by Thea Thomas
The front doorbell rang. Elizabeth jumped up and met Mrs. Vargas at the door. Tearfully, she ushered her into the kitchen.
She finally saw the other side of Elizabeth’s face, and her still swollen, purple eye socket. “Did Tony do that to you?”
“Yes. He hit me, and I told him that we were through and that he had to leave. For revenge, I guess, he kidnapped Amy. I’ve been driving around, hour after hour, looking for him.”
Mrs. Vargas’ expression became very sad. “I’m very disappointed.”
“Well don’t be disappointed in Elizabeth,” Gail defended. “She’s turned herself inside out to be Amy’s mother. If you’d just let her adopt Amy in the first place when you saw the three of us were a perfect family, instead of making Elizabeth feel she had no alternative but to marry the first person who asked, this would never have happened.
“Look at her!” Gail went on, heated. “Beaten, abused, stitches in her hand and knee, sleepless, worried, and traumatized, and see how calm and rational she is? She’s so amazing.”
“Oh, Gail,” Elizabeth protested, “don’t upset Mrs. Vargas.”
“No, no,” Mrs. Vargas said. “I’m glad to hear her testimonial, I trust Gail’s instincts.”
“If you must be disappointed in someone,” Gail continued, “be disappointed in me. I’m the one who left the door to the garage unlocked and forgot that Tony had a garage door opener, which is how he got his hands on Amy. Elizabeth was at work expecting that I keep up my end of protecting Amy.”
“Mrs. Vargas nodded. “Unfortunate. Unfortunate all around. So, what’s been taking place?”
Elizabeth told Mrs. Vargas about the events of the previous days, including the two paranormal events Peter had with Elizabeth’s grandfather.
“When my grandfather, or who, or whatever it was, told Peter that Amy’s real name is Amethyst, which Peter had absolutely no way of knowing, I was convinced that something spectacular was happening.”
“Perhaps” Mrs. Vargas said carefully, “people pick up bits of information from someone they care very much about. That is, I suppose a person as close to you as Peter is, and as sensitive and intelligent as he is, would be able to psychically access Amy’s real name and even tie it together with a lucid dream with a man like your grandfather in it. But I don’t believe it goes any farther than that.”
“A few days ago, Mrs. Vargas, I would have said the same thing. I’m just an ordinary person who’s greatest desire is to live an ordinary life. But events larger than me have been taking place, and I can’t deny them with some usual explanation such as mere sensitivity and dreams.” Elizabeth told her about the previous two nights, the dense fog, the white sedan, the driver with short dark hair and large glasses.
Mrs. Vargas appeared to become agitated by Elizabeth’s story as it progressed. When she stopped, Mrs. Vargas asked, “Where did you get that information?”
“What?” Elizabeth was stunned by Mrs. Vargas’ quietly disapproving voice, a tone she had never heard from her.
“Those details, how did you come up with them?”
“Why, just exactly as I said,” Elizabeth answered candidly. “The way I told you.”
“There is no way that you could know... let me tell you a story,” Mrs. Vargas said, becoming her calm self once again. “One day I got a call from a young mother asking me if I knew of any financial assistance to help her provide medical attention for her infant. I visited her and she told me her story, which no one, besides myself, has ever heard.
“She had wanted nothing more than to have a child, although she had no man in her life. Working second shift as a word processor in a big empty building and living with her mother, there was little probability that she would ever meet someone. But still she wanted a baby.
“An attractive man left work every day just as she came on to her shift. He noticed her looking at him and one day he asked her to lunch. After a dozen “lunches,” she was pregnant. She told him about the pregnancy, but she realized she didn’t love him, and didn’t want to have anything more to do with him. In any case, the day after she told him, he quit work and disappeared.
“When her baby, Amy, was born with a club foot, the woman took on a second job, and spent the rest of her time writing letters and making telephone calls to try and get financial assistance for surgery and medical treatment. She had to spend most of her money on baby sitters and she worked herself into the ground.”
Mrs. Vargas paused for a moment. “She loved Amy with all her heart and soul, much as you do. But tragedy struck one night when an unusually dense fog rolled in. She apparently became disoriented in the fog, driving off the road and into a lamp post. She died instantly.
“Amy’s grandmother could not afford to provide for her. Without her daughter’s income, she had to go on welfare herself. Anyway, she wanted nothing to do with Amy, blaming the poor baby for her mother’s untimely death.
“Amy’s biological mother had short black hair and wore large, dark-rimmed glasses. She drove a small white sedan.”
Chapter XXX
After Mrs. Vargas left, Elizabeth went to her room, exhausted. She fell asleep and immediately began to dream. She saw the white sedan, she followed it up El Toro road again. She turned on the car radio – a young woman’s voice said, “I chose you to be Amy’s new mother because I saw in your heart and soul you would have the same love for Amethyst I have.”
The white sedan turned onto the Silverado Canyon Road and in her dream, Elizabeth followed. The white car disappeared.
Elizabeth woke up, still exhausted. The dream had taken as much out of her as if she’d actually gone through the experience. She got out of bed and prepared for the long-night’s drive.
She headed directly for Silverado Canyon Road. The sun was setting behind her and all the trees glowed, bathed in the sun’s golds and pinks and oranges, the sky a deepening blue. Birds fluttered about, and Elizabeth saw a squirrel scamper from a branch on one tree and leap across to the neighboring tree.
Everything in this idyll was ageless and beautiful. Elizabeth wished with all her being that she could enjoy it.
She felt herself moving, suddenly, through that odd, static atmosphere. The interior of the car became charged. She slammed on her brakes as she hurtled headlong into a cabin.
But as she pulled onto the shoulder, gasping with palms sweating, she saw that the cabin was translucent. Dark brown, with a brown shake roof and three steps leading up to the front door. There were two gigantic fir trees, one on either side of the cabin, the same cabin that had superimposed itself on the baby’s carpet.
And now she knew, without a doubt, this was where Tony was hiding with Amy.
This cabin must be here in the canyon – somewhere.
Elizabeth drove the two miles up to the little village of Silverado Canyon. Then she drove the narrow, winding road that snaked among the cabins on the hillside. But they were all cheek by jowl. None of them had the space around them of the one in Elizabeth’s vision. None of them had the giant matching fir trees.
She continued up the canyon to the next berg of cabins. They were even more unlikely, as they were not even on a hillside.
Night had fallen and Elizabeth could no longer see to continue her search. She went back down to Lake Forest and home, buying maps of the area at every filling station she passed.
Gail greeted her at the door. “Oh, Lizzie, I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Why? Has something happened?”
“No. I wish I could say yes, but no. I just mean, you’re wearing yourself down to nothing with all this driving around. And you’re not accomplishing anything. At least it’s only ten o’clock tonight instead of one a.m.”
Elizabeth began spreading out the maps on the living room floor.
“What are those for?” Gail asked.
“I’m going to find Amy tomorrow morning.”
“How?”
“From all the information I’ve been given.” She got down on
the floor and started studying all the roads in the Silverado Canyon. Silver mining had gone on in those mountains one-hundred years ago and there were perhaps cabins that hardly anyone knew about, up in the hills, abandoned. A perfect place for someone who wanted to hide.
Elizabeth penciled out three nearly invisible lines – dirt roads, she surmised on one of the maps, then highlighted them on another, larger map.
She pointed at those three infinitesimal lines. “On one of these roads, that’s where Tony is hiding Amy. On a hill, in a dark brown cabin with three steps up to the door and two huge fir trees, one on either side of the cabin. That’s where my baby is. I’m going to bed.”
Chapter XXXI
Elizabeth set her alarm for four-thirty. It would be light enough by the time she got to Silverado Canyon to see the cabin. She got dressed and tip-toed to the garage. As she drove she thought about Tony, not in his right mind. Perhaps he even had a weapon.
But she couldn’t stop now. The police had not found Amy. She’d left enough in the hands of others. Amy was her responsibility, and she was taking charge.
She put the map she had folded down to the three obscure roads across the steering wheel, studying it, hoping another vision would come to her. But it did not, and before long she was at the Silverado Canyon turn off.
All three of the roads were far up in the foothills of the mountains. Elizabeth drove through the winding sleeping village of Silverado Canyon, as day dawned, fresh and beautiful. But Elizabeth had no mind for nature now. She knew she was close to Amy.
Finally she came to the first road and turned onto it, driving over un-drivable terrain. “This is a road?”
There was nothing but thick vegetation on both sides of the road and not the slightest hint of any sort of building anywhere. The terrain did not look right either, it was too flat. But Elizabeth followed the bumpy ruts until they became indiscernible and finally were completely grown over.
There was no place for her to turn around, and, in fact, she was afraid she might get stuck. She backed up cautiously until she came to a space wide enough to turn around.
She made her way back out to the main road. One down, two to go. The next road looked a bit more promising, the area was more hilly.
She turned onto it, but had only gone half-a-mile when she encountered a sign:
YOU ARE ENTERING PRIVATE PROPERTY
NO TRESPASSING — THIS MEANS YOU!
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
SURVIVORS PROSECUTED!!
Elizabeth felt a mixture of amusement and amazement. What kind of mentality was this? Was it a joke, or perhaps... not.
No sign, however, even if it read “Road to Hell” would deflect Elizabeth from her purpose, and she continued. She drove another half mile, when the burliest man she’d ever seen in her life came at her in a jeep.
She stopped. He jumped out of his jeep as if he were ready to tear her car limb from bumper.
She tried smiling as he roared up. “What’s the matter with you? Are you illiterate?”
Elizabeth was hugely tempted to say, “Hola, no habla...” but she resisted. The man appeared to lack humor. “I stopped and read your most gracious sign. I am not the enemy, sir. I’m looking for someone who is out here, somewhere.” She held her map out the window, pointing at the three high-lighted roads. “See? I’m looking for a cabin that’s up on a hill, with two huge fir trees on either side of it.”
“Well, you won’t find it here. I live alone up here and I don’t have any shacks like that.”
Elizabeth nodded. She extended her hand. “My name’s Elizabeth.”
The burly man nodded back, but refused to take her hand. “Okay, Elizabeth, now just turn around and get out.”
“What I had in mind, that is, I’m hoping you’ll let me go on up this road, just to check it out, and give myself peace of mind.”
“I’ll give you a piece of my mind! I told you that what you’re looking for isn’t up here. Now BEAT it.”
“Do you know of any place around here that might fit my description?”
“There’s a place something like that on the other road you got marked there,” he said, poking an index finger the size of a plump hot dog at her map. “But nobody’s lived there for years. It’s uninhabitable. You can’t even drive up to it anymore, it’s so overgrown.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said gratefully, throwing her car into reverse. “Maybe you don’t like the idea, but you’ve just done a good deed.”
She backed around and charged back to the main road.
The third dirt road was on the opposite side of the main road, and, according to the map, virtually across the street from the one she’d just exited. But she had to drive up and back twice before she found the unmarked ruts.
As soon as she turned onto the nearly invisible road, though, she knew she was in the right place. She drove for nearly a mile with tree branches thwacking her windshield and scratching the finish of the car. Then the trees thinned and she found herself in a meadow. It was flat, full of wild flowers and the palpable presence of small creatures. Ahead was another thicket of growth, and Elizabeth continued.
These woods were darker and thicker, the road wound up and down bluff-like hills. Then, suddenly, there it was – a clearing with the cabin, and the two giant fir trees that were etched on her mind’s eye, taking three-dimensional form in front of her.
Immediately she cut the engine and let her car roll back into the trees until she could not see the cabin. She crept out of the car and stole among the trees, working her way up the steep hill towards the cabin. Her heart pounded – to be this close to Amy! Elizabeth found herself practically gasping for air as she climbed the unmercifully steep hill while struggling through the dense, unyielding underbrush.
Finally she reached the small clearing around the cabin. She crept up to the near fir tree, bigger around than she. She listened and peered around. There, just peeking out from behind the cabin was the nose of an old Ford pick-up truck. So that’s what he’d been sneaking around in.
She heard nothing and realized that she would have to steal the remaining distance to the cabin and look in a window.
She scurried forward and peeked through a side window. There, on a ratty, horrible couch, slept Tony. Her heart raced even faster, which seemed impossible.
But she didn’t see Amy.
Where could she be? Then Elizabeth heard a faint crying from another room. Amy! Her baby was practically within her grasp.
“Shut up!” Tony yelled. “SHUT UP!” He didn’t move a muscle to see why she was crying.
Elizabeth suddenly knew what it was to have the strength of ten men. She hoisted herself up through the open window and flew to the back of the cabin where she had heard her baby cry. There was Amy, trapped in a corner by a pile of boxes and broken furniture, a cage of sorts. In her life, Elizabeth had never felt rage like she felt now, seeing her poor Amy humiliated and neglected.
Tony flew into the room and jumped on Elizabeth. “What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you! NO WOMAN TREATS ME LIKE YOU DID! No woman ever has, and no woman ever will. You’re my wife, you belong to me!”
Tony’s rage and venom turned his perfect features into a frightening, hideous mask. The pulsing vein in his forehead looked as though it would burst then and there. “Besides,” he continued, digging his fingers like talons into her shoulders, “who else would have you, you wimpy little mouse? I married you for financial security. You were crazy to expect me to stay home and play daddy! I knew how to get you back, all I had to do was take the brat!”
Tony stopped ranting and looked down at Elizabeth, trapped under him. “Wait a minute, how did you get here?”
He dragged her to her feet, pulled her over to the window and looked out. There was nothing but trees and wild vegetation to be seen.
“Hah! All by yourself. Too smart for your own good, aren’t you. Well, you’re here now. I knew it’d work, just grab the brat and you’d come run
ning. I wanted to let you suffer some more before I told you where to come. I wanted to make sure you’d obey me after you saw I mean what I say!”
All through Tony’s crazed harangue Amy was screaming at the top of her lungs, “Mommy! Mommy!”
“And shut that brat up! I’ve had all of her noise I can stand!”
Elizabeth’s fury was so intense, she’d become calm. “She’d better not be missing one single hair from her head.”
“Ha! Ha!” Tony said in a forced tone. “Or what? You going to hurt me?” He slapped her. “I think I should make a matching black eye for that other pretty one I created. You still don’t know who’s boss, do you?”
Elizabeth wretched herself from Tony’s grasp and ran toward Amy. She grabbed a chair from the pile and swung it at Tony. It knocked him into the wall and he looked at her in complete surprise.
“Don’t make me angry, Elizabeth,” he warned. “I mean it. You’ve really been making me angry lately. I won’t tolerate it!”
Elizabeth grabbed another piece of the makeshift facade blocking her from her baby, and threw that at Tony as well. Another box and she had her hand on Amy. Amy clutched onto Elizabeth. “Mommy! Take Amy.”
“Yes baby, I’m taking you. Don’t worry!”
Tony lunged at her, and threw her to the floor. She twisted out of his grasp, her eyes and mind only on Amy, who stood reaching through the last chair blocking her from Elizabeth, crying, “No, Nony, bad. Mommy, take Amy. Nony, bad.”
Elizabeth couldn’t bear the plaintive cry of her baby. Oh yes, Nony had become very bad, indeed. “Yes, Mommy take Amy.” She kicked with all her might at Tony’s hand grabbing onto her ankle.
“Damn, Elizabeth, that hurts. Will you just stop fighting me?”
She jumped up, leaned over the chair and grabbed Amy, then sidled along the wall. Tony slowly stood, clearly disoriented, but not willing to stop. There were three feet between her and the door to the front room. She jumped through the doorway and Tony leapt forward, grabbing her shirt.