Authors: Koethi Zan
Adele stopped writing and looked up. I let out my breath.
It wasn’t much, but I’d take it.
“Sorry,” Adele said, putting the pen down.
“What difference does it make?” I said quietly. “Now that we’ll just die in here. One way or another.”
“No,” Tracy said, her eyes igniting with sudden fire, “we’re going to get out of here. We just need to know more. Adele needs to come clean.”
She stood up and turned to face Adele.
“Adele, you’ve been here before, haven’t you? Whatever it is you’re hiding from us, you have to tell us now. You may not even realize you have the key to get us out of here. Or maybe you do realize it. We need to know who else is involved. Who left those letters? Who trapped us? Who got this house ready for us? Who put out the welcome sign? Jack has to have had some help. He is in prison, after all.”
At that we heard a noise, unmistakable this time, coming from underneath our feet. A thump. We all sat up, alert, leaning forward, listening. There it was again, a thump. In the cellar. There was no ignoring it now.
“What is that?” Christine spoke first.
We stood up simultaneously and walked to the door that led down to the bowels of the house, Adele following us a few feet behind, a look of sheer terror on her face.
We stood there in the hallway, in front of that cellar door. The coded locks were there, but the door was slightly ajar. As though someone wanted us to go down there. As though the very house itself was luring us down. Down into that cellar. Again we heard the noise.
Taking one deep breath, Tracy pulled the door open and took a step down the stairs. As her foot hit the first tread, Christine balked.
“I can’t go down there. I really, really can’t.” She stepped back into the door of the library.
“You can go in
there
but not down there? That makes no sense,” Tracy whispered in frustration.
“Leave her alone. I feel the same way, but we need to see what that sound was. Maybe she can keep watch upstairs,” I said, motioning for Tracy to continue. Tracy shook her head but then went on.
We carefully made our way down the stairs. My nerves were rattled by the sound of those too-familiar creaks from my nightmares. I counted them automatically, without realizing I was doing it out loud. Tracy turned around and glared. I stopped.
But in that moment our eyes met, and the years we spent together flashed through my mind, blurred into a dark-gray haze of memory. Every pain, every sorrow, every regret was suddenly racing through my body, fused into a powerful sense memory of our past life. And here was Tracy, my rival, my enemy, my tormentor, and yet the only one who could truly share this moment with me. For a split second, we were worn-out soldiers fighting together in the same lost cause.
And we both recognized the electricity passing between us. A sinking in the stomach, a terror rising in our throats, a shadow of evil passing over our hearts, that only we could possibly understand. This energy, this current, this place. We looked away at the same time, unable to bear it.
Down in the cellar, I felt my chest tighten. The dank smell of it was exactly the same. The chains might have been gone, but the rings attached to the walls were still there, as menacing as ever. The box still sat in its corner, shut up tightly. There was no one there.
At the sight of the box, my stomach clenched again. Yes, it had all been real. Yes, I really did lose Jennifer. There it was. Wood and nails and agony. Unimaginable. Yet undeniable.
Then as Adele reached the last step, the sound came again. Only this time we could tell it came from inside the box. Automatically, my brain struggled to detect a pattern to it, just as I had listened for Jennifer all those years ago.
Hearing the sound, Adele turned around and darted back up
the stairs. But before she could make it even halfway up, Tracy grabbed her arm and held it fast.
“Oh, no, Adele. You’re in this with us now,” she said.
At that moment something stirred at the top of the stairs. Christine was standing there, clutching her broom handle for dear life. Her face was tense, her eyes looking past me to the box in the corner.
“I’m coming too,” was all she said. She seemed to be holding her breath as she carefully made her way down the stairs. I pointed to the box, and we nodded, taking small, tentative steps toward it. Inching our way in the dark cellar toward the one thing we never wanted to see again.
The door to the box was fastened with a piece of thin rope, tied in an elaborate knot. Tracy was the only one brave enough to walk all the way over to it. The rest of us stopped a few feet away. We all stood behind her, raising our makeshift weapons. We froze for a moment, still, listening for the noise again in that box. No one wanted to touch it. It was like a living animal, dangerous and solitary, down here in the hell of our past.
As Tracy reached it, she seemed to summon every last ounce of courage in her, and she suddenly grabbed the knot and worked at it frenetically, her brow furrowed and teeth gritted. It was a byzantine tangle, loop upon loop, but finally it loosened, and in one swift motion she flung open the door.
There, in the box, was a man, tied up with more of the rope that had fastened the box shut. We gasped. I leaned in to take a closer look. Though his face was grimacing and red from fear, I could tell who it was.
“Ray? RAY?” I said, in shock.
He nodded but couldn’t speak. There was a wadded rag in his mouth. His face had a look of extreme terror, but when his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw it was us, and his fright turned to relief. Tracy moved to untie him, but Adele held up her hand.
“Couldn’t this be a trap? Isn’t it possible that he’s the one in league with Jack, and once we release him, he’ll turn the tables on us?” Even Adele’s voice had reached a frantic pitch.
“Let’s let him explain,” Tracy said, pulling the rag from his mouth instead.
“Water,” he whispered hoarsely.
I nodded, and Christine went back up to the kitchen and returned with a glass. She held it to his lips as he drank thirstily and asked for another. After two more refills, he was able to speak.
“Thank you,” he said. “Can you untie me?”
“We need to talk first,” said Adele. “Who did this to you?”
It looked as though he might cry again, as if he were pained at the thought of telling us what had happened.
But almost in a whisper, he said it. “Sylvia. Sylvia did this to me.”
“
What?
” We all said it at once.
“It’s true.
“I was in town, on my way home from work, when I saw her leaving the post office. Maybe it was wrong to follow someone like that, especially a young lady, but I just … wanted to see if she was okay.
“I’m embarrassed to say that, as you can see, I ended up trailing her all the way here. I called Val and left a message letting her know I’d be late. I ought to have told her what I was doing, but I knew she would think I was being an old fool, and I guess—I guess I was.”
He stopped and asked for another drink, then continued.
“When I realized where she was going, I was scared. I knew this was Jack Derber’s house, but I wanted to see if I could help Sylvia … and I guess, if I’m honest, I wanted to know what was going on. The door was open so I walked in and found her in the library and confessed that I had been following her. I told her I was so happy to see her, that I had been so worried.
“I couldn’t believe the look on her face. It was so blank. She shook her head at me and said I shouldn’t have done that and that she was very sorry. Then she walked over close to me and pulled out a gun. She said she was sorry again, and then she forced me down here to the cellar and tied me up, and she—” Here he broke off and started sobbing. “I can’t believe it. She left me here. She left me to die. In a cramped little box. Sylvia.”
CHAPTER 36
Back in the library, we sat in silence. We didn’t dare meet one another’s eyes, as we let the truth sink in. Sylvia was not the victim we’d imagined. She was our captor. She had been here—alone—to set the stage for our demise.
Ray was in the worst shape, perhaps, still grappling with his new knowledge of who we really were and why we were here. But as we had recounted our story to him, it had seemed even clearer to all of us that we could do nothing but wait for Jack’s plan to unfold.
Christine’s soft moaning from the window seat finally broke the silence, then rapidly escalated into a steady mumbling, low and unintelligible. I knew those sounds. It was a flashback to her cellar days, her familiar ramblings, the mutterings I had learned to ignore. The house was invading us each in its own way, creeping into our very bodies, reverting us to the selves we had been back then.
I was afraid of what that meant for me.
Then without warning, Christine stopped crying and stood up. She made her way to the center of the room as we looked on warily.
She seemed troubled, gripping her hands tightly in front of her, over her stomach. But her voice was unexpectedly calm when she began.
“Sylvia isn’t the only evil one here. I’m just as guilty as she is.” She paused, pulling herself together. I waited, my breath held, wondering what could possibly come next.
“I was afraid to tell you when we were in the cellar. I was too ashamed. I didn’t think you’d understand it then, but now … now I have to get this out. Before it’s too late.
“This”—she waved her arms to indicate the space, but we knew she meant something much larger—“this is my fault. Everything that happened here is because of me.”
She was silent for a moment, then steeled herself to go on. It was clearly excruciating for her to say this.
“When I was a student—his student—I wasn’t just his research assistant. I was … I was having an affair with Jack. I thought I was in love with him. And that he was in love with me.” We stared at her, stunned. I could not imagine voluntarily being close to Jack.
She was holding back her tears now, determined to get the words out.
“So he lured me here, and I was a fool. I was the beginning of it all,” she continued bitterly, “his fucking test case, and I suppose when I didn’t fight back hard enough, or outwit him, or break out, he felt secure enough to bring you down there.”
Christine walked over to the spot Tracy and I knew so well. His place by the rack where he had always stood over us. She remained there perfectly still, her eyes staring at the floor as she tried not to break down.
She looked up at Tracy, then over to me, and went on, “But it’s
worse than that. I could never bring myself to tell anyone this before, not even the police. You see, there were two other girls before you got here. I”—she could barely say it—“I helped him abduct them.”
“What—what do you mean?” asked Tracy, looking as if she’d been slapped. I couldn’t move. I just sat there, staring at her.
“He brought me with him. I thought it was my only chance to escape, so I told him I’d behave. I didn’t actually intend to help him. Then there we were in his car, offering a ride to a girl about my age. I can still see her. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail. She had a navy blue backpack and kept checking her watch. It looked like her bus was late. She seemed so innocent. I’ll never forget it: her eyes met mine, checking in with me. Checking to see if it was safe. I wanted to scream out that it wasn’t. Not safe at all. But I held my tongue because I was afraid.”
No one moved. No one breathed.
“And then we did it a second time. That second time I couldn’t meet the girl’s eyes at all until it was too late,” Christine had to pause to gather her strength again.
“Neither of them lasted very long down there. They each went in the box right away, and after a few days each one went upstairs and never came back. I didn’t dare ask what happened.
“And now, every night I see the faces of those girls in my dreams. Hell, every time I close my eyes. And I imagine I see them looking at me through my daughters’ eyes. That’s why I came out here right away when you called. When you told me there might be other girls, I thought … I thought we might find those two somehow.” She turned to me, accusingly. “But now we won’t. Because now we are going to
die here
.”
Tracy stood beside her looking helpless, as Christine dropped to her knees and started to weep, slowly and softly at first, but then steadily harder and harder.
I was preparing myself for the worst when she sat up abruptly, then bent down close to the floor. She was peering at something.
“Wait a minute. What is … what is this?” she said, wiping her face and then pushing her fingers hard against a spot in the floor. That same spot. Jack’s spot. “What the
fuck
?”
Christine ran her fingers along the board and found some sort of lever. She pushed it, but nothing happened. We all crowded around her.
Of course, I thought. Another of his sick games. Something placed there specifically for us to find. So we could know the answers, just before he had us killed.
“Here, let me try it,” Tracy said. She pushed it harder, but the catch was stuck.
“Hold on, hold on … there we go.” She eased it open.
The floorboard came up, hinged on one side deep within the crevice of another board. There was a hole in the floor, about one foot by two. Tracy reached in and pulled out a small wooden crate, then lifted the lid. There was a smaller cardboard box inside on top of a pile of spiral notebooks. As she opened it, we peered in over her shoulder.
“Photographs,” Adele said, looking excited at first, until she saw what they were. They were not what any of us were hoping to find. Not even Adele.
Tracy flipped through them slowly, and the rest of us stood watching over her shoulder. As the photos flashed past, I saw image after image of young women’s bodies, of all shapes and sizes, in both natural and unnatural poses, naked and clothed. In color, in black and white, in sepia tones. But it was their faces that disturbed us the most, blurred as many of them were. Some were smiling, some looked afraid, some were clearly suffering. And some were the faces of corpses, in various stages of decay.