Far Far Away

by Tom McNeal

  When the groaning wall had swung shut and the dungeon fallen quiet, Jeremy gathered the peas from beneath his pillow, washed them in the basin, and held them in his open hand for Ginger to see.

  “Hope you’re not trying to pass those off as magic beans.”

  He shook his head. “It’s our calendar. We don’t have a way to mark days down here, so every day I’ll give you a pea and we’ll know how many days have passed. Up to twenty-seven, anyhow. Because that’s how many peas we have.”

  Ginger’s eyes filled with alarm. “You think we’re going to be down here twenty-seven days? You don’t think we’re going to be rescued?”

  “I do,” Jeremy said. “But—”

  “Keep your peas,” she said. “If we’re still down here after twenty-seven days, I don’t want to know it.”

  Soon thereafter, the lights dimmed slowly, as to suggest dusk and nightfall, and one by one, the prisoners fell into the heavy breathing of sleep. Sometime later—how much time had passed, I could not have said—Ginger began to make fearful, murmuring noises that awakened Jeremy.

  “Hey!” he said in an urgent whisper. “Ginger! Are you okay?”

  Her murmuring stopped, and she said, “Oh. Yeah. Bad dream. Sorry.”

  “And you’re okay now?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Except, you know, that we’re here.” A few moments passed. “That story he told. Didn’t it sound like he poisoned the baker and his wife?”

  “Yeah, it did,” Jeremy said quietly. “And took the money and came here.”

  “What I was thinking about was how he made the green smoke when the baker and his wife died. It’s like that’s what he does after he’s—you know …” She let her voice trail off. “He’s worse than the villains in those stories of yours.”

  Jeremy gave a small laugh. “It depends. In one story, the stepmother chops up her stepson and puts him in a stew that she feeds to the boy’s father.”

  “Okay, that’s worse,” she said, yawning. “Not that it’s much consolation.”

  After a time, Jeremy whispered, “The thing is, in fairy tales, when the heroes are chopped up or eaten by the wolf, they still come back to life at the end and live happily ever after. But this isn’t like that. If we die, we stay dead.”

  But Ginger could not reply, for she had given in to sleep.

  Slowly the days passed. Often I imagined slipping out with the baker in order to try somehow to find help in the village, but I could not break my pledge to Jeremy to stay. Ginger did accept the pea that Jeremy gave her every morning—she now had seven of them. The prisoners listened to the baker’s dark stories, and they ate the baker’s food (all of which, it must be admitted, looked delectable). They exchanged their soiled clothes for clean, their spent flowers for fresh. They wondered who might be looking for them, and they discussed ways of escape. Nothing offered much hope. Jeremy and I continued telling the tales, one after another, always with happy endings. Often I would embellish, or even add episodes, that they might divert the others a little longer. When I did this, Jeremy would hesitate and cock his head but then go on with the amendments I provided. He and I could not talk during the day, but at night, when the others were asleep, he would whisper, “You there?” and I would say, Yes, Jeremy, I am here.

  And there was someone else, too, making pleas in secret. Whenever she found that the others were momentarily paying her no attention, Ginger would cover her eyes with her hands and her lips would softly move. And once, when the others were in their baths and she was completely alone, she placed her hands to her eyes and whispered softly, “Please watch over Jeremy and Frank and me, too, and please help someone see the baker for what he is and discover that we’re here, wherever we are, and, most of all, don’t let us all die here without ever getting to—”

  But she did not finish the thought. The sound of Jeremy’s shower had suddenly ceased, so she whispered, “Amen,” and fell silent.

  Without ever getting to … what? I wondered. What might she be regretting not having the chance to do? And a darker question yet: If in this dungeon she were to slip free of her mortal self, would she, too, be destined to drift through eternity searching for the thing undone? It did not seem impossible. Nothing, it seemed, was too cruel to be true.

  One night, when the day had seemed endless and the prisoners’ stomachs were rumbling with hunger, the baker rolled in his cart and announced that he had news from the outside world. “Yes, yes,” he said cheerfully, “and so much of it hitting so close to home!”

  The prisoners watched him as he set the cart and uncovered a stewpot and a beautifully browned loaf of freshly baked bread.

  “I will begin with my visit with our dear Sheriff Pittswort, who came in for crème-filled pastries. As we chatted, I could not keep myself from asking about our missing young people. ‘Oh, them,’ he said. ‘They’re just out adventurin’. They jumped a train. The girl wrote her grandpa telling him so.’ ” The baker’s eyes glistened with pleasure. “The sheriff told me he did a little investigating and, lo and behold, they found Jeremy’s and Ginger’s bicycles near the siding, an ideal place, according to the sheriff, to catch a train.” A laugh rumbled up from the baker’s ample belly. “Lo and behold! Our Sheriff Pittswort has solved the case!”

  The baker lifted the lid from the pot, stirred his stew with a wooden spoon, and sampled it appraisingly. “Yes, I think this will meet with your approval.” He took out his carving knife and began drawing a flat file back and forth across its long blade.

  “What other news?” he said. “Oh, yes, Dauntless Crinklaw. Our good mayor. Once he heard about Jeremy’s train adventure, he said he had no choice but to start legal proceedings against Jeremy in absentia for his nonpayment of debt.” The baker held up the knife—its blade gleamed when turned to the light. “Lo and behold! In absentia! What phrasemakers our villagers can be!”

  He began slicing the bread—its splendid aroma spread through the chamber.

  “Oh! But I forgot the most interesting news of all! There is one person in town who believes something is wrong with our narrative. Our dear Deputy McRaven believes that Miss Boultinghouse has met with foul play, and he says so to one and all. But no one pays him any attention, and do you know why?” The baker’s face swelled with happy expectation. “Because no one listens to a dwarf!”

  The baker laughed so hard that his great stomach shook.

  “No,” he said, catching his breath, “the deputy will never uncover our secret, but he has revealed his own!” The baker nodded to himself. “Just think of it. Our deputy isn’t worried about Jeremy or Frankie, and he has never worried about all the other missing children over the years. But now he is worried sick about Miss Boultinghouse. Yes, worried sick! So what has he inadvertently announced to the town? That our poor, sad, solitary dwarf has been enchanted by a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl!”

  Again the baker’s stomach shook with laughter.

  Could it be true? Could Deputy McRaven have been following Ginger because he was lovesick?

  Yes. I saw it at once. It not only could be true but most certainly was.

  “A laughingstock,” the baker said. “That is what our deputy has become.”

  He began to ladle thick beef stew into bowls. “Oh,” he said. “One last thing! Jeremy’s show was on the air last night, but I’m afraid the ending did not change. A pity, really, because just think of it—if he had answered that last question and won all that money, he would not have needed to sneak away to work on a wood crib in the forest and then”—he gave his broadest smile—“we would not all be together now.”

  He set the food on the ledge of each cell and was about to open the little doors when Ginger said, “They’re going to find us, you know.”

  The baker stilled his hand.

  Frank Bailey said hurriedly, “But you’ve been nice to us, Mr. Blix, so even if they did find us, we wouldn’t tell them anything.”

  The baker kept his eyes on Ginger. “And how will they find you,
dear girl? You do not even know where you are.”

  “We’re in your dungeon,” Ginger said.

  The baker laughed. “Oh, ho! Is that where you think we are? In a dungeon?”

  “Yeah,” Ginger said, “that’s what we think.”

  “But you might be anywhere, dear child. You might be in a converted silage bin on a deserted farm. Or in a concrete chamber out in the woods. Or in a secret vault under the old quarry.”

  At these suggestions, all darkly possible, Ginger fell quiet.

  The baker’s voice softened. “But do you know?—it doesn’t matter where you are, because no one is ever going to find you.” He smiled. “Now, my dear child, if you will just apologize for your outburst, you may all have your dinner.”

  If eyes could kill, Ginger’s stony glare would have struck the baker dead.

  The dungeon filled with silence.

  Then, in a low voice, Jeremy said, “We’re beneath your house.”

  The baker’s eyes danced merrily toward Jeremy. “Oh! Do you think so?”

  “Yes,” Jeremy said. “I do. You drugged us, and you drove us back to town and left us in the back of the van while you went into Elbow’s Café and ate and even talked with my father. Then you drove into your garage and slid us down the chute and carted us through the third room and swung open the back wall and brought us here.”

  It took Jeremy perhaps a quarter of a minute to say these words, and in that time the color had drained completely from the baker’s face. He stared in disbelief, and when he spoke, it was almost to himself. “You were awake? But if you were awake, why didn’t you call out?” Wildly, his eyes flew everywhere, and then alighted again on Jeremy. “But you were not awake. You were cataleptic. How could you see?” His voice climbed in register. “How did you see?”

  Tell him nothing, I said.

  The baker’s eyes turned to ice, and so did his voice. “How did you see?”

  “I don’t know how I saw,” Jeremy said. “I just saw what I saw.”

  The baker held his gaze on Jeremy, and then a smile slowly returned to his lips. “Your eyes were open,” he said. “You were cataleptic, but your eyes were open. That is how you saw.”

  Then he collected the prisoners’ untouched dinners and departed.

  The moment the baker was gone, Ginger turned to Jeremy. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “How did you know all that stuff that Sten was doing while we were conked out?”

  “I didn’t. I mean, I think he might be right—that my eyes were open and it sort of registered in some dark corner of my mind and then, when he began to talk about it, it kind of worked itself free.”

  She stared at him. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so. How else would I have seen it?”

  She kept her eyes fixed on him. “Yeah, well, that was what I was asking.”

  From across the chamber, Frank Bailey said, “Know what I noticed?”

  The other two turned toward him.

  “That we’re going without our dinner,” he said. “I mean, everything was just fine, and then you guys had to start talking about dungeons and seeing things and getting Mr. Blix all worked up.” He shook his head. “Because I can tell you that when Mr. Blix is all worked up—”

  He did not finish speaking because the lights had begun to dim.

  A moment later, the prisoners sat in darkest darkness.

  “Oh, God,” Frank Bailey said, and Jeremy asked him what he meant, but by that time he did not have to.

  The sounds had begun.

  “What’s that?” Ginger said.

  The sounds were soft and strange and unsettling, a kind of whisking, as if from the movements of small living creatures. Nothing could be seen. The darkness was impenetrable—we all might have been blind.

  Frank Bailey said, “Sounds like mice.”

  “Or rats,” Ginger said.

  “Do you see anything?” Jeremy asked.

  “Not a thing,” she said, and I added, Nor do I. I do not smell anything, either.

  Something metallic suddenly scraped across the stone floor. “That’s me,” Ginger said. “I’m pulling my cot closer to yours. Can you pull yours over, too?”

  Jeremy did. Then, into the darkness, he whispered, “You okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s just that one time, when I was little, I saw some rats eating a not-quite-dead barn kitten … and it kind of affected the way I feel about them.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said. “I guess it would.”

  * * *

  The night was so long that it might have been three nights, or four, or five. The sounds of whisking rodents never ceased. From Ginger, Jeremy, and Frank Bailey, I occasionally heard the rhythmic breathing of sleep, but more often I heard heavy sighing and anxious whispering.

  “You awake?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think the light will ever come on again?”

  “Sure,” Jeremy said.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Ginger said. “I mean, what would be the point of keeping prisoners in total darkness until they go stark raving bonkersville?”

  Who can say how many hours passed, but at last, when the darkness finally began to thin and the dim light rose, Ginger and Jeremy lay asleep in their cots on either side of the iron-barred wall. And there was something else, too. Ginger had slipped her hand through the bars and it lay wrapped in Jeremy’s hand.

  Upon wakening, Ginger quickly pulled back her hand. Jeremy, too, began to stir. “Okay,” Ginger said, “whoever doesn’t believe in hell should spend a night in this hotel.”

  Jeremy stood and began inspecting the floor, looking into corners.

  “No droppings,” he said. “If there were mice or rats, you’d see droppings.” He glanced across the dungeon at Frank Bailey. “You think it was just sound effects? To toy with us and give us the willies?”

  Frank Bailey tugged at his ear. “I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Blix was just trying to get our attention, or something.”

  “He did that, and then some,” Ginger said. “I need a shower just to wash off a little bit of the bad way I’m feeling.” But a moment later, she stepped back out of the tiny bathroom with an expression of shock. “No water.”

  “That’s a new one,” Frank Bailey said. He blinked. “I wonder what it means.”

  “I think it means he’s playing mind games with us,” Jeremy said.

  “Yeah,” Frank Bailey replied in a quiet voice. “And they’re kind of working.”

  “No!” Ginger said, her voice stiff and rigid. “We can’t let him win. And we can’t let him think he’s winning.”

  She is right, Jeremy, I said. Perseverance is all. You must resist and adapt and never give up.

  “You’re right,” Jeremy said to me, but Ginger, thinking he was talking to her, said, “Of course I’m right. Who said I wasn’t?”

  “A motto just came to me,” Jeremy said. “Resist, adapt, never give up.”

  “Sure,” Ginger said. “We can make it an acronym. Rangu.”

  Ginger and Jeremy then heard something they had not heard since the beginning of their incarceration: a laugh from Frank Bailey.

  “Rangu,” he said, and another, smaller laugh spilled out. “Sounds like a spaghetti sauce.” His grin seemed to leap across the chamber. “I like it.”

  Jeremy nodded. “And the other thing we have to remember is that there are people besides McRaven who are going to miss us. And pretty soon they’re going to begin looking in the right places.”

  Ginger nodded. So did Frank Bailey, who added, “But until then, I could do with a little food.”

  Eleven peas lined the ledge above Ginger’s sink.

  Four days had passed without food. The prisoners’ stomachs were hollow. They did not exercise. Jeremy’s voice was tired as he told the old tales, and Ginger and Frank Bailey had difficulty listening. They were just waiting for food, or for whatever else might happen next. And finally, when they had begun to think they never
would, they heard the moan of the wall, the squeal of the cart, the clinking of dishes. And there was the baker, smiling, a white cloth blanketing the serving cart.

  “Hallå,” he said. “Is it not a great day to be alive? Is everybody comfortable? Is everyone sleeping well?”

  Ginger and Jeremy stared at him.

  Frank Bailey stared at the cart.

  Like a magician, the baker whisked away the white cloth to reveal four platters covered with metal domes. He lifted one dome to reveal a savory cut of roasted beef. A rich aroma bloomed into the air.

  The prisoners looked at the food with the dilated eyes of predators.

  “Roasted beef,” the baker said, “mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh roasted beets, just-baked rolls, and a pleasant little dessert. But first”—he set the domes back over the beef—“I need each of you to write a little note to your loved ones.”

  It took several moments for the baker’s meaning to settle in.

  “No,” Ginger said in a stony voice. “The answer is no. If you’re going to abduct and hide us and do who knows what, okay. But don’t expect us to help.”

  The baker smiled at her, then turned to Jeremy. “And you?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “Same.”

  The baker turned to the other enclosure, lifted the plate cover, and tilted the platter to display more clearly the delectable beef. “And what does Frankie say?”

  Several long moments passed before Frank Bailey pried his gaze from the plate. In a small voice he said, “I’m with them.”

  “Ah, I see,” the baker said, slowly setting the cover back over the plate. “Frankie is now with them.”

  He scanned the chamber and sighed. “I understand. But please don’t say I didn’t offer,” he said, and with that he began to wheel the serving cart away.

  Something changed in Jeremy’s face—I had the presentiment that some idea had occurred to him. “Wait!” he called.

  The baker stopped and peered back.

  “I’ll write the letter,” he said. He looked from Ginger to Frank Bailey. “We all will.”