One Among Us

by Paige Dearth

  Rock turned to John William. As if the other three men weren’t in the room for the same reason he was, he said, “Let’s go talk. I’m ready to make an offer.”

  John William grunted and looked at the others, who were still studying Maggie. They all nodded as they filed out of the bedroom. Up in the attic, in Myles’s office, Maggie was sold to the highest bidder for ten thousand dollars. Rock had purchased himself an almost new, fourteen-year-old whore.

  Before Rock left, Myles made another offer. “Listen, I got this boy. He’s around seven. If you want him, I’ll give him to you cheap.”

  Moments later, in the bright light of the kitchen, Rock looked at Seth. “Well, he’s a little too young to turn out, but my old lady always wanted a little boy. She can have him for a while and play mom,” he said, thinking aloud.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Rock said. “I’ll give ya five hundred bucks for him. He ain’t no good to me this young. I’m gonna have to raise him for a couple of years. Gonna cost me money to feed him and keep him. You know what I’m sayin’. So five hundred’s my final offer.”

  Myles looked at Rock as though he wanted to spit in his face. “Yeah, fine. Five hundred bucks. I need the little shit stain out of here. You come back with the cash tomorrow. Early.”

  “Sure, Myles. I’ll be back in the morning,” Rock promised.

  Maggie wasn’t within earshot during any of the negotiating. The only thing she knew was that the men were making offers. She stayed up most of the night worrying about Seth and what would happen to him if she left. It wasn’t until morning that Maggie found out that Seth would be leaving with her.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It was just before dawn when the lights popped on in the basement, waking Seth and startling Maggie, who had been up all night worrying. John William opened Maggie’s kennel, and she rushed over to Seth, who looked pathetic with his small arms extended through the chain link toward her. He was whimpering like a small puppy. She moved in as close as she could to comfort him.

  “Get the hell out of the way, you whore. I need to open his kennel,” John William said.

  Together at last, Maggie hugged Seth close as they walked up the basement stairs for the last time. In the kitchen, standing next to Myles, was Rock. He was over six feet tall, and his arms were crossed over his massive chest in a threatening stance. Rock wore his hair long, combing it back with a greasy hair-care product. He had a full beard and a mustache. He was one of the most dangerous people in Kensington, where he lived and did all of his business. Rock was the biggest drug dealer and pimp in the area surrounding Center City, Philadelphia.

  He got the nickname Rock when he was in his late teens and started pushing crack cocaine, or “cookie,” on the streets. He looked every bit the picture of a man involved in a shady business. He patrolled Kensington Avenue regularly, keeping a close eye on his street dealers and whores, and was always on the lookout for young people to make money for him.

  Rock was infamous for strong-arming people into doing what he wanted. Since he controlled most of the drug pushers and prostitutes in the area, he had any number of people at his beck and call. His reach was endless.

  Maggie and Seth had fallen into the hands of one of the most ruthless men in Philadelphia. He showed no tolerance for disobedience and had high expectations for the people he considered his property. The fourteen-year-old and the seven-year-old stood before him, waiting to hear what would happen to them next.

  “Let’s go,” Rock said to Maggie. “I wanna get you back to town so you can start makin’ me some money.” Then he glared at Seth. “You comin’, too.”

  Seth squeezed Maggie’s hand tighter as they followed Rock out to his car. The sky was clear that morning, and Maggie looked back toward the bushes where Cali lay dead in her cage at the bottom of the pool. Her eyes brimmed with tears as the great loss tugged at her heart.

  “Listen, girl. Don’t be doin’ none of that cryin’ shit, ya hear? I ain’t got no time for that. Get the fuck in the car so I can get your sorry ass back to where you gonna be livin’,” Rock demanded.

  The kids slid into the backseat of a black sedan. The windows were heavily tinted, making it impossible for anyone to see into the car. Rock sped out of the driveway and eased onto a country road. Rap music was blaring. Seth was sitting so close to Maggie that if he got any closer, their hips would fuse together. Seth was seeing the outside world for the first time in his life that he could remember. His memories from before he was taken by John William were nonexistent, and now, with so much whizzing by the window, he was overstimulated and on the verge of panic.

  After forty-five minutes, Rock turned off a highway and onto Kensington Avenue. They drove under a massive steel structure that ran the length of the street as far as they could see. Maggie would soon find out that the seemingly endless, prehistoric-looking steel centipede was the Market-Frankford Line of the subway that was elevated above the ground. Under the El, which the locals had nicknamed the structure, the streets were cluttered with prostitutes and drug addicts.

  Maggie couldn’t peel her eyes away from the young girls; many were just a little older than she was, and some looked younger. They wore skimpy outfits, and when they noticed Rock’s car, fear stirred on their faces. They tried to appear to be working hard to find customers. Girls leaned into cars and talked with scruffy men who skulked on the sidewalks. Maggie didn’t know that she was looking at her own future.

  Rock drove to the edge of Kensington and parked in front of a large twin home. He turned to the backseat. “We’re home. Your mama is waiting for ya inside. Don’t ya go givin’ her a hard time, either, or I swear I’ll kick your ass.”

  Seth clung tighter to Maggie. Rock gave her a threatening glare.

  “Come on, Seth. We need to do what…” Maggie stopped short, realizing that she didn’t know the man’s name.

  As if he was able to read her mind, he said, “Rock. My name is Rock. That’s what you call me.”

  “We need to do what Rock says,” she coaxed.

  Seth silently followed Maggie and Rock into the house. They stood just inside the front door. The living room to the left was massive and in need of fresh paint and new carpet. A black leather sofa and matching chair faced a television. Empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays covered black-lacquered end tables. Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, and their nostrils filled with an acidy mixture of booze, smoke, and body odor. The dark, velvet drapes were shut tight, keeping out any natural light. To their right was a dining room that had been made into Rock’s office. Six mismatched chairs surrounded a large table, on the middle of which sat a telephone and a handgun. Maggie cringed when she spotted the gun. She wondered if they would sleep in one of the bedrooms on the second floor, an option that gave her a tiny sliver of hope.

  “Come on,” Rock said.

  They followed him down a narrow hallway that opened into a kitchen. Dirty dishes were strewn on the worn, red, Formica countertop. In one corner, a heavy, black woman sat at a patio table. She looked up from her coffee and jumped to her feet. “Oh baby, you really meant it. You brought me a son,” she gushed, rushing over to Seth.

  Seth pulled away from her, locking his arms around Maggie’s waist. Rock’s wife, Thelma, didn’t take kindly to his reaction. “What the fuck, Rock? I thought you said you was bringin’ me home a new son. He ain’t acting like no son of mine,” she barked.

  Rock grabbed the back of Seth’s neck and squeezed hard. “Go say hello to your momma, boy. This ain’t the way ya wanna get started with her,” he said, seething.

  Rock loved Thelma. They had been together from the time they were fifteen. In fact, Thelma’s father, Jackie, was the drug kingpin in Philadelphia until he was murdered. Jackie ran the black mafia and had taken Rock under his wing to be certain his daughter would have stability.

  Jackie had set Rock up as a dealer in Kensington and had never allowed him to be a part of the mafia. By the time Rock and Thelma were twent
y, they had expanded into prostitution. Thelma’s father had set the couple up in business, and Rock’s loyalty to her was unbreakable.

  In the ten years since her father’s murder, Thelma had slowly become a recluse. She was a heavy drug user, something she had promised her father she’d never be. Now she was a full-blown, drug-using agoraphobic and never left the house for anything. The walls of her home defined her world, a rather lonely one. She had tried for many years to get pregnant, and after she and Rock accepted that it would never happen, Rock began to bring young children home for her to raise until they were old enough to use as prostitutes or drug runners. It had been over two years since Thelma had a child.

  Unfortunately for the children, brutal, murderous parents had raised Thelma. She lacked patience and compassion for children who didn’t act exactly as she demanded.

  “Come over here to me,” Thelma said in serious tone.

  Maggie moved toward Thelma with Seth at her side. “It’s all right, Seth. This is our new mom,” she reassured him, fighting back the creepy feeling she had in her gut.

  “Our new mom?” Thelma shrieked. “Who the hell are you talking about, fool? I ain’t a mamma of no whore. You lucky I lettin’ you be in my house right now. You ain’t livin’ here, girl. The boy is, but you ain’t, you filthy bitch,” Thelma said heatedly.

  But then, what will happen to me? Maggie’s thoughts silently screamed inside her head.

  Chapter Forty

  Panicking, Maggie threw herself on Thelma’s mercy. “Oh, please let me stay too. I can clean and take care of Seth for you. I’ll do whatever you need. Just don’t separate us,” Maggie begged.

  “Get this ho outta my house,” Thelma told Rock, flailing her arms.

  “Time to go,” Rock stated.

  Maggie grabbed Seth, and he clung to her. Rock marched over and pulled her off the small boy. Seth was hysterical and began to scream at the top of his lungs, “I wanna stay with Aggie!” Turning to Thelma, he spewed, “I hate you. I don’t want to stay with you. I wanna go with Aggie.”

  Thelma slapped Seth across the face. “Well, I see you ain’t got no manners. That’ll be the first thing I gotta teach ya. Nobody yells at me, boy.” Then she grabbed his arm and led him away from the kitchen.

  As Rock forced Maggie toward the front door, she yelled, “Don’t forget me, Seth. We’ll be together again. I promise!”

  The outburst made Rock livid. He planned to set things right once he got Maggie to the house where she would be staying. He silently strutted out to his car, Maggie in tow, and shoved her into the backseat. Ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of a broken-down row house on Kensington Avenue. Without uttering a word, he pulled Maggie from the backseat and climbed the cement steps to the front door.

  Inside, the house was a flurry of activity. The scantily dressed young girls, with bare bellies and asses peeking out below their skirts and shorts, hardly noticed Maggie as Rock pushed her toward the living area at the back of the house. In that room, there were several men dressed in jeans and oversized T-shirts. Many of them wore thick chains around their necks and untied sneakers. The men watched as Rock brought Maggie into the room.

  “We got us a new girl. This one has a mouth on her. She needs to be wrecked,” Rock told them.

  Wrecking a new girl was what pimps did to assimilate her into the world of prostitution.

  A heavyset Latino man named Armando hoisted himself from a chair in the corner. “I got this one,” he said simply.

  Armando took Maggie upstairs to the master bedroom. Once inside, he made her get naked and stand in the middle of the room. As she stood there, not knowing what would happen to her, she began to sweat. A few minutes later, she started to cry. All the while, Armando sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her as if she were a feast he was about to devour. Twenty minutes later, Armando moved off the bed. He gave Maggie a massive shove, and she landed face down on the mattress.

  She quickly flipped onto her back and faced her attacker. He came at her so fast she didn’t have a chance to react. Before she knew it, he was inside of her. When she screamed, Armando hit her in the face. “Shut your dirty mouth. Nobody here cares what’s happenin’ to you.”

  “Please don’t hurt me. I swear I’ll be quiet,” she pleaded.

  Armando’s laughter filled the room like the growl of a Harley motorcycle on a quiet summer night. It put her further on edge. “You bet you’ll be quiet. Cause if ya don’t, you’re gonna make it a lot harder on yourself.”

  Armando stood and regarded Maggie carefully. “You sure are a good-looking bitch. Let me take a closer look-see at those eyes of yours.” He inched closer to her face until his nose touched hers. The anger bubbling up inside her made Maggie’s expressive blue eyes more intense.

  Finally, she turned her head away from him. “Do whatever you’re going to do to me. I don’t really care anymore. Just get it over with already,” she stated.

  Armando put his hand around her neck and began to squeeze. She started clawing and scratching at him in an effort to make him stop. But Armando persisted, applying more pressure to her throat. As soon as he let go of her throat, he pulled her up by her hair and shoved her toward the bedroom closet. When he swung the door open, she noticed it was empty. On the closet floor was a small door with a deadbolt. Armando unbolted the door in the floor and pulled it up. Then he stared down into the dark hole below.

  Maggie watched, unable to comprehend what was happening to her.

  Armando edged her closer to the hole. “You can get in easily, or I can throw you in there. Choice is yours,” he stated.

  Not knowing how deep the hole was, she sat down on the floor and put her feet in first. She tried to feel for the bottom, but her feet did not touch a solid surface. After several seconds, Armando lifted her from the sitting position and dropped her into the vertical box. Maggie’s feet hit the bottom hard, and she thought she had broken her ankle. Looking up at Armando, she begged, “Just let me out. Please.”

  Armando slammed the small door in her face, and she heard him throw the deadbolt. Scrunched at the bottom of the lightless box, her limbs bent and tangled, she wondered if he would ever come back for her.

  Several hours later, the lid of the box opened. Maggie stared up at Armando, and then he showed her the snake in his hands. Maggie began to scream wildly. Armando dropped the long snake into the box and slammed the lid closed.

  After several minutes of screaming and a few bites on her legs, Maggie’s animal instincts took over. She grabbed the snake in the darkness of the box and clamped her teeth down until the snake was in two pieces. Maggie couldn’t have known that the snake wasn’t poisonous.

  When Armando checked on Maggie the next day, he was surprised to see that she had not only killed the snake, but had eaten most of it while she sat at the bottom of the dark, damp box.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Not a day had passed in the three years since Maggie had been missing that Lorraine Clarke didn’t think or talk about her daughter. She wanted to believe Maggie was still alive; her guilt over leaving Maggie alone that one day never stopped consuming her.

  The Clarkes had moved on with their lives, if there was such a thing after losing a child. They were doing the best they could to resemble a normal family. Lorraine and Rob’s marriage had been put to the test. Each of them dealt with Maggie’s disappearance differently. Rob wanted them to focus on Keith and being a family again. Lorraine wanted the same, but she was unwilling to let go of the ghost of her missing daughter. Because of this, Rob and Keith bore the burden of her unhappiness.

  It was Halloween when Rob approached her. “Lorraine, I think we should consider selling this house and starting over somewhere new. We’ve come a long way, but you know as well as I do that we need to try something different to make our marriage work. There are just too many reminders of Maggie here. It makes Keith feel like an afterthought. So what do you say? Would you consider starting over somewhere new?”

/>   Lorraine was appalled, a reaction Rob hadn’t quite anticipated. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? Are you actually suggesting that we leave this house so when Maggie tries to come home, she can’t find us? My God, Rob! What the hell is wrong with you? How can you give up on our daughter so easily?”

  “I haven’t given up, Lorraine. I never will. But this life we’re living, it’s just not healthy for any of us. You’ve made a fucking career out of searching for Maggie. We can’t go on like this. What about Keith? Huh? What about him and what’s good for him?” Rob argued.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Keith. He’s a well-adjusted little boy. I love him with all my heart, so don’t you dare insinuate that I’m neglecting him,” she yelled back.

  Seeing that Lorraine wasn’t capable of having a rational conversation, Rob decided to let the subject rest until another time. “Well, we aren’t done talking about this, Lorraine. We have to do something before we lose everything. Losing Maggie was the worst thing that could have happened to us. We made it through that together. We might be holding onto this marriage by a string, but we are still here, the two of us, together, trying to get our lives back,” Rob said. “I love you, Lorraine, but your inability to cope with this horrible loss is destroying our family.”

  Since their argument on Halloween, the couple had grown further apart. Lorraine was unwilling to consider leaving their home, and Rob was incapable of spending another year there with the spirit of his beloved daughter haunting him day in and day out.

  A few days before Christmas, Detective Harker paid the Clarkes a visit. Lorraine threw open the door after she saw him through the peephole. “What is it? Did you find her?” Lorraine shot at him.

  “Well, hello to you too, Lorraine. It’s good to see you again,” Harker said, trying to lighten the moment.

  Lorraine glared at him. “Well? Did you?” she persisted.

  “Can I come in, Lorraine?” Detective Harker asked.