I had this image in my mind of men sneaking through my bedroom window, taking my mother—but to do that, they’d have to get through the gate first.
The alarm had been off. The alarm was never off. They could’ve disguised themselves as a delivery service, gotten buzzed in, snuck through the window, convincing her to disarm it, threatening her life, if they thought it could somehow trigger the police.
Or.
Or.
She could’ve let them in.
But no. She wouldn’t. She’d never.
I remembered the day social services came for me. How she seemed to know, even before they rang the bell at the gate, what they were here for—so different from the first time they stopped by. She’d asked for their ID numbers, and she’d called the home station to double-check, to be sure of who they were first. And even then, there was a long moment when I thought she wouldn’t do it. A moment where she turned around and pulled the curtains shut, her back to the door, a deep, steady breath. A moment where she grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall—I’d said, “Mom?” because she was hurting me.
She stopped. Dropped my arm. Put a hand out to steady herself against the wall. And she didn’t look at me when she said, “Kelsey, go let the nice people in.”
Even then, she couldn’t do it herself. Everything in her body screamed no.
I shook the thought. It didn’t matter. Ryan was in the dark kitchen, banging cabinets around. Right now there were men outside, and we were inside, and we needed help.
Nothing about this house was set up to call for help. My mother had lied. We were not prepared for anything. We were not prepared for this.
The House of Horrors, Cole and Emma called this place. Steel-reinforced walls and spike-topped gates. And for what? For what?
It was as if we were an island. An island, cut off from the rest of the world.
I walked to the back window, pushed the curtain aside, and stared out into the darkness.
I felt the darkness staring back.
Ryan was opening and closing kitchen drawers, rummaging through them with the flashlight gripped in his teeth, pulling out anything he could use. Knives, the fire extinguisher, an aerosol container that I thought probably only held olive oil.
He paused to look up at me, removing the flashlight from this mouth. “Is there any way out of here, other than through the gates, Kelsey? Anything you can think of?”
“No.”
Think, Kelsey. We needed light. We couldn’t call, and we couldn’t run, but light could be seen for miles….
“I have an idea,” I said.
He placed his hands on the counter, and I could tell, even in the dark, they were pressing so hard into the marble that his knuckles were turning white. “I’m all ears,” he said.
“I can make a smoke bomb. I can make it colored. It will be bright. People will see it over the trees. People will come.”
“You can make a smoke bomb?” He almost smiled before remembering where we were, why we had to do it.
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty simple, actually. My mom taught me a few years ago, in science. She used to homeschool me.”
“I thought you moved here last year.”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve always been here.” I was just invisible. Trapped behind these walls without even realizing it. I could’ve disappeared and nobody would’ve noticed.
I started shaking, opening the pantry door, looking for the baking soda and sugar. “Everything else is downstairs,” I said.
I spun to leave and he reached for me, just like my mom had earlier today in this very room. “Kelsey, please stop for a second.”
I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I’d feel the momentum picking up, the air rushing by, like we were falling, and there was only one inevitable outcome. “What?” I asked, stripping the paper towels from the tube. I’d need that, too.
His arms went to my shoulders. “What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
He started to say something, but stopped. He was still staring into my eyes.
“I don’t know, Ryan,” I said. I thought my house was built out of paranoia. I thought it was because of what had happened, not what might happen.
“What are they after?” he asked. “Is there something here?”
I shook my head too fast. And Ryan kept staring, like there was something he wanted to say, but didn’t. “What?” I asked.
I noticed his throat work as he swallowed. “Why do you live like this?”
I had to tell him. I had to explain—we lived like this for a reason. And now that reason had found us.
“My mother,” I said on impulse, even though I knew that wasn’t what he was asking. I blew out a slow breath, telling him the thing he was really asking. “My mother was taken years ago,” I said. “Kidnapped. When she was my age. She was taken from her home, and she doesn’t remember it.” I shook my head again, clearing the thought of the similarities. Men at the house. Again. “She escaped a year later, and then she had me, changed her name, and moved here. And nobody’s bothered us since.”
He looked at me, like he was trying to work something out.
Don’t ask, I thought.
Don’t do it, I thought.
“Where’s your dad?” he asked.
A dad. Like the man who stood beside him at the ceremony, straightening his tie. Like the person who taught you to ride bikes, who protected you. “I don’t have one,” I said. And from the wince in his expression, I knew my tone told him everything he was asking. The way his eyes snapped closed in impulsive response, as if he saw too much suddenly in my face—like my mom sometimes did.
His mouth opened, and I thought, Don’t say it. Don’t.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but I’d already turned away, shrugging as I did. I knew nothing of it. I did not exist without this horror of my mother’s life. Sometimes I thought she couldn’t move past it, couldn’t break free of the fear, because of me. Always here, always a reminder—look what happened. Look. Look.
I did not look like her.
But I could be like her.
I needed to be like her. Because if I was not, if I was the other half of me, what was I then? The half of me that could destroy her? I was either scared most of the time, or I was a monster. Those were my options.
“Ryan, I can make the smoke bomb, but it’s going to take time, and we’re running out of it. I need to keep moving.” I needed to, before the fear caught up and worked the other way around, paralyzing me instead.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
—
Down in the basement, I dragged two battery-powered lights into the corners, illuminating the room in a faint, uneven glow. I pointed to the boxes against the wall. “The chemicals we need are somewhere in the boxes for school stuff. Somewhere in that pile.”
Ryan stood near the entrance to the safe room, eyes glued to the screen, his jaw moving slightly side to side, like he was having a conversation with himself.
“Anything?” I asked.
“They’re still out there.” He turned back to me, watching me like I was going to save us.
I could do this. I could get help for us.
There would be deliveries—Mom had scheduled the groceries for tomorrow. The mailman would come tomorrow. Help would eventually arrive.
But those things wouldn’t happen in time.
We lived in the middle of nowhere. The entire night stretched in front of us, in empty silence, like the expanse of cliff below us. I felt us hanging once more—
“Won’t your parents worry?” I asked.
“Eventually,” Ryan said. “But maybe not.”
“Is this something you do often?” I asked, and I felt a sting of jealousy, though I had no right.
“I spend a lot of time down at the station. They’ll probably think I’m there—and like I said, they’re practically family. The other firefighters will think I’m home. I’m eighteen. I kinda…fought my parents for some freedom. As long as I get my work done and I don’t get into trouble…I’m an adult.”
“Don’t you live with them?”