Girls on Film

by Gregg Olsen

  He frowned. “You’re . . . ” He bent down, his eyes on the already noticeable bump of her abdomen, and his eyes brightened. “Courtney. You have something for me?.

  “Nothing,” she said, recoiling under his scrutiny. “Nothing for you”

  He smiled. His teeth shone white in the early evening and she remembered how he’d used them on her body; how he’d defiled her with his mouth while she was tied up, helpless, screaming in that quarry cavern that he’d turned into a kind of deranged bachelor pad. It had a bed. A lamp. It had a box of ropes, knives, needles, ink and wire.

  “Let’s see what’s in my toy box today,” he’d told her the first night he’d taken her.

  Courtney stood up, shivering on the cold, damp grass.

  “I promise I won’t make trouble,” she said. “Just leave me alone.

  I will never tell again. Just go”

  She didn’t want to mention the baby. If he was uncertain at all, she was not going to confirm her condition. When the baby was born, she told herself, she’d give it up for adoption, to an agency with the strictest confidentiality policy.

  A smile came to the monster’s lips and it took everything Courtney had to hold the contents of her stomach inside. She wanted to scream. She wanted to vomit. But she didn’t, of course. Because though she thought she could never love her baby, she knew that someone else could.

  And that someone else would never be her abductor.

  Her rapist.

  Her baby’s father.

  My father.

  I SIT IN SILENCE AS my mother pauses and more jagged pieces of the ragged puzzle that was our life until barely a week ago fall into place. I am still mad at her, but I find myself clinging to her, comforting her. There is so much to know and if these are to be our last hours together then I need to show her love.

  “How long before he comes back?” I ask, looking toward the steel door that holds us captive in this dark, scary place.

  “Tomorrow. When you were unconscious and he brought you in here he said he’d be back tomorrow. He left some sandwiches and some ice tea”

  “Don’t drink the ice tea,” I say, urgency rising in my voice. “Marie made it”

  “Who’s Marie?” Mom asks, obviously confused.

  “You don’t know about Marie?.

  She shakes her head.

  “His wife,” I say. “Alex Rader’s wife, Marie. I trusted her because she was in a wheelchair”

  A look overtakes my mother’s face. It is the kind of reaction that a kid makes when he looks up from a really hard math problem. The look that says something puzzling has finally been figured out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cash: None.

  Food: Two tunafish sandwiches.

  Shelter: Cave.

  Weapons: Rocks.

  Plan: Get ready.

  THE WOMAN IN THE WHEELCHAIR was struggling to get it up over the curb.

  Courtney had missed the bus at school and was making the long walk home. While waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change, she couldn’t help but notice the young woman in the wheelchair trying to get wherever she was going to.

  “Do you need a hand?” she asked. The woman looked over her shoulder and nodded. She is blond,

  pretty and only a few years older than Courtney. As Courtney got closer the woman in the chair started to cry. “This just isn’t right,” she said. “Let me help you.” The moment was awkward because the woman wouldn’t—o.

  couldn’t—stop crying.

  “I never should have imagined I could manage out here on my own,” she said between sobs. “It’s too hard. All of this”

  “I’m sorry,” Courtney said. She thought a moment and said something truthful and to the point. “Look, I don’t even know what to say here. I don’t know if I should say you’ll be all right or that you’ll get there or what? All I can think of is that I’m sorry”

  The woman looked up at her.

  “I appreciate that,” she said. “I’ve been in this chair for a while now and I’m still getting used to it. Sometimes I just need a little push”

  “I can do that,” Courtney said, gripping the back of the chair.

  “My car’s over there.” The woman indicated the far reaches of the parking lot. “I guess I can manage now”

  Courtney didn’t stop. She didn’t need to hurry home, and doing something nice for someone else was a big part of who she was.

  “That’s all right,” she said and the wheels glided over the asphalt toward a bronze-colored van parked by the dumpsters. “I don’t mind at all”

  For the rest of their time together, neither one said much more. Courtney had already exhausted any commentary about the weather and she certainly wasn’t about to bring up anything about the circumstances that led this young woman to being chair-bound.

  When she’d arranged the wheelchair next to the van, the woman instructed Courtney to go to the rear of the vehicle.

  “I have a lift in the back,” she said.

  Courtney nodded and, as she turned, a hand reached from behind and put something over her face.

  Then nothing. Just black. Just the beginning of a nightmare that would haunt her for her entire life, a nightmare that would make her give up everything she had. Her family. Her beloved sister. Her home. Her name. Everything would be gone. She would not be a doctor, like she’d hoped to be. She would not be anything but a figure among the shadows. She’d give up everything except her daughter.

  That was one thing she could never do.

  AS I LIE THERE IN the semidarkness with Mom, hearing her story, learning what it was that transformed her life, I want to know what awaits us. I want to ask her what exactly he did to her, as if there could be something worse than the rape that made me. I want to ask her why she decided to keep me, but I already know that. It is the same reason that propelled me to find her. My stepfather, my brother, neither of them had endured what we had those first years alone on the run. Hayden never knew any other life. Rolland loved Mom enough to try to save her. Hayden’s reality had never shifted. Rolland never wanted anything other than to protect Mom.

  But we both had known another life. My mom, definitely. Me, a sliver of one. We didn’t start to run until around my fourth birthday. I know from talking to Aunt Ginger that a play had been made for me at the hospital the day I was born. I understand that Alex Rader wanted a piece of me. Yet, we didn’t run straight away.

  “What happened to us?” I ask, an opening question that could lead to a torrent of responses. I want a response to something specific, but casting a wide net might get me something I don’t expect.

  Maybe even something I don’t really want to know.

  Her blue eyes lock on mine. She knows that her subterfuge hurt me and in her hesitation I see an opportunity to force her hand.

  “I love you, Mom,” I say. “But you should have trusted me. I always trusted you”

  “That isn’t fair,” she says. “You were a child. Any mother would have done the same thing”

  “Maybe, but what also isn’t fair is that I’ve never had a real friend in my life. I’ve never stayed overnight at any other girl’s house. I’ve never had a birthday party that included anyone but you. Then later, Rolland and Hayden. I never once knew what it was like to confide in someone other than you”

  She looks away into the darkness.

  I add more. “I never knew that I had an aunt named Ginger, but you did. You saw her as recently as Labor Day weekend last year. Don’t get me wrong. I love you. But you don’t have the right to tell me anything isn’t fair. Not ever again as long as we live. Which might not be much longer anyway”

  Tears stream down Mom’s face, but I don’t offer her any comfort this time. In a very real way, I feel better right now than I ever have. She might have done all that she did for the right reasons, but right reasons don’t necessarily mean the results were any good.

  “I don’t even know when my real birthday is because you’ve swit
ched it up so many times”

  “March seventeenth,” she says. “You’re sixteen”

  I’m way past really caring about that right now. I’m thinking of Hayden, Aunt Ginger and even Caleb, and worrying if I’ll ever see them again.

  “What happened to Bill Walters? What happened to the hero you’ve told me all these years was my biological father?.

  Now she’s really crying. I don’t comfort her. Not really. I’ve been through a lot the past few days. I know she has too, but part of me knows that the mystery of my life and how we lived will never be fully known to me. There isn’t enough time for that. I’m looking for broad brushstrokes now. I’ll dig in deeper, if I survive.

  If we survive.

  “Bill Walters never existed in your life. That’s why you have no memory of him”

  “But we had his picture on the TV in Minneapolis before we moved to wherever we lived next”

  “Iowa,” she says.

  “Whatever,” I snap back. “That’s not the point. The point is that you let me believe my dad was a war hero. You told me that Bill Walters was my dad. Do you know that I used to take his photograph into my room at night and put it under my pillow?.

  “Of course. I’m the one who moved it back to the TV in the morning, Rylee”

  I want to shut her down a little by telling her that I hate that particular name and that I’m mad that she always got prettier names when we moved. But I don’t. I know that would be petty and there will be time for that later. At least I hope so.

  “Who was he?” I ask. “I had his photo. The dog tags?.

  “He was Ginger’s husband. I got the photo and the tags from her. She gave me everything I needed to get out of Tacoma and start over”

  Aunt Ginger? Her husband.

  The tags. The photograph.

  Props.

  Just like my cat flyer.

  “I thought they were divorced,” I say. “I didn’t see his picture at her place. Just a bunch of us.” I glower a little in the dimming light.

  The generator is sputtering.

  Before Mom answers, I turn to a more practical subject.

  “Are we losing power?.

  She nods. “Yes. It will be dark in a few minutes. Let’s go over to the pen”

  “The pen?” I ask, the term making my skin crawl.

  “That’s what Alex calls the spot where we sleep”

  “You’re on a first name basis?.

  “I do what I have to. I got out of a place like this once. I intend to do it again”

  “We need to find a way out of here now,” I say. “That’s what we need to do. We don’t need to go to the pen”

  I get up and scan the walls, but they are solid granite. We’re trapped inside a mountain. My impulse is to scream for help but I know by the pressure on my ears that we are down deep. Soon we will be in the dark. And then he will come back. There will be nothing but blackness in between.

  “How did you get out that first time?.

  The generator is rumbling louder. Then it coughs to a stop. The place is dark and silent. Mom doesn’t say anything and I can’t hear her breathe.

  “Mom?.

  A hand reaches for me and I pull away even though my brain tells me she’s the only one here. Her hand swipes for me once more and I let her catch me. She takes my hand and we inch across the gravel floor toward the pen. Mom is crying. I can’t hear her, but I can feel the tremble and shudder of her silent tears.

  “How did you get out?” I repeat as she pulls me onto what feels like a mattress. It is itchy and smelly and I’ll never complain about the Best Western again. Her arms wrap around me and we sit there in the dark.

  Silence. What’s the matter with her? She needs to pull herself together. Now.

  I’m inches from her face, but I shout.

  “Talk to me, Mom!.

  Warm air leaks from her lips and she finally speaks.

  “Leanne,” she says. “Leanne got me out”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cash: None.

  Food: One tunafish sandwich.

  Shelter: Underground.

  Weapons: Rocks.

  Plan: Whatever it takes. Whatever it is.

  WHEN SHE FINALLY STOPS WEEPING, Mom tells me about the pen and how it was different when Alex Rader brought her to a similar place when she was sixteen. There was no generator, for one thing. There was also a partition dividing the space into two. It was so dark that the first day, after he had raped her and left her bound and gagged, it took her a while to feel the presence of another person.

  “I thought I was alone,” she says, unspooling the words slowly. “I thought that there was no way that what he was doing to me could be done to another human being. When I woke up I was sore in every place you could imagine, and one place that I didn’t expect. My shoulder. I thought that maybe I’d been injured when I tried to fight him off”

  “The tattoo,” I say.

  She doesn’t answer, but I imagine that she nods. Maybe she is even a little proud of me for figuring out that she and the other girls had tattoos.

  “There was no generator noise then. Just the dripping of a drainage pipe and the sound of someone whimpering through the partition. Alex was gone and I called over toward the noise. A moment later, there was an answer”

  “MY NAME IS LEANNE. HE’S going to kill us. I think he already killed a girl. He put me in her clothes”

  Courtney felt her own heart heaving in her aching chest.

  “My name is Courtney,” she said. “How long have you been here?.

  The girl was crying. “I don’t know. The days all run together. I want to go home. I don’t want to do this”

  Courtney didn’t either.

  “Are you tied up? Can you get free? He has me pinned down here”

  “Duct tape. He took it from over here when he brought you in”

  Courtney twisted her wrists until she felt the tape’s adhesive backing pull small hairs from her arms.

  “Yes, he’s taped my wrists,” she called back, her voice raw from her screams. “I think he’s taped my ankles too. I can’t lift my head up to see. I’m pinned down”

  Like a frog in Biology. Pinned. Waiting for the tip of the scalpel and the intrusion of steel into its fragile body. Her fragile body. He wasn’t going to cut her. But he was going to violate her over and over until there was nothing left of her. Her spirit, her body. All vanquished by his twisted desire.

  “He used a rope on me,” Leanne said. “I think I can get off this mattress and make it to you. Maybe we can help each other get out of here. I don’t want to die”

  “We’re not going to die,” Courtney said, not knowing if that was true.

  Leanne Delmont, just sixteen, slithered across the dirt of the floor like an injured animal. In the dimmest of light, her eyes were wide and full of panic. She inched herself up to Courtney’s side and tried to assess the situation.

  Their eyes met.

  “Yes, he taped you,” she says as she immediately and frantically tried to work the tape loose with her hands, which were bound by a nylon cord. She had more freedom of motion than Alex Rader’s newest captive, Courtney, and she gave it everything she had.

  “I don’t know,” she said as she struggled with the tape, her words choked with fear. “I can’t get it. It’s too tight”

  Courtney yelped into the semi-darkness.

  “I’m hurting you,” Leanne said, slowing a little, but still trying to find a way to undo or tear off the silvery duct tape. It was worse than trying to find the end of a roll of plastic wrap, a mundane thought that came to her in the midst of the horror at hand.

  Whatever pain Leanne thought she was inflicting was nothing compared with the ordeal Courtney had experienced with Alex Rader when he punched her in the face and threw himself on top of her, ripping her clothes, her body, with the force of a maniac.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Courtney lied. “Keep going”

  Leanne was in a frenzy as she
worked the tape with her fingertips, and then somehow managed to lean in and bite the binding with her teeth. Hot tears fell over Courtney, but she didn’t say another word. Leanne kept going until Courtney’s hands were free.

  In a flash, Courtney righted herself, quickly undoing the tape around her ankles.

  She was free.

  “Help me,” Leanne said.

  Courtney turned her attention to Leanne and began to struggle with the tightly-bound ropes that tied her wrists and her feet.

  “Who is he?.

  “A cop,” said Leanne. “He told me he was a police officer and that my parents had been in a terrible accident. I got in his car. I was so stupid. I didn’t think to ask him how he found me. Or how he knew my name. That was so stupid. He showed me his badge”

  Leanne had been beaten, raped, and humiliated in every way by a monster, yet she blamed herself.

  “It isn’t your fault,” Courtney said, as she managed to undo the binding ensnaring Leanne’s wrists. They were raw and bleeding and, for a second, until blood covered the gouges made by the rope, she thought she saw Leanne’s wrist bone.

  “He sat me in the front, the passenger seat. When the seatbelt didn’t work he told me that it was a little tricky and he reached over to help me. Then his hand went over my face. And then it went black”

  The sole source of light in the dark space was a battery-powered lantern. Courtney hurled herself toward it. She held the lantern in the air, noticing for the first time that Leanne was completely naked, bloodied and bruised.

  They had to get out.

  Now.

  “The only way out of here is through the door,” Leanne said.

  AS MOM TELLS THE STORY that I suspect she’s never told anyone before, I see her in new way. I already know that she is strong. I’ve never doubted that. I know that she loves me and Hayden with every fibre of her being. I know by the way she can barely say Rolland’s name—any of his names—that she is beyond heartbroken that he’s gone.

  Because she loved him.

  Us.

  Me.

  What I didn’t know until this moment is that what happened to Leanne Delmont haunts my mother’s every waking moment. I never knew about Leanne, of course. Yet, it seems that she was always there with Mom. I wonder how often we’d been sitting together while Leanne’s face came to my mother’s mind. Had it been during a scary movie when the boogieman rushes toward a screaming girl with a roaring chainsaw? Had it been at Christmas when she undid the twine and ribbons of a package that had been wrapped just for her.