Vanish

SEVENTEEN

Mila

There is a new girl in our house.

This morning, a van pulled up in the driveway, and the men carried her up to our room. All day she has been lying on Olena’s cot, sleeping off the drugs they gave her for the journey. We all watch her, staring down at a face so pale that it does not look like living flesh, but translucent marble. Her breaths come in soft little puffs, a strand of her blond hair fluttering every time she exhales. Her hands are small-a doll’s hands, I think, looking at the little fist, at the thumb pressed against her lips. Even when the Mother unlocks the door and steps into the room, the girl does not stir.

“Wake her,” the Mother orders.

“How old is she?” Olena asks.

“Just get her up.”

“She’s only a child. What is she, twelve? Thirteen?”

“Old enough to work.” The Mother crosses to the cot and gives the girl a shake. “Come on,” she snaps, yanking off the blanket. “You’ve slept too long.”

The girl stirs and rolls onto her back. That’s when I see the bruises on her arm. She opens her eyes, sees us staring at her, and her frail body instantly stiffens in alarm.

“Don’t make him wait,” the Mother says.

We hear the car approaching the house. Darkness has fallen, and when I look out the window, I see headlights winking through the trees. Tires crackle over gravel as the car pulls into the driveway. The first client of the evening, I think with dread, but the Mother does not even look at us. She grabs the new girl’s hand and pulls her to her feet. The girl stumbles, sleepy-eyed, out of the room.

“How did they get a girl that young?” whispers Katya.

We hear the door buzzer. It is a sound we have learned to shrink from, the sound of our tormentors’ arrival. We all fall still, listening to the voices downstairs. The Mother greets a client in English. The man says little; we hear only a few words from him. Then there are his heavy footsteps on the stairs, and we back away from the door. He walks right past our room and continues down the hall.

Downstairs, the girl raises her voice in protest. We hear a slap, a sob. Then footsteps thump up the stairs again as the Mother drags the girl to the client’s room. The door slams shut, and the Mother walks away, leaving the girl with the man.

“The bitch,” Olena mutters. “She’ll burn in hell.”

But tonight, at least I will not suffer. I feel guilty as soon as that thought crosses my mind. Still, the thought is there. Better her than me. I go to the window and stare out at the night, at darkness that cannot see my shame. Katya pulls a blanket over her head. All of us are trying not to listen, but even through closed doors, we can hear the girl’s screams, and we can imagine what he is doing to her, because the same has been done to us. Only the faces of the men vary; the pain they inflict does not.

When it is over, when the cries finally cease, we hear the man walk down the stairs, and out of the house. I release a deep breath. No more, I think. Please, let there be no more clients tonight.

The Mother comes back up the stairs to retrieve the girl, and there is a long, strange silence. Suddenly she is running past our door and down the stairs again. We hear her talking to someone on her cell phone. Quiet, urgent words. I look at Olena, wondering if she understands what is going on. But Olena does not return my glance. She hunches on her cot, her hands turned to fists in her lap. Outside, something flutters past the window, like a white moth, twirling on the wind.

It is starting to snow.

The girl did not work out. She scratched the client’s face, and he was angry. A girl like that is bad for business, so she is being sent back to Ukraine. That is what the Mother told us last night, when the girl did not come back to the room.

That, at least, is the story.

“Maybe it’s true,” I say, and my breath is a puff of steam in the darkness. Olena and I are once again sitting on the roof. Tonight it sparkles like a frosted cake under the moonlight. Last night it snowed, barely a centimeter, but enough to make me think of home, where there has surely been snow on the ground for weeks. I am glad to see the stars again, to be sharing this sky with Olena. We have brought both our blankets outside, and we sit with our bodies pressed together.

“You’re stupid if you really believe that,” says Olena. She lights a cigarette, the last one from the party on the boat, and she savors it, looking up at the sky as she inhales the smoke, as though offering thanks to heaven for the blessings of tobacco.

“Why don’t you believe it?”

She laughs. “Maybe they sell you to another house, or another pimp, but they don’t ever send you home. Anyway, I don’t believe anything the Mother says, the old whore. Can you believe it? She used to turn tricks herself, about a hundred years ago. Before she got so fat.”

I cannot imagine the Mother ever being young or thin or ever enticing a man. I cannot imagine a time when she was not repulsive.

“It’s the cold-blooded whores who end up running the houses,” says Olena. “They’re worse than the pimps. She knows what we suffer, she’s done it herself. But all she cares about now is the money. A lot of money.” Olena taps off an ash. “The world is evil, Mila, and there’s no way to change it. The best you can do is stay alive.”

“And not be evil.”

“Sometimes, there’s no choice. You just have to be.”

“You couldn’t be evil.”

“How do you know?” She looks at me. “How do you know what I am, or what I’ve done? Believe me, if I had to, I’d kill someone. I could even kill you.”

She stares at me, her eyes fierce in the moonlight. And for a moment-just for a moment-I think she is right. That she could kill me, that she is ready to do anything to stay alive.

We hear the sound of car tires rolling over gravel, and we both snap straight.

Olena immediately stubs out her precious cigarette, only half smoked. “Who the hell is this?”

I scramble to my feet and cautiously crawl up the shallow slope of roof to peer over the edge, toward the driveway. “I don’t see any lights.”

She clambers up beside me and peeks over the edge as well. “There,” she murmurs as a car emerges from the woods. Its headlights are off, and all we see is the yellow glow of its parking lights. It stops at the edge of the driveway, and two men step out. Seconds later, we hear the door buzzer. Even at this early hour, men have their needs. They demand satisfaction.

“Shit,” hisses Olena. “Now they’re going to wake her up. We have to get back to the room before she finds out we’re gone.”

We slide back down the roof and don’t even bother to snatch up our blankets, but immediately scramble onto the ledge. Olena slips through the window, into the dark attic.

The doorbell buzzes again, and we hear the Mother’s voice as she unlocks the front door and greets her latest clients.

I scramble through the window after Olena, and we cross to the trap door. The ladder is still down, the blatant evidence of our location. Olena is just backing down the rungs when she suddenly stops cold.

The Mother is screaming.

Olena looks up at me through the trap door. I can see the frantic glow of her eyes in the shadows below me. We hear a thud, and the sound of splintering wood. Heavy footsteps pound up the stairs.

The Mother’s screams turn to shrieks.

All at once, Olena is climbing back up the ladder, shoving me aside as she scrambles through the trap door. She reaches down through the opening, grabs the ladder, and pulls. It rises, folding, as the trap door closes.

“Back,” she whispers. “Out on the roof!”

“What’s happening?”

“Just go, Mila!”

We run back to the window. I am the first one through, but I’m in such a rush that my foot slides across the ledge. I give a sob as I fall, clawing in panic at the windowsill.

Olena’s hand closes around my wrist. She hangs on to me as I dangle, terrified.

“Grab my other hand!” she whispers.

I reach for it and she pulls me up, until I am doubled over the windowsill, my heart slamming against my chest.

“Don’t be so fucking clumsy!” she hisses.

I regain my footing and cling with sweating hands to the sill as I make my way along the ledge, back to the rooftop. Olena wriggles out, closes the window behind her, then clambers after me, quick as a cat.

Inside the house, the lights have come on. We can see the glow spilling through the windows below us. And we can hear running footsteps, and the crash of a door flying open. And a scream-not the Mother this time. A lone, piercing shriek that cuts off to a terrible silence.

Olena snatches up the blankets. “Climb,” she says. “Hurry, up the roof, where they can’t see us!”

As I crawl up the asphalt shingles, toward the highest point, Olena swings her blanket, brushing off the footprints we have left on the snowy ledge. She does the same with the area where we had been sitting, obscuring all traces of our presence. Then she clambers up beside me, onto the peak above the attic window. There we perch, like shivering gargoyles.

Suddenly I remember. “The chair,” I whisper. “We left the chair under the trap door!”

“It’s too late.”

“If they see it, they’ll know we’re up here.”

She grabs my hand and squeezes so hard that I think she will snap the bones. The attic light has just come on.

We cringe against the roof, not daring to move. One creak, one skitter of falling snow, and the intruder will know where we are. I feel my heart thumping against the shingles, and think that surely he can hear it through the ceiling.

The window slides open. A moment passes. What does he see, gazing out? A fragment of a footprint on the ledge? A telltale trail that Olena’s frantic swipes with the blanket did not obliterate? Then the window slides shut again. I give a soft sob of relief, but Olena’s fingers again dig into my hand. A warning.

He may still be there. He may still be listening.

We hear a sharp thump, followed by a scream that even closed windows cannot muffle. A shriek of such excruciating pain that I break out sweating, shaking. A man is shouting in English. Where are they? There should be six! Six whores.

They are looking for the missing girls.

Now the Mother sobs, pleads. Truly she does not know.

Another thud.

The Mother’s scream pierces straight to my marrow. I cover my ears and press my face to the icy shingles. I cannot listen to this, but I have no choice. It does not stop. The blows, the shrieks, go on and on so long that I think they will find us here at sunrise, still clinging with frozen hands to this roof. I close my eyes, fighting nausea. See no evil, hear no evil. That’s what I chant to myself a thousand times over, to drown out the sounds of the Mother’s torment. See no evil, hear no evil.

When the screams finally fall silent, my hands have gone numb and my teeth are chattering from the cold. I lift my head, and feel icy tears on my face.

“They’re leaving,” Olena whispers.

We hear the front door creak open, hear footsteps on the porch. From our perch on the roof, we can see them walk across the driveway. This time they are more than just indistinct silhouettes; they have left the house lights on, and by the glow spilling through the windows, we can see the two men are dressed in dark clothes. One of them pauses, and his short blond hair catches the reflection of the porch lights. He looks back at the house, his gaze lifting to the roof. For a few terrifying heartbeats I think he can see us. But the light is in his eyes, and we remain hidden in shadow.

They climb into the car and drive away.

For a long time, we do not move. The moonlight shines down with icy radiance. The night is so still I can hear the rush of my own pulse, the chatter of my teeth. At last, Olena stirs.

“No,” I whisper. “What if they’re still out there? What if they’re watching?”

“We can’t stay on the roof all night. We’ll freeze.”

“Wait just a little longer. Olena, please!”

But she is already easing her way down the shingles, moving back toward the attic window. I’m terrified of being left behind; I have no choice but to follow her. By the time I crawl back inside, she is already through the trap door and climbing down the ladder.

I want to scream: Please wait for me! but I’m too afraid to make a sound. I scramble down the ladder, too, and follow Olena into the hallway.

She has come to a standstill at the top of the stairs, gazing downward. Only when I move beside her do I see what has made her freeze in horror.

Katya lies dead on the stairs. Her blood has streamed down the steps like a dark waterfall, and she is a swimmer, diving toward the glistening pool at the bottom.

“Don’t look in the bedroom,” Olena says. “They are all dead.” Her voice is flat. Not human, but a machine’s, cold and matter-of-fact. I do not know this Olena, and she scares me. She moves down the stairs, avoiding the blood, avoiding the body. As I follow her, I cannot stop staring at Katya. I see where the bullet has torn through the back of her T-shirt, the same shirt she wears every night. It has yellow daisies and the words BE HAPPY. Oh Katya, I think; now you will never be happy. At the bottom of the stairs, where a pool of blood has collected, I see the imprints of large shoes that have tracked through it on their way to the front door.

Only then do I notice that the door is ajar.

I think: Run! Out of the house and down the porch steps, into the woods. This is our escape, this is our chance at freedom.

But Olena does not immediately flee the house. Instead she circles right, into the dining room.

“Where are you going?” I whisper.

She does not answer me, but continues into the kitchen.

“Olena!” I plead, trailing after her. “Let’s go now, before-” I stop in the doorway and clap my hand over my mouth, because I think I am going to throw up. There are splatters of blood on the walls, on the refrigerator. The Mother’s blood. She sits at the kitchen table, and the bloody remnants of her hands are stretched out before her. Her eyes are open, and for a moment, I think that maybe she can see us, but of course she cannot.

Olena moves past her, through the kitchen, to the back bedroom.

So desperate am I to escape that I think I should just leave now, without Olena. Leave her to whatever insane reason keeps her in this house. But she is moving with such purpose that I follow her to the Mother’s bedroom, which has always before been locked.

This is the first time I have ever seen the room, and I gape at the large bed with satin sheets, at a dresser that has a lace runner and a row of silver hairbrushes. Olena goes straight to the dresser, yanks open drawers, and rifles through the contents.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“We need money. We can’t survive out there without it. She must keep it here somewhere.” She pulls out a woolen hat from the drawer and tosses it to me. “Here. You’ll need warm clothes.”

I’m loath to even touch the hat, because it was the Mother’s, and I can see her ugly brown hairs still clinging to the wool.

Olena whisks across to the nightstand, pulls open the drawer, and finds a cell phone and a small wad of cash. “This can’t be everything,” she says. “There has to be more.”

I only want to flee, but I know she’s right; we need money. I cross to the closet, which hangs open; the killers have searched it, and several hangers have been knocked to the floor. But they were hunting for frightened girls, not money, and the shelf above has not been disturbed. I pull down a shoe box, and old photographs spill out. I see pictures of Moscow and smiling faces and a young woman whose eyes are disconcertingly familiar. And I think: Even the Mother was young once. Here is the proof.

I pull down a large tote bag. Inside is a heavy jewelry pouch and a videotape and a dozen passports. And money. A thick bundle of American cash, tied with a rubber band.

“Olena! I found it.”

She crosses to me and glances in the bag. “Take it all,” she says. “We’ll go through the bag later.” She throws in the cell phone as well. Then she snatches a sweater from the closet and thrusts it at me.

I don’t want to put on the Mother’s clothes; I can smell her scent on them, like sour yeast. I pull them on anyway, quelling my disgust. A turtleneck, a sweater, and a scarf all layered over my own blouse. We dress quickly and in silence, donning the clothes of the woman who sits dead in the next room.

At the front door we hesitate, staring out at the woods. Are the men waiting for us? Sitting in their dark car farther down the road, knowing that eventually we will show ourselves?

“Not that way,” Olena says, reading my thoughts. “Not the road.”

We slip out, circle around to the rear of the house, and plunge into the woods.