Gone

CHAPTER 34

Wednesday, 10:12 a.m. PST

SHE WAS FLOATING. It was a curious sensation. One tinged with both a sense of wonderful weightlessness and a heavier sense of dread. Maybe she wasn’t floating. Maybe she was falling, plummeting, racing down a dark abyss.

She felt the wind in her hair, the chill on her face.

She opened her arms.

And she was awake.

Dougie spoke first. “Rainie?”

“Dougie?”

The room was dark. She couldn’t get her bearings. Something had changed, but she couldn’t figure out what. From across the way, she heard the rustle of clothes, Dougie moving toward her.

“You’re not dead,” Dougie said.

“No.” She licked her lips, trying to find moisture to ease her parched throat. Her tongue felt swollen with thirst, her mouth cracked and painful. She blinked her eyes, but nothing appeared in front of her, not even shades of gray. Maybe she’d gone blind.

“Where?” she managed to ask hoarsely.

“It’s a room,” Dougie supplied. “I gave you the bed. I thought you needed it more.”

“Dark.”

“He boarded up the windows. I tried to get the wood off, but I need a tool. Do you have a tool?”

Dougie’s tone was wistful. He knew the answer, of course. Sometimes, it was just hard not to ask.

“I got food,” Dougie said a bit more brightly. “Crackers. Cheese. I saved you a piece.”

“Water,” she croaked.

Dougie’s voice went low. “I drank the water,” he said quietly.

“Oh, Dougie…”

She couldn’t summon enough moisture for further words. Instead, she reached over and tousled his hair. In response, he pressed his cheek against her leg. It immediately sent a bolt of pain through her body, but she didn’t protest. It was unbelievably nice to feel his presence in this unrelenting dark. To know that neither one of them was alone.

“I told him we were cold,” Dougie said in a muffled voice. “I told him the cellar was too wet and we wouldn’t stay there anymore.”

“Brave… of you.”

“He laughed at me. He said he didn’t fucking care if we froze to death-”

“Dougie…”

“He said it! I’m only repeating what he said. Didn’t fucking care.”

Rainie rolled her eyes. Now Dougie was clearly milking the opportunity to swear. But it made her smile. He sounded like a seven-year-old. He sounded, for the moment at least, normal.

“He didn’t put us in the cellar,” Dougie said now, perplexed. “He led me down the hall. He put me in this room. I didn’t like it at first. I yelled at him to let me out. I was… I was afraid.” He mumbled the last word, making it hard to catch. “But then he came back with you. And gave me some blankets. And I had some cheese and crackers. And water”-another mumbled word. “But only a little bit. I swear it wasn’t that much. And I did save a cracker. Don’t you want a cracker?”

Rainie felt the boy press the saltine against her fingers. She took his gift, not wanting to offend him. She didn’t think she could eat the cracker, however. She didn’t have enough moisture left in her mouth.

“How long?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I kinda… I think maybe I fell asleep.”

Rainie nodded, looking around the room, trying to get her bearings. It was unbelievably dark, even darker than the cellar. She would guess that not only had the man boarded up the windows, but he had painted everything black. Why? Sensory deprivation? Another tool for controlling his hostages?

Why this room, if he had the cellar? Unless maybe he’d realized the truth behind Dougie’s words. The cellar was too cold and damp, running the risk of hypothermia.

Maybe he couldn’t afford for them to be dead just yet.

The thought invigorated her. If he needed them alive, they wielded more power than they thought. They could afford to keep fighting. In fact, they’d better start ramping up their efforts, fight hard now, before that equation changed.

Rainie sat up. Out of nowhere, a white-hot harpoon of pain lanced up her left side and nailed her left temple. She cried out before she could stop herself, falling back, clutching her head with her bound hands. As swiftly as it came, the sharp pain was gone again, except now she was aware of too many things. Strange, tingling currents zooming up and down her limbs. A heavy dull ache swelling her left knee. The sharp sensation of her head being squeezed in an unbearable vise grip.

“Rainie?” Dougie asked fearfully.

“Sorry… Moved… wrong.”

“He zapped you. I saw him do it. He had this thing in his hand, and then he pressed it into your neck and pulled the trigger. Your body went bzzzzzzt, just like they do on TV.”

“Need… a moment. Dougie-”

But before she could say the rest, the door burst open, and the room was flooded with brilliant white light. Rainie flung up her bound hands to protect her eyes. Dougie cowered beside her.

“Heard you were awake,” the man announced. “Excellent. Get up. We got work to do.”

Rainie tried to move, tried to roll away from the man, find her feet, put up some kind of fight. Her muscles would not respond to her brain. Her legs didn’t move, her hips remained motionless, her shoulders refused to rotate. She lay helpless as the dark silhouette stepped into the room and grabbed Dougie by the arm.

“You first. She’s not going anywhere.”

Dougie cried out in terror, flailing with his feet, thrashing against the bed. Rainie tried to grab his hands, tried to draw him against her, as if that would make a difference. The man wrenched him away, tossing the boy easily over his shoulder.

Dougie screamed again and the sound cut Rainie to the bone. Goddammit, do something, she commanded herself. Get off this fucking bed!

She strained against the mattress, begging her body to move.

“No, no, no!” Dougie was screaming down the hall.

Rainie remained pinned to the bed, tears pouring down her face. No, no. Please move. Oh, goddammit. Oh, goddammit, Rainie, you miserable piece of shit. How could you be so weak?

She heard a door open, a door shut, and then there was no sound at all.

Time elapsed. She didn’t know how much. Her left leg twitched uncontrollably. The pressure built behind her temples, pressed against her eyeballs.

Then the man was back. She heard his hard, fast footsteps pound into the room. He grabbed her bound wrists and dragged her out of bed. She flopped like a dead fish onto the floor and lay there, too stunned to move.

“Get up,” he commanded her. “Like hell I’m carrying you down the stairs.”

“Water.” She sounded pathetic, beaten, a wounded animal begging for mercy. How did someone like her ever get to sound this way?

“Oh, trust me, you’ll have plenty of water soon enough.”

He yanked her to her feet. Her left knee wouldn’t take it. The minute he let go, she collapsed again. The man wasn’t happy. He kicked her in the ribs, then stood above her, hands on his hips.

“Rainie, I don’t have time for this shit.”

Hit him,she thought. Bite his kneecaps. She remained curled up in the fetal position. She didn’t know a head could hurt as much as hers did and still not explode.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” He kicked her again. She remained motionless.

He got pissed off and waled on her as if she were a beaten dog.

It didn’t do him any good. She couldn’t stand up and no amount of physical abuse was going to make a difference. The man finally seemed to reach the same conclusion. He stopped kicking her and, instead, sighed heavily.

“You know, this is getting to be way too much trouble for the money.”

He bent down, looping his arm around her bound wrists. “Next time, fuck proof of life. I’m gonna kill up front and get it over with. None of this dragging people around, having to feed them, having to house them, having to put up with their puny attempts at escape. Frankly, you’ve really annoyed me, Rainie. I can understand why your husband moved out. You’re fucking incompetent.”

He started dragging her by the arms down the hall. She kept herself still, deadweight. Halfway down the hall, the man’s breathing became ragged. He stopped, gasping for breath and cursing her. A human body was cumbersome, not easy to pull. If he was going to kill her, she’d at least make him work for it.

He hooked his hands beneath her armpits, took a deep breath, and resumed his laborious journey down the hall. They entered the kitchen. He yanked her around the corner, down the long row of cabinets. At the last minute, she twisted her leg just enough for her foot to hook the corner unit. In response, he cuffed her on the side of the head.

Then they were off again.

She understood where they were going now. Back to the cellar. The dark. The bone-biting cold. She balked, more desperate now, arching her back, trying to twist out of his arms. She didn’t want to go back down into that pit. He would toss her down the stairs. He would bolt the door.

And no one would ever see her or Dougie alive again.

“No, no, no.” She didn’t know she had started moaning, until her own voice reached her ears.

“Shut up!” the man warned.

They went by the last cabinet. She desperately clawed at the handle.

“You’re pissing me off, Lorraine!”

But she wouldn’t let go, couldn’t let go. She was weak and battered and delirious from the withdrawal of her medication. But she had one lucid thought: He hadn’t killed them last night, which could only mean he still needed them. So she had to fight now, make a last stand before their usefulness expired and he abandoned them completely.

“I’ll get the Taser,” the man roared. “Don’t make me do it, Rainie.”

“Water, water, water!”

He grabbed her fingers and yanked them from the knob. One of her fingernails ripped off. She yelped with pain, then he had the cellar door flung open and was pushing her onto the top step.

“I’d start walking,” he said, “otherwise it’s a long fall.”

He pushed her hard. She barely caught the wooden railing, using it to slow her momentum as she careened violently down the stairs, landing in a puddle at the bottom.

“Let me out!” Dougie shouted from the shadows. “I don’t want to play anymore!”

His voice ended in a high-pitched scream.

“Hey, Rainie,” the man taunted from the top of the stairs. “Enjoy your precious water.”

The man started to laugh. Then he slammed the door shut and Rainie heard the click of the lock securing the door in place.

Dougie started screaming again, loud, wild, outraged. “No, no, no, no, no!”

Rainie would’ve joined him, if only she had the strength.

“No, no, no, no, no!”

Moment slid into moment. Dougie finally fell silent. They both absorbed the dark.

And then, for the first time, Rainie became aware of a new sound. Low, constant, vibrating. Hissing in the dark.

Rainie finally got the man’s joke. And she realized now the question she should’ve asked Dougie from the moment she’d woken up-why had the man given him cheese and crackers? What had Dougie done to earn such a treat?

“Dougie,” she called out quietly. “You have to tell me the truth-did the man take your picture?”

“I’m sorry,” the boy said immediately, which was answer enough.

Rainie closed her eyes. “Dougie, were you holding a newspaper?”

“It had my picture on the front page! Yours, too,” he added belatedly.

“Dougie, you need to get to higher ground. Can you find the workbench? Climb up on that.”

“I can’t! I’m tied to a pipe! I can’t move!”

“Oh no.” Rainie tried to stagger to her feet, to find Dougie in the dark. But her legs wouldn’t move, her body wouldn’t cooperate. She remained sprawled on the cold floor, feeling the water rise against her cheek.

The hissing sound had gained momentum and was now accompanied by a gurgle.

The man had burst a pipe. He was flooding the basement. He had his proof of life.

Now, he’d put them down here to die.