The car speeds on. The young woman watches it leave before she looks around and does the next best thing.
“Taxi!”“For the last time, Jen—this is not a joke.” She speaks into her phone with a mixture of annoyance and agitation, as the taxi speeds down the street in pursuit of the white car. “I think Tarquin Halloway has been kidnapped by a man in a white Ford, and I want you to call the police. No, I don’t have their number just lying around. Yes, 911’s been busy for the last five minutes, and I’m not entirely sure why. That’s why I want you to call instead while I…Yes, I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out where they’re heading. No, I don’t know what the hell happened with those birds. Yes, I’ll be back as soon as I find Tark.” “Is this for real, lady?” The taxi driver looks alarmed. “We’re after some pervert on the run?”“I don’t know yet.” The young woman’s eyes are glued to the white car just ahead, which is turning onto a smaller, quieter street at the outskirts of town. They lose it for a few minutes after it speeds up and turns a sharp corner, and it takes some more searching
before she finally catches a glimpse of the car as it turns into a small driveway, almost hidden by a tall grove of trees. She gestures at the driver to stop at the opposite side of the street.
“I’ll be getting off here. Keep the change.”“You sure you don’t want me to stick around, miss?” She pauses. “Can you use your radio to call the police?”
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I can radio my boss and he can—” “Do that.” She hands him a couple of bills and gets out of the car. “I think you ought to wait for the cops to get here, miss. If there’s some wacko on the loose, I don’t think you ought to be looking for him alone…”
“I don’t think I can wait that long. Just call the police as quickly as you can.” She runs toward the row of houses, while the taxi driver picks up his radio and speaks hurriedly into it. But by the time he gets out of the car, intent on following the teaching assistant, he stops. She is nowhere to be seen.
***
She is not afraid, not at first. She is careful not to attract too much attention, though her nerves are frayed and adrenaline shoots through her network of veins. The house is nestled on a tiny culde-sac, one of only three houses there. It stands against a backdrop of afternoon sky, the sun bleeding through the clouds. A still calm descends as she nears the parked white car. The hood is warm when she touches it, but its occupants are missing.
The cab driver’s right, the teacher’s assistant thinks. There are a million reasons why I shouldn’t be here alone. I’ve watched enough slasher movies to know this.
But she knows that as the minutes tick by, her cousin draws ever closer to danger. Her last conversation with his father drifts into her mind, and she is ashamed that she is unable to keep her promise of watching over him. It is a part of her nature to be protective, and this flaw sometimes overrules her caution.
She tries the door and is not surprised to find it locked. She wrestles against the idea that she could be arrested for breaking and entering, tries to imagine herself serving time in jail stripes, and decides to chance it. She circles the house and finds a small window opened partway—enough for her to be able to squirm inside.
There is no one inside the first room she enters, which is a kitchen. Knives of varying sizes line the wall, gleaming in the dull light. Grocery bags take up one side of the kitchen island, filled with vegetables and canned goods. Everything appears to be in its place, tidy. There is nothing out of the ordinary here. She waits at first; frightened, certain she’s been found out—but the minutes go by, and no one comes. The house is quiet; not a creature stirs.
For a moment she feels foolish, embarrassed. Could she be mistaken, after all? She takes out her phone to call her friend and is annoyed by the lack of mobile signal in the area.
She turns just in time to catch a glimpse of me drifting into the next room, head bowed, feet barely touching ceiling.
She is taken aback and wonders briefly if she is going crazy on
top of everything else, but she realizes she has come too far now to turn back. She grabs a small knife as a precaution, then follows me into the next room and sees me standing before a large wooden door. She blinks, and I disappear.
By all outward appearances, it could have been a closet or a storage space, or even a small bedroom, the type allotted for guests. But when the teaching assistant pulls the door open, all she sees is a set of stairs, leading down into night.
It is all she can do to take that first step down. It creaks slightly under her weight, not loud enough to echo into the narrow space, but enough that she becomes more aware of the darkness. Her descent is slow and careful, and for the first time, she wishes she had looked around for a flashlight to bring. But before she changes her mind, she reaches the bottom.
There is a bulb hanging at the end of the stairs and another door before her. The young woman swallows hard, silently counts to ten, and pushes it open.
Inside, the tattooed boy is nestled against a small cot on one side of the room, fast asleep and unharmed in every way that she can see, much to her relief. A small candle has been lit beside him. Large pipes run parallel across one wall, gurgling water and sewage. The room itself carries a dank smell of rotten wood and moss.
The young woman looks around for other signs of life. Finding none, she hurries to him, feels his forehead, and sighs with relief upon noting his steady pulse, his measured breathing. “Tark? Tark, wake up.”
But the boy only murmurs something unintelligible and sinks back into slumber.
She takes one step, two steps toward him, then gets no further. Something crashes painfully against the side of her head, and the last thing she sees before blacking out is me, standing over her crumpled form, head twisted enough to one side that a disfigured eye stares back down at her, black against a pale, stark face.
“Wakey, wakey, sleeping beauty.”This is the first thing the teacher’s assistant hears as she struggles back to consciousness. A light shines from somewhere above and distorts her vision. She shakes her head, attempting to dispel this hurt, and finds that she cannot move. Someone has lashed a series of ropes around her legs and arms, imprisoning her against a hard bed. She can do nothing more than move her head a few degrees in either direction.
A man moves into her line of vision. He is the same one she saw driving the white car with the drowsing teenager in his passenger seat. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” the Smiling Man says.
“Though I am sorry to say you won’t be staying here very long.”The girl tries to sit up, struggling in terror against her bonds, but the Smiling Man has done this many times before, and they hold fast. She opens her mouth to scream, but the man merely laughs as her cries bounce off the walls. “Nobody’s going to hear you this far down, sweetheart. I made sure of it.” He grins in a disarming way,
but his eyes remain blank and hooded, unable to absorb so much as a glimmer of light.
“I called the police,” the girl gasps out, unwilling to surrender. “They’ll be here soon, and they’ll catch you.”
The Smiling Man take him, take him now shrugs this off, like it is of little importance to him.“It’s quite a drive from the nearest police station, especially with the rush hour. There aren’t many police in this town anymore, not after the recession. And besides”—he leans in close so she could smell his light, delicate perfume, the strong decay of eggs in his breath—“by the time they get here I will be gone,” he whispers. “And you will still be dead.”