The Girl Who Wasn't There

by Nick Clausen

  Rebecca holds her breath to listen. Is it a trick? It has to be …

  She swallows hard and fights to hold back the tears. It’s hard; she’s never been this scared before, has never been in a situation like this. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, the pipe growing slippery with sweat from her palms.

  The dog gives off an impatient whimper and moves its head a little. A tiny bell hanging from the collar rings briefly as the dog looks at her like it’s trying to say: “Why are you just standing there? Come on out here. It’s okay.”

  Rebecca can’t take it anymore. She drops the pipe and makes a run for it, jumping out of the open doors. The dog pulls back in surprise as Rebecca comes flying out. But she never lands on the gravel. A long, slender arm shoots out and catches her midair.

  Rebecca squirms, kicks and punches. The creature wraps its arms around her, pinning her against its boney body in a crushing embrace, preventing her from moving. It’s way too strong; way stronger than a human. It can easily break every bone in Rebecca’s body. The stench from it fills her nose as she is carried towards the building. She screams into the cloth until she almost can’t breathe.

  The creature brings her inside what looks like a quite ordinary, yet very messy, home. The air is stale and stuffy, smelling heavily of dust and cigars.

  The creature carries her upstairs, down a hallway and into a tiny room with old, nicotine-brown wallpaper. Then, it throws her facedown onto a bed without any sheets.

  Before Rebecca can get up, a hand is placed right between her shoulder blades, pushing her down into the mattress, squeezing the air out of her lungs.

  As Rebecca struggles in panic to breathe through her nose, she vaguely notices her shoes and socks being pulled off. The pressure on her back eases off just enough for her to lift and turn her head sideways, heaving in long, whining breaths through her nostrils. Then a cold, strong hand locks around her ankle, and she hears a strange whistling noise which reminds her of the sound a hot stove gives off when you spray water droplets onto it.

  Then comes the pain.

  It’s sudden and sharp and shoots up through the ball of her foot.

  Rebecca screams and tries to kick, but the grip around her ankle is like iron, and the creature presses her back down as she tries to wriggle sideways.

  The pain in her foot eases slightly as the seething noise stops. Still keeping her pinned to the mattress, causing Rebecca to once again feel like she’s suffocating, the creature shifts its grip to the other foot, and then the noise and the pain come again, just as bad as before.

  Rebecca screams, cries, coughs and wretches all at once, fighting to get air in through her nose and trying not to throw up into the cloth, which would definitely cause her to choke.

  Then she’s abruptly turned onto her back.

  Rebecca flails her arms aimlessly, trying to tear at the creature, sensing only a blurry outline of it through teary eyes.

  It grabs both her wrists, seemingly with little effort, and pins them both atop her head. Rebecca squints her eyes, anticipating pain and tries to turn her face away, but the creature’s cold fingers clamp down on her chin and turns her head back to neutral. She tries again to scream, but manages only a muffled sigh, as the creature’s fingers go to her left eye and force it open. Through tears, Rebecca gets a glimpse of its greyish face soaring above her with the brown ceiling as a backdrop. Then she feels a drop of cold, thick liquid in her eye, blurring her vision even more. A second later, it begins to burn and sting. The creature moves to the other eye and repeats the procedure.

  During the whole operation, the creature is completely silent. Rebecca can’t even hear it breathing—only her own, panicked noises.

  Finally, it rolls her over on her side and lets go of her wrists. Rebecca’s hands immediately go to her stinging eyes, rubbing them, but that only makes it worse. She feels the creature fumble at the back of her neck. There’s a snap. The pressure around her head disappears, as Rebecca is able to spit out the soaked-through cloth and heave in deep, freeing breaths.

  She tries to open her eyes, but they burn too badly, so she simply scrambles to the far end of the bed, pushing up against the wall. Her feet are burning, and her eyes sting like mad. She forces herself to breathe quietly, allowing her to listen.

  The room is quiet. It sounds like the creature left.

  But no. Rebecca can smell it. The rotten stench and the sour odor of cigar. Only now, it’s mixed with the scent of something burned.

  She manages to pry open one eye a few millimeters, and she gets a glimpse of the ragged figure standing there, next to the bed, staring down at her, what looks like a lit cigar dangling from its lips.

  Rebecca knows the creature only just got started. She knows it’s only taking a short break from torturing her. Any second, it will resume.

  “Lea … leave me be,” she whimpers, her mouth still wooly from the cloth. “Please just … leave me be …”

  The creature doesn’t answer. Rebecca doesn’t know if it understands her; if it even talks. Then she recalls the small, whimpering voice of the girl from the car, and she trembles even more. She blinks and tries to look at the creature, but it’s painful having her eyes open.

  Then, it suddenly speaks. The voice is nothing like the one it used to lure Rebecca to the van. It’s low and rusty, like it’s very rarely used.

  “Welcome home, Alice,” it says.

  Rebecca sobs. “I … I want to go home … if … if you take me home … I promise not to tell anyone … I promise!”

  She halfway sees, halfway hears the creature turn around and walk out of the room, closing the door gently behind it.

  Rebecca doesn’t move for a while. The stench of burnt skin, smoke and fear is heavy in the air.

  She tells herself to get up and try to get out. But her eyes are still stinging, and the pain from under her feet has grown worse. She carefully feels the ball of her feet with her fingers and finds two small wounds on the soft skin. They’re no bigger than a penny, but they’re bleeding.

  While it happened, Rebecca thought the creature cut her with a knife, but now she can piece it together: the circular shape of the wounds, the smell of burnt skin, the cigar.

  It burned me.

  Rebecca begins to cry again, her thoughts going back to Andy. Did he really hear her knocking from inside the car? Yes, he must have. He turned his head to look straight at her.

  Even if Andy didn’t hear her, by now he must have realized Rebecca is missing. He probably already told Mom and Dad. They must be out looking for her. Did they call the police yet? If Andy heard her knocking inside the van, he will tell the police—maybe he even had time to see the license plate.

  Rebecca feels a faint hope at the thought.

  They’ll come for me. Andy heard me. They’ll come for me.

  She keeps repeating it in her head. It keeps all the scary thoughts somewhat a bay. She’s very exhausted from being terrified for so long. Now, as the immediate danger seems to be over, the fear drains away slowly, leaving Rebecca to drift off into something close to sleep.

  DAY 2

  Rebecca awakens abruptly and sits up with a jerk.

  What comes back to her first is the pain in her feet. It has turned into more of a hot, pulsating sensation, but it’s still painful. Her eyes, however, are a little better; they don’t burn or sting as much as they did before she drifted off. But her eyesight is still somewhat blurry, even after she has blinked several times and rubbed at her eyes.

  The dusty taste of the cloth is still in her mouth, and she can feel dried-up saliva on her cheeks. She’s terribly thirsty.

  She looks around the room. It seems to be a child’s room, most likely belonging to a girl, judging from the old-fashioned dolls on the shelf on the wall. Aside from the bed, which is placed under a slanted wall, the only pieces of furniture are a bookcase, a desk with a wooden chair, an old chest and a tall, built-in closet. The floor has a worn-down rug and the ceiling hangs very low, like
it’s about to fall.

  Rebecca has no idea how long she was out for. The room is dimmer now, outside the single window the sky is dark grey. She slept very deep with no dreams; in fact, it felt more like she was unconscious. For all she knows, she could have been gone for hours, perhaps even a whole day.

  She swings her legs over the edge of the bed and carefully puts her feet to the floor, immediately sparking darts of pain from the burn wounds.

  She manages to get up and wobbles to the window. The view is blurry, almost like the glass was wet from rain, but she can make out a large garden encircled by a tall, thick hedge, and on the other side are open, naked fields. No other houses are visible for as far as Rebecca can see. Out by the horizon lies a brownish belt, most likely a forest. For a hopeful moment, Rebecca thinks it might be the forest next to the park, but then she remembers how long they drove to get here; it must be another forest.

  She turns and staggers across the room to the door, her feet throbbing worse with every tentative step. She tries her best to only put weight on her heels, but it’s difficult walking like that. She reaches the door and tries the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it turns willingly.

  Rebecca peers down a long, dark and narrow hallway with no windows and three doors, all closed. At the end is the staircase leading down.

  She can neither see nor hear the creature; it could be lurking right behind any of the doors, or maybe at the bottom of the stairs. She breathes through her nose, sensing faintly the rotten smell in the air.

  Rebecca’s heart is beating in her chest. The hallway reminds her of a river in Africa, and she’s a gazelle who needs to cross it, not sure if a crocodile is waiting just below the surface, ready to strike.

  Rebecca bites her lip. Do I make a run for it? What if it catches me? What will it do to me?

  She decides not to risk it, not like this. She can’t run on her aching feet, which means she’ll have a very poor chance of outrunning the creature if it comes after her.

  So, she closes the door again and limps back over to the window. She’s on the second floor, and there’s a long way down to the lawn. Below the window is a tiled terrace. Rebecca is okay with heights, but jumping from this high up will undoubtedly result in something fracturing—if that happens, she’ll have zero chance of escaping.

  She moans and sits back down onto the bed, relieved to take the pressure off her feet which are really hurting now.

  Perhaps she needs to wait, just a little while. Only until her feet are better. Hopefully, her eyesight will get better, too.

  Besides, she’s sure help is on its way. The police will come. Andy heard her—she knows he did. He told them about the van. They’re probably working hard to trace it right now. Maybe they’re even on their way out here. She imagines three police cars racing down the highway, sirens blaring. It’s a very comforting image. She hopes they’ll shoot the creature dead once they get here.

  Rebecca’s gaze fall on the basket sitting on the desk. It’s about the size of a shoebox. She frowns.

  Was that here before? Or has the creature been in here while I slept?

  The thought gives her the shivers.

  She goes to look in the basket. There’s a packet of Band-Aids. A roll of gauze. A tube of cream and a tiny, brown bottle.

  Rebecca strains her eyes to read the inscriptions on the labels. There are some difficult words, and she needs to spell her way through them.

  Burn gel, it says on the tube.

  And Chlorhexidine – for disinfection, on the bottle.

  The basket is a first-aid kit, Rebecca realizes with surprise. The creature put it here, so she could tend to her wounds.

  Next to the basket is a big glass of water. Rebecca sniffs it, not really sure she can trust to drink it. Maybe the creature put poison in it.

  But why would it do that? If it wanted to kill her, it could just as easily come in here and do it itself. She would be powerless to stop it.

  So, she drinks the glass of water, gulping down every last drop. It washes away the dry taste in her mouth and feels wonderful in her throat.

  She brings the basket to the bed and uses first the chlorhexidine, then the burn gel on the wounds. The first one stings badly, but the second one soothes the pain again. She uses the gauze to bandage her feet.

  Afterwards, she lies back down, feeling a little better, staring up into the blurry ceiling. She recalls the image of the police cars and feels even better still.

  They’ll come for me soon. Andy heard me, and he told the police about the van. I just need to wait. They’ll be here any minute …

  Rebecca dozes off again.

  DAY 3

  The next time Rebecca awakens, the room is dimly lit by a faint daylight. She notices right away the pain in her feet is less intense, and as she blinks her eyes open, her sight is almost back to normal, only a small fuzziness around the edges.

  She lies still for a moment, listening. She had a dream that policemen were storming the house, shouting and shooting downstairs. The sound of the firing guns and the men’s voices were so real, she believes for a second it might not have been a dream at all. But the house is completely quiet, which probably means the police haven’t come yet.

  That’s okay, she tells herself. They will soon.

  She sits up and feels the bandages. One of them has come a little loose, and she spends a minute fixing it. As she works on the bandage, she becomes aware of a pleasant smell. She looks around the room, noticing she’s able to perceive a lot more details now, and she sees a plate on the desk. Which means the creature was in here again.

  Her stomach rumbles from hunger. It’s amazing, actually, that she can be hungry in a situation like this, but she is. So, she stands up carefully. It’s still painful, but with the help of the bandages she’s almost able to walk normally.

  She goes to the desk and sits down. Sniffs the plate. It’s mashed potatoes with small brown lumps, which look like bacon.

  She considers again if the creature might want to poison her, or maybe give her something which puts her back to sleep so it can do things to her. But again: why would it make the effort, when it can do what it wants to her already? Besides, there was that thing it said.

  “Welcome home.”

  And then some name, Rebecca can’t recall what it was. But apparently, the creature thinks Rebecca lives here now.

  “Well, it’s wrong,” Rebecca whispers to herself. “I’m going back very soon to my real home. The police will be here any minute now.”

  Meanwhile, she might as well eat something. She lifts the fork and takes a tiny bite. There is nothing alarming about the taste. She takes another bite, then another, and soon she’s shoveling down the meal.

  Once the plate is empty, she wipes her mouth with her sleeve, then gets up and goes to the door. Again she finds it unlocked.

  Rebecca feels a lot braver now, with her stomach full and her head well rested. Still, her heart rate immediately speeds up as she slips out into the hallway. She steps as carefully as she can, but the ancient, worm-eaten floorboards give off tired moans nonetheless. She flinches every time there’s a new stab of pain from the wounds. The hallway seems like it’s a mile long.

  Finally, she reaches the staircase, her mouth dry and her armpits clammy, and she halts for a moment, holding her breath and listening.

  Is that someone talking?

  It is. And it’s not the voice of the creature. It’s a man’s voice, deep and calm. Someone else is downstairs—maybe the police really have come after all!

  Rebecca feels her hope go up. She begins to descend the stairs one step at a time while grasping the greasy banister for support.

  She stops four steps from the bottom and crouches down. From here she can see a tiny kitchen bathed in a grey daylight. The stove is really old and greasy, and there seems to be no fridge. The counter is stuffed with plates, newspapers and garbage. But other than that, the kitchen is empty. Yet the voice of the man is still audible.
>
  Who’s talking?

  Rebecca spots the radio on the windowsill, and immediately, her spirits sink. No one has come for her. She’s still alone in the house with the creature. And what’s worse: she has no idea where it currently is.

  Only one door leads out from the kitchen, and it’s open. Rebecca can make out another dim hallway out there.

  She gets moving again. Her feet are hurting now, but she ignores the pain and pushes on, hoping to reach the front door and get out of the house before the creature shows up.

  Halfway through the kitchen, a subtle ringing makes Rebecca stop in her tracks. She turns to look. In the corner is an old wicker basket. The dog is looking up at her with a curious expression. She completely forgot about the dog. It’s a brown dachshund.

  “It’s okay,” Rebecca whispers, afraid the dog might bark to alarm the creature. “I just want to get out of here.”

  As though the dog understands her, it sighs, then rests its chin on the edge of the basket.

  Rebecca presses on. The hallway leads to several other rooms. One of them is a living room. Another is the scullery. At the sight of the front door, Rebecca’s heart jumps.

  She moves quickly, hardly sensing the painful jabs from the souls of her feet. She is just about to grab the knob, when something tells her not to. Instead, she looks down and sees a dog hatch at the bottom of the door. It’s too narrow for her to squeeze through, but she crouches down to have a look. With her hand, she flips up the hatch and peers outside, the cool, early evening air seeping in.

  She sees a section of the courtyard and one half of the garage, in which the yellow van is parked.

  Then the creature comes into view, and Rebecca almost screams.

  The figure trudges across the gravel on its long, thin legs, dressed in blue overalls. It has something which might be a pair of large hedge shears in one hand. It’s only a brief glimpse, then the creature is gone from view again. Rebecca can hear the crunching footsteps disappear out of earshot. She carefully closes the hatch again and goes into the living room.