Mercy

Chapter 21

Many hours later Cain slowed her car and felt her breathing accelerate as she drove into Crawfordville, Georgia. This was not because of the surroundings. She had never passed any place here that was recognizable to her because the Atkinses had been careful never to bring her into town, or anywhere else. They obviously didn’t want anyone to know that they had her. At first, Cain didn’t know why that was the case. As the years went by the reason became very clear.

Cain stopped for a late dinner at a small diner with half its blinking neon lights out and with an exterior faded by time and probably shallow pockets. She wasn’t really hungry but just needed a bit of time to deal with the fact that she was back in this place.

The waitress poured out her second cup of coffee and watched as Cain listlessly poked at her food.

“Not to your liking, hon?”

Cain glanced up. The woman was well into her seventies and looked too tired and frail to still be working. The smell of stale cigarette smoke rose from her pores like a morning fog. Her teeth were nicotine stained, but her features were kind and her smile was sincere.

“No, it’s fine. Just sort of lost my appetite.”

“Haven’t seen you around before. You new in town, or just passing through?”

“Just passing through.”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” noted the waitress wistfully. She tucked a strand of gray hair back inside the blue cap she wore. “I’d like to say I’m just passing through sometimes, and I was born here. Born here and never got out of jail. Where you coming in from?”

“Atlanta,” Cain lied.

“Been there once, thirty years ago. Bet it’s changed a lot. Now this here place never changes. Some days that’s good, most days not so good. But it’s all I’ve got or ever known, so...”

“Change can be good,” said Cain.

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

“Well, experiences are all I’ve got.”

“Hope they were good ones, sweetie.”

Cain paid her bill and left without answering.

She had learned the street address for the Atkinses when she had lived in the house and seen letters addressed to them. For some reason, that address had been lodged in her memory ever since.

The Google maps app on her phone was guiding her to that destination. When she turned onto the road she finally saw something she remembered. The massive live oak up ahead. It had obviously gotten even bigger over the intervening years; its canopy was so broad it almost blocked out the sky, it seemed to her. This was the tree under which Joe Atkins’s body lay. She wondered if the last thing he ever saw was that tree, knowing it would outlive him.

There were no other homes down here, as had been the case when Cain lived here. As she passed by the house, the sweat started popping up on her face, under her armpits, behind her knees. Her stomach started to churn. The freezies were taking over with the power of a fully loaded freight train. She hit the gas, blew past the house, jerked to a stop a quarter mile down, put the car in park, then got out and threw up coffee and stomach bile behind a raggedy bush.

This is ridiculous, El, pull yourself together.

She got back into the car and drove back down the road, passing the house slowly. It looked mostly unchanged. There was a large blue tractor trailer rig out front. It seemed to dwarf the modest house. The rusted metal carport next to the house was empty. She could see no lights on inside. She pulled farther down, parked on the dirt shoulder, and got out. With a flashlight she’d taken from the glove compartment, Cain set off into the woods with a very specific destination in mind.

My old home.

She knew if she could endure this, she could make it through anything, because here was where she had made it through everything.

Cain recalled every step since this was the same path, albeit in reverse, that she had taken on her way to freedom. She turned to the left and came out into a clearing. She needed to be very careful right now. She looked back in the direction of the house. She couldn’t see it from here, but she wanted to make sure no one was coming from that direction.

She continued on, having to fight her way through the wilderness that had grown up in the path since she had last been here. But she paused and studied some broken branches, demolished bushes, ripped-apart saplings, and how the earth underneath her feet had been disturbed by numerous feet plowing through here.

She started sweating again.

The video. People have recently been here. They were heading where I’m going right now. The cops. The FBI.

The freezies started up again, and she leaned against a tree and took deep breaths. Lactic acid was drying out her mouth and enfeebling her limbs. That had happened to Cain in her very first MMA bout. She had been so nervous that she could barely move. The woman she was fighting had knocked her flat on her ass and then tried to arm-bar her. Cain had been so pissed at herself that the lactic acid got blown up in the spike of fury-spawned adrenaline. The ref had finally had to pull her off the woman, whom she had beaten into unconsciousness.

She blew air and acid out all over the Georgia forest until her limbs were freed of their lethargy and saliva returned to her mouth.

When she reached the next clearing, she stopped and looked ahead.

Her old home rose up out of the darkness like some creature that carried only despair in its maw. It was smaller than she remembered, but that was normally the case when folks revisited the haunts of their childhood, and for Cain the word haunts was spot-on. The door was closed, but when she shone her light, it was revealed that there was no padlock. The ivy around the front had been pulled down, exposing the rusted surveillance camera.

She gathered her nerves, stole up to the door, knelt down, and put her ear to it. She heard nothing from inside. Then Cain looked up at the camera and was seized with a terrible thought. Was it still functional? She reached up and pointed it away from her. She fled into the woods and waited for about twenty minutes to see if anyone appeared. When no one did she crept back over to her former prison, steeled herself for a moment, then opened the door and went inside.

Cain shone her light around and was instantly engulfed with thousands of horrible memories; the effect was suffocating, as though the room suddenly lacked all oxygen. She sat down on the floor and guided her light around.

She winced and drew back at the sight of the chain secured to the wall. They had used that on her until she had grown too big and defiant.

And dangerous. They didn’t dare get that close.

As soon as she was fully grown, it became about two things: keeping their distance, and the gun. Desiree hadn’t been able to torture her anymore. But she had done plenty of it over the years. Enough to leave Cain permanently disfigured.

She looked at the filthy mattress on which she had slept for thousands of nights; then there was the shelf with odd objects on it, all treasures to her back then. She had given names to all of them and they had been her only friends during those years. She talked to them, had tea parties with them, then, as she grew older and bolder, she formed an imaginary gang with them that did mischievous things to drive the Atkinses crazy.

She breathed deeply, and the smell of wet clay and mold and rotting wood filled her lungs like water in a bucket. As a captive here, she had breathed this air every day. But every day that she had been alive to breathe was a victory.

There were items she didn’t recognize. A pair of boys’ sneakers, a baseball mitt, a deflated soccer ball, some girly magazines. Maybe the people living in the house now had kids and they had found this place and used it as a hideout or something. In fact, the more she thought about it, maybe that was how the place came to be found by the cops.

And then she saw it.

Sally, her doll, which lay in a corner on the floor. She went over and picked it up. It looked so tiny in her hand now, though the last time she had held it she was nearly fully grown. She had come to regret leaving it behind, but in the heat of the moment, in the sheer exhilaration at being free, she had forgotten all about Sally. She stuck it under her bulky sweater. Sally would not be left behind this time. She rose and left, closing the door behind her.

And that was when the voice called out.

“Hey, what are you doing here?”