“What the hell are we going to do?” asks Sarah. She’s not hysterical—I don’t think Sarah does hysterical—but she’s definitely panicked, and I know that there’s plenty to panic about.
I look around the room, trying to figure out what we’re supposed to do. Along the edge of the wall, there are two small windows at ground height. There’s no way in hell that I’d squeeze through one of them, and although Sarah might have a fighting chance, there are bars across them both, bolted into the cement foundation from the outside.
The door is solid, and I’m pretty sure it’s metal, aluminum maybe. There are two bolts instead of one, and the handle is also locked.
“Shit,” I say. “We’re not getting out of here.”
Sarah doesn’t respond; she’s moving stuff off an old kitchen chair, brown vinyl padding on the seat, and moving it across the room, underneath a tiny air vent.
“Sarah,” I say, as she climbs onto the chair. “That thing is like four inches wide. You wouldn’t fit up there in a million years.”
She gives me a look like I’m a complete idiot, then puts a finger to her mouth and stands on tiptoe, twisting her head sideways to point her ear toward the hole.
I finally get what she’s doing, and I move to stand next to her by the chair. Together, we stand as quietly as possible and strain our ears.
There’s a heated conversation going on above us, somewhere in the room above. The energy of the words is obvious, but the words themselves are harder to make out.
Let them go drifts down at us, and we exchange a hopeful glance, only to be shattered by the stomp of a foot and a deep, authoritative bellow. Absolutely not! They’ve seen—
The words break off abruptly as someone, I assume inadvertently, moves and a foot blocks the air vent. The voices become completely unintelligible, a dull mutter from above the ceiling. A few moments later, the foot moves, but the voices move with it, and footsteps move across the ceiling and away from us, toward the front of the house. Soon, there are no voices within earshot, and we’re left to mull over what we’ve heard.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I say, “but the cops are not on their way. He just pretended to call.”
“Shit,” says Sarah. She gets down from the chair and sits wearily.
“We should move that back,” I say. “In case they come down and see what we’ve been doing.”
She nods but makes no move to stand up. After a moment, I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “It probably doesn’t matter,” I say.
At some point, the door unlocks, and Ginette pushes it open, carrying a tray. I glance at Sarah and know we’re both thinking the same thing. She’s old, and although she looks healthy enough, it would be easy for the two of us to overpower her.
“Don’t waste your energy,” says Ginette. “Bill is at the top of the stairs with his rifle. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if we have to.”
There’s no way to tell if she’s telling the truth, and I put my hand on Sarah’s arm to tell her to stay where she is. Through the open door, I can see the workbench, and a set of steps leading up to a cellar door, like the one from The Wizard of Oz. Another exit, if we could only get to it.
“What are you going to do with us?” Sarah asks.
“We’re trying to figure that out now,” she says. “Now eat something and try to get some sleep.”
She puts the tray on the table and turns to leave.
“What do you know about Sibby Carmichael?” I ask. She stops, and her back stiffens.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she says after a brief pause. Then she walks back out the door and closes it, and almost instantly, we hear the soft metallic snip of the bolt sliding into place.
“We have to get out of here,” I say. “There’s no way they’re going to let us go after this. They know something about Sibby, and they know that we know. There’s a reason they didn’t call the police.”
“How?” asks Sarah. “There’s no way out of here.”
We spend the next couple of hours doing our best, but it turns out she’s absolutely right. The tiny window is too small for either of us to crawl out of, and after a couple of attempts, feet appear, and a moment later a piece of plywood is pressed up against our only view, and we can hear it being drilled into place.
The door is even more of a barrier. It’s steel framed and locked tight. It makes me wonder if anyone else has ever been locked in here.
The day disappears, and although we keep futilely bringing our phones out of our pockets, there’s no signal. To make matters worse, Sarah’s phone is almost dead, and mine has only about 20 percent battery left. Eventually, we agree to put them on airplane mode and put them away entirely, in case we have another opportunity to use them.
Footsteps come into the house on and off throughout the day. Although we occasionally hear voices upstairs in long conversation, they’re quieter, and we can’t make out what they’re saying or even who is talking. Most disturbingly, Ginette doesn’t reappear, even when dinnertime comes and goes. A cold chill makes its way through my body when I consider what that might mean.
Eventually, the house settles into quiet, and I imagine Bill and Ginette heading up to bed as if everything is completely normal. Sarah and I curl up next to each other in the corner, and I put my arm around her. Eventually, she falls asleep, but I stay the way I am, wide awake, although my body desperately wants me to rest. The feeling of deep fatigue combined with a steady rush of adrenaline is strange and unsettling.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been sitting like this when I hear light footsteps above us in the kitchen, and then someone descending the stairs. I quickly shake Sarah, who groans and then jerks awake when I lightly cover her mouth with my hand.
“Shhhh,” I whisper, and the two of us get to our feet and crouch by the door. “I didn’t hear the upstairs door close again,” I say. “This might be our only chance. I’ll jump at whoever it is, and you run for the cellar.”
She looks like she wants to argue, but I shake my head. There’s no time to make another plan.
I hear the bolt slide open, then the latch turn, and a moment later the door slowly opens. I’m ready to jump forward and tackle Ginette or Ron, whoever has come down here, but I stop in midjump.
It isn’t Ginette or Ron or even Barnabas or one of his crew, for that matter. It’s a teenage girl.
She’s not dressed like any teenager I’ve ever hung out with. In fact, she looks like she stepped out of a time machine. Her face is young and clear and healthy looking, but she’s wearing a kerchief that would better suit an old lady. It pulls back her plain dirty blond hair, which is neatly cut to land just above her shoulders. Her dress is simple, with a high, buttoned collar.
All these years, I’ve wanted more than anything to know what happened to Sibby, wondering what I could have done differently. Wishing I could have saved her.
In the end though, it’s Sibby who shows up to save me.