Still Missing (8 page)

"How did you find out?"

"It doesn't matter how, it matters that I care enough to tell you. I learned something else while I was there." He paused. I knew he was waiting for my line, and I didn't want to play into his hands. But I had to know, which meant I had to ask.

"What else?"
How are you going to hurt me next, you bastard?

"Something extremely interesting about Luke...."

This time I forced myself to remain silent. He broke after a couple of beats.

"It would seem he's already grown tired of waiting for you."

"I don't believe you. Luke
loves
me--"

"Well, when I saw him walking with his arm around that lovely blond woman, and he leaned down to whisper in her ear, I don't think he was telling her how much he loved
you
, Annie."

"You're lying, he wouldn't--"

"He wouldn't what? Can you honestly tell me you
never
wondered if sweet Luke was just too good to be true? He's
weak
, Annie."

Mind reeling, I stared at the far wall.

The Freak nodded. "But you're starting to see it now. What I saved you from."

Was it possible Luke could already be dating someone else? There was one blond hostess, I couldn't remember her name but I'd thought she had a crush on him. He told me I was being silly.

The day before I was abducted, Luke hadn't sounded enthusiastic when I invited him over for dinner the next night. He was at the restaurant, and I figured he was just busy--or maybe thought I might have to cancel again. Had there been another woman even back then? No, there couldn't have been. Luke never once told me he was unhappy, and he didn't have a cheating cell in his body.

The Freak turned my chin so I was forced to make eye contact. "I'm the only one you have left, Annie."

He was just lying. All of this was his latest, best move in his sick game. He loved nothing more than to shake me up. Other people cared about me, lots of people. So I hadn't been a perfect girlfriend, especially right before I was abducted, but Luke wasn't going to replace me just like that. And Christina loved me--she'd been my best friend forever, I knew she wouldn't forget about me. Maybe Mom and I didn't always see eye to eye--she and Daisy always got along better--but she'd be devastated that I was missing. Selling my house didn't mean anything, if it was true. It was probably for reward money.

But, what if The Freak wasn't lying? What if they really weren't looking for me anymore? What if they'd all moved on? Luke might have a new girlfriend, one who didn't work all the time. Mom could be signing a deal on my house right now, Emma could have forgotten all about me too. Was she with Luke and this blonde? Everybody was going forward with their lives and I was going to be trapped with a crazy sadist-rapist forever.

The Freak made it seem so real, and what evidence did I have to prove any different? Nobody had found me, had they? I wanted to argue with him and convince him that other people loved me, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. Instead I remembered the dog pound.

I used to help out there--mostly just cleaning out kennels and taking dogs for walks. Some of the dogs had been abused and bit anyone who came near them. There were others that wouldn't let themselves give or receive affection no matter what, and some that became completely submissive and peed if you so much as raised your voice. Then there were the ones that had given up and just sat in their cages, staring at the wall when possible new owners came in.

This one dog, Bubbles, an ugly little thing with a skin condition, was there for ages, but as soon as anyone new came in he pranced up to the front of the cage like he was the most beautiful creature in the world. Always hopeful. I wanted to take him home, but I was living in an apartment at the time. Eventually I had to quit because of work, so I never got to see whether anybody adopted him. Now I was the dumb dog waiting for someone to take me home. I hoped they put Bubbles to sleep before he finally figured out no one was coming for him.

I stopped to get some gas on the way home from our last session, and up by the register, the shelves were loaded with bags of candy. I was never allowed anything like that on the mountain, and for so long I missed things, stupid little day-to-day things, then as time passed I stopped missing them, because I couldn't remember what I liked anymore. Standing there, looking at the candies, I
remembered
I liked them and rage boiled up inside me.

The girl behind the counter said, "Is that all?" And I heard myself say, "No," and then my hands were scooping bags and bags of candy off the shelves--sours, jujubes, wine gums, jelly snakes, anything. People were standing behind me, watching a crazy woman grab at candy like it was Halloween, but I didn't give a shit.

In my car I ripped open the little bags and started stuffing my mouth full of candies. I was crying--didn't know or care why--and I ate so many that I threw up when I got home and my tongue was covered with little sores. But I ate more--a whole lot more--and fast, like I was afraid someone was going to stop me any second. I wanted to be that girl who used to like candy so bad, Doc. So bad.

I sat at my kitchen table--wrappers and empty bags all around me--and couldn't stop crying. I had a sugar headache. I was going to throw up again. But I was crying because the candies didn't taste like I remembered.
Nothing
tastes like I remember.

The Freak never did tell me why he'd gone back to Clayton Falls or what he did there other than spy on my so-called loved ones, but the first night after his return he sure was in a good mood. Nothing puts a skip in a freak's step like telling a girl no one gives a shit about her. While he made dinner he whistled and danced around in the kitchen like he was on a cooking show.

When I glared at him, he just smiled and took a bow.

If he'd made it to Clayton Falls and back in five days, I couldn't be that far away or that far north, unless he just parked the van and flew somewhere. Regardless, none of it seemed to matter anymore. Whether I was five or five hundred miles from my home, the distance was insurmountable. When I thought of my house I'd loved so much, friends and family, search parties that weren't searching, all I felt was a giant blanket of fatigue wrapping itself around me and pulling me down.
Just sleep. Sleep it all away.

I might have felt like that indefinitely, but two weeks after The Freak came home, around the middle of February, when I was about five months along, I felt the baby move. It was the strangest sensation, like I'd swallowed a butterfly, and in that moment the baby stopped being something evil, stopped being something of
his
. It was mine and I didn't have to share it.

After that, I liked being pregnant. Each week, as I grew and rounded out, I was amazed that my body was creating a life. I didn't feel dead inside, I felt alive. Even The Freak's recharged obsession with my body didn't change my feelings about being pregnant. He'd make me stand in front of him while he ran his hands all over my stomach and breasts. During one of these "examinations," which I'd spend counting knotholes in the ceiling, he said, "You don't know how lucky you are to have your child born away from today's society, Annie. All human beings do is destroy--they rip apart nature, love, and families, with war, with governments, with greed. But here I've created a pure world, a
safe
world, for us to raise our child in."

As I listened to him, I thought about the drunk driver killing my dad and sister. I thought about the doctors loading Mom up with pills, the Realtors I knew who'd do anything to get a deal, my friends and family who were moving on, cops who must have their heads stuck up their asses or I'd have been found by now.

I hated that I was even considering the opinion of a freak. But if somebody is telling you the sky is green, even though you know it's blue, and they act like the sky is green and they keep saying it's green day in, day out, like they really
believe
it, eventually you could start wondering if maybe you're nuts for thinking it's blue.

I often wondered,
Why me
? Why, of all the girls he could have taken, did he pick a Realtor, a career woman? Not exactly mountain wife material. Not that I'd have wished this on anyone, but wouldn't he want someone he knew would be weak? Someone he knew it wouldn't take much to fuck with? But then I realized he did know. He knew all along.

I thought I'd worked past my childhood, past my family, past my pain, but when you've rolled around in manure long enough, there's no getting away from the stench. You can buy every damn type of soap out there and scrub your skin until you're raw, but then one day you're out walking around and a fly lands on you. Then another one, then another--because they
know
. They know that underneath that fresh-scrubbed skin you're just manure. Nothing but shit. You can clean it up all you want, but the flies always know where to land.

That winter The Freak put me on a reward system. If he was happy with me he gave me things--one extra slice of meat at dinner or one extra pee break. If I folded the laundry perfectly, I was allowed a little bit of sugar in my tea. After one of his trips into town, he said I'd been a good girl and gave me an apple.

So much had been taken away that when he gave me anything, even something as mundane as an apple, it became huge. I ate it with my eyes closed, and in my mind I was sitting under a tree in the summer--I could almost feel the sun on my legs.

He still punished me if I did something wrong, but he hadn't hit me for a long time, and sometimes I wished he would. Being hit was a physical act that made me feel defiant. But the mind shit? That really did a number on me, and as the months passed, the voices of my loved ones faded to whispers and their faces blurred. Little by little, day by day, the sky became green.

He still continued with the rapes after I started to show, but they were different somehow, more like he was now the one acting a role. Once in a while he'd even turn gentle, loving, then catch himself and blush, as though it were the niceness that was wrong.

A couple of times he simply stopped and rested beside me with his hand on my belly, then he'd ask me questions: What did it feel like to be pregnant? Could I feel the baby moving? If he wasn't in the mood for sex I'd still have to put on the dress, and we'd usually lie in bed with his head on my chest.

One night the weight of his head on my breasts triggered a nurturing sensation, and I started daydreaming about the baby. Without thinking I started singing, "Hush little baby, don't you cry," out loud. I stopped as soon as I realized what I was doing. He shifted his head so it rested on my shoulder, then looked me in the eye.

"My mother used to sing that to me. Did your mother ever sing to you, Annie?"

"Not that I remember."

My mind searched for ways to keep the conversation going. I wanted to know more about him, but it wasn't like I could just come out and say, "So how did you turn into such a freak?"

"Your mom must have been an interesting person," I said, hoping I wasn't stepping onto a land mine, but he didn't say anything. "Do you want me to sing you something special? I don't know many songs, but I could try. I took lessons when I was a kid."

"Not right now. I want to hear more about your childhood."

Shit. Could I get him to tell me revealing stuff by talking about my crap?

"Mom wasn't really the sing-you-to-sleep type," I said.

"And these lessons, were they your idea?"

"That was all Mom."

My whole childhood was spent trying something new, singing lessons, piano lessons, and of course figure skating. Daisy was into skating from the time she was little, but I didn't last long. I spent more time with my ass on the ice than in the air. Mom tried me in ballet, too, but that ended when I spun into another little girl and just about broke her nose.

Even the accident didn't stop my mom. If anything, her golden child's death increased her need to make me good at
something.
Well, what I got good at was sabotage. It's amazing how many ways you can break instruments or ruin sequined costumes.

"What kind of lessons did you want to take?"

"I was into art, painting and drawing, stuff like that, but Mom wasn't."

"So if she wasn't, then you couldn't be?" His eyebrows rose. "Doesn't sound like she was very fair, or much fun."

"When we were younger, before Daisy died, she could be fun. Like every Christmas we made huge gingerbread houses, and she'd play dress-up with us all the time. Sometimes she'd build forts in the middle of the living room with Daisy and me, then we'd stay up late watching scary movies."

"Did
you
like the scary movies?"

"I liked being with Daisy and her.... They just had a different sense of humor. Mom's really into pranks and stuff, like one Halloween she poured ketchup all over the floor by my bed so when I woke up and stepped in it I'd think it was blood. She and Daisy laughed about it for days." I still hate ketchup.

"But you didn't think it was so funny, did you?"

I shrugged. The Freak began to look bored and shifted his weight like he was going to get up. Shit. I had to start showing him some real feelings if I wanted him to connect with me.

"It made me cry. Mom still likes to tell everyone how she fooled me. She gets off on stuff like that, fooling people. She even used to trick-or-treat with us."

"Interesting. And why do you think your mother likes to 'fool people,' as you say?"

"Who knows, but she's damn good at it. It's how she gets most of her makeup and clothes--she has every saleswoman in and out of town wrapped around her finger."

It didn't take many bottles of knockoff perfume before Mom went hunting for a sucker behind a department-store cosmetics counter. Saleswomen not only gave the pretty grieving widow make overs but plenty of free samples as well, especially when Mom was so good about talking up the products to any woman who happened by.

That's not all she was good at. She may have small hands but Mom has sharp eyes, and those hands of hers are fast. The top of her dresser was littered with half-used cologne, potions, and lotions she'd gotten bored with after plucking them off a counter when a saleslady's back was turned. Sometimes she actually bought stuff, but she generally returned it at the same store in a different town. I finally said something, but she told me that with all the sales she was helping the women make, she considered the occasional bottle her commission.

Once Mom realized how easy it was to steal perfume she moved on to clothes and lingerie. Good stuff too, from boutiques. When I got older I refused to go with her. I'm pretty sure she still does it, I don't ask, but the woman is better dressed than most fashion models.

"Sometimes I think she liked me better as a kid," I said. The Freak's eyes burned into mine. I'd touched a nerve.

With our eyes locked, I said, "Maybe I was more fun for her when I was little, or maybe it's because I started getting my own opinions and actually challenged her. Whatever the reason, I'm pretty sure she's disappointed I grew up."

The Freak cleared his throat, then paused and shook his head. He wanted to say something, he just needed a little nudge. In my gentlest voice I said, "Did you ever feel like that when you were a kid?"

He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, his head still resting on my arm. "My mother didn't want me to grow up."

"Maybe all moms feel sad when their kids grow up."

"No, it was...it wasn't that."

I thought of his total lack of body hair and his obsessive shaving. I forced myself to curl my arm around under his head and rest my hand on his forehead. He flinched in surprise, then glanced at me, but he didn't pull away.

I said, "So her first child died..." His body tensed against my side. I lifted my palm to stroke his hair so he'd relax, but, unsure of his response, slowly dropped it back down on his curls and just pressed my leg against his so he'd feel its warmth. "Do you think it had something to do with that? Did you feel like you had to live up to him? You know, like you were a replacement?" His eyes darkened as he turned slightly away. I had to stop him from shutting down.

"You asked me about Daisy before, and I didn't want to talk about it because it's still pretty hard for me. She was great, I mean she was my big sister and I'm sure sometimes she got annoyed with me, but I thought she was perfect. Mom did too. After the accident I'd catch her staring at me, or she'd walk by and touch my hair, and just in the way she did it, I knew she was thinking about Daisy."

He faced me again. "Did she ever say anything?"

"Not really. At least, nothing I could point to. But you don't have to hear the words to know. She'd never admit it, but I'm pretty sure she wishes I was the one who went through the windshield. And I can't even blame her for it--for a long time I wished it too. Daisy was the better one. When I was a kid I thought that was why God wanted her."