SHE CAME DRIFTING back to consciousness, on the bed, on her knees, her arms straight up over her head, her hands roped together and linked to a cable that rose high into the blackness of the warehouse ceiling. She was still fully dressed, her feet were untied.
The first thing she did was kick off the shoes.
Roger sat across from her now, his head straight down. He looked unconscious. A thin ribbon of drool ran from his mouth to his lap.
The man in the white jumpsuit was not in the room.
The record player had finished whatever it was playing and the needle was stuck at the end. The brip, brip, brip coming through the cheap speakers was a water torture – methodical, a metronome urging her to act. But she couldn’t act. Her head swam, her body was numb.
The mannequins were now arranged on the bed around her. She was able to spin a little and she saw that a mannequin dressed as a pirate was kneeling behind her, as was the flapper she had seen sitting at the desk earlier. In front of her was a soldier, on his knees, on the floor. The doctor was sitting at the desk. Standing next to Roger, propped against the wall, was the cowboy. This close, Amelia could see what it was that was causing the stench. The eyes on the cowboy. The lips on the doctor. The rotting breasts on the flapper.
Amelia looked straight up, away from the carnage. But soon the effort became too taxing. She lowered her eyes and tried to find a place to rest them, a place that didn’t steal pieces of her mind, her sanity.
The burlap bag. It sat on the ground near the cowboy’s boots, just to the left to Roger’s wheelchair, just beneath the windows. Amelia ran her eyes over the shape, the size, the soft angles.
It was the burlap bag that had been in the Camerons’ backyard.
The one that had sat at this monster’s feet.
Maddie.
No.
When the man returned this time, he seemed manic, clearly in the grip of a drug rush of some sort, soaring. Amelia knew that he was no longer going to play with them. This was the end of her family, right here and now, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
‘Now, before I fuck your wife, I have a question for you,’ the man said, conversationally, lifting Roger’s head. ‘I want you to tell me what happened that night, Roger. Tell me in your own words.’
Amelia looked at the burlap bag. Please, God, just an inch, she thought, staring at the middle of the bag. Please let me see the material move up one inch, then back down. Let me see her breathe once. One. Solitary. Breath. God, if you’ve ever heard a mother’s prayer, hear this one.
One breath.
She would not, could not, take her eyes from the bag.
Nothing.
‘Whose room is this, Roger?’ the man asked.
Roger lifted his eyes. ‘My room.’
The words were slurred, thick with his tongue.
‘That’s right,’ he said. He gestured to the mannequin next to him. ‘You remember Johnny Angel, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Course you do,’ the man said. ‘I always thought Johnny had the nicest eyes. Caring and honest, you know?’
Roger remained silent. The man looked at Amelia.
Amelia looked back at the burlap bag.
Breathe, Maddie.
Breathe.
Amelia had never felt as powerless in her life.
‘What do you want?’ she heard Roger ask, weakly.
‘I want you to tell me what happened that night. I want you to be a man and confess to your part.’
Then a light next to the television lit up, a red light on a small, sophisticated-looking panel. The man walked over to the TV, punched a few buttons.
And, without a word, walked out of the room.