The Forgotten Child

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Something Jade had said replayed in Riley’s head then, and Riley tried to think of all the secret doors she’d seen in movies and TV shows. If it wasn’t some elaborate hidden passage opened by stepping on certain floor tiles in an old cave, it was a door opened by pulling on a book on a shelf.

  Only problem was, these shelves were empty.

  Michael still probed every available surface, undeterred. Even at 5’10,” the topmost shelves stretched taller than him. On tiptoe, he barely reached the top shelf, let alone the shelf’s back.

  She tried to picture Orin loping around here. All six-feet-plus of him. Mindy’s memory of Hank jumping to find the correct book.

  “Can you give me a boost?” Riley asked, immediately abandoning the idea of scaling the shelves like a ladder, sure she’d fall and crack her skull open.

  Michael looked at her, the shelves, and back again before shrugging. Lacing his fingers together, he formed a basket for her foot and stooped.

  Bracing her hands on one of the shelves and the other on his shoulder, she stuck a foot in his hand and pushed off the ground. He hoisted her up. With her arms folded on the topmost shelf, she sneezed violently at the cloud of dust she kicked up.

  “Hang tight,” Michael said, and next thing she knew, he’d gotten underneath her, positioning her to sit on his shoulders as he wrapped his arms around her shins.

  Now on his shoulders, she had a better view. Her cell phone light bounced erratically as Michael adjusted his hold on her. With one hand holding her phone, the other poked and prodded at the shelf and bookcase backing. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  “I think it was the other one,” Mindy said, watching them as she chewed nervously on a thumbnail.

  Michael shuffled sideways.

  Riley poked and prodded this shelf’s backing, too. Moments away from giving up, her fingertips grazed a small, splintered hole. A piece of what might have been a nail or a wire had been poking out, but when her finger touched it, it fell away. A muted scrape and clang reverberated from the other side.

  Riley looked down; Michael looked up. They wore identical wide-eyed expressions.

  “Oh hell,” said Mindy.

  “I need something to smash through this,” Riley said, shoving at the bookcase backing with the heel of her palm. It gave a little, but not much.

  Getting Riley back on her feet wasn’t remotely graceful, but the second she was on solid ground again, they split off to find any blunt object they could. All three settled on the thick metal candleholders decorating the various surfaces, tossing the candles aside.

  Resting their phones on the shelves, giving them enough clearance so the light wasn’t blocked, they started hacking away. The first hit against the wood with the metal candleholder reverberated painfully in Riley’s elbow. The back of the bookshelf shifted a little.

  They took turns trying to smash through the same area. Riley, Mindy, Michael. Riley, Mindy, Michael.

  After several more hits, the wood started to splinter. Riley turned and gave it a couple of sidekicks, using the force of her heel. One kick, two—and her shoe went through. Those aerobic kickboxing classes she used to take had just paid for themselves.

  They smashed through the broken wood even further with their candleholders until there was a hole big enough for one of them to crawl through. The space was about four feet off the ground, in one of the middle shelves.

  Though it would be a tight squeeze, either Mindy or Riley would fit through.

  “Sorry, but that’s a solid fuck no from me,” Mindy said, thumbnail wedged between her teeth again.

  “Dammit,” Riley muttered.

  “I’ll be right here,” Michael said. “There’s gotta be a latch or something on the other side.”

  Grabbing her phone, Riley bent down and shone the light inside the opening. If this were a scary movie, that would be the exact moment a disease-ridden zombie appeared in the hole to scare the shit out of her. But she couldn’t see much of anything and heard even less.

  “Dammit,” she said again, shoving her phone into her pocket.

  Gingerly climbing onto the third shelf, sure the wood wouldn’t be able to hold her weight, she held her breath. So far, so good. Holding onto the lip of the shelf above her, she inched toward the hole so her feet faced it and her back faced Michael and Mindy.

  In as fluid a motion as she could manage, she went feet-first through the hole, her shirt snagging on a jagged piece of wood as she went. Her boots hit solid, slightly uneven ground, and aside from the weak light of the two cells in the next room, it was pitch black. And smelled musty—like wet sawdust.

  Aside from a small tear in her top, and possibly scraping a little skin from her back, she was unscathed. And there still weren’t any zombies, so she figured luck was on her side. She assumed there were no zombies, anyway. She couldn’t see a damn thing.

  Fishing her phone out of her pocket, she turned on her flashlight again and turned to face the bookshelf. A quick scan revealed a latch, like one you’d find on a gate, in the upper left corner, a pull wire hanging uselessly from it. The wire she’d inadvertently knocked loose with her finger.

  Luckily the latch was lower here than on the other side. The base of the bookcase rested on a pair of wheels, one askew. A handle sat about chest height.

  Since releasing the latch meant pulling the wire up, she jumped to knock the top of the latch loose with the tips of her fingers. She miraculously got it after a handful of jumps, sweat beading on her forehead. She gave the handle a pull, but the wonky wheel kept it from moving. Poking her head through the gaping hole, Riley said, “It swings toward me, but one of the wheels is busted. Push as hard as you guys can when I tell you.”

  “Got it!” said Michael.

  Riley returned to the wonky wheel, and with a combination of pulling up on the case’s frame and kicking the wheel back into alignment, was able to get it semi-straight. “Push!”

  The case jerked toward her and she barely got her fingers out of the way in time. Hurrying to her feet, she grabbed hold of the handle and pulled the door toward her while Michael and Mindy heaved from the other side. A horrible scraping sounded followed by a thud—Riley was ninety-eight-percent sure the wheel had fallen off—but they’d opened it enough that they could squeeze through.

  Riley swept her light over their handiwork and found the bookshelf-door resting at an awkward angle, the wheel lying a few inches away.

  “Think we’re gonna have to pay for that?” Michael asked.

  With a snort, Riley swung her light the other direction. They stood in a crude hallway, the walls made of what looked like nothing more than packed earth, the air damp and musty. A faint sound of dripping water would have really tied the whole creepy vibe together, but it was silent.

  Riley looped her arm through Mindy’s. “You’re doing great.”

  “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

  They walked for about a minute, flashlights up, then the path veered left, where they quickly came across a white, rusting metal door. It had a spinning handle in the middle like a submarine door or an old-time bank vault.

  “No way there’s anything good in here, right?” Michael asked.

  “Probably not.”

  Plus, Orin had followed them, waiting to see where he’d led them.

  The moment Riley reached out to touch the handle, she was assaulted by images. Orin lumbering down the hallway with a black trash bag hung over his shoulder, a smile on his face like a perverse Santa Claus. Another of him with a young Francis by his side, the pair pushing a stretcher with a body bag on it.

  Riley reeled back, removing her hand.

  “Hey,” Michael said. “What happened?”

  Shaking her head, heart racing, she said, “Can you open it?”

  Mindy shifted from foot to foot in Riley’s peripheral vision. Like a little kid who needed to pee. Like a nervous animal getting ready to bolt to safety.

  Michael took hold of the handle with hi
s hands at two and eight and turned. The lock disengaged with a long, grinding metal shriek that made the hair on Riley’s arms stand up. Shoving the door open, they were hit with another wave of musty, stale air and something else. Something faint, but sickly.

  It was dark in here too—the room aptly named—and they crept over the slightly raised threshold. Riley was scared to lift her flashlight beam and see what was in here. But she didn’t need to, because seconds later, the room flooded with light.

  Michael had found a switch, power still running to the hidden room.

  Riley and Mindy both let out muffled screams; Mindy clamped a hand over her mouth. Michael unleashed a string of colorful curses.

  The cellar-sized room’s back wall—the one across from them—had a freestanding set of shelves, and next to it sat what looked like a giant refrigerator with drawers. Either of the side walls had long, thin tables pushed against them.

  Riley couldn’t keep her gaze from the shelves for long. The top two rows were stuffed with books and papers. And below that sat row after row of jars filled with floating body parts and organs. A small one with a pair of eyes, medium-sized ones with severed feet and hands, and even two larger ones with heads. One was missing its eyes and stared at Riley from across the room with empty sockets. There were jars of brains, hearts, and the snake-like coil of intestines. Dried bones, and what Riley could only guess were muscles and dried tissues, sat in neat little rows before carefully written tags.

  Riley swayed on her feet.

  Mindy stumbled back and grabbed hold of the wall, head leaned out of the dark room. She emptied the contents of her stomach onto the floor. Then she turned and slid to the ground, back to the wall, knees to her chest, head in her hands. Riley thought she could hear her muttering to herself again, the other woman’s eyes screwed tightly shut.

  There was no drain in the floor here beneath the steel tables. And that was because, Riley figured, once the girls had been moved in here, they’d long since been killed and drained of any fluids. This was a room Mindy had been lucky enough to escape.

  She was an asshole for agreeing to let Mindy come with her. This surely would traumatize her further. How had she let her see this? She needed to grab Mindy and Michael and get the hell out of here now. But she couldn’t look away from Orin’s “work.”

  On one of the thin tables lay yet more books held in place by bookends, loose papers sticking out at odd angles. More tomes littered the space, including biographies of John Hunter. An open sketchbook with a partially drawn bone sat beside the bone in question.

  Riley inched towards the table, eyeing the spines of the leather-bound journals. Names were written vertically in black marker. Names she didn’t recognize from reports. Kristy, Maddie, Paula.

  And one for Hank. Riley grabbed it and flipped it open. Orin’s handwriting was small, neat, and in all caps. The first page listed Hank’s incorrect name, the day he’d been taken, and a description of him both physically and emotionally. Realizing her fingerprints were now all over it, Riley wiped the cover with the long sleeves of her shirt—Crap, had she just wiped off other fingerprints as well?—and returned the journal.

  On the other table were more dried bones and tissues.

  And, on the middle tables, rested two fully intact skeletons. One skeleton had brown bones, as if they’d been painted with furniture varnish. The other had clean white bones.

  Riley eyed the steel locker in the corner, reminded of the metal drawers in morgues she’d seen on TV. But she knew those drawers had never held flesh-covered specimens.

  She crept past the laid-out skeletons and the table covered in bones and dried tissues. Something told her she knew what was in the drawers, but she needed to see it anyway.

  Mindy was still on the floor, head in her hands as she employed deep breathing exercises. Michael stood just inside the doorway, silent and watching—like Orin.

  There were four drawers, the fourth one at eye-height. A jar with a severed hand floating in a murky brown liquid sat atop the bank of drawers, forever waving at her. Her stomach churned.

  Taking a deep breath, she pulled her sleeve over her hand and then took hold of the handle. Pulling the handle down, she released the latch, then pulled it toward her, sliding the drawer out. She took several steps back as the preserved skeleton came into view. A choked sob vibrated out of her throat when, by the skull, she saw the neatly folded brown shirt, Scooby Doo’s floppy ear standing at attention as if in greeting.

  “Hey, Pete,” Riley whispered.

  She stared at him—what was left of him—for a few moments before trundling the drawer closed and pulling out the next. A skeleton with a string bracelet lying beside the skull, the name Maddie spelled out in individual painted beads. Drawer three had a Mickey Mouse watch by where a skull should have been, the hands—Mickey’s arms—stuck at 1:33.

  Rattling the drawer closed, she opened the last, finding it empty.

  Tears in her eyes, she turned to the skeletons on the tables. She hadn’t noticed it before, but items lay by both of their heads, too. The one closest to her had a small ring with a red gem in the middle. The other had a silver ring circled in little squares of turquoise, strung on a silver chain.

  Riley just stood there in a daze, not really looking at anything, fighting the urge to collapse. She’d hoped she’d find Pete. She had no idea she’d find four others.

  Orin hadn’t killed five girls. He’d killed nine and one boy. Ten victims.

  The police only knew about half. Five families with no closure.

  Her chest ached.

  Mindy silently cried now, shoulders shaking, arms wrapped around her middle as if trying to hold herself together. Riley wanted to go to her, to comfort her, but she felt numb. Helpless.

  Michael moved toward her. When she looked at him, his skin had paled. “Five in all?”

  Riley nodded. The back of her throat hurt from how hard she tried not to cry.

  “And Pete?”

  Riley nodded again.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  But before Riley could come up with the suggestion, a loud scrape made all three of them jump. It startled Mindy out of her tears.

  Jesus! She’d half forgotten what she’d been doing before she found this room of horrors. Why she’d been here in the first place.

  It had to be Detective Howard. How long had they been down here?

  The time on her phone said it was nearing five. Had it really been forty-five minutes since they’d arrived?

  “I know you’re down here, Riley!”

  Michael and Riley’s attention snapped to one another.

  Mindy sucked in a breath. “Holy. Shit. That’s not the cop.” Then her breath started coming in short, quick pants. Her hands shook. Her eyes darted this way and that.

  Full-blown panic attack.

  Riley darted over grabbed hold of her hands. “Mindy.” No response. “Mindy!” she hissed.

  The other woman’s gaze focused on her.

  “I need you to breathe, okay?” Riley said.

  “How the hell is he here? How did he know we’d be here?” Mindy asked, her voice nearing shrill. “Where the hell is Detective Howard?”

  “Shit,” whispered Michael.

  Francis’ voice had sounded far away, carried to them by the echo off the hallway’s walls.

  Riley turned to Michael. “Hide.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There’s no way to know who he thinks is here with me, if anyone,” she said. “He might think we got separated or something. But you’ve got a better chance of ambushing him than either of us do. What if he’s armed? Hopefully Howard got delayed somehow and he’s still on the way.”

  “Riley,” Michael said. “I’m never going to fucking forgive myself if something happens to you.”

  “Same,” she said. “Now hide.”

  “What about me?” Mindy hinged forward, hands on her hips and head bent toward her knees. “I can’t do this.”r />
  “What do you think you’re doing down there, Riley?” His voice was closer now—too close.

  “Hide,” she snapped at Michael.

  Michael cursed again, then scrambled for a place. He ran around like a chicken with his head cut off for a moment, then scurried behind the still-open door. Getting the tips of his shoes onto the ledge of the door so his feet wouldn’t show, he held onto the crank handle in the middle. Riley ran over and pushed it until Michael’s back was against the wall. If he stayed wedged into the corner made by the door and the wall, he’d be out of sight if no one looked too closely.

  Riley grabbed hold of Mindy’s hand and then scurried to the other side of the room and hid behind one of the steel tables. She yanked Mindy down next to her. All Francis would have to do was look under it, but it gave her a mild sense of safety.

  Heart hammering so hard she could hear it, she held fast to a table leg on one side of her, and Mindy’s sweaty hand with the other. What the hell were they going to do? What had happened to Howard? She felt the gaze of the floating heads behind her, of the detached eyes trapped in formalin.

  She stared through the open door and down the short hallway. His footsteps echoed closer. It was only a matter of seconds before Francis appeared.

  One, two, three, fo—and there he was. All swagger and confidence. He didn’t appear to be covered in blood, but his white shirt and one cheek were smeared with dirt, his hair mussed. God, Riley hoped Detective Howard was all right.

  Francis only slowed his swaggering pace once he reached the door of the dark room. For a moment, Riley feared he’d somehow seen Michael. For ten solid seconds, nothing happened. Riley squeezed Mindy’s palm so hard, she was surprised she didn’t break her hand.

  Maybe he would turn away. Maybe he’d think he was too late. But the pile of Mindy’s sick was puddled just outside the door.