One Kick: A Novel

by Chelsea Cain

  Bishop was already crossing the room to the closet. “That’s not right,” he said, again.

  He slid open the closet door and Kick heard the click of a chain light being pulled. She stepped beside him. The closet was double-wide and empty except for a few abandoned wire hangers. He gave her a sideways look and then stepped inside the closet, hunched under the clothing bar, and began running his hands over the closet’s back wall like he was trying to crack a safe. Kick did her own survey. It was a good drywall job, professional-looking, without lumps or cracks. A lot of attention to give the back of a closet. Bishop got tangled in the wire hangers and they jangled as he slid them away from him. He dropped to his hands and knees and started inspecting the line where the wall met the floor.

  “You won’t find it,” Kick said.

  “It’s here,” Bishop said, moving his hands over the carpet. “The blueprints show the room should be bigger. This closet—this whole wall—shouldn’t be here.”

  “It’s there,” Kick said. “But you won’t find it.”

  Bishop sat back on his haunches and looked at her.

  She dropped her backpack at her feet and tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “Do you want me to find it?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “If I find the box, we’re done. I fly home tonight on the fancy jet. And you find someone else to play Charlie’s Angels with.”

  Bishop stood up, wrestled with one of the wire hangers that got caught on his shirt, and then stepped out of the closet. Lilac carpet fuzz stuck to his jeans.

  “Deal?” Kick said.

  “Show me the box,” Bishop said simply.

  “Fine,” Kick said. She stepped past him into the closet and pulled the light chain. “I need dark,” she said, closing the louvered door behind her.

  The slats of the louvered door let in light from the office, so it wasn’t really dark, just shadowed, but that was fine. It wasn’t the dark Kick needed; it was the solitude.

  She approached the wall.

  Funny how stuff comes back to you.

  Sometimes, when they moved into a new house, the box was already there, and sometimes they had to build one, framing it out, wiring it, putting up drywall. Mel was handy. Sometimes he would let Kick help build the spring loading for the door while he built the mechanically controlled lock. You could do a lot with a tiny speaker, a gear reduction motor, some PVC pipe, a few suction cups, and an open-source prototyping platform. You could hide a door in plain sight.

  Kick put her hand in the lower right corner of the closet where the wall met the carpet and then walked her fingers up five steps and over to the left five steps.

  “Well?” Bishop asked through the louvered door.

  “Go away,” Kick said. She made a fist against the wall where her finger had been, and knocked.

  Shave and a haircut. One knock, followed by four quick knocks, followed by one knock.

  The back of the closet popped open an inch.

  That sound. She had forgotten the sound the doors made when the spring released.

  Kick gave the wall a push and it swung open.

  The louvered door started to rattle open behind her. She glanced over her shoulder at Bishop.

  Lit from behind, he was a faceless, dark shape.

  The edge of the bright rectangle of light touched Kick’s knee.

  She scrambled forward, through the door, into the box, slamming the trick panel shut behind her. She moved on her hands and knees in the dark, feeling ahead of her, until she found a corner to sit in.

  She could hear Bishop pounding and hollering her name on the other side of the wall. She didn’t respond. She heard the sound of the wire hangers being ripped from the clothing bar and thrown against a wall.

  Kick didn’t have a plan. Before, when she was a kid, she’d spent so much time in dark cubbies like these that she had learned to let go of time.

  She hugged her knees to her chest.

  The bleach smell was stronger in here, and there was some other smell, too, something more rancid. Kick could taste the stench, feel it settling in her lungs along with the dust and cobwebs. The walls weren’t framed out, so her back was pressed against an exposed two-by-four.

  “You’re contaminating evidence,” Bishop called. She could hear him knocking. Shave and a haircut. He’d figured out that much. He was working his way along the wall.

  There was always an override just inside the door. She just had to reach it and she could lock the chamber from the inside. The knock wouldn’t open the panel then.

  She crawled forward.

  Her socked toe caught on something in the dark. She cried out. With the nail torn off, the toe bed was so sensitive that any contact felt like a dropped anvil. She didn’t know what she’d hit. But it had felt hard. She went after it, thinking it might be the override.

  “Open the goddamn door!” Bishop hollered.

  “I’m not coming out,” Kick called, poking at the air with her foot. She got to stay in the box as long as she wanted. That was Mel’s rule. She didn’t have to come out until she wanted to.

  Her toe made contact with something again. She twisted around and reached for the spot with her hands. There was something there, on the floor. Too large to be the override lever. Her fingers touched plastic. She explored the surface, following it to the wall, against which it appeared to be propped. Thick plastic, and under it something cool to the touch, and solid. The plastic crinkled under her touch. Some places felt softer and gave when she pushed; others were hard. She gave it another nudge. . . .

  She knew an instant before it fell. Something shifted in the dark.

  She squawked and jumped out of the way. She felt the air move as it went by. The thing hit the floor with a sickening thunk and the floor vibrated.

  “What’s going on there?” Bishop called, a new urgency to his voice.

  Kick stayed frozen, trying to orient herself. Whatever was in there with her was big. The sound it made when it hit the floor, that solid thud, it sounded like meat.

  Bishop was swearing up a storm. Kick could hear him banging around on the other side of the wall, like he might put his elbow through the drywall.

  Kick eased her phone from her pocket, hit the “home” button with her thumb, and aimed the blue light of the screen toward the thing on the floor.

  She absorbed it in a series of mental snapshots, a head, a hip, the curve of a knee. The shape forming a word in Kick’s brain: body. The body was wrapped in Visqueen, and blood pooled underneath the plastic. The head was inches away from Kick’s toes, faceup, or more like the suggestion of a face, pale and lumpy, like unformed clay. Underneath the plastic Kick could see a blond swath of shoulder-length hair. There was something else, too, something packed around the lower part of the body. The phone was shaking, so it was hard to make out much in the jumpy blue light. Kick held the phone closer and trained the screen on the corpse’s face. Someone had scrawled capital letters in black Sharpie on top of the Visqueen over the thing’s forehead. Kick’s mouth silently made the word.

  “Boom.”

  Boom?

  “Do you smell that?” a small voice asked in the darkness.

  Kick spun the light around.

  The little girl was standing perfectly still. Barefoot, hair a long tangle of brown. Her skin was pale. Kick could tell it had been a long time since she’d been let out of the box.

  “Go away, Beth,” Kick hissed. “It’s not safe here.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Bishop called. “Is someone in there with you?”

  “You can’t stay here,” the girl said.

  Kick heard the soft boing of the panel’s spring mechanism again and turned her head. Bishop had done it. Light spilled into the box. They were never as nice lit up, just dirty glorified crawl spaces, hidey-holes. The girl was gone. The body
was still there.

  The stomp of Bishop’s feet vibrated the plywood flooring under her knees. And then he stopped. She glanced at him, his long neck, his stricken gaze fixed on the corpse, the scrawl across its face. Bishop wasn’t supposed to be in there.

  “Go away,” Kick said.

  Bishop squatted next to the thing, head turning back and forth, taking in every detail. Then he said, “Shit.” He pivoted and lunged at Kick.

  He caught her off guard and managed to get his hand around her elbow before she could react. Kick felt a stab of pain from her shoulder to her wrist as he stood, pulling her up roughly with him. He was dragging her back, out of the box. She clawed at his clamp-like grip on her arm, and managed to free his pinkie and bend it back as she pulled and twisted the joint. She got away, and tried to get back to the corner of the box. But he got her by the waist, his arms hooked around her hips. She tried to stamp on his feet, but without shoes she was at a disadvantage. He was grunting and swearing, hauling her toward the closet, out of the box. He was hurting her. She screamed and scratched at his arms, but he wouldn’t let go.

  He was saying something to her, in her ear, over and over again. He wrestled her through the secret door, back onto the lilac carpet. She tried to slam her heels into his knees, but couldn’t make contact. She was gulping air, adrenaline on overdrive. He didn’t understand. She couldn’t leave Beth. She was just a little girl. They couldn’t leave her alone in the dark with that thing. Kick’s socked heels bounced on the carpet as they cleared the closet threshhold and moved through the office.

  Kick struggled, but it was like her mind and body had gone out of sync. Bishop got one of his arms over hers so that he had her from behind by the waist and had her forearms pinned to her chest. Then he spun her around and lifted her off the ground.

  He never stopped moving, never missed a step. He had her out of the office and was carrying her down the hall. He sounded like an animal, straining and grunting.

  It occurred to her that he was going to kill her, like he’d killed the dog.

  She caught sight of the front door ahead. Teslas were made in America; if he put her in the trunk, all she had to do was find the emergency release lever. Bishop shifted his hold on her as he turned the doorknob and used a foot to throw open the door and they stepped outside and onto the stoop.

  A blast of heat hit them from behind and they were thrust forward, and for a moment Kick felt her body lifted from Bishop’s arms, and they were both sailing through the air, bathed in bright light. A deep, hollow sound reverberated behind them, deafening everything. Kick didn’t have time to correct her fall: she hit the dirt face-first, skidding several feet before stopping. Debris rained down on her, she didn’t know what. She covered her head with her hands and waited. She lifted her head slightly to see where Bishop had landed and saw him a few feet away on the singed grass. The house was ablaze in orange. Black smoke billowed into the gray sky. Even where she’d landed, thirty feet from the stoop, Kick could feel the heat from the fire.

  Boom.

  “Remember that smell?” Beth had asked.

  Sulfur.

  Sometimes Kick had helped Mel make the bombs.

  Bleach.

  They had used it every time they moved. Leave no trace, Mel would say. It was the way of the Comanche.

  Kick lifted herself painfully to her hands and knees, her eyes fixed on the inferno that now engulfed the house. Beth was still in there. She was still in the box. Kick had to save her. She rocked back onto her feet and tried to stand, but her limbs felt foreign and the ground kept moving out from under her. She slid forward and her face hit the mud. I’m going to lose consciousness now, she thought.

  8

  AFTER A WHILE, KIT got used to the dark. It was her own little world. She had her own sleeping bag, and a nightgown, and a hairbrush, and a bucket to do her business in. She knew the room with her hands, the rough wood, the heads of nails, the soft padding on the walls. The man who called her Beth came every day. Each day he took the bucket, and each day when he brought it back it smelled like bubble gum. When he was there, Kit was as still and quiet as a mouse.

  Sometimes he brought food. Peanut butter sandwiches. Oreos.

  Today, when he brought the bucket back, he turned on a light.

  The brightness almost knocked her over. She was a bug under a rock, scrambling for some kind of cover.

  “It’s okay,” the man said.

  She was wrapped in a little ball. She was a potato bug. She was a pebble.

  “Look,” he said, “I brought you cherries.”

  Kit looked up, trying to get her eyes used to the stinging light. The man was sitting on the floor, at the light’s center. He had already lied to her. He had not helped her find her dog. But now he was holding out a white bowl. He tipped it forward, and it was full of cherries, and she had been in the dark so long that the red was extra red and the white was extra white.

  “Look what else,” he said. He set the cherries down on the floor and pulled a rectangular board game from behind his back, and a book. The book had a drawing of rabbits on the cover. “It’s one of my favorites,” he said. “It’s called Watership Down. I’m going to read it to you.” Then he tapped the board game. “And I’m going to teach you how to play this game. It says ages eight and up on it, but you’re a smart girl, aren’t you, Beth?”

  “You said you’d find my dog,” Kit said.

  “Your dog is safe, Beth,” the man said. “He’s home. You don’t have to worry about him.”

  Kit nodded and was grateful. If anything had happened to Monster, it would have been her fault.

  “But this is your home now,” the man continued. “With me and Linda.” He set the game on the floor and opened the lid. His blond hair was fine, like a baby’s. “Are you good at following directions, Beth?”

  Kit’s stomach growled and she snuck a peek at the cherries in the bowl.

  He unfolded the board from the game. It was covered with colored squares. “Draw seven tiles,” he said, “and I’ll teach you how to play.”

  She hesitated for only a second before she scooted forward across the wood floor, just close enough to reach into the bag. She took a handful of what was inside and eyed him across the game board as he drew his own letters and placed them one by one on a wooden rack. She looked around for her own rack and found one in the box and put it on her edge of the board and started setting up her wooden letters too. As she counted them from her fist to the rack, she realized that she’d drawn one too many. She should have put it back in the bag, but she didn’t. Instead, heart pounding, she hid it in her hand.

  “See if you can arrange your letters to make a word,” he said. He held her gaze. She was not used to grown-ups doing that, and her face got hot, and she wanted to let go of the tile, put it back, but she was afraid that she would get in trouble. The man smiled and picked up the bowl of cherries and held them out to her. “It’s your turn, Beth.”

  9

  KICK WOKE UP COUGHING, gasping for air. Something was pressed against her face, covering her mouth. She clawed at it, but something was in the way.

  “Easy,” a woman’s voice soothed. “It’s an oxygen mask. Deep breaths now, hon.”

  An oxygen mask?

  Where was she? Kick’s eyes stung. Her ears were ringing. The sky was dark and full of fireflies. She was on her back. Everything hurt. The smallest movement echoed through her skull. She felt grass under her fingertips.

  She blinked. There were sirens. She could feel people running past, their footfalls reverberating through the ground. Embers floated and whirled, hundreds of thousands of them, tiny stars. A dry heat puckered her skin. The house was on fire. The sound of the blaze was punctuated by exploding glass. Her eyes burned with grit; she could taste smoke. She strained to turn her head toward the orange glow, but the woman holding the oxygen mask to Kick’s m
outh was taking up too much of her visual field.

  “Breathe,” the woman said. Kick could do that. That was easy. She’d had a therapist once—all they’d done was breathe; they’d breathed for hours. Kick inhaled. Kick exhaled. Breathe. Check. The woman had a ponytail and a gold paramedic’s badge on her left pocket. A patch on her uniform sleeve read: King County Medic One. Exhale. Inhale. Check. The oxygen was making Kick a little light-headed. She felt the paramedic’s fingers find the inside of her wrist, between her bone and tendon, looking for a pulse. Her face flashed blue and red.

  The paramedic lifted the oxygen mask from Kick’s mouth. She leaned close. Her lips moved. She was wearing tiny silver stud earrings shaped like turtles.

  Kick heard sirens. Her face hurt. She didn’t know why. “What?” she croaked.

  The paramedic’s head came closer. “Where’s Beth?” the paramedic asked. “Is she still in the house?”

  Half the sky was orange. The other half was charcoal.

  The ponytailed paramedic had the oxygen mask back over Kick’s mouth. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “We’ve called your mother.”

  Kick vomited. The paramedic pulled the oxygen mask away and rolled Kick onto her side.

  Inhale. Exhale. Check.

  Now there was a man squatting in the grass next to her. A fine sheen of sooty sweat gleamed on his olive-colored skin, and the knees of his pants had grass stains on them. A gold detective’s badge hung around his neck. Kick stared at him, trying to make him come into focus. His black hair was flecked with white.

  The detective smiled at Kick and then gave his head a shake, and the white flecks fell out of his hair.

  “Ash,” he said.

  She watched as the white flecks floated away behind him.

  The fire made a sizzling sound, like frying flesh. Even from across the yard, she could feel the heat on her face. Through the flames that engulfed the house, she could see that the entire second floor was already skeletal, burned down to the studs. Water from the fire hoses turned to steam.

  “They’re letting her burn herself out,” the detective explained. “Her?” He pointed to another part of the yard. “That’s where you landed,” he said. “Blast threw you almost thirty feet. I’d say you got out of there without a second to spare.”