I lost count of the days since he had last opened the door. I hadn’t heard his footsteps or the creaking of his bed or the scrape of a chair or the slamming of a door. No logs dropped in the fireplace. No pots and pans clanged on the stove. All I heard was silence.
I couldn’t reach the windows to look out for him, not without someone else to boost me up there. And no one else was in the basement with me. No one had been there for months, not since that last boy had trudged up those steps and not come back. He had been furious about that because summer was over, and he didn’t like to hunt in the winter. He said it was always easier in the summer.
I didn’t like it either, because I was totally alone. No one to talk to. No one to sleep beside.
But why was it so quiet?
Maybe he had gone off hunting for a new kid. I hadn’t heard the van crank up and leave. I wouldn’t have missed the sound of an engine starting. No way I would’ve slept through that.
But still, I didn’t hear him. The silence was wrong. It scared me. I would sit down there, looking up the steps, half hoping the door would open and he would still be there.
The other half of me prayed the door never opened again.
The problem was, I was hungry. I mean really hungry. When he tossed food down, I always knew to make it last a few days. I never knew when he would throw more down. But he had never been this long, so I had run out. Not a scrap.
The last time he had opened that door had been a couple of weeks earlier, and I wasn’t sure he was going to throw food down. He leaned against the frame, wheezing and hissing. No new kid was thrown down, but he didn’t call me up the steps, either. He just glared at me.
I knew he hated me. Always had. I thought maybe he had finally decided to come down and kill me. After all, he didn’t need me without a kid for me to tend to. But he didn’t come down. He just stared. And wheezed. Minutes, hours passed while he leaned against the doorframe, looking at me as I tried to hide in the shadows.
Finally, he reached behind his back and grabbed a bucket of food. He tossed it down to me, but it hit the steps and tumbled, clattering across the floor. The slop spilled out, and the rats came from the shadows. I wanted to chase them away—it was my food, and I was starving—but I didn’t dare move until the light from upstairs was blocked and I heard the door slam shut and the lock slide into place.
I chased the rats away and gathered my food in the bucket. It wasn’t much. They had gotten some of it. But I could make it last a few days.
But more than a few days passed. He didn’t come back, and I didn’t know where he was. I started debating how long I would last. What if he wasn’t coming back? What if I could get away? I could have crept up those steps and forced open that door only to find him sitting there, waiting and watching for me, grinning that twisted, gap-toothed smile and twirling the ax handle he liked to use for the most heinous beatings.
I licked water from the walls and searched desperately for crumbs. Not for the first time, I caught a rat slowed by the wintry cold, slammed its head against the stone wall to kill it, and sank my teeth into it. Rats were better tasting than some things, and it was too cold for insects.
That last day, the day I escaped, the light outside was gray and cold. I could barely see in the corners as I searched for something—anything—to eat. I was sitting there, thinking I was going to starve to death, and I made a decision. Just like that, snap, and I knew what I had to do. I didn’t want to die in that basement—a shocking thought, considering how little I had to live for.
I didn’t expect to get far and figured he would catch me and kill me for trying to escape. I knew I wouldn’t make it. I just didn’t want to die without trying.
I put a first tentative foot on the bottom tread of the wooden stairs and listened to it creak. I held my breath and waited for the storm of his footsteps, for the door to be yanked open, for him to glare down at me in fury at my boldness. I remained frozen as minutes slipped by, listening, but only the groaning of the wind answered me before I gathered enough courage to move to the next step. Still more ticks of the clock until the next. And the next and the next. The shadows of the brief winter day shifted across the room as I moved cautiously from step to step, always prepared to scamper back down.
Hours passed before I stood at the top, trembling as I pressed my ear against the door. Tree branches clacked against each other as the wind groaned. Ravens squawked as they fought over food in the woods. A rat scurried in the walls.
But not a human sound reached my ears. No footsteps. No voices. No breathing.
With sweat dribbling down my back despite the cold, I reached out with a quaking hand and turned the knob. The latch slipped away from the strike plate with a loud, echoing clack. I squeezed my eyes shut, dreading the storm of approaching boots.
But I heard only silence.
Maybe another hour passed—I don’t know, I’ve never owned a watch—until I built enough nerve to push on the door. It didn’t move. An unseen but often heard padlock held a hasp closed on the other side. I looked in the shadows of the basement as if some previously hidden tool would come to sight, but I knew every square inch, and it held nothing useful.
Nervously wetting my lips, I grabbed the handrail with each hand and kicked with all my strength, which wasn’t a lot. The door held solidly in its frame. I slammed my shoulder against it. Despite the intense pain the impact caused me, the door didn’t release.
But I also realized something. He wasn’t in the house. No way he wouldn’t have heard me banging on that door. I didn’t know when he would return, or who might be with him, but I had a chance at freedom for the first time in my life.
Sheer desperation to escape filled me. I pushed, shoved, and clawed before a crack appeared in the wood panel of the door. I wriggled my fingers into the splintered wood, desperately prying the hole bigger and bigger until I could squeeze my arm through and grasp the padlock. I yanked and pulled but it didn’t give. I screamed in frustration and twisted hard. With a sudden snap, the door yielded. I stumbled into the kitchen and fell face-first onto the floor.
For the time ever, I was out of the basement without him.
Then again, maybe he was watching.
I bolted to my feet and looked through the dark house. His shape rose from a shadowy corner where he had been waiting, laughing at my feeble escape attempt. His meaty hand slipped the wide leather belt from around his waist, and he raised it high over his head in a clenched fist. As I heard it whistling through the air toward me, I cowered and wrapped my arms around my body, bracing for the sting of the flaying swipe.
The pain never came. I peeled my eyes open and looked where he had stood, but only the shadows of tree branches danced on the wall. He had never been there.
I rose to my feet and staggered through the kitchen and into the den. Shadows morphed into recognizable shapes. Logs lay stacked against the wall, but the fireplace was dark and cold. A small table held dirty dishes and glasses. A Mason jar sat half-filled with clear moonshine. A stench hung in the air.
I worked my way through the shadows to the far end of the room and reached for the exterior door, convinced it would be tightly locked, but the knob turned easily in my hand. I slipped out onto the sloping wooden front porch, its supports rotting and termite infested. A board under my foot squeaked.
I breathed in deeply and felt the cold air. A few snowflakes fell, and I realized I was cold. I didn’t have a coat or shoes because he never gave them to us. We used burlap bags as blankets at night and wrapped them around our feet during the day for warmth. Maybe he had something else, but I couldn’t go back in the house to search. He might be in there drunk or asleep.
I cast one last glance back at the house and fled into the surrounding woods. Branches smacked across my face. My feet slammed into rocks. But the pain meant little compared to the elation of being outdoors. I whooped and hollered, celebrating my victory, and I ran as far as I could.
I didn’t stop until the reality hit me. I was free.