Turning, I held the phone back up to my face, staring down at the display panel. I thumbed the command that would reveal Whalen’s number. The caller ID came back, “Restricted Number.” With trembling fingers I began to dial 9-1-1.
But before I fingered the second number in the sequence, I stopped myself cold.
I stared out into the thickening darkness and the silence of the apartment. What if the police come to my home? Whalen must be watching me. He must have been watching me now for weeks; months. What will he do when he sees the police car? What kind of revenge will he take out on Michael?
All strength seeped out of me. My hand and the phone it gripped fell to the side. I had no idea which way to turn for help. Not without getting Michael killed in the process.
I sensed someone behind me.
I knew he was there before I actually saw him. Something inside my brain went click. My eyes rolled back into their sockets. The wood floor beneath me turned to mud. I turned around, but did so in slow motion. I screamed but the sound of my voice was like an old vinyl record played at slow speed. When my eyes connected with his, I felt all oxygen leave my lungs. It was as if I’d been kicked in the stomach by an invisible booted foot.
There he was: the source of my fear; the author of my texts.
You are one day early…
He was the old man from the Hollywood Carwash. His was the face from ViCAP. He was the monster from my dreams. He was shaven clean now, and what had been long white hair was now a bald scalp. His face was gaunt, cheeks sallow, chin protruding. His pallor was chalk-pale. Dark round eyes made the paleness all the whiter.
Now for certain I remembered the face. I remembered the man; the monster.
I took in all these details with every single one of my senses as he approached me in the hall of my apartment, dressed in the worn work-boots and the blue uniform of the apartment complex maintenance crew. Standing there I could only wonder how he managed to get Michael out of there without anyone spotting him. He must have wrapped Michael up in the rug, dragged him out the front door like a piece of furniture. There were always people moving in and out of these apartments. Who would notice?
In one hand he held a needle and syringe. In the other, a pistol. He stared into my eyes as I began to feel myself losing all sense of balance.
“My other little kitten is gone,” he sobbed, in a gruff, high-pitched moan.
“Molly died,” I choked.
“Cry, cry, cry,” he whispered, his eyes tearing, his bottom lip protruding out in pout position. “Cry, cry, cry.”
He hadn’t yet touched me with the tip of that needle before I passed out.
Chapter 47
Molly enters the house in the woods before me. She is not bothered by the smell anymore than she is bothered by the creepy feel of spider webs that hang from the ceilings and the walls. In a word, the interior is trashed, with broken furniture scattered all about what was once an open living room. Looking all around me, I see that most of the walls have been opened up probably with claw hammers, almost all of the copper piping and wiring torn away by scrap hunters. There’s an old chandelier that hangs from the ceiling, its bulbs gone along with any crystals that once hung from it.
And that smell. It’s just as bad inside as it is outside.
“ Come on,” Molly says. “I want to show you the upstairs.”
Out the corner of my eye, I make out the staircase that leads up to a second floor. Its treads are no longer level, but leaning inwards. Just looking at them frightens me so that I can’t imagine stepping on them, bearing weight upon them. But Molly isn’t the least bit afraid. She heads to the stairs and in the home’s semi-darkness, begins climbing them, one at a time.
I follow.
As we ascend the staircase in near pitch darkness I begin to smell a new odor. It’s the same smell you get inside an old abandoned barn. The smell of cats and their urine. As we come to the second floor landing, a black cat scurries out from a room at the far end of the hall, runs right past us.
“ Hi Blacky,” Mol says, as the cat leaps back down the steps.
“ Obviously you two are acquainted,” I say.
“ We’re old friends,” she adds.
“ Look at all this room, Bec,” she goes on. “There’re two rooms apiece for us.”
I go no further than the first bedroom. There’s an old bare mattress set out on the floor, its rusted springs sticking out of the holes. There are dark spatter stains on the walls that remind me of blood. There’s an exposed light bulb that hangs down from a wire. If it were not for the sunlight that sneaks in through the cracked double-hung windows, the place would be pitch black.
I find myself shaking. I’m having trouble breathing. I get the feeling something bad has happened here. Something bad enough for the place to have been abandoned.
“ I’m going back down, Mol,” I say through shivering teeth. “I don’t like it up here.”
“ Don’t like it?” she says, running from room to room, jumping up and down on the bare mattresses. “It’s all ours.”
I turn back for the stairs. That’s when I hear the front door slam shut.
The Woods
Chapter 48
The cell phone woke me from out of a drug-induced sleep. I raised myself up, scraping away the wet pine needles that were stuck to my right cheek. I opened my eyes onto a darkness broken only by a tiny flashing red light embedded inside the plastic phone casing. Climbing onto my knees, I reached out for the phone, opened it, and held it up to my ear.
I was wet and shivering. I was also dizzy, out of balance. Out of instinct, I pressed the phone to my ear, listened for a voice. But then it dawned on me that there would be no voice.
Setting the phone flat in the palm of my hand, I peered down at the light radiant screen. Opening and closing my eyes, I tried hard to focus.
Do you luv Michael little kitten?
I thumbed in an answer. Pounded it in.
Do not hurt him.
It took forever to type in the letters, my eyes straining to focus in the light rain and through the haze of the sedation.
Another text came through.
Cry, cry, cry little kitten.
No choice but to play the game. That meant telling the truth.
I luv Michael.
I awaited Whalen’s reply. It came quickly, as though the text had been prepared well ahead of time as a quick text.
Flashlight is at your feet. Pick it up and turn it on little kitten.
From down on my knees, I reached out with my free hand, probing the wet mix of pine needles, leaves and raw earth with bear fingers until I located the heavy flashlight. The light not only provided me with a means of vision, it also revealed the truth: Whalen had dropped me inside a patch of thick woods. The monster had drugged me, hauled me out to some remote area and dropped my unconscious body inside it. Somewhere wild, somewhere dense with cover. Somewhere cold.
Another text.
Go to pictures little kitten.
I thumbed the menu key. A second screen appeared, this one offering eight options. The first for recent calls, the second for personal phone book, the third for games. And so on. I fingered the number 6 on the keypad. A picture appeared. A man who had been bound with silver duct tape. A man of medium build forced down on his knees. Like me, he seemed to be kneeling inside a thick patch of woods, while a bright white light shined on him, as if coming from a set of headlights. In the picture I could see that the man’s hair was dark, thick. He was bare-chested. The mustached face had been covered with separate strips of duct tape, one covering the eyes, the other covering the mouth, leaving only an exposed nose through which to breathe.
The tape acted like a mask. But I didn’t need to view the entire face to recognize Michael.
I wiped the beaded rainwater from the small screen, moving on to the next picture. Michael was still down on his knees. Only this time, he wasn’t inside a patch of woods. He was inside a building or a house. Down in
side a basement. He was down on his knees on a hard-packed gravel and dirt floor. Surrounding him were stone and cinder block walls. He was bathed in harsh white light, just like in the previous picture. Probably from an exposed light bulb. I knew that basement, knew what had happened there. To Molly and me.
I dropped the phone, fell to my knees, and coughed up bile. The acidic bile filled my mouth, burned my throat. Spitting it out, I inhaled deeply of the cool wet air. I was afraid to pick the phone back up; afraid of what came next. I’d already seen enough.
But then I had no choice but to pick the phone back up. No choice but to keep on looking. It seemed to take every ounce of my will, but I thumbed to the next picture and drew my eyes to the screen.
This time I saw myself. Rather, not only myself, but Michael and I seated on the couch in my apartment, sipping wine. The picture appeared to have been snapped from directly outside the apartment window.
I depressed the keypad, moved on to the next picture. And the next, and the next…
Me, knapsack in one hand, one of Franny’s canvases in the other, moving toward my Cabriolet inside an empty downtown Broadway parking garage; me running for the Cabriolet; me jumping behind the wheel… Me standing on the porch of my parents’ home, staring out onto the woods and Mount Desolation beyond them… Me holding the black and white photo of Molly and me in my hand as I sat down onto the porch, pressed my back up against the clapboard wall… Me in bed, my eyes wide open in alarm, Michael asleep beside me…
I guess I wasn’t nuts after all. Whalen had been following me all along.
More photos appeared. Black and white images.
Molly and I when we were no more than three, running in the backyard behind our farmhouse. A color shot of Molly and me waiting for the school bus in our St. Catherine’s elementary school white and blue checkered uniform skirts. Molly and I as pre-teens playing one of our nightly games of flashlight tag in the tall grass behind our home on a hot summer’s night. Molly in her bed asleep; me undressing in my bedroom, both photos no doubt having been shot from outside our windows where Whalen must have perched himself on the porch overhang.
All those years ago…
Chapter 49
The phone pulsed in my hand. Thumbing SEND I read,
Run away little kitten. I’m going to chase u now. You remember the game. Flashlight tag. Cry, cry, cry.
I peered at the radiant display hoping that I would wake up from a dream. But this wasn’t a dream. It was the past relived. This was Whalen chasing Molly and me through the woods, again.
I closed the phone, shoved it in my pocket, looked up at the sky and saw only darkness and clouds illuminated by the distant flicker of lightning. I had to find a way to deal, get a grip.
I started by gripping the flashlight and aiming it dead ahead.
Chapter 50
The flashlight lit up a stand of brush, vines and trees directly in front of me. Making my way through that thick stuff would have been impossible. Shifting clockwise I began to pivot on the balls of my feet like a dancer pirouetting in slow motion. I kept this rotation up, keeping the shining light out ahead of me, until I recognized a narrow foot or deer trail that cut through the thick woods. Probably the same trail that had been here since Molly and I were girls.
I was doing my best to think clearly, without panic. Doing my best not to lose it. Doing my best not to lose my mind. If ever I wished Molly by my side, now was the time. I had to force myself to think like her. What would she do?
Swallowing a breath, I spoke to myself in a calm, collected manner. You need to figure out which way you are going so that you do not start running around in circles.
I aimed the flashlight up at a black and blue sky. No chance of viewing any stars or moon. Not that it would make an ounce of difference. I shined the light straight ahead toward the trail, then turning, shined it behind me. That’s when something began to go rapidly south.
The flashlight began to fade.
The beam started to fade to a kind of yellowish half light. My pulse picked up. I opened my mouth, allowing some of the rain to fall onto my tongue.
What I would do without the light? What would I do in the pitch dark? How would I find the house? How would I find Michael?
I shook the flashlight, but it was a useless, wasted motion. Common sense told me to use whatever available power I had left in the flashlight to enter onto the trailhead and get the hell away from this place. I aimed the dim light out ahead of me, making my way across the clearing in what I could only pray was Michael’s direction.
I was standing at the edge of the chosen trail when the flashlight went dead.
Chapter 51
Rain began to pour down in sheets of painful, ice-like bullets. The heavy cloud cover surrounded the hillside like a vapor ring. Directly before me came the intermittent explosions of lightning. Without them the darkness of the woods would have been absolute and impenetrable. Because of the cloud cover, no stars shined up above. No moonbeams penetrated the low lying mist and fog.
Another quick shot of lightning caught my attention just as I began the sightless journey onto the narrow trailhead. As I was about to place boot-heel to the soft mud-covered floor, the lightning struck the ground somewhere off in the distant valley, toward the field and my parents’ house at the far end of it. Because of its flat, dark appearance, I became convinced that I was looking directly at my parents’ property.
What had seemed like a dream was now painfully real. Whalen had kidnapped Michael and I, somehow dragged us up to Mount Desolation. Michael was inside that old house in the woods. He was tied up, held hostage in the basement. If I didn’t get to him before Whalen got to me, he would die. Or maybe we would both die anyway.
I inhaled a deep breath, exhaled, tried to get my head together, tried to think logically, without fear or emotion clouding my judgment. The distant lightning strikes provided just enough light to tell me the path I was about to tread would lead downhill. Downhill toward the house.
I also knew that downhill could be deceiving. Mount Desolation wasn’t really a mountain at all. It was made up of several large hills that crested and dipped before finally the flat, heavily wooded land took over. I also knew that if the empty field behind my parents’ house was located in front of me, then so was that terrible house in the woods.
Whether I liked it or not, that was my direction. I was the blind woman forced to move by touch, one foot before the other, the rain coming down stronger now against my face and head, running down my scrunched brow in streaks.
A branch slapped me in the face and my eyes teared up. Big tears fell and mixed with the rain on my face. I tried to stay on the narrow trail. I was blind, trying to stay free and clear of the brush and the trees; trying to do it by touch, by feel, with arms and hands extended out in front of me while I moved at a slow, frustrating trot.
Another lightning bolt revealed a landscape of thick, dripping growth. The sight of it lasted only a split second. Pine trees, mulberry bushes intermixed with birches and oaks. Still another bolt revealed something else-something scattering before me. Something alive, quick and fleeting.
At first I thought it might be a dog. Maybe a deer. Instinct spoke to me, told me to drop to my knees while gripping the flashlight, holding it out before me. It was my only available weapon. Lightning struck. Thunder exploded. The concussion took my breath away, shook the ground at my feet. Lightning restored my sense of sight. It allowed me to spot the monster, if only for an instant. That single instant is all it took for me to know the truth.
Whalen blocked the trail.
Whalen, head shaved, dressed in dark clothing, smiling, eyes covered with goggles. Green tinted eyes. Green tinted, mechanical, night vision eyes. He stood in the center of the narrow trail, heavy rain water washing over his lean body.
All oxygen escaped my lungs. Blindness returned. But not for long.
More lightning lit up the night sky. Another eye view of the path came and went with the
speed of a heartbeat.
Now the path was clear.
Like the lightning, Whalen had vanished in an instant.
Now you see the devil. Now you don’t.
Chapter 52
When I tried to walk, I tripped. With every step I took along the trail in the darkness came a branch slap to the face, a tree trunk to the thigh, a boulder to the shin. I caught a thorn from a thick bush that hung over the trail. It tore into my jeans, penetrating the skin on my lower calf. I knew I was cut. Not because I could feel the sting. But because I could feel the blood trickling down the calf muscle, warm and wet, the thick consistency not at all like the cold October rain.
It was a struggle to get anywhere in the dark. Five minutes of walking and stumbling, and I managed to cover no more than thirty or forty feet. Whether or not I was maintaining a straight line was a mystery to me. I might as well have been crawling.
The only way to continue with the blind trek was to drop down onto hands and knees, feel my way along the gravel trail the same way an animal might do it: by touch, by smell, by sound. By using as many senses as possible.
It’s exactly what I did.
From down on all fours I crawled over the smooth rocks and mud-covered gravel toward the sound of water. Not rain water falling from the sky, but stream water running heavily into a pool. I knew the pool from my childhood. It had to be the same one. The more I crawled the louder, more forceful it became. I knew the pool was situated close to the house in the woods. No more than a couple hundred feet separated the pool from the house.
I was closer to Michael than I thought. Just the thought of going to him, helping him, offered me a trace of hope and a trace was better than nothing at all.
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