by Tom Leveen
“Yes, missy, I’ll have to call the police,” Rebane said. “Or I could just deal with you myself.”
He took one step closer.
At last I screamed. Terror crisscrossed through my limbs like wicked electricity. I spun on one toe, reaching for the kitchen doorknob. In the next moment his full weight crashed against me. Pressing me into the door.
“No you don’t,” he grunted.
I felt his hands on me, everywhere at once, tentacles. Opened my mouth to scream. One of those tentacles slithered over my face. He yanked the basement door wide open, turned, and shoved.
I flew down the steps. Landed midway down the staircase.
“Be right back,” Rebane called. He slammed the door shut. I heard the padlock click home.
I pulled myself down the stairs on quaking limbs until I reached the cold concrete floor. Curled up in a ball. Shook. Gasped. Babbled.
A ghost rose in the far corner of the room.
My hands flew automatically to my mouth to stifle the cry of shock. I only caught half of it.
The figure on the cot shot up, staring at me, clearly as frightened as I was.
Tara.
“Hello?” she said fearfully.
She’d been covered by dull blankets, a vague lump in the flickering candlelight. That’s why I hadn’t seen her before. I stood up and threw myself onto the cot, hugging her close in both arms.
“Tara!” I whispered, as joy, relief, terror, love, and hate all swirled through me in a vortex. I couldn’t think.
“Who are you?” Tara whispered back. She wasn’t hugging me.
“It’s me, it’s Pelly!” I said, pulling away and holding her by the shoulders. “From the coffee shop, from the mall, Tara, it’s me.”
Tara scooted back from me, clinging to the rough gray wall. In the candlelight her features were shadowed and distorted. She wore a white T-shirt, the blankets now covering her from the waist down. Something clanked as she moved.
“My name’s not Tara,” she said.
She’s so far gone, I thought. She has no idea who she even is.
“Tara, listen, we’re going to get you out of here,” I said. “I—I—I don’t know how yet, but I’m getting you—”
“My name isn’t Tara,” the girl said. “It’s Jody.”
I froze. Despite the urgency of our predicament, I couldn’t move.
“Rebane,” I blurted. “Rebane said your name was Leslie in the coffee shop. I knew he was lying, but . . .”
“I know,” the girl said. “Leslie, that’s what he calls me. I think that’s what he called all of them. But my name is Jody O’Malley. Why do you keep calling me Tara? Who are you?”
She stared at me across that dim candlelight. In that moment, I saw it. Saw what I should’ve seen in the Hole in the Wall.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. Tried not to get sick all over myself as the truth of the situation sank into my skin, saturated my bones.
Jody’s eyes were blue.
Just as blue in this godforsaken basement hellhole as they’d been in the café.
Tara’s were brown.
Just like Mrs. Jacobs, just like Mr. Jacobs, just like her older sister, Carla.
Brown eyes.
How could you forget that, you idiot? Don’t go putting this on your college apps, okay? My gloved fingers felt automatically for my rubber band to snap against my wrist. Couldn’t find it. Tore off the gloves, threw them aside.
“Can you really get me out of here?” Tara—Jody—asked.
“I . . . I don’t know . . .”
She flung off the blankets and I gasped. Jody was naked other than the T-shirt. A sinister, heavy shackle bound one of her thin ankles to a weighty chain that snaked off one edge of the cot. I didn’t have to look beneath the bed to know with utter certainty that the end of the chain was attached to the cinderblock wall or the concrete floor.
The first words I could make come out of my mouth were simply, “My god.”
As she moved, her shirt slipped a bit. I was able to see her neck and shoulder. There was that small mole on her neck, just as I’d seen last week. But so much higher. Near her ear, not lower near the shoulder like Tara’s. Only about three or four inches of difference, and yet all the difference in the world.
Some detective you are, Penelope, the voice in my head told me. You’re a champion. You couldn’t piece this together back in the café? Brilliant.
And what about the age-enhanced photos? I must’ve really only seen what I wanted. Needed.
“How’d you get in?” Jody said. “Do you have a key? Where is he?”
“I don’t know, I think so, I . . . keys . . . the keys are upstairs, I left them.”
Upstairs, the basement door opened, then slammed shut.
We clutched each other as ponderous footsteps descended the stairs. As if in slow motion, Rebane appeared, carrying a wooden cane in both hands.
“Well, well,” he said. “My two little birds. What are we going to do about this, hmm?”
And he laughed.
I wish I could say I sprang into action. That I grabbed Jody’s chain and whirled it over my head like some barbaric Wonder Woman, slamming it into Rebane’s head and making our escape.
I wish I could say I moved. Attempted to do something.
I didn’t.
I was as frozen on that cot as I’d been earlier in Rebane’s living room. Whether it was his power or my weakness, I don’t know. I knew this feeling, knew it well, like my own skin. It was panic, it was fear, it was everything that had been wrong with me since Tara disappeared. Like gravity had multiplied exponentially beneath me, keeping me rooted to this cot, just as it had rooted me to the doorway of my house before school. I couldn’t move then, and I couldn’t move now.
Why—why on earth had I thought I had what it took to rescue Tara?
“Before you make too many plans,” Rebane said, leaning against the stair railing, “you’ll want to take special note of the fact that the lock on this side of the door is a combination. Anything happens to me down here, and we’ll be going through it together for a very long time.”
Bastard. Genius bastard. I hadn’t even seen the other lock on this side of the door.
“S-someone will notice you’re gone,” I said. “Come looking for you.”
“Then by all means,” Rebane said. “Try it.”
So much for that idea. His words acted like ice in my lungs.
Rebane smiled as he watched horror spread across my face. “You must be the little whatsit that busted in earlier tonight. I knew something wasn’t right when I got home. Didn’t think you’d be back. But now that you’re here with Leslie—”
“Jody!” she screamed. “My name is Jody, you asshole!”
Rebane clucked his tongue and shook his head in mocking disappointment.
“Now, Les,” he said, “you know what that kind of language calls for in this house, right?”
He may as well have flipped a switch. The fight in Jody’s voice and limbs gushed out. She sank onto the mattress like a deflated balloon. My mind filled with images of what his threat implied. Things I could barely fathom. Atrocities, abuse, torture . . .
“What did you do to her?” I heard myself saying as Jody curled up on the thin, hard mattress.
Rebane took slow, practiced steps toward me, squeezing the cane in his fingers.
“Oh, about the same’s I’m gonna do to you,” he said. “Anybody even know you’re here, missy?”
I swallowed hard. Said nothing.
“Didn’t think so,” Rebane said. He paused, scrutinizing me more closely. “What the—” he said, and didn’t come any closer. “I know you. I’ve seen you before. Where?”
I shook my head. As if that would keep him from remembering.
“Yes, I
have,” Rebane said carefully, like he was giving himself time to let the memory come to him. “Recently. A store, maybe. That coffee shop!”
I cringed.
“That’s right,” he went on as his greasy, leering smile spread like a tumor across his face. “The cute little barista. Well, well, well. What brings you here, hmm?”
I forced myself not to look at Jody, but it didn’t matter. He put the pieces together.
“That’s right,” he said. “You thought you knew my little Leslie. Except you don’t, do you.”
I shook my head again. It made Rebane laugh.
“Don’t suppose it matters now,” he said. “You’re here. With me.”
Jody released a dismal whimper.
“Now, honestly, missy, you and I both know that you had a little thing for me. I felt it back at your coffee shop. So this really won’t be such a bad thing. You wanted it, you’re getting it. Think about all the fun we’re going to have over the next few days.”
I felt a scream building in my chest, but it wouldn’t come out.
“Or weeks,” Rebane added as he took another step closer.
“Or months.
“Or . . . well. You do the math.”
“Please,” I wheezed. “Please just let us go.”
“I was about through with Leslie, anyway,” Rebane went on. “You’ll do for a bit. But just a bit. You’re spoiled. I can smell it on you. Broken and spoiled.”
I almost puked. I didn’t know what he was talking about. And it didn’t matter.
Franklin Rebane was crazy.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Rebane said, and when he did, a sick moan came out of my mouth. He could read my mind.
“Well, unfortunately for you, I’m not,” Rebane said. It didn’t convince me.
“Not at all,” he said. “Oh, I’ll admit, I am going to do some pretty depraved things to you down here. Isn’t that right, Leslie?”
Jody whimpered again, closing her eyes and turning away from him as if bracing herself. Dear God, what had he—
“Yep, that much is certain,” Rebane went on. And licked his lips.
“But I’m not crazy. And frankly, that’s probably what should worry you the most. See, you just happen to be here. You came here all under your own steam. I don’t think a little cuss like you will be missed. And down here I can do whatever I want. Whenever I want. For as long as I want. Just you, and me, and my imagination. Thrilling, isn’t it? So, am I crazy? Nope.”
“People know I’m here!” I said.
“Really? Who?”
“My-my-my mom. My mom knows. She’ll call the police, and—and—and—”
“Mm-hmm,” Rebane said.
“I’ve been to the police. If I go missing, they’ll come here first, they’ll look for me right here!”
Rebane gave me a pitying look. “Even if that’s true,” he said, “it just means I can’t keep you around for quite so long.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you, you can let us both go and—”
“You should stop talking,” Rebane said. “You’ll need your strength. It’s a bit late in the evening, I suppose, but what’s say we get started?”
Started. The word tumbled between my ears like a canyon echo. Started. Started . . .
Just as Rebane was about to close in on me, I heard a voice of angels from upstairs. Distant, muted. But there.
“Pelly!”
“David!” I shrieked.
Like some elderly Jedi, Rebane backhanded me with the cane against my temple, sending me against the wall, then toppling off the bed. I tried to rescrew my eyeballs back into their correct sockets as Rebane bolted up the stairs.
I groaned David’s name. At least I was conscious. I thought I saw Jody folding her knees against her chest and covering her head with both hands.
Rebane hadn’t lost his genius. He rushed up the stairs and pounded on the basement door, shouting, “We’re in here! He locked us in here!”
It was so absurd it was brilliant. Exactly the kind of lie that would throw a normal person off balance.
“If you pull and I push, I think we can get the door to open,” Rebane went on.
“David . . . ,” I said, trying to warn him, but I was still too groggy from the blow to my head to project my voice.
The next few moments went by at the speed of fear.
Dim light flooded the stairwell from the hallway. I heard muttering, then flesh meeting flesh. A grunt, and a sickening series of thunks as David tumbled down the stairs and came to rest at the bottom, not moving.
See, Penelope? You see what you did? You killed him.
With a cry that tore my lungs apart, I pushed myself up and raced for the stairs, leaping over David’s prone body. I bounded up the steps two at a time, using the handrail to propel me. Rebane was just turning in the doorway, the outer padlock in his hand.
He tried to slam the door on me. I knew if he did, our fates were sealed.
I heard him grumble something profane as he shoved a hand into my face. The blow cranked my neck back and made me lose my vision for a split second. Just long enough for Rebane to slam the door, trapping me inside the basement. A moment later I heard the outer lock click into place.
I lifted my fists to pound on the door, but stopped. I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Plus there was David to think about.
I ran back down the stairs. David, thankfully, was starting to pull himself into a sitting position.
“David!” I said, and knelt down beside him. “Are you okay?”
“Uh . . . ,” David said, his eyes half-closed. “Maybe?”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
“You can’t,” Jody said, still curled up on the cot. “He’s gonna kill us all.”
SEVENTEEN
“What do you mean?” I blurted, as if Jody had been speaking a foreign language.
“He won’t keep us all down here alive,” Jody said listlessly. “He can’t afford it. We’d be too much trouble. He’ll kill him”—she waved weakly toward David, who glanced up and winced—“and then one of us. Probably me. You’re young. Who is this guy, anyway?”
“A friend. Doesn’t matter, we’re getting out of here,” I said, trying to sound determined. Instead I sounded like a mouse in a trap.
“Help me up,” David groaned.
“Maybe you shouldn’t move,” I said. “Your head’s bleeding.”
David touched the line of blood running down his face and held his fingers up to his eyes. “It is dark in here, right?” he asked. “It’s not just me?”
“There’s just the candle, it’s the only light,” I said. I turned to Jody. “Isn’t there another light in here somewhere?”
She shook her head. “The bathroom isn’t wired, and the ceiling bulb is controlled in the kitchen,” she said. “He only turns it on when he . . . he likes to see what—”
“Stop, stop,” I said, shutting my eyes for a second. I didn’t want to know.
David began standing again. I tried to keep him down. “Don’t,” I said. “You might have a concussion or something.”
“Doesn’t matter,” David said, using the wall to help himself up. “We have to get out.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“By the kitchen door,” David said. “Knocked it outta my hands.”
Shit.
I snapped my rubber band against my wrist to sort my thoughts into a logical order. Went to the cot and took Jody by the shoulders.
“Jody,” I said. “Is there any, any other way out of here? Or any way we can surprise him?”
Jody shook her head. Pretty much what I’d expected. The basement had no windows, no other doors. It was exactly what I’d imagine an underground concrete bunker to be:
four walls, the little homemade doorless bathroom nook, and wooden steps up to the door in the kitchen. Other than the table and cot, there was no furniture. The only real hiding place was under the stairs, but it wasn’t like one of us could go there and surprise him.
David pointed to the candle. “What if we burn it down?”
“He’ll leave us here,” Jody said. “Let us burn.”
“Does he have a gun?” I said. “Have you ever seen one?”
“Yes,” Jody said. “I’ve seen it. A pistol.”
“That’s not a good start,” David said, wincing.
The door opened.
Instinctively I drew back against the far wall, standing beside the cot. David backed up too, as if to shield me and Jody.
We heard Rebane messing with the combination padlock. When it clicked into place, my stomach deflated. He took the steps one at a time as if making sure we weren’t going to jump him.
My limbs froze as I saw a silvery revolver dangling from Rebane’s hand. Grim in the shadows cast by the candle, the gun seemed impossibly huge.
“Yooo hoooo,” Rebane sang softly. “Is everybody here?”
I found myself wishing for the days when “fear” meant not wanting to go to school, or to stay inside all day. I could’ve laughed. That wasn’t fear. This. This was the real thing, real terror, real certainty that I was going to die. I heard myself chanting, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, not knowing if it was out loud or only in my head.
Rebane reached the floor and turned toward us, carrying the pistol at thigh level.
“Leslie?” Rebane said. “You want to go first?”
“They’ll hear it,” David said. His voice was desperate. “Someone’ll hear the shot, and they’ll come—”
“Leslie?” Rebane said. “Is that true? Will someone hear the shots?”
He’d used the plural. Jody shook her head dismally.
“No,” Rebane said. “They won’t. They’ve never heard anything from down here. Isn’t that right, Leslie?”
Someone said, “Leave her alone.”
Rebane tilted his head. He stared at me, his face incredulous in the candlelight.
I’d said it.
“What?” he grunted.