The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

  Livia squinted through the windshield at the tall berm, covered by neglected trees and bearded with heavy weed growth that ran as far as her eyesight allowed. It encircled the Stellar Heights neighborhood.

  “Up went the gates,” Megan continued. “Tall, black, cast-iron gates that would keep out the unwanted West Bay residents until they moved along, pushed out by wealthy expansion. In came the winding road meant to meander through the beautiful neighborhood. Seventy-nine custom homes were meant to fill this subdivision. Seventy-nine magnificent structures, each five thousand square feet. The builder managed to erect six before the housing bubble burst. No one was buying giant homes anymore. The credit crunch pinched all the people buying homes with the bank’s money. And when the banks stopped lending, the builder ran out of capital. So Stellar Heights, hidden from the world by the giant berm, was forgotten by all and sat abandoned for the last several years. Until a county ordinance a few months ago came through demanding the destruction of the six abandoned homes and the ghost town they sat in.”

  Livia watched as Megan opened the passenger-side door and walked past the Stellar Heights sign and to the tall, black gate. Highlighted by the car’s headlights, Megan looked like a ghost floating toward the haunted town. She pushed the gates, which yawned open from the middle. The effect was dramatic and eerie, as if something sinister had just been released from within. Beyond the gates, through the mouth of the berm, blackness waited.

  Megan sat back in the passenger seat and closed the door. “Let’s go,” she said. “I need to know for sure.”

  “Megan,” Livia said. “Maybe we should call someone. Your dad, or someone to meet us here. If you think this is the place you were kept.”

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  Megan pointed forward, into the darkness of the abandoned subdivision. Livia thought of calling Kent Chapple to meet them out here. She knew he’d come in an instant if Livia asked. She thought of calling 911, but her mind stalled on what, exactly, she’d say was the emergency.

  After a moment, she released the break and they slowly drifted past the gates and into Stellar Heights.

  CHAPTER 50

  August 2016

  The Night of the Abduction

  Nicole followed Casey as he drove from the beach parking lot. An odd thrill filled her chest from what she’d just witnessed. She knew Megan McDonald, at this moment, was terrified. And it served her right. Everything in her life had been handed to her. There had never been anything to challenge her or derail the perfect cadence of her life from grade-school star to high school princess and soon to college genius and medical-school scholar and eventually a physician who saved the world. No one should get everything they want in life.

  So badly Nicole longed to be in Casey’s car, listening to Megan cry and plead. But they both agreed it was too risky. Surely, Megan would identify Nicole, even with the burlap over her head. Should Nicole talk or laugh, as she was certain to do, the ruse would be over. It was a better option to follow Casey to the old brewhouse where the club’s meetings had taken place. There, Nicole could watch from afar and muffle her laughs as Casey dumped her in the shed and slid the heavy latch down across the door. The same shed the club had used for Nicole’s initiation weeks before.

  When they finally let Megan go, it would take the princess an hour to find her way out of the Cove, and though Nicole would never have the satisfaction of telling Megan she had been the one who organized the prank, she would certainly enjoy the aftermath. Matt could comfort her all the way to Duke.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Nicole said to herself when Casey turned left at Junction Avenue and headed to the other end of West Bay. The old Coleman’s Brewery building was in the other direction.

  She picked up her phone and called him. He didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 51

  November 2017

  Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

  Away from the streetlights of the surrounding road, the interior of Stellar Heights was an inky dark barely penetrated by the car’s headlights. As Livia slowly drove the long, winding road that meandered into the heart of the abandoned subdivision, the vehicle’s lights illuminated empty construction sites on either side of the smooth pavement. Gravel and boulders and large excavated holes meant to be the foundation for never-constructed homes came and went under the glow of Livia’s high beams. With each passing minute she drove into darkness, Livia felt the outside world beyond the berm drift farther and farther away.

  She was ready to abandon the journey, to drive Megan home and present this lost girl to her parents and ask for help. Even admit her mistake for bringing such a fragile girl into this search for answers. But as Livia lifted her foot to apply the break, the far anterior reach of the headlights fell upon a home—a single home at the end of the tortuous road they had followed for the past few minutes. And then, under the scant moonlight, five other structures came to life. Each building sitting on two acres of undeveloped land, this string of six homes and twelve acres made up the whole of Stellar Heights.

  Livia stopped the car and surveyed the house captured in the glow of her headlights. It could have been, Livia surmised, a magnificent home had construction continued. Red, vibrant brick made up the exterior of the two-story building. Above the beautifully trellised entryway was the framed glass that overlooked the foyer, reflecting back the lights of Livia’s car. She could imagine the warm light of a chandelier glowing from within. Across the entryway where a beautifully stained pine door should stand was, instead, heavy construction plastic, gray and dusty and frayed at the edges.

  Megan stepped out of the car and pulled a flashlight from her bag. Livia followed Megan to the front of the car and watched as she played the industrial-style flashlight over the big house, then turned and pointed the light at the neighboring home and ran its powerful beam over the brick. Megan turned in a circle, head tilted back, and looked up into the night sky. Livia knew enough not to interfere. Megan was on her own journey, and Livia was along only for support.

  It was a few minutes before Megan spoke.

  “There!” she said, pointing to the sky.

  Livia looked up to see, high overhead, the lights of a jetliner blinking against the black canvas sky. Megan closed her eyes and listened, nodding her head. She looked back to the sky and watched the plane until it was gone from sight and out of earshot. Then she sat down on the hood of the car and closed her eyes. After twenty minutes, Livia grew anxious, standing in the dark, abandoned subdivision.

  She was gathering the courage to ask some questions when Megan’s eyes shot open, a faint smile finding her face. She began nodding. “Do you hear it?”

  Livia listened to the dead night. “Hear what?”

  “Wait. It will come again.”

  And it did. Faintly in the far distance, Livia heard a train’s whistle.

  Megan looked at Livia, locked her eyes with a triumphant stare. “This is where he kept me. In one of these abandoned homes.”

  “How do you know, Megan?”

  “I’ve searched for months during my lunch hour. Searched for the right distance from the airport. The right flight pattern of the planes. The correct height of their approach. The volume of their engines. And I searched for that whistle. It belongs to a freight train that runs through Halifax County. I know, the best I can remember through the haze of my sedation, that it took about an hour that night to transport me from the cellar to the bunker. With these clues, I visited location after location, but none of them quite fit. Stellar Heights, though . . . it’s the place that brings all those clues together.”

  Again Megan ran the flashlight around the homes, a point source of light in an otherwise black abyss.

  “I’m sure, Livia. This is the place.”

  CHAPTER 52

  August 2016

  The Night of the Abduction

  Casey watched the headlights in his rearview mirror, making sure Nicole was behind him. He’d ignored the chime of h
is phone. He was sure Nicole was calling to inquire why they weren’t headed to Coleman’s. The phone’s ringtone—“Sweet Home Alabama”—was a melodious contrast to the crying and pleading from the girl in the backseat, bound and hooded, who went on in hysterics about her father. Casey turned the radio louder.

  When he reached their destination, he jumped out pushed open the cast-iron gates. Nicole yelled something through her open window but Casey did not acknowledge her. Instead, he climbed back into the Buick and turned into the darkness, following the winding road for several minutes. Finally, bathed in blackness and isolation, he stopped the car and shifted into park. Nicole stopped behind him. The girl’s cries had begun to die down, the sedative finally taking effect. He quickly slammed his door and walked to Nicole’s car.

  “Where are we? This is creepy.”

  “Trust me,” Casey said, sitting in the passenger seat of Nicole’s car. “What I have planned is better than the shed at Coleman’s.”

  Nicole looked around at the abandoned homes with no lights. “Think she’ll be able to find her way out of here? I mean, where the hell are we, anyway?”

  Casey ignored the question. He needed to give the ketamine a little longer. He turned the radio’s volume louder.

  “What did you think of my technique?”

  “I think you’re sadistic,” Nicole said. “Is she freaking out?”

  He didn’t want to talk about the girl, so he slid a hand onto Nicole’s thigh. “So it turned you on?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “When do we screw with her?”

  Casey looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”

  He leaned over and bit Nicole’s earlobe. They frolicked in the car, unaware of the sedan parked down the way, lights extinguished with the driver watching from the darkness. The man grew impatient as his body burned with anticipation. His delivery had arrived. A new girl. One he planned to love and care for more than any other. But his thrill of this night was overshadowed by the pulsing vessel in his neck.

  The Buick Regal was not alone. A second car had trespassed into his secret world of Stellar Heights.

  CHAPTER 53

  November 2017

  Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

  Livia stared at Megan. The car’s headlights were hitting them at thigh-level and gnats floated in their beam.

  “Megan, tell me what you’ve learned.”

  “I know you think my kidnapping is related to Nancy Dee and Paula D’Amato,” Megan said. “I know you’ve tried to find ways to link them and find all the similarities between us. And there are, Livia. So many things are the same. But only when you pointed out those similarities did I notice the differences. The startling ways our cases are unalike.”

  “I don’t understand,” Livia said. “What are you talking about, Megan?”

  “The book,” Megan gave a disgusted laugh. “It’s such bullshit. My celebrity? Fake. Based on a lie. All the girls the book has helped? Nonsense. I used to help girls, back when I ran that retreat. I helped girls fit into high school. That was real. This? Everything I have now from that book, none of it helps anyone. It’s all a lie.”

  “What’s a lie, Megan? What lie are you talking about?”

  “Nancy and Paula were both abused. Sexually assaulted, for months and years. It sickens me. Paula was beaten until she died.”

  “I know, Megan. It’s awful.”

  “Yes. But why was I never touched?”

  Livia squinted in the darkness.

  “He never assaulted me, Livia. Never physically touched me. Dr. Mattingly initially believed I suppressed the abuse, hid it under the effects of the ketamine. But that’s not it, Livia. The physicians who examined me confirmed there was no sexual abuse. No sexual intercourse. Dr. Mattingly speculated that I repressed the memory of other sexual abuse, and he has worked carefully with me during therapy sessions to tease these buried memories from me. The problem is, they don’t exist. He never assaulted me, Livia. So much is similar between Nancy and Paula and me. But so much is different.”

  “I believe you, Megan. He never assaulted you. I believe that. But you never claimed he assaulted you. Not in your book or your interviews. That was never part of your story. You don’t have to defend this point with me or anyone else. There was no lie, Megan. You didn’t lie.”

  “Yes, I did. Not about the abuse. But it helps explain everything else. It makes everything else line up. It exposes my lie for what it is—a goddamn farce that’s taken on a life of its own. For a while, even I believed it.”

  Livia walked closer. “Tell me. What lie, Megan?”

  “About the bunker.”

  Livia waited as Megan continued to play the flashlight over the ghost houses around them. Clearly, her mind was confused and overloaded, processing too many things at once.

  “No, Megan. You were at that bunker. There’s proof of your being there.”

  “I was there. He brought me there. But I never escaped.”

  Livia watched Megan. Tried to read her eyes through the darkness and diagnose if this poor young girl had gone mad from the recent events and the possibility of her abduction being tied to Nancy Dee and Paula D’Amato, two girls who had turned up dead.

  “Of course you escaped, Megan. You are here now. You’re safe. There is no lie.”

  “No,” Megan said, finally taking her eyes off the houses and staring at Livia. “You don’t understand. I am here. I am alive. Nancy and Paula are not. But I’m alive not because I escaped from that bunker. It’s because he let me go.”

  CHAPTER 54

  August 2016

  The Night of the Abduction

  The headlights of Nicole’s car shined into the backseat of the Buick Regal. The girl had settled down now. She no longer kicked at the door or pounded her shoulder into the window. Casey was certain she was lying on the backseat, sleeping in a coma-like slumber. He’d seen it before.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s time.”

  He climbed from Nicole’s car and opened the back door of the Regal. The girl was indeed unconscious, lying like a drunk in the backseat, burlap over her head and zip ties securing her wrists behind her back, one leg splayed across the torn vinyl seat and the other limp on the floorboard.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Nicole asked. She and Casey where bleached by the headlights from Nicole’s car, which also highlighted Megan’s unconscious body.

  “Just taking a little nap.”

  Nicole hesitated. “You give her something?”

  “She’ll be good as new in about an hour.”

  Casey reached in and pulled Megan—floppy-armed and bobbleheaded—out of the car and over his shoulder. He clicked on a flashlight and headed toward one of the houses.

  “What are we doing with her?” Nicole asked.

  Casey didn’t answer, just walked ahead. After a moment of hesitation, Nicole followed.

  Away from the headlights it was pitch-black. Casey shined his flashlight onto the house numbers above the front door. 67. He’d delivered Nancy Dee, a year before, to the house next to this one. And a year before that, he’d brought the Georgia Tech girl named Paula D’Amato to the house two doors down. He’d never had the courage to revisit those homes to see what remained. He knew the Dee girl was gone. But the others . . . he never gathered the nerve to check.

  He walked through the front door with the unconscious girl over his shoulder and Nicole following.

  “What are these empty houses doing here?” Nicole asked.

  Casey kept moving. Toward the cellar door, which he kicked open with his foot and then started down.

  “Casey, stop! This is screwed up.”

  But he was gone a moment later. Swallowed by the dark stairwell.

  CHAPTER 55

  November 2017

  Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

  Megan took off, heading with her flashlight to one of the empty homes. Livia followed. Toward the dark house up the road from where Livia had parked, adjacen
t to the home bathed by the car’s headlights.

  “You ran from that bunker,” Livia said. “The police know you were there. Your prints were found on the door handle. The burlap bag he placed over your head was found in that bunker. Your hair follicles were in the bag. That was a real thing, Megan. You did escape that night. You ran through the woods until Mr. Steinman found you on Highway Fifty-Seven.”

  Megan, a few paces in front of Livia, spoke over her shoulder. “Yes. The bunker was real. It was all real. The forest, the highway. Mr. Steinman, too. But not the escape. The media created that. Dante Campbell and all the others, they wanted the sensationalism. The whole country took that myth and ran with it. I did, too. Embellishing the details in my book until I believed the story myself. But it’s not true.”

  She continued walking toward the house, the beam of her flashlight widening on the brick exterior. Megan jogged to the back of the house and shined the light onto the English windows of the basement. The light shined straight through the windows and into the empty basement. No plywood. She redirected the light to the next house, across two acres of construction and clay and rubble. She ran for it.

  Livia worked to keep up, stumbling over the rubble as she finally came alongside Megan. “Tell me about the bunker, Megan. What’s not true with your story?”

  “I didn’t escape. He left that bunker door open. He did it so I would run.”

  “Why? Megan, why would he do that?”

  “Because there was no other way.”

  “Slow down and help me understand.”

  Megan made it to the rear of the next house and shined her flashlight onto the English windows at the base of the foundation. The light stopped at the yellow-brown plywood that covered the windows. Livia saw the boarded windows and remembered immediately the section in Missing that described such a thing. An eerie feeling came over her.