The Girl in the Maze

by R. K. Jackson

  Maybe wide enough to crawl through, Lenny offered.

  “Martha. This is Aubrey. I’m your friend, I want to help you. Just give me a signal. Let us know where you are. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She was startled by the proximity of the voice, already so much closer than before. She lunged forward, tumbled out of the hammock of vegetation, and sprinted the short distance to the culvert, a few feet above the base of the ravine. Her shoes crunched through broken glass. She untangled the vines from her arms, scrambled up the embankment, and looked into the metal opening. Overhead, a rumble of traffic. Amberleen’s version of rush hour.

  “There she is!” a voice shouted—this time a different voice, not Morris. “I can see her…hurry, she’s over there.”

  Exposed now, working quickly, Martha put her head and shoulders into the culvert opening and wriggled forward, digging her elbows into the metal ribs. But something was holding her….

  “Stop now, or I’ll shoot.”

  She glanced behind. No one there, just a tight knot of kudzu wrapped around her foot. Martha wiggled and wrenched free, leaving her shoe behind.

  “STOP!” a voice shouted. Morris.

  Keep moving, Lovie, else they’ll kill us.

  Martha worked her torso into the pipe—then, a sharp sting in her right leg, as if someone had touched her with the lit end of a cigarette. A gunshot cracked the air and echoed through the culvert like a hissing rocket. The pain spread quickly, fanning out into a white, blanching shock through her calf.

  She dug her elbows into the steel ribs and heaved forward, wriggling farther into the pipe. She dragged herself forward with the points of her elbows along the slimy base. She got some traction with her left foot and let the injured one drag behind, useless.

  They shot me, she thought. They shot me…why, why, why?

  ’Cause you’re a criminal, Lovie, Lenny’s voice replied, disembodied. And scuffers shoot at bad guys. That’s the long and short of it, innit?

  Shut up, Lenny, she thought. Just shut up, shut up and shut up. The culvert wasn’t long; she could see a disk of sunlight at the other side. She crawled toward it, her adrenaline overriding any consideration of her pain from the gunshot wound.

  They’ll be waitin’ for you at the other end. You know that, don’t you, Lovie?

  Martha reached the end of the culvert and paused. Lying on her belly, she scanned the landscape beyond. No deputies here, no one at all. Not yet. Just another ravine. Crabgrass, litter, and a stagnant stream. At the top of the ravine, a row of old buildings. She recognized the lumpy, worn brickwork—the back end of the historic district. The blacktop overhead hummed with traffic.

  She climbed out of the culvert and tumbled into a rancid pool of water. Needles of pain shot through her right leg. She curled into a fetal position and lay there, exposed.

  Brilliant, Martha. This is the way to pop your clogs. Like a dog in a ditch.

  Martha pushed herself up. Dark red marbles floated in the water. Marbles of blood.

  She looked up the slope of the ravine. The base of the cleft was deep enough to hide her from the roadway. And she could see an alley between the first and second buildings. She ape-walked through the crabgrass, climbing toward street level.

  At the top, she stumbled across a gravel lot, reached the weathered masonry of the nearest building, and held on to it, tucking behind a steel trash barrel. She glanced back down the slope. The blades of crabgrass were tipped in red, leaving an obvious trail where she had crawled. The globules of blood were expanding in the pool of water. She gripped the corner of the wall, nauseated at the sight of her blood, and took some weight off her injured leg. A hum welled inside her head and white shapes floated before her eyes.

  The morning sun had yet to reach between the buildings. A narrow alley stretched for a block before ending in the bright light of the Bay Street business district, where she would again be out in the open. But along the wall were recessed doorways, possibly leading to basements or storage rooms. Places to hide.

  Martha heard the thrum of a helicopter somewhere nearby. She limped along the cobblestones, gripping the weathered, edgeless brick with both hands. A Dumpster stood in her path, and she hopped around it, keeping the weight off her wounded leg and holding on to the metal lip to keep from falling. She reached the far corner of the Dumpster and caught sight of a door, a green wooden door with peeling paint, in a recess. She took a hop toward it. Something dark came out of the shadows.

  Martha opened her mouth to scream, but before she could make a sound, a warm, soft thing clamped over her mouth. The shape from the shadows was bigger than she was, and it held her in its grip. She felt her weight leaving her feet. She struggled against the shape, tried to see it, but her vision was blocked by swarms of amoeba-like shapes. Then a roaring sound filled her ears and the amoebae multiplied and danced, lining up now, high-stepping like the Radio City Rockettes. The roar engulfed her like a churning ocean wave, submerging her beyond the reach of sight or sound.

  Chapter 15

  Martha woke in semidarkness. The dark shape was gone. There were no amoebae, no ringing in her ears, just a feeling of weakness and fuzzy disorientation. A flatness. A calm.

  She’d been asleep—how long? Hours. Maybe even days. She could see wood planks, timbers overhead. Cobwebs in the rafters. A wedge of blue sky peeked through a gap between the planks. She turned her head and looked to the side. More planking, rough-hewn.

  In the center of the wall was a small window, its view to the outside blocked by a plastic roll shade. On the sill were small, irregular objects. Martha blinked. Stones? Maybe seashells.

  Next to the window, a rusted metal sign advertising NEHI ORANGE SODA, nailed to the wall sideways. She raised her head slightly. At the far end of the room, a thread of sunlight outlined a rectangular shape. A door.

  As she lowered her head against the pillow a slight movement near the rafters caught her eye. A model airplane, single propeller, turned on a string. She shifted her head the other way. Assorted objects lined the room’s exposed framework. Pictures, a turtle shell, an animal skull, a raccoon skin. Some pictures were tacked to the wall. One face she recognized—Malcolm X, with his trademark glasses. She’d done a book report on the civil rights movement in high school. Others looked vaguely familiar—public figures. Another photo showed a man and a boy together. African Americans. They were holding rifles, smiling.

  She tried to sit up and survey the rest of the room, but her head began to swim and she lowered herself back down. The cot she was lying on gave a rusty creak. The lumpy mattress smelled of motor oil.

  Her mind skipped back, recalled images of events that now seemed as if they’d happened long ago, like a half-remembered childhood nightmare. She probed her last memories—spending the night at Lydia’s house, and the next morning—had it really happened? Please God, no. Let that be a dream.

  Her right leg was throbbing, and she could sense a tightness around it. She lifted her head and pulled the sheet aside. Her right leg was wrapped in a beige bandage that was secured with a clip. There was a reddish-brown stain near the center.

  She was no longer wearing her shorts, just her underwear. She glanced around the room, feeling vulnerable, wondering where her shorts might be.

  Martha lowered her head, tired from the simple act of lifting it up, and listened. No voices, only the birds chattering in the bright daylight that peeked through the wood slats.

  Her mouth felt pasty. A plastic cup sat on a table by the bed, next to a kerosene lantern, and she reached for it. She felt a slight sting as she moved her arm. She was startled to see a thin plastic tube taped to her forearm. The tube snaked upward, led to another unlikely object—a bag of clear fluid hanging from a chrome stand. The fluid dripped from the bag. Martha closed her eyes, opened them again. Look away, then look back. The fluid bag was still there. She let her head rest on the pillow and tried to think. How long, how long?

  Her mind was numb. She knew the
re were terrible memories—searing images from her last hours of consciousness—lurking below the surface, but she wasn’t ready to face them yet. And Lenny was back, his pasty visage, his reptilian voice, lurking somewhere at the periphery of her awareness. But the only voice she heard now was that of her own consciousness, stirring like dead leaves. She was in a one-room cabin, somewhere. Someone was taking care of her. For the moment, that was all that mattered.

  She took the plastic cup and found that it contained water, as she’d hoped. She brought it to her lips and took a long, refreshing drink, then lay her head back down, tired again. She focused on the wedge of blue sky in the ceiling, closed her eyes, listened to the sounds outside the small windows. The buzz of cicadas, an occasional peal of seagulls. And another sound—a soft lapping. Water, Martha thought, slipping back into sleep. I’m near water.

  —

  The next time Martha woke, she was aware of a new sound, a soft puttering. She raised her head and considered getting up, but found her body unwilling to cooperate. The putter got louder, then stopped near the cabin. Then, a bump, a splash, a sound of dragging, a clank of metal.

  Martha propped herself up on her elbows and looked toward the front of the room.

  Footsteps outside approached and stopped outside the door. There was a tentative knock.

  “Who’s there?” she croaked.

  She heard the sound of a hasp being unhooked, and the door swung open. A flood of blinding sunlight. Silhouetted there, a dark shape, as tall as the door itself.

  Martha started to work her feet toward the edge of the bed, clutching the sheet to her waist.

  “Stay there,” a male voice said. “Stay in the bed.”

  The shape stepped forward, the door jerked shut on its spring. Martha blinked, her view obscured by a bluish afterimage of the silhouette in the sunlight. The figure moved toward a wooden table, a brown paper bag propped in a muscular forearm. He put the bag on the table and went to the other wall and worked a string to raise a roll-up blind, letting more light into the room. For the first time, Martha got a good look at him. A black man, maybe about her age. No shirt—just a vest made of green camouflage material. An olive-green knit cap was stretched over his head.

  “Is that too bright?” he asked, turning toward her. She tried to read his face. Large eyes. A small scar on his cheekbone. Handsome, intense.

  “No, it’s fine,” Martha said, blinking. “Who are you?”

  “Jarrell,” the young man said. He took a step toward the bed and Martha drew her knees up.

  “It’s all right. Relax,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” He passed by the bed and went to the IV stand and looked at it. He flicked his finger at the clear plastic and then turned the little plastic gear below the bag, causing the drip to slow. He picked up a clipboard on the table next to the bed and wrote something on it. Martha noticed a tattoo on his arm, rendered in black ink—a stylized S that ended in a snake’s head. It was a symbol she had seen somewhere before. In her groggy state, she couldn’t quite place where.

  Martha watched him work. Something about the young man himself seemed familiar. How can that be?

  “Let me have your arm,” he said. “I need to take your pulse.”

  Martha stared at him. She wanted to be home. But where is home?

  “It’s all right,” Jarrell said. “I just need to take your pulse.”

  Martha nodded slightly, held her arm out to him. He took her thin wrist and held it, placing his big forefinger on her pulse, and looked at his watch. Martha’s arm looked pale as a candle in his dark fingers. A chain with a silver cross at the end dangled from his neck. His bare shoulders looked smooth and powerful.

  “You’re a doctor?” Martha asked.

  Jarrell said nothing, just dropped her wrist and made another notation on the chart. Then he went to the end of the bed and lifted the sheet off her bandaged leg. He looked at the dressing, lifting her leg and rotating it one way, then the other. Then he went to a long table where he’d placed a paper bag. He pulled out a small plastic container of orange juice and went to the side of her bed. He poked a straw into the box and held it toward her.

  “Can you sit up? You need to drink this.”

  Martha sat up, and he tucked her pillow behind her. She took the juice and sipped.

  “Thank you.”

  “How long have you been awake?” He looked again at the clipboard.

  “About a half hour, I think. How long was I asleep?”

  “About twenty-four hours,” he said.

  “All day and all night? Then today is—”

  “Wednesday,” he said, making another note on the chart. “You weren’t asleep the whole time. Your blood loss caused you to drift into hypoxia, one of the early stages of shock. Without fluid, it might have progressed.”

  She lay back and glanced toward the small window. Palmetto fronds clacked in a light breeze. “Where am I?”

  “A secret place.”

  Jarrell unpacked the grocery bag, placing items in a battered aluminum cooler.

  “Did it really happen?”

  “Did what really happen?”

  “Lydia—is she really—”

  “Yeah. She’s dead.”

  Martha felt a tremor somewhere deep within. But she wasn’t ready to deal with this yet. Her mind’s protective system kept a lid on her feelings.

  “They think—the police think I did it.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why—” Martha looked down at her bandaged leg.

  “The bullet nicked your peroneal artery. So you lost a lot of blood.”

  “But I didn’t—it wasn’t—”

  He came over to the bed and removed the cushion from behind her head. “The bullet’s gone. I removed it. You’ve got to rest.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten A.M.”

  Martha mentally traced back through the last night she could remember taking her meds. Lydia’s house. Nighttime. She had already missed at least a full day’s dosage.

  “I’m on medication.”

  He turned toward her. “What?”

  “I have a prescription. I take drugs. I have to take them every day. Medicinal drugs. I have to take them.”

  “Prescription?”

  “Yes.”

  “What for?”

  Martha hesitated. “It’s private. But it’s very important. I have to get my pill-minder….”

  She swung her legs toward the edge of the bed.

  “Oh no you don’t.” Jarrell stepped over to the cot and pushed her legs back onto the bed. He pulled the sheet back over her. “You’re not ready to get up yet. You’ll break the clot.”

  “You don’t understand. I have to…you’ll have to get it for me.”

  “What kind of medicine is it? What is your condition?”

  “It’s private.”

  “You have to tell me. Is your condition life-threatening?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s the medicine?”

  “I left it back there. At Lydia’s house.”

  Jarrell turned toward her and leaned over the bed. He laid one powerful hand on her shoulder. He pushed her down, causing the bedsprings to creak. His eyes were wide and shone like obsidian. Martha gasped.

  “Okay, we need to understand something here,” he said. “You and I both are in a world of shit. Personally, I intend to get myself out of this shit. In order for that to happen, you’re going to have to cooperate with me. Keeping secrets is just not going to work. The last place we are going to go is anywhere near that house. Not anytime soon. You get where I’m coming from?”

  “But you don’t understand….” Martha could hear her voice trembling. “I’ve got to have my meds.”

  “Now, how critical is it? Will you die? Will you have seizures?”

  “I won’t die.”

  “That’s good. Because if you can live without it, you will. Nobody is going anywhere. Do I need to tie you down to this bed?”
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  He glared at her, eyes burning. Martha shook her head.

  “Good. I don’t want to do that, but if I have to, I will.”

  Jarrell stepped away, going back to his business. Martha propped herself up on her elbows. Two doses. It’s the first time she had skipped her medication at all, since the hospitalization. And she promised Vince she would never stop. Promised.

  “How long am I going to be here?” Martha asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Without my medications, there might be problems.”

  “Problems? There might be problems.” He laughed bitterly.

  Martha laid her head down again. The simple act of trying to get up had exhausted her. After a long moment, she spoke again, softly.

  “By the way, my name is Martha.”

  She heard the cabin door snap shut, and realized there was no longer anyone there to answer.

  Chapter 16

  Vince Trauger keyed his distance goal into the Life Fitness treadmill and started jogging. It was his first day at the Buckhead Fitness Center in—what? Over two years? He’d put so much time and energy into solving the problems of his patients, he’d started to neglect himself. He’d put on some extra pounds, and his energy level had been flagging.

  He felt a vibration from the Android in his pocket, ignored it. Time to start putting yourself first.

  Vince was feeling good today. About himself, and about the way things had been going. Last week, there was the television interview for WSB-TV. He came off quite well. They were doing a feature on the Gateway Center, the recovery program he’d helped establish. It gave Vince a public platform to articulate his vision for the future of mental health. A job, gainful employment, was the best therapy, he told the interviewer. Long-term hospitalization only perpetuates mental illness. Then he shared a few of his success stories: The schizoaffective young man who was now employed as a clerk at the Home Depot in Chamblee. The woman who landed a job as a secretary at a law firm in Decatur. He also talked about the bright young woman who responded rapidly to antipsychotic medication and returned to social functioning in only three months’ time. He knew he’d pushed the envelope with Martha, but his instincts told him it was the right thing to do. And he was learning to trust his instincts.