To see a thing uncolored by one’s own personal preferences and desires is to see it in its own pristine simplicity.
—BRUCE LEE
My first conscious thought wasn’t made up of words. Instead, it was a silent scream. It felt like it had been echoing inside me for an eternity.
I had to move, to get up, to run. Had to get away. I no longer knew from what, just that I would surely die if I didn’t.
But as I started to push myself upright, pain even stronger than my terror ripped through me. I slumped back with a groan.
“It’s okay,” a girl’s voice said. A gentle hand patted my shoulder. “You’re safe.”
The events that had brought me here slowly filtered into my memory. When I had tried to run in the parking lot, I had fallen, hit my head, and passed out, which meant I probably had a concussion. And I hadn’t improved things by leaping out of a van while it was moving. Now my wrist throbbed, my head pulsed in time with my heart, and my ribs hurt when I took a breath.
“Where is he?” The words came out slurred. Wear see? My tongue felt like a piece of leather.
“Don’t worry,” said the girl. I could tell she was sitting next to me, on the edge of the bed where I lay under the covers. “It’s just you and me. But we should be quiet. He doesn’t like noise.”
Finally I forced open my heavy lids. I was in a dimly lit room. The double bed filled the small space nearly edge to edge. Short brown curtains covered the windows.
Wincing, I slowly turned my head to look the girl in the eye. And shrieked.
She looked like Frankenstein’s monster, if he were a teenaged girl. Barely healed scars crisscrossed her face. The edges of a torn nostril didn’t quite meet, and there was a red hole in the middle of her lower lip.
The girl didn’t flinch, but steadily met my gaze with her blue eyes. Her eyes and her forehead were the only untouched parts of her face. With the back of her hand, she wiped her wet-looking chin.
“What happened to you?”
“A dog bit me.”
My own face hurt. Suddenly fearful, I tried to bring up my hands to touch it, but found my left arm was in a makeshift splint. I frantically ran my right hand over my forehead, eyelids, cheeks, nose, and chin. While parts felt scraped and bruised, my features seemed whole.
“I’m Jenny,” she said as I pawed at my face. “And you’re Savannah, right?”
Hearing my name come out of a stranger’s mouth sent another zap of adrenaline through me. “How do you know my name?”
“Sorry. I went through the wallet in your backpack.” Jenny’s straight dark hair fell past her shoulders. Under a gray cardigan, she was wearing skinny jeans and a tight red sweater with a deep V-neck. She leaned closer. “He took me, too.” Her whisper was as light as a breath.
“We have to get out of here.” But where was here? My best guess was some tiny shack in the woods, but that still didn’t seem quite right.
Jenny shook her head. “You need to rest. You’re hurt.”
For an answer, I threw back the covers and pushed myself up with my good hand. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, ignoring how the room tilted. When I steadied myself on the ivory-colored wall, it felt cool and oddly slick. The wall was made of plastic.
I went to the window, with Jenny trailing behind me. But when I pushed aside the curtain, all I saw was flat silver. At first I thought it was paint, but then I realized the window had been covered from the outside with a shiny plastic tarp.
Increasingly light-headed, I made for the doorway, ignoring Jenny telling me to stop, to come back.
I staggered down the short hall. When the elbow of my bad arm banged against the wall, pain turned the edges of my vision white. I passed a tiny bathroom with a half-open folding door. This wasn’t a shack, I realized. It was a motor home.
As the space opened out into a carpeted living area, Jenny grabbed my shoulder. With a twist, I shook her hand loose and made for the door in the far wall. Its window was also covered. I grabbed the handle.
“Don’t open that!” Jenny said urgently behind me.
I turned the handle and pushed. It started to open, revealing a sliver of light. Cold air rushed in through the crack. Metal rattled. I was already moving my foot to step outside when the door’s movement abruptly stopped. The gap was only about three inches wide. In frustration, I bashed the door with my shoulder, ignoring how it set off echoes of pain. But the door refused to budge.
Putting my eye to the gap, I caught a glimpse of a heavy metal chain that was preventing it from opening all the way. Below it was dark, muddy ground. “Help! Help us!” I shouted through the gap.
Suddenly the door vibrated under my palm when something scrabbled and scratched at the metal. And in the gap I saw a dark and terrible eye, a monster’s eye with no white at all.
It tried to thrust its head in farther, just below my face. A growl filled the room. With a shriek, I pulled back. The dog’s mouth snapped open and closed, black-rimmed lips stretched over long white teeth. Silvery threads of saliva bound together the top and bottom canines.
Jenny pushed me away with one hand while she wrenched the door closed with the other. Outside, the dog began to bark, angry and urgent.
“I told you not to do that!” She brought her hands to her stitched-together face. Her nails were ragged, bitten to the quick. “Did Rex bite you?”
The adrenaline and fear that had propelled me this far suddenly disappeared. I fell more than sat on the small couch. “No.”
She scurried to the window, bent down, and pressed one eye to it. There was the tiniest of gaps at the bottom where the tarp had slipped. “If Sir hears Rex, he’ll come back, and he’ll be so mad. He hates noise.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“Even if we got out of here, we won’t get past Rex. I already tried to escape, months ago.” Turning back to me, she gestured at her ruined face. “And you can see how far that got me.”
“You said that guy took you, too. When was that?”
“Back in February.”
But this was December. Jenny had been here for months and months. Nearly a year. The feeling of the room closing in, of the edges of my vision dimming, crashed back over me like a sneaker wave.