Authors: Koethi Zan
She bent over the photos spread on the floor, picking one up here and there, tracing the images with her finger. “So,” she began, her voice barely audible, “were we just part of these … these experiments too?”
I sat down next to her, picking up a photo, this one of a brunette with the frizzy curls of a cheap home permanent, her eyes staring warily into the camera lens. Subject S-5. From the nineteen eighties I guessed.
Christine had returned to the window seat. Ray was pacing back and forth, wringing his hands. We were all shaken to the core.
“Are these the other fifty-four girls from Jim’s list? Could any of them still be alive? If so, are they on the run with Noah Philben right this very second?” I asked.
Tracy shook her head slowly. “I wonder if Noah is a ‘serious scholar,’ too.”
“Somehow I don’t think so,” I replied, absently stacking the photos back into piles. “Seems to me that Jack liked torture and Noah liked making money. They figured out a way to do both. And now that Jack can’t be hands-on, I’m sure he loves hearing the stories of this sick world he set in motion. And probably still controls.
“Or maybe Sylvia is in control,” I said, thinking about our situation. “After all, she set this trap for us. Maybe she’s his proxy now.”
“Like you were, Sarah?” Tracy said quietly.
I jerked my head around to face her, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, look at how you betrayed us. You were practically in Sylvia’s shoes. There but for the grace of God—”
“I was nothing like Sylvia. How dare you say that?”
Tracy stood up and walked over to me. She was close enough to know I would be uncomfortable. I hated my body at that moment for shrinking back from her. “Sarah, have you been brainwashed to forget? Do you not remember what it was like those last months in the cellar? When you … when you …
went to the other side.
”
I shook my head. “I didn’t. I didn’t.”
“Really? You didn’t? Well, then how do you explain the fact that you’d moved upstairs at that point? How do you explain that when one of us would be tied down on the rack, you stayed right there, in the room, helping him, handing him his tools and instruments,
smiling
? I guess his techniques worked on you, after all.” Tracy was shouting at me now.
My thoughts began racing, fragments of memories, disjointed scenes, reappearing in my mind. I shook my head, as if that might wipe away the images her words had put there. I shook harder and closed my eyes. I bit my lip hard to try to stop the tears I felt forming in my eyes. I didn’t want to lose control right now. I wanted to be strong.
I pulled myself together and sat up. The first face I saw was Ray’s. I could see his shock and horror at what Tracy was saying, as he looked from her to me, and me to her.
“I don’t remember that. That didn’t happen,” I finally said, exhausted from the effort of struggling with my memories.
Christine had risen from her perch and was approaching me slowly. “It did happen, Sarah. It
did
.”
“And that’s not even the worst of it, Sarah,” Tracy started up again. “I could almost forgive you for that. We were underfed, our heads were screwed up. But there was a certain code I thought we had down there. A certain commitment to one another. And you violated that in a way that was so much more profoundly damaging than anything Jack could ever do to us.”
I shook my head, still repeating, “I didn’t. I didn’t.”
“You
did
, Sarah.”
The room was quiet for a moment, and then Tracy said, very softly and deliberately, enunciating each syllable clearly, “You told him about my brother. You told him about Ben’s suicide.”
At that something unbelievable happened.
Tracy
started to cry. Actual tears. I stared at her in shock. I had never seen this before. All those years in the cellar, she had been so strong, she never let us see her like this, and now, here, not because of Jack, but because of something
I
did …
“
Why
?” she pressed. “He didn’t need to know that. I understood what you had to gain by helping him with the instruments. I know you were trying to get in his good graces so he might trust you enough to let you go outside. I understand that.
“But to tell him about Ben. When you knew he would use it against me. I could take anything else. Being bound, gagged, electrocuted, beaten—whatever. But I didn’t want to hear him use Ben’s name. Once he knew about Ben, he was able to manipulate my mind, make me believe Ben’s death was my fault, my fault entirely.”
She stopped talking suddenly, wiping her face with her sleeve. Then she stared at me, her eyes narrowing.
“Well, I have another secret for you, Sarah. I know you think you’re the only one who suffered here. But let me tell you, those first years out were difficult for me too. Much harder than they needed to be. Thanks to you, I couldn’t stop thinking about the things Jack said to me in there.”
She was quiet for a moment, then closed her eyes as she began again. “It was so hard, in fact, that I tried to join Ben at the bottom of that lake. Twice. And clearly I’d be better off right now if I’d just stayed down there.”
None of us spoke. I stared at the floor, unable to meet her eyes. I couldn’t believe it. Tracy seemed so tough, so powerful. The strongest one of us all. Had this experience nearly destroyed her as well?
Or maybe
I
had nearly destroyed her?
They were right. I hadn’t needed to tell her secret to Jack. Why did I? My memories from that time were so convoluted, so painful yet indistinct. Maybe there was a moment, a few fleeting seconds, where my mind had gotten turned inside out, and I thought that being with Jack, helping Jack, was somehow where my whole life had been leading. I had believed in his twisted vision of the world. Some small part of me had been resigned to be with him for the rest of my life, furthering his sadistic goals, satisfying his perverse needs. I had needed to believe so that I could carry out my plan. Believe just a little to convince him. But had I gone too far? Had I crossed the line? Had I been a success story in his sick study after all?
I could only stammer out the words, “I’m sorry … I’m so sorry … I—”
But at that moment, we heard a new sound from the front of the house.
CHAPTER 38
We all turned to the entrance of the library, where Adele had left the double doors ajar. We heard footsteps approaching. The outline of a woman appeared in the shadows, like a ghost, gliding along the floor into the room. Then I saw it: she was holding a gun. And moving in closer.
“Sylvia!!!” Ray shouted.
I could not believe what I was seeing. At first the room seemed to spin around me, and then to disappear altogether. A world came crashing down in my head. A thousand worlds. My mind couldn’t put together the pieces of the puzzle, so disorienting was the reality in front of me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do the math.
“That’s not Sylvia,” I finally said, feeling all of my blood surging to my head. “That’s … Jennifer!”
“Oh. My. God,” I heard Christine say from the back of the
room, as Tracy stood there stunned, only able to mutter a quiet “What the fuck?”
“But that
is
Sylvia,” said Ray again, in an almost pleading voice. “It
is
.”
The woman with the gun walked closer to us.
Finally, she spoke. “Everyone get close together. Sit on the floor. Hands up in the air.”
I felt confused, disoriented, split apart. And yet what I felt most was joy, a sensation of completeness that I hadn’t experienced since before our abduction all those years ago. It
was
Jennifer. Jennifer. It was really her. We were reunited again, after what was surely only an aberration, a fluke, a thirteen-year detour in what should have been our lives together. It seemed to me I should be able to run over to her, throw my arms around her, and whisper into her ear the way we always had. She was safe. We were safe. We were both alive.
I was whispering her name, despite myself. I thought somehow that once she realized it was me, she would put the gun down and we could all go home, and the past thirteen years could be erased. We could write up a new Never List, and we would follow it to the letter and be safe, together, forever. Surely she was not the one who had imprisoned us again. Surely we had all the facts mixed up, and there was another explanation.
The gun did not waver, though. We did as we were told.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The front door of the house was wide open behind Jennifer. Even in my shock, my mind, so set to self-preservation, immediately started calculating the odds. How could I get past her and out that door? Then I recognized that once again all I could think of was saving myself, leaving the others to their fate. I’d save them if I could, but only as an afterthought, once I had secured my own future.
The realization of what I was doing, even in that moment, forced me to face something about myself. Tracy and Christine
were right. What had Jack Derber done to me? In that instant, a part of me was ready to give up. Now anything could happen, and in a way I didn’t care what did.
But no, I thought, pushing away that despair, I wanted to live. I wanted to be strong. And I needed to understand.
“Jennifer, I thought—I thought you were dead … the body … with me in the box …” I stammered.
“Yes, I know you thought that. There were other bodies, Sarah. That one wasn’t mine.”
“‘Other bodies’? Where were you then?” I could barely process the implications of what she’d said. I had thought
I
was the turncoat. Now I realized Jennifer had made it much further down that road. “Did you know … did you know I’d been left in that box?”
Jennifer’s eyes flickered for a moment, and then she turned away from me. Tracy stirred, and Jennifer trained the gun on her.
“Don’t move, Tracy, or I will kill you first.”
“‘
First’?
” shrieked Christine, who was right behind me.
“Shhh … shh …” I tried to calm her, careful not to turn all the way around and not to take my eyes off Jennifer.
I saw Ray’s look of utter confusion, but there was no time to explain to him what must have happened. That there was a real Sylvia Dunham, but this was not her, and he’d never met her. That Tracy and I had met the real Sylvia Dunham’s parents and seen her photograph. That she must have been abducted too, long ago. That Jack had handed over her identity to Jennifer, so she could be out in the world, acting under his orders. That they must have needed marriage documents for her to enter the jail. Anything could have happened to the real Sylvia, and everything probably had.
Then I saw her. Adele was walking back into the room behind Jennifer. I wanted to signal to her but wasn’t sure how. She was our only hope. I could see she’d been crying, that she was lost in thought, not even looking up as she walked along the hall.
I hoped against hope the others would not show any sign that they saw her.
Christine caught her breath, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tracy nudging her knee into Christine’s leg. We all saw at once how our fate now lay in Adele’s hands. The seconds were painful. Adele’s steps, one, two, three. Jennifer in front of her, staring at us with an odd sort of victory playing in her eyes.
Look up, Adele. Look up.
I knew we were all thinking it. No one was breathing.
Then Adele looked up.
Don’t scream
, I thought.
Don’t fucking scream.
After that, everything was in slow motion for me. Adele didn’t scream. Instead she slowly leaned down and picked up the frying pan she’d left on the floor. She hesitated only a fraction of an instant.
I could see in her eyes, though, that even after all her years as a dominatrix, Adele was not prepared to inflict actual pain, and maybe even death, on someone else. And I didn’t want that either. I was even afraid for Jennifer at that moment. Even then, I did not want Jennifer to die. Not after I had found her again after all those years. Not even after I was pretty certain she was about to kill me. Not even then.
Adele suddenly pulled the pan back over her head and in one swift motion brought it down on Jennifer’s hand. The gun fired as it flew across the room. Adele tripped and fell from the weight of the pan, the awkward angle of her swing bringing her crashing to the floor.
I quickly scanned the room. Ray had been hit in the foot. He was howling, his blood spreading out onto the polished wood floor. Christine looked stunned, paralyzed by fear.
Tracy and I both jumped up, lunging toward Jennifer. I got there first. Jennifer was already turning, running for the open door, ready to slam it behind her. To leave us trapped again, this time for good.
This was the moment. I could tell Tracy was not going to reach her in time. I was going to have to do it. To grab not just any body, but the body I had so longed for and yet feared in my memory, from the box. The idea of it made me sick, made my flesh crawl. But I fought it. I fought through.
I ran as fast as I could and tackled her hard, throwing my arms around her in a sick embrace of reunion. I held her firmly, wrapping my arms far enough around her to clasp my hands together. She twisted around to face me, to push me off. I could feel her breath on my face. No one had been this close to me in years. Her arms flailing, she fought like hell, but this time I was strong. This time I would save us all.
Tracy was right behind me and helped me pin Jennifer’s arms. Adele had gotten back up, raced out of the room, and come back with the rope from the cellar. Together we tied Jennifer up tightly. Afraid to stay in the house for a second longer, we dragged her out into the yard and stood around her, staring in disbelief.
CHAPTER 39
No one said anything. While we didn’t understand the full details of the story yet, we understood enough to get a sense of what had happened. We would learn later about Jennifer’s terrible ordeal, the years of torture and manipulation she had spent with Jack at the house and then, later, in Noah Philben’s cult. The way they had passed her around to satisfy their sadistic needs, then used her as a go-between for Jack in prison. The things she had had to do to survive. The pain she had encountered and, worse, been forced to inflict.