by G X Todd
The third time she came back from doing this, she said, ‘Karey never showed me that hidden staircase. You’d think she would’ve, it being such a neat little feature of her home and all.’
‘Maybe she didn’t know it was there.’ He brought the hot saucepans over to the table. ‘Chicken soup or alphabet—’ he tried to say ‘spaghetti’ but the word stuttered at his lips and refused to come out.
‘I always say “noodles” anyhow,’ Lacey said. ‘I’ll have them, please.’
They sat and ate quietly, listening to the house creak and the rain lash. The soup burned a hot path down Pilgrim’s oesophagus and pooled like lava in his gut. The only sounds in the kitchen, apart from the muted crackling of the stove’s fire, were the occasional scrape and clang of their spoons as they dragged pasta and soup up from the saucepans and into their mouths. No more thumps came from upstairs.
Pilgrim watched the girl poke her spoon into the tomato sauce, push and nudge at the spaghetti shapes for half a minute before she showed him what she had done.
‘Can you read what I put?’
He studied the pasta, even tilted the saucepan this way and that, but, although he knew that the spaghetti was letters, knew that each one she had lined up could be only one of twenty-six shapes, it was like trying to catch fish with his eyes, each letter squirming away from his comprehension.
He shook his head. ‘Your name?’ he guessed.
She drew the saucepan back to herself and dug her spoon in, scooping up the letters she had arranged and stuffing them in her mouth. ‘No,’ she said around the food. ‘Eat me.’ She gave a weak smile as she chewed.
Without discussing it, they both left a little food in the bottoms of their saucepans and returned them to the stove, the aroma of hot broth still hanging thick in the air. The longer Pilgrim sat in the warm kitchen, his stomach as full as it had been in a while, the more his aches and pains leached out of him. It would be nice to settle down in front of the stove and not move. But he couldn’t afford to relax – not yet – so instead he dried off and checked both guns, unloading each one, making sure the firing mechanisms, as well as the bolt action on the rifle and the pump action on the shotgun, all worked smoothly. Then he reloaded them.
The girl hadn’t spoken for a while. He caught her a time or two looking up at the ceiling.
‘She won’t leave the house,’ he told her. ‘She’s been here all her life. It’s her home.’
Lacey nodded.
A minute’s more silence went by.
He placed the rifle on the table in front of her. ‘It’s full dark outside. It’d be a good time to head out to the casino.’
He would have preferred to go by himself, but Lacey knew the area, at least more than he did. To a degree, he needed her, and he highly doubted the niece would make another appearance while they were here, at least not for a while.
‘We’ll come back,’ he said. ‘She’ll have calmed down by then, and we’ll try over.’
‘I shouldn’t leave. I only just found her. She’s probably scared out of her brain.’
‘I thought you wanted to help Alex.’
‘I do.’ The way she said it made Pilgrim think she’d either start yelling at him or burst out crying. He didn’t want her to do either.
He reached over and briefly touched her hand. A few seconds’ contact, a gesture of comfort that didn’t come easily to him, but he recalled the weight of her hand on his foot, the hours she’d spent with it resting on his boot while he slept in front of the crackling fire, the barn doors closed to the night, his head throbbing with so much pain he thought there was a possibility he might not wake at all.
‘Your niece doesn’t want to be found right now,’ he told her. ‘She knows this place better than we do. We can search, but we’d be wasting our time. Alex we can help. Your niece will still be here when we get back.’
The girl didn’t speak but gazed at him, searching his eyes. He could see the dejection in them, a dark shadow hiding at the back in a place she probably thought was hidden from him.
Finally, she nodded and pushed up from the table. ‘I need to do something first.’
He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he nodded in turn. ‘I need to go hunt us out some wheels anyway. I’ll be back in a short while.’ He stood up, already lamenting the fact that he’d have to leave the cosy kitchen.
‘It’d be worth checking next door. Karey was always complaining about Mr Thomas revving his new project at stupid hours in the morning. Might be something useful in his garage. They had a spare set of keys by the back door there. For when they went on vacation.’ She nodded behind him to a key rack, half of its six hooks occupied.
She left the rifle on the table and crossed to the hallway. At the doorway, she paused, her head down. ‘This isn’t what I wanted.’
There was a world of meaning in those words, not least the fact that she had lost her niece almost as soon as she’d found her. Pilgrim understood that hopes often didn’t align with reality. The easiest option would have been for her to keep her hopes modest, but she’d been unable, or even unwilling, to contemplate the reunion with her family as being anything but a happy one. Her high hopes had set her up for a long fall.
And it was never the fall that killed you in the end. It was hitting the bottom that did all the damage.
Lacey went upstairs, plodding her feet so that each shoe fell with a hollow clomp. She turned right on the landing.
Thump thump thump, she stomped.
Come out, come out, come out, she thought.
On their search, the Boy Scout had shut every door after checking each room, so now the hallway was a narrow, closed-off tunnel. She paused in the shadowy gap leading up to the tower. The dark was so dense she was sure she could reach out and touch it if she wanted.
This hadn’t been her destination, but she sat down on the bottom step and looked up into the darkness. Addison might be up there, might even be sitting on the top step, gazing down at her, for all she knew.
‘I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to get here,’ Lacey said, her voice hitting the darkness and disappearing, like musical notes in a soundproofed room. ‘I wish I’d come three years ago, but it’s been kind of hard, what with Grammy not being well. You’d have liked her, though, your great-grammy. She was tough. Like she was part of the rocks under the ground, something that could never, ever be uprooted. And you know, it’s kind of funny because I guess she never was uprooted, not really. Everything that hurt her came from the inside. She didn’t have any control over the things breaking down in her head, confusing her and changing who she was. None of us can control what goes on in our minds.’ And wasn’t that the truth, she thought.
She waited for a reply from Voice, maybe something sardonic or even defensive, but none came. He was giving her some space for now.
She scooped out the St Christopher from under her collar and stared at it. The design was lost in the darkness, but it didn’t matter; she knew it by heart now. She brushed the coin against her mouth, feeling the embossed image warm itself on her lips. Look how far it’s gotten me, Red. All the way to where I need to be.
She took a deep breath – held it in – then let it out in a rush. ‘I’d love to meet you, Addison. Can we do that when I get back?’ Not a whisper of sound reached her ears. ‘I’ve never done this aunt thing before, but I know how to be a sister. I’d be good at that, at least.’
The dark remained silent, impassive. Lacey tucked the St Christopher safely away and stood up. ‘I’ll be back soon. You don’t need to be afraid, OK? I’m going to take care of you. You’re not alone any more.’
Lacey paused a second longer, but nothing stirred. She walked to the end of the hall, opening the last door on the right, and stepped into her sister’s cold bedroom. The bed was made, the comforter neatly turned down at the top as if waiting for Karey to climb in with a hot cup of cocoa and a good book. Inside the wardrobe, Karey’s clothes would be hanging. Inside each drawer, her jumpers
and slacks and underwear would be neatly folded.
Lacey lay down on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow. Underneath the stale mustiness there was a faint, lingering aroma of perfume. Floral and sweet. Like stepping into the backyard at home in the summer.
Lacey allotted herself the same five minutes she’d spent at her grandmother’s graveside before leaving home. For those three hundred seconds, the pillow’s cushion caught her sobs and her grief twisted her grip on the comforter. Five minutes, and then she stood, her face damp, her breathing deep, letting the painful tightness rip through her chest, wanting it to hurt, needing her grief to be so powerful it urged her to turn away from it or else be consumed. She had no time to be consumed. Alex needed her. She neatened the pillow and smoothed out the bedcover. Then she left her sister’s room, shutting the door behind her, and went back downstairs.
Thump thump thump, went her feet.
Alex, Addison, Alex, went her thoughts.
CHAPTER 4
The rain had slowed to a drizzle, a mist that settled in their hair like jewels and beaded on their jacket sleeves and shoulders. The sister’s neighbour had a fine taste in projects; it was a shame the man wasn’t still around – Pilgrim would have liked to shake his hand. The modified Triumph TR7 hadn’t been too difficult to get up and running. It glided like a phantom, her parallel-twin-engine growl echoing off the buildings, burbling beautifully back at him as they passed through the darkened streets. He didn’t worry about the noise or attracting attention any more; they would soon be leaving the city behind. He saw only two other vehicles, crawling along different streets as if in search of something, but neither car altered course when they sped by.
He didn’t think he’d be on the back of a motorcycle again so soon, and not with Lacey huddled up against him. There had been a 1970 Dodge Charger in the garage, too, but he couldn’t resist the pull of the motorcycle after spending so many hours confined inside the truck’s cab. He had some difficulty squeezing the stiff clutch lever in with his weakened left hand so kept his gear-shifting to a minimum, and it was painful to have Lacey’s arm curled around his middle, pressing over his ribs, but the ride would be short, and he was happy to contend with the discomforts for the pleasures he gained.
Too soon their four-lane-split highway passed into a factory district, businesses colonising the dry land up top with the distant gambling establishments lining up at the ends of gently sloping roads, each casino built on the banks of the Mississippi like kitschy children’s playsets, the only things missing their flashing Mattel lights. He cut the engine and coasted the last half-mile silently, the night air warm and damp through the neckerchief he’d pulled up over his nose, the only sounds the motorcycle’s spinning wheels and the rustling of the wind in his ears.
He remained unsure if the TR7 would fire up again without the car battery to jump-start it, but now wasn’t the time to let such troubles concern him. He let the bike drift to a stop and planted both boots while Lacey climbed off. He left the motorcycle hidden behind what was once an old iron-working factory. Lacey unhooked the sling he’d made to strap the guns to her back, and he helped her untie them, retaining hold of the shotgun. She fiddled with the hand-held CB radio, two muted blips beeping when she turned it on. She held the speaker up to her ear.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Keep it on for now. But keep the volume low.’
She nodded and clipped the radio to her waist.
They carried onward on foot. Pilgrim heard Lacey sniff a time or two as she walked alongside him, her chin down and her hands stuffed up her sleeves. Under the cotton of his neckerchief, his warm breaths blew back at him in small, even puffs. It was a regular, countable thing. So were their footsteps, eating up the sidewalks, two of her smaller-spaced steps to one of his wider ones.
They jogged across yards and skirted empty parking lots, hopping over drunkenly tilted wooden fences and hugging the buildings’ walls. Street by street, they moved steadily closer to the river. As they crouched down against one wall and caught their breath, Lacey leaned into Pilgrim’s side and whispered in his ear. The casinos along here housed hundreds upon hundreds of visiting gamblers on their entertainment floors, she told him, and had almost as many guest rooms, as well as a variety of restaurants and gift shops. She also described the steamboat building she remembered visiting, but until he saw it he didn’t quite believe the picture her words drew.
The Riverboat Casino sat on the river’s swollen banks, its expansive parking lot flooded in places, the water dark and fathomless. The hotel-casino itself was designed after a multi-tiered steamboat. In its heyday, Pilgrim imagined it would have been lit up in strings of gaudy bulbs and neon lights, the paddle box and its wheel encrusted with illuminated balls, the two tall smokestacks painted red and blinking a welcome seen from miles upriver. It was an impressive sight even unlit and unloved, one towering mast listing dramatically off centre, windows smashed, paint flaking.
‘You’re sure this is the place?’ he asked. There were no lights shining from any of the windows; nor were there signs of any visitors intent on gambling.
He got the sense she nodded. ‘I loved this place as a kid. I didn’t believe Karey when she told me about it – a building that was a boat, too. It sounded crazy. But she brought me here, and she—’
She stopped talking when a solitary figure emerged from the building adjacent to the hotel-casino, passing under the raised arm of a security barrier and ambling down the ramp. The guy wasn’t in any hurry and didn’t appear to be too concerned with checking his surroundings as he walked from what Pilgrim could only assume was a parking garage. An arm detached from the guy’s side and rose to head height.
The radio at Lacey’s hip crackled to life.
‘Vehicles all clear. Get those cards dealt out, Ove. Be back in two.’
The figure disappeared from view behind the corner of the casino, heading back inside.
‘We’re already two games in, buddy’ came the reply. ‘Better get a shake on.’
‘This is it,’ Pilgrim said.
He and Lacey were crouched behind a waist-high wall at the top of the road that led its snaking way down to the parking lot. Pilgrim had never understood this country’s predilection for assuming that every single person drove everywhere, thus making the progression of the pedestrian difficult. The switchbacks in this winding road made the walk three times longer than necessary. It also meant they would be visible to anyone happening to glance out of a window for three times the duration.
If it is any consolation, said his new voice. I’m sure the builders of this country now deeply regret their non-pedestrian-friendly road systems.
It wasn’t any consolation to him, and Pilgrim half crawled, half scurried further along the wall to the top of the road in search of another way down.
There wasn’t one. Not unless they wanted to swim.
He sighed.
I’m at a loss as to how you get yourself into these situations. And that sounded far too much like something Voice would say for Pilgrim’s liking.
He went back to Lacey and nodded to the road. ‘This is the only way.’
‘I figured it would be,’ she said.
Pilgrim kept to cover as much as possible but there was nowhere left to hide by the time they reached the bottom of the winding road – the open expanse of the flooded parking lot was the only thing between them and the hotel-casino’s entrance. Of the three hundred car-park spaces, only a handful was occupied, and Pilgrim didn’t have to investigate the vehicles to know they had already been picked clean.
‘What’s the plan?’ Lacey asked breathlessly, hunkered down next to him as they both surveyed the layout ahead.
There wasn’t any plan. To plan something when you had no idea what waited for you was practically impossible. He was beginning to consider sending her back to wait by the bike but suspected she would start a heated debate with him right then and there, and that
was the last thing he wanted.
‘The plan is not to get caught,’ he said.
He was hesitant to step out into the open. The night crouched alongside him, a dark presence at his back, lurking in his periphery. There was a heavy sense of waiting in the damp air, of cunning anticipation, as though something just out of sight were readying itself to pounce. He wasn’t sure if the girl sensed it, too, but she had pressed herself up against his side, a warm, solid weight from his armpit to his hipbone. He could feel her breathing, her ribs expanding and falling with each heavy breath. For a moment he flashed back to how it felt to have her slotted on the back of the motorcycle with him. She had been the first living human he had willingly made physical contact with for 151 straight days, and Voice had warned him not to get used to her presence. Now he feared he was more than used to it: he found, increasingly, that he didn’t want to be without it.
You’re drowning.
Yes. And the feeling wasn’t an entirely unpleasant one.
In the sudden deflation of her ribs, he felt as well as heard the girl huff her breath out at him. ‘That’s about as helpful as a concrete life-vest,’ she said.
He smiled in the dark, although it couldn’t be seen. ‘We go in quiet. We stay quiet while we’re inside – which means no shooting, no shouting and no knocking anything over. We look around. We find Alex. It’s a big place, and you said there are about thirty of them? So there’ll be plenty of places to hide if we need to.’
‘And what if we do end up making noise?’
‘You remember me telling you to keep your boots on when you sleep?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Remember why I said it?’
‘Because most times it’s better to run like hell than to fight?’
‘Exactly. If they find us, we run.’
They agreed that, if they did have to run and were somehow split up, they would meet back at the metal-working factory where they had left the TR7. It was a simple plan overall, but it suited the situation.
Pilgrim did a strange thing, then, one he couldn’t entirely explain to himself. He placed a hand on the girl’s head, palm cupping over the fragile curve of her skull. Her hair tickled and the crown of her head pumped out heat like it was her very own wood-burning stove.