Author: Laurie Faria Stolarz
Category: Suspense
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“An understatement, I would assume. The thing is, I don’t remember him coming at me or any hint of a struggle.”
“If you were at a party, others must’ve seen him too.”
“Maybe. I mean, I guess. But I’m not really sure he knew anyone there. He seemed kind of lost, just hangin’ out in the basement. The only reason I went down there to begin with was because Haley—the girl throwing the party—asked me to grab some food from the cellar. The guy said he’d made a wrong turn, looking for the bathroom, and then confessed to hating crowds. That’s when we got to talking.”
“Well, if he was at the party, then he must’ve known Haley.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe not. Nothing was clear.
“Now, come on, what did you do?” he asked. “To cut off your food supply and cause blackout conditions.”
“You really want to know?”
“Well, that’s kind of why I’m asking.”
And so I told him, this stranger, this person I didn’t know I could trust, so much more than he’d asked to hear—about my tantrum and about how much I missed Shelley; about the phone call I’d made to my parents from the trunk of the monster’s car and how I could still hear my mother’s sobbing inside my mind’s ear.
“My mother is the bravest, strongest, most together woman I know,” I said, “and hearing her cry like that…” I took a deep breath, unable to hide my tears. “I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been there too.”
“When you first arrived?”
“When I first arrived, the day after that, and most nights thereafter. It wasn’t until I found the air vent that I stopped feeling sorry for myself.”
“And when did you find that vent?”
“About a week ago. But rest assured, if I got this far, I’m going to get us out for good. So during those long stretches of time when it feels like you’re going to snap, think of me in a maze of ductwork, mapping out our route.”
The fact that he was including me in his plan was too much to swallow down my splintered, severed throat, and I choked up on the thought.
“I gotta go,” he said. “I don’t want to get caught out of my room on one of his rounds. Should I come by tomorrow?”
“Please, don’t go yet.”
“Okay, but just, like, five more minutes. What do you want to talk about?”
“Whatever you like.” I snuggled against the wall, sucking my blood-blistered thumb, and listened while he told me about the farm where he and his dad lived, raising chickens and bees and selling eggs and honey.
I’m not sure how long he talked, because at some point I fell asleep to the soothing tone of his voice. It blanketed me like velvet and protected me from the dark.
THEN
20
As soon as I woke up, I maneuvered my way to the bathroom, having kicked a clear pathway. The sudden pop of light stung my eyes, and my lids slammed shut. I stumbled to the cabinet and peeked just behind it. No air vents.
I checked around the toilet and the sink as well. It seemed the only source of ventilation came from a baseboard unit that ran along the far wall of the main room.
Still, I continued to search, crawling beneath the bed, feeling along the walls, reminding myself that a lack of sight doesn’t stop the blind. I needed to be brave. I couldn’t fall apart.
I also needed my box of brownies. Where was it? I pawed through the bedcovers, knowing it had to be there, anticipating the feel of the sharp-angled corners and the long, slender box.
But it wasn’t there.
Not under my pillow either.
Or behind the headboard.
In the dark, tarry recesses of my mind, losing the box of brownies felt a little like losing a friend.
I continued to search, rummaging through the clothing on the floor, untangling a webbing of sheets, and sorting through a pile of cracker and cookie boxes. I also ran my fingers inside every square inch of the dresser and cabinet.
No dice.
In a final attempt, I reached to find the handle of the fridge, and as if by magic, the obvious struck: Fridges have lights. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner?
I pulled the door open. The seal broke. A chill hit my face. But it remained absolutely dark. A working refrigerator with no light bulb.
A high-pitched growling noise erupted in the room. It took me a beat to realize it’d come from me—my frustration, my lack of control. Just breathe, I told myself. The brownies are here someplace.
In this room.
Where else can I check?
But what if they weren’t? Was it possible the monster came into the room while I’d been sleeping and snagged the box away?
A knock sounded, making my insides jump. Mason was here. I scurried to the wall like a mouse for cheese.
“I brought you a piece of cake,” he said.
“Excuse me?” My head fuzzed.
“Cake,” he repeated. “With a candle for light. You do like cake, don’t you?”
“Yes.” I still didn’t get it.
“What kind is your favorite?”
“The kind with a knife baked into the center.”
“And your second favorite?”
“Vanilla with blue frosting.”
“What a coincidence. That’s just what I brought for you.” There was a smile in his voice. “Here you go. Got it?”
“Okay.” Not okay. Was he going crazy too?
“Just don’t blow out the candle,” he said. “Keep it lit by your bed.”
“You’re joking though, right? You don’t really have cake.”
“No, but if I did, I’d share it. I’d find a way to serve it somehow—even magically—through the wall.”
“Well, thanks,” I said, craving a thickly frosted piece.
Mason came to the wall for the next eight days. I knew it was eight days, because each time he was about to leave, he’d ask, “Should I come back tomorrow?”
As if it were even a question. I’d begun to live for his visits.
“I’d love to be able to picture who it is I’m talking to,” he said on one of them.
I wanted to picture him too. But in my mind, his image had already formed. I imagined he was strong and wiry—to be able to sneak between walls—with longish hair, since he likely didn’t have anything to trim it, and dark eyes.
“Well?” he asked.
I ran my hand over the hollow of my stomach, then slid my fingers along pelvic bones that jutted out a good four inches. I’d lost at least fifteen pounds since my arrival. The insides of my knees were purple, yellow, and black—at varying stages of bruising—from bones pressing on bones in the middle of the night.
“You first,” I told him.
“I’m just over six feet,” he said, “which makes slithering through heating ducts all the more interesting. I have brown hair and eyes, and a crooked nose from the time I got puck-chucked playing hockey. I normally wear contacts and wish I had them now—or at least glasses—but I had to throw them out because they got too old and dry. Your turn.”
I tried to picture his crooked nose, remembering a boy in school who’d broken his twice while playing Wham-O. “I have dark hair,” I said.
“Long or short?”
“Just past my shoulders.” I felt it to be sure. “People say I have a porcelain complexion, but that’s just code for ghostly pale. My eyes are green, and I’m short, like my mom—barely five feet two—with too many freckles, thanks to my dad.”
“Freckles on your face?”
“Freckles pretty much everywhere,” I said, wishing I could suck the words right back. Where was he picturing them? Why had I just told him that?
“Well, I happen to like freckles.”
I suddenly felt each one on my face; they burned like embers, making my skin flash hot.
“So what do you like to do when you’re not being held hostage by a lunatic?” he asked.
“I write a lot—poetry, mostly. I also
run. And I love animals.”
“You would’ve loved my dad’s farm. The best was when he was trying to raise lambs. The babies were really cute … the way they’d hop around. Have you ever seen a baby lamb hop?”
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see it, almost forgetting where I was.
“I’m also big into hiking,” he continued.
“In the mountains?”
“Anywhere, really—even if it takes me days or weeks. Life is short, and I want to see as many awe-inspiring sights as I can, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I didn’t know at all. I could only imagine what it was like to take off on a whim, on a quest for visual greatness. “Are you in school?”
“Does Life School count?”
“Sure,” I muttered, my head spinning with questions. Where did he live now? Was it still with his dad? What did he do to make money?
“Are you in school?” he asked.
“Well, it’s technically summer break.”
“And Jamaica was all booked up, I take it.”
I let out a laugh—my first one since being there—and I felt it in my chest, the strain of unused laugh muscles.
He left shortly after, much earlier than I’d wanted. The following day, in between working on the mattress and searching for the brownie box, I waited for him to come, pacing the floor of the room, scurrying to the wall whenever I heard the slightest clatter or rap.
I also sat on the floor, beneath the table, and wrapped myself around one of the legs. With my cheek pressed against the smooth, polished wood, I closed my eyes and pretended the leg was a person, that the wood was a cheek, and that I was embracing someone I missed—first Mom, then Dad, then Shelley, Jack. And Mason.
Additionally, in the bathroom, to help gauge the time, I plucked tissues from a Kleenex box and set sixty to the side (one for each second in a minute). I counted them over and over, finally stopping at 127 batch-counts—for two hours and seven minutes since the previous door-clank. To what that actually amounted, I had no idea, but somehow it felt like progress.
Finally, Mason’s familiar knock came, and I scooted down by the dresser.
“Are you sleeping?” he asked.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Who knew if it was even nighttime? I still didn’t have hot meal delivery. I was living off snacks, trying to cling onto pounds.
“Feel like playing a game?” he asked.
“Sure.” I nestled close.
“I’m thinking of a word. You can only ask me yes-or-no questions.”
“Is it a person?”
“No.”
“Okay, so it’s a thing? Does it have legs?”
“No again.”
“Is it known for having a distinct color?”
“Yes. Well, sort of.”
The word was daisy, and meanwhile my word was enamored.
I was.
Undeniably.
Enamored with his friendship, hungry for his attention.
We continued with our game, taking turns with words and guesses until it was time for him to go.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he said. “Should I bring you a brownie sundae?”
“Wait.” I racked my brain, trying to think up some way to make him stay. “Where’s your room?”
“At the other end of the hall, through a tunnel.”
“How many doors down?”
“Why? Are you planning to pay me a visit? Shall I leave my door unlocked? You never did tell me if you found a vent in your room. You’re not holding out on me, are you?”
I pressed my fingertips against the wall. “If only there were a vent in my room—or at least one I could crawl through.”
“I’m not really sure how many rooms separate mine from yours since I haven’t been out in the hallway. But if I were to guess … ten rooms, maybe twelve. Then you have to go through the tunnel. My room is on the other side.”
“Wow, this place must be enormous.”
“An understatement, as I’m learning, but I’m making progress. I found a pathway to the room behind Samantha’s. She and I were finally able to talk.”
“And so did you?” I swallowed hard.
“Just for a minute—just to confirm that she’s in too.”
“In?”
“To escape,” he said as though the answer should’ve been obvious.
And it probably should’ve been, but I just couldn’t help it—this wave of insecurity; it washed over me like boiling water. Would finding a pathway to Samantha mean fewer visits to “see” me?
“Jane?”
“Yes?”
“Did you not hear me? I said Samantha says hi.”
“You told her about me?”
“Of course. Was that not okay?”
“I’m just tired,” I said, which was the truth, after all—tired and hungry. Plus, I’d started my period, which is a terrible excuse, but it made me more exhausted than I ever thought possible.
“Do you want a bedtime story?”
What I wanted was not to care. But I totally did. And so I curled up by the wall, in a nest of strewn clothes, and listened while he told me about Huey, Dewey, and Louie, three wild turkeys that had lived on his farm, plus Libby the horse and a rabbit named Mr. Pinkney. In truth, it didn’t matter what he talked about. It was his companionship that meant most—like an intoxicating drug shot up inside my veins, warming all of my cold places, lightening up my darkest thoughts.
“Do you want to hear about the time I found Conway the hen sleeping in bed with my dad?” he asked.
His voice was creamy like custard. I wanted to crawl up inside it and never let go, and so I told him yes and snuggled in closer.
THEN
21
I started my day by cleaning up the room, feeling around for snack debris and empty drink containers and depositing them into a trash bag. I also folded clothes and filed them inside drawers, and I loaded the pantry cabinet with unopened food packages, trying to guess the contents of each one by giving it a shake. Was that the pitter-patter of salt? The shuffling of granola? The cracking of pretzel rods?
In the fridge, I placed a half dozen water bottles to the right. The Gatorade bottles were wider, the plastic thicker. I placed those to the left and made a mental note. Additionally, I drained the shampoo from two bottles into a half-gallon jug and threw those bottles away, making it look as though I’d been washing my hair. I did the same with a few bars of soap—threw their wrappers away.
Mason was right. I needed to play by the rules, and that included calculating the contents of my trash.
It took a bit of maneuvering to push the bag through the cat door, but I managed. I was also able to pick out a strategic armload of clothing—underwear, sweats, and tees—along with the bed linens. I set those in the hallway too.
The last key ingredients were the scorecard and an order form to request more supplies (shampoo, soap, granola bars, cashews, potato chips, tissues, and water). But before I placed those in the hallway, I scavenged a cereal box and pulled out the wax-paper bag inside. In the bathroom, I tore the box open and used the back side to scribble a note to my captor:
Dear Person Who Took Me:
Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone about you—not that there’s much for me to tell. I don’t know where I am. I don’t even remember what you look like. You can drug me again, take me someplace far from here, and leave me there. I’ll find my own way back. Please, I’m begging you to consider this. I miss my friends and family, and I want to go home.
Sincerely,
Jane
When I woke up later, it took my brain a beat to process what my eyes had already taken in: the bright white walls, the snack cabinet, the table, the dresser and mini-fridge.
I could see.
The light was on.
I jumped from the bed and peeked out into the hallway. Everything I’d left was gone. In its place, I found a container of baked ziti, a pile of fresh bed linens, a bar of soap, two
shampoo bottles, a box of tissues, and a six-pack of water. I also earned two stars—for the laundry and the trash.
I slid the ziti toward me and got to work, using my fingers, cramming the noodles into my mouth, three and four at a time. The thick tomato sauce dripped down my chin and brought tears to my eyes—so unbelievably good, like nothing I’d ever tasted.
As I ate, I peered around the room, still searching for the box of brownies. I’d done a good job of cleaning up. The floor was mostly bare. There was nothing on the surfaces of the table, dresser, and mini-fridge.
Finally, I was able to see the fruits of my laborious project, where the mattress was frayed and splotched with blood: muted red and brown patches. At first, I didn’t believe that all the blood had come from me, but the nubs of my fingers told another story. I should’ve asked for bandages too.
My stomach still growling, I brought a cup of green beans to my lips and poured them into my mouth, practically drinking them down like juice. I chased the beans with lemonade, then scooted closer to the bed, peeking beneath it.
What was that?
Sticking out from behind the bedpost …
I could barely make out the corner of a white box. I edged closer, able to see a bit of the block lettering—an e and an s—and the mitten-like hand of the smiling chocolate square.
I climbed onto the bed, my insides charged like power lines, and reached down into the space between the bed frame and the wall. I grabbed the corner of the box and pulled upward. At last, I’d found them: the Cocoa Loco brownies. I hugged the box to my chest and collapsed back onto the bed.
All of the above victories cheered me up more than they should have, distracted me from the fact that I hadn’t seen Mason in what felt like days.
I curled up with the box, imagining Shelley’s face, almost able to hear her voice: Need I remind you that you’re trapped like an animal? Who cares about stars for good behavior or some guy who talks to you through a wall? Why aren’t you trying to find a way out?
She was right. But what if something bad had happened to Mason? What if he’d been hurt or sick, or gotten caught outside his room?
Or worse still: What if he’s spending his free time with Samantha? the Shelley voice mocked. What if they escaped together and left you behind?