It’s a yellowing, shabby kitchen with patterned linoleum and flower-print wallpaper. It stinks of stale smoke.
For a moment I’m reminded of my mother’s trailer. But where her home is trashy, this one is immaculate, despite the smoke smell.
I turn to Jack and whisper, “She’s underneath the basement. He’s dug a room.”
“I remember.” It’s almost a snarl.
Right. I made him see. He’s never going to forgive me for that.
“I have no idea how to get into the basement.”
“Huh. We’ll have to search.”
Jack’s calling the shots now somehow. I don’t know whether that means we’re near the end of our partnership … our brotherhood … or whether it just means he’s in charge.
Why does everything have to be so hard?
We start opening doors. A utility closet. A pantry. A closet full of coats. Jack looks at me, shakes his head. He points. Moves on to the hall. A bathroom, then another closet.
Then, suddenly, a man is standing in front of us. He’s a foot away from Jack, filling the dim hallway with his shadow. Dubrovnik. I know it’s him, even though I can’t see his face.
He swings something, and Jack jerks sideways, his head leading. The sound of the impact sounds like a branch breaking under the weight of snow, bright and resounding but wet too. A moist crack.
Jack hits the wall and slumps to the floor.
Dubrovnik steps over his body and advances toward me. Even in the dark, I can tell he’s smiling. This is fun to him.
It’s my job to make it not fun for him.
I raise the Taser and pull the trigger.
Two darts lance through the air and embed themselves in Dubrovnik’s chest.
He doesn’t jerk or fall or tense. Nothing. He just reaches up and yanks the darts out.
It’s been more than two months. The charge is dead.
Never have I felt anger like I feel now. Not when Moms abandoned us. Not when I think about Billy Cather and being shot. Not when I think about a father who never was. The anger is like an explosion in my skull, and I’m not even trying to invade Dubrovnik’s head.
I shriek and race down the hall at him, arms out, leaping.
He swings—a billy club, it looks like—but the walls are too close here. The tip bounces off a doorframe and hits me in the shoulder instead of the head. The pain is sharp but not unbearable. Unfortunately for Dubrovnik, I have a good head of steam, and inertia is a bitch.
I barrel into Dubrovnik, fists swinging. The first one clips him on the cheek, and his head rolls back. But he flings up an arm and blocks my left as he grabs me with a gnarled hand, unimaginably strong. I yelp as the bones in my left wrist grind together. A sound issues from his disgusting throat. It takes me a moment to realize he’s laughing. It’s a phlegmy, evil sound. But it’s cut off as his feet hit Jack’s inert body and he begins to topple. Backward. Taking me with him.
I bring up my arm as we fall. His head bangs on the hardwood floor, and my elbow smashes into his throat, hard. I feel the flesh of his neck and the gristle of his windpipe giving. I push down as hard as I can, shoving my forearm down like I’m bearing a shield, grinding it into his neck.
Dubrovnik begins to thrash. One of his big, gnarled fists catches me on the temple, and the world teeters and I see stars and I’m rolling away from him. When I get my sense of direction back, I spy the dull, blunt shape of the billy club—no, it’s a miniature baseball bat—and I snatch it up and scramble to my feet.
Dubrovnik is gasping, his hands clutching at his throat. He looks at me with wide, terrified eyes. Having a hard time breathing, are we? Let me help you with that.
It doesn’t bother me one bit that he’s looking at me right in the face when I clobber him with the bat.
“Fat lot of good all these superpowers did when he came at us,” I say, glancing at Jack. He’s woozy and unstable, and his scalp bleeds all over the place. He looks like a survivor of a terrorist bombing.
I take him into the kitchen and give him a glass of water. Then I grab a dishrag and mop up the blood oozing from his head. Once I get him on a kitchen stool, I search through all the drawers until I find some white nylon rope.
My head is a little woozy, too. I can feel my cheek swelling. I’m afraid the left side of my face will never be the same. First Ox smashing me into cinders, and now Dubrovnik. But at least Dubrovnik’s going to roast for it.
I trudge down the hall to Dubrovnik’s body. I check his pulse. Still here in the land of the living, the bastard. I yank his wrists backward, tie a tight loop around them, and then begin trussing the monster like a hog. Once he’s bound tight, I go back and check on Jack. He’s still just sitting there, gazing at the hideous wallpaper. It’s patterned with birds and pears and what looks like a cherub playing a lute.
That’s creepy, the cherub.
I’ve got to find the basement.
“Who was…”
Jack’s voice is slurry.
“So, who left? Who was the person in the station wagon —”
“Hold on, man. I’ve got to find the girl, quick.”
I race down the hall, throwing open doors. The one to the basement is the last on the left.
The stairs creak as I head down. I feel along the walls for a light. I can’t find one.
It smells moldy down here, and the air feels dank and cooler than upstairs. After a few moments my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I think I can make out a lighter-colored line above me. I wave my arms above my head and, sure enough, hit a string. Once it stops swaying, I grab and pull and I’m blinded by the glare of the single hundred-watt bulb.
I’ve never been in a basement before, since trailers don’t have them. But heck, all trailers have TVs. And this basement looks like what I think a basement should look like. I see a workbench and a wall of shelves holding preserves and boxes. The floor is concrete. A washer and dryer sit in the corner along with a treadmill.
What I don’t see is a door to a sub-basement.
I search the concrete, looking into all the corners.
No door.
“Can you hear me?” I scream. “Can you hear me!”
I send out my mind, leave the prison of my body, and try to find the light of another person down here. Nothing.
Oh no.
I scramble back up the stairs.
Can I have been totally wrong? Am I crazy? Is Dubrovnik innocent?
I stop, go back down the stairs, my heart doing backflips in my chest. My own breathing is deafening in my ears.
“Please! Answer me! Are you here?”
Nothing.
I move to the boxes in the corner. I throw them aside, breaking the dishes or glasses stored in them. I strip the shelves, throwing the pickled fruits and vegetables onto the concrete. Each one detonates with a low, liquid crash.
Behind the shelves there’s nothing.
Panic rises in my chest, and I feel like at any moment the world will end.
I’m whirling around when I see the extension cord. It’s orange and snakes from the single bulb, down the wall and underneath the stairs.
I follow it, tracking the cord with my eyes. A large chest lurks there in the shadow of the open stairs. I yank the chest away. The floor sounds funny and hollow.
Oh, thank you.
I throw open the trapdoor and see a rough clay and stone stairway. Dubrovnik made this with his own two hands.
At the bottom is a door with a combination lock.
Racing back up the stairs, into the dark hall, I find Dubrovnik still unconscious.
“Jack! Jack! I need your help! Bring water.”
No response.
He must have gotten a serious whack from Dubrovnik. Probably has a concussion. I dash down the hall, into the kitchen. Jack’s slumped over, resting his head on the counter like a bored student in class. Rummaging through the cabinets, I find a large pot, jam it underneath the faucet, and fill it with water.
I dump it all on Jack’s head. Spluttering, he jerks his body upright. Blood streams down his cheek and neck.
“Stay with me, Jack. Stay awake.”
He blinks. Nods once, tersely.
I fill the pot again and carry it back down the hall to where Dubrovnik lies. Did I see his hands move?
I kick him—as viciously as I can—in the stomach. He twists, and I dump the water on his face.
Dubrovnik gasps. I really did a number on his throat, I think.
“I know you’re awake, you freak. Look at me.”
Getting in his head is harder this time. My agitation may be to blame, or it might be his pain and discomfort from being hog-tied. I don’t know. This ain’t a science, I’m coming to understand.
“Look at me!”
He turns his head and opens one yellowed eye. I’m happy to report the other is swollen shut.
He’s fighting me, on the inside. He knows I’m in his head.
“What’s the combination?”
“Huh…” He voice rasps like sandpaper. “I don’t know what you’re talking—”
Just hearing him lie makes me furious again. So I go ahead and kick him in the stomach once more. I wish I was wearing boots. Tennis shoes aren’t the best for interrogation.
“What’s the combination?”
He smiles a bloody smile, the evil bastard. He’s still fighting me. But just by my asking, he’s thought of it. I guess he can’t help but think of the answer.
12-26-05.
“Where are your car keys?”
He shakes his head, but I get a clear image of them in a drawer in the kitchen.
“Thank you for your cooperation.”
He’s not smiling anymore.
I dash back into the basement, down the steps, and get the lock open on my second try.
I push open the door.
He keeps her in the dark. I can hear her whimper and cringe as the door squeaks open.
We’re born into pain, our constant companion through life. There are things you see, things you experience that you can never wash away or rid yourself of—never. They’re like ink impregnated into skin, tattooed on your consciousness, malformed and dark and hideous.
There are things we see that we will never be able to unsee. They change us to the core.
What I see now in the pit, I will never speak of it, not the way Dubrovnik kept that child, not the evidence of the things he did to her.
Never.
She huddles in the corner of the cell. In the cold.
Looking at the girl, I fall to my knees on the roughhewn packed-clay floor. When the heaves stop, my breath coming in dim white plumes from my mouth, I can see again through my tears. I force myself to stand, force myself to go behind her eyes, truly terrified of what I’ll find there. I see things, things he’s done to her—
I’ll never speak of them. Never.
It’s as though she’s always been here. She has no recollection of light, or love, or her mother’s touch, or even warmth. This disgusting little hole in the ground is her world.
Her mind is a jumble, and I get strange flashes of Dubrovnik’s loathsome face, sometimes sad, sometimes angry. Sometimes it is wreathed in long hair and makeup, as if he’d dressed himself as a—
Inside her pain I can barely function, I’m filled with such hatred and disgust and rage.
There’s nothing I can do to help. Only time and love can heal her. All I can do is help her body.
I have to get her under covers before I can take her out of the cell. I have to cover her. I remember seeing some blankets in a box in the basement, and I dash back up the stairs and root around until I find one. Then I go back down. It nearly breaks my heart when I wrap her in the blanket and she sighs. When she rediscovers what it means to be warm again instead, my heart loosens in my chest. For a moment, I feel her remember what it’s like to be human.
She’s light as a doll stuffed with sawdust. I carry her into the basement and up the stairs. She’s trying hard to cover her eyes.