Page 39 of The Chain House

But finally, after a few miles of distancing themselves on the open roads of Twisted Tree, the delayed reaction, as noticeable as her laughing late on punchlines, hit her first full force as a painful, rib-wrenching sob, and then as a quiet flood of tears. She heard a knocking sound, and at first looked around the truck before realizing it was internal. Not so much inside her head, but a knocking that resonated throughout her body, like a low-level thrum in her bloodstream before gaining steam through her bones and into her heart toward a fist-pounding crescendo of fear, of knuckles on wood, of a closed fist on wood, a wooden door rattling inside a wooden frame and her heart beating so hard it knocked against her rib cage. She leaned forward and hugged her chest but the knock-knock-knock continued.

Carl, after checking his rearview mirror, must have felt like it was safe to pull over to the side of the forested road. None of the reporters had followed them.

Jennifer looked around at the trees on either side of the road, grateful Carl had stopped; the motion was making her nauseated, the internalized knocking sound driving her mad.

“Do you hear it?” she asked Carl.

His reply was muted, but the shaking of his head was clear, and it said, Hear what? Do I hear what?

She shook her head, I don’t know.

She cried. She covered her face and cried.

Carl squirmed in his seat; he clearly didn’t know how to comfort her, or even if he should. Instead, he let her be, and even in the middle of whatever this was, she was grateful for that too. Because even she didn’t know what this was—this emotional outburst from someone who typically wasn’t a crier. Some kind of emotional dam had broken. This was so unlike her it might as well have been someone else sitting in the parked truck, and as her tears waned, her brain somehow cleansed and clear, she knew exactly who this other person was. And the knocking … she knew that too.

It was her, as a girl. It was her then, and the same girl knocking to come out now.

The same girl she’d unconsciously locked away twenty years ago, locking her inside the closet of her mind in the hours before they’d physically been rescued from the closet inside that house. She’d buried that girl inside as a start-over, thinking they were all inside the closet because of what she’d seen. Because of what she’d witnessed, and it was all her fault. Her thinking, Maybe if I put her—the old me—inside her own closet, and hush her up, that only then would someone come save them. Because The Raven didn’t. The Raven wouldn’t.

“The Raven was here,” she said aloud in Carl’s truck, recalling not only what she’d written on that closet wall twenty years ago, but somehow seeing herself write it all over again, now, but as the terrified child she’d been back then. “The Raven is a liar.”

She turned, wiped her eyes and cheeks, saw Carl watching.

“Who’s The Raven?” he asked. “Jennifer, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” she said, to stall, to kick the can down the road until her mental clarity was restored. Mostly she did know; she thought she did but wasn’t yet sure. The only thing she was sure of was that seeing Sal Batise again in person had triggered something within her, and this was the delayed reaction. It had opened a door within her, because a small fist had been knocking on it. For years perhaps the knocking had been muted, but now it was loud and clear, and the floodgate had opened wide.

They’d tried when she was a little girl.

Her new parents were amazed by how well she’d adapted. Since the circus surrounding the finding of the children, and the subsequent months of questions from detectives, from child therapists and psychologists, and later, when her new parents had tried bringing in an art therapist, as cautiously curious as they’d been about her lack of memory, what they’d referred to as lack of baggage, they’d been so concerned she was harboring something deep down that one day could damage her.

She laughed at the thought of that now, and Carl might have thought she’d lost her mind, but in truth it was her mind being returned to her, maybe not in full, but whatever it was … she felt the intense urge to put a clean pencil to fresh paper and draw. The little girl inside her was coming out from the closet to breathe fresh air, her little hand hurt from holding the pencil, from drawing with it so hard and for so long without stopping that her fingers cramped. Her friends were locked inside with her, and they were crying in the dark because the flashlight had burned out hours ago. She remembered putting her cheek to the dusty closet floor to get her nose closer to the crack at the bottom of the door, to get a whiff of cleaner air out there, air that wasn’t polluted with the stench of their own urine and feces.

She said to Carl, “Take us back home, please.”

“What about Sam?”

She checked her phone, saw a text she’d missed from Sam that said: I might be longer than I thought. Batise wants me to stay

Jesus, Jennifer thought, how can you spend another minute inside the same room with that man? Her urge to get as far away from the prison as possible was now as strong as her urgent need to draw the face her mind was now revealing.

She said to Carl, “Find a Target. Or a CVS. Walgreens, whatever. I need a pencil and paper.”

One thing she was beginning to love about Carl was that he didn’t ask too many questions and mostly did what he was told. He pulled back out onto the road, typed into his Maps app, and drove off in the same direction they’d been going before he’d abruptly pulled over. But she was better now and eager to move on.

She texted Sam as Carl drove: We’ll be around when you’re ready. Just let us know. What else have you learned? Is he really Mallard Malone?

Carl took a right turn and followed his navigation prompts through country roads edged by equal parts woodlands and fields.

Sam responded with a long text: Can’t call right now but he’s given us the coordinates for another body he claims to know about. Police are quietly looking into it. If it checks, he might really be Mallard Malone. And I think Justice Minks is real. Batise thinks that’s who took Beth Hawthorne. Said something to do with Minks being Mallard Malone’s biggest fan?

Jennifer typed: Wow please keep me posted

Will do

And be careful, Sam

U2