Gretchen

by Shannon Kirk

  I left my clothes in Gretchen’s room. I’m in her white mini nightgown. No shoes. My pendant bangs on my chest.

  I’m running down the dirt road to our rental ranch. The wind howls around, in and out, up and over the blueberry-holly hill between Gretchen’s and the low, long shed, the sounds morphing into blooms of screaming, as if each blueberry bush is a blowhole, exhaling agony inhaled through the mouths of the holly mounds. The hill is the earth in death throes, dying.

  When I reach the parking space between our ranch and the long, low shed, I see the Volvo is still here and my bike and helmet are dumped on the ground. Meaning Mom hasn’t left to grab a stash of cash in Connecticut yet. This may be a good sign. Maybe she’ll listen.

  The chains are back on the long, low shed, and I’m not delusional. I’m not seeing things because I’m emotional. I know for sure they were not there when I got home.

  Everything is all wrong, and the wind is raking so hard through the cattails, I imagine a machine speed-grating aluminum foil. My hair whips in my eyes and mouth.

  I find the door locked, so I kick the brick by the door where we hide the spare key. I enter the red-and-turquoise kitchen, which is darkened but for the pin lights on the stove hood.

  Is Mom sleeping?

  There are no sounds inside this house, but at least here I can hear the whipping wind, unlike inside Gretchen’s airtight, soundproof brick sarcophagus. I’m barely dressed, and my bare feet track dirt through the kitchen. Mom’s not sitting in the dark on either of the red love seats. All the fun lights are off. I head down the hall toward Mom’s bedroom, and Allen races under my legs, startling me, making me trip.

  “Allen,” I hiss-whisper as I catch my balance by palming a hall wall.

  I turn to Mom’s room to find the door open, a small lamp by the chair in the corner on, her bed made, and no one here. The key to the metal box is on top of her dresser. Every article of clothing of hers is packed in the open suitcase on top of the bed; her closet door is open to show it’s been emptied. Our two boxes of keepsakes are packed and stacked on the bed. The metal box is on top of one of them.

  Mom is never separated from the key to this metal box. She never leaves the box out in the open. Where is she?

  I race through the house to my bedroom. No Mom. She’s not in the kitchen. Not in the dining room. Not inexplicably crouched between the row of potted plants. Not in the living room. Not in either of the white-tiled bathrooms. She’s not in any of the closets. And she didn’t hide herself in the hipster-antique armoire. I look out the front door toward the long, low shed, which is dark and shut and still chain locked. Nobody’s out there. She’s not pacing the parking area. Not stalking around the cattails, which whip against each other and the lime snake-grass like the patch is in a melee of a gang-on-gang sword fight. Mom’s not waiting in the brown Volvo. I race back to her bedroom.

  Next to the metal-box key on the dresser is her burner phone. I realize I left mine in my pants pocket up at Gretchen’s. Mom vanished. Left her phone and the key and the box.

  I think my heart is going to explode.

  I grab the key and the metal box. Everything is wrong: Mom’s missing, Gretchen says she knows who I am, and the damn shed was unlocked, now locked. I pop the lock on the box and lose my balance when I see the contents. I’ve stumbled backward to the chair in the corner and fallen to sitting. The open metal box is on my lap.

  There’s no cash in this metal box. None at all.

  What I see are papers, lumped up as if covering bulky items.

  I unfold the first paper: a birth certificate for a baby girl, born March 16, 2004. My fake papers put my birthday at March 26, 2004. The baby’s name is Laura Bianchi. The mother’s name is Gretchen Bianchi. The father’s name is Paul Trapmore. Is my real name Laura Bianchi? I thought my birth father’s name was Foulin, not Trapmore. And, and, and, oh my God, Gretchen. The mother’s name is listed as Gretchen. This is why Mom freaked out. Liar.

  Under the birth certificate is a newspaper clipping. The headline says, Two-Year-Old Kidnapped from Bing’s Superstore. There’s a grainy security photo of a person in a hat and a mustache. I push past all the other folded papers and newspaper clippings in the box because I feel lumpy, nonpaper objects at the bottom. Sure enough, I pick out a fake mustache and a squished baseball cap tightened into a roll, the bill crushed and held rolled by several rubber bands. I remove all the rubber bands, expand the hat, and hold the bill. In comparing this hat to the one in the security picture in the newspaper, although the picture is blurry and features undefined, they are the same. The same exact hat. The same embroidered B on the cap. The caption on the picture says, If you have seen a person matching this image, please contact Carmel Police Department at 1-800-555-1533. I scan the article for details. The mother, Gretchen Bianchi, was shopping with her two-year-old daughter, Laura Bianchi, when a man or woman in disguise snatched Laura. There’s another color picture in the article, and this picture is high-def. The caption says the woman is the mother, Gretchen Bianchi, like on the birth certificate.

  Gretchen Bianchi has violet eyes.

  The baby, Laura, has violet eyes, the article says.

  Gretchen Bianchi has long black hair.

  Gretchen Bianchi is tall.

  Gretchen Bianchi looks like me.

  I look like Gretchen Bianchi.

  Gretchen Bianchi is my mother.

  Susan Smith, the woman I know as Mom, has brown hair. She always said I look like my birth father.

  Who is the woman I call Mom?

  Who is the woman I call Mom?

  I clutch the box to my chest, suck in all the boiling air, close my eyes, bend at the waist, and fight through a panic so fierce, the pressure might pop my arms off at the rotator cuffs. My face is fire hot, and I’m sure I’m full of so many mind hives, my skin will melt off my skull.

  Still clutching the metal box as if I cradle my own actual head, I race out of the house, down the dirt driveway, through Bottle Brush Forest, and to the country road. My bare feet slam onto pebbles, and I’m sure I’m cutting them. But I don’t slow. I don’t stop. I’m wearing just this white nightgown. I’m immune to whatever chaos the wind is throwing, because I am chaos itself.

  I’m on the pitch-black country road now. A thick forest surrounds me on both sides of the windy road, but I move on. I move fast. I ignore howls of wind through the trunks, the sounds racing in the trees beside me. I ignore the scraping and scratching I’m sure I hear, screechy animals keening louder than the wind, so they can’t be real. They’re not real. They could be real, though; they could be screaming fisher cats, could be a hungry mountain lion, could be a pack of coyotes. Could be a nursing cub and a growling mother bear. Could be Gretchen, racing like a beast in the woods, driving a motorized scroll saw, aiming to pin me on the flat plate and cut me into a human puzzle. Could be a whole team of serial killers and rapists. All of them. All of nature and all of evil, running beside, astride, behind, everywhere around me in the dark forest.

  The road dips, and I’m tripping, I’m running downhill so fast. I don’t slow. Soon I’ll have to use this momentum to hurl my body up the coming hill. I can’t see a thing in front of me. Can’t hear anything but whooshing wind and screeching and scratching. I know which way to go by the feel of tar on the soles of my feet and the momentum of going down. Down is the correct way. Soon I should be heading up. Up the hill, which will lead to a view of the village.

  Where am I going?

  I’m racing to the police station. Go to the police. I didn’t take time to dress or put on shoes or pop on the bike. I left Mom’s cell on the dresser. I left whose cell on the dresser?

  Who the hell am I?

  What am I clutching? I’m clutching a metal box of lies.

  Still on the downward part of the country road, that scrabbling in the woods to the right is not only getting louder, but is morphing, I think, maybe, into a recognizable, single sound, and not just a cacophony of night noise in high wi
nd.

  But it is so nasty dark, the wind hissing loud and wild, pricking hair in my eyes, and my emotions so insanely untethered, my senses are scattered. I can see nothing, and I hear no individual sound in singularity.

  And yet.

  This one single noise in the woods will not be denied. It’s busting through whatever environmental mental soup I’m in and is gaining closer, racing through the trees. Snapping sticks while shouting, “Lucy,” the noise rolls to me in a scream-groan-crackle.

  And now that the shouting is distinct above the howl and hiss of wind, I see a pinprick of light bouncing, extinguishing behind trunks, returning, and bouncing more. Whatever the light is, it is affixed to whatever is racing through the woods and toward me, scream-groaning, “Lucy!” as if pulling my name from a deep, scarred throat.

  The scream is malevolent, bloodcurdling, and guttural. It is not bellowed in caution or fear for me. The scream is a mad ache, murderous, one meant to stop me from leaving at all costs. I imagine spit accompanies each utterance of my name from this frothing mouth in the woods. A half-formed demon.

  My body moves before my brain accepts danger. I’m hop-skipping to a backward run.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Whatever concocted fears of being alone in the dark, on a forested country road, I may have engineered in sane times have come true in this night of total insanity. Somehow I’ve fallen into an evil black hole. The only thing I see is a pinprick of light that moves along with a racing demon, who aches out my name as if my name is an eternal pain.

  Whoever is screaming my name, whatever is screaming my name, could kill me, drag my corpse to the gangly pines, and feast upon me there, because there are no streetlights, and nobody’s on this country road except me. My bare feet are covered in sticky pine needles, and several pebbles jam my toes. Even if the wind wouldn’t drown out my screaming, there are no homes close enough to hear. Maybe the demon wishes to frighten me. Maybe the demon wishes to save me. Steal me. Hurt me. Kidnap me. Kill me. I’m running backward. My bare feet burn.

  The demon with the light breaks through the line of forest on the right, and as it is lit sideways to me, I watch it scamper to the uphill portion of the road. But because it is just far enough away, I can’t make out the person wearing the light. The light goes out. I hear running toward me in total dark.

  Skip-stepping backward up the hill I just came down, my feet slam into rocks; I’m sure my soles bleed. I’m too frightened to turn and run properly, too frightened to place my back to whoever comes my way.

  I’m a slow-frozen, frightened rabbit; this person is an unflinching predator.

  I stumble when the person nears enough I hear her breathe.

  The light flicks back on, and I fall on my ass, but I clutch the damn metal box to my chest with one crooked arm like losing it would be to lose my own head. My protection of this box makes my fall that much worse, because I’ve got only one hand to brace myself.

  Lording over me is Gretchen in a headlamp. She’s exhaling through an open mouth, dragging phlegm and a dark hiss as she does. If she had saber teeth, I’d be punctured to death for sure. The bruised bags under her eyes are horrible shadows on her near-translucent face, given the bright light of her headlamp. I’m sure her pupils are pools of blood, she’s so worked up in a rage.

  “Lucy, stop! Why would you run away? Why would you steal my nightgown? Why would you leave while I’m making you a surprise in my surprise room for you? Why?” Her tone is hysterical, her voice so hoarse and so full of bitter hatred, and her body shaking so uncontrolled, I honestly think her insides are burning.

  I’m crab-crawling with three limbs backward away from her, still clutching the box.

  “Why would you leave me? Why would you run from your friend, Lucy?” Spit does indeed fly from her mouth when she groans out my name. “Stop!”

  But I don’t stop, I keep half crawling. I don’t have the time it would take to stand before her, because now I notice, she’s holding a long, white stick. Or is it a bone? A leg bone? Is she raising it so as to clobber me? I can’t tell precisely what this object is because she settles it behind her back as she walks in a lean over me; I’m still crawling backward on the road.

  “What’s in the box, Lucy? Is that why you ran? I’m not an idiot. Does it hold who you are? You didn’t need a box to tell you. I searched for ‘violet eyes and lost girl’ the first night I went to your window. I’ve always known.”

  I stop.

  I swipe-kick at one of her scrawny ankles so she trips. She drops whatever long stick, or bone, was in her hands. It clatters to the ground and into the dark.

  While I stand, she picks up her weapon—I’m sure a weapon—and races into my space. I tower over her. Her headlamp shines in my eyes.

  “You knew?” I ask, bewildered. “You didn’t tell me? Didn’t call the cops?”

  “You’re an idiot. You really never looked, did you? You could have always known.”

  “You kept me to yourself. You could have helped me.”

  “I am helping you. You need to come back to my house now. There’s things for you to see. I am your friend, Lucy. I am your only friend.”

  “You strapped on a headlamp and ran through the woods to stop me, Gretchen? Screaming like a psycho to scare me.”

  She closes her eyes and shakes her head, mouthing, “Psycho, psycho, psycho. Gretchen Sabin is a psycho. Psycho.” It’s as if she’s reliving a taunt by swallowing the taunt, over and over. She slits her eyes open and, tapping her headlamp, says, “How else would you move through the forest at night, Lucy? Huh? I told you. There’s things for you to see. We can go back the way I came. Remember? The logging road that leads to the hermit’s house? There’s other forest paths to other surprises. And in my house, there’s a surprise for you there too.”

  I’m walking backward again. And I think I must be near the turnoff to the ranch, near Bottle Brush Forest, when she raises the stick-bone, and, at the same time, a car appears from the direction of the village. Its headlights illuminate its distinctive shape, a shape familiar to me. I jump up and down and wave my one free hand.

  “Here, here,” I’m yelling.

  I may have taken a lifetime to look inside this damned metal box for truth, but I know enough to take an escape hatch the second it appears. Because I know if I don’t fast-grab this chance to leave, I’ll vanish for good. Gretchen’s eyes are firecrackers, her lips are wet with spit, and a low growl gurgles from her throat.

  She lowers the stick-bone, shuts off her headlamp.

  “You’ll be back, Lucy. What about your precious cat, Allen?” Gretchen says as I feel her whisk past me in the dark and run up the dirt turnoff through Bottle Brush Forest.

  The familiar car, a tiny red Toyota truck with a turkey on top, is gaining on me. It skids to a stop on the other side of the road. The door opens. And my big, tall savior steps out.

  “Lucy, what the hell is going on?” Dali asks.

  I’m not going to the cops. The only thing I know is how to run. I want the whole world to disappear away from me. And Dali will keep my secret. He’s honor bound.

  PART II

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MOTHER

  Gretchen Bianchi, that’s who she is, and that’s who she reminds herself she is every dawn as she push-ups and knee-bends and planks through her first daily routine. Her sister Carly calls her Maggot and Magpie and Mag, so she thinks of herself as those names too. But her name is Gretchen Bianchi. Gretchen Bianchi. And she’s been searching for her precious daughter ever since that monster took her thirteen years ago from the baby-food aisle at Bing’s Superstore. Hasn’t seen her since. Who took her? is a question she asks herself a thousand times a day. Who did Paul sell details to, to steal her? Who? Who on the dark web bought those details?

  Ever since bankers turned the Triple C into an upscale, year-round resort for people of all ages, added the luxury hotel as well, Mag has served as second-in-command at the Activity Center—in t
he summers only—supporting the lead instructors. She socks away her summer pay to use as gas money for her beast camper so as to drive and search for her baby girl the other nine months of the year. It would be easier to tell her four sisters, her special Carly, this is where she is each summer, but she can’t bear to hear their arguments that she should return to them. Rational arguments that she should stop her search. No. Never.

  Cord is his name, and he’s the master archer. A seventy-three-year-old marine and law-enforcement veteran with hearing loss. Cord had started as the recreation director in his early-fifties retirement when the Triple C was a girls’ camp, so Mag has known him forever. He’s the same old Cord who bounced Paul out of the camp with “stern warnings.” The VA outfitted him with state-of-the-art hearing aids, twin Cs that cuff each ear and match his thin, but still-present, sandy hair. Mag loves working with Cord most out of all the marine veterans.

  At the end of this last June, Cord waited for Mag at the mouth of the Activity Center driveway, waving her on where to park her beast camper, which was her regular summer spot, right next to his one-room log cabin, the one he’s lived in all along. The hydrangea bush he planted over his beloved dog’s grave years ago was the height of a mature elephant and divided Mag’s camper and his cottage with a wall of blue floral pillows.

  This last June, Mag was a week late in starting her summer shift.

  She parked and jumped out to hug Cord. He’s been like a father to her all these years.

  “Where you been, lady girl? I was afraid you wouldn’t return this year,” Cord said, stepping back from the hug but holding her arms. He had to look up to see her face-to-face, her being all legs and torso. The man was still fit, tanned, and appeared twenty years younger. Mag looked forward to the steak frites and red wine they’d have for dinner, as that was how they always kicked off their summers.

  “Had some camper trouble in Colorado and, while I was waiting on a part, got mixed up in a course on clay impressioning and sculpting. Real cool. Sorry I’m late,” she said.