Page 86 of The Death Row Club
As if reading my mind, he says, “I’ll be back soon. Promise.”
The phone disconnects with a click.
I set it aside, start fiddling with the diploma again. I’ve just gotten it standing upright when there’s a rap on the front door. It’s too late for a delivery, and we’re miles away from our nearest neighbor. I creep over to the window and peer out from behind the curtain. A girl stands in our yard. She can’t be older than sixteen, maybe seventeen. Her skin’s gone ashy, the color of old mop bucket water, and her hair’s matted into clumps.
“Help!” she calls. “Help! Please!”
I drop the curtain like it’s caught fire. This can’t be what it looks like. There must be some other explanation. Maybe… maybe her car broke down, and she noticed our driveway while she was heading to the nearest gas station. It’s hard to get a cell signal in this area. She probably wants to use our phone, that’s all.
“Help!” She sounds like she’s about to cry. I shuffle closer to the window and look down at her feet.
They’re bare.
I shrink back into the shadows until I’m pressed against the edge of my bed, then sink onto the mattress. He promised me that he’d stopped, that things would be different now that we were together. He promised. He wouldn’t—
BANG.
I jump at the sound. My breath sticks in my throat.
BANG BANG BANG.
Her palms slam against our front door. I press mine against my ears. The louder the banging gets, the more I curl in on myself until my arms are wrapped around my knees and my head is buried between my thighs. I’m trembling with the force of her blows. And then—
She stops.
I wait for the noise to start up again, but it doesn’t; when I finally work up the courage to return to the window, the backyard’s empty.You should’ve opened thedoor, a little voice whispers in the back of my mind.How could you let her go back into those woods?He must’ve left the shack door open, the same way he did with me. Which means he’s nearby—waiting in his car, hidden in the same sharp curve of the road where I found him. What does he do with them? I remember the phone with its bright blue light. Does he coax them into the road, trap them there?
Does he run them down?
I imagine those girls denting the bumper, cracking the windshield,tumbling over the hood, then disappearing into the night as he guns it down the road.
BANG BANG BANGechoes through my head.
One girl slams against the hood, two girls, three girls.
I wait for her to return, but nothing stirs outside except the shadows. I should go to sleep. When I wake tomorrow, everything will be back to normal, and all of this will have been nothing more than a bad dream.
Instead, I snatch my jacket from the closet and set off into the night.
I haven’t revisited the shack in almost a decade, but hurtling through the forest, my feet remember the way. With each step, dread tightens around my lungs. When I finally stagger into the clearing, the door stands open, padlock and chain abandoned on the ground.Turn around now, the voice hisses.Go home, while you still have one.
I step inside.
It’s difficult to see in the dark, but the shack looks the same as when I left. I inspect the corners for crumpled-up blankets, discarded paper cups, any indication someone was confined here recently. Nothing. I breathe a sigh of relief, am about to leave, when I notice the scratches on the wall. The morning I woke up here, I carved my name into the wood with a blunted nail, but that was way down at the juncture where wall met floorboard. These scratches climb almost to the ceiling.
I take out my phone and switch on the flashlight.
The beam finds my name at the bottom, then slowly traces the carvings up the wall. In high school, the art teacher instructed us to walk around the room while maintaining a soft focus. “Don’t let your eyes fix on anything,” Mr. McLaughlin directed. “Instead, let them relax, so you can take in the whole picture.” I shift into that same soft focus now, so I can only make out the number of names instead of the letters comprising any particular one. There must be thirty up there. Maybe more. All except mine written in the same orderly handwriting.
Tom’s handwriting.
My phone tumbles to the floor, the light snuffed out. I press my fist against my mouth and scream, a thin, reedy whine escaping through my fingers. He lied to me. He’sbeenlying this entire time. All those so-called business trips, he was never jetting off to foreign countries. He was cruising the highways across neighboring states, looking for girls who’d wandered off on their own.
I reach for the phone, but my finger stalls above the keypad. If I call the police, then my home—the one I waited so long for—will disappear. I’ll once again be left standing by the gas pumps while happy families zoom by in their minivans. In my mind, the police are already filing into the cabin, stripping my closet and dresser drawers. Out come the black plastic garbage bags.Time to hit the road, kid. You can’t stay here.
Panic creeps over me, but I shake it off. I’m not a child anymore; I can get by on my own. The next girl whose name goes on that wall probably won’t.
A dispatcher picks up immediately. “Nine-one-one,” she says, “what’s your emergency?”
