I watch them transform into beautiful white butterflies beating their wings.
One by one, they fly away, taking my way out with them.
63
When I wake, pale light gilds the pine floor and bare walls. The eight rocks sit undisturbed on the window ledge. The chair is still propped under the doorknob. The broom and my gun are companions beside me. The shade that I tore off its rod lies crumpled in the corner.
It is 6 A.M., maybe a little earlier. Guessing the time is one thing I was born to do. My trainer could rarely trick me even when he blindfolded me. When I roll off the futon and stand, it feels like a brick struck my right temple. The aching in my arm is a quiet ping in comparison.
I slide over to the window and peer out at a peach tree, its fruit rotting on the ground where it fell. A stone well with crumbling mortar stands to the west of the tree. Beyond it, I see the glint of a stream where I’m guessing Carl filled my water bottle. My eyes settle back on the well.
Waterproof watch (resistant @ 300 meters). The thought comes unbidden, and ridiculous. That well is not a thousand feet deep. Maybe ten. At most, a hundred.
I turn my attention to the rusty umbrella clothesline sticking out of the ground and a neglected patch of dirt that once grew vegetables. Not much farther, the small green oasis ends abruptly in forest. This must have been a happy little haven for an acquitted killer.
I wiggle the chair out from under the door and let the rocks clatter to the floor.
Then I listen. Nothing but the early chirping of a few cicadas trying to get the most out of a short life after hibernating for seven or thirteen or seventeen years. The cicadas share an odd love affair with sleeping and prime numbers. I know my cicada trivia, too, Carl.
I run through the house and rip off every single blackout shade, wondering if they ever kept a kidnapped girl from keeping track of time.
Either the noxious smell is dissipating or now I’m immune.
In five minutes, the house is suffused with fresh air and the light of sunrise. I venture outside and walk two slow circles around the house. A piece of brittle, ruined plywood covers the well with a massive rock in the center to keep it in place. Too heavy for me to lift alone. I wonder if the well was hand-dug by Carl’s uncle, or by Carl himself.
The stream is tiny, full of algae, making me regret last night’s sip of water. I yell Carl’s name. Nothing. I’m thinking about my trainer’s warning—that it is worse to be hunted in the daytime in a strange place than at night in someplace familiar.
More cicadas are chiming in, ratcheting things up.
In the kitchen, I search out a rusted butter knife, a sleeve of saltine crackers in an old tin and three orange Gatorades that expired two years ago. I cut away the bad spots on a few peaches. The breakfast feels like a feast.
Rebooted and ready to go.
So here I am in the hall again. The daisy knobs are smiling at me with their round white faces and yellow eyes.
They are saying, Open up.
* * *
—
The largest door in the cabinet is center-perfect and labeled Big Bertha. It makes me think of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs and the way he stole only fat girls and starved them so he could use their extra skin to sew his costume. Rachel was thin.
When I yank on the door and find an old Singer sewing machine tightly strung with beige thread, ready to go, I nearly throw up.
I didn’t think it was possible to hate Carl more. But every second that passes in front of this hideous cabinet, breathing in its musty stench, sinks me to a deeper, darker place.
Who do I pick next? Cinderella because he called her that in the notes in his book? Scarlett because my sister and I watched Gone With the Wind countless times one summer, or Poppy because it is my mother’s favorite flower?
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that every lost girl has exactly the same value. They all deserve to go first.
The pulse points in my body are hammering away. My hand pulls at the knob for Cinderella. Then Vivian. Mary Louise. Jean. Sophia and Penelope. I tug at the drawers and cabinets in this monster until they are all gaping wide open, and I can be certain.
I’m staring at cameras.
Carl didn’t just name George, his traveling camera.
He named all of his other cameras, too.
* * *
—
The lenses glare back at me like an assortment of empty eye sockets. I can’t place my emotions. Relief that I didn’t find Carl’s macabre trophies? Trepidation that Carl is still in control of the game?
I grope behind the sewing machine and come up with nothing but dust. I remove Eleanor, a boxy old Kodak Duaflex, and Jean, a vintage Canon with a long accordion neck, and place them on the floor.
When I studied Carl, I also studied cameras. I could name almost anything set in front of me. I search the back of the cubbyholes that held Eleanor and Jean. They are otherwise empty, so for the moment I’m going to assume there is nothing in this cabinet but Carl’s camera collection.
A large, shallow drawer that I didn’t notice last night runs across the bottom of the chest. No daisy knob, just a small keyhole.
I get it, Carl. The little key to nothing goes to something.
I strip off the necklace and kneel down. I don’t find out if the key fits because I don’t need to use it—when I tug the drawer, it topples out, and half the contents stuffed inside slide onto the floor.
More paper ghosts.
64
Shadows and light, angles and blurs. I’m guessing Carl stored at least a hundred photographs, all 8X10, all black-and-white, in the drawer. It took four one-armed trips to carry all of the pictures to the living room couch, where I’m hastily sorting through them.
There are no closeups of the lady in the rain or the girl in the desert. No broken bodies, no bones scattered beside rusted cars at the bottom of a Piney Woods gully. No Marys. Most of the pictures I’ve never seen before. At least a quarter of them are portraits of dogs.
All of them are filled with the dimensions of Carl I like to deny.
My chest tightens with all that he provokes. The regret, the triumph, the longing. The idea that we miss so much waiting for what is right in front of us, that the ordinary is magical, that the exotic is in our backyard, that every animal has a soul, that there is this terrible, wonderful novel in every human being. He shoots through a dark glass. Nothing lasts, he’s saying. Not joy, not pain.
Carl never aimed to be in the right place to preserve an iconic moment in history. Marilyn Monroe’s skirt flying up, a busboy on the floor trying to comfort Robert Kennedy after he was shot. Carl shot what was right in front of him. The proud dog, the dying tree, the poor child wearing an adult’s face, the rich adult wearing a child’s.
I feel suddenly exposed. It’s like a camera is pointed at me through every one of the windows I’ve so recklessly flung open. I’m fighting the urge to leave, to be done with Carl’s house in the woods.
I turn to the next photograph quickly, and the next and the next and the next, hardly seeing them as they whir by. But something registers. I stop. Go back.
Wisteria is blooming in front of a simple house.
Two story, white frame, one window box, a pitched roof. A girl is balanced on top of it, wearing an old flowered sheet as a cape.
Her arms are stretched from her sides like she’s already soaring. Her eyes are closed. A thin mattress from a crib is lying on the grass to catch her if for some reason her plan doesn’t work.
I don’t need to use my imagination to make up what happens next in this picture. I was standing just outside the frame.
My sister jumped and broke her ankle and two ribs.
It was seven years before she disappeared. I had just turned five.
If Carl took this photo, he must have been spying on us for a very long time.
* * *
—
I’m tugging every white scrap off the branches as I hike up, e
rasing my footprint.
I shove them into the sack I created out of the Hawaiian shirt, which is hauling two orange Gatorades, a large selection of Carl’s photographs, the rusted butter knife, the pain pills, and the water bottle, still full, a backup. I’m less worried about consuming old Gatorade than parasites from the stream.
Wherever I remove a napkin, I leave one of Carl’s rocks at the base of the tree. In the daytime, I can see that he chose them carefully—there is a little sparkle to them in the light dribbling down through the branches.
Like all trails, it’s steeper on the way up. With only one working arm, my headache still pounding, it feels like Mount Everest.
I’d gotten so used to the cicadas’ cacophony and the cool cover of pine trees that I am fifteen minutes in before I realize the screeching insects have abruptly shut off like they were on a switch.
A storm is coming, maybe a bad one. The last time insects gave me such an ominous signal, the wind flattened my Girl Scout tent while I cowered in it with an anxious girl like me named Lily, the one who hid food under her bed and never ate it.
Up or back down? What if Carl managed this climb, and the truck is gone? The pine needles are beginning to chatter and dance. The breeze filtering down is raising goosebumps under my shiny sweat.
The decision is simple. I won’t spend another second at Carl’s cabin. I plunge forward, visualizing the truck still parked in the clearing, the extra key still hidden in the wheel well, Carl at a Whataburger mirage chowing down.
The last thirty steps to the clearing feel like a mile. The truck hasn’t moved. Barfly is tied to a tree, whining. Trees are going crazy. The sky is an ugly black finger painting.
As soon as Barfly sees me, he tugs at his leash and barks in frantic, staccato beats. I can’t believe Carl abandoned him out here while he probably sits inside the truck, radio blaring, chatting to Walt.
I finish that thought in my head just as I reach Barfly to untie him. Something’s wrong. It doesn’t match with the respect I saw in those dog portraits or Carl’s obstinate affection for Barfly. Carl loves dogs more than people. More likely, instead of people.
I whip around. Two figures are running out of the trees straight at me. Barfly is urgent and snarling. The men from the bar? Who tried to run me down? Behind them, I glimpse Carl, a gun in his hand. A .22. What is going on? One of the truck windows shatters. Or Carl aimed for my head and missed.
The crack of the gunshot seems to surprise the men, too. They make the mistake of turning their backs to look. I sling the full weight of my makeshift sack as hard as I can at the closest one, stunning him.
I whip the sack again. He stumbles down easily. In the daylight, I see my pursuers for what they are: thirtysomethings with memory muscle and flab, whose current exercise rigor is probably mowing the lawn.
Barfly is going nuts, straining at his leash. The guy still standing is making his move on Carl. Carl fires. The scream is a shrill, bone-shattering sound that shouldn’t ever come out of a man his size. He’s on the ground, clutching his leg.
Carl has already pulled out the duct tape and rope from my backpack.
There’s blood in the dirt near Carl, but I can’t tell where exactly it’s coming from. Carl roughly tapes the man’s ankles together, then tosses me the duct tape. “Wrap that one. Hands and feet.”
“Hey, wait a minute…” My guy, groggy as he is, has started to assess his future. The threatening sky, the snarling dog, the wild-eyed old man now looping a rope a few feet away.
“No talking,” Carl admonishes. “Shove him over here when you’re done.”
In minutes, both men are expertly coiled to a tree.
“Cartoon bandits.” Carl stands back, grinning. “Nice job with the luau purse. We’ll wait out the storm with Barfly in the truck. Then we’ll get their story.”
He grabs Barfly’s leash to unwrap it and whispers something in his ear. Barfly licks his cheek.
“We are not a team,” I protest dully, but the thunder drowns me out.
65
“Explain,” I demand.
We’re in our old positions. Barfly in the back, Carl at the wheel, me in the passenger seat. The wind and rain are slamming away, the thunder almost constant. I’m not afraid of the storm. I’m pretty sure nothing will flatten this Chevy truck.
“I took a walk,” Carl says, “and look what I found when I got back.”
“Explain better.”
“I tied Barfly to the tree and went to take a dump in the woods. We had just woken up. I heard a car engine. These two parked about two hundred yards back and got out. Same car from the other night. I just waited while they chatted. Couldn’t hear much. Fat one’s named Marco. They mentioned something purple. What took you so long? Did you find the girls?”
It takes me a second to realize that by “the girls” he means “cameras.” I have no idea what his purple reference means. The name Marco, though, is ringing a distant bell. “Where did you get the gun?”
“Lucky, huh? Got the gun out of the Volkswagen. Under the front seat. Those college girls are pretty damn careless now that they can conceal and carry. I almost didn’t take the gun with me while I did my business in the woods, but I wasn’t sure what kind of a mood you were going to be in when you got up here.”
“Who are these guys?”
“How the hell do I know?”
It’s sinking in. Carl stole a car and a gun. I’m aiding and abetting a weapons charge. I just concussed a human being. I transformed into someone I didn’t recognize when I swung that sack.
It’s still raining furiously. I can barely make out the two men through the wet blur of the window. I pray the tires won’t be mired in mud. In twenty-four hours, Mrs. T, the police, will be looking for us. Someone will be looking for these men. I pull out the key on the chain around my neck.
“I’d like that back. The key belonged to my aunt. Did you use it on her sewing cabinet? She used to wear it all the time as a reminder of her dad. Also, so none of us cousins would get into her private stuff when we were kids.” Carl chuckles. “That turned out to be a box of Fannie Mays, her honeymoon negligee, some slutty novels, and that photo of her in the desert, which my uncle took when they were dating. He was a shutterbug, too. Taught me a lot. Got several of the girls from him when he died.”
“You wore the key to remember your aunt? The photograph in your suitcase—your uncle took it? You used her drawer to store your photos?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“The cabin…”
“I inherited it when she died. You see why I was so fond of her.”
“Was the whole purpose of this visit for me to find the photo of my house in that drawer? Of my sister?” Do those cameras in any way represent your victims? Ones I don’t know about?
“As usual, you’re full of questions. We need to get out of the truck. Marco is beginning to move.”
* * *
—
It is clear that Carl is excellent at tying people up. Marco is jerking his arms and legs but not going anywhere. His friend is awake and trying more subtle moves, which aren’t working, either.
I got out of the truck holding a garbage bag over my head for cover. I don’t need it. The storm is slacking off, leaving oppressive humidity. The mud is thick pudding under my feet.
Carl rips the tape off Marco’s mouth. He spits at Carl and misses. “I’m going to sue the shit out of you.”
“I doubt that,” Carl says smoothly, untaping the mouth of the other guy. Carl removes the .22 from the back of his jeans and aims it at Marco’s other bright yellow Nike, the one that isn’t bloody. “I want you to tell my friend why you are so pissed at her.”
The other man attempts to sit up. He’s soaked and clearly miserable. “Marco, I’m done here. I’ve got a wife and kids. You’ve taken it way too far.”
“Shut up, Fred. Do you want your wife and kids to know what you did?”
“That was all you! You were almost through
before I saw what you were doing to her in the water. I never touched her!”
“You’re just as guilty. Texas likes to fry the people who let things happen as much as the ones who do the deed.”
Fred’s cheeks are turning an ugly shade of maroon. “You—”
A gunshot rips the air. It ricochets into a deep puddle in front of Marco, slinging mud into his eyes.
“Carl!” I yell.
“Those two are making my head hurt,” Carl complains. That’s not hyperbole. He’s beginning to look confused.
I’m less confused now. Water. Marco. Fred. Purple. Violet.
“Carl, I’ve got this, OK? Don’t shoot anymore. Is one of you married to Gretchen?”
Fred appears almost grateful, as if this is going to be our bond, the thing that saves him. “Yes, yes, that’s me. Ten years in May. We’re going to Hawaii to celebrate. Let me explain. When Marco and I got out of the water that night, I figured Violet was just lagging behind. Mad because Marco went too far. You know, worried I might try to screw her, too. She screamed once.”
“You walked into the water with Violet,” I say quietly. “Your friend raped her, maybe drowned her, and you just left. Now you’re married to her best friend.”
“Like I said, I didn’t do anything back then. All I did now was tell Marco that some woman was bugging Gretchen, wanting to meet at the beach. He thought you might be a cop. You sure as fuck don’t act like a cop.”
“What’s a girl expect if she skinny-dips?” Marco asks.
“I just got all that on tape,” Carl announces.
“What?” I’m confused.
“It was a condition,” Carl explains impatiently. “The girls helped me pick out an iPhone back in Austin. Paid $34.99 extra for the gold case but worth every penny. You want me to play it back? It’s easy.”
Paper Ghosts_A Novel of Suspense Page 24
