by Blake Crouch
Movies for a breaking mind.
I talked to myself.
I sang.
Mostly, I wept.
Then cycled through it all over again, until I finally arrived at a simple, overpowering wish to die. The pain of this immobilized consciousness, of lying in the dark waiting for something I knew not what, freezing and thirsty and hungry and confused and no concept of it ever ending was beyond any physical pain I’d endured.
And then it happened. I came shivering out of a fever dream and something was different—an object rested in my right hand—small, longer than it was wide, hard plastic, one side covered in rubber buttons.
A voice—soft, southern, and familiar—was suddenly in my head.
“You have a choice, Andy. This will be the first of many, and once done, it cannot be undone. In your right hand, you’re holding a remote control. If you want to see something, press the large button toward the front.”
I realized I held a smaller device in my left hand.
“What’s in my other hand?”
“That’s for later.”
“Where are Violet and Max? Luther? What have you done with them?”
He made no answer.
I sat in the dark fingering the large, circular button, savoring this first new sensation in days—the friction of the rubber against the ridges on my thumb.
I didn’t want to do it. I knew nothing remotely good could come from it, but anything would be better than continuing to sit here in darkness.
This, I couldn’t bear.
So I pushed the button.
Violet
“HELLO, Violet.”
She brought her hand to the earpiece in her left ear, hadn’t even noticed it until this moment.
“Acknowledge that you can hear me.”
“Where’s my son?” she asked.
“I’m holding him.”
She took in a quick shot of oxygen, tears welling, her throat beginning to close.
“If you hurt him in any—”
“He’s safe—for the time being.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Max’s unmistakable cry blared through the speaker into her ear. She could have picked it out of a million.
“See, you just made me pinch him. There, there, little man. Hush now.”
“Max, it’s Mama. I’m right here.” She couldn’t hear him anymore. “Please don’t hurt him. I’ll do anything you want.”
“So glad to hear you say that.”
“Is Andy okay?”
“Andy...has been better. But he’s alive.”
“What is it you want?”
“Get your ass up.”
Vi came to her feet, made a slow turn, eyeing the abandoned factory houses up and down the street. She touched the earpiece again, gave it a soft tug. It didn’t budge, but she could feel her skin stretching.
“It isn’t coming off,” Luther said. “Not without a scalpel. Start walking.”
“Which way?”
“Toward the water tower.”
She started walking.
“You can see me?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
The water tower stood a quarter of a mile away, its silver tank dulled and heavily graffitied.
Still, she could read the palimpsest of the tower’s namesake.
“You’re feeding my son?”
“He’s being fully cared for, Violet.”
“I need to see him.”
“That can certainly be arranged.”
“How?”
“Obedience, of course.”
She was closing in on the tower now.
A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the base.
“Up and over,” he said.
She ran her hands through her hair which had been pulled into an off-center ponytail, then touched the fence, a heavy coating of rust on the metal. As she began to climb, she noticed she wore a pair of tennis shoes and a black tracksuit that had never belonged to her.
Near the top, she made a lateral move across the fence and swung her leg over between a gap in the barbed wire, caught the leg of her tracksuit on a stray jag of metal coming down, ripped a six-inch tear.
Gasped at the coldness of blood and the burn of torn flesh.
She hit the ground on the other side, turned, stared up at the tower—a hundred and seventy-five feet of rusted metal that should’ve been razed years ago.
It creaked, swaying visibly in the wind.
“There’s something for you at the top. Something you’re going to need.”
“The top of the tower?”
“That’s right.”
Violet saw where the lowest rung of the ladder stopped six feet above the concrete foundation.
“I can’t reach that.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
She stepped onto the broken concrete and stopped directly under the ladder. When she stood on the balls of her feet and reached her hands up, her fingers just grazed the bottom rung. Bending her legs, she jumped and grasped the lowest rung with one hand, then both, grunting as she pulled her eyes parallel with her blanching knuckles.
Her right arm shot up, fingers catching on the next rung and tightening around the metal.
She cried out, fighting through the next pull-up, the hardest she’d ever done.
Her knees slid over the bottom rung and she let her weight rest upon it.
Gasping.
Sweat burning in her eyes.
Violet clung to the rusting ladder, allowing her pulse rate to slow. When she could breathe without panting, she got her tennis shoes onto the bottom rung and stared up toward the base of the water tank.
“Is this safe?” she asked.
“Does it look or feel safe?”
She began to climb.
The ladder itself was impossibly narrow, a foot wide at most. As she stepped onto each new rung the weight of her footfall set the metal vibrating on a low and haunting frequency.
Forty feet up, and she still hadn’t looked down, maintaining a hyperfocus on each rung, down to the rust-speckled metal. It was all that mattered—making clean steps. Certainly not the world opening up all around her, or the perceptible leaning of the tower that grew more pronounced the higher she climbed, or the picture her mind’s eye kept conjuring—the bolts that held this ladder to the top slowly pulling out of their housings.
The wind pushing against her carried tiny ball-bearings of sleet.
Halfway up, she had to stop and make herself breathe.
Not breathless from exertion, but fear.
When she opened her eyes, she was staring down the length of the ladder between her feet, figuring it must be seventy or eighty feet to that concrete slab at the tower’s base. It moved back and forth, or seemed to at least, though she knew that was the tower itself swaying and a surge of bile lurched up her throat.
Hold it together. You’ve been through worse. This is for Max. For Andy.
“You aren’t freezing on me up there, are you?”
“No.”
Her words thick in her throat, palms sweating, sliding too easily across the metal rung. There was a tremor in her right leg as she started to climb again. Exhaustion and fear and the adrenaline running out, leaving her muscles shaky.
But she kept climbing.
A freezing drizzle needled the side of her face.
The steps becoming slippery.
Vi looked up. Three more rungs. Almost there.
She pushed on.
Two more.
Then reached up, her right hand clutching the water-beaded railing, and pulled herself onto the catwalk that encircled the water tank.
It spanned twenty-four inches, but at least it had a railing, a flimsy semblance of protection.
A small camera, just out of reach, had been mounted to the water tank.
It aimed down toward where the ladder joined the catwalk.
Violet flattened herself on the cold m
etal, her heart beating against it. She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking out across the urban wasteland that sprawled beneath her—block after block of derelict neighborhoods. A six-story housing project—black windows, a crumbling playset in what remained of the courtyard. She craned her neck. Abandoned factories loomed in the distance around the other side of the tower. A series of buildings. Brick chimneys, smokeless and soaring into a ceiling of slate. Everywhere, nothing but industrial decay. A ghost town. Only in the far distance, a mile or more away, did she discern the hum of automobiles, and further on, the feeble skyline of the city.
The speaker crackled in her ear.
“Get up.”
Vi wiped the rainwater out of her eyes and got back onto her feet.
“I told you I had something for you, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“That was a lie. Not something. Someone.”
Violet felt a vibration under her feet. She grabbed hold of the loose railing, didn’t like standing upright, the swirl of vertigo threatening.
She staggered back over to the ladder and looked down.
They’d only just started, but someone climbed quickly, with purpose.
“You’re coming up here?” she asked.
“That’s not me. Her name is Jennifer. She woke up here just like you, about an hour ago. Also like you, she’s a new mother. Her daughter, Margot, is sharing a crib with Max as we speak.”
Vi could hear the woman’s footfalls clanging on the metal rungs.
“Why’s she coming up here?”
“Because she doesn’t want her daughter to die. I assume you feel the same way about Max?”
Vi felt a tightening in her chest.
“Whichever one of you isn’t thrown to their death in the next ten minutes can also rest assured their child will be safe a little while longer.”
“Luther, for God’s—”
“Should be fun.”
“I can’t do this.”
“No one’s asking you to do a thing.” Clang. Clang. Clang. “Just stand there for all I care, let her throw you off.”
Violet backed away from where the ladder joined the catwalk.
Still, she had that lilting wooziness in her stomach, the height unnerving.
She leaned against the side of the empty water tank, her hands beginning to shake, listening to the woman approach.
And then the clanging was right there, and she saw hands grasp the railing and a head of dirty-blond hair lifting into view.
The woman climbed onto the catwalk and stood facing Violet. Ten feet away. She was a few years older, early thirties at most, wore a pink tracksuit and had about six inches on Vi. Deep, black bags formed half-crescents under her eyes, her skin molting with old mascara. The drizzle had flattened her hair. She looked sturdy, scrapy, angry, and scared.
“Hey,” Vi said.
The woman just stared, but something was breaking inside of her.
“Oh, I should’ve mentioned,” Luther said, “what with you being a cop and all your training, I gave her a knife. It’s only fair.”
Violet said to the woman, “Let’s climb down. We don’t have to do this.”
“He has my angel.”
“I know. He has my son. But we can’t do this. What he’s trying to force us into.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Let’s go down,” Vi said again. “We’ll figure something out.”
The woman shook her head, tears already trailing down her face. She reached back and her hand reappeared grasping a large hunting bowie with a wicked point and a nasty, serrated blade that looked unnatural in her hand, her eyes constantly shifting down to look at it, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she held.
“I’m Violet. You’re Jennifer?”
The woman gave an uncomfortable nod.
“The only way he wins is if we do what he wants. If we don’t go after each other, he has no power.”
The voice in her head said, “Not exactly true, Vi.”
“Jennifer, I used to be a cop. Will you trust me?” Violet edged forward, extending her hand. “Just drop the knife, okay? We’re stronger together.”
Jennifer’s lower lip trembled. “He’s going to kill my daughter.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t make that promise.”
Babies suddenly cried through the tiny speaker into Violet’s ear.
She and Jennifer shouted, “No!” in unison, both clutching their earpieces.
“Stop, Luther!”
“Please!” Jennifer screamed.
Vi took another step forward, her head spinning with the tiny, wailing cries.
“Look at me Jennifer!” she shouted.
The woman met her eyes.
“He wants this, okay? Do you understand that?”
“He’s hurting her!”
Jennifer swung the bowie at Violet, who leapt back.
Her impact sent a tremor through the catwalk, the metal vibrating, and Vi had to grab the railing to steady herself.
Her stomach burned. She touched her hand to the front of her tracksuit, and it came away red. The blade had passed through the nylon and cut a shallow streak across her abdomen.
She looked up at Jennifer who seemed stunned at what she’d done, fingering the blood on the knife.
Jennifer’s face broke. “I’m sorry,” she said.
The babies still screamed through their earpieces, and Luther was saying something that was lost amid the cries.
“I have to do this,” Jennifer said.
She stepped forward and Vi stepped back.
They both froze.
Jennifer rushed forward, and Vi rushed back.
Like some terrible dance.
When they stopped again, they were still six feet apart, both panting.
Jennifer faked a step and turned, sprinting in the other direction, disappearing around the other side of the water tank.
Vi stood motionless, listening. She could no longer hear the woman’s footsteps—nothing but the wobble of the railing, the pattering of the rain on the tank.
She could only see several feet in each direction before the catwalk disappeared around the curve of the water tank.
The sound of the crying babies had faded away.
Violet said, “Jennifer?”
She ventured three steps around the tank—nothing.
“Jennifer?”
She never heard the footsteps, only felt a new vibration in the catwalk, turned just in time to see Jennifer charging her in socks, the woman’s face overcome with a sudden ferocious flush, eyes gone cold and determined.
Predatory.
Vi watched the knife moving toward her, everything replaced by a diamond-hard streak of self-preservation.
Twenty-four inches of walkway left little room to parry the oncoming attack, and with Vi already pressed up against the water tank, she simply reacted without thinking, her right hand deflecting the knife thrust, clenching Jennifer’s wrist, and before she realized what she was doing, she’d simultaneously struck Jennifer’s arm above the elbow and jerked her wrist back against the blow.
The woman’s radius snapped and the knife clattered to the metal walkway and Vi drilled her chestplate with a palm-heel strike.
From Jennifer’s charge to this moment had taken the blink of an eye, Vi running on instinct and muscle memory. Vi lunged to grab the woman, her fingertips just missing the tracksuit as the backs of Jennifer’s thighs hit the railing, her momentum carrying her torso over the edge.
Vi caught a glimpse of the heels of her tennis shoes and then the woman was gone but for her fading scream—three and a half seconds of pure, vocalized terror.
She’d never heard anything to rival the sound of a human body slamming into a concrete slab from a hundred and seventy-five feet.
A thousand things breaking in the space of a millisecond.
Then silence.
Violet grippe
d the wet railing, staring down at Jennifer, sprawled far below.
She’d killed before, but they’d been monsters.
That woman was an innocent.
This felt...wrong.
She backpedaled into the water tank and sank down onto the walkway.
“Please don’t hurt her baby,” she said. “Please.”
“You are good,” he said. “You are very good.”
“Will you spare her child?”
“For no reason?”
“I’ll earn it.”
Vi could feel herself coming unhinged, a psychotic refusal to acknowledge what had just happened.
“That could be interesting.”
“Promise me.”
“Head back down. We’ll talk when you reach the ground.”
For several minutes, Vi sat there, unmoving.
The drizzle had become rain and it beat down on her head, a bitter cold beginning to fester someplace deep inside of her.
Andy
ON the screen, I watched Violet slowly working her way down the water tower’s ladder. The camera shot came from over a hundred yards away—handheld and constantly zooming in and pulling back to correct the focus. Condensation on the lens lent a foggy overlay to the picture.
I’d heard everything Luther had said. Watched the fight. Seen Violet throw the woman over the railing.
Now the screen went black.
Again, I sat in darkness, the thought crossing my mind that I had just dreamed all of this.
Sleeping was sight and picture and color.
Waking this unending night.
His voice convinced me otherwise.
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Luther said. “It must be something to know her. I mean, really know her. Do you really know her, Andy?”
“Whatever you want with Violet, use me,” I said. “I’ll go along with anything you want, but please, let Violet and her son go. They don’t need to be a part—”
“You love her, huh?”
The question more painful than anything I’d experienced sitting in this chair.
Emotion swelling in my throat.
“I owe her,” Luther said, “and still...”
His voice trailed off, and for a moment I could only hear him breathing, and the patter of rainfall on plastic.
