Harrowing

by S. E. Amadis

  I turned away from him and pressed some buttons. My phone refused to light up.

  “Shit. The battery’s dead,” I cried, remembering.

  I cupped the useless device in my palms, the rain trickling over it, and banged away at the unresponsive buttons with stiff fingers. My fingers were so numb with the cold I could barely move them. I rubbed my grimy hands over the black screen, lost in thought, sniffling absent-mindedly as rain pooled at the tip of my nose. My soaked jacket sleeves dragged down over my wrists and plopped onto the phone, encasing my hands in dripping fabric and making me feel like an orphaned waif in Victorian London. I sighed.

  “It doesn’t work,” I said, shaking my head.

  Calvin glanced over my shoulder at what I was doing.

  “What doesn’t work?”

  “This.”

  I threw the mobile back into my bag and hurled my bag at Calvin.

  “I thought I had a brainstorm. I thought I could look up if Bruno has any other properties,” I explained, deflated. “But the bloody shitty phone’s dead. Just when I fucking needed it the most. And now I’ve no idea what to do.”

  I kicked at the tires again out of pure frustration.

  Calvin wrapped comforting arms about me.

  “That’s best done on a computer,” he told me. “Not on a teensy mobile. And I don’t even know how to do that on a computer, either. We’re not hackers, you know.” He rubbed his eyebrows. “Well, come on. Why don’t we get home and think things through there? You’re frozen.”

  I shook my head and squinted out into the darkness.

  “I can’t. Romeo’s out there somewhere. We’ve got to find him.”

  Calvin seized his helmet and jammed it resolutely over his head.

  “Yeah, but we won’t accomplish anything by hanging out round here. He’s obviously not here. Our best bet’s to get home and grab the computer there.”

  He stood up and straddled the seat of his motorbike.

  “Come on. Time to do something proactive. You’re so cold you can’t even think straight,” he cajoled in a reasonable voice. “And that’s not being of much use to Romeo, you know.”

  He waved at the seat. Sighing, I climbed up behind him and grasped his waist.

  “Besides which, don’t you need to charge up your phone?” he added. “If you don’t charge it up, how can people get in touch with you with information?”

  I had no choice but to agree with him.

  At a stop light, he reached behind him and passed his phone to me.

  “Here. I’ve had a brainstorm. I’ve thought maybe you could call Lindsay and tell her what’s up.”

  I glanced at him quizzically but of course, he couldn’t see me.

  I shrugged.

  “Well, I guess it won’t hurt,” I conceded in the end.

  As he revved up the engine, I dialled Lindsay’s number and tried to hold a conversation with her over the roar of the motorbike.

  I’d had no idea how completely and utterly exhausted, how absolutely ground up I was, until we walked in through the door of my apartment. I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was long after midnight.

  I dug up my phone charger in the living-room and plugged it into a socket in the kitchenette, then left my phone on the counter and collapsed on the sofa-futon. But a minute later I had to get up and reach for my laptop.

  My foot rolled over something small and round. I bent and picked it up. It was a diminutive orange plastic bead, like the sort little girls wear on necklaces or bracelets strung together with elastic string. I squinted at it.

  “That’s strange,” I said.

  “What?”

  I waved my hand and rolled the bead through my fingers.

  “Nothing. Just, I don’t know where this came from. ’S not important.”

  Calvin tossed together a glass of whisky straight and held it out to me. I waved it away.

  “Alcohol, Calv? No. I need real food. I haven’t eaten in ages.”

  Calvin cocked an eyebrow at me and began to stir up a package of macaroni and cheese while I banged away helplessly on the computer. Everything was coming out all wrong. My sopping wet sleeves kept flipping down over my wrists, wrapping themselves about my hands and encasing them inside. My fumbling fingers couldn’t even press the on-off button. And when I finally got it on, Windows decided it was a superb moment for an hour-long update. I kicked the computer off my lap, nearly smashed it on the floor. A glance at Romeo’s least favourite meal, that he’d complained so peevishly about for ages, had me melting into tears.

  “Wherever he is... he hates that food, Cal... I’d do anything to have him here with me... eating this crap with me...” I gasped in fits and starts. “Anything... I miss him so much... I’m sure Bruno has him starved... I’m sure...”

  Calvin left the meal cooling on the table and plunked himself down beside me, wrapping his arms consolingly about me.

  “We’ll find him,” he said softly. “We’ll get him back. Now come and eat. You must be starved. And then we’ll think what to do next.” He leaned back, cool-headed pragmatism taking over. “I say we should report this to the police right away. No more playing private eye, you and me. It’s obvious we haven’t a clue how to go about this.”

  I nodded dejectedly and went to the table.

  “I don’t have much confidence they’d be able to do anything,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll waste more time asking us questions and investigating me and my background, rather than going after Bruno. I just read a coupla novels about kidnapped kids, and the police kept suspecting the parents. They said something like ninety-five percent of the time it’s the parents who arrange for their kids to be abducted, so they can get rid of them.”

  I paused as an even more demoralizing thought occurred to me.

  “And isn’t there this thing, I think I’ve heard of it before? Something about how they need to wait a certain number of hours before they’ll officially open an investigation into a missing person and start looking for him or something? And while they’re waiting all those hours, Bruno could be hurting Romeo. Or take him away someplace so far away no one will ever find him. Or...”

  I buried my face in my hands on the table and dug my fingers into my eyes. Calvin perched himself awkwardly by my side.

  “I think that waiting period doesn’t apply to kids. Well, but I’m not too sure. I know about as much about police procedures as I do about neurosurgery, you know, so don’t take my word on it.” He gestured at my plate. “Eat up. How long’s it been since you last ate something? You have to keep your strength up, you know. For Romeo,” he added, when he noticed I only picked at the macaroni with my fork. “You’re no use to anyone if you’re fainting from hunger.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re right.”

  I was famished. But it was still hard for me to get anything down with the lump in my throat.

  “We’ll call the police as soon as we eat,” Calvin reassured me.

  After dinner, Calvin dumped the dirty dishes into the sink and reached for his phone. He studied me with concern as I melted into a sodden morass on the futon.

  “I haven’t got much battery. Go take a hot shower while I charge up the phone, sweets,” he urged, “before you catch pneumonia or something. Let me take care of it. I’ll call the police for you.”

  I bristled.

  “I want to talk to them. He’s my son.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re not in a state to talk to anyone,” he said firmly. “Look at you. No one will take you seriously, the way you look right now. Everyone’ll think the same thing Mrs. Garrison did. That you’re drunk, or not a fit mother. They’ll have plenty of reasons to investigate you and not believe a word you say, just from the way you look. Your face is as black as a chimney sweep’s. For fuck’s sake, how much mascara do you dump on every morning, anyways?”

  He pulled me to my feet and dragged me towards the bedroom.

  “Go on. Take a
shower and freshen up before I call the police.”

  I reached the bedroom door and paused.

  “And I can’t go in to work tomorrow either,” I mumbled as this irrelevant thought struck me inanely. “I’ll have to call my boss and explain. I’m sure I’m going to lose my job. Not that it matters anymore,” I added as I reached for the light switch. “I have no idea what Sandy Bleckley will say now. Not after that tremendous sermon she threw to me this afternoon.”

  I turned on the bedroom light and screamed a shrill, bloodcurdling shriek that probably resonated all the way to Timbuktu.

  For there on the threshold, outlined in black in the harsh light from the bare light bulb above, tottered a menacing figure with his anonymous face enshrouded deep inside a hoodie. I could barely make out the nasty curl of his lip as he advanced towards me.

  “You were speaking about me?” taunted the grating female voice. The same one I’d had to suffer through earlier this afternoon as she’d lectured at me without pity.

  The bottom plopped out from my stomach. My limbs, frozen and numb, jerked into action with exasperating lentitude. I finally succeeded in forcing myself to turn around as an iron grip wrapped itself about me, vice-like, encasing me like unmovable fetters. I was barely able to make out Calvin’s mouth petrified into a “o” of terror, his eyes popping out from his face like toad eyes.

  “Now I have you,” Sandy Bleckley cried triumphantly, her voice hard and unpleasant. “Both of you. I’ve got your son, Romeo, I believe he says his name is? And if you ever want to see him alive again, Annasuya, you’ll stay put and listen to everything I have to say.”

  Chapter 24

  Sandy led us to a white van parked out behind the building and shoved us into the back, switching on the overhead light. Then she climbed in with us and slid the door shut with a bang.

  “Make yourselves at home.” She patted at the rusted metal floor.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I said with a hiss. “Where’s Romeo? Weren’t you going to take me to him?”

  Sandy motioned at me.

  “Shush. I said I’d do all the talking, and you’d just sit there and stay put, if you want to see your son again. Remember?”

  I shut my mouth. Sandy smiled, a bitter grimace of satisfaction.

  “That’s better,” she said.

  She glanced me up and down.

  “You look as pathetic now as you did when you left the office this afternoon,” she remarked wryly. “I could tell right from the first day that office work doesn’t suit you, Annasuya.”

  “Then why’d you keep me on?” I shot out “Why didn’t you notify the agency and fire me?”

  Sandy arched her eyebrows at me ironically.

  “What? And lose track of you? If you were working with me, at least I could keep close tabs on you.”

  “Keep tabs on me? But why?”

  Sandy smirked.

  “Bruno’s orders, of course.”

  She let the implications of what she’d just revealed sink in.

  “So you specifically asked for me from the agency?” I said at last.

  Sandy shook her head.

  “Not by name, no.” She smirked. “But I did describe someone with your characteristics to such a tee, there was no way they would have sent me anyone else. And if by the odd chance they’d sent me someone else anyways, I would’ve sent them back right away. I only wanted you.”

  I glanced at the floor sullenly.

  “Why?”

  Sandy brushed her lips with her fingertips.

  “Shhh. I said I’d do the talking. Remember?”

  She made as if to stand up and pretended she had just remembered something. Her playful leer betrayed her true intentions.

  “Oh, and by the way...”

  She pulled some papers from her purse and spread them out before me. I gaped at them.

  There was the print-out of an email. The real, authentic email. The original one that I had written. With the date of the meeting as I’d typed it – the correct date – printed clearly across the line: May eighth.

  “Yes,” Sandy whispered. “You’d written it correctly. You never made that mistake that I accused you of.”

  I could only gaze at her in stupefaction. She shifted more papers before me. There was the pamphlet from Dunn’s Furnishings. The name of the CEO: Kerry Weatherspoon. The woman I’d addressed my email to. I had used the right name. Sandy giggled.

  “Yes, I had a modified pamphlet printed out specifically for you.”

  I was floored.

  “Why?” I stammered out at last.

  “So I could retain you at the office, of course.” She shrugged. “To give Bruno time to carry out his part of our deal.”

  “His part of your deal?” I parroted like an automaton.

  “Of course.” Sandy giggled again. “So he’d have time to pick up Romeo and spirit him away to our hiding place.”

  “And why did he want to do that?” I continued, still in a monotone. “You’re in cahoots with Bruno?”

  “Obviously.”

  Sandy waved her hand frivolously in the air.

  “We’re not interested in the boy, of course. We just wanted to use him to catch you.”

  She grinned.

  “It worked, didn’t it? We have you here now, and you came willingly on your own two feet.”

  I tried to work things through, but my mind felt as if it had turned to molasses.

  “So, you don’t really have Romeo?” I murmured. “You just pretended you did, to get me to come with you?”

  Sandy laughed.

  “I never realized you were that dense. Of course we have Romeo. We picked him up from his school. Remember? We didn’t just pretend to pick him up.”

  I tried to make sense of what she was saying.

  “Why do you want me?” I cried. It was the only thing it occurred to me to ask. “Is it just Bruno, taking some sort of revenge on me or something, because I got away from him?”

  Sandy let forth another of her annoying giggles.

  “Really, Annasuya. I thought you were much more intelligent than that. Revenge? You think Bruno is that petty?”

  She clapped her hands together.

  “Bruno’s going to be the leader of a new world order. And you have an important role to play in it. That’s why he needs you.”

  “An important role? What role?”

  I wondered why I was playing along. Bruno was obviously nuts out of his mind.

  Sandy spread out her hands.

  “I don’t know what role. Bruno doesn’t confide these sorts of things to me, you know. But if he says you’ve got an important role, then I know it’s true. I trust him intrinsically.”

  I stared at Sandy, utterly mystified.

  “Sandy, why are you doing all this for Bruno? What is he to you, anyways?”

  Sandy grinned, a smug smile of contentment.

  “You know, when I first met Bruno, years ago, I just knew it was my destiny to serve him. Something inside him just lit up, like a glow, like there was some sort of halo surrounding him, every time I looked at him. I just knew he was different. Special. I could tell one day he would rise above all those other petty mortals. And, I guess, I wanted a part of that. It was a bit like a dream, you know. It was like, it was my new mission and purpose in life, so to speak. So when he finally noticed me and invited me to be his right hand in preparing his new world order, I jumped at the chance. Didn’t even have to think twice about it.”

  She pushed herself abruptly to her knees.

  “That’s enough now, Annasuya. I’ve told you more than I was supposed to. I was supposed to just keep quiet and drive. And that is precisely what I’m going to do now.” She crept towards the door. “Besides which, isn’t that what you wanted? To be with your son again?”

  She shoved open the van door, stepped out and locked us in again. A few seconds later, she climbed into the driver’s seat at the front of the van. The back, where we were, was separa
ted from the cab end by a thick sheet of tinted and obviously bullet-proof plexiglas. With the overhead light still on, reflecting in the glass, and the darkness of the tint, it was impossible to see where we were going.

  I rolled over and stared at Calvin. His eyes still looked like they were popping out of his sockets like toad eyes. He gazed at me in an obvious state of shock and began to pat me awkwardly on the arm.

  “Well, at least Romeo’s safe, babes,” was all he said in the end.

  *

  I estimated that Sandy drove for more than an hour. I tried to do as people did on TV and tried to listen for tell-tale sounds that could give us a hint as to where we were headed. But we changed directions so many times, sometimes passing what sounded like noisy thoroughfares or even busy highways, other times humming in complete silence on roads that could have been simply residential streets within the city, or quiet country lanes.

  At last, the van bumped along on what felt like gravel for a short distance, then pulled to a stop. Sandy hopped out from the cab and within a few seconds, she was dragging the door of the van open.

  “We’ve arrived,” she told us succinctly. “You can have a look around, if you want. I doubt you’d recognize the place anyways.”

  We climbed out. We appeared to be in some sort of back yard, large enough to belong to some family residence in the suburbs. Before I could make out much more than a few murky trees in the distance, Sandy was hustling us down a paved path towards a door on the side of a white bricked bungalow. I tried to examine the house in the dark, but immediately Sandy flung the side door open and pushed us through. We found ourselves at the top of a flimsy wooden staircase which led into some sort of cellar.

  “Get down those stairs before I shove you down,” she hissed.

  I heard the rustling of footsteps in the dimly lit edges of that subterranean cesspool, and within a minute Romeo dodged into view, a furtive, terrified gaze in his eyes. My heart leapt into my throat. I forgot everything else and dove down the stairs, nearly tripping on my heels and breaking my neck in the process.

  “Roomeooo!” I shrieked. I jumped onto him and grabbed him so tightly I almost suffocated him.