by Lonni Lees
Alarmed, Sabrina looked down—and saw.
She bolted upright, shoving Charlie’s hand as she rose. “Shit,” she was saying. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit!” She ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.
“Lucy Mae?”
“Leave me alone!”
The door was opening. “Get out!” she screamed, pushing her weight against the door. “Get out, go away.” Charlie yelped as the door knocked against his wounded hand. He pulled away, allowing her to slam the door, leaving him on the other side. “Damn it, stay out of here,” she cursed, panic in her voice.
Sabrina leaned her back against the door and looked down. She cried. There was blood, everywhere blood—first Charlie’s blood and now her own.
For the first time, Sabrina was menstruating.
Weighed down with defeat, she let her body collapse and slide down the length of the door. She pulled her knees up, hugging them tightly against her, head slumped forward.
She needed her mother. And she wanted Betty and Miss Cooney.
But Charlie Blackhawk stood beyond the door.
Why now? She wondered. Why here?
It just wasn’t fair. Too many old movies, too many plot lines from Betty’s romance novels. Nobody ever got their period in either one of them! “I am Roboscout,” she said, feeling childish at saying the words. “Period or no period.” Roboscout had kept her alive this long.
She pulled herself up and nervously removed her clothes. At any moment he might barge through the door. But she turned on the shower and got in, hoping he wouldn’t pull open the curtain like Tony Perkins in Psycho. She looked into the drain and saw Janet Leigh’s blank eye staring up at her in Hitchcockian black and white. The cold water numbed her and she washed herself quickly. Then she scrubbed her soiled undies as best she could. She dried herself with a soiled hand towel, then slipped back into the dirty uniform. She folded the towel and placed it between her legs, pulling the wet underwear over it to hold it in place. It felt like a soiled diaper, awkward and clumsy.
She was angry.
It was his fault.
Sabrina threw open the bathroom door and yelled at Charlie. He had to go to the store. They needed food. She needed Kotex. That was all there was to it. She refused to be embarrassed. This was all his fault and he could damn well deal with it. She kept repeating her demands but he just kept pacing. She was screaming. He was holding his hands over his ears.
“I can’t go where they know me,” he said. “Not for that stuff.”
“You have no choice. I need them. And with no food, we’ll both die. Is that what you want?” A chill went through her—that was it—that was how the game would end. She pushed the thought from her mind.
Charlie was agitated as he stormed into the kitchen. “Devil’s spawn!” he screamed. Sabrina heard the sounds of dishes smashing against the wall and wondered, if she ran for the door right now, if she could escape. “Shitdamn,” he said. More glass breaking. She was within his sight and dared not move. “Kill the bitch, Charlie!” his Momma’s voice demanded. Sabrina held her breath as he reentered the room.
“You’re fucking everything up, Lucy,” he said. “And you’re trying to trick me again. If I gotta drive clear up to Arrowhead you think you’ll have time to escape. Well, it ain’t gonna work.” Then in a near-whisper he added: “I’d kill you first.”
And she believed him.
Had he said Arrowhead? I’m in the San Bernardino Mountains—cretin just told me so. “You can tie me up again, she said. “Or just take me with you…you know I’d never leave you, Charlie.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” he sing-songed, reaching for the rope. First he bound her ankles, then tied her hands behind her back. His bandaged hand worked awkardly as he tightened the knots.
“It’s cold in here, Charlie. Would you start a fire before you go?”
“Why should I?”
“Because you love me, Charlie.” She used her best Lucy Mae voice, at first not understanding his rage. Then it hit her—he was upset because she was no longer a little girl. She had misplayed a very important rule of the game.
“And because I saved your life,” she reminded him.
He slapped duct tape over her mouth.
“…don’t gotta listen to you!”
But he started a fire before he left.
Sabrina began working the knots.
Jan Smith pumped up the volume in her earphones, creating her own lyrics to the tune that was playing: “Sunshine strangers on the road,” she sang loudly and off-key. Her pink joggers added bounce to her step as she challenged the old dirt road. Mid-morning sunlight sifted through tree branches and powdered the ground.
Her cheeks were flushed. This was a beautiful day, her day off, and she was in party mode. Hawk hadn’t come back to the General Store so she was seeking him out. He’ll love it, she told herself—mature men love aggressive women. She wore a tight pink tee tucked into a denim mini-skirt and wore no bra or panties. She was ready to roll.
Walking along the road, she wondered what it would be like. He’d smile and invite her in. She imagined his hands removing her skirt…imagined the sex. When they finished she’d leave, not caring if he even remembered her name. Better he didn’t. Just sunshine strangers getting it on, then moving on. Just how she liked it.
Jan was ready to have her itch scratched and hoped that she could find his cabin.
She reached the end of the road and the old wooden sign. She spun in a circle, looking in all directions, then spotted the chimney smoke just over the ridge. She sang as she ascended the steep hill that led to his cabin.
She knocked. No answer. She banged louder and waited, dancing to the song on her cassette player. No one came. She tried the door but it was locked, the window covered with newspaper. She turned off the player and walked around the cabin. The kitchen door was locked but she could see inside. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she thought. There was something about the room—the mess and the broken dishes. But what the hell, she’d come for a hot body not a cool housekeeper. Still, there was something unnerving about all that broken glass. It gnawed at her as she walked around the cabin and peered through a window into the shadowy room. Something moved. She squinted, peering through the dirty glass. He has a woman in there, she thought, then saw that it wasn’t a woman but a child. She lay on the bed, tied with ropes, her mouth taped shut. Jan’s heart pounded. Her instinct was to run. But the child looked back at her, pleadingly.
“Oh, my God,” Jan said, beating her fists against the glass. “This is heavy shit.”
Charlie Blackhawk heard the commotion the instant he turned off the engine. He cocked his head and listened. Then he slid cautiously from the car, leaving the door ajar so as not to make any noise, and swiftly and quietly climbed the hill.
Glass shattered as Jan broke the window. Charlie recognized her. The nosy little bitch from the General Store was invading his space—she’d find Lucy Mae! Outraged, Charlie lunged for her, grabbing her from behind. “Slut,” he said, pulling her from the window. “Harlot!” He threw her, stunning her as her head hit the ground. He was on her before she could move. He giggled as his large hands squeezed tightly around her throat. As he strangled her, he slammed her head repeatedly against the ground. There were thuds, then a sickly crack like branches breaking. It was her skull. Her body fell limp, eyes staring up at the China blue sky and the tops of the swaying, whispering pines.
Her body twitched, then lay still.
Charlie tried to ignore his erection.
He picked up the dead girl and carried her to the back of the cabin, just outside the kitchen, tossing her carelessly to the ground. He got a shovel and started to dig.
Once the hole was dug, he walked over to the body and stood over it. So young, he thought, triggering memories of nights in the city…. “Whore, slut, harlot,” he said. He sat on the ground and spoke to her. He reached beneath her skirt.
Jan Smith’s sunshine stranger touched he
r in her dark and secret places, and promised not to tell.
Sabrina’s form floated far beyond the cabin. It had been easy this time. She saw a sign that read: TO LAKE—an old car with the license plate HAWK—a dirt road leading to a tiny village. She saw an old wagon wheel in front of a building. She was frantic to escape. She’d seen Charlie grab the girl at the window. The game was very dangerous and the rules were changing. She looked around for anything that might tell her where she was. Anything at all. Buddy, Buddy, Buddy, she kept repeating. It made no sense. But nothing made sense anymore.
She heard Charlie’s voice and instantaneously felt the mattress beneath her. He was naked when he entered the room, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, his eyes vacant. “Look, Momma,” he said, gazing beyond Sabrina, unaware of her.
She watched as if hypnotized, unable to avert her stare. His body was covered in scars and burns, some old, some fresh. “The watching games,” he snickered. He took a long drag from the cigarette, then removed it from his mouth.
His malignancy filled the room.
She moved her wrists against the slacking rope.
Smiling, Charlie lowered the hot ember to his naked flesh, to his scarred and disfigured penis.
Sabrina shut her eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Meg Stinson watched as the dark blue BMW pulled into the driveway. The man had a child in the car, but he left her there as he got out and walked up to the house. He appeared harmless enough. When he had called she thought it was another crank call. She’d hung up. She couldn’t understand the cruelty of people. There had been nine obscene phone calls already. But no one called with information on Sabrina, not until the odd call from the man named Jerry Hamill. After she’d hung up on him he called again, and kept calling until she was willing to listen. “She knows,” he’d kept repeating, “My little girl knows.”
Meg invited him in and they sat in the livingroom. “Tell me what you know about my daughter,” she said. “You told me over the phone that you had information.”
“I don’t know where to begin. Little of this makes sense.”
“Either you know something or you don’t.”
“My daughter has dreams.”
“We all have dreams.” Meg rose from the chair. “I think you’d better go now.” She regretted letting this crackpot into her house. She should have just referred him to the police.
“Get out now” she said, pointing to the door.
He didn’t move. “She has dreams about your daughter.”
“About my daughter? Go on,” she said, feeling compelled to listen.
Jerry told her about the dreams, the problems, the doctors. “I don’t know why this is happening to her, but it’s as if all this nonsense is starting to pull together and mean something. It’s beyond logic—and I pride myself in being a logical man. I’m afraid for her, and I think you know…something.”
The door opened. Meg turned and saw a tiny girl standing in the doorway, her eyes sunken, her body frail. She appeared to be seven or eight years old. Her unhealthy pallor was accentuated by pale, strawberry hair. Meg gazed at her with pity. The child was a stranger yet something about her was both familiar and unsettling.
“Amy,” her father said.
“I know this house!” She ran through the room and into the front bedroom as Jerry and Meg followed. When they entered Sabrina’s room Amy was beating her fists against the window. She turned, did a karate kick. “Roboscout!” she yelled. She pushed her way past them. As she neared the front door she stopped and turned. “Buddy,” she whispered, then collapsed.
“Buddy.” Meg repeated the name in disbelief as Jerry ran to his daughter.
“She knows what happened in this house,” Meg was saying. “She knows about my Sabrina. Make her tell me!”
“Just shut up,” he said, carrying Amy to the bedroom and placing her on the bed. “Get me a cold washcloth.”
When Meg returned, Jerry was sitting on the bed soothing his daughter. Meg was touched by the gentleness in his voice, the kindness in his gestures. She handed him the cloth. Lovingly and tenderly, he wiped Amy’s brow. “She’ll sleep now,” he said.
They returned to the livingroom. Jerry studied Meg, her eyes, her hair, her features—just as he’d studied the face on the flyer. He pulled the insert from his pocket and held it up, shaking it in Meg’s face. “Tell me,” he said. “You know—tell me.”
“You have to wake her up,” Meg said, ignoring him. “She has to tell us….”
“Look,” he said, pointing to the photo. “I can see it, can’t you?”
“See what?”
“You have the same face! You all have the same face. You’re coloring, your features. Can’t you see it?”
“What are you talking about?” She said, looking at the photo.
Jerry blurted out the words, knowing they sounded foolish, but convinced they were true. “My Amy was adopted. I’m certain Amy and your girl are sisters. That you’re her birth mother.”
“But that’s absurd. Thousands of children are adopted. And don’t you think I’d know?” Something stirred in the pit of her stomach, a memory that haunted her.
“Damn it, can’t you see that both their lives are in danger? You owe us the truth.”
“There’s nothing to tell. What you’re suggesting is impossible and I don’t have to listen to you.”
“They’re in danger. Somehow, what’s happening to your daughter is also affecting Amy. She’s getting sicker. I need to understand what’s happening. Look,” he said, pointing to the flyer. “They even have the same birthday.”
“Lots of people have the same birthday. Anyway, she can’t be the same age. Just look at her. It’s impossible.”
Jerry sat down next to her. “She looks like you,” he said softly. He put his arms around her, then buried her face against his shoulder. Instead of recoiling from his touch, Meg leaned into him. Why did this stranger make her feel so safe? Was it the gentleness he had shown with his daughter? The sincerity in his illogical words? There were things from her past that she shared with no one. Not even with Betty. But because of the situation she felt compelled to open up to this man that she’d known for less than fifteen minutes.
“She was dead,” Meg said. “I know that she was dead.” Secrets rose from their graves as she was being asked to confide them to this stranger. She hesitated. “I can’t do this.”
“I’m sorry, but right now the children are all that matter.”
Meg began to speak, slowly at first. She told him how she’d run away with Junior and left nothing out. She couldn’t look at him, but as she spoke a heavy weight was lifting from her. “You could never understand,” she said. “I was sixteen and stupid and he turned me into garbage.” She talked about the beatings, the prostitution, all of it. She told Jerry that she’d gotten pregnant and hoped that Junior would no longer want her—that he’d set her free.
Instead, he’d found men who’d pay top dollar for a pregnant whore—lots of them. “I was so young, so frightened, so beaten down. And he told me that when the baby came, he was going to sell it.”
Jerry stroked her hair gently as she continued.
One day she and Junior had fought. He beat her again, worse this time. He threw her to the floor, kicking her repeatedly in the stomach before storming out of the motel room. “Later that night I went into labor,” Meg said. “I was alone and terrified. He was going to sell my baby and there was nothing I could do. Where is my baby?” she cried. “Where is my Sabrina?”
“Shhh, it’ll be alright,” he said.
“It’s never going to be alright! I’m never going to be forgiven, don’t you see? My friend was taken from me. Sabrina was taken from me. It’s my punishment, but how could I have known?”
“Known what?”
Meg continued, “The pain was terrible.” Labor had been intense and quick and she gave birth alone, on the dirty bathroom floor. Sabrina was born—strong and healthy and loud. Bu
t the contractions didn’t stop.
When the second baby came, she was tiny and blue and dead. It was as if, in the womb, Sabrina had hoarded all of her mother’s nourishment. “Don’t you see? She was dead. I’d stopped caring about myself long ago, but I had my baby now. I had to escape. Junior would never know there had been two of them, so I left the dead baby on the floor and I ran. I knew that she was dead so I ran away with my Sabrina in my arms.”
“But the baby lived,” Jerry said.
“I didn’t know. I’m not a monster, I just didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“I started building a new life, and slowly, I started feeling better about myself. But the past never goes away, does it?”
“What matters is that they need each other,” Jerry said. Meg saw no judgment in his face nor did she hear blame in his voice.
“It’s as if they’ve always been searching, reaching out to each other—as if they….” she paused.
“As if neither of them ever felt whole,” he finished.
“My ex-wife and I had been trying to get pregnant for three years,” Jerry volunteered. “Then one day an old friend from law school had the solution. A baby was available and I grabbed the opportunity. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t legal. He had connections and a birth certificate and other papers were forged and all was well with the world. I brought her home and my wife disliked her from the start. It ended up she had been on birth control pills the whole time. A baby was the last thing she wanted. Amy’s fragility just made it more impossible for her to deal with. Amy was nothing more to her than a broken toy and an inconvenience. Things quickly deteriorated. She finally walked out and left me to raise Amy myself.”
They held each other, sharing the silence.
Amy’s sleep was restless. The girl was there again. “Buddy,” the girl kept saying, but in the dream Amy knew that she was speaking to her. Pictures flashed like a frantic slide show. Darkness—trees—road signs—birds. The images held no meaning for Amy but the voice kept repeating, “Find me, find me, find me.”
