Finders Keepers (2 page)

“911.
 
What is your emergency?”

 
She swallowed hard.
 
“My name is Eliza Brown.”

“Excuse me, could you speak louder?”

Not if I’m hiding from an axe murderer!
 
She pinched herself.
 
Get a grip.
 
This is all in your imagination and not nearly as terrifying as that time your mother
permed
your hair.
 
Very true.
 
Cupping her hand over her mouth and the speaker on the phone, she repeated herself.
 
“Eliza Brown.
 
I’m at the Treasure Bin on Main.
 
The power is out.
 
No one is here and I am locked in.”
 
She didn’t want to say she heard footsteps and strange noises.
 
“Please, can you send someone?”

“Hello,
Eliiiza
.”
 
It was no more than a whisper, but it was clear and distinct and very close.
 

Ellie gripped the phone tighter with a sweaty palm.
 
“Someone is here.
 
Please.
 
I’m in trouble.”

“All right.
 
Stay on the line and stay calm.
 
The police are on their way.”

Ellie nodded.
 
Her tongue lay weighted, attached to a huge rock that seemed to block the flow of air through her throat.
 
Except for the background noise of the operator, and the hammering of her own heart, there were no more sounds.
 
Until her phone beeped.
 
Its light dimmed.
 

No, no, no
.
 

The phone beeped twice in a row.
 
Low battery flashed on the screen.
 
“My phone is going to…” Then it was dead.

She kicked herself.
 
When this was all over she wasn’t going to hear
I’m sorry you got locked in with a psycho or had to get rabies shots
, no, it was going to be
a responsible young adult would keep her cell phone charged
.
 
Her mother’s voice was very clear in her head.
 
Ellie shook it hoping to rid herself of that voice but only succeeded in making her bangs fall in her eyes.
 

As far as she could see she had two choices:
  
1) Make as little noise as possible or 2) make a mad dash for the little back room.
 
Maybe she could lock herself in and search for a real flash light or a corded phone.

Something moved to the side of her, close enough that it fluttered the stray hairs around her face.
 
And then a warm breath tickled her neck and that sealed the deal.
 
Falling onto her hands and knees Ellie crawled toward where she thought the front counter was.
 
Swish, swish, swish echoed the dress.
 
Traitor.
 
Knew you were bad luck
.
 
Several musty-smelling, low-hanging garments smacked her in the face.
 
Dropping her head, she plowed through, eventually banging her skull into the edge of the glass.
 
In the silence, it sounded like a small explosion.
 
She leaned back onto her heels, cradled her head with her free hand, and then stood up.
 

It’s all in my imagination.
 
The sheriff or fire department or even the bald donut guy who always uses his volunteer firefighter status as a pick up line…so gross… they are coming.
 
Any minute
.
 
Both the fire department and police station were only a few blocks away.
 
If she could just get out, she could run there.
 
Save them the trip.

Suddenly, something loped across the room knocking over several racks of clothing.
 
Letting out a terrified shriek, Ellie dove head first over the top of the counter.
 
Her fingers brushed the floor.
 
Her head was just a few feet from smacking into the linoleum.
 
But she hung suspended above the ground floundering like a caught fish.
 
Then she realized.
 
It, whatever
it
was, had caught the end of the train on her dress.
 
She flung herself forward, frantically kicking and clawing at the floor until her momentum was rewarded with the sound of tearing fabric.
 
She somersaulted over the counter.
 
The dress flipped up over her head and fell like a parachute on top of her.
 
Her tail bone smashed into the ground.

Cold fingers clamped down on Ellie’s arm.
 
She yelped and clawed at her forearm.
 
More hands, more fingers tore at her dress and skin.
 
She kicked out and swatted anything that came near her face or latched onto her body.
 
Her train, now only halfway attached, dragged on the floor behind, fifty pounds heavier.
 
She stood up, snatched the extra material and pulled.
 
Whatever held her clung to the fabric like a leggy Japanese beetle.
 
Ellie reached around and felt for the snaps or clasps where the train attached.
 
The weight shifted.
 
It yanked her off balance and she lost her grip on the clasp.
 
Whirling around a second time, she wrenched on the train.
 
More sounds of splitting fabric.
 
The weight eased up and she leapt away from the discarded garment.
 
All caution thrown to the wind, Ellie shoved her way through the display racks and sprinted back toward the entrance.

Her shin struck the ledge of the display window and she toppled halfway into it.
 
Pain seared through her right leg and automatically she dropped all her weight onto the other.
 
Without slowing, she limped along the edge until the empty space changed to concrete wall and then the wooden frame of the old door.

In health class they learned about a mother who lifted a car off her trapped child in a sudden adrenaline rush.
 
What seemed unbelievable at the time, now Ellie figured she could do as least as much.
 
She closed her eyes, channeled her inner superhero, and rammed her shoulder into the door.
 
It flared red hot in agony but without hesitation she slammed into the door again.
 
Then she threw herself at the door again.
 
The third time it gave way about an inch.
 
She squealed.
 
It scrabbled across the floor, the frantic scraping only changing when it encountered the toppled racks.

The door was open just enough that she could wedge her shoulder into the opening.
 
The frame sliced into her bare shoulder blade but she squeezed her eyes shut and kept forcing the door.
 
One more push and she’d be through.
 
Pretending to be her father trying on his favorite jeans from college, she sucked in.
 
A hard body collided with hers.
 
Arms latched onto her waist.
 
Ellie shrieked and swung wildly.
 
Her elbow connected with a hard, bony nose.
 
The crunch vibrated through her arm, and then was drowned out by a feral roar.

The tulle skirt shredded as Ellie forced her hips through.
 
Her good ankle hit something hard and she fell face first over the object which had jammed the door shut.
 
She lost hold of her phone which, up until that point, she’d held in a death grip.
 
Superman style, her forearms skidded across the sidewalk.
 

The wail of the sirens split the unnatural silence.
 
In all her sixteen years, nothing ever sounded more beautiful.
 
The red lights of the fire truck appeared first, lighting up the street with flashes as the long rectangle shape peeled around the corner.
 
Ellie scrambled to her feet and limped into the middle of the road.
 
Having caught sight of her in the headlights, the driver laid on his horn.
 
Brakes squealed.
 
She scuttled off to the other side of the street.
 
The roar of the engine died and only then did Ellie glance back at the store.
 
The strobe of the lights reflected against the glass.
 
She couldn’t see all the damage she knew was in the store.
 
But the lights did catch one thing.
 
It caught the reflective surface of a pair of eyes.
 
They flashed yellow-green.
 

But she was safe.
 
The rescue worker was already leaping from the cab of the truck to rush to her side.
 
Neither he nor she saw the thin, brown arm snake out of the shadows and curl its knotted branch-like fingers around Ellie’s ankle.

A firecracker exploded inside of her skull.
 
Bits of light like a sparkler blazed behind her eyelids for a few long seconds and then fizzled out.
 
Darkness seeped in, but not before she heard it whisper, “Mine.”

2

 
“Prank” was the word being used over and over again outside the curtain which separated her bed from everything else in the ER.
 
The fireman who carried her in said it.
 
The police officer said it.
 
Her mother, in her stunned and bewildered state even echoed it several times.

Ellie raised her arms in front of her and examined the damage.
 
From palms to elbow she was wrapped up in gauze bandages.
 
No serious injury there, but the burn of the antiseptic begged to differ.
 
Flipping her left arm over she looked at the purple bruises and red cat scratches which had been too minor to cover.
 
Without touching her shoulder she knew that prickly black thread poked through her skin in seven ugly Frankenstein stitches.
 
Earlier, the nurse had given her a mirror so she could watch the doctor weave the needle in and out of her skin.
 
She’d bitten her lip and watched the whole thing and even smiled at the cute intern who’d done the job.
 
But when he and the nurses left, she hauled herself off the end of the bed and stumbled to the little sink where she retched.
 

She decided to pull up what was left of her potential prom dress to look at her shin and see if it looked as bad as it felt.
 
Yes, she was still wearing
the
dress.
 
There was no way she’d be caught dead in one of those open-backed hospital gowns.
 
She wiggled her ankle and tugged a little on the now gray tulle to reveal a dark magenta knot swelling and stretching her skin tight.
 
It formed what looked like a miniature Indian mound.
 
It’d been x-rayed but declared unbroken.
 
As far as her head, the CT was negative but the doctor thought she might have a bit of a concussion.
 
If it were true, that was her only somewhat serious injury.
 
As a result, she was being kept overnight for observation.
 
Ellie didn’t mind.
 
Something about the 24 hour nature of the ER with its bright lights and constant bustle of human activity was extremely reassuring.

Prank?
 
Try homicidal, creepy-eyed killer, or killers, who know my name
.
 
Of course, under the influence of pain medication, no one listened to her, even after she pointed out it was only ibuprofen.
 

“These are the facts,” the officer said earlier, sounding more like an old-fashioned murder-mystery detective than a modern policeman.
 
“Someone claiming to be a towing service called Ellie’s mother and explained she was parked in a fire lane.
 
Her mom dashed out of the store like a bat out of…and anyway, came to find that her car was nowhere to be found.
 
Literally.
 
She called all the towing companies in town and no one had her car.
 
She then walked home to retrieve her husband’s car.
 

The cashier received a similar call, tricking her into walking outside the store.
 
Then she was locked out from the inside.
 
She decided to head home to retrieve an extra set of keys but when she found her car was also missing, she then walked directly to the police station to report it stolen.
 

The first to respond to Ellie’s 911 call was the fire department.
 
Upon arriving at the scene, they found a large fifty pound concrete block wedged against the door, which is why Ellie couldn’t get out.
 
Also, the electricity was out on the entire block and the reason for the outage is still unclear.
 
The electric company said they would send someone sometime tomorrow.”

Helpful.

Her normally, completely stable, practical, and
do not live your life in fear
mother sort of snapped somewhere in the middle of all “the facts.”
 
From stunned to two steps below hysterical, she barely contained her screeching.
 
“Prank?
 
Can you be sure?
 
What if he followed her there?
 
What if his intention was to…to…”
 
She sputtered at the end and couldn’t get the word out.
 
Ellie was slightly relieved since she didn’t really think her mother could say rape.
 
It would have come out “deflower” or something else embarrassing.
 

She tuned out the rest of it after that, especially when her mother started in on the officers, giving them a tongue-lashing Ellie’s Grammy would be proud of.
 
Ellie didn’t want to hear or talk about it anymore.
 
Ever.
 
When the officers finally escaped, she kept her mind occupied with thoughts of unfinished physics problems while alternately counting dots on the ceiling, except, of course, when her mother was watching.
 
Then she pretended to sleep.
 
That is, until an unsettling thought occurred to her.

 
“Mom, have you been home?
 
Did you feed Pinstripe today?”

Her mother’s response was a little too quick.
 
A little too practiced.
 
“He’s a wild animal, sweetie.
 
He’ll be fine.
 
He has natural survival skills.”
 
She leaned over and brushed Ellie’s pink bangs away from her eyes.

“Mom?”

The guilt spread across her mother’s cheeks like a bad sunburn.
 
It was easy to provoke because her mother was a huge softie when it came to the bird Ellie rescued three months before.
 
He’d flown straight into their sliding glass door.
 
Part of his right wing was a bloody mess and it looked as if some of it was actually missing.
 
It was one of the rare weekends that her father was home and he’d helped her wrap the blood-soaked black bird in a towel and bring him in.
 
From there Ellie had worked with such precision, care, and calm cleaning the bird and patching him up as best she could that her father declared she was cut out for medical school.
 

She thought about the stitches in her shoulder again.
 
The smell of alcohol assaulted her senses and her stomach flipped over dangerously.

“I was rushing around searching for your father’s keys when the police called and told me what’d happened to you.
 
He looked so curious, and I was distraught and so I blurted the whole story out to him.
 
Poor
Stripey
, (her mother’s nickname for the bird) he must have sensed my distress.
 
He went completely wild and flew straight at the window.
 
I was so scared he’d kill himself that I opened the back door and he flew straight out.”

Ellie didn’t know what to say.
 
He was a wild crow, not a pet parakeet.
 
It’s not like she planned to keep him forever.

“I’m so sorry
hon
, are you okay?”

Ellie shook her head trying not to sniffle.
 
“This is, by far, the crappiest day.”
 
A few hot tears slipped down her cheeks.
 
“Ever.”
 
She dragged the top of the sheet across her eyes.
 
The fabric smelled like dandruff shampoo.
 
Black streaks of mascara stained the sheet.
 

Her mom leaned over the bed and squeezed her.
 
Ellie let her mom hug her for a second.
 
Yes, it was
that
kind of day.
 
“I’m fine.
 
Really.
 
Go see if you can’t get me out of here.
 
I want to sleep in my own bed.
 
It was just a prank, after all.”

A prank that wasn’t going to get the best of her either.
 
After her mother disappeared around the curtain, Ellie slid off the edge of the bed and grabbed her jeans and sneakers.
 
As soon as her mom said go, she was out of here.
 
The trick was trying not to scream while wriggling back into her pants.
 
She’d barely finished and flopped back onto the bed, exhausted, when a voice said, “So you’re a bird person?
 
Aren’t you worried about the avian flu or parasites or fleas?”
 

The voice came from the bed next to hers which she couldn’t see because of the curtain partition.
 
This was not the day to be cute with her.

“They say it’s extremely impolite to listen at keyholes.”

He laughed.
 
It was a discordant grinding of sorts.
 
She cringed involuntarily.

“Trust me, if there were anything better to do, I wouldn’t have been listening.”

Well, she couldn’t
bedgrudge
him that.
 
Now that her initial fears had settled, she regret her part in agreeing to stay overnight and she hoped that her mother was being successful in getting her discharged early.
 
The novelty had worn off and in reality this was the worst kind of boring.
 
All the chatter and beeping and bright lights made it impossible to sleep.
 

“What kind of bird is it?”

“Crow.
 
His name is Pinstripe.
 
But I’m sure you heard that already.”

“So, what, you found his egg and now you’re his mother?
 
Was that your favorite book as a kid?”
 
He imitated a tiny little high pitched squeak, “Are you my mother?
 
Are you my mother?”
 
In spite of his humor, he sounded downright hostile.
 

   
“Yeah, something like that,” she said.
 
“What are you in here for anyway?
 
You sound like you jammed something up your…”

His harsh laughter stopped her short.
 
The cacophony made Ellie’s ears tingle.

“Sorry, you’re right.
 
I’m being a big meanie, aren’t I?
 
Just bored.
 
I’m waiting for my girlfriend.
 
Her shift ended twenty minutes ago.
 
Was supposed to end anyway.”

Ellie let the silence sit between them for several long moments.
 
Obviously older than her and probably a total creep.
 
Whatever.
 
Her neck had had enough of the flat, lifeless pillow that was doing nothing to support her aching head.
 
She turned onto her side and fiddled with the buttons on the guard rail.
 
The thin mattress vibrated and the bed creaked its way into a sitting position.
 

“They say you’re going to be on the local news.
 
The police are issuing a statement.
 
Guess they’ve decided not to call it a prank after your mom’s nuclear meltdown.”
 
Mimicking perfectly the pot-bellied police officer who’d spoken to her last, he said, “It pends further investigation.
 
We are asking the public to please report anything suspicious and to use caution and common sense when you are out and about, especially after dark.”

A fluorescent light above her flicked off.
 
Ellie caught her breath and held it.
 
It buzzed and then flickered back on.

“Oops.
 
That was just me.
 
Did it scare you?”

Whoever was behind that curtain was approximately ten seconds from getting knocked unconscious with a bedpan.