“Be a good girl and don’t scream,” said the voice from behind me, male and cold and terrifying in the darkness. “Don’t turn around.”
I didn’t do either thing. Didn’t make a sound, not even a little one. Just stood there in the pitch black of the O’Connors’ study, frozen, still halfway out of my seat in the reading nook, hair falling forward over my shoulders, hands pressed hard into the wood of the wall, knuckles turning white.
After the lights went out—first in the front yard and then inside—it wasn’t long before I heard sounds, and not the kind that came from the heating system or an old empty house straining against the cold. These were the sort from people entering—people who didn’t have keys, people who weren’t supposed to be there—which would make it breaking and entering. It all happened so fast, and they were there before I even knew what was going on—the men, the boys, the robbers—whatever they were.
And I was alone.
“This place was supposed to be empty,” hissed a second voice, also male, low and nervous. “She wasn’t supposed to be here!”
“Don’t you move,” said the first voice again.
There came a crash. The overturning of a chair and something else. The smash of a vase, the shattering of glass, shoes, boots maybe, kicking the shards. The faint trickle of water as it dripped onto the floor between the sounds of other things breaking and crashing, and the crisp snap of stems underfoot. The shhhhhh of papers sliding to the ground. I couldn’t see anything or anyone. There was the darkness, broken only by the occasional beam of a flashlight, and there was the fact that my captor had me facing away from everything and everyone. The only thing I could make out in all that black was the slight gleam of glass on the face of the clock, and the shine of metal on my captor’s boot as it caught the glare of flashlights.
“Where does she keep the jewelry?” someone said, a third voice.
Doors opened and slammed shut. A table, or maybe it was a desk, overturned and a great resounding boom echoed outward.
“Hurry up!”—the second voice again.
Another pair of footsteps sounded along the floor, pounding out a run on the grand staircase that wound gently up from the entryway of the house, each step muffled by the rug until they hit the landing, where there was only wood. There was a sharp creak as the footsteps got closer.
I whimpered then. I couldn’t help it, didn’t even realize the sound was about to come out of me. With all the noise, all the banging and the searching, I thought it might be drowned out alongside everything else, but it wasn’t. In a split second hands were on me, arms around me tight and unforgiving, and one of them, one of them went around my neck, put me in a headlock. I could feel the body, his body, the one of my captor, flat and tight against my back. More sounds escaped and kept on coming with a will of their own, that is, until I heard the man, the boy, whoever he was, whisper in my ear “Shut up or you’re dead” so close and so frightening that my brain finally shut my voice down.
And then, then I felt the knife.
He held it to my throat. It was cold and it was sharp, so sharp it cut straight through the thin gold chain I was wearing like it was butter, the one with the tiny mosaic heart my mother had given me for Christmas. It fell to the floor with a soft clink amid the din. I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid that any little shift would push me toward that blade, so I stayed as still as I could.
It seemed like I might have to stand like that forever.
I stood, unmoving, for what felt like a hundred years.
Then, “What are you doing to her?” shouted a different voice, the newest one, the fourth, and it was shot in our direction like a bullet.
I flinched.
The man, the boy, the one who had me in his arms but not in a way that I’d ever wanted to be in a boy’s arms, swiveled and shouted toward the fourth voice, “I’m taking care of loose ends.” When he turned around, that knife sliced right across my neck, not a long cut or a deep cut but still a cut, and the pain was immediate—the pain and the blood. I felt it trickling, warm and wet along my skin.
Were they going to kill me?
The grip on my neck loosened, and I fought the urge to scream, but then I felt hands, more than two—I wasn’t sure whose—at my head, my eyes—and my heart sped until I thought it would fly out of my chest. Two bodies at my back now, four hands fumbling around my face, and a bag being shoved over me—no, not a bag but a scarf, thick and suffocating across my eyes and falling down over my nose.
I was blindfolded.
The rush of blood to my head, the terror, all of it combined, made me dizzy. I thought I might faint.
There came the righting of a chair, Professor O’Connor’s desk chair, I thought, and the scrape of it on the floor behind me, stopping at the back of my knees.
Hands again, two this time, different from the Headlock Man because these were gentler, on my shoulders and pushing me down. I was meant to sit, so I did. Then my arms were pulled behind me, behind the chair, then the feel of thick twine wrapped around them, tied together. I didn’t struggle, tried not to. My breath came in great spaced-out gasps, my body forgetting to breathe after each gulp of air, head spinning, heart racing. I needed to get ahold of myself, so I began to pay attention to my lungs, pushing them open and closed in a rhythm. Tears burned in my eyes, but I refused their exit. I didn’t want to die because I couldn’t keep quiet and couldn’t keep still. I had to give myself the chance of living through this.
“That’s right, stay calm,” went that fourth voice again. He’d whispered those words, his tone less violent than the others and more in control, a tone that said trust me. I wanted someone to trust right now, too, I really did. But then, how could I trust one of them? He was close, very close, I could feel his body, feel the heat pouring off him from the stress of the situation. From the stress of breaking into this supposedly vacant house and instead finding out it wasn’t vacant at all. “No one’s going to hurt you,” he whispered, his voice low and husky and altered. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, all right?”
I wasn’t sure if this was a question and it wasn’t like anyone was giving me choices, so I said nothing. Stayed silent in the dark of the night with the blindfold over my eyes, the winds of the snowstorm outside howling.
But he’d wanted an answer. “All right?”
I nodded. I nodded, even though it wasn’t all right. None of this was all right. I wasn’t all right.
“Good girl,” he said, those words spilling out at me for the second time, but this time with urgency, like my whole life depended on the ability to continue to be the good girl, the quiet girl, the girl who listened. “Just stay still,” he whispered, closer now, next to my ear, like he really was trying to save me, as though it was in his power to do this very thing, his breath on my neck, fast and worried.
And I sat there—we sat there, me and him—I don’t know how long, in the noise of the crashing and the destruction of the O’Connors’ house, the shouting and the shattering, in this place that I loved and relaxed and relished the various books the professor left for me. My mind gone blank. My mind trying not to think anything at all. My mind wishing for this nightmare to end.
Then suddenly it seemed like it might.
There came a silence. A stopping. A gathering of footsteps nearby.
My body tensed with fear, and there came those words for the third time, rewarding the fact that I’d stayed still and quiet, that even in my terror I’d behaved.
“Good girl,” my captor whispered, trying to soothe me I think, and for a moment he almost had me. I almost trusted him. I almost believed he meant well, wanted to save me after all.
But then came another set of footsteps, an unexpected set, loud and sure, the steady thump, thump, thump of heavy shoes pounding against the carpeted stairs and then the thwack, thwack, thwack across the wooden floor at the top, the sounds of a man approaching, a confident man. One with no idea what situation he was about to happen upon.
The footsteps came to a halt.
“Jane?” My name, called out in the darkness, cutting through the fear. Then again: “Jane?”
And next, “Daddy?” I called back.