The woman shrugging philosophically again.
Don’t do it, I wanted to tell her.
But I couldn’t find my voice. I couldn’t find my will.
I only knew how to survive.
I didn’t know how to save anyone else.
Jacob drove. He headed to Lindy’s house and then . . . and then . . .
*
THERE WAS MUFFLED SCREAMING. It went on for a long time. There were grunts and groans, smacks and squeaks, all from a place I wouldn’t go, a room I never saw.
I sat outside Lindy’s house, in the backyard, my arms wrapped tight around my head, as if that would block the onslaught.
Eventually, I crawled far enough away to vomit up the tequila. Then I dry heaved. Then I picked at the scab on my forearm, if only to distract myself by watching the cut bleed again.
Hours later Jacob walked out wearing jeans, nothing else, his white flabby belly like an obscene growth. He smelled terrible. Sweet and sour. Sweat and sex.
I would’ve thrown up again if I’d had anything left.
He merely grunted, lit up a cigarette.
“Evening time, we’ll take her out to the swamp. Let the gators do the hard work for us.”
I said nothing.
He squatted down, peered straight at me.
“If it hadn’t been her, would’ve been you,” he said.
Brown eyes, I thought. Like her mother’s. Like her daughter’s.
“Do you have any more children?” I heard myself ask.
He laughed. “Nah. Just this one.”
“Her mother—”
“Hates my guts. Kept her from me for years. But that’s the thing about kids. They grow up. Get a mind of their own. Now, she wants to know her daddy. Can you believe it? All these years later . . .” Jacob grinned in the dark. “My little girl loves me.”
Jacob rose to standing, stubbed out his cigarette.
“You know things now,” he informed me. “Got your hands dirty yourself. No matter what happens. You’re now one of us. Welcome to the club.”
Chapter 36
MY THIN PINE SHARD, meticulously peeled down to slip into the doorjamb, splinters the second I try to use it to jimmy the door latch. I sit back on my heels in the dark, holding the remnants in my hand. I could try again, but what would be the point? The pine is soft and thin. The door is solid and heavy. Using one to pry open the other is never gonna happen.
Behind me, the girl whimpers. I track the sound to the far left corner.
“Yeah, I know,” I say out loud, encouraging contact. I can’t see her in the dark, which makes sound more important. Like mine, her hands are now free, her arms unrestricted. God only knows what she’ll do next. Jump me from behind. Go for my throat. Just because she’s a victim doesn’t mean she’s innocent. I know that well enough.
Survivors do what survivors must do in order to survive.
“Shut up, Samuel,” I mutter out loud, which makes the girl whimper again.
I rise to standing, stretching out my arms, flexing my wrists, which feels good. Then I contemplate my options.
No sound from outside. No shadowy movements in the viewing window. So far, the girl and I have been unshackled for at least thirty minutes, and there’s been no response from the peanut gallery. Evil Kidnapper doesn’t realize we’re on the loose yet? Or doesn’t care?
How did he get pine coffins in here without me ever waking?
How did he snatch me out of my own apartment without me ever fighting?
“Stop it,” I order myself. Now is not the time to analyze the past. Now is the time to move forward.
“Who’s out there?” I ask the girl as I roam our dark prison, searching for anything that might make a better crowbar than slivers of cheap wood.
She doesn’t talk.
“Did you know Devon?” I ask. It takes me a minute to remember his full name, told to me forever ago while I was sitting in the back of a patrol car. “Devon Goulding. Bartender. Amazing pecs. Works at Tonic. Did you know him?”
No more whimper. A sharp inhale. Recognition. I would swear it.
“I killed him,” I say, my voice just as conversational. “I tossed antifreeze and potassium permanganate onto his head and shoulders. Chemical fire. Burned him alive.”
Another shocked inhale.
“Does that make you happy? To know that he suffered. That he’s dead. Or do you miss him?”
I don’t mean for my voice to sound understanding, even wistful. But these things happen.
“The man’s dead?” Her voice sounds hoarse, but at least she’s finally talking to me.
“I didn’t kidnap you,” I say.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know what happened to you?”
She doesn’t answer. I should’ve stuck with understanding. Compassion is not my strong suit.
“Tonic nightclub. Downtown Boston. Ring a bell?” I’ve come to the plastic bucket. I pick it up, heft it for weight. A metal handle would’ve been nice. Even a plastic one might’ve worked. But I’m not that lucky. Which means there’s nothing to harvest as a pry bar. What if I threw the bucket at the viewing window, went for shattering glass? I twist the bucket in my hands, already skeptical. It’s too light, the one-way mirror no doubt being heavy-duty. I keep the bucket with me for now, however. If the girl rushes me, I can always use it to conk her over the head, Three Stooges style.
“Tonic,” the girl whispers, as if recalling a name from another lifetime ago.
“Black walls, blue lights, killer bands,” I begin, then halt myself. Black walls. Unbidden, I cross to the right until I hit one of the walls in question. Floor, wall, ceiling, windows all covered in black paint. Could that be coincidence?
Devon Goulding surprised me Friday night. The bartender with the amazing pecs suddenly appearing and taking out my initial target. And yet, regaining consciousness in his garage . . . He felt arrogant and inexperienced to me. A predator, sure, but this kind of predator?
With a blacked-out room, penchant for silk nighties, and elaborate shackle system?
Not to mention, I took him down, and yet here I am.
And yet, and yet . . . A nightclub famous for its blacked-out bar. And a room now covered entirely in black paint. Could that really be a coincidence? Which makes me wonder what else I’d missed Friday night.
Several of Stacey’s friends had said they frequented Tonic as well as Birches. Not to mention the staff at both places were friendly with one another, getting off duty at one club to go grab drinks at the other, given the close proximity. In my mind, that made it worth checking out. After all, the staff at Birches had been cleared in Stacey’s disappearance, but what about the folks down the street at Tonic?
Long shot, maybe, but apparently closer than I’d thought.
“Birches,” I say out loud, just to see what kind of reaction I can get from my cell mate.
She inhales again, her official sound of recognition.
“Stacey Summers,” I state.
She doesn’t reply as much as she whimpers. Affirmation, denial? What I’d give for the tiniest beam of light.
“Last thing you remember?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer. I search my brain for a better approach. What did I remember in the beginning? Or perhaps, more accurately, what did I allow myself to still know? Because it’s not like you magically forget your entire life, identity, the people who loved you. It’s more like you box them up, put the images away. Because thinking of such things, knowing such things, is simply too hard. Those memories make you human, which is inconsistent with your current role as an inanimate object.
And just because the police one day spring through the door, black armored beetles toting weapons and shouting orders, doesn’t magically open up the mental attic. If anything, I locked down harder, as disoriented by freedom as I’d once been by life in a coffin-shaped box.