The Girls She Left Behind (7 page)

“Okay,” she murmured again. But it wasn't. It wasn't okay at all.

The time-and-date stamp on the cell phone's text message read
TUESDAY, 9:24 P.M.,
just half an hour ago. Below that, the message itself consisted of two words, all caps, no punctuation. Centered on the black screen the white letters stood out stark as a scream:

HELP ME

W
e didn't want to wake you,
the note lying in Tara's lap had said, in the dome house of the hippies way out in the woods where she'd fallen asleep.

Outside, bright daylight meant it was at least midmorning on Tuesday. She'd jumped up and looked around dazedly, but no one was there, not even the cat. The music had stopped and the dome house, so busy and friendly the night before, shimmered with silence. Panic rushed through her as she realized what had happened. Then she saw the kitchen clock and realized it was nearly noon, even later than she'd feared.

Stay as long as you like,
the note said. Which meant they'd gone without her. She'd already missed half a day of school, and she hadn't called home. Fumbling in her bag, she'd found her phone, but no bars showed in the display screen. There were dead areas for cell reception in Maine, and this must be one of them.

She'd hurried through the kitchen, where the sink was piled with dishes. By daylight the dome house's interior looked shabby and careless, the chair coverings threadbare and the floor, made of rough, unvarnished planks, unswept. She'd stopped to fill the animals' water bowls from the hand pump on her way out.

The outhouse was disgusting. She'd crouched quickly among the trees, then jogged down the long dirt driveway to the road. How could they just leave her like that, without a word?

But when a car finally pulled over and picked her up, she'd decided not to worry about it; she would explain when she got home, she'd told herself, which she would very soon because the car was full of more college boys. They were going to help fight the wildfires in Aroostook County, they said.

Tara had thought they looked too soft for it, in their early twenties but already with pouches of fat beneath their chins and the poochy beginnings of beer guts. Of course she hadn't said so, though; they were just boys, after all, goofy and clueless as if fighting wildfires was some kind of an adventure.

And they'd taken her right to Bearkill, or almost. But that's when her next mistake had happened, a big one, and very fast.

So fast, she'd never even had time to scream.
One half mile,
she thought bitterly now, reliving her errors and mocking herself for them as she trudged on through the smoke-reeking night.
They offered to take me all the way but like an idiot I said no.

Her mother always said if you do something, own it. Don't try to hide it or weasel out of the responsibility later. But she'd also said don't hitchhike. Said it like she meant it, with a look in her eye that had told Tara it truly wasn't negotiable.

So she'd chickened out. She didn't want her mother to know that she'd been hitchhiking, so she told the boys she'd walk the rest of the way home, even though winter's early nightfall had already arrived.

And it hadn't been bad at first; nice night, and her own driveway wasn't far off. But then the van came up fast from behind her, its headlights casting her wavering shadow onto the blacktop ahead.

She'd never seen the driver, hadn't bothered to look around until the van slowed, alerting her too late. Practically in the same instant a pair of rough hands had grabbed her, slapping tape onto her mouth and heaving her into the van's cargo area.

She'd never had time to scream, and the van had taken off fast, lurching forward abruptly while she was still scrabbling for an inside door handle. But there wasn't one, and that's when she had realized: She might not know who'd grabbed her, but she knew what this was, all right.

She ought to; she'd been warned often enough. She'd been kidnapped by a maniac, a rapist or worse
.
That's what her mother always said would happen if she hitchhiked, and now it had.

The van sped down the road while she screamed as loud as she could through the tape, hammering with her fists on the heavy metal grating between the passenger and cargo areas. Dark cloth draped over the grate kept the driver hidden, but whoever it was could hear her.

She'd made sure of that, even after the van jolted off the paved road, the lurch throwing her to the metal floor. Kicking, pounding, howling through the sodden tape over her mouth…

But then through her fright she'd recalled her cell phone and found it in her bag, which her attacker hadn't noticed. She'd kept it turned off to save battery but now, fumbling the phone out with shaking hands, she managed to poke the gadget's tiny, glowing keys.

Her fingers trembled, clumsy and numb feeling. Twice, she accidentally turned the thing back off and had to restart it. But she would get out of this, dammit, she
would,
so she kept at it.

Remembering what her mother always said about sticking up for herself—
You can't be a doormat unless you lie down, Tara
—she held back her sobs long enough to type her mom's number and a message—
HELP ME
.

There.
Gasping with fright, she'd just pressed the
SEND
button when the van lurched to a halt, slamming her to the floor and knocking the phone from her hands.

The side door slid open. She wanted to start bawling, but she didn't
.
Instead she grabbed the phone up, stuffing it hastily into her pant pocket. She scrambled to her feet and charged the door opening, ducking and aiming her head at her attacker's midsection.

Because this is it, this is my last chance—

“Oof.” The surprised grunt of pain she heard on impact was as satisfying as any stunt in her cheerleading workout. Swerving, she ducked again, rolling to one side and onto her feet on the rough ground, filled with the sharp exhilaration of sudden freedom.

Run,
a small, clear voice in her head advised her coldly. But the voice cut off abruptly when an unseen fist slammed the side of her head and she went down hard, stunned silent.

A harsh, unidentifiable whisper came from above her. It was the same voice as before. “Do nothing, say nothing.” Helplessly she obeyed, waiting for what would come next.

Please, I'm only fourteen…
“Look at me and I'll kill you.”

Hands hauled her up, shoved her forward. She fell again to the dry, stony earth in the darkness, then struggled up once more. She stood there terrified, dizzy and tottering, until a hard kick sent her sprawling for a third time.

“Had enough? Or do I have to hurt you some more?”

A hand thrust down at her, gripping a shovel. “Take this.” Shakily, she obeyed, still flat on her stomach.

“Get up. Put both your hands on the shovel. Don't be stupid and try anything with it.”

She hauled herself up by leaning on the tool. It was the only way she could do it. Then she cautiously lifted the thing, ready to fall onto it again if her legs gave out.

They didn't. “Good. Now…”

There was joy in the voice, and that scared her the most.
You just wait, though,
she thought.
Wait until I get my breath back
.

Because even though she was still very scared, she was mad now, too. Who the hell did this person think he was, anyway? And now she had this shovel in her hands, a heavy one, its blade sharp and made to cut swiftly through the earth.

Or through other things. “Start digging,” the voice ordered, so she did.

Still thinking, though. Thinking hard about the shovel and about the things—
packed earth, dense roots, other things
—that it might cut through. Thinking…

Just you wait.

O
nce I saw Cam on TV being led out of the house in New Haven, it all came back to me: The dance at the park. The man grabbing us.

And what happened next. I don't know how long it was after I'd drunk the drugged juice that I woke up in the van's rear cargo area. By then I was hurt and naked, with the greasy taste of the fried chicken he'd been eating smeared on my mouth.

Cam wasn't there. The van had stopped. I didn't know where we were or how long I'd been unconscious, only that it was still dark out.

The side panel slid open. He leaned in and shoved a bunch of cloth at me. It was a dress, a sort of smocklike thing.

“Put it on.” He made a hurry-up gesture with his hands.

I didn't want to, but I didn't want him looking at me naked, either. He had my own clothes in his hands, so I did what he said. Then I sat down again as my legs gave way. Through the open side panel I could see that we were on a quiet street in a part of the city where I'd never been, with cracked sidewalks and shot-out streetlights and chain-link fences staggering drunkenly around the tiny, trash-littered front yards.

“Get out,” he ordered, but I was too frightened to move. Finally, with a curse he yanked me roughly through the van's side opening, urging me toward a shabby wood-frame house with a sagging front porch and stacked concrete blocks where the front steps used to be.

I began whimpering. I knew that it wouldn't do any good but I couldn't help it. “Quiet,” he said, muscling me along.

I should have screamed anyway and taken my chances. But I was so scared; it was as if my whole body were made of pure fright, vibrating with terror. Plus I was hurting all over and still in shock from what he'd done to me, and dopey from the spiked juice.

Using a key from a ring on his belt, he unlocked the front gate on the chain-link fence, forcing me through it and up to the house, which was also locked. I kept thinking that someone in one of the neighboring houses would see us and do something. Yell at him to stop or ask me if I was okay or call the police.

But nobody saw us, or if they did they've never admitted it. When he shoved me through the door I tried a final time to rebel, planting my feet and opening my mouth at last to shout something, make someone hear me.

But nothing would come out except a tiny squeak that made him laugh, like my pain and terror were amusing to him, as if they were what he wanted. He placed his hand on the flat of my back to shove me in, but at his touch my body leapt cringingly forward on its own, nearly falling over the awful threshold.

Then, with the cold, hopeless awareness of a drowning person going down for the last time, I was just where he wanted me to be: inside, where no one could see or hear me.

The door swung shut. He kept one hand tight around my wrist while he relocked it from the inside, using another key from the ring he still held. The keys jingled softly as he prodded me along a hallway smelling of rancid grease, down a flight of unpainted steps, and into what looked at first like an ordinary basement.

A washer and dryer, old tires, and a rumbling furnace were down there. A pool table stood under a dangling lightbulb, a bookcase against one wall was crammed with old magazines, and a heavy orange canvas jacket plus a dusty yellow hard hat and what looked like several small scuba tanks cluttered the rest of the space.

Except for that stuff—old fire department gear, it looked like—it was the kind of cellar anybody might have. But when I saw it, with that weak yellow lightbulb dangling above it, it hit me all at once that I was never going to see anything else again. Not my home or my parents or anybody else I knew.

Not ever. Only him with his small gleaming eyes the color of dark water and his lips slick with grease. The scarred, lumpy knuckles of his fingers were grimy, as if he worked on cars for a living, maybe.

Then I saw the cages. There were two of them over in the far corner of the basement, built up with heavy wood framing against the cinder-block walls. He opened the chain-link cage door of one of them, put his hand on my back again, and shoved me inside.

“Shh,” my captor said once he'd slammed the door and locked it. I nearly started screaming again then, but he stopped me by putting a greasy finger to his lips.

“You make a sound, honey, I'll come back here and slit your throat. I mean it. I have done it before,” he added chillingly.

As he turned away, chuckling to himself, I felt the contents of my stomach roll over: the dinner I'd had at home, the half of a beer at the park, and the spiked juice he'd made me drink, all of it threatening to come up in a convulsive heave.

And then it did. Panic clutched me; I thought when I was done he'd be standing over me with his knife out. But he wasn't. Instead he was focused on someone else, and God help me but I was grateful for it.

One side of the cell I was in was made of wooden slats as a sort of divider. From beyond them I heard him fumbling with another lock. The lock's hasp clicked open; a girl began crying.

Cam, I thought at first. But it wasn't her; I knew her voice and it wasn't. Next came the sounds of a scuffle in there, a dull smack like a mallet hitting a piece of meat.

“Please,” someone whispered.

Twice. She whispered it twice. Then something heavy hit the slats I'd pressed my ear against, startling me backward, and she didn't say it anymore.

The enclosure's door scraped shut and a lock rattled angrily, its hasp snapping shut again with another small click. Feet went up the stairs, one pair unsteady, the other a heavy clomp, and the light went out.

Despair seized me, a feeling like drowning while swirling down a drain faster and faster as the door at the top of the stairs slammed, and then there was silence. I waited in terror for him to come back, but he didn't.

“Hello?” The voice came from the other cubicle. “You okay?”

Peering through a crack between the slats, I saw a primitive room of about ten by ten feet, illuminated only by a small nightlight hanging from an extension cord. Two girls were in there, a dark-haired one and one with that very fine corn-silk hair that was almost white.