by Willow Rose
“What’s so dangerous about that, old woman?” Kimberly laughed. “It’s just a chair, for cryin’ out loud.”
39
May 2016
I called Detective Bellini right away and she arrived a few minutes later with her entire team, including her partner, Detective Nelson. The tunnel was blocked off. I stayed to watch the crime scene techs arrive. I told everything to Bellini while she served me some coffee from her thermos in a white plastic cup.
“It gets to me every time,” I said.
“As it should,” she said.
I nodded in agreement and sipped the hot coffee. I thought about Shannon. I had tried to call her cell several times to let her know I was going to be late, but she hadn’t answered. It worried me.
“There were no tracks in the tunnel,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Bellini asked. She had nice eyes. I hadn’t noticed before. Blue like mine. Her hair was dark. A rare combination. Her skin had been destroyed by acne when she was younger and left visible scars. Other than that, she was pretty. I wondered what she would look like if she pulled that ponytail out and let her thick hair fall down. The big ring glistened in the light when she moved her finger to her temple to scratch an itch.
“The body of the young girl was laying headfirst in the tunnel,” I said, “but there were no signs of her body being dragged across the rocks. If she had crawled in there on her own, there would have been tracks. If she had been dragged in there, there would be some sort of indication of that too. But there was nothing.”
Bellini nodded and drank her coffee when a crime scene tech named Sutton came out. Bellini served him some coffee as well.
“So, what do we have?” she asked, after giving the guy a chance to swallow his coffee.
“Female, white, about ten years old, I’d say.”
“How long has she been dead?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe a year? Could be more. Could be less. It’s hard to tell when there’s water present. She’s not the only one, though.”
I almost lost my coffee on the pavement. “What?”
“There are more bones in there. Older ones,” he said with an exhale. “Way older. It’s going to take some time to figure out where they came from…how many we’re talking about. Right now it’s all a mess.”
I almost didn’t dare to ask, but I had to. “More children?”
The tech nodded and sipped his coffee. “I’m afraid so.”
It was easy to tell from the size of the bones. I knew a guy like Sutton could tell just by looking at them.
“I see,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach.
“But there are a few full-grown bones as well. I haven’t been through them all. They could also belong to a full-grown teenager. It’s hard to tell just by looking at them. But what I can say with certainty is that they haven’t been in this spot for long; otherwise, the homeless and drug addicts that hang out here would have seen them. Plus, the birds and other animals would have eaten more of them.”
“So they were moved?”
“It appears so.” He finished his coffee and nodded. “Well, back to work.”
I grabbed my phone to see if Shannon had called me back, but she hadn’t. It made me worried. What was she doing? She couldn’t be sleeping. I knew she would be up, wandering around, worrying about our baby. What was she up to? She was supposed to stay by the phone in case there was news. I didn’t like it. I decided to call Sarah.
She picked up right away. “Any news?”
“No. But I’m trying to get a hold of Shannon, is she there?”
“No. She went out.”
“She went out? But…but she was supposed to stay at the house and wait for news,” I said.
“I think she needed some air.”
Air? Oh, my. Please tell me she didn’t…
“Are the kids okay?”
“Yes. They’re fine. Just getting them ready for bed.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up, trying hard not to panic. Where the heck was she?
“I think I should be getting back. It’s late,” I said to Bellini.
40
May 2016
Come on. Drink it. You know you want to.
Shannon was staring at the bottle inside the brown bag in her hand. She had walked around the corner from the Hawthornes’ house and bought it at a small convenience store before it closed for the night. Now she was looking at it, tears running across her cheeks. She had found a bench on the square in front of the Hawthornes’ house. A woman walking her small poodle walked around her, pulling her dog closer. Shannon couldn’t blame her. She probably looked like a homeless person with the hoodie over her head and bottle in her hand.
See if I care.
She felt so many different and conflicting emotions, sitting there with the bottle in her hand. Part of her wanted to feel nothing, to not care anymore what anyone thought about her and just get really drunk. The other part knew she wouldn’t be able to stop it once she started, and that it would destroy everything she had worked so hard to build. But what did she really have to lose? If they never found Tyler, it would be the end of it anyway. She would never be able to live on without him. Might as well get it over with. Nothing worse than sitting and waiting for your world to crumble and doing nothing about it.
Might as well go out with a bang.
Shannon sobbed and screwed the lid off the bottle. She wiped a few tears away with her sleeve, then lifted the bottle up to salute the house in front of her.
“Here’s to you, Hawthorne. For making me realize it was no use anyway, that nothing would ever change.”
She lifted the bottle and put it to her mouth, just as she spotted a figure in the Hawthornes’ yard climbing over the wall.
“What the heck?” she said and lowered the bottle.
The two officers at the front gate didn’t see anything; they were talking and smoking cigarettes. Shannon could see them glowing in the dark. Meanwhile, the figure jumped down from the wall and ran onto the street. As it emerged under the street lamp, Shannon realized it was a child.
Betsy Sue!
Shannon got up, threw the bottle in the trash can next to her, then followed the girl. Shannon let her run out of sight of the officers, around the corner, and into the bigger boulevard before she closed in on her and grabbed her by the shoulder.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
The girl turned with a gasp.
“Caught ya’, didn’t I?” Shannon asked and pulled down her hoodie so the girl could see her face.
“Shannon King,” she whispered.
Shannon pulled the hoodie back on, just to make sure no one else recognized her as well. “Where are you running off to?”
“I…I…” Betsy Sue stopped herself. “Nowhere.”
“Well then. If you’re not going anywhere, then maybe it would be wise to get you back to the house and your parents, huh?”
Betsy Sue shook her head. “No. Please. I have to help her.”
Suddenly, it was getting very interesting. “Help who?”
“Miss Muffit. I have to help her.”
Shannon lifted an eyebrow. “You were going back, weren’t you? You were trying to go back to that place where you were kept? Why?”
“I have to,” she said. “It was a terrible mistake that I left. I need to go back.”
Shannon knelt in front of the girl. “Do you mean to tell me you know where it is?”
Betsy Sue shook her head. “No. I don’t. I got lost in the tunnels last time I tried.”
41
May 2016
I burst through the crowd of reporters, who had apparently decided to spend the night in front of our rental house.
“Jack, how’s Shannon?”
“Any news of the baby yet?”
“Is Shannon drinking again?”
“Was she drunk when she lost Tyler?”
“Are you filing for a divorce?”
I
stopped and looked at the reporter who had asked the last question. “We’re not even married yet,” I said. “At least get your facts straight.”
“Is that why you’re here? To get married? Was that why you came to Savannah? Is the marriage off now; is it, Jack?”
I continued without answering any more questions and closed the door behind me, the reporters still yelling behind it.
“Are you going to file for full custody of Tyler after this?”
Shannon was standing in the hall when I entered the house. I breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“Where have you been?” I approached her, trying hard to calm down. All the way back in the car, I had been getting myself all worked up, thinking that Shannon had fallen off the wagon again.
“Did you…?”
She shook her head. “But I was about to.”
“Phew. You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that.” I grabbed her in my arms and held her tight. “You scared me. I was so afraid you had…well, you know.”
“Taken a drink. It’s okay, Jack. You can say it.”
I nodded. I knew she was right. We had taken a few weeks of therapy in the fall together to improve our relationship and talk about the things that were hard to talk about. Like her drinking and my desperate fear that it would happen again, that she would start drinking and leave me. In therapy, I had learned it was all right to ask her directly if she had been drinking or even if she craved a drink. Openness was important, the therapist explained. Shannon was also allowed to tell me if she wanted a drink, and I had to be open towards hearing it and know that it was a big part of her.
It was still hard for me to talk about it.
“Yes. That’s what I feared. But you didn’t?”
She shook her head again. “I bought the bottle, but then I saw something that made me stop. Come with me,” she said, and grabbed my hands in hers.
I followed her upstairs to the bedrooms, where she stopped in front of the room we had temporarily turned into the nursery for Tyler. I didn’t understand.
“What…?”
She shushed me and opened the door. Inside on the floor, playing with Tyler’s favorite teddy bear, Bobby, sat Betsy Sue.
“What the heck? What is she doing here?” I asked.
Shannon closed the door so Betsy Sue couldn’t hear us talking in the hallway.
“I found her. She was running away from the Hawthornes. I spotted her and brought her here.”
“You did what? You mean to tell me her parents don’t even know she’s here?” I asked, startled.
Shannon put a hand on my shoulder to calm me down. “She was running away, Jack. She doesn’t want to be with them. Can you blame her? I mean, they didn’t even seem happy to get her back. Especially the father. I don’t like him.”
“Well, I don’t either,” I said, thinking about how Betsy Sue’s room had been so empty, how they had decided to not save any of her things. It was like they didn’t expect her to come back, and it had me worried that something was off with them. “But that doesn’t give us the right to take their child.” I took in a deep breath, trying to calm down my beating heart. It didn’t work. Panic soon spread. “They’re going to think we kidnapped her,” I said. “Oh, my. This is bad, Shannon. We can’t keep her here.”
I rubbed my chin, thinking about all the consequences this could lead to.
“She can help us find Tyler,” Shannon finally said.
I looked into her eyes. I’d had the same thought when I asked her to drive around with me.
“You think?”
Shannon nodded. “She was trying to get back. That’s why she left, Jack. Only she can’t find her way back. Last time she tried, she got lost, she told me. But I was thinking that if we helped her, then maybe…”
“She could lead us there,” I said.
“But she doesn’t seem to remember anything when I ask her about it,” Shannon said. “She said something about tunnels and getting lost in them, but that’s all I could get out of her. I tried to ask more, but now she has shut up like an oyster. I don’t know how to get her to talk again.”
“I might,” I said. “Do you know if there’s a deck of cards around here somewhere?”
42
May 2016
I shuffled the cards Shannon had found for me and sat in front of Betsy Sue. “Ready for another round?”
The girl looked up, but she didn’t look at me, she seemed to be looking right next to me.
“Billy wants to play too,” she said.
“Billy…? Oh, right … Billy, the boy…with the yellow skin, right?”
“Right. Make sure you give him cards too.”
I nodded, thinking I better play along if I wanted to get her to talk. I put out cards for both her and Billy. Betsy Sue looked at her cards for a long time.
“Do you think Billy wants another card?” I asked.
Betsy Sue looked in his direction, then shook her head. “No. He stands.”
“And you?”
“Hit me.”
I gave her another card. “So, tell me about when you lived with the doctor at the house. What is the first thing you remember?”
Betsy Sue kept looking at her cards. “My four-year-old birthday,” she said.
What? That makes no sense!
I decided to play along. Any information we could get out of her would be of help. “So, why do you remember that particular day?”
“Because that’s when Miss Muffit arrived,” Betsy Sue answered.
“Miss Muffit. You seem to talk a lot about her. How old was she when she came to the house?”
“She was a baby, duh. Just like I was when I got there.”
Okay, now it’s just getting weird.
“What do you mean you were a baby?” I asked.
“I was a baby. Just like Miss Muffit was a baby, just like Bibby Libby was before me. She took care of me when I was a baby, like I took care of Miss Muffit. It’s how it works. Are you going to give me another card or what?”
“Of course,” I said, and put down another card, making her bust. “Billy wins,” she said.
“Now we haven’t seen his cards yet, so we don’t know…” I said and turned Billy’s cards. To my astonishment, he had exactly twenty-one. “Wow. You’re right.”
I gathered the cards and started a new round. “So, when you arrived, there was another girl there,” I said. “What happened to her?”
“She is a ghost now,” Betsy Sue said and picked up her cards.
“She died?”
Betsy Sue shrugged. “Nothing really dies.”
“Was she put in the chair?” I asked, remembering what Betsy Sue had told me back at the Hawthornes’ house.
Betsy Sue nodded. “Hit me.”
I gave her another card.
“Billy wants one too,” she said.
I gave him one as well. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it was possible for her to have been so young, to remember her four-year-old birthday when she had been five when she was taken from the Hawthornes. According to them, she had been stolen from a playground one day when they had taken her to Forsyth Park and she had been playing with some kid. Mrs. Hawthorne had turned her back on them for one unforgiving second, she had stated afterwards, and when she looked again, her child was gone. It was every mother’s worst nightmare.
I shook the thought and decided that maybe the girl just got it all mixed up. Maybe the doctor had told her she was a certain age. She probably didn’t even know when it was her real birthday. Yes, that had to be it, right?
“What else do you remember from your time at the house?” I asked.
“I remember when it rained outside, all the birds would come to the attic and we would play with them. They brought us gifts.”
“The ravens?” I asked.
“Yes. I stand. Billy wants another card.”
“Tell me about the tunnels,” I said and gave Billy an extra card. “Shannon said you got lost in them? Was that ho
w you escaped? Did you go through a tunnel?”
Betsy Sue nodded, then looked at Billy. “He stands. He has twenty-one again.”
I laughed and picked up his cards, only to discover that she was right. I stared at her, wondering how on earth she could have known that. She had to have some special skills when it came to cards.
“How did you find the tunnels?” I asked and gathered the cards again. I started to shuffle them.
“Miss Muffit didn’t dare to go down there,” she said.
“But you did?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Miss Muffit dare to go in there?”
“Because of the smell.”
“But you didn’t care about the smell?” I asked and gave us all new cards.
“I could smell something else,” she said.
“And what was that?”
Betsy Sue looked up. “The ocean. I could smell the ocean.”
“How did you know about the ocean?” I asked.
“We had books to read at the house. Only I couldn’t read them. I looked at the pictures. But there was one with pictures of the biggest oceans. Bibby Libby taught herself to read a little. She told me about it.” Betsy Sue went quiet. I guessed she was sad to think about Bibby Libby, who must have been like a mother, or at least a big sister to her.
“Did Bibby Libby also tell you about the tunnels?”
Betsy Sue nodded. “She showed me where to get into them. There’s a door in the kitchen floor, you know. A carpet usually covers it and there’s a big heavy chest on top of it, but Bibby Libby found it and showed it to me one day. She said she was going to escape just before she was sent to the chair.”
“But she never made it?” I asked.
Betsy Sue shook her head. “Hit me.”
I gave her yet another card, while trying to figure out how life had been for such small children, constantly knowing that at some point they were going to die, that they were living on borrowed time.
