by Zan, Koethi
As we marched down the hall, Christine sidled up to me and whispered furiously, “What the hell are you thinking? No way am I going back there without Jim.”
“Jim would never let us go there at all. We have no choice,” I replied, sorrier than anyone that it was the case. But this was our moment. I felt it. “Jack is telling us something is in there, and I believe him, even if it’s part of his sick game. For this one last time, I think we have to listen to what he has to say.”
CHAPTER 33
We returned to the rental car in silence, Tracy taking her now-familiar place behind the wheel. This time, though, it didn’t bother me, because in some new and strange way I felt I was the one leading us on.
Staring out the window on the passenger side as we left the city proper, I wondered what had made me insist on going to the house. I hadn’t had time to prepare myself mentally, and I reminded myself I had sworn never to return to this state, much less to that awful place. I looked at Tracy. She nodded as she shifted the car into drive.
“You’re right, Sarah. We need to do this.”
I found the address on Google, and we punched it into the GPS. Amazing how easy it was to find now, when so many had searched for it for so long. There it was, on Google Maps, street view and satellite. I turned to the backseat. Christine’s hands were shaking again, as she ran them up and down her thighs.
I felt my breath coming a little faster and recognized with annoyance the dizziness that was starting to whirl the thoughts around in my head. If there was one thing I was not going to do, however, it was let Adele see me crack. This time I didn’t bother with any sophisticated stress-reducing techniques. Goddammit, I thought to myself, you are not going to have a panic attack right now. You can’t.
I held my breath and counted to twenty, squeezing my eyes shut. This was for Jennifer. I had brought her photo along again, and I pulled it out, taking a long look at her face. Then I slipped it back into my pocket as a talisman against the evil of this place.
I felt my head begin to clear and my breathing return to normal. And then once again, I began to feel that strange sense of elation. Maybe we would find something. Evidence. Explanations. Answers. Something we could use to keep Jack in prison, something that would take us to Jennifer’s body, or maybe, just maybe, something that would explain why this had happened to us. I couldn’t tell what was more important to me at this point.
When I finally made my escape, I had thought I would never be unhappy again. That there was no room for unhappiness as long as I was free. Why, then, couldn’t I actually be happy?
Or is it the case that no one ever truly gets over anything? Is there really that much pain and suffering continuing right now at this minute, in millions of hearts, in bodies carrying on the burden of existence, trying to smile through tears for fleeting, passing moments here and there—when they can forget what happened to them, maybe even for whole hours at a time? Maybe that’s what it is to live.
But I couldn’t think about that now. I had to focus. However doubtful it seemed that we would find anything the FBI had overlooked, I reminded myself that they had been searching for something entirely different. They hadn’t been exploring Jack Derber’s whole existence back then. They had been looking for girls tucked away in crevices. The hard evidence of bodies.
And back then prostitution rings would have been low on the list of FBI priorities anyway. The Internet hadn’t yet linked together the perverted of the world for more coordinated horrors. Back then it had been serial killer season. That was where the glamour was. That’s what they wanted Jack to be—a mad, lone attacker.
None of us spoke for the entire forty-minute drive. We just listened to the GPS, its computer-generated voice filling the spaces where we couldn’t connect anymore. Recalculating came the constant refrain, and I could see in all of our faces that that was what we were doing as well. Trying to adjust ourselves to this sudden new reality. We were approaching the place where we had thought we would die. The place where we had wanted to kill each other. We didn’t know what this would feel like, but it would not feel good.
We found the driveway, which I recognized from the newspaper photos. Tracy stopped on the road, her turn signal flashing. A light rain started to hit the windshield, and without a word she flicked on the wipers. We sat there, still in the silence. The GPS reminded us that our destination was on the right.
“Are we ready?” Tracy finally said.
“No, not ready,” came Christine’s voice from the back. “But let’s do it. Let’s just do it.”
I looked back at her. Christine’s hands had stopped fidgeting, and there was a new resolve in her face. I nodded to Tracy, and she turned the car into the driveway, which twisted along up the side of a low mountain through a heavily wooded forest. I looked at the trees and remembered the time I had spent in those woods, after my escape, wandering, nearly dead from dehydration, naked. An animal in the forest, disoriented and alone. More alone than I’d ever been in my life. The weather had been the same then, and I remember opening my mouth toward the sky, tasting the rain.
As we drew closer, I noted that here and there, strewn on the ground or hanging from trees, were tattered bits of yellow police tape, hardly recognizable unless you knew to look. We finally pulled around the last corner, and the house came into view. A large A-frame lodge, dark green, blending with the forest, and a deep red barn over to the right. That barn, I thought. That barn. I shuddered as we pulled to a stop in front of it.
Tracy looked over at me, but I couldn’t read her expression. Was she checking on me, or was she lost in her own painful memories? I couldn’t tell.
I looked back at Adele, who had a look of wonderment on her face. I didn’t know if she’d ever been here—if this place had been a secret haunt of hers as well—but at least she seemed properly in awe of what had occurred in this spot.
I looked over at Christine. She was calm and solemn. Her hands were still.
We got out of the car almost simultaneously, the doors clicking in unison as we closed them gently. We all stopped in our tracks, looking at that house with silent dread. It was overwhelming. This building felt alive to me, ominous and strange. It seemed to be watching us, a part of Jack he’d left behind.
Finally, I took a deep breath and started toward it, careful not to look at the barn. I almost laughed out loud at the irony of trying to break into this house that we’d spent years trying to get out of. But here we were. And we were all terrified.
I got close enough to look into the window by the door. It looked well organized and scrubbed clean inside. I wondered for a moment what lucky person had had the job of restoring the house after the ransacking by law enforcement.
Tracy, leading the way, walked over to the door and was reaching for the doorknob, when I interrupted her.
“Should we avoid fingerprints?”
“Well, we aren’t exactly prepared with gloves, now are we?” Still, she stretched the end of her T-shirt to grasp the door handle. It was unlocked, and she flung the door open.
“So there we are. Our first experience as criminal trespassers—a great success.”
“That’s weird,” came Adele’s voice from behind me. “Creepy, in fact.”
The door stood open before us. We looked at each other again. Who would take that first step?
I knew the answer. I had dragged us all here, so it was only fair that I should be the one to cross that threshold first.
I took a deep breath, trembling only slightly, then entered the house. I turned back to the others.
“See, it doesn’t hurt at all.”
No one cracked a smile.
I took another step in, and Tracy followed me.
“Well, here we are, in never-never land,” she whispered, looking around at the prim kitchen. It seemed so ordinary. No one could have detected the evil residue his touch must surely have left behind.
Adele followed us in cautiously, eyes wide.
Christine stoo
d at the door, immobilized by fear. I noticed her left hand start to quiver. Then, bracing her left arm with her right hand, she stepped over the threshold slowly and deliberately, inhaling deeply.
“Okay, then,” was all she said.
I propped the door open with a small side table from the entryway, not ready to be fully enclosed in there, and then led the way down the hallway, fighting all the while to keep myself from hyperventilating. My pulse was racing, and that old familiar dizziness was creeping in. I knew, though, that for everyone’s sake, I needed to keep it under control.
I went down the hall and stood for a moment alone in front of the double doors to the library. If anything relevant was hidden in this house, I knew it would be in that room, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face it.
I put my hand in my pocket, reaching for Jennifer’s picture. I clutched it. I could feel it crinkle up in my fist. I might be damaging it, but I needed to draw a kind of physical strength from it now, to let the ink from that image soak into my fingertips and bring Jennifer closer to me. I slid the door open slowly, hoping I could take in the room in bits and pieces, easing into it.
The first thing I saw was the rack, still there in the corner.
Tracy’s voice was right in my ear behind me. “Ugh, why didn’t they take that freaking thing out of here?”
“The room seems so much smaller,” Christine said softly.
“That makes a lot of sense,” began Adele. “This room won’t have the same power for—”
“Shut up, Adele,” Tracy and Christine said in unison.
Adele shut up. We all stepped into the room and stared up at the bookshelves, which ran up to the top of the double-height ceiling. The books were still there. Thousands of them.
I walked over to the heavy oak desk, with its roll top and its dark green blotter. It was expensive, clearly. Jack’s adoptive family had not wanted for money, and neither had Jack.
In the dead center of the blotter lay an unmarked envelope. I lifted it up. It was sealed. The others came over to see what I’d found, Tracy and Christine carefully avoiding touching the rack as they made their way to my side.
“Should I open it?” I looked at them.
“Why not?” said Adele. “We’ve already broken and entered.”
“We didn’t have to break anything,” reminded Christine, “and since he never wanted us to leave in the first place, I feel like we have full guest privileges.”
I broke the seal of the envelope and slid the paper out, then unfolded it slowly. There, in Jack’s writing, in clear bold letters, were the words Welcome home.
I dropped the paper as though it were on fire.
At that same moment we heard a door slam, hard, from the hall. The door we had come in. The door I’d propped open.
We all jumped to our feet and quietly pressed ourselves to the library wall. Tracy was in front, closest to the door. We listened, but I heard only our own breathing.
Tracy peered around the corner. No one could have gone farther into the house without passing the library door. She motioned for us to follow her, as she edged out of the room.
There was no one there. If someone had been in here, he’d gone back outside after slamming the door shut. But why?
Tracy made her way over and grabbed the doorknob, this time forgetting about prints. And then we understood. It was locked from the outside.
“What the fuck??” she shouted, as she banged on the door, to no effect.
“No way. There is no way we can be locked in this house. NO. WAY,” said Christine, shaking.
“Let’s stay calm,” I said. “There are a million windows, and I have my cell.” I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up. Only there were no bars in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. In my crazed state, I’d failed to check it. “Except there’s no signal.”
“Too far up the mountain,” said Adele. “That makes sense around here. Shit.”
I raced from room to room, peering out the windows. There was no one in sight. But the house was surrounded by dense woods. There were plenty of places for someone to hide if they were keeping an eye on us. Or planning something worse.
Adele walked into the kitchen and tried opening the windows. They were sealed shut. The locks would not turn. She pulled open cabinets and drawers and finally found in a closet a broom with a heavy wooden handle. In a sudden frenzy, she started beating on the windows in the kitchen. Glass broke and flew around the room. We shielded our eyes and backed out of the way as Adele struck again and again. She was surprisingly strong.
Tracy, staring at Adele in her fury, bent down, protecting her face with her hands, and leaned over to me to whisper, “Maybe I was wrong about Adele.”
I shrugged as we stepped into the hall to avoid the flying shards. “Or maybe she knows even better than we do how dangerous this place is.”
Adele finally stood motionless, panting, her face red, her hair a tangled mess. She still held up her broom, ready to attack, as we cautiously reentered the kitchen to survey the damage. The counters, sink, and floors were covered with broken glass. I moved closer and examined the mullion of one window that had splintered apart from Adele’s thrashing. There was something there between the two thin strips of wood. I touched it. Cold metal. I realized then that each window was covered by a grid of iron bars. The painted wood built around them was only a facade.
The place was rigged.
At that, without a word, we split up, each of us going to different doors, pulling and banging at them all in turn, futilely. They were sealed shut, the doorknobs jammed. I heard screams of frustration from each corner of the house as every possible exit resisted our efforts.
Christine gave up first. She sat in a corner of the library, curled up, and began to cry, moaning words of apology to her daughters.
I couldn’t stop myself, though. I pounded and pounded every available surface. Finally, dispirited, I stood at the kitchen counter, looking out of the broken window over the sink toward the barn.
“Only thinking can save us,” I whispered to myself, drawing on the last bit of my fading inner strength.
As I turned to leave the kitchen, I saw Adele walking toward the door leading downstairs to our former prison. I couldn’t face the idea of anyone going there.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “That goes to the cellar, and I can tell you with utter certainty there is no way out of there.”
She flinched and backed away from the heavy metal door in horror. She didn’t have to be told twice. A few minutes later I heard her hurling what must have been her whole body at the back door, grunting as she hit the solid wood.
Each of us gave up in our own time, then made our way, one by one, into the library. I sank down into the couch in the middle of the room, facing the large fireplace. Tracy slumped down beside me and put her head in her hands.
“He did it. He got us back,” she said quietly.
I shook my head in disbelief.
“How could he have known we’d come here alone?”
“He took a chance, I suppose. What did he have to lose? Plus, if he was counting on us being stupid and arrogant, he was right.”
“It won’t take long for Jim to realize we’re missing, though,” I said.
“Jack knows that too,” Tracy replied, “since he’s obviously got someone following us pretty closely. That just means whatever he’s got planned for us will happen sooner rather than later.”
I scanned the room, wondering where the attack would come from. I felt helpless, panicked.
“We need some kind of … weapons,” Tracy said, looking as frazzled as I felt. I nodded and we scattered, each of us searching for something with which to fight back. Christine returned brandishing the broom handle Adele had used on the windows. Tracy and I, clearly the most practical, each took a kitchen knife from the block, and Adele found a heavy frying pan.
When we gathered again in the library, I bolted its heavy wooden doors shut behind us. Without discussion
, we spread out, as though taking up guard stations around the room. Tracy stood in one corner, I took up a post in the other. Adele squatted over by a window, her eyes just peering out over the sill, into the woods.
Christine pulled herself up and crawled into the window seat, as far from the rack as she could get. Her knees were tucked up under her, and she clung to the curtains, weeping. She had carefully propped the broom handle beside her, but I didn’t have much confidence that she’d be of any use in a crisis this time. The old Christine was back.
“What was that noise?” Adele said suddenly, jerking to attention.
“What?” Tracy said, cocking her head to hear.
“That noise. I heard something, I think from the cellar.”
“I’m not going down there,” I said decisively.
Tracy shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything,” she mumbled.
It’s possible we were in denial.
“So that’s it?” Adele said. “We just sit here and wait for someone to find us? And hope it’s the good guys first?”
“I guess that’s about right,” Tracy said bitterly.
“Well, I for one,” Adele began again, “plan to do what we came here for. I’m going to have a look around.”
Tracy glared at her. “What’s the point? You clearly don’t understand what we’re dealing with.”
I sat in my corner, studying each person. We were starting to turn on each other already. I saw the obvious fear on the surface, but I could also see that other being inside each of us, poised to strike, poised to live at any price. I forced the thought away, telling myself I was only projecting onto them my own gripping fear of being returned once again to my animal self.
It was the place. It was being back in that house. I felt like a caged beast and once again felt I would do anything to escape. Anything. Just like before. I recognized it in a flash, the feeling that all my integrity, all my rational being, would be instantly displaced if it came down to it. Was everyone else like that? Or was I just a base person at heart, incapable of empathy for others, as Tracy thought? Could she have been right all along? And who would I sacrifice this time, to get out of here?