Authors: Koethi Zan
“I’ve been thinking about it more, and I just don’t think I can do it,” I began.
“You mean, you can’t find Jennifer?”
“I mean, I can’t go out to a warehouse in the middle of the night. Without the police.”
“The police? Excuse me, but does it seem to you there is probable cause? They don’t even think there is a crime. And for that matter, maybe there isn’t one. This is trespassing, pure and simple. And maybe, if we get really brave, breaking and entering.”
“Even more reason why we shouldn’t do it,” I countered.
“Do you have any other ideas for leads?”
I didn’t answer.
“Yeah, thought so. So where does that leave us then? You want to give up? What’s worse? Looking through the windows of a warehouse, or having Jack Derber show up at your door a free man?”
I shivered. “I obviously don’t want that.”
“Look, I’m not psyched about this either. But I keep thinking about those other girls. The other fifty-four. If there’s a chance we could find even one—”
“Can’t we at least go during the day?”
“You mean, when anyone there could see us in plain sight? Come on, I don’t think I have to tell you how much more dangerous that is. We need the cover of darkness.”
I could feel my shoulders begin to shake, but I fought back the tears. I didn’t want Tracy to see me cry again. But I couldn’t face the idea of going back there.
I needed some air. The hotel windows didn’t open, so I picked up the laminated room service menu and started fanning myself with it. Tracy watched me, but I had given up trying to read her emotions, so I didn’t bother checking her expression.
“Come on, Sarah,” she finally coaxed. “You gotta get there. Look how far you’ve come already. A month ago you couldn’t go to the laundromat. I know none of this is easy for you. It’s not easy for me either. But remember, you won’t be going out there alone this time.”
Tracy went into the bathroom and came out with a wad of toilet paper.
“Here,” she said, handing it to me rather unceremoniously. “Go ahead and cry. You’ll feel better. Then clean yourself up, and let’s take a look at Google Earth.” She paused before continuing, “And if you really can’t do it, then fine. I’ll go out there by myself.”
I gasped. “You wouldn’t!”
“I would, and I will. You know my theory. Plunge in. Face the fear head-on. Stay on the offense.”
Just what I need, I thought. Another body on my conscience. I was the one who had gotten her out here, dragged her back into the nightmare of these memories. I couldn’t let her go out there on her own. If something happened to her, I would never recover from the guilt. I had to pull myself together and go. I sat there hating her and, even more, hating myself for starting this whole thing. If I hadn’t pushed this forward, I’d still be sitting in my peaceful white haven eleven stories up, ordering in Thai food and watching films on Turner Classic Movies I’d seen a hundred times by myself.
Goddammit, I had to do this.
That night at ten p.m., dressed in black and wearing our most comfortable shoes, we pulled out of the hotel parking lot. Part of me was hoping I couldn’t find the warehouse again. That somehow the earth had swallowed it whole, along with whatever perverse rituals were going on within it.
On the drive Tracy told me she’d reached Christine that morning, after somehow persuading Jim to give her the number.
“And how did
that
go?” I asked.
“Of course, it was a miracle she didn’t hang up on me immediately, but she heard me out. She didn’t have too much to say about it, though. In fact, she was silent for so long, I thought we’d been disconnected. But then she oh-so-calmly thanked me for the ‘update,’
as she called it. The
update
. And that was pretty much it. She said she had to go catch a plane and hung up.”
I could tell Tracy was upset by Christine’s indifference, but she didn’t want to let me see it. For my own part, I hadn’t expected much to come of it, so I shrugged in the darkness of the passenger seat as I adjusted my black gloves and cap.
After a couple of false starts, we found the road to The Vault, which we only confirmed by driving all the way up to its entrance. We pulled into the parking lot and killed our lights. We had to take things slowly, after all. In the darkness, Tracy peered over at a lone man, standing by his car as he pulled a fringed black leather jacket up over his well-muscled shoulders.
“Your kind of place, huh, Tracy?” I finally said.
She laughed quietly.
“It doesn’t … it doesn’t remind you …” I trailed off.
Tracy just stared into the doorway of the club. “Yes. Yes, it does. But it gives me control of it.”
We sat silently in the dark car for a few more minutes, then pulled back onto the road. While Tracy focused on the winding drive, I looked out into the trees, studying each dirt driveway on the left to find our turnoff. I had been so afraid that other night that I couldn’t remember if I had driven for twenty minutes or forty-five.
Finally, I saw it. I was sure it was the right one, if nothing else because of the way my skin crawled just seeing it. We drove past it a few hundred yards, searching for a place to tuck the car. We found a small road where the weeds had grown up, and Tracy eased in as far as she could. She backed it in slowly so we could pull out fast if we needed to. I made Tracy check twice to make sure we wouldn’t get stuck in the mud and the grass wasn’t high enough to impede our exit. I wanted to be prepared to leave in a hurry.
This time I was fully equipped at least. I had my cell phone strapped to my waist, as well as a backup prepaid phone. One on each side. Tracy shook her head, but I could tell she was scared too and therefore was probably secretly happy I had them. We each had a flashlight, and I had brought a small camera and a can of mace. I carried Jennifer’s picture in my pocket to bolster my nerves.
We stood face-to-face, looking at each other, bracing our shoulders as we each took a long deep breath. And then, without a word, we started out. Almost as soon as we were out on the road, we heard a car engine gunning and jumped down into a ditch until it went past.
“Why do I feel like the criminal in this picture?” Tracy asked.
We continued slowly on until we reached the driveway, then crept along in the woods. At the top of the hill, we could see clearly down to the warehouse. It looked totally deserted. No van, no cars, no men. Nothing.
I breathed a small sigh of relief as we got closer. Maybe it had been abandoned. Maybe we had been foiled in our amateur sleuthing after all. It was a welcome thought, and I clung to it.
A single caged bulb on the side of the warehouse formed a large half-circle of light on the ground in front of the door. With a slight jerk of her body, Tracy signaled to me to follow her, and I stayed right behind her as we made our way around the building, dipping into the shadows to stay hidden.
The woods were deadly quiet, except for the vague rustle of leaves as the summer wind shuffled delicately through them. There was just a hint of cool in the air. Back home in my apartment, I might have even cracked open a window on a night like this.
After walking around the full perimeter of the building, assuring ourselves nothing was parked on the far side, we made our way
over to the windows of the garage door and peeked in. But it was too dark. We couldn’t see a thing. Tracy nodded in the direction of the door, and before I could stop her, she twisted the doorknob. Locked.
Trying another approach, Tracy returned to the garage door, leaned down, and yanked up on the handle. I whispered for her to stop. To my relief, it didn’t budge, but she whispered back that she thought with enough force it might give way. She gestured for me to take the other handle at the end of the door. I shook my head vigorously.
“No way,” I whispered back to her.
Tracy stood still, looking me in the eye there in the darkness. “This is for Jennifer,” she said.
I looked all around at the empty space surrounding us. I took a deep breath and gave in. I positioned myself at the other end of the door and grasped its handle. Tracy held up her fist and counted off with her fingers, one, two, three, and we pulled with all our combined strength. I felt it give a little, and we leaned in again and pulled harder. It was stuck, but we were able to hoist it up about a foot and a half off the ground. With that, Tracy lay down on her stomach and started to slide under.
“What are you doing?” I said, almost out loud.
“How else are we supposed to find out what’s going on?”
My breath got faster, and my pulse was racing. “I’ll wait out here for you,” I said, all the while wondering if that really felt any safer.
“Suit yourself.”
I watched her slide under, out of sight, and started pacing around, counting off the steps to the woods, calculating how fast she could get back out, how long it would take us to be hidden in the dense trees once again. Then I heard a violent clank and turned back to
the warehouse. The garage door had slammed shut. If anyone was in there, they would certainly be aware of our presence now.
I walked fearfully back to the windows and, in a state of half-shock, looked in. The light flicked on. A face stared back at me, inches from mine through the glass. I screamed and jumped back before realizing it was Tracy. She smiled and pointed to the door. She met me there and let me in.
“See, nothing to it. No one’s here.”
The warehouse seemed much larger from the inside, almost cavernous. And yet even so, the walls felt as if they were closing in on me. I looked back at the door nervously, to make sure we’d left it ajar.
The building was empty except for rows of stainless-steel stalls that lined the walls, each about four feet across, perhaps for some sort of livestock, I thought. At the end of each stall was a metal stand bolted to the floor, with a clipboard filled with blank pages, a pen dangling from a small chain on each one.
In each stall, rubber hoses with spray nozzles hung loosely from the ceiling, and small hooks were attached in four places to the back wall. A row of dim bulbs hanging from cords above barely lit up the space, casting bumping shadows as they swayed slightly overhead.
Tracy was standing in one of the stalls, bent over the drain in the middle of the floor. She got down on her knees, staring at something very small. I crouched down next to her. She reached out her gloved hand, took the object between her fingers, and lifted it up into the faint light. I shrank from it in disgust: a human fingernail, in its entirety, with a tattered bit of dried-up flesh clinging to it. Tracy looked at it solemnly, and then carefully put it back down on the floor where she found it. We were both horrified, sitting back on our heels, trying to figure out what this bit of human detritus could possibly mean.
My back was to the door, and that’s why Tracy saw the lights first. I saw the panic in her eyes before I realized what was happening. Too late, I heard the whirring of the car motor outside, then a door slam while the engine was left running. We were no longer alone.
There was no time to turn off the lights. The front door lay in the same direction as the noise, so Tracy and I ran over to the garage door, each grabbing a handle to hoist it back up from where it had fallen. When it dropped, though, it had latched. This time it wouldn’t budge.
I felt a sharp chill surge through my body. There was no other way out except through that main door. We heard steps approaching and, in a panic, ran over to the farthest stall. We flattened ourselves against the wall, hiding our feet behind a large plastic bucket that mercifully stood there in the corner.
I was cursing myself for the lights. That was my fault. Tracy had turned them on to make it seem safe enough for me. If only we had used the flashlights we’d brought, we would have had a chance.
Just as we ducked into the stall, we heard the footsteps of two or three approaching men. A voice boomed into the dimly lit room. “Relax, relax, we come in peace.” A burst of hoarse laughter from the other two.
Tracy and I shifted farther into the corner, all the while knowing that hiding there was no solution. It was only a matter of time before they had us. I carefully pulled my cell phone off of my belt and held it down at my side. I could see my slightest move reflected in shadow, so if I so much as moved my hand, their attention would be drawn to us. Tracy noticed it too, and because she couldn’t motion to stop me and couldn’t speak, she looked at me with a pleading expression. I hadn’t seen one like it since the cellar.
I was caught in a terrible bind. I couldn’t get the phone up to my ear without identifying our location, yet if I didn’t make a call, if I didn’t somehow reach out beyond the walls of this warehouse,
anything could happen to us. I looked down as far as I could without moving, selected Jim’s name from my contacts, and started to text him with one hand. But what could I tell him? I’m in a warehouse, in Oregon, and I’m not exactly sure where? Useless. I had recognized the voice though, and so I typed slowly, hampered by my forced immobility. Two words:
Noah Philben.
He was the only trail.
Almost as soon as I’d typed the last letter and hit send, the men, who must have signaled one another, started running directly over to our corner. Tracy let out a small scream. I couldn’t have made a sound at that moment, I was so paralyzed by fear.
Before I could process what was happening, one of the men grabbed me, gripping both of my arms tightly behind me with one hand, while neatly removing my belt with the other. All my devices clattered to the floor. The other man held Tracy just as firmly, and Noah Philben calmly approached me, leaning over to gather up the cell phones as he did.
“Welcome to the sacristy, Sarah—oh, I’m sorry, what did you
say
your name was before? I really can’t remember. But I remember
Sarah
.”
He reached out for my chin, rubbing one finger slowly underneath it. My body pulled away from him almost involuntarily. Any human touch was repellent to me, but his in particular, slithery, suggestive, was more than I could bear. I could feel the cold sweat breaking out over my body. When I pulled back, the man holding me tightened his grip and pushed me even closer to Noah Philben.