Local Woman Missing Page 4

  I close my eyes and burrow my head into my knees, try and make myself small.

  I hear the click of the flashlight turning on. Through my closed eyelids, I barely see the blaze of light as it goes roving around the inside of the shed, bouncing off walls. I ain’t ever been so scared in my whole entire life.

  The garbage can is tall and wide, taller and wider than me. I’m crouched so low my body hurts. I got myself rolled into a ball, just like pill bugs. I ain’t breathing much, just enough as I have to do to keep from turning blue. But they’re half breaths that I take, never letting enough air in or out, so that my chest aches and burns. I pee myself. My soft pants fill with it, turning soggy.

  The light from the flashlight moves on and gets dimmer, but it doesn’t go completely away. He’s investigating some other part of the shed. The moments tick by at a snail’s pace. With my eyes closed up tight, I can’t see nothing, but I imagine the man investigating every crevice, every nook and cranny, in that whole entire shed, looking for me.

  I start wondering, worrying that I got a foot stuck out, that the sleeve of my shirt or a clump of dirty hair is somewhere where he can see. ’Cause even though I’m hiding behind that garbage can, what if all of me ain’t tucked neatly back?

  The shed door squeals open even wider.

  One loud footstep tromps into the shed with me. Then another. Then another.

  He’s coming inside the shed. Next thing I know, he’s all the way inside the shed with me. I hear that man’s heavy breathing. I smell his rank breath.

  He’s saying words, telling me he knows I’m there.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he singsongs, and if it wasn’t for that, I’d think he did see me. But I’m no idiot, whatever that lady thinks. I’m no twat. If he knew where I was, he’d have me by now. But a hunch is all the man’s got.

  He swears blind that he ain’t gonna hurt me none. “Just come on out, little girl, and I’ll take you home.”

  I don’t believe him. Or maybe I do. Except home is not my home. He don’t intend to take me back to Daddy. No, this man intends to take me back to his home and lock me back in that dungeon of his, after he teaches me a lesson about stabbing people with spoons.

  I curl more tightly into my pill bug ball. I hold my breath. I bite my lip and clench my eyes shut tighter, ’cause somehow not seeing makes it feel less real.

  Something inside that shed goes crashing down. I start. It takes everything in me not to scream. Whatever it is, the man knocked it from its place, trying to scare me out of my hiding place. Something else falls. He’s knocking things down on purpose. I peek one eye open and see a box of nails spilled on the wooden floorboards. They’re sharp as daggers.

  I think of all the bad things this man could do to me with them nails. He’s madder than I’ve ever seen him. I brought out the devil in him when I went and stabbed him with my spoon.

  I hear the lady’s voice hissing from the other side of that shed wall. She’s calling for the man, telling him to stop making such a racket ’cause someone will hear.

  “You see her?” the lady asks. “She in there?”

  The man lets out a big long breath, then says, “Not in here.”

  The flashlight light falls away from me. His footsteps retreat and he goes outside.

  On the other side of that wall they’re talking quiet-like, making a plan about how they’re gonna find me. He’s gonna go one way, she’s gonna go the other.

  I make a plan, too. I’m gonna stay right here.

  The man asks, “Everything good back home?” and I know that’s when he’s talking about Gus.

  “All good,” the lady says, and I know then that that lady did snatch Gus and bring him back. Now Gus is locked in the dungeon without me. Or maybe he’s dead. ’Cause that’s the best way they could punish me for what I’ve done, by hurting or killing Gus.

  I want to cry, but I can’t cry ’cause crying would give me away. I could give myself up and go back to living in that dungeon of theirs with Gus, but I can’t. One of us has got to live through this ordeal and tell the rest of the world where we’ve been all this time. For Gus’s sake, now more than ever, I’ve got to live.

  * * *

  Light noses its way into the shed with me. It comes in through the slats of the wooden boards. It’s a golden yellow, something I ain’t seen in years. Seeing the sunlight nearly makes me cry, but I don’t cry ’cause crying won’t do me any good. I’ve got to keep my wits about me if I’m going to try and find my way home.

  The shed, now that I see it in daylight, is old and rickety. There’s a lawn mower and a ladder in here, and a bunch of broken bikes. I rise up to my feet, try and step around them, but my legs are half-asleep on account of the way I’ve been sitting. I never did sleep, all night long. I spent the whole night crouched into a ball, waiting for that man to come back.

  At some point in the middle of the night, it started raining. I heard them raindrops pounding on the roof and, every now and again, a stray raindrop snuck into the shed with me, landing on my arms and face. I tried to gather that rain into the palms of my hands and drink it, but there wasn’t ever more than a couple drops of it. I’m so thirsty. My throat is bone dry. I ain’t drank in days. My lips is dry, too. They’re split so that, on them, I feel blood. I run my tongue over that blood and taste it.

  When it was raining, it took everything in me not to go outside, to leave the safety of the shed, and turn my face up to the sky with my mouth open wide. But I was scared to death the man was waiting for me on the other side. So I settled on just drinking one stray raindrop at a time.

  My body hurts now, from running the way I did. There’s dried blood on my hands and legs. That’s from tripping over the tree. My feet are covered in blood, too. There’s wood chips and pebbles stuck in them. It hurts to walk, but I do, anyway, ’cause I got no other choice. In the sunlight I see scars on my arms, from who knows what. Probably all the times that lady went and hit me with her belt, or the time she threw hot water that smelled like a swimming pool on me. That hurt like heck, when it wasn’t itching half to death.

  I go to the front of the shed, but I don’t go straight outside. I stand in the doorway first, looking out, surveying my surroundings. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know that I’m alone, that I’m not being watched.

  There’s a house outside. It’s big and white and falling down. It’s got a slant to it, the porch is uneven and a broken window is patched up with red tape. Smoke comes from the chimney, which is the only way I know that the house isn’t abandoned, that someone still lives there.

  The world outside the shed is wet from the rain, though it ain’t raining no more. The sun is just starting to come up. The sky is full of puffy clouds in shades of pink and blue. Seeing colors like that makes me gasp. I haven’t seen colors in nearly forever. I have to think a minute to remember the names of them. There’s yellow beneath the clouds, the sun sitting there where the sky meets land.

  The earth itself looks fuzzy to me, like there’s clouds coming up from the ground, too. The world is overwhelming and big. I find myself missing the darkness of the enclosed basement, ’cause even though it was the worst place in the world, something about being shut in made me feel safe. There was only one way in or out. No one was gonna sneak up on me without me knowing. But here, bad things can come at me from any direction. The sun is getting to be so bright I can just barely open my eyes. I feel danger everywhere, lurking, hiding out where I can’t see it.

  The shed feels safe and enclosed to me, like the basement. I have half a mind to lock myself inside and stay put. I got to give myself a good talking-to to work up the nerve to leave.

  I take a hesitant step out. I put my bare foot on the wet grass. There’s a puddle there. It’s mud-splattered and warm, but still, I drop to my belly and take a big, long swig of the dirty water before standing back up.

/>   I decide right away that I’m not going to go to that house and see if anyone is home. Because I don’t know who lives there, and what kind of people they are. I don’t know if they’re the kind of people who would snatch up children that ain’t theirs and keep them.

  Instead, I move unnoticed across the yard and to the street on the other side of it. The street is at first dead quiet. There’s more than one house, but they’re all the same, big and white, and run-down. They’re spread apart, with land between them, so that I got to walk awhile to get from one house to the next. I don’t walk in the street. Instead, I walk in the ditch beside it so that when a rare car comes soaring past, I drop down in that muddy ditch and hide.

  I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve never been in this place before, not so far as I know. But I don’t know where the house is that the man and the lady kept me; I don’t know what it looked like from the outside. With all my running last night, I got turned around. I couldn’t ever find my way back, which makes me think that the man and the lady could be living inside any one of these houses here; that Gus could be inside any of these houses here; that the shed where I spent my night could have just as easily belonged to them.

  I’m worried about Gus. But I don’t got any idea what to do. All I know is that I got to save myself first before I can save Gus. The thought of that knocks me sideways. It just don’t feel right leaving Gus behind, though I know if I go back to the man and the lady, we’re both dead.

  I try and memorize my surroundings. If I’m ever gonna find my way back I got to remember things like the fence, which sits waist-high and is brown, falling down. I got to remember them smokestacks billowing not so far in the distance. I got to remember the houses, which are old, every single one of them, with paint that flakes off. There are trees on one side of the road, but on the other there’s a field, with crops that grow. I go to the crops and snatch an ear of corn for myself. For a moment, I hide myself in the field and take a bite of that corn, not remembering the last time I ate, but especially not remembering the last time I ate something that wasn’t mush. The corn is hard and starchy. It ain’t tasty at all. It hasn’t been cooked. But that don’t matter at all. I’m so hungry I’d eat dirt if it was my only choice.

  I rise back up to my feet when I finish that corn. I’m tired, but I don’t got time for napping. I trudge on through the edge of the cornfield, which hides me some. It’s not easy on the feet. The ground here is mushy from last night’s rain, and soon the bottom half of me is covered in mud.

  The sun keeps coming up. After a while, it dries the puddles some. It warms my skin so that I go from cold to hot real quick. The fields thin and, little by little, trees crop up so that soon I’m marching through a forest. Like the cornstalks, the trees hide me, too, though I hear the street not so far from here. I hear the cars go zooming past. In the woods, I cross a little crick. I pause for a sip of water. I splash a handful of it on my face and hands, cooling me down, washing the caked-on blood away. I rub it over my arms. It feels good, but it don’t do nothing to get rid of the scars.

  The sun is hot now. It burns my eyes. I keep them trained on the ground, ’cause looking anywhere up hurts bad. My eyes aren’t used to the sunlight.

  I don’t see the lady and her little girl and dog come walking through the woods at first. It’s the dog that sees me. I turn sharply at the sound of its bark, rise up quickly from the crick and think about running. Energy floods my legs and I nearly bolt.

  But the dog is small and white. It yaps more than it barks, its tongue hanging out sideways. Its little tail wags like it thinks that seeing me is the best thing in the world. The girl says hi. She says it about a gazillion times, like it’s a new word she’s learned and she’s trying it on for size. They put me at ease. I don’t bolt, because the dog and the little girl are pleased as Punch to see me.

  The woman is slack-jawed. Her eyes are wide and she’s pulling on the leash, trying to stop the dog from running to me. But then, by accident, the leash slips from her hand. The dog breaks away and comes running. At first I flinch ’cause it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dog, and here this dog is jumping on me, licking me, peeing.

  “That’s Cody,” the woman says. Her voice is kind. “He won’t hurt you. He just gets excited when he meets new people,” she says, coming closer to pick up the dog’s leash, but she leaves him where he is ’cause the dog is nice, and after a quick second, I’m not scared of it no more.

  The woman is looking strangely at me. I have no idea what I look like. All I can see is my arms, my chest, legs and feet. I can see my hair, too, ’cause it’s long, but I can just see the part of it that dangles. I got no idea what it looks like on my head. In that dungeon where they kept me, it used to fall out in clumps for no good reason at all.

  “Are you new?” the woman asks, ’cause she knows she ain’t ever seen me around here before. I shake my head. Her eyes go to my bare feet, which is bleeding. There’s a thin stream of blood coming real quick. There’s still blood on the knees of my pants and I ain’t bathed in weeks. My breath and my underarms is raunchy. I keep my arms down so the woman can’t smell what I smell when I lift them up. The little girl is still saying hi.

  “Are you hurt?” the woman asks. She doesn’t wait for me to tell her ’cause she can see for herself that I am. I’m hurt bad all over. “You’re hurt,” she says. “You’re bleeding,” she says, pointing at my feet and then my knees. “Right there. And there. How old are you?” she asks, and when I don’t answer right away, she starts rattling off numbers. “Eleven? Twelve? Fourteen?”

  I nod at fourteen ’cause I’ve got no idea how old I am. Fourteen is as good an age as any.

  It hurts to stand or walk, ’cause my feet on the underside is all torn up. My legs are sore and my belly aches.

  The woman is still staring at me. She’s got yellow hair like the sun. She smiles at me, but I can tell that it’s not a real smile. It’s a worried smile. The woman don’t know what to make of me, though soon she ain’t looking at my face anymore ’cause she’s looking at my hands and my arms and my knees and my feet.

  I like the sound of her voice. It’s soft and kind. “Are you lost, sweetheart?” she asks me, her eyes coming back to mine. I say nothing.

  “Do you live around here?” the woman asks.

  I shrug my shoulders. I open my mouth to speak, but my voice is just barely there. I got to stop and start over a time or two. “I don’t know, ma’am,” I say, ’cause truth be told, I got no idea where I live, other than that the house is blue. But I couldn’t find that blue house if my life depended on it.

  “You don’t need to call me ma’am, honey,” she says. “You can call me Annie.” But of course I can’t do that ’cause when I don’t say ma’am I either get a beating or I get starved. “You’re really lost, aren’t you? What happened here?” she asks, meaning those scars on my arms.

  I just stare dumbly when she asks. I don’t say nothing but I feel tears pooling in my eyes.

  The woman asks, “Can I call your parents for you? Do you know their phone number?”

  I shake my head. I don’t know nothing about that.

  I can see the worry in her eyes. She looks me up and down. I feel uncomfortable with her looking at me like that, so I look at my hands instead. There’s gravel buried into the palms of them. I pick at the tiny pebbles with my dirty fingernails so I don’t have to look this pretty woman in the eyes.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart? Would you be willing to tell me that?” She takes a breath when I say nothing. She says, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  I’m scared as heck, wondering what she wants to know my name for. But I tell her, anyway, ’cause I don’t know what else to do and ’cause the woman seems kind. She don’t seem like the kind of lady who would snatch kids that aren’t hers and keep them in her basement.

 
“Delilah,” I tell her, my voice rattling.

  I see in her throat that she swallows hard. There’s a bulge that moves up and down. The little girl is tugging on her hand now, asking again and again, “Who dat? Who dat, Mama?” but the pretty woman don’t answer her.

  “Delilah what?” the woman asks me. She got her eyes set on me now. She’s not looking at my feet or my knees, but now she’s looking at me. Her eyes have gone from wide to wider and her skin is suddenly white-like. The dog’s yapping up at her, trying to get her attention, but she pays it no mind.

  “Delilah Dickey,” I say.

  The woman don’t say nothing this time, but her hand goes to her mouth and she gasps.

  PART TWO

  KATE

  11 YEARS BEFORE

  May

  There’s a knock at the door. It’s loud and insistent. It’s after nine o’clock at night. It’s dark outside, the moon and stars hidden behind storm clouds. The only time I can see outside is when lightning strikes, flooding the world with a sudden burst of light.

  I’m in the kitchen, home late from a long day of work. I’ve just opened a bottle of wine and am waiting for leftovers—Bea’s stuffed shells that she made hours ago, when I was still under the impression I’d be home on time—to warm in the microwave when the knock comes. I look up from my glass at the sound of it, my blood running suddenly cold.

  People don’t show up out of the blue at nine o’clock on a stormy night.

  Bea is out back in the detached garage that she uses as a music studio. Her phone lies on the counter beside my glass of wine. From the kitchen window, I look out into the backyard, where it’s dark and raining. The rain pours down from the sky, a sudden blitz. I have trouble seeing out the window because of the rain. It hasn’t stopped raining for days. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’m not the only one who’s contemplated building an ark. Even Bea, the more even-keeled of us, has contemplated building an ark. Severe flooding is expected, and every day of the next week calls for more rain. Rivers have overflowed their banks, wreaking havoc. The grocery store parking lot is a swimming pool. Roads are impassable, and some of the schools have been closed. There was footage on the news of canoes in towns not far from ours, paddling down the middle of the street.