Splinter (Fiction — Young Adult)

by Sasha Dawn

  And if my mom took the picture—it’s her handwriting on the back—maybe she suspected Dad was having an affair with Trina.

  But Dad denied it. He told me about his affair with Heather, so why would he lie to me about having a relationship with Trina? Maybe Trina was the one who didn’t want things to be over. Maybe she pursued him, kept showing up uninvited. Could she have threatened my mother? Could she have been the inspiration for Nobody’s Fool? Was Mom taking a picture to prove Trina wasn’t going away? Could she have been in the passageway that day?

  Wait a minute.

  If I mistook my father’s ex-wife for Mom that day in the passageway, it’s possible Trina might pass for Delilah.

  Would she, with lighter hair, be able to, say, apply for a passport with my mother’s identification?

  Pieces of the puzzle spin in my mind, and they’re nearly clicking together.

  Trina Jordan was married to my father. That means she was once—duh—Trina Lang. Could Trina, perhaps, be short for Catrina?

  Catrina Jordan-Lang.

  C. J. Lang.

  And if Trina isn’t Jane Doe Georgia . . . maybe she’s purposely stayed out of sight all these years.

  Maybe because she did something she wasn’t supposed to do.

  Once the police connected Trina to my mother through my father, they put together a theory: Mom couldn’t come home because she’d done something to Trina. Did they ever consider the opposite?

  If Trina applied for my mother’s passport, she knows my mother won’t be needing it.

  A jacket—which Heather assumed was Mom’s, but which Eschermann believes was Trina’s—was in the passageway.

  There was a stain on the cuff of her jacket. Could’ve been blood. Was it my mother’s blood?

  I buckle from the inside; it feels as if my stomach is caving in, folding me in half. I drop to my knees.

  All those years I spent waiting for her to come home—pointless. Stupid. I was looking to grasp onto something that had already slipped through my fingers.

  The postcards flash in my mind like a slide show, mocking me. How excited I’d been the first time I found one in the mailbox. The stupid, naive hope those postcards had instilled in me . . .

  I’d spent so much time, so many years, defending my mother, hating my mother, missing my mother—and if I’m right, if she’s dead . . .

  Grief balls in my throat, and fat tears roll in dollops down my cheeks.

  But she never would have left me, and I should have known it. She was a good mother; she loved me.

  I feel the memory of her warm arms around me, her lips pressing a kiss to my temple, as we stare into the flames of Schmidt’s bonfire. Smell the charring hot dog on a stick. Hear her laughter.

  In a flash, the memory is gone, replaced with the bone-aching cold of this cave.

  A violent sob escapes from deep in my gut: “I’m sorry!”

  I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry I doubted you.

  I should’ve remembered the things she’d always told me—how could I have forgotten she’d promised to always be there for me?—should’ve believed in my mother’s love for me, should’ve known better than to even think her capable of leaving me.

  And now . . .

  Heather’s gone.

  I can’t explain that.

  But if my theory about Trina is correct, it means Dad is innocent too. And over the past couple of days, I’d come to seriously doubt him.

  I even told Detective Eschermann that I agreed with some of his theories.

  God, what kind of daughter am I?

  Or am I just grasping at thin air again?

  I have to get out of here.

  I’m putting pieces together with no one to follow up on it, no one to validate me or tell me I’m crazy for thinking such thoughts. I’m stuck here, screaming until my throat is swollen in this dank cold, banging on doors with raw fists.

  Ryan won’t answer the door at his end of the passageway.

  Gram won’t answer the door at hers.

  And I can’t stay here anymore! Not when I think I know what happened. Not when what I think I know can clear Dad’s name, even if it can’t find Heather.

  Wait.

  Think.

  The wine cellar.

  I concentrate, try to remember the details, the dimensions, on the plat of survey. If only that third door would open . . .

  Maybe I’d be able to get out of here.

  Ryan said the wine cellar is under the barn, and the box with my mother’s things was tucked behind the lathe. If I could get beyond that door and climb up the wall somehow, using the lathe, maybe, I’ll be home free.

  The flashlight on my phone is starting to flicker.

  How long have I been in here now?

  It’s just after five in the morning.

  It’s been only an hour, but it feels like ten.

  I know things Eschermann has to know. I don’t have time to wait for someone to realize I’m not where I’m supposed to be.

  I kick at the door with the iron hasp. Rattle the handle.

  Scream some more.

  “Please,” I say between sobs. “Please just open.”

  I take a deep breath and run at the door as best I can in the confined space. Of course, the door doesn’t budge. I press my body against it, flatten my cheek against its old, splintering planks of wood.

  “Please.”

  I brace myself against one end of the door and kick at the latch. Then I pull the boot from my right foot and slam the sole into it, chipping away the rust.

  When enough has fallen away, I try again.

  One last time, I grip the door handle.

  Depress the latch.

  Click.

  I gasp.

  Yes!

  The latch budged. Now to work on those rusty hinges.

  I clumsily get my foot back into the boot as I hold the latch down with one hand. The muscles in my hand ache with the effort, and the cold of the metal seeps achingly into my fingers. Still pressing on the latch, I bump against the door with my shoulder, again and again, until it starts to scrape against the ground.

  Open a smidgen, and then a smidgen more.

  With all my might, I ram into it, and it opens a few more inches. Another ram or two, and I should be able to get inside.

  I shine the flashlight into the space but see nothing but a concrete shaft, not more than a four-foot square, muddied over time with dirt showering down from the earth-floor in the barn.

  But there’s a ladder.

  My shoulders fall in relief, and more tears spring to life in my eyes.

  I’m going to get out of here.

  It’s an old makeshift ladder, constructed with old lumber, and it doesn’t go all the way to floor of the shaft. It stops about five feet up from the floor and butts against the ceiling, near the hatch in the floor in the barn. I shine the light into the corners. Ryan said he’d recently boarded something up to prevent critters from getting in here. Is there a chance I can snake through it myself?

  Ryan will come out eventually to finish splitting the firewood.

  I can hold onto the ladder and pound and scream on the hatch until he hears me.

  I put all my weight behind one last thrust against the door, and it nudges open another inch or two.

  I squeeze through, leading with a leg. One thigh through, hips through, torso and head through.

  I did it.

  The floor feels wobbly, almost spongy.

  A split second later, I see why—I’ve been shoving the door against a buckled, rotted plank, the whole floor is rotted, and it’s split now, and the floor can’t hold—but it’s too late to do anything about it.

  There’s nothing to grab hold of.

  The ladder is across the shaft, just out of my reach.

  And the floor is giving way beneath my feet.

  And down I go, folding into the abyss beneath the cellar, landing against the rocks and mud and creepy-crawly creatures inhabiting the earth.<
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  Crashing against old glass bottles.

  Everything goes black.

  Sit up.

  Go on, do it.

  Everything wavers in and out of existence, like the fade-out at the end of movies. Dizzy. Uncertain.

  Wake up, Sami-girl.

  My teeth chatter in the cold. I pull my coat more tightly around my body, but it’s not enough.

  Wake up, Samantha Mary.

  I’m trying, Mom.

  Mom?

  I startle.

  I gasp a breath but inhale only dust and dirt and musty air that smells like it’s been cycling through this space for a decade.

  “Okay, okay.”

  I draw in a deep breath. With the air come more particles of dirt, which I cough out. The gravelly breath I draw bruises my throat.

  It’s so dark in here.

  I feel a tickle in my nose, an itch in my eyes.

  A tiny speck of light, like a star in the sky viewed from the bottom of the ocean, beams in from the corner up there.

  My chest tightens, as if the world is closing in on me, boxing me into a tiny cube, and while I know I’m lying still, it feels as if the earth around me is bobbing and swaying. Like I’m sealed in a box and tossed overboard a ship. Waves slowly swallowing me.

  My wheezing breaths are the only thing I hear, aside from the ringing in my ears.

  My head pounds, and I feel sort of nauseous.

  Not a migraine. Please. Not now.

  But the acute, rhythmic bleeping in my ears and the pain behind my eyes tells me it’s already upon me, and I don’t have my Imitrex.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” I don’t know why I keep saying it, when things are very obviously not okay.

  Instantly, the map pops up in my mind. I try to breathe through the pain and panic as towns bump up out of the paper, but it doesn’t work this time . . . because I know Mom isn’t in any of those places.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Concentrate.

  “It’s okay.”

  Sit up, I tell myself, so you can stop choking on the earth.

  “Okay.”

  One . . . two . . . three.

  I push against the ground.

  Slivered boards and dirt surround me.

  The sound of glass clanking against glass fills the space when I move.

  Wine bottles.

  That’s right. I got into the wine cellar, and the floor caved in.

  One step at a time. I feel in the darkness for the perimeter of the space. Reach to the right, to the left. Feel the concrete walls.

  Trembling. So scared, so cold.

  On my knees now, then crouching on my feet.

  Eyes starting to adjust to the dark.

  Okay. Okay. I see the outline of bottles in the corner.

  My finger grazes against something small, rectangular.

  My phone!

  Please, please, please let me still have battery left.

  It’s on red. Probably less than 5 percent.

  No service bars. I dial anyway: 9-2-2. Back, back. 1-1. 9-1-1, Send. No signal, no transmission.

  I punch a text—help—and I send it to all the contacts in my phone. Watch the blinking line—blink, blink, blink—until it tells me the message failed to send.

  I pan upward. The ceiling is honing in on me.

  I know it’s just my eyes playing tricks. I know the room isn’t shrinking—how could it?—but I can’t stop feeling as if the space is dwindling to nothingness.

  My fingers are shaking, but I manage to touch the App button on my phone. Find-My-iPhone app. No, no, not Angry Birds. Find-My-iPhone app. Fingers don’t work when they’re vibrating with the cold, and the light from the phone is wreaking havoc on my headache. Exit Angry Birds. There. Find-My-iPhone app. On.

  Type out another text, describing my surroundings. Send. I know it won’t work, but I have to try. I have to do something. I can’t just sit here.

  I shine the light again around the cubbyhole. Old dusty bottles, strung with cobwebs.

  The passageway was used during Prohibition to bring alcohol to the main house. The wine cellar was accessible from the barn and the tunnel, and was hidden from the outside world. Who would’ve thought there’d be a cellar beneath the cellar? A hidden compartment inside a hidden compartment accessed through a secret path? I’m close to home, but my family may never find me. Is this where my mother had been too?

  The dogs alerted behind the barn. The police searched the passageway. They dug up the grounds outside the barn, maybe even inside it. But what if they didn’t search under it?

  I have to get out of here.

  The ladder . . .

  It’s at least ten, maybe eleven, feet from the ground. If I could get a running start, maybe I could jump and reach the lowest rung, but there’s not enough space for that.

  And say I do manage it, there’s still the matter of the heavy panel enclosing the cellar. Do I have the strength to climb, scream, and pound until I make enough noise to be noticed?

  My shoulder hurts from repeatedly banging into the door, and it hurts to sit, let alone climb, thanks to the migraine. I’m cold and damp and aching from the fall when the floor caved in beneath my feet.

  They’ll find me.

  Of course they will.

  But will I die of cold, of hunger, of thirst before they do?

  My stomach churns. I’m going to throw up.

  Second chance summer is over, Sami-girl.

  I know, Mom.

  I wrap my arms around my body, balled at the corner of this cell. Rock back and forth to keep warm. Stare up at the corner, where the star of light used to be, but see only dark.

  How long have I been in here?

  I check my phone, even though I know it’s been dead for a while.

  Dead. Like Mom.

  The truth of that fact slices through me and pulls a raging sob from my sore throat. But I tamp it down instantly. Crying makes me want to vomit.

  I can’t just sit here and cry.

  I grab a bottle and start scraping at the dirt walls around me, building up a mound of earth beneath the ladder. It’s the only option I can think of.

  Unless . . . unless my digging will cause the whole structure to avalanche around me, bury me.

  I’ll have to be careful.

  I’m not breathing as much as wheezing now. I’m light-headed and dizzy, like the clouds must feel when the fairies sweep them away.

  The dogs alerted behind the barn.

  My mother was here once. She’s the cocoon in the mason jar shoved under the porch. Lieutenant Eschermann was right. Could be the body was moved.

  Trina moved her body.

  Somewhere, there’s a withered corpse of a butterfly enclosed and forgotten. I’m guessing she’s in Georgia. I’m guessing she’s now known as Jane Doe.

  But this is where she died. Maybe not on this earth, but on the planks that caved in when I stepped onto them.

  I saw her walk into the tunnel, but I never saw her walk out.

  Or maybe someone shifted the planks to hide her body in the cellar beneath the cellar? What if, as I’m digging, I come across her, what’s left of her?

  I go limp with the possibility.

  I have to do it anyway. I have to save myself. Unless someone hears me, I have to move the earth.

  “Lieutenant!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Neilllllla!”

  My head pounds.

  Vomit rises in my throat and I retch on the ground.

  But I scream, I scream, I scream.

  The earth gets wetter the deeper you dig.

  The wetter the earth, the better it is for packing, just like snow.

  It’s slippery, but if I form the slope just right, I’ll be able to climb up the hypotenuse and reach the lowest rung of the ladder.

  Mud is caked under my fingernails. It’s probably in my hair, smudged under my runny nose, and maybe even lining my lungs by now. Cassidy’s boots are ruined. My fingers hurt with the cold, and my t
hroat must be redder than fire. I can’t scream anymore.

  But there’s a spot of light coming through the hatch.

  I want to feel that light on my face.

  The battery in my phone is dead, so that tiny stream of light is the only illumination in this shaft.

  I reach out to it, as if I can hold it in my palm.

  But then, it disappears.

  I need it.

  “Please,” I beg the fairies in the sky. “Brush the clouds away.”

  And the pinhole of light filters down on me again—“Thank you, thank you, thank you”—but only for a moment. And it’s gone again.

  My throat burns with my next sob. That light was going to help me get out of here.

  It appears again, only to vanish with the next breath, then appear again.

  Someone is in the barn!

  And then I hear it: the repeated pounding, as if someone is banging a blunt object against wood.

  Is Ryan splitting wood in the barn?

  “Help!” I scream. “Help, help, help!”

  But the sounds continue in measured cadence, and I don’t have much of a voice left. Maybe he can’t hear me above the noise.

  I wait for a break in the rhythm.

  “Ryan!”

  But before I get it out, the pounding starts again.

  It’s no use. I don’t have the voice to do it right now. My efforts to build up the ground so I can reach the ladder could take even longer than it would take Ryan to pull down another tree.

  I let out a wail of frustration and throw the wine bottle I’ve been using as a shovel against the wall. It crashes with bravado.

  The sounds above cease.

  “Help!” My voice cracks. I scurry to find another bottle before whoever’s up there resumes his task. I clang this bottle against the walls of the shaft. “Help!”

  “Samantha?”

  “Down here!” Clang, clang, clang.

  I stare at the stream of light and pray: open the door, see me, find me.

  “Sam?”

  He sounds farther away now.

  I hear voices. He’s talking to someone. Maybe he never heard me at all.

  No, no, no . . . Come back this way! Come back!

  Clang, clang, clang go the wine bottles against the walls.

  “Samantha?”

  The concrete shaft practically reverberates with the sound of metal on metal. I stiffen. I’m not making that racket. What’s happening?