80: “Wake up!
“Wake up!
“Wake up!”
Muffled.
Words spoken through a wet towel.
A girl’s voice.
“Please, wake up . . .”
The words right in her ear. Warm breath. A heavy whisper.
When Kati’s eyes opened, they felt so heavy with the effort, they almost slammed shut again. Consciousness returned. With it came pain, washing over her like a hot liquid from inside, burning at her muscles and bones.
The blindfold was gone.
Her hands and feet were no longer bound.
A girl of about her age bent over her, faces nearly touching. Kati’s head in her lap.
When Kati’s eyes focused on this other girl, the girl pressed a finger to her lips. “He can’t hear us,” she breathed. “We can’t let him hear us. I don’t want him to come down here.”
Something was wrong with her voice. She sounded like someone getting over a bad cold. It pained her to speak. Kati could see it in her eyes. Dried blood crusted her lips.
Kati tried to sit up, couldn’t, fell back into the girl’s lap.
The other girl brushed at her hair. “I changed your clothes. It was me, not him. He left clothes for you. Your clothes were all wet. You’ll catch cold down here, so I couldn’t leave you like that. You don’t want to get sick. You need your strength. We need to get out of here. Can’t do it alone. Need to work together.”
The girl spoke in ragged breaths, each word a struggle.
Kati vaguely remembered the water tank, falling into it.
Then nothing.
“He tried to electrocute you. He did electrocute you, I saw him do it. He put you in that big water tank over there and dropped jumper cables down into the water. There was this loud bang, then I smelled . . . I smelled . . . something burning. I think it might have been your hair. I can’t tell. Your hair is still wet. He took you out of the tank and gave you CPR. He gave you CPR for a long time, then you coughed, but you didn’t wake up. He watched you for a while, then he put you in here. He put you in here with me and went upstairs. He hasn’t been back down. Not yet. We need to be quiet so he doesn’t come back down. If he realizes you’re awake, he’ll come back down, I know he will.”
The girl coughed.
She grimaced in pain.
When she took her hand away from her mouth, red spittle covered her palm. “I . . . I swallowed glass, to keep him away from me. It worked, he didn’t touch me.” A weak smile. “Guess I showed him, huh?” She wiped her hand on the green quilt wrapped around her body. “I’m Larissa.”
“I’m Kati,” she managed, her own throat dry, needing water. “Where . . . where is Wesley?”
“Who?”
“I . . . I came here with Wesley Hartzler. He was with me.”
“I haven’t seen anyone else, only you. He only brought you down here.”
“I came here with him,” Kati repeated.
At this, Larissa’s eyes lit up. “Could he have gotten away? Maybe he went for help?”
Kati saw the strange man leap across the table, saw him smash his cocoa mug into the side of Wesley’s head. Wesley falling to the floor. “I don’t know, I think he hurt him. I think he hurt him really bad.”
“Maybe he didn’t hurt him so bad. Maybe he got away. Otherwise, I think he’d be down here with us. He would have locked him in here.”
Kati looked up at the girl holding her, watched her eyes dart desperately around the room before they fixed on the ceiling. “How long have you been down here?”
The girl’s gaze turned back to her, a quick, animal-like movement. “I . . . I’m not sure. A day, maybe? I passed out after I swallowed the glass. It’s been hard to keep track of time. What day is it?”
“Saturday,” Kati said, forcing herself to sit up. Her head was spinning. She touched her left temple and winced.
Larissa’s face fell. “He took me this morning. It hasn’t even been a day. God, it feels like I’ve been here a week.” She coughed again, more blood.
Kati tried to stand, fell back over. Larissa helped to steady her. “Be careful, I’m sure you’re still weak.”
Kati nodded, drew in a deep breath, tried to stand again, this time pulling herself up with the chainlink. Once on her feet, she started to circle the cage, checking every seam, every little opening.
“I’ve been over it a dozen times. He welded all the seams and bolted the frame down into the concrete. There’s no room to get out at the top, and he’s got two padlocks on the gate. There’s no way out of here.”
Kati rounded the corner and came to the door. She studied both locks. “Where does he keep the key?”
“On a chain around his neck. Do you know where we are? Where the house is, I mean?”
“You don’t know where we are?”
Larissa shook her head and told her how he had abducted her.
“This house is on Lowell. There are neighbors all around. Wesley and I came here recruiting for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“Does anyone know where you are?”
Kati frowned, dropping the lock. It clattered against the metal frame. “No. There was a large crowd of us at the start, roughly two dozen, but we all left the hall early this morning and split up to cover the most ground. We were gone hours before we got to this house. I lost sight of the others. We go in small groups to stay safe. I stuck with Wesley because he said he knew the neighborhood, he knew this street.”
Kati crouched back beside Larissa. “You said he didn’t touch you or me. Is that why he took us? Did he take us for sex?”
A tear formed at Larissa’s eye, and she wiped it away with a dirty hand. “At first, I thought so, but with you . . . he asked if you would see for him, if you would tell him what you saw, before he put you in the water, before he electrocuted you. When he was trying to revive you, he kept telling you to come back from the light, come back to him. He was frantic. He didn’t want you to die, but he tried to kill you. I don’t—”
A door opened at the top of the stairs.
Heavy footsteps.
Larissa lay back down, covered herself with the quilt. “Pretend to be sleeping still. He’ll leave you alone,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
Kati didn’t, though. She stood there, she stood there at the door as the man with the black knit cap came down the remainder of the steps to the basement, his right foot dragging slightly behind him.
“You’re awake.” He approached the cage. “My daughter’s clothes fit you well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to catch cold. I should have removed your clothing before I put you in the tank. It’s better that way, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
He wrapped his fingers through the chainlink, gripping the metal. “You must tell me, what did you see?”
Kati looked at his hands. His fingernails were dirty, his skin covered in small colored lines, smudges from markers or pens. On the side of his head, his large incision was partially visible at the edge of the cap. The wound was red and inflamed against his pale skin, flaked with dried blood, scratched raw.
“What did you see?” he said again. The s drawn out, a lisp. He watched her anxiously with unblinking eyes.
Kati reached up, brushed her finger over his, then clasped at his filthy hand through the chainlink, holding him within her grasp. She leaned close, her face inches from his. “I saw something amazing,” she told him. “I saw the face of God.”