Thirty

She was alone.

There was a silence to the place she’d never heard before. An emptiness that made her sure that wherever he’d gone, the man who took her was not here. She didn’t know how long she’d lain there listening to the empty black that surrounded her, but somewhere between realizing there was no one to stop her and remembering where she was, Maggie made a choice.

Pushing herself against the wall, she planted her bound hands on the floor, levering herself up until she was sitting. She’d pissed herself again. The cold sting of it rubbed into the chafed skin of her thighs, mixing with the tacky blood and the …

That’s when she started to remember.

What he did. How much it hurt. How long it went on. What he said to her. The lash of a whip, the brutal thrust of his hips. Over and over until each unbearable pain bled into the next. Until she screamed and cried. Begged for him to stop.

Until she wanted to die.

She started to shake. Her arms and legs trembling so hard she had to wrap herself into a ball and press her face into the top of her thighs to keep herself from coming apart. “Stop it,” she said out loud. “Stop it right now.”

She didn’t have time to fall apart. She was alone, but for how long? Ten minutes? An hour? Unwrapping herself, she planted her bound hands on the floor and pushed again, pulling her legs beneath herself slowly, finding her balance, until she was standing.

The room was pitch black. When he’d dragged her back down the hall and toss her into it, she’d hit the floor, her knees buckling before she scrambled across the cracked concrete until she hit a wall. Wedging herself into its corner, she’d cowered and waited.

He’d stood in the doorway for a few minutes, watching her—his fingers flexing around the handle of the knife he’d used on her. “Do you still believe in miracles, Margaret?” he said to her in the same calm, reasonable tone he’d used while systematically raping and beating her.

“Yes.” She whispered it, worried that if she raised her voice he’d be able to hear the lie. She knew instinctively that the moment she told him the truth—that she didn’t believe in anything anymore—he’d kill her.

Instead of answering her, he just laughed and shut the door.

Now, hands outstretched, she shuffled forward, shoulder scraping the rough block wall. The dark had a way of disorienting you. Turning you upside down. Growing and shrinking until you didn’t know where you were. Making it impossible to find your way to the other side.

The more she stared at it, the more the crack of light beneath the door seemed to stretch and wane, growing farther and farther away with each step she took. She kept going. One step in front of the other. Eyes fixed on the crack of light that would show her the way out.

When her hands closed over the door handle, her breath caught in her chest. Please. Please let it be open. Please God, help me find my way out. Please, please, please … She levered the handle downward. Felt the latch that held it closed give way.

The door swung open.

It was a test. Some sort of trap. The certainty of it had her shrinking away from the open doorway. She’d try to escape and she’d be caught. He’d punish her. Drag her back into that room and do things …

She leaned heavily against the doorframe and waited. Listened. There was nothing. No sound. No movement. Trap or not, this was her chance. She wouldn’t waste it. Pushing herself away from the door, Maggie took a tentative step into the hallway.

The space was deserted. There were other doors. Other rooms. Trying them, she found some locked, some not. The ones that opened were empty. There were no windows. Not anywhere. No way out that she could find. Looking down, she saw the blood trail that cut down the center of the floor.

Maggie followed it. Not toward the room he’d taken her to, but in the opposite direction. Around a corner and down another corridor. The blood trail grew fainter and fainter until it was nothing more than indistinct brown streaks soaked into the concrete, disappearing under a closed door.

If this is where he’d taken the body of the other woman, maybe it led to the outside. Maybe it was a way out. Again, she stopped and waited for the trap to snap shut.

After a few seconds of more nothing, she yanked on the handle. The latch released and the door swung open. Her chest went tight, constricted with hope. She would find her way out. She would escape. She would run.

She would live.

It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing. What she was smelling. Bodies. So many of them, heaped on top of each other in a gruesome tangle of mottled skin and rotting flesh. She gagged, the smell of it—spoiled meat and spent fluids—pushing her back into the hallway.

“Did you get lost, Margaret?”

She was spun around by the heavy hand that landed on her shoulder and she swung out with her hands and missed, throwing herself off balance. He grabbed for her but she lunged out of the way, slamming into the wall. She almost went down but kept her feet. Kept running. Kept moving.

Back the way she’d come. Past the room she’d been kept in. Past the room she’d been raped in. She could hear him behind her, shouting at her to stop. That he would kill her if she didn’t.

She didn’t stop. She ran until she found stairs.

She climbed them faster than she thought she could, slamming into the door that topped them. Pushing it open, she launched herself through it.

More dark. The howl of a coyote.

Below her, she could still hear him. He wasn’t shouting anymore but he was coming. He’d warned her what would happen if she didn’t stop. He was coming and if he caught her, he would kill her.

Maggie had made her choice the second she opened the door and stepped into the hallway. She didn’t want to die. So she ran.