Right Next Door

by Leah Montgomery

  “Nothing. Just thinking how much I wish I could stay and have French toast with you two today.”

  “Then stay. You can be a few minutes late, can’t you?” She reaches around him to set the griddle on the front burner.

  “Not today. I have that meeting this morning. What kind of an employee would I be if I didn’t know the ins and outs of my company’s products?”

  “If you stayed here for French toast every time I asked, probably a fat one.”

  “Fat and unemployed, so it’s probably better for all of us if I get going.” He kisses the tip of her nose. “I hope you two have fun in the sun today.”

  “We will. It’s going to be a good day.”

  “Any day that starts with your toast is a good day.”

  Marcy leans into his chest, blossoming in the warmth of his love. She’s never been the kind of wife to take his compliments for granted or to underestimate the value of them. Both Marcy and John have seen too many marriages crumble because one stops noticing and appreciating the little things. Marcy trusts her husband and their union implicitly, but she’s not fool enough to think she can stop trying. Neither of them can. Marriages take work and she refuses not to bring her A game to theirs. Just like she refuses not to bring her A game to motherhood. Marcy’s two most important roles are wife and mother.

  Or maybe mother and wife. In that order.

  A knock, just loud enough to be heard in the kitchen, brings a crease to Marcy’s forehead. She glances behind John’s back at the blue numbers on the microwave. “Who could that be at eight thirty in the morning?”

  “I’ll check and go through to the garage that way,” John offers.

  “That’s okay. I don’t want you to get caught up in something and be late. I’ll get it. The toast can wait a couple of minutes.”

  “You girls have fun. See you tonight.” With a quick peck to her lips, John moves through the kitchen toward the door that leads to the garage while Marcy makes her way to through the living room to the front door.

  She angles her eye in toward the peephole as she reaches for the dead bolt. Her forehead smooths when she sees who’s standing on the stoop. Marcy flips the locks and swings open the door.

  “Good morning, neighbor. This is a nice surprise. Come in.” Marcy backs up and motions for Jill to come in.

  “Oh, I can’t. I’m on my way to work.” Marcy notes the Wednesday Addams hairstyle—the lackluster drape of hair from skull in a thick curtain—and the dull, muted clothes. She deduces that this must be Jill’s work look. She can only hope she has another, prettier look for home life. If not, Marcy will have to think up a nice way to offer a makeover.

  “Oh, what do you do?”

  “I work for an accountant.”

  “Nice,” Marcy replies. “We haven’t gotten around to all those basics yet. I’ll be starting to teach in the fall, and John is in sales. What does Mark do?”

  “He, uh, he works from home. Computer stuff.”

  “Wow, that’s handy. Having him there all day must save on the cost of day care.”

  Jill doesn’t respond. “I hate to rush, but I forgot to ask if we could exchange numbers or I’d have just called you later. I wanted to see if you and your daughter might like to come with us to the park this evening. Mark read that they’re bringing in some rides for the kids to celebrate the start of summer break, but he has some work obligations and can’t go. I thought I’d check with you. We could make it a girls night.”

  Jill’s smile is sweet and kind, and Marcy has no doubt that they will make great friends. She can feel it in her bones. Unfortunately, they won’t be making any headway in that arena tonight. As much as she’d love to take Jill up on her offer, Caroline doesn’t do well in a crowd. They’d tried something similar in Austin and the results were disastrous. All the people and movement plus the noise level were more than she could tolerate. It put Caroline so on edge that when Marcy took her hand, just to keep her close, Caroline started screaming and flapping her arms. She tried to escape and nearly ran out into the street before Marcy caught up to her.

  No, hopefully one day Caroline will be able to enjoy something like that, but that day is not today.

  “That’s so nice of you, but we already have plans for tonight. Maybe another time.”

  “Oh, sure. Yes, of course. I knew it was last minute, but I thought I’d ask anyway.”

  “Maybe we could all get together sometime this weekend.”

  “Or even just the four of us. Keep it to the girls at first.”

  “That sounds great.” Much better for Caroline. Marcy was already wondering how she’d do at a dinner with three extra people. Three strangers no less. Two girls is a much better start. “My phone’s in the kitchen. Do you have yours on you?”

  Jill pats her pockets and pulls a small rectangle out of one. “I do.”

  “Let me give you my number. You can text me later so I’ll have yours.”

  Marcy rattles off her phone number and Jill taps it into her phone. When she’s finished, she shoves it back into her pocket and pulls back her sleeve to glance at her watch. “Okay, I’ve got to run. I’ll text you later.” She whirls around and starts down the sidewalk. “Oh, and I’m sorry to come by so early. I saw your kitchen lights on and hoped you were up.” She’s talking even as she almost jogs to her dark blue car, which is parked and running in the driveway.

  “No problem. Have a good day at work.”

  Jill waves and ducks behind the wheel. The engine roars as she puts it into gear and goes barreling backward down the driveway. At the bottom, she turns out into the street and waves to Marcy again through the window.

  Marcy mimics the gesture. She’s still smiling when she closes the front door and returns to the kitchen. That smile dies when she sees that Caroline is nowhere to be found.

  Chapter Five

  Chained?

  Oh Jesus God.

  My heart set off on a mad gallop. My mind started spinning all at once. In every direction. Questions, questions, questions.

  Questions, but no answers. Just blanks. Blanks, blanks and more blanks. Blanks and confusion.

  I spent an eternity in those pointless loops. Finally made myself stop. Think. Reason.

  I needed to start from the beginning. That would make the most sense. So I did. I tried. I concentrated. Hard. But when I tried to think back to the last thing I remembered, my head began to pound. Pounded so badly, I had to reach up and squeeze my skull between my hands to make it stop.

  A thousand lifetimes went by before it finally tailed off. Wound down to a dull throb. I took three deep breaths. Tried a different tactic.

  Maybe I was dreaming. I knew from experience that some dreams seem ridiculously real. Right until I wake up. I just needed to wake up.

  I stilled. Thought of reality. Waited for something to change.

  Nothing did.

  How does one go about forcing a dream to end?

  I paused. Thought. Considered.

  Pain.

  Pain was supposed to wake a person up. Or at least that’s what I’d read on the Internet. And we all know everything you read on the Internet is true. Still, it was worth a shot.

  I reached down to my stomach. Pinched one of the small rolls around my waist between my fingers. Then twisted. Hard. I twisted until it felt like I was drawing blood. My skin stung even after I let it go.

  I waited. Counted to ten. Tried to wake up. But nothing happened.

  A little niggle of panic danced at the periphery of my thoughts. Like one of those black floaters you get in bright light. A dark spot that was practically nothing until I focused on it. Then I couldn’t not see it. Couldn’t not feel the panic.

  My pulse tripped up a few notches. I resisted the urge to freak out. Resisted the urge to focus on that damned floater. Panic would do me no good. If I was, in fact, in some kind of peril, which all indications seemed to confirm, I’d need all my adrenaline for later. For whatever was to come. There would surely co
me a time when I’d need to fight. For my life. For my freedom. For my safety. That was the only way a scenario like this could end. Unless…

  Once that thought fell into my head, I threw it aside. Purposely resisted it, too. I couldn’t allow myself to go down all the terrifying roads of what if. The only things I knew for sure were that I was not at home and I was not free. Nothing else was a certainty yet.

  Yet.

  I had time. No idea how much, though, so I had to be smart. Use everything at my disposal the best way I could.

  First things first. I needed to know as much about where I was as I could. Knowing that I was naked and alone in the dark wouldn’t serve me in any way.

  Alone.

  A soft little gasp eked its way from between my dry lips.

  I assumed I was alone.

  But maybe I wasn’t.

  My breathing kicked up. Started coming in short pants. “H-hello?”

  The word fell absolutely flat. There was no echo. No reverberation. No sense of space whatsoever. Each syllable died the instant it left my tongue. Like the room absorbed them. Like they were trapped in here, too.

  When I got no response, I tried again. Louder. “Hello? Is anybody there?”

  Same thing. The moment that last word was out, it was gone. No trace of it. No memory of it. It was as if it never happened. Like sound never happened. Which made me wonder what kind of environment might dampen noise that way.

  There were only a few things I could think of. One more terrifying than the rest.

  Dirt.

  Lots of dirt.

  Like when something has been put in the ground.

  Buried.

  My throat closed around that word. My brain fled from it.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  The sweat that covered my brow formed a drop. It scurried down my cheek.

  I tried to tell myself to calm down.

  Calm down, damn it!

  But that was hardly ever effective for someone like me, least of all in a potentially life threatening situation.

  I tried logic, too.

  Whatever I was in was too big to be buried. People buried coffins. Or small crypts. They didn’t bury whole big rooms.

  Then I realized I had no clue how large my containment actually was. What if the walls were all within inches of my face, I just couldn’t see them?

  Pulse hammering at the base of my throat, I got onto my knees. Stretched my arms out as far as they’d go. I did it slowly, almost afraid of what I’d find.

  They dropped suddenly. Boneless in relief when I didn’t meet walls or ceiling within that short distance. I could rule out a crypt. At least I thought so. Only one way to rule out anything for sure, though, and that was to check out my surroundings as much as I could. It was dark, I was alone, and I was naked as the day I was born, but I could still move. And feel. And hear and smell. I’d put all that to good use, because whatever the hell was going on, I wasn’t the type to just lay down and take it. If there was a weakness in this room, if there was a weapon or a way out or anything I could use to my advantage, I was damn well going to find it.

  Palms flat on the floor, I tried to push myself into a stand. I didn’t have to be able to see the room to know it started spinning. I wobbled woozily and returned to the relative safety of my knees.

  Okay, so I’d explore, but just not on my feet. I could crawl and learn everything I needed to know. Babies did it all the time. It was just that my knees felt much sturdier than my legs did.

  Reaching back, I tugged on one of my chains. There was quite a bit of slack, so I kept pulling until it went tight. I tugged again. And again. It felt to me like it was pulling downward, so I turned and started patting the ground until I felt a steel ring bolted to the floor. And, beside it, a drain. Too bad I hadn’t felt that before I puked. The upside was that I had a landmark. Three actually. Thankfully, only one of them was disgusting and smelly. There was no way I could not find my vomit again.

  Using that puddle of puke as a starting point, I started crawling in a slow, straight line. I counted it as one “step” each time my palm hit the floor. As I counted, I made note of every sensory detail I encountered. That wasn’t much since I didn’t have the use of sight, but it still painted a mental picture.

  The floor was a hard slab of concrete, smooth and somewhat cool against my skin. Cooler than the hot, humid air anyway. It didn’t smell musty like a basement, but the way sound just died gave it a subterranean feel. The air…it was so claustrophobic. And there were no sounds other than the whispers of my scuffling and panting. No outside noise like traffic or construction or kids playing. I racked my brain for possibilities other than a basement, but the only thing that came to mind was maybe a warehouse in a deserted part of town.

  At the count of nine “steps,” my head butted up against something. I stopped, reached out and let my fingers dance along what was in front of me. Thin metal strips, twisted together into rectangles.

  Chicken wire.

  I poked one finger through a square until I could feel what was behind it. Something soft and spongy. Dense and covered in fabric. Something that felt like a mattress.

  I sniffed a couple of times. It didn’t smell musty either. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Had this room been made just for me?

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled at the thought.

  What would make a person do something like this? And to me, of all people? What could someone possibly have planned for me, to lock me in a room like this?

  I knew that was a dangerous road to go down. More emotionally than mentally. I couldn’t let myself lapse into so much fear that it crippled me. I couldn’t be helpless. Not right now. I could fall apart when I was safe, back home with Gabe and Dalton. But not now.

  I straightened up onto my knees. Stretched my arms up as high as they’d go and then as wide. I felt no walls and no ceiling, so the room was at least taller and wider than my five or six feet wing span.

  Now for the other dimensions of the room.

  With my fingers curled into the wire for support, I shuffled right, counting each planting of my right knee as one “step”. At eleven steps, I came to a perpendicular wall. Even in the corner where the walls met, I could feel slack in my chains. I reached out and felt along the new wall. As far as my arm would reach, it was the same situation—chicken wire and mattresses. At least now I could understand why sound was so deadened around me.

  As much as the soundproofing bothered me, the fact that I wasn’t buried alive was some small comfort, although, I didn’t get to enjoy it very long. One bitchy part of my brain immediately spoke up to remind me that if someone left me here, naked and alone with no food or water and no way out, I might as well be buried alive.

  Bitch.

  I shifted back eleven steps, and then repeated the process in the opposite direction. I got to fourteen steps to my left when the chains tightened and I couldn’t go any farther. I felt like it was safe to assume there was more of the same in the direction, but that there might also be a way out over there. Otherwise, why stop my chains from giving me absolute freedom? In fact, why chain me at all?

  I counted my return steps, making a mental sketch of the room as I went. When I reached fourteen, I spun a one-eighty on my knees and started crawling back in the direction of my vomit. As I suspected, it made an excellent landmark. The closer I got, the stronger the acrid scent of bile and digested food became. It wasn’t quite strong enough to fully compensate for a lack of vision, as I soon found out when I slapped my palm down right in the center of the slimy little pool.

  Saliva gushed into my mouth. I swallowed it back. I didn’t need a bigger puddle. God, no.

  My knees were getting sore from the pressure of the unforgiving concrete, but I didn’t care. I struck out to repeat the process in the other direction. When I finally made my way back to the puddle again, this time managing not to actually touch it, I sat back on my haunches. My mental image was as complete as it was li
kely to get without some lights.

  I was in a rectangular room, likely interior, possibly subterranean. As far as I could tell, every wall—and possibly even the ceiling—was lined with mattresses encased in chicken wire. I thought it was safe to assume that the point of entry was just beyond the reach of my chains, which meant that as long as I was chained, I was stuck. And unless I could loosen that ring bolted onto the floor, I would remain chained. The room was constructed so that nothing could get out.

  Not even my screams.

  I turned back around, facing what I thought was the far corner where my chains wouldn’t reach. I was thinking about how I’d stare at that spot until someone opened a door or a hatch or something. That had to happen eventually, right?

  It had to.

  It just had to.

  I was settling in for the long haul when I felt something brush my leg. I didn’t have time to think about what or who it was, or what to do about it. My body was taking care of business before my head could even figure out what the hell was going on. If it had bothered to ask the rational part of me what to do, I would’ve advised against running. But as it was, my instincts took over and I was on my feet before I knew it. My body knew only escape. The overwhelming, mind numbing, all consuming need to flee. The problem was, I couldn’t flee. At least not very far.

  The last thing I heard after I took off was the snap of the chains going taut.

  The last thing I knew was the dull thump of my shoulders slipping out of joint.

  The last thing I felt was sharp, shooting, horrific pain.

  And then nothing.

  Chapter Six

  Marcy is folding a load of clean towels, fresh from the dryer, as is her Saturday morning habit, when her phone buzzes with an incoming text. She glances down to see a number she doesn’t recognize, so she quickly slaps the last washcloth onto the pile and clicks the message to see who it is.

  Jill: Hi, Marcy. This is Jill. I wanted to share my number with you, and apologize that Cheyenne and I won’t be able to make it over this weekend. She’s been running a fever, and I’d hate to bring a bug over to y’all. I was really looking forward to a nice long chat and getting to know you a little better. Maybe we can reschedule for sometime soon. Let me know. Thx.