Abduction

by Rodman Philbrick

  Almost whimpering with panic, Mandy felt her way back down the stairs, clinging to the wall. She pushed open the basement door and fumbled for the light switch beside the door.

  But all she felt was smooth wall. Mandy reached higher, then lower. No switch. It couldn’t have just disappeared.

  Suddenly a thought jolted her. She was feeling along the left-hand wall. The light switch was on the right-hand wall. It always had been.

  Mandy felt the ice close deeper around her heart. That wasn’t the sort of mistake she made. She knew right from left instinctively, never had to stop and think like some people did. What was happening to her?

  Her mind was going. Bits of it dissolving like melting glue.

  Mandy reached out with her right hand and found the switch. She snapped it on. Nothing happened. The darkness pressed her from all sides.

  Gritting her teeth in misery, she started across the pitch-black basement, her arms outstretched, feeling for obstacles.

  If she could only get upstairs, everything would be all right. It wouldn’t matter if her parents heard her then. She could say she’d been hungry or something, going for ice cream in the freezer.

  “Ow!” She cursed quietly, rubbing her shin. She’d barked it on the metal leg of her dad’s table saw. The pain pulsed red before her eyes.

  But the table saw was supposed to be in the rear corner of the basement, not out in the middle of the floor in front of the stairway. It wasn’t the sort of thing her dad moved. Too heavy.

  Mandy knew she couldn’t be that disoriented. She had a superb sense of direction. A wave of uncertainty rolled through her, making her legs wobble. She moved around the table, her arms out. When her hands touched the wall, fear washed over her.

  The table saw was right where it was supposed to be. She’d been moving in the exact wrong direction.

  She was lost in her own basement. Something was wrong with her head.

  “Get a grip,” she told herself sternly, taking a deep breath. She turned until she knew she was facing the stairs. Sliding one foot forward at a time, she moved again.

  Luckily her father wasn’t the kind to leave things laying around so there was nothing to trip her up. But even though she knew, absolutely knew, she was heading in a straight line, she kept veering into her dad’s workbench, which was against the wall, across from the stairs.

  “Anybody could get turned around in total darkness,” Mandy told herself. “Even me.”

  But her chest felt tight with anxiety. A tiny part of her was afraid she’d never get out, that she’d go around in circles in this musty basement forever.

  Where were the stairs? She should be there by now.

  Mandy froze as a tiny scrabbling noise sounded in the dark behind her. At least she thought it was a noise. A mouse?

  Or maybe it was her imagination. Somehow it seemed more frightening that she couldn’t tell whether the noise was real or not.

  Then she heard it again. It was definitely a noise. Something alive. And it could see better than she could, for sure.

  Mandy flailed her arms out wildly and—bang—hit something. The stairs! She felt so relieved, she scarcely noticed the ringing pain in her fingers.

  Hanging on as if the staircase might move away if she let go, Mandy reached the bottom. She shot up the stairs as if she thought something might try to stop her.

  For a horrible instant she was afraid the upstairs door was going to be locked; then she was through the door, in the hallway. Her legs gave out and she fell in a heap on the polished wood floor.

  Moonlight filtered through the curtained windows. It made the dark house seem bright in comparison to the impenetrable blackness of the basement.

  Mandy sat, too weak to move. The house was hushed. She was sure she was the only one awake.

  Cautiously, she let her mind return to her awakening on the porch. She pushed her memory farther back, trying to see how she had got there.

  There were the porch boards, her hand aware of splintery roughness. And before that a groan as she had wakened. And before that—

  Suddenly her mind spun dizzily. She felt as if she were perched, teetering, on the edge of a cliff, nothing but a black abyss before her.

  Mandy clapped her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming out. Her stomach clenched.

  She stumbled to her feet. The house seemed to tilt under her.

  She needed to get to her room. Fixing her mind on that, refusing to think of anything else, she lurched down the hall, through the living room, and up the stairs to the top floor.

  Everything was quiet. She crept across the carpeted hallway to her room and opened the door. Inside looked normal. The bedclothes were thrown back as if she’d just gotten up for a minute.

  Moonlight fell on her parade of little magnetic animals. They marched along their strip of beaten metal sheeting on the wall above her bed. A childhood collection, they only remained because she never noticed them anymore.

  The book she’d been reading was facedown on the floor. Her window was open, her telescope set up beside it. There was the usual mess of shorts and jeans, T-shirts and sandals, on the floor.

  Everything was the same as she remembered.

  Mandy heaved a sigh. She shut the door behind her. Suddenly her legs felt so shaky she wasn’t sure she could make it to bed. She started forward.

  Her eye caught movement to her left. She jumped, her heart in her throat.

  The mirror. It was only the mirror on her closet door. Mandy looked at her own shadowy image. It was a shock to see how normal she looked.

  Her long blond hair was matted and tangled and her normally steady blue eyes looked wild, but mostly she looked like she might have gotten up to go to the bathroom or something.

  Her T-shirt wasn’t torn or dirty, her arms and legs weren’t scratched or bruised. Her legs might feel like rubber, but in the mirror they looked as strong and slender as ever.

  Mandy felt calmer looking at herself in the mirror. Obviously nothing serious had happened to her. She must have been sleepwalking.

  She had never done that before.

  She must have had a bad dream. Something in it caused her to walk outside in her sleep. At least she had sense enough to wake up before she got any farther than the porch.

  Mandy’s skin crawled. It didn’t matter how firmly she told herself there was a rational explanation. Something felt very wrong.

  As if the whole world had shifted slightly, leaving her out of synch.

  Mandy turned away from the tall, slim figure in the mirror and got into bed. She told herself it was only natural to feel disturbed and out of it after such a weird experience. She told herself she’d feel better in the morning. But she didn’t really believe it.

  There was a sick feeling of dread coiled in her stomach. She felt as if something bad had happened but worse was coming.

  Mandy glanced at the luminous dial on her clock radio.

  It was 2:30 A.M.

  How long had she been outside? What had happened to her in those four and a half hours?

  Mandy clutched her blanket. She had to put this doom-type thinking out of her mind. She was scaring herself for no good reason.

  She was a rational person. Tomorrow everything would look different. Meanwhile she had to focus on something else. Something good.

  Think about swimming tomorrow at the quarry. How great the water would feel.

  Think about that cute boy who always seemed to be around lately. Luke. Too bad he was so shy.

  Not that he was all that good-looking. His nose was too big and his dark, curly hair was too wiry.

  But there was something so—there—about him. He wasn’t always posing and checking himself out like other boys.

  And he had the most expressive, warmest, brown eyes she had ever encountered.

  Mandy closed her eyes. But it wasn’t Luke’s angular face and warm brown eyes that materialized in her mind.

  Instead, the eyes that bored intently into hers were
gray, like dirty ice. Their expression was cold and so evil she felt paralyzed.

  The face filled her mind. It pressed so close she could see every black-pitted pore. Lank, greasy hair brushed her forehead.

  It was a familiar face. Mandy squirmed away in terror.

  But she was pinned in place.

  The black abyss rushed up around her. It sucked her down.

  She felt its clammy force envelop her, choking off her scream.

  Then the blackness invaded her mind, and that was the last she knew.

  Chapter Five

  Luke waited until his dad had gone to work before he got up. Usually he bounced out of bed, full of energy as long as it wasn’t a school day.

  But this morning his arms and legs felt encased in lead. Pulling on swim trunks and a T-shirt was a struggle. His mind kept going blank on him. He kept forgetting what he was doing.

  “I hope I’m not coming down with something,” he muttered to himself.

  His mother echoed those words when he went down to breakfast.

  First she tried asking him about last night. “Are you sure you can’t remember anything?” she pressed. “Did you fall, maybe? Hit your head?”

  It seemed like her words were coming at him from a long ways away. He knew it was taking him too long to answer. But he couldn’t help it. He was operating in a thick, soupy fog. As if his mind wasn’t entirely his own.

  “Could be, Mom,” he said finally. “I was walking on Old High Street. It’s so dark there, and there’s all kinds of potholes. Maybe I did fall.”

  She fussed over him, feeling his head for lumps, until Luke felt like he couldn’t stand it anymore. He was going to explode.

  Then she stopped. “I don’t know, Luke. I can’t detect any injuries, but I’m no doctor.”

  She picked up her purse and looked at him worriedly. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to be late for work. If you feel dizzy or anything, anything at all, I want you to call Dr. Fanelli right away. Promise?”

  She gave him another worried look before she left, but Luke could tell her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted to believe him, but it was hard.

  He didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t believe it himself, except he was the one it happened to. Total blackout. More than four and a half hours subtracted from his life. Like a big black hole in his brain.

  And afterwards, that creepy feeling of eyes inside his mind. Eyes busy under his skin.

  He grabbed his towel and headed out the door. What he needed was a long, hard swim in the cold water of the quarry pool. That would clear his head.

  Exercise always energized Luke. He set off up the block in a slow jog. A good run would get his blood moving. It always worked.

  Problem was, he felt like he was running in deep sand.

  After only two blocks, Luke’s breath was labored. He wanted to give up and walk. But then Sue Ellen came out of her friend Lorrie’s house, and the fear of having to speak to her jolted him into a sprint.

  His mind flashed on the one date he and Sue Ellen had had, two months ago. Luke hadn’t gone out with anybody since.

  He had known he was in trouble right away. Sue Ellen had opened the door wearing a short, slinky, shiny dress with thin straps and shiny high-heeled shoes. Luke instantly felt like a major dork in his jeans and blue-striped sweater.

  He’d been thinking pizza and a movie. She let him know she had dinner and dancing in mind. The fancy food had taken almost all his money. He’d been so worried about what to order he couldn’t think of one word to say. Duh.

  Then the dancing. After the cover charge at the club, he only had money enough for one Coke. He had told her he wasn’t thirsty.

  He also had told her he couldn’t dance, but she didn’t believe him until he stomped on her shiny shoes, nearly breaking her toe.

  Thinking of any part of it—the dreaded date—could still make him shudder.

  “Hey, Luke! Wait up, man!”

  With a start, Luke realized he was almost at the quarry park. His friend Matt came running up, red-faced and out of breath.

  “I’ve been calling your name for the last two blocks,” said Matt. “What are you, training for the Olympics?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking,” Luke explained. “I guess I didn’t hear you.”

  “Whoa, thinking?” Matt widened his eyes in mock surprise. “I thought I smelled something burning. Hope you didn’t do any permanent damage.”

  Luke smiled, but he could feel it was more of a grimace. His heart was pumping strong and his blood was zinging, but he still felt weird.

  As if there were an invisible glass shell around him or something.

  He knew Matt expected him to come back with an insult, but he couldn’t. “Ready to swim?” he challenged Matt. “I’ll race you across the quarry pool.”

  “Lake,” said Matt, pointing at the new sign above the park’s entrance. “It’s not a dumb old quarry pool anymore, it’s Greenfield Lake, doofus.”

  The town had finally decided, since they couldn’t stop kids from swimming at the old quarry, to turn the place into a park. Sand had been trucked in for a small beach. There were picnic tables and lifeguards.

  The old stone-quarry pool was exactly the same. Only now it was called Greenfield Lake. Naturally everybody made fun of the grandiose name.

  But Luke didn’t answer. He was already racing for the water, shedding his T-shirt as he ran. He felt like he was trying to run away from himself.

  At the first shock of the water, he felt like he had succeeded. In that instant, nothing existed but the icy clearness of the pool.

  Luke surfaced, sputtering and hooting, and began to stroke for the opposite side, feeling good. He heard a sound, like a shriek. But it didn’t register.

  His skin tingled. His muscles felt strong working against the water. He could do this all day. Swim and swim and never have another thought.

  He reached the far side of the pool, turned, and pushed off with his feet. Luke was feeling like himself again.

  He ducked his head under the cold water and kicked, gliding like a missile under the surface. Down here everything was quiet and still. He made it almost all the way back across the pool before he had to come up for air.

  “Good going, jock-brain.” It was Matt, standing at the side, shaking his big head. “That was Mandy you splashed, diving in. She was on the ladder, dipping her toes. She looks ticked, man.”

  The quarry pool dropped off deep from limestone walls. There were only two ways into the water. Luke’s way—a quick dive from the side. Or the new way—down the ladder the town had installed.

  Luke remembered the shriek he had barely heard after he dived in. He felt like a total jerk. So much for any chance he might have had with Mandy.

  “I never saw her,” he protested. “I didn’t know she was there.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not what she thinks,” Matt said, smirking. “She thinks you did it on purpose. And then swam off without a word.”

  Luke’s heart sank. “I’ll have to go apologize.” His stomach churned at the prospect.

  Hauling himself up on the rock wall, his practiced foot found one of the many toeholds in the limestone. Matt leaped over Luke’s head into the water, making a huge splash. Luke scarcely noticed.

  His eyes were on Mandy. His stomach was churning worse than ever.

  Mandy was talking to Sue Ellen. They were both laughing. No way he could go talk to Mandy now. He wondered if they were laughing about what a geek he was. Luke shivered—and it wasn’t from the coolness of the morning breeze on his wet skin.

  Then his eye caught another movement at the park entrance. A large group of kids streaming in, mostly boys. A gang of skinheads, swaggering and rowdy.

  Except for the one in front. The leader. Quentin.

  Unlike his followers, Quentin hadn’t shaved his head. His straggly dark hair hung straight to his shoulders. With those behind him dressed all in black, his bright orange swim trunks stood out like a beacon.

&nb
sp; Quentin was skinny, his arms and legs like toothpicks. He had bad skin. He was short, too, and round-shouldered, and wore thick, heavy glasses. But he walked across the small beach like he owned it. Like he was six feet tall and as handsome as Brad Pitt.

  He was striding purposefully toward Mandy.

  Luke had felt a strange dread grip him the instant Quentin appeared.

  Now a panicky urge came over him. He wanted to leap out of the pool and run to protect Mandy from Quentin. It was crazy. But the certainty of danger was so strong Luke didn’t even question it.

  He levered himself up on his arms. His breath was fast and shallow. Then all at once the strength drained out of his arms like water out of a sieve.

  Luke collapsed, chest down on the gritty edge of the pool. His legs dangled uselessly in the water. All of his strength was gone. All he could do was watch.

  Mandy had her back to Quentin, but Luke could tell the instant she sensed him behind her. Mandy stiffened. Her face froze.

  Sue Ellen kept chattering like she didn’t notice a thing.

  Quentin kept coming. The gang of ’heads fanned out behind him. They were going to surround Mandy, pen her in.

  Luke’s arms and legs felt made of rubber. He opened his mouth to yell a warning. No sound came out.

  Instead a frightening image slammed into his brain. It blotted out the sun, the park.

  Disoriented, Luke struggled to find himself. Panic gripped him, sending his head into a spin.

  In his mind he saw himself pinned, unable to move. He didn’t know where he was. But bending over him was Quentin.

  He saw Quentin’s muddy gray eyes gleaming with triumph. His rubbery mouth stretched wide in horrible glee. He said something. Luke couldn’t hear any sound. But he could read Quentin’s lips.

  “Gotcha.”

  A spike of terror pierced him, and then suddenly the image vanished.

  The sun was shining again. The pool sparkled all around him.

  Luke saw Quentin reach Mandy on the beach. Although Quentin was a long distance away, Luke could tell he was wearing that same horrible grin that had invaded his mind.