by Paul Pen
He remembered everything.
The portrait he’d seen in the living room hadn’t been a dream. Nor had the identical girls, or being run over by a truck, or waking up among cactuses, or the way they had dragged him over the ground and up the stairs to put him in this room. He was in a bed. The stone with eyes observed him from a bedside table. Next to it was a glass, a pitcher of water, medicine boxes. He looked at the ceiling, then at his body, covered by a sheet. He wanted to get up, but neither his legs nor his arms obeyed his orders. They just squirmed, obstructed by one another, connected in some strange way.
The sound of the mattress springs alerted Rose, who was the woman picking up the glass, that he was awake. She left the bucket on the floor and went out of the room. She returned with her husband. Whose name was Elmer.
“Who are you?” Rose asked. “Why are you here?”
Rick peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth as if it were made of Velcro.
“Water . . .”
“Tell us who you are.”
“. . . I need water.”
The bitterness of the saliva he swallowed made him retch. It tasted of dry blood. His entire body hurt from the convulsion.
“When you tell us why you’re here.” Elmer sat on the bed, his hands on either side of the mattress, his head over Rick’s face. “And why you had those documents in your car. Who are you?”
Rick’s breath escaped in a sigh. Elmer’s face moved away. He reached for the glass of water on the bedside table and, without holding it to Rick’s lips, poured the contents over his mouth. Rick opened it to capture as much liquid as possible. His tongue regained volume, elasticity. His skin seemed to come back to life, to come loose from the muscle.
“Who are you?”
Rick wriggled about under the sheet, unable to understand his limbs’ behavior.
“Am I tied up?”
Rose was watching him from the foot of the bed. She touched her husband’s shoulder so that he would get up. She lifted the sheet, offering Rick the chance to look at himself. There were more patches of purple or yellowing skin on his naked body than pinkish ones. The bulges on his legs raised the possible number of knees to five. Though he couldn’t reposition them, he checked that he hadn’t lost mobility by bending his toes. His arms were straight, immobilized at his sides. Rope was knotted around his wrists. They’d secured it under the bed, making movement impossible. The self-inflicted injury on his arm burned at each point where Rose had extracted a needle. Identical points were spread all over his body from when the truck hit him.
“The ones I removed from your arm were a handful compared to the ones I had to take out now.” She gestured at the most affected area on one side. “Some are still in there—in your back, especially.”
Rose dropped the sheet. She tucked the edges under the mattress, as if making the bed, binding Rick even more tightly. She covered him to the chin with the taut fabric.
“Are you going to tell us who you are?” she asked.
Elmer took the brown folder from the desk and dropped it on Rick’s abdomen, setting off a blaze of pain in his ribs.
“Police? Detective? FBI?”
“Po . . . po . . .”—he tried not to stammer so he would sound convincing but was unable to stop himself—“police.”
Elmer turned his face toward his wife, shielding his mouth with his hand. He whispered something unintelligible.
“You’re lying,” she said, looking Rick in the eyes. She sat on the bed, tightening the straitjacket that held him even further. “You are lying. An officer doesn’t injure himself on purpose. Or do you want me to believe that you really just fell against that cactus?” When she bent forward, the sheet suffocated him. “What’ve you been searching for in the places marked on your map? What have you been searching for here?”
Rick extended his neck in an attempt to get more air through to his chest.
“Tell us who you are!” Elmer yelled.
“What do you know?” whispered Rose.
She lay her hand on the bed in such a way that the material pressed down on Rick even more. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple rose. It didn’t go back down. He felt his face redden. The pain in his head intensified with each heartbeat. The springs squeaked when he writhed.
Rose lifted her hand, freeing part of the sheet. Rick breathed so hard it hurt his throat.
“Who are you?” she persisted. She brought her face so close to Rick’s that their noses almost touched. “What do you know?”
Rick narrowed his eyes. “I know you’re not the mother of those girls.”
Rose slapped him. It hurt from his jaw to his eyebrow. She pointed at him with a finger that she then drove into his cheek. Her eyes glistened.
“Of course I am.”
Rick wet his lips, preparing himself for what he was about to say.
“My sister’s, too?”
He saw the immediate realization in Rose’s eyes. The spark that must have gone off inside her head irradiated light through her pupils. Her features tightened, before relaxing. Her mouth opened.
“Of course,” she breathed, “I should’ve known it as soon as I saw you. You have her eyes.”
The same hand that had slapped him now rested on his face. It stroked it with the thumb. It felt his cheeks. It traced the line of his eyebrows. Rose’s fingers ran over his features as if she already knew them. She’d stopped blinking, hypnotized by what she saw.
“Edelweiss . . .” she whispered.
There was a maternal gentleness in her touch that disgusted Rick. He shook his head to escape from the fingers that caressed him as if saying goodbye to a corpse. He bit the air.
“That wasn’t her name,” Rick muttered. “She was called Elizabeth.”
Rose shook her head as if he’d said something stupid.
“Edelweiss,” she repeated. “She was a flower. Like all of my girls.”
“Eliz—”
Rose’s hands covered his mouth.
“Edelweiss,” she whispered, increasing the pressure.
Rick caught the flesh of a finger in his teeth. He bit down with all the might of his jaw. Rose leapt up from the bed with a howl. Elmer leaned over the bed and squeezed Rick’s throat with one hand.
“Did you . . .” Blood-flavored saliva bubbled in Rick’s throat. He had just enough air to finish the question. “Did you kill her?”
Rose groaned with pain, as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Elmer released Rick’s throat to hold his wife, who had burst into tears. He consoled her, whispering words in her ear, rocking her.
“Answer me,” Rick growled. “Yes or no.”
“You have no idea how much that question hurts.” Rose sniffed and wiped the moisture from under her eyes, from above her lip. “Losing a daughter is the most painful thing that can happen to a mother.”
“She wasn’t your daughter.” Rick’s voice broke up. “And the most painful thing that can happen to a mother isn’t her daughter dying. It’s her daughter disappearing. Her daughter being stolen from a park one morning, and never knowing anything about her again.” A tear made a wound on his temple sting. “Not knowing hurts more than death. I know it because I’ve seen that pain every day in my mother’s eyes. And it’s much worse than what I see in yours now.”
“You told us you were an only child.”
“You made me an only child when I was two. You stole Elizabeth from me. My little sister . . .”
Rick closed his eyes. He saw Elizabeth’s little face in his mind. The face in the only black-and-white photograph that Mom still had, taken a month after she was born. That little face now merged with the pencil drawing Melissa had shown him, in the living room, of the beautiful woman that his sister had become. Small variations transformed the image until it became his mother’s face.
“She was just like our mother.” Rick kept his eyes closed so the illusion wouldn’t vanish. “She had the exact same face as my mother.”
“You’re wrong,” R
ose said. “I was her mother.”
“She was not your daughter!” Rick kicked his legs in spite of his condition. The indignation hurt more than a few dislocated bones. He felt something inside him tear. “She was not!”
Cramps made his body arch. He writhed under the sheet while the hybrid image of the baby, the portrait, and his mother distorted in front of him. When his muscles reached maximum tension, they gave way. The sudden relaxation made him slump onto the mattress. He regained his breath with deep gasps as the folder slid off his abdomen to one side. Elmer retrieved it and realigned the edges of the documents.
If he’d had any strength left, Rick would have thrashed about on the bed again. The physical pain was easier to endure than the horror of the acts committed by the couple in front of him. He spoke without looking at them.
“She wasn’t even enough for you. Losing her daughter destroyed my mother forever, but for you, my little sister wasn’t enough. You needed more.” He directed the accusation at Elmer, who looked away, at the documents. Then Rick turned to Rose. “How many mothers have you done it to? How many of those girls have brothers or sisters like me?”
“I think you already have an idea.” Elmer found the documents Rick had marked with a red pen in his car. He waved them in the air. They were the papers noting disappearances that fit the girls’ profiles. “And here you are.” He held up a newspaper article with Rick’s photo.
“How can you live like this? How many families have you destroyed to make yours?”
Rose avoided eye contact, looking down at the floor, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Make him stop,” she said to her husband.
“What kind of family have you created? It’s . . . you’re . . .” Rick couldn’t find suitable words. “It’s sickening.”
“Make him be quiet.”
“And you say you live here to escape the city, to build a family closer to nature, away from the concrete. But you didn’t have to come this far to do that. Not to such an isolated place. This house isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s a hideout.”
“You don’t know anything,” Rose said.
“I know you hid a twin from me. Thousands of girls disappear, but pairs of twins, not so many. I’d like to have some little twins as well, you must have said when three daughters were still not enough. Something like that, huh? But those girls are still appearing in the newspapers. It’d be very dangerous for you if anyone saw them together.”
Rose looked out the window.
“Well, you were right, because for me they were the final clue. If you had those twins, you could also have my sister. Someone who snatched a pair of girls could easily have snatched another.” Rick lifted his head up despite the pain. “Or even three others.”
“Make him stop, please, make him stop.”
“If I hadn’t discovered them I would’ve gone after dinner. I would have visited the two houses I had left, then given up once and for all and gone back to Colorado.” The tightness spread halfway down his back, the muscle cramped. “Even my mother was asking me to forget about it, to get on with my life. I couldn’t even tell her that I was still searching for Elizabeth, because it just made her worse.” The pain in his neck blinded him, and he let his head fall back on the pillow with his eyes closed. “She’d already given up. Eighteen years is a long time. And in the end you have to give up, accept that disappearing is a form of dying. A time comes when the only thing that consoles a mother is hoping her daughter is dead. That’s how much you hurt her.” He turned his head to Rose, soaking the pillow with tears. “But I guess you don’t care about that.”
“Be quiet!”
Rose reached the bed, grabbed his left foot, and twisted it. The pain condensed in his ankle as if a stake were being driven through it. A scream emerged from his gut and burst out of his throat. He repeated it to distract his mind from the pain. He screamed once more.
“Stop yelling,” Elmer ordered.
This time Rose didn’t just cover his mouth with her hands. She pressed her entire chest against his face, suffocating him with her flesh, with her clothes. He shook his head until the searing throb in his ankle began to subside. The stake disintegrated, and continuing to scream required too much effort. The peace that the absence of pain brought sedated him, and his body cried out for rest. When Rose freed his face, Rick took in a mouthful of air as soothing as the water Elmer had thrown over his lips. He looked her in the eyes before whispering a question.
“Was she happy here?”
Rose dried his eyelids. She brushed aside his hair.
“Very.” She gently smoothed the sheet over his chest, her gaze lost in some fond memory. “She was very happy.”
Elmer kneaded his wife’s shoulder. They exchanged a nostalgic smile that saddened Rick.
“Did she never know that—?”
“Of course not,” Rose answered without letting him finish. “We were her parents. And she had four sisters.”
“None of them know anything?”
Rose shook her head with her eyes closed, as if it bothered her to have to reply to such an absurd question. She was stroking her husband’s fingers on her shoulder, fiddling with his ring.
“You disgust me,” Rick said.
From outside, Melissa’s voice reached them. “Dad?”
Elmer went to the window. Rose threatened Rick by grabbing the same foot she’d twisted before. She placed an index finger over her lips.
“Can we come in? We’ve hosed down the whole truck. It’s getting dark.”
“Where are your sisters?”
“They’re coming.”
The twins’ screams and laughter sounded close.
“How is he?” Melissa asked. “We heard him scream.”
“We’ll be right down.”
Rose let go of Rick’s foot but preserved the threat by turning her hand in the air.
“What’re you going to do with me?” he asked.
Elmer placed the folder on a shelf above the headboard. When he tried to close the folder he found that its elastic band was broken.
“Cover it with the stones,” said Rose. “Put it underneath.”
“Nobody’s going to come in.”
Rose took the rock with eyes from the bedside table. Rick heard heavy objects, other stones, moving along the shelf. The wood creaked as it bowed.
“That’s better,” she said.
“What’re you going to do with me?” Rick repeated.
They looked at each other but didn’t respond. Rose tucked the sheet under the mattress.
“At least let me breathe.”
Elmer waited for his wife at the door.
“Some water . . .”
“You’re going to have more medicine in an hour,” Rose said. “You can wait.”
They left the room and locked the door from the outside. Rick thought of his mother. Until it was too dark, he lay looking at his sister’s face in the drawings on the wall.
At the front door, before going out, Rose rearranged her dress, adjusting the shoulders. From her husband’s forehead she wiped a drop of blood that had survived his bath. She took his hand and they sighed together. They opened the door.
Iris was standing on the porch, on the other side of the battered screen door, twisting a hairband in her fingers. Over her head, the mosquitoes swirled around the light on the porch ceiling. Sitting on the steps, Daisy and Dahlia whispered into each other’s ears. Melissa was stroking one of her rocks with eyes.
“How is he?” asked Iris.
“Get yourselves ready, we’re having dinner.”
“Aren’t you going to answer me?”
Rose took her by the arm and led her to one corner of the porch.
“Honey, I’m sorry for dragging you like that to your sisters’ room,” she whispered. “But I had to get you away from that boy. He’s dangerous.”
“What was he going to do to me after being run over like that?”
“You can never be too safe.”
“How is he?”
Met with silence, Iris inspected her mother’s face, searching for some reaction in her features that could serve as an answer. She found nothing. She yanked her arm free and escaped into the house. She had to struggle with the screen door to get in—the hinges had come loose and the frame got in her way. Elmer went after her.
Melissa stood up.
“Did you have to put him in my room?” She brushed off the backside of her skirt. “How am I going to put Gregory back? It’s Marlon’s turn to sleep in the bed with me tonight.”
“We have bigger problems right now,” Rose said.
“Sure, mine are never important.” Melissa went into the house, muttering to her stone.
Rose told the twins to go in with her, but they didn’t move. They sat huddled with each other on their step, Dahlia gripping the handrail post.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you want dinner?”
Daisy whispered something in her sister’s ear.
“We’re afraid to go in,” they said at the same time.
Rose asked them to make space for her. She sat between them, gathering the excess material of her dress between her legs. She took their hands and placed them on her knees after kissing the palms.
“What’re you afraid of?”
“The man. He used the shotgun.”
The little girls nestled closer, seeking refuge. Rose enjoyed the way their hair smelled the day after a bath, when the soapy aroma intermingled with the scent of the sun and their light perspiration.
“There’s no need to be afraid. Your father and I have taken care of him. We won’t let anything bad happen to you. Not ever.”
“Are you sure he won’t do anything?” Daisy asked.
“He screamed really loud,” Dahlia said.
“He’s not going to do anything to you.” She kissed their crowns. “Anyway, if it’s about screaming, we know all about screaming. Don’t we?”
The little girls’ eyes lit up in the unique way they did when Rose encouraged them to be naughty. It was Rose who screamed first. The girls laughed. Then Dahlia screamed. And Daisy joined in before she’d finished. Rose joined the chorus. They screamed one after the other, all at the same time, in pairs. Dahlia tried screaming with different vowels, and Daisy copied her. Somewhere in the desert a coyote responded with a howl. The little girls shrieked with laughter in Rose’s arms.