My Story (10 page)

Mitchell was as taut as wire. He didn’t move. He hardly breathed. He stood there listening, tense and ready to spring. I didn’t know where he kept his knife, but I knew that it was always close. It seemed that he could make it appear out of nowhere. I pictured it again in my mind. Long. Black. Serrated on one side. A cutting knife. A deadly knife. And if I had learned anything about Brian David Mitchell, it was that he was evil enough to kill.

So we waited there together, listening for the sound of someone calling out my name.

I was being torn apart inside. My heart beat with both terrible excitement and utter fear. Someone was looking for me! Someone was very near! Calling my name. I might be rescued! He might find me! But if he did, would Mitchell kill him? If I screamed, the man might hear me. He might try to climb up the side of the mountain. But would he find me? I could picture Mitchell, this crazy man jumping out from behind a tree and slitting his throat. My uncle would be dead. I would still be captured. Nothing would really change. Then would Mitchell kill me too? Would he move me somewhere else? Somewhere worse? Somewhere more dangerous? Someplace much farther away from my family and my home? I remembered how hard it had been to climb the mountain. There had been times when we had been forced to crawl on our hands and knees. It might take, what … an hour for my uncle—if it was my uncle—to climb up the mountain to the camp? Plenty of time for Mitchell to kill me. Plenty of time to get ready to attack whoever came into the camp.

For a moment, a fantasy flashed into my mind, the dream of a desperate little girl. I imagined lots of men. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. They knew where the camp was without me screaming. They surrounded the camp. There was nothing Mitchell could do. He couldn’t hurt me. He couldn’t attack them all. He might turn to me in anger, but he would know that it hadn’t been my fault that they had found me! I had not even made a sound. He couldn’t be mad at me. He couldn’t blame me. I had done everything he had told me to do. But the men had found me anyway.

I wanted it so badly that I could hardly breathe. I wanted to be away from there. I wanted to be away from him. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see my family. I wanted to be safe and not hurt anymore.

But I knew it wasn’t real. There was no group of men. They weren’t going to surround us. There was only one man. And Mitchell was going to kill him if he came into the camp.

I glanced at Barzee. Her face was mean and hard. Mitchell moved closer to me. His eyes were as deadly as the steel of his knife.
You will die here
, his eyes seemed to say.
You and whoever is down there in the canyon. There’s no way this ends well if he starts climbing toward our camp!

My heart fell into my stomach. I wasn’t just brokenhearted. I was shattered. Simply shattered. I had lost my only chance! I started shaking. My knees turned to rubber, my throat grew so tight I couldn’t breathe. The bitter disappointment seemed to crush my soul.

We waited, all of us listening intently. The voice called again a time or two but then faded. A long time passed. We didn’t move. The voice was never heard again.

That night, I cried myself to sleep again. And though I didn’t know it, four or five miles to the west my mother cried herself to sleep as well.

Early the next afternoon. I was sitting on my appointed seat—the bucket had become the only object to which I could lay claim within the camp—when I heard a faint noise and vibration. I immediately looked up. It grew closer. Louder. The thump of helicopter blades echoed down the canyon. They slapped the air like gunshots, coming at me before the sound of the engines could reach my ears. Without even thinking, I stood up and moved toward the sound, my head up, my eyes searching, the blue sky obscured by all the trees.

Mitchell froze. He was only a few feet away from me. Barzee was on the other side of him, her face turned toward the sky. The sound was getting closer. Her eyes were growing very wide.

The helicopter seemed to be moving down the slope of the mountain. And it was moving very slow. It grew louder. So low. So slow. This helicopter was obviously searching. And it was moving directly toward the camp.

We had heard the sound of airplanes before, but they had always been far away and so high that they could never have found me. And we’d heard a few helicopters, but they were just the sound of beating rotors and noisy engines in the sky. Most times I never even saw them, only heard them as they moved across the top of the ridges on the mountain. But this one was different. It sounded like it was moving directly toward us. The sound grew louder. The roar of engines. The sound of rushing air. I started to feel it now. The trees began to move, blowing toward the bottom of the canyon. The helicopter
was
coming right toward us. And it was
so
close.

Instinctively, I pulled against the cable around my leg. My eyes darted here and there, looking for an opening, any break in the trees where I could be seen. I moved toward a spot of sunlight breaking through the branches, my eyes always toward the skies.

Mitchell was frozen in uncertainty and fear. Barzee seemed to be made of stone. I expected Mitchell to spring into action, but he seemed incapable of doing anything. For the first time, a thought crossed my mind: Maybe he doesn’t have all the answers. Maybe he doesn’t even have a plan.

I lifted my hands toward the skies. I almost started screaming, “I’m here! I am here!”

They were going to find me! My nightmare was nearly over!

It’s impossible to describe how powerful the helicopter seemed to be. The noise filled my ears. Jet turbines. The power of the rotors. I couldn’t see the helicopter yet, but the trees were bending down around me. Frantically, I searched above me, reaching out toward the wind.

Suddenly, I felt a vise grip on my arm. Mitchell pulled, his hand like cold steel on my skin as he forced me toward the tent. Barzee was already there, tugging frantically at the zipper. We piled in, almost tumbling onto the floor. I made a move toward the opening, but Mitchell was already standing in my way. I slid toward the corner of the tent and waited. They might not see me, but they would see the tent. There were blue and gray tarps all over the ground. They
had
to see our camp. They
had
to be looking for me! Why else would this helicopter be hovering down the side of the mountain? They would send someone up to investigate. Surely I would be found.…

It seemed the helicopter was right above us. The branches on the trees were being beaten down. I looked up through the air vent in the top of the tent, but I could only see a tiny slit of sky. But I could see the branches blowing all around us. Dust and dry leaves were in the air.

Seconds passed. And then a minute.

Surely they will see us.
…

Truthfully, I wasn’t certain that all of this effort was part of the search for me. It seemed a little bit extravagant. But why else would a helicopter be hovering right over our camp?

The chopper didn’t move. They must have seen the tent, the camp, all of our utensils scattered here and there. I looked anxiously toward my captors. Fear showed on their faces. I wanted to scream with joy. I imagined that maybe the pilots on the helicopter had heat-seeking equipment that would allow them to see through the fabric of the tent.

Mitchell’s face was taut, his eyes wide, his lips tightly drawn against his teeth. Barzee was huddled in the tent beside me.

They know it’s over, I told myself. They’re going to catch them. They will be in prison and I’ll be free!

More seconds passed. The helicopter remained directly above us, the wind blowing the tent like a flag in the wind.

Mitchell was peering through the vent in the roof, the same as me. His expression looked like a bomb was about to fall on his head. I wanted to cry with relief. I wanted to scream in pure joy.

Then the helicopter started moving away.

I followed the sound with my eyes. The helicopter didn’t dart away but moved slowly, inching down the canyon as if it were … still searching for something! The wind began to decrease, the branches blowing with much less force. The dirt began to settle. We all waited. Another minute. The sound faded. A couple of minutes. The helicopter was gone.

I stared in disbelief. Had they not seen the tents? The tarps? The dugout and our camping gear? Had they not seen anything? I wanted to cry with frustration! They had hovered directly over us. I expected them to … I didn’t know … drop a sheriff from a cable? Yell out over some loudspeakers, circle around and fly back over the camp? Anything to give me a signal that help was on the way.

But nothing. They did nothing.

The sound of the helicopter was completely gone now, leaving only the quiet of the mountain and the gentle summer breeze.

*

I thought that maybe they would return. I thought maybe someone would come hiking up the mountain. Police. Someone prepared to save me. But no one did. The afternoon dragged by. All the time I waited, alert, my ears straining to pick up the sound of someone hiking up the canyon, calling out my name. All afternoon I waited. All night. All the next day. I tried to keep my hopes up, but I realized that no one was going to come.

Another heartbreaking moment. Another bone-crushing defeat.

We spoke little of the disappearance of the helicopter, but I could see that Mitchell took it as another sign from God.
If it is God’s will that I do this, let the helicopter fly away.
I don’t know that he ever said those words, but it was just too easy for him to interpret it as another sign from heaven. However, after the helicopter, he also became more cautious. He realized that they were still searching for me—making a real effort to locate me—and he was going to have to be more careful.

So while he took it as another sign, I took it as nothing but another opportunity lost. And I struggled to explain it to myself. It was so frustrating trying to understand how the helicopter could have missed seeing us. Maybe they thought it was a homeless camp. But we were so far up on the mountain, that wouldn’t have made any sense. Maybe they thought we were some hikers. But if we were, and they were looking for me, wouldn’t they have wanted to talk to us to see if we had seen anything?

I thought back on the other opportunities lost: tiptoeing down the steps in my house, just a few feet from my parents’ bedroom; crouching behind the bushes as the police car had driven by; the first morning, after he had raped me and then left me alone inside the tent. That was before I had been cabled. The voice calling me from down the canyon. The helicopter hovering right over my head.

Water was a big deal. It was precious. It was rare. Mitchell and Barzee rationed it closely. It took a lot of work to get and we conserved it carefully. We kept a small bowl to wash our hands in, but that is all the washing we ever did. The rest of the water we drank. It was warm and tasted of plastic, but I didn’t care. Getting my share of water was a really big deal.

Mitchell hated going down to the spring at the bottom of the canyon, which meant that every couple days we’d run out of water. He’d usually make us go a day or so before he’d finally gather up the plastic containers and head on down the canyon. These waterless days were miserable. I was already hot and dry and filthy. Going a day without any water while enduring the summer heat only made it worse.

When he’d go for water, I’d beg him to let me go with him. His reply was always the same: “You’re not ready.” Which was an interesting thing to say. Already, he was starting to manipulate me.
Be good and I will reward you. I can be generous and kind. But you have to earn it. And you will owe me once I have given some freedoms to you.

It’s ironic that by letting me off the cable, he was trying to reel me in. Even then, he was trying to get me to love him. But it certainly didn’t work. Never did I develop any feelings for him or Barzee. All I ever felt was fear and repulsion.

When it came to the possibility of letting me go down with him to get some water, I don’t think he was worried that I would escape. For one thing, he could always hold on to the other end of my cable. And it was two adults against a child, hardly an even fight. But trying to get away wasn’t what motivated me. I was simply desperate to relieve the boredom. I was so tired of being cabled that I wanted to scream. Watching as he headed down the mountain, I longed to be free of the cable that held me in its narrow cage.

Looking back on it now, I think that might have been the beginning of my subjection to him.

Soon I would be walking around the city with Mitchell and Barzee and not telling anyone who I was. Soon, I would be questioned by a policeman in the Salt Lake City Library, and not dare to answer when he asked me my name. People wonder how I could have done that. Why didn’t I cry out for help? Why didn’t I scream to escape when, finally, I had the opportunity?

The answer is difficult to explain, but it comes down to fear. Fear for my life. Fear for my family. Fear of the pain and humiliation. Part of it too was the constant intimidation. Part of it was the feeling that I had already lost my life and everything worth having—the feeling that I had gone too far to be saved.

All of these emotions were going to overwhelm me. They were going to make it possible for Mitchell to take me into the city and lead me around like a dog. Every ounce of energy and courage I had was used on maintaining my drive to survive; nothing was left to use on plans of escape … yet.

And I think most of that started when I was raped and chained up every day.

*

One morning, Mitchell and Barzee had a big fight. They were constantly at each other’s throats, always nagging and poking and getting on each other’s nerves, but this one was a big one. Lots of screaming and yelling and calling bad names. Barzee was tired of all the attention I had been getting. “You’re just being lustful!” she screamed at her husband. “Just because she’s young and beautiful. You’re being lustful! You’re being carnal. It’s not right!”