomach felt hollowed out and his eyes burned. Why did his heart feel like it had sunk into his intestines? He had been thinking of Olivia. She was gone from him now and it fucking hurt. He would rather have needles pressed into his eyeballs than feel this loss. Is this what love felt like? He could think of nothing else and no one else. It angered him to think of the police officers helping her and comforting her. He did that! That was his job! He showered her, braided her hair and painted her nails! He didn’t do it because it was his job. No. He did it because he cared for her and needed the connection to her and he did feel connected. He would say they were fused at the soul if he believed in that nonsense. How could they appreciate that? They couldn’t and they wouldn’t. They would be hunting him forever. His lip trembled. Olivia was gone from him now.
-11-
Bam!
The door shook in the frame and bulged when struck. Olivia cringed thinking it might fly off the hinges and crack her one. It didn’t. The door stubbornly remained closed.
Lucy said, “I feel like I’m in one of those cromedies.”
Olivia said, “Cromedies?”
Lucy said, “Yeah. A crime-comedy. Where the cops can’t get a damn door open at a crucial moment in the storyline. The camera would show them all standing out there, rubbing their chins, discussing whether or not to blow the door open.”
“They wouldn’t do that would they?” Olivia said.
Lucy shrugged.
They all moved further away from the door, staring at it with suspicion. Olivia would have asked the operator but she had put the phone down when the Tactical Officers showed up.
Bam!
The frame cracked the plaster.
Bam!
The frame warped and the door limped open, squealing on bent hinges and the crooked frame. Standing in the doorway, Olivia saw a Tactical Officer holding the ram, his eyes wide, surprised he breached the door.
Three men, clad in black and wearing helmets and goggles charged in with machine gun sights held up to their eyes. Everywhere their eyes moved, the barrel followed.
The first one in said to Olivia without looking at her, “Anyone else in the house?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Okay. Go with them.”
Officers in regular uniforms rushed in and ushered the women outside. They squinted against the flashing strobe-lights and felt as disoriented and bewildered as cavemen leaving their dark home. Ambulances were parked in front of the house with crews standing outside, heavy bags slung over their shoulders. Seeing the girls emerge the crews hurried over to them. The porch was freezing under Olivia’s bare feet. A blanket was thrown over her shoulders as she was bombarded with questions. A CTV news van parked tight beside an ambulance. A man with a camera on his shoulder argued with a paramedic. Olivia’s eyes followed the elongated tower protruding from the roof of the news van. It scraped the night sky and then she noticed it. A real sky with real stars. A cold breeze ruffled her hair and she gloried in it. Out of the house. She was out of the house. Liberating and terrifying at the same time, so much space, and not enough space. Her eyes darted everywhere, so much happening, lights flashing, faces crowding into her space and a tiny part of her wanted to be back in her room where it was, for the most part, quiet.
A hand pried the knife out of her hand. An older man, a paramedic with silver hair and kind eyes behind glasses said, “Come with me, dear. You’re safe now.”
Olivia burst into tears.
&nb
sp; -12-
The reunion with Olivia overwhelmed them both. He rolled up in his car, panicked because no one told him anything on the phone. He called the police, asking for updates and they brushed him off. He didn’t know what that meant. Were they intentionally keeping him in the dark because they weren’t ready to give him terrible news? When he got there, would an officer with stripes on his sleeve meet him there to tell him they had been too late? Sorry about your luck Mr. Barnes. We found your daughter. She’s dead. Was that what awaited him when he got there? Goddamn he could go for a drink right now. A little nip, to get him through this, something to bolster his courage. He didn’t believe he could take a blow like that. To hear Olivia’s voice on the phone which he thought was impossible, a goddamn miracle, really, he was terrified to believe it was her and terrified to doubt it. But he knew. It was her alright. His golden heart, calling for him, wanting her daddy to bring her home. He couldn’t fail her. Not again. It would kill him. The urge to continue living would dissolve as sugar in water.
After she disappeared, the first few months, hell, the first couple of years, he believed she would return. Some people would call that denial. He preferred to call it hope. She would walk in the door with some temporary amnesia story that would make any soap opera writer proud and he would believe it. Why wouldn’t he? He just wanted her back. When the couple of years turned into three, then four, the reality of Olivia never coming home sunk in, albeit, slowly. The not knowing kept him up many nights sucking back the contents of any bottle left in the house. Was she alive? Was she dead? What the fuck happened to her? He needed to know something. He couldn’t make any life decision because of it. His life on pause.
It got to the point he would rather know she was dead than to continue living in this fugue of indecision. It was the not knowing that corroded his soul. And still he looked for her even though the little asshole voice in his head kept telling him she had to be gone, gone for good. Time to quit jumping up whenever the phone rang and to stop checking the door every time the house settled thinking it might be her footsteps on the boards. Forget spending his weekends cruising the university searching for her blonde head, waiting for her to turn, see him and smile. Time to stop chasing ghosts.
He hated that voice. With every day that Olivia didn’t return, the whispers grew more insistent, refusing to be ignored. The practical side of him, telling him his hoping for her return was a foolish, childish idea and not fit for his adult mind. He drank to silence those whispers. He preferred drunken oblivion to those dark fears. Some hope, even if based on a stubborn refusal to believe her dead, was better than despair. If he got there and she was dead, it would be the end of him. He knew it. It would be too cruel.
He listened to the GPS voice directing him where to go, determined not to miss a turn and he pulled onto Alice Street almost running over two people standing in the road. His tires slid on the icy pavement and he turned the wheel and bumped into the curb. Three police cruisers, a large black van, three ambulances and a CTV news truck crowded the street. An elongated antenna protruded from the roof of the news truck, reaching for the bloated grey clouds in the dark sky. Flashing lights illuminated people, curious neighbours and those who monitored police scanners holding conferences in the street, pointing at the house and talking with serious tight lipped expressions. He turned off the car and left it parked against the curb and got out. The cold wind tore open his coat. He squinted at the house, the one the GPS led him to. Was she there? In the house?
He strode across the street, parting onlookers with his arms. An officer ran crime scene tape along the front of the house, looping it around fence posts. He quickened his pace to get inside the scene before the officer taped it off. The house’s front door was missing. Warm yellow light slanted on the snowy lawn. On such a well kept home, the lack of a door was as incongruous as a dark gap in an otherwise white smile. The officer stringing the tape noticed Harry bee-lining it behind him and shouted at him but the words were lost because he saw her. Olivia, flanked by two paramedics, limped out the front door with a shiny silver blanket, similar to tin foil, hanging across her shoulders. She glanced down at her footing and when she raised her face shiny with tears, she saw him. Her face melted and Harry was sure his features did the same dance, oscillating from relief to fear and fighting to hold back tears that couldn’t be restrained. He rushed over the snow feeling the hard icicles slide into the tops of his shoe. He heard someone yelling at him to stop but it didn’t mean anything to him. That voice was coming from another planet as far as Harry was concerned. Only Olivia mattered. Olivia fast-hobbled down the stairs and noticing her bare feet he put a hand to his mouth as they sank into the snow. He wished he had brought boots for her.
Something stopped him, something pulling on his arm and his feet almost slid out from under him but whatever had stopped him kept him from falling. He glanced down at his arm, saw a gloved hand on it and followed the arm to the face. The police officer, the one who had been running the tape, curled his mouth into a grim line. His daughter, his beautiful girl screamed, “Daaaaddy!”
The officer looked from Olivia to him, opened his mouth to say something and instead the officer let him go. He made it to the porch and scooped up his daughter and sobbing into her shoulder he felt her ribs through the blanket. A bag of bones crying into his chest. He dreaded learning what happened to her. The fear of it grew in his stomach like a malignant tumour. Five years of horror, melting the flesh from her already thin frame. He would worry about that later. Right now, all that mattered was Olivia, alive in his arms.
Olivia wouldn’t let Harry leave her side and he didn’t want to. He wanted to soak in her presence. He kept reaching out to touch her, a pat on the leg, a brush of fingers on the shoulder, amazed and grateful at the physical reality of her. He rode in the ambulance with her to the hospital and when they got there he stood in the corner of the room as nurses and doctors busied themselves around her, beeps of machines and the drone of conversations the background orchestra. He noticed the spot where her ear used to be and his stomach clenched. When he held her hand, he felt the empty spaces where her fingers once were. When the nurses covered her in a warm blanket, Harry’s eyes took in the missing toes on her feet before the blanket floated down to cover them. He wanted to vomit. That would be for him though and not for her. Time enough to agonize over what she must have gone through these past five years when alone and Olivia wouldn’t have to witness anymore pain. Turning into a blubbery mess wouldn’t do her any good. She needed her father to be strong for her. Later, alone in the dark, maybe then he could give in to the anguish and fear of what she lived through. Not now. Now was the time to hold her hand, smile when she turned her trusting eyes to him and tell her everything will be alright. Because that’s what parents were supposed to do.
Police detectives paced out in the hall wanting to talk to her. She didn’t want to speak to them. Not yet. She just wanted to rest. When Olivia fell asleep, Harry left her side to collect their business cards. He would contact them when she woke up. The officers said they would wait and offered to pick him up a coffee. Harry declined. Harry returned to the room and studied Olivia. Thin, haunted, she twitched in her sleep. Her eyes were deep pockets. So different from the last time he had seen her. Five years is a long time. Longer still for one who suffered so much. She couldn’t be the same person he had last seen standing in a room full of boxes ready to unpack. Those injuries to her turned his stomach. She lived through his worst nightmares. He would do anything to help her. Whatever therapy she needed he would take out a second mortgage on his house to make sure she would get it. Man, could he go for a drink. Why is it that he still wanted a drink so bad? Is there a more selfish creature on the planet than an alcoholic? He didn’t think so. It wasn’t a matter of wanting a drink, he needed one. He stuck his hands in his armpits to stop them from shaking. Harry stood at the window and glanced dow
n. News trucks continued to pile into the visitor area. He spied FOX news down there. American news stations were in it now. Cameras and commentators all took up position in front of the hospital, hoping to learn more of this macabre tale. Mass murderers? Rapists? Abductions? A house of horror in a quiet community? A reporter’s feast and the vultures had descended en masse. These sort of things didn’t happen in the town of Erin, Ontario. A small town where the big stores have yet to gain a foothold. No Wal-Mart’s here, just a Timmy’s, but then Timmy’s were everywhere. There were mom and pop stores, family owned and family run, lining the main street. Everyone knew everyone else’s business and murmured them to each other over coffee and at church gatherings or maybe at a local garage while they waited to get their brakes done or at the hair salon with the click of scissors and the offerings of gossip just as loud. Point being, no one had secrets in this town. Someone, somewhere knew your business and told it to their neighbours ad infinitum. It was how small towns operated, or so Harry thought. Except for this. No one knew about this and the community was not only stunned, they were flabbergasted, knocked down on their collective asses. Right in their town by one of their own. A quiet neighbour sure, but their neighbour. For more than five years two men had been keeping stolen women in their basement. Abusing them and when they no longer continued to please, they killed them. Even more incredible, the men ate them. How could this be? How could the gossips in this town not know? Sure, there were more than a few in town, rocking on their feet in front of some news camera, offering a knowing look and saying, I knew there was something strange about him, or I had my suspicions about that place. Even still, there were more questions than answers. And one of the killers was still out there. Before exhaustion pulled Olivia into a deep sleep, she spoke enough to the detectives to let them know she had no idea who the Jackal was. Had never seen his face, just his hands. As far as Harry knew, none of the poor girls had seen his face. An unknown. A shark swimming in a sea of people, no one ever realizing how close the danger circled them. He could be anyone. He could be anywhere. He could be wandering the hall in a nurse’s uniform, carrying a needle filled with ‘nothing good.’