by Ricky Fry
If you’re the boy, then I like the part when he dies.
He pushed the chair back and stood. “I’m going into town for another supply run. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
At least it meant he would leave me alone. I waited until I heard the sound of his old truck starting up and tires rolling down the drive. When I was sure he was gone, I got back to work on the bolt.
In an hour, my fingers were sore, so I wrapped the chain with a blanket and kept swinging up and down, and more flecks of concrete fell away from the wall.
The bolt must have been set deep. Despite my efforts, it wouldn’t budge. Still, I wouldn’t lose hope. It was like that movie, Shawshank Redemption, where the lead character spent years digging a hole through his cell wall with a tiny rock pick. I would never give up, not until I was free of this place and had my revenge on Travis.
My work was interrupted by the sound of a vehicle approaching the cabin. It had been less than two hours, not long enough for Travis to make it all the way into town and back. I dropped the blanket and leaned against the chains until I caught a glimpse of the vehicle out of the tiny window.
It wasn’t Travis’ truck. It was a passenger car, a faded and off-putting shade of red.
I wanted to scream for help, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I’d grown more cautious during my days in the basement and decided to wait until I could be certain it wasn’t someone who might do me harm.
Upstairs, I heard the front door open, followed by footsteps on the wooden floorboards.
“Oh, my lord! What happened here?” It was a woman’s voice. I guessed she was older, maybe fifty or sixty. Perhaps she’s seen the charred walls of the kitchen.
“What has that boy done? I swear, he’ll never learn.”
It’s his mother. Or an aunt, maybe. No, only a mother could talk about her own son that way.
“Please! I’m down here. You have to come and help me. Oh, please help me!”
The footsteps stopped.
“Down here,” I screamed. “I’m down here in the basement.”
Several minutes passed before the footsteps resumed. I heard the rustling of pots and pans, glasses being taken down from the cupboard.
In another few minutes, there was the jingling of keys, and the basement door opened. A woman, heavyset, struggled as she lowered herself down the stairs. In her hands, she carried the same Mickey Mouse serving tray, two steaming mugs of some hot liquid on top.
“Please,” I said. “He’s trapped me down here. You have to help me. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to make it.”
“Now, now, honey.” Her voice had a peculiar accent I couldn’t place, Southern maybe. “Just calm yourself. No use getting your panties all in a bunch. I made tea. Would you like some?”
“No, I don’t want any tea. Do you have the keys? You must have the keys.” I held up my hands so she could see the cuffs around my wrists. “There’s a wrench upstairs. Oh, please help me before he comes back.”
She seemed entirely oblivious to my plight. I thought maybe she was senile. I’d spent a summer working in a nursing home and had seen firsthand the effects dementia had on the elderly.
She placed a mug on the ground in front of me, careful not to come too close, then took a seat on the chair.
She sipped from her mug. “What’s your name, honey?”
“Spencer,” I said. “Spencer Madison.”
“You a girl, ain’t you?”
“Can’t you see what’s happening?” I wondered how long it might be before Travis returned. “I’m a prisoner. Travis kidnapped me.”
Her face remained completely unchanged as if my words had failed to register. “Kind of a funny name for a girl, don’t you think?”
My pleas for help weren’t working, so I took the tea in my hands and sipped. “Yes, ma’am. I get that a lot. What’s your name?”
“Henrietta,” she said, “on account of my father’s name was Henry. Never did like the name very much.”
“Well, Henrietta, there’s a wrench upstairs. Do you think you could find it for me?”
“Oh no, he wouldn’t be very happy if I did that.”
“Who? Who wouldn’t be happy?”
“My Travis.”
So she is the mother.
“I told him not to bring another girl here. But he’s never listened to me, that boy. Not even when he was shitting in diapers.”
“Another girl?”
“Oh, honey. You don’t really think you’re the first girl he’s ever fallen in love with? You’re pretty. I’ll give you that. Even if you do have a boy’s name.”
I already knew from the tooth I’d found in the crack I wasn’t the first. What was even more shocking was that his own mother seemed to know about the things he’d done.
She took another sip of her tea. “I have to say I was a bit surprised to hear you down here. I wasn’t expecting he’d find one so soon—not after the last mess. Oh, it took me ages to clean up all the blood. But what good is a mother if not to look after her son?”
It was clear she wasn’t going to rescue me. I’d need a different strategy. “But I love him,” I said. “I love Travis.”
“Liar!” She threw her mug on the floor, and it shattered into a thousand pieces.
“It’s true.”
“No one could ever love my son. He’s a monster. Came right out of the womb that way, screaming and gnawing at my tits with those filthy little gums from the day he was born.”
“So then why do you help him?”
She looked around at the scattered pieces of the broken mug and sighed. “Now, look what you’ve made me do. I was really enjoying that tea.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you didn’t answer my question, Henrietta. Can I call you Henrietta?”
She nodded.
“If he’s such a monster, why do you help him?”
“It’s simple,” she said. “I’m his mother. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
I couldn’t argue with the logic of her answer. “You know, there’s more than one way to help Travis. He’s sick, Henrietta. He needs the care of professionals.”
“You mean head shrinkers?”
“No, I mean people trained to take care of someone like him. There are places he could go.”
Places where they’d lock him up and throw away the key.
“You want me to send my boy away? Lock him up in the funny farm with the mouth breathers and droolers? Oh no, I don’t think so.”
“Maybe there’s another option. Why don’t you help me out of the basement, and we’ll make you another cup of tea, figure things out together?”
“I don’t like you,” she said. “You’re a city girl—the kind of folks who think they’re better and smarter than us country bumpkins. And you talk too much.”
I was about to prove her point by speaking again when I heard another set of tires crunching over the gravel in the driveway.
Is Travis back so soon?
Henrietta stood and went over to the window. I could tell from the look of surprise that crossed her face, it was not Travis in the driveway. It was someone else, someone she hadn’t been expecting.
There was a knock on the front door and a voice calling out from the porch. “Hello? It’s Sheriff Johnson. Henrietta? Travis? Is anyone home?”
She leaped from the chair and flung herself at me, bringing her fat hand over my mouth before I had a chance to scream. “Shush, girl. Don’t you dare make a sound, or I’ll kill you myself.”
The front door swung open, and I heard footsteps above in the living room.
“Henrietta? I saw your car in the driveway. You down in the basement?”
Henrietta whispered in my ear. “Be a good girl now, and don’t cause no problems. Be a good girl, and nobody has to get hurt.”
She released her grip and started up the stairs, taking care to close the door gently behind her. I leaned forward, struggling to make out their conversation.
“Oh, Jim Tanner in town said Travis had come by the store a few days back, and he saw your car over at Fleming’s Beauty Parlor this morning.” The sheriff’s voice was warm and friendly, not the voice of someone who suspected a kidnapping victim was stashed away right beneath his boots. “Figured you two might be staying up here at the cabin. Listen, we’ve had quite a few mountain lion sightings this year. I wanted to come by and warn you myself.”
“Mountain lions? Oh, good heavens. Well, Travis has a shotgun. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I don’t have much to eat, or I’d offer you something, and well, I’m terribly busy with the laundry.”
“Oh, that’s alright,” he said. “Don’t want to trouble you folks none. You say hello to Travis for me.”
It was my only chance. I threw my head back and screamed. “Help! I’m down here. They’ve kidnapped me. Please, help me!”
“Now, what in the hell is that?”
I heard the shuffling of his boots moving closer to the basement door.
“Oh, it’s that old washer,” she said. “Makes such terrible noises.”
“The washer?” said the sheriff. His voice had changed into something more serious. “Henrietta, you got someone down in the basement?”
I screamed again.
“Zeke Johnson,” she said, “don’t you open that door.”
“Sit down, Henrietta. And keep your hands where I can see them.”
The door opened to reveal a thin man holding a large revolver in both hands. He was old, maybe in his sixties or even seventies, with a grey beard that framed his slender, chiseled face.
His eyes grew wide as he caught sight of me. “Sweet Jesus.”
“They’re going to kill me,” I said. “Please, you have to help me.”
He took a few cautious steps down the stairs, his gun still pointed in front of him. “Don’t you worry, darling. It’s okay now. Sheriff Johnson is here.”
My body went limp. It was over. Help had come. There was still the case in Portland and the threats Matt had made the night I’d fled with his car, but at least I’d be free of Travis and the basement. Tears welled up in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”
He scanned the room as he neared the bottom of the stairs, his gaze jumping between the bucket of puke and piss and the chains around my wrists. “In all my years—”
I didn’t have time to warn him. Henrietta came racing down the stairs with the kind of quickness I’d never seen in someone her age. I’d only opened my mouth to scream when she brought a large frying pan crashing down on the back of his head. He stumbled forward and fell face-first down the remaining stairs. There was a loud crack as he hit the floor, and blood oozed from his mouth.
That’s when Travis appeared at the top of the stairs, still holding a bag of groceries in each hand. “Oh, mama. What have you done?”
NINETEEN
“It wasn’t me,” she said. “It was the girl. She screamed, Travis. I had no choice. She made me do it.”
He’d put the grocery bags down and was standing with his mother at the bottom of the stairs. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw you on the news. They said your partner had been killed, and the van you were driving went missing. They said you might be dead too, murdered by two fugitives from justice. But I knew, Travis. You’re my son. I knew.”
He lowered his head like a little boy being scolded by the teacher. “I’m sorry, mama.”
She turned and pointed in my direction. “So soon? You know what happened to the last one.”
Just then, the sheriff gasped for air and choked on the blood between his lips.
“Oh, heck,” she said. “I thought I’d killed him.”
Travis stomped up the stairs and came back with a plastic grocery bag.
The poor sheriff’s eyes had the same expression as the deer I’d hit in Matt’s Audi, just before it bounced off the hood of the car.
“Please,” he said, blood spurting out of his mouth.
But it was too late.
Travis pulled the plastic bag over the old man’s head and held it tight. In another minute, it was all over.
“We both killed him,” said Henrietta. “Now, you’re gonna help me clean this up.”
“What do we do, mama?”
He was no longer the man I’d seen bossing around girls in the back of a van. He was no longer the tough guy who’d slapped me around. He was a scared boy, cowering to his mother’s every command.
“Well, we can’t leave him here. Go out to the shed and get a tarp. There’s blood everywhere. We’ve got to roll him up before we move him.”
Travis did what his mother said, and I was left alone with her again.
“I knew Zeke ever since we moved up here when I was in middle school,” she said. “Shoot, must be going on fifty years. He was older, of course. Took my sister Mary to the prom. She died a few years back, my sister. Lung cancer. Now here’s Zeke, dead as a doorknob.”
“And you’re still here,” I said, my head spinning from the murder I’d witnessed. I’d never seen a dead body before and wondered if that’s what I would look like after they killed me—just a bag of skin and bones.
She let out a little chuckle like she was surprised and amused at the same time. “You’re right. I’m still here. It’s a shame you won’t be around for much longer. But I can’t allow it, not after what you’ve seen.”
What are you waiting for?
Death would have come as a relief. But no matter how much I felt like giving up, there was still some part of me that wanted to live. It burned inside me, right next to the rage and the desire to kill Travis. Now I wanted to kill his mother too.
Travis returned with the tarp, and they rolled the sheriff up into a tidy bundle.
“Help me get him up the stairs,” said Henrietta.
“And then what?”
“Then we put him in his car, roll it off that cliff five miles down the road. Must be two or three-hundred feet down to the bottom. He’ll be busted up so bad they’ll think it was an accident—if they ever even find him.”
“But mama, don’t you think we oughta wait until after dark?”
She shook her head. “Can’t risk it. What if someone wanders up the drive and sees his car parked outside? This way, if anyone knew he was stopping by, we can say he never came, and they’ll think he crashed on his way.”
Travis took a moment to consider. “That’s smart, mama. Real smart. But what if someone sees me driving his patrol car?”
“Ain’t too many folks on that road. You just sit real low in the seat, boy. Put his hat and glasses on and raise a hand in front of your face to wave if anyone passes. And Travis, be careful when you push the car over.”
“Yes, mama. But how will I get back?”
“You got legs, don’t you? But don’t follow the road; someone’s bound to see you that way. Come up the creek bed and cross through the woods back to the cabin.”
I watched as they worked together, mother and son, to haul the sheriff’s dead weight up the wooden steps. Then I heard the car pull out of the driveway and wondered if Henrietta would come back down and kill me herself.
She appeared a few minutes later with a mop and a big yellow bucket. “Bleach,” she said. “That’s the trick to cleaning up bloodstains. They can come in with those special cameras, you know? Blue lights or something. I saw it on one of those crime scene shows I like watching on Sunday nights. Comes in real handy at a time like this.”
She made several passes with the mop, each time emptying the reddish water in the bucket and adding a fresh round of bleach. She didn’t finish until the water in the bucket was clear.
“Gotta let the bleach sink in real good. Down into the cracks and crevices. Most people end up rushing the job and wind up missing a spot.”
I had to give it to the crazy old woman. She certainly knew how to cover up a murder. Still, I
clung to the hope that someone would come looking for the sheriff and find me before it was too late—before I was just another murder for Henrietta to cover up.
By the time Travis came back, it was nearly dark outside the window. Henrietta had gone upstairs to the kitchen for more tea while I sat looking at the place where the sheriff had breathed his last breath.
I wonder if he has grandkids.
I pushed the thought out of my mind as they both came slogging down the stairs. Travis’ boots and pants were muddy, and there was a scratch on one cheek.
“It’s time,” said Henrietta. “You have to kill her now, son. She’s already seen far too much.”
“But mama—”
“Don’t you ‘but mama’ me, boy. She’s a liability. A risk. And if anyone wanders in and finds her like the poor sheriff did, she’ll send us both to death row.”
If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would have had time to feel sorry for Travis. His mother was insane. Murderous even. It’s no wonder he turned out the way he did.
“I won’t do it.”
“You should have thought about that before you went and kidnapped another one.”
It’s an odd thing, listening to two people deliberate your death as if you weren’t in the room. I began to feel as if I was floating out of my body, watching the scene unfold as I hovered near the ceiling.
“But I love her, mama. She’s the one.”
“Oh, you stupid, silly boy. Do you really think she’s ever going to love you back? Look at her, Travis. You’ve got her locked up in chains and pissing in a bucket.”
I snapped back into my body with sudden clarity and knew exactly what I had to do. “I do love him,” I said. “I love you, Travis. I want to be with you forever and always, like Liang and the princess.”
His face lit up. “See, mama. She loves me too.”
“She’s only saying that so you won’t kill her. Don’t be fooled by some wretched little whore.”
“She’s wrong,” I said. “She’s wrong, Travis. I didn’t see it before, but I love you now.”
Henrietta turned to face me, rage spilling out of her narrowed eyes. “Shut up, whore! Nobody loves my son except for me.”