A picture is developing in his mind.
Her computer is already on. He moves his finger across the trackpad to wake it from sleep. He starts by pulling up her blog. Though it looks like she posted daily entries, the site has not been updated in ten days. Her previous posts were all things he had seen before: conservation issues, environmental impact discussions, and public policy debates concerning the L.A. River.
He clicks off the browser and begins reading through folders and file names on her hard drive.
An electronic ding sounds off. A flashing window appears in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
Someone is sending an instant message.
Shepherd_79: god i’m so sick of guys
Shepherd_79: he didn’t call again tonight
He is tempted to shut the program down, make it seem like a glitch. Her friend would never think twice about it. But he doesn’t do anything, thinking it is far less suspicious to do so.
His heart is racing, and he can feel his neck and chest flushing with color. Finding it hard to concentrate on reading her folder structure, he opts to open an image viewer and browse through her digital photos.
Shepherd_79: i should just get over him, right?
The photos are grouped into categories, mostly events: parties and a couple weddings. The largest group of pictures contains shots of the river. He opens them in thumbnail view and scrubs through them, trying to differentiate one from another. They all look the same. Graffiti-covered cement. A hint of water. Chain link, barbed wire, corrugated steel.
He clicks on a couple of images, enlarging them, hoping to read the graffiti. But it’s all senseless tagging in an indecipherable alphabet.
Next are a bunch of shots of storm-drain covers spraypainted in bright, bold metallic colors. The paint looks layered on, the iterations of multiple artists on many different occasions.
There’s something familiar about the shape of these drain covers, the way the upper hinges taper off to points on either side of the large circle.
Shepherd_79: hello?
Shepherd_79: are you ignoring me too bitch!
The messages are getting to him. Someone is closing in on him, has him under a microscope.
He clicks the IM window and types, hitting the keys hard.
CAN’T TALK NOW.
A mistake? Just by typing a few words he has brought her back. A ghost in the machine. Although this ghost is thinner than smoke.
The next image of the drain covers reveals it all. The spray-painted eyes, nose, whiskers. Cats. They are graffitied to look like cats.
Another message comes through IM.
Shepherd_79: sorry … you okay? is there news about your sister?
He jumps up to her bookshelf and starts tearing through books.
Captions under key images begin to point him to a general location. Hopping back onto her computer, he starts opening documents and searching for keywords.
Frogtown. Atwater Village. County Flood Control. Mural Registry.
He starts sketching on the back of a piece of paper.
After much work, he has a map, a goal. He is about to leave when he notices the IM window is blinking again. He knows he will have to close the program before he leaves. Keeping it open will make for a suspicious scene, even though the books and papers he has pulled out make the ransacked place suspicious enough.
He reads the last communication.
Shepherd_79: what’s the matter?
Shepherd_79: hey! HELLO!
Shepherd_79: Who are you?
(Shepherd_79 has signed off.)
He exits the program. He imagines that Shepherd is heading here, to this house, to investigate. It hardly matters now. He won’t be here. He is heading back to the river.
He knows who she is. He knows how to find her. The rest is fate.
In the dim light of the riverbed, he has trouble seeing the graffiti on the drain covers, but he knows he’s at the right place. Six cats, six drains. The large painted faces hang perpendicular to the ground. During heavy rains they will swing up, releasing torrents of run-off into the violent river come to life. Now they are silent, each recessed into an individual hollow in the channel’s cement wall. He takes a moment for a deep, shaky breath. He twists his wrist to look at his watch, but the time doesn’t even register. His mind is on what happens next.
Really, what is he doing here?
Thoughts crowd his head. He should go to the police, he should go get help, he should just walk away and pray for this day to end. He shakes his head, pulls the paper he ripped from her diary out of his pocket. With a faint click he turns his flashlight on and reads:
In real life, stories never actually end; they simply change. If you are in a loveless marriage, you can’t just type “THE END” and move on to the next story. No, you make choices and you change, your story changes. A main character is swept to the side. A supporting character rises to take on more importance. New characters are introduced.
Nothing ever stops, not for a single moment.
Six cats in front of him. He chooses one. Kicks at the cover. Solid. He touches it hesitantly, thinking that it’s probably dirty. The slightly moist surface is cold from the night air. It says to him,
Choose again.
The next cat he selects reacts differently. It gives when he touches it, making a squeaking sound not unlike a low meow. One of the top hinges is broken. The cover opens easily. Beyond is a cement tunnel, almost six feet in diameter.
He steps up. Inside. The beam of his flashlight melts into black. The entire inner surface is covered in graffiti tags of multiple colors. Catching the writing out of his peripheral vision gives the illusion that the tube is slowly rotating. He tries to concentrate on the sloppy seams of the poured concrete, concentric rings that disappear into darkness. He walks slowly at first, then with determination.
The path in front of him does not appear to end. He stops and looks back. He can’t see the entrance anymore. If he spun around he wouldn’t be able to tell which way was out, which way was in.
He keeps walking until he reaches a hole in the curved bottom of the tube. The hole is slightly smaller, maybe four feet wide. Attached to the side is a ladder. He aims the flash-light below. He cannot see bottom.
He climbs down the ladder.
The length of the descent surprises him. When he reaches the bottom rung, he extends his leg down, swinging it to feel for some ground. His shoe scrapes against something and he decides to let go of the ladder.
He lands awkwardly, almost twisting his ankle. He shines the flashlight around. Another tube, this one perpendicular to the one he came in. His choice is left or right.
There is a scratching, scurrying sound. He thinks it’s most likely a rat.
Then it sounds different. A whimper. A cry.
He looks in the direction he thinks the sound is coming from. His flashlight only goes a small distance before the beam diffuses into an off-white haze. He thinks he sees movement, but it’s up high, eye-level, not crawling across the floor.
He flinches and throws some light above him. Nothing but gray cement.
His light still pointed above him, he looks forward and sees something more clearly. He turns out his flashlight and lets his eyes adjust. Again he sees it. A flickering.
A light ahead.
He runs toward it. As he gets closer, he can’t quite grasp what it is. The first thing he sees is the reflection of his own flashlight.
Then he sees her.
He holds up his free hand, trying to wave the image away as he fights back the nausea. Looking around, he sees he’s in what appears to be a large circular room. Off to one side hangs a camp lantern that barely illuminates the scene.
In the center of the room are two large pieces of sheet glass, hung vertically. They are sealed together at the four corners with over-sized metal bolts. Between the glass is pinned a young girl, wearing only a white T-shirt, a white pair of underwear.
The glass holds her up off the ground. She is pressed together so tightly that her face is distorted, her cheek blotchy and spread wide, her lips puckered like a fish. Her eyes are closed.
“No more.” Her voice, a dry whisper. “Please, no more.”
He catches himself staring with incomprehension before he snaps out of it and rushes to her, examining the glass for some type of latch or opening. Finding none, he fights with the bolts. His hands burn at the friction of the unmovable metal.
“Please … I’ll do anything … I’ll let you do anything,” she says.
The bolts appear to have been tightened by some massive wrench. He looks around the room for it, but finds only a metal pipe.
“Just whatever you do … Don’t ring the bell anymore.”
He stops, looks at her, really looks at her. “What?”
She opens her eyelids, and her eyes searchlight the room. “Who … who are you? Where is he?” Her voice gets more and more excited, and her eyes go crazy. Except for this flurry, she is unable to move. “Get me out, get me out, get me out!”
“I’m trying. Just calm down. Everything is going to be all right.”
He tries to pry the two panes apart, first with his hands, then with his shoe. Her cries are getting louder; his blood pressure, rising.
The glass does not budge. Now a scream: “Get me out! He’s coming! He’s coming back with the bell! No no no no …”
He tries to quiet her, tell her that he’s here to help. He does not tell her that her kidnapper is dead, in the river, unable to hurt her anymore. The idea of what he did to her burns him, keeps him quiet.
Her screaming shows no sign of stopping. She screams dry, hollow, hyperventilated screams—she can’t get enough air to properly bellow out. It would be better, he thinks, if she could really let it all out. But she is so constricted. Her wheeze crawls up his spine and pools into tension.
He grabs the metal pipe.
“Look. The only way I’m getting you out is to break the glass.” He weighs the pipe in his hand. “But I think it’s too dangerous. You could really get hurt. I’m … I’m going to go for help.”
“No! He’ll come back! You have to do something!”
“He’s not coming back!”
The noise she’s making reminds him of her sister’s last sound, that final emptying scream. Could he have done more to help her? Should he have done less?
He can’t concentrate with her crying. The opportunity is slipping by. What would he be willing to do to free her? Anything? A moral lapse? No. To lapse is to fall. This is a leap. This is worth the price.
He swings at the glass with the pipe, aiming near her upper leg. The impact makes a loud reverberating bounce that echoes through the underground tunnels. The glass does not break.
“No! Stop! That hurts! Get me out of here!”
“I’m trying—”
“Get me out!”
“I’m trying!” He swings. “I’m trying!”
Again and again, until the glass shatters. She falls forward onto the shards.
He throws the pipe away and goes to lift her up. Blood has already soaked her thin shirt. She presses herself onto him, holding him, crying deeply, allowing big gulps of air to enter her lungs.
“I’ll take you somewhere safe,” he tells her, but all she can do is moan.
In his car. He drives her to the nearest hospital. She hasn’t said anything since he carried her up through the tunnels and out of the river. He continues to glance over at her, hoping she will say something, anything. When she doesn’t, he speaks just to break the still air.
“He can’t hurt you anymore.”
She looks out the window. “When I woke up in that thing, he began telling me stories. He would tell me about the horrible things he was going to do to my sister. Only, every time he would describe something really bad, he would ring a bell. At some point the stories stopped. He would just come and sit next to me and ring the bell.”
He grips the steering wheel tightly. “You know, I had it in my hands. I had the bell, and it slipped away from me.” He looks at her, her confused expression. “It’s gone now. It’s all gone.”
She puts her hand on the door handle, turns to him. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of your sister.” He sees a tear roll down her cheek, a tear she does not wipe away.
She says, “I think you should just let me out here.”
He turns onto San Fernando Road. “The emergency room is right there. Just let me—”
She throws the door open; he slams on the brakes. She uses the recoil of being thrown back to push herself out of the car. She gets to her feet and runs toward the hospital, flailing her arms as she goes.
There is nothing more he can do. He reengages his stalled engine. He leaves.
He puts his window down, even though the late-night air is cool. He wants to drive forever, wants the car never to run out of gas, never to stop. No acceleration, no deceleration. A constant, smooth, uninterrupted drive.
This fantasy cannot hold. He knows he needs to go home. He looks down and remembers her blood all over his clothes. He can’t go home like this. He’s too tired to want to figure things out, though he knows he needs to. But then, as ideas do, something comes to him.
For the last time tonight he heads to the river.
He finds their bodies, largely unchanged since he left them hours ago. He examines the man, stiff and cold, roughly his same build. First he takes off the man’s jacket. Then his shirt, his pants.
They fit him well enough. At least they are clean.
He dresses the man in his clothing. Now the kidnapper is wearing the blood of the sister of the dead woman next to him. For him and for now, this is enough.
As he reclaims his personal belongings from his exchanged clothing, he finds the empty powder packet in the suit jacket. He leaves it in the possession of the corpse.
“You,” he says to the dead man. “This is your fault.”
Home. He tries to be quiet as he opens the door. He closes it softly. He crosses the front room, slinks into his office and into his chair. He breathes in and out, trying to calm down. His skin is clammy from the lack of sleep.