Chapter Thirty-Two

Sam Dumain

Sam turned back to the window. Vicky’s questions were like probes tapping, touching, stimulating the pain and images and feelings she’d always managed to block. She considered this last question before nodding once. “We were on the ground, on cardboard. Mama was sleeping. It was dark except for one lantern.”

“Was anyone else there?” Vicky’s voice was gentle.

“Just Mama.”

“Were you tied up?”

“No. Well, yes, at first, but not later.”

“What was it like in there?”

Sam fortified herself against the wave of remembered pain. “Cold. Dark, except for the lantern.”

Sam hated that her voice cracked. She needed to get through this. Waves of sensation crashed back—the fears of a child, her heart being eaten alive from the inside out, thousands of sharp teeth gnawing at her insides.

“I didn’t want to leave Mama. But I had to get help. I crawled under a ledge where I could feel air coming in. There was kind of a tunnel. I could hear water running. I could barely fit at first, but it got bigger. I crawled out. It was horrible. I got out and found a knife. Then I went back to Mama in the cave. It was a cave.”

Sam pushed away the memory of returning to Mama. “There’s more but I can’t remember anything else.”

“That’s a hell of a lot already. Where’d you get the knife?”

“There was a house. No one was there. I took a knife. I was so scared.”

She shook Mama, begged her to please wake up. But Mama’s hands were so, so cold. She scolded herself for not getting a blanket. Her world shattered when she realized a blanket wouldn’t help Mama now.

“What a brave girl, especially to go back. Try to picture it. It smelled like a cave, right?”

“Yes.” Pause. “Then the woman was there.”

“The woman from the van?”

“Yeah. By the door.”

“Did she open the door?”

“I don’t know. It was giant, thick. Metal.”

“It was made of metal? How do you know?”

“I must have touched it. It was cold. It made a lot of noise.”

“Like squeaky hinges?”

Sam was thrumming with tense energy. “Bigger than that—”