by Kelvin Teo
Running his hands over the shoulders of the girls, he roused them and was able to get up from the bed. Checking his phone, he saw it was after eight and his battery was close to empty. Rummaging around in his bag, he found his charger and plugged it in and set his phone to charging.
He glanced at the display and saw there was still no service in the area.
He stepped to the window and looked across the parking lot to the garage and saw the door was up and could see some movement inside.
"What’s going on?"
He turned around and a sleepy Ali was stretching and looking at him. As she stretched, she made sure to give him a good shot of her long, brown legs. Something he was powerless to ignore.
When she saw she had his attention, she giggled and slid over next to Lizzie and snuggled up to her.
"Sorry, Danny. You moved."
He laughed and said, "I’m going over to the garage and see what’s going on with the van. Stay here."
It was then he saw a tiny bit of fear in Ali’s eyes and she looked around.
"Clark didn’t come back last night?"
"Apparently not," he said. "How’s your arm, by the way?"
"It’s fine," she said as she moved it around. "It really wasn’t that serious."
"Alright, stay put. I’ll be right back."
He stepped out the door and looked up at the sky. There were some low hanging clouds and they looked just like the kind to drop an inch or two of rain very quickly.
Oh man, I hope they have that van fixed soon.
As he crunched his way across the parking lot, he could see Ricky was in the garage, working on a second car that was there.
"Morning, Ricky."
Ricky came out from under the hood and said, "Hey, mornin’ Danny. Sleep good last night?"
"As good as could be expected, worrying about the van and hoping we’ll be on the road this morning."
He looked over at the van and could see a big empty space under the hood where the radiator is supposed to be.
"That doesn’t look promising," he said.
"Sorry about that," said Ricky. "The radiator didn’t come in until about an hour ago and when we pulled it out of the box, they had sent the wrong one. Zeke got pissed and threw it in the back of the truck and took off. I’d hate to be those guys at the parts place when he gets there."
Danny’s shoulders sagged as he heard the story, but realized getting mad wasn’t going to solve the problem.
"So, hopefully this afternoon?"
"Sure, when Zeke gets back with the right radiator it will only take about an hour to get it put in."
Danny nodded.
"Okay, I’ll leave you alone then. Hey, how bad was the accident yesterday?"
"Accident?"
"Yeah, your mom said you two had to go down the mountain on an accident call yesterday."
"Oh right. Yeah, it was pretty bad. A truck sideswiped a family in a car and sent them into the trees. It took us hours to get the car out."
"Anyone hurt?"
"The whole family was wiped out. Not a pretty sight."
"Oh man, that’s brutal."
"Tell me about it."
"Okay, I’ll check back later."
Walking back to the room, he couldn’t help, but think something wasn’t quite right with the story.
What accident? How many accidents did they handle yesterday?
Walking back into the room, Lizzie was still snoozing on the bed and Danny went over and patted her on the shoulder.
"Hey, sleepy head. Time to rise and shine."
She groaned and rolled over and saw him smiling at her.
"Oh, it’s too early," she said, pulling a pillow over her head.
Danny could hear the shower running in the bathroom and realized he was going to have to wait to go in there and take care of morning business. It had him wondering why he didn’t do it first thing in the morning. Now he had to wait.
Kicking off his shoes, he checked his phone and saw it was fully charged. He hoped it would hold its charge for a couple of days.
He laid down on the other bed and closed his eyes. Laying back, he began to feel like Lizzie. It was much too early to be getting up, though he and the girls had gone to sleep early. Maybe the mountain air was making them tired.
"Danny!"
He shot up in the bed and looked around. The other bed was empty and he looked toward the bathroom. The door was standing wide open and he could see a shadow moving on the door.
Jumping up he ran to the bathroom and found Lizzie standing in the middle of the room, looking at the shower. The shower was still running, but it was empty.
There was no Ali standing in the stream of water.
He looked down and saw her clothes bunched up on the counter, along with her phone, which was plugged into the wall outlet.
"Where is she, Danny?"
He could hear the terror in Lizzie’s voice as he reached into shut off the water.
He turned around walked across the room and picked up his phone. It was fully charged and he saw that he and Lizzie had been asleep for more than an hour.
"Danny, I’m scared."
"I know, Lizzie. I am, too."
He tried dialing 911, but got nothing. For all the help the emergency number was, they might as well have been on the moon.
He went over and checked the door and saw it was still locked, just as it had been when he came back from the garage. She hadn’t gone out that way.
He turned back to the bathroom and looked around. There was a window on the far wall and he went over and pushed on it. Surprisingly, it pushed open easily and silently.
Looking out, he could see the ground was raised all along the backside of the motel, coming up to about two feet from the bottom of the window.
As he looked out, something caught his eye and he felt a stab of fear in his gut.
"Oh shit," he said softly.
Stepping up on the toilet seat, he climbed up and through the window. He walked a few feet away and bent down to pick something up.
Turning back, he saw Lizzie holding the window up and looking through.
"What is it?" she asked.
He didn’t want to show her, but he knew he couldn’t keep it from her either. He held the object up and her face went white.
"Oh my God!"
The bandage from Ali’s arm had a tiny, red line from where it had covered the cut on her arm.
Danny walked over and leaned in the window and tossed the bandage on the counter.
"I’m going to look for her. Keep the door locked."
"You are NOT leaving me here!" she gasped.
He made no attempt to stop her from climbing through the window and helped her to her feet.
He walked over to the place where he had found the bandage and crouched down, looking at the ground.
"Looking for tracks?"
"I’m looking for anything that might tell us which way she went."
He looked, but couldn’t see anything. The ground was hard, so there were no footprints.
"You go over there and we’ll start up the hill. Do not get out of my sight." he said. "Look for anything, like footprints."
"Her footprints will be easy to see if they’re here anywhere."
"Why do you say that?"
"Danny, she’s barefoot and naked."
"Let’s go."
She moved about ten yards to Danny’s right and was about to go more, but he called to her and said that was far enough. He didn’t want her out of his sight.
Moving up the hill, it started to get a little cooler. The gray clouds seemed to have dropped even lower and Danny could feel rain was about to fall. If it did, it would wash away any sign of Ali’s passing.
They had gone about two hundred yards up the hill, not finding anything. Lizzie had resorted to calling out for Ali and Danny considered asking her to stop. If Ali had been taken, he didn’t think it wise to advertise they were out here looking.
; In the end, he knew he couldn’t ask her to stop yelling for Ali. They were best friends and would do anything for each other.
Before they took too many more steps, the rains came and they came with a vengeance. It went from a tiny drizzle, to large drops and onto a full-force thunderstorm in the space of about two minutes.
Danny yelled for Lizzie to come toward him, but she didn’t answer and when he looked, he couldn’t see her through the sheets of rain.
Oh gawd, not her, too.
He stumbled his way through the rain and water coming down the hillside, calling for her. It seemed like every time he called out to her, thunder drowned out his voice, like it was trying to keep him from being heard.
"LIZZIE!"
His heart was pounding in his chest and water was running in his eyes. He stumbled over a rock, sticking out of the ground and went sprawling across the wet ground.. When he pushed himself up, he looked down and saw a pair of sneakers in front of his face.
Looking up, he saw Lizzie standing there, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at something in her hand. When he got up, he saw she was holding a gold pendant on a chain.
"Her mother gave this to her about a month ago. She would sooner die than to take this off."
Danny looked at her and even though they were standing in a raging storm, he could tell she was crying.
He reached out and closed her fingers over the pendant.
"Put this in your pocket and you can be sure to give it back to her when we find her. Right now, we have to get back inside."
She looked up at him.
"We’re going to stop looking?"
"Lizzie, in this storm we’re just as likely to get ourselves lost or killed. We need to go back to the room and wait for this storm to pass."
Lizzie turned and looked up the mountain and screamed.
"ALI!"
Danny put an arm around her and they started walking back down the hill. He could feel her shaking and it wasn’t from the cold rain that assaulted them.
As they stumbled to the back of the motel, they came to the open window and looked down. There was a gap between the back of the building and the raised earth. Figuring the owners didn’t want the ground right up against the building, they had left a gap.
Danny looked down into the gap and couldn’t see much in the darkness. He was more interested in getting Lizzie back inside the room. Both of them were soaked and he could feel the chill of the water beginning to soak into his bones. He knew Lizzie had to be feeling the same thing.
He helped her back through the window and crawled through himself and saw they were tracking half the mountainside into the bathroom with them.
At the moment, he didn’t give a damn about that.
After he secured the window and turned around, Lizzie was just standing there, staring at the window. She was also shaking badly and he knew the cold was starting to get to her. She probably didn’t even notice it, being so worried about her friend being out there.
He reached into the shower and turned on the hot water and then kicked off his shoes and socks. Dropping his pants he noticed she wasn’t even registering him at the moment.
He bent down and started untying her laces and helped pull her shoes and socks off and then, taking quite a bit of liberty, he opened her pants and pulled them down.
She didn’t even resist. She was still staring out the window.
Taking her by the hand, he pulled her into the shower and got her under the warm water. As the warmth began to seep into her body, she began to huddle up close to him and he started rubbing her back.
"Where do you think she is, Danny?"
Her face was pressed up against his chest and she sounded like a very scared, little girl.
"I don’t know, Lizzie, but I promise, as soon as this storm breaks, we’ll go back out and look for her."
She pulled away for a moment and looked down.
"I can’t believe I let you get me out of my pants so easily."
He tried to smile, but his face wasn’t having any of it.
"To be honest, sweets, getting into your pants is the last thing on my mind right now."
She pressed back up against him and he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight. He wasn’t going to let her be taken.
7
The rain kept up for over three hours and by the time it let up, it was already dark outside and both of them knew it would be pointless to go looking for her.
They left the room and walked over to the garage, to find Zeke working on the car his brother had been working on that morning.
"You’re not working on our van right now?" asked Danny.
Zeke looked over and said, "Nope, the parts place didn’t have the right radiator. They ordered it while I was standing right there and promised it would be the first delivery tomorrow as soon as it came in."
Lizzie turned and looked at Danny and she had a terrified look on her face.
"Look," said Zeke, "I’m really sorry about this, but being up here in the mountains, we run into this kind of stuff all the time."
"We need to contact the sheriff," said Danny.
"Woah, I don’t think we need the sheriff to handle this little problem."
"It has nothing to do with the van. It’s about the fact that two of our friends are now missing and I’m scared something has happened to them."
"Two are missing?" asked a voice behind them.
Ricky had just walked out of the office and was wiping his hands on an oily cloth.
"Yes, the other guy and girl that were with us," said Danny, looking at him. "You guys wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?"
"Are you kidding?" asked Ricky. "Why would we know anything?"
"That’s why I want to get the sheriff up here. He can organize a search party and we can find them."
"Well," said Zeke, "we’d certainly call him, but the storm knocked out the phones."
"I thought the phones were out for the last couple of weeks? At least, that’s what your mama said."
"They were. They came back on this morning, but then the storm came up this afternoon and knocked them right out again. It’s the damnedest thing."
"Uh huh," said Danny as he looked back and forth between them. "Can we borrow your truck for an hour or so? I want to drive down to the convenience store."
"Man, I’d really like to help you there," said Zeke, "but that thing has such bad brakes, I’d be scared to let you drive it even twenty feet."
"Any other vehicles?"
"Nope, just that truck and the tow truck and it would be against the law for me to let you drive that."
Danny looked at him, pushing down the urge to lash out. He could tell they were full of shit and doing everything to keep them from getting off that mountain.
"C’mon, Lizzie," he said, taking her hand. "Let’s go back to the room."
After they got safely back to the room, she unloaded on him.
"Why didn’t you say something? You know they’re lying!"
"Shhh, quietly." he said, holding up his hands. "Lizzie, we’re stuck on this mountain. No one knows we’re here and we’re surrounded by a bunch of redneck hillbillies. This is just the kind of thing horror movies are made of. We need to be very careful about what we say and do."
She plopped down on the bed, knowing what he was saying was true and she began to cry. He walked into the bathroom and grabbed a handful of toilet paper and brought it back to her. As she wiped her face and nose, she looked at him and shook her head.
"What are we going to do?"
"We’re going to wait a couple of hours and then slip out of here quietly. We’re walking out of here. By the time the sun comes up, we’ll be out of the mountains and back to civilization."
"We’re just going to leave Ali and Clark?"
"Lizzie, we are both out of our element here. Way outside of it. We have no clue where Ali was taken or where Clark went off to last night. We could go searching that mountain o
urselves, but the storm will have washed away every bit of evidence of where Ali went and I’m thinking Clark probably walked out of here, himself."
"And left all his stuff?" she asked as she waved toward his bag.
"Yeah, that wouldn’t seem like the thing to do."
"Can I ask you a question and you promise not to get mad?"
"Lizzie, I will not get mad at anything you have to ask. We’re in this together."
She bit her lower lip and then asked, "Do you think Clark could have done something to Ali?"
Danny sank down onto the other bed, facing her and took a deep breath. He was searching for the words, wanting to make sure she wouldn’t take things the wrong way.
"I thought about that, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do something like this."
"You’re really sure?"
"Liz, think about it. Why would he need to? Ali has already shown she likes him and given half the chance, she probably would have crawled into bed with him, naked as the day she was born. You’re her friend. Tell me if I’m right."
Lizzie shrugged and said, "Yeah, you’re right. If we weren’t here to keep them from doing it, she’d probably wrap her skinny legs around him in a heartbeat."
"So, he’d have no reason to kidnap her from the bathroom. I know he can seem like a bit of an ogre sometimes, but he really is a good guy deep down inside."
"Yeah, all he really would have needed to do is ask her if she wanted to go for a walk."
"So, that leaves us back at the beginning," said Danny. "We can safely assume she didn’t crawl out the window, bare ass naked, all by herself. She was taken against her will."
Lizzie nodded slightly and had to dab her eyes again as the tears began to form. Their little talk hadn’t done anything to calm her. Having it pointed out they were living in the middle of the scariest horror movie she’d ever heard of was enough to make her want to puke.
Standing up, she walked to the bathroom and then stopped. Looking in, she saw all the mud they had brought in with them and then she saw Ali’s clothes, still sitting on the counter. She felt a shiver of fear wash over her.
"Can you do me a favor?"
"Sure. What do you need?" he said as he stood up and walked to her.