Splinter (Fiction — Young Adult)

by Sasha Dawn

  My fingers follow the path I must’ve taken the day my mother disappeared. I wish I could remember.

  I wish I were walking that path now, on my way to share apples with Ryan in his uncle’s kitchen, just a normal girl sneaking out on a Saturday night.

  I sink into it, try to put myself into the diagram, back in time, back to the day it all happened.

  My eyes are getting heavy. I take my phone and the plat to the sofa on the other side of the room and lie down with it next to me.

  “You’re sleepy,” he says through a yawn. “You should go back upstairs and get in bed.”

  “Not yet. Talk to me just a little longer.”

  “I’ll talk to you until you fall asleep, if you want, but I think—”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course I will, but I think you should go to bed.”

  “I don’t want to.” I pull a throw from the back of the sofa and snuggle under it. Heather made this blanket. If I use my imagination, I can pretend this blanket is one of her hugs. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the idea the woman who held me through my childhood nightmares could have had a hand in my mother’s disappearance.

  “If you fall asleep, I’m going to hang up. But if you need me again when you wake up, I’ve got the volume turned all the way up on my phone. I’ll wake up.”

  “Thanks.”

  “In case I don’t get to say it later: good night, Samantha.”

  “’Night, Ryan.”

  “What are you looking at as you fall asleep?” he asks.

  “It’s a map.” I turn the camera to the plat. “Here’s where I am. And here . . .” I trace the underground path with a finger. “. . . at the end of it, is you. And here . . .” I indicate an area just off the page. “This is where the dogs alerted. Where my mother was probably buried before my father moved her body.”

  “Oh, Sami.”

  “What’s this?” I trace a dotted line that forms a square off the underground tunnel, past the property line.

  “That’s the old wine cellar under the barn. There’s a hidden hatch in the barn floor, and a ladder. Another place to hide the liquor during Prohibition.”

  My mother’s things were stashed behind the lathe near an underground cellar, Ryan had said. Could it be my mother was stashed there too?

  I’m running through the secret passageway.

  A minute ago, I saw my mother go in through the door in the floor of the carriage house.

  And I see her up ahead.

  Have to reach her, have to get to her.

  I’m scared.

  Something bad’s about to happen.

  “Mommy!”

  Wait a minute.

  That’s not Mom.

  Something’s not right.

  Not right.

  Not right!

  I jolt awake.

  It takes a few seconds for me to orient. I’m in Dad’s office. I fell asleep while Ryan was telling me about his favorite horse.

  Beads of sweat dampen my temples. I know it was just a dream. A dream I’d had and lived through before. But unlike the other times I’ve had it, I know something’s not right even after I awaken.

  It’s four in the morning. No one’s awake but me. The house is still and quiet, save the hum and rattle of the furnace as it kicks on.

  I make my way upstairs.

  The lights in Gram’s motor home are still on. This must be hard on her, I realize. Dad’s her only child, and his life has been a series of accusations and tragedy. No wonder she isn’t sleeping.

  Jack Frost touched every blade of grass last night.

  Second chance summer is over, Mom.

  We left the porch lights on, and the light in the carriage house gable, just in case Dad and Heather made it home in the middle of the night, but given the stillness of the place, I’m guessing nothing’s changed. I check my phone. No call from Lieutenant Eschermann, no call from Heather, no call from Dad.

  I wrap the blanket more tightly around my shoulders and think.

  If Heather had called the emergency number and the call disconnected, and her purse was thrown from the car, why was her phone in her purse?

  Does it make sense that if she’d been trying to make a call and the call didn’t go through, she would’ve had time to put the phone back in her purse? If she and Dad had struggled over the phone, wouldn’t the phone have ended up on the floor of the car, like her keys? Lost out the window? Wedged between the seats, maybe?

  And if the call came in at twenty after two, it came long after she and Dad left the station, which means she probably wasn’t calling when she realized Dad was taking her out of town. She would’ve called much earlier than forty-some minutes after she got in his car, if that was the case. She was calling to report the accident, which means she had to have been conscious after the accident.

  Unless she didn’t make the call at all.

  I know it’s early, but I call Eschermann, this time dialing his personal cell phone. It rings, rings, rings.

  Voice mail.

  “Lieutenant, it’s Samantha Lang. I’m sorry for the early call. But Heather couldn’t have made that call to emergency. The phone was in her purse. If it was an emergency and she had time to put the phone back in her purse, she would’ve tried nine-one-one again. Someone else called, put the phone back in the purse, and maybe even threw the purse from the car. Call me. I’m up.” I hang up.

  I look at the plat of survey again, at the square-shaped wine cellar beneath the barn.

  If Eschermann hasn’t been able to locate my father and Heather at a hospital, could it be because they aren’t at a hospital at all?

  Dad convinced Heather to take a ride.

  What if he brought her here, to the house, and slipped something in her drink? Maybe he carried her to the passageway . . . What if he then drove the car out, crashed it to divert the police—have they looked anywhere but hospitals since they found the car?—called 911 with Heather’s phone, and took off?

  Then, we’d eventually find Heather, but he’d be gone with a decent start ahead of the police.

  Kismet stretches herself awake and instantly starts nosing for me to take her out.

  “All right,” I whisper. “But let’s be quiet.”

  I walk through the rear hallway to the mudroom, where I shrug on my jacket and slip on Cassidy’s boots, which are at least a size too big.

  Kismet and I exit. I can hear her paws crunching over the frosty grass.

  I look up at Ryan’s window, which is still dark, and then across the way to Gram’s motor home, which is still ablaze with light.

  A quick glance in the motor home window tells me that even if she’s awake, she doesn’t appear to be moving around. Maybe she fell asleep with the lights on.

  Wait.

  Cassidy’s Jeep isn’t in the driveway. I look up at her window, which is cracked open, but only by an inch or so. Did she sneak out to be with Zack? Or did she park the Jeep elsewhere? I’ll look in on her when Kismet and I go back inside.

  In the meantime, I shoot her a text: Where are you?

  Kismet falls in place beside me but stays there only for a few paces before she darts ahead of me. She noses her way through the carriage house door, which couldn’t have been shut all the way, and disappears into the carriage house.

  “Kismet!” I’m still whispering. I don’t want to wake the neighborhood. I follow her in, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

  I use the flashlight on my phone to pan the interior.

  “Kismet!”

  She pops up from the floor. Yaps.

  I nearly drop my phone. The door in the floor is open.

  My dog is already halfway down into the tunnel.

  “Kismet, get out of there!”

  But she descends farther down the stairs, farther into the passageway.

  “Kismet!” I stand at the top of the stairs and whisper into the tunnel, but it’s no use. She isn’t listening.

  Maybe she’s trying to t
ell me something. Like . . . maybe Heather is in the tunnel.

  I don’t want to go in.

  But I called Eschermann, and he’ll be calling me back. I have my phone. If there’s trouble inside, I can call for help.

  “Kismet! Come on, girl. Come on out.”

  I hear her scuttling around in there. Playing.

  I can either freeze to death waiting for her to come out, or I can go in after her. Lose-lose.

  After a deep breath, I step onto the first step down.

  I duck so I don’t hit my head as I descend the remaining ten steep and narrow steps. Ten. Bad luck.

  It’s dark and dank, despite the single beam of the flashlight on my phone creating streams of light on the rocks-and-mortar walls, which bulge into the space at unpredictable intervals. The place feels like a dungeon.

  And tucked into a niche, between the rocks of the foundation, is a vodka bottle, half-full. Dad’s been drinking. He’s just been hiding his liquor so I wouldn’t know it. My heart sinks with the realization.

  The scents of the underground passageway fill my nostrils—musty, wet earth, like the smell of the air right after wet leaves are cleared from grass. I close my eyes and I see a flash of the past:

  I’m running toward my mother, golden leaves hanging over me. She’s there, past the canopy of branches, waiting for me. But in a breath, the leaves morph to concrete. I’m running through the passageway, and I’m terrified. I feel as if I’ll never get out. There’s a shadow of a figure at the other end. Someone safe. Someone who’s always taken care of me. Mom.

  But when I catapult at her and bury my head against her body, the smells are all wrong, the feeling of her clothes isn’t right. And the hands holding me . . . too strong, too tight! It’s not my mom! I wiggle to get free, but the grip on my tiny body only constricts. Not Mommy.

  In a flood, the memory rushes back to me.

  I’ve been here, done this, before.

  It wasn’t a dream.

  It happened.

  It’s not my mother.

  Curly dark hair.

  And whoever she is, she’s running in the opposite direction, back toward the carriage house.

  The memory slams into me, nearly knocks the wind out of me.

  I gasp.

  There’s a flutter in my heart, like a warning not to go much farther. I imagine the walls caving in on me, the ceiling crumbling to rubble all around me. Trapping me. Suffocating me. Like I can’t get out.

  Like Jane Doe Georgia in a ditch.

  The tunnel is barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. It’s cramped, and the space is only getting smaller and smaller.

  Those dreams about being buried, not being able to get out. The drawings of the blood rain and the dead body in the rocks. The manuscript. The jacket. The picture of Dad with another woman. The images of Mom in Schmidt’s box . . .

  “Kismet!” My hissed whisper echoes in the space.

  Is Heather in here somewhere? What else would entice the dog?

  I delve deeper in, walking at a clipped pace, the space getting narrower and the ceiling getting shorter with every step. My hair grazes the top, as the passageway has taken me slightly up-slope.

  My breaths are more like wheezes than effective respiration.

  The path forks a little to the right, which I know leads to Schmidt’s basement, but the dog stops here, pawing at the bottom of a door with large rusty hinges. A large iron handle practically taunts me, dares me to depress the latch. “What is it, Kissy? What’s in there?”

  I shine the light downward to see what’s occupying the dog.

  It’s a caterpillar. A chunky, fuzzy caterpillar. The kind my mother used to collect from the trunks of the hickories and stems of the sunflowers.

  Another memory: the caterpillar crawling over her fingers, as she told me what was going to happen to the creature once it built a cocoon.

  In the corridors of my mind, I see mason jars filled with caterpillars spinning silk around their bodies. Cocoons stuck to sticks.

  And then, the emergence of the butterflies, with their gorgeous, artful wings . . .

  My fingers meet the old door and pull, but the door won’t budge.

  As the crow flies, the distance between our property and Schmidt’s is about one hundred thirty-five feet. I’ve just walked about seventy feet, which means this door is about fifty feet past our property line. Which means this door is on Schmidt’s property.

  This must be the wine cellar.

  My dream about her coming back to play one last time . . .

  My obsession about her being in the passageway, or on Schmidt’s property . . .

  The dogs alerted behind this barn.

  This is the wine cellar, and Dad had access to it.

  Say a man loves a woman, but he’s made a mistake with another girl. Say the woman he loves doesn’t love him back anymore, but he wants to keep her close. Wants to keep their child close. Would he have stashed that child’s mother in a hiding place? Could she have died there, a prisoner, before anyone knew she was gone?

  Maybe Dad kept her here, behind this door, until he couldn’t keep her anymore.

  Until the cops caught wind of the fact that maybe she hadn’t left town—that maybe she wasn’t anywhere anymore.

  Or maybe there was some sort of altercation and an accident. One bump in the wrong direction, and her head could’ve banged fatally against one of the rocks in the foundation.

  I close my eyes and remember the last time I saw my mother. She was there in front of me. I didn’t think I was alone when she left, but then I was running through the passageway. I thought I was running after her, but . . .

  I never reached her. The tunnel curved, and I felt like I’d never get out of there.

  And I never saw her again.

  Kismet growls, then barks, and races back in the direction we came from.

  I walk quickly behind her—as quickly as I can, anyway, but Cassidy’s boots are slipping from my feet, and I can’t run.

  A moment later, the dog is out of sight, up the stairs.

  Clank, slam!

  The concrete tunnel reverberates with the sound, freezing me in place with the realization of what just happened. The door has slammed shut.

  “No, no, no, no!” I trip toward the access steps, but I can already see the door leading to the carriage house is closed.

  A few steps later, even the light emanating from the coach lamps and slipping through the cracks dissipates. Everything would be black, if not for the light from my phone.

  I push and pound on the door, but it doesn’t move.

  I’m trapped!

  “Help! Someone!” But no one comes.

  Frantically, I redial the last number I called—Eschermann’s. But my phone only buzzes at me. Call can’t be completed. No service.

  And, thanks to my hours-long FaceTime with Ryan earlier, I don’t have much battery left.

  I make my way toward the other end of the tunnel. “It’s okay,” I coach myself along the way. “I’ll go in through Schmidt’s basement. I’m not stuck here. I’m not going to freeze to death.”

  Something Ryan said, though . . . he put a lock on the door after that.

  I won’t be able to get in to Schmidt’s house on my own. Worst case scenario, I’m in here for a few hours until the world starts waking up. I’ll pound on the door until Ryan hears me.

  And if he doesn’t hear me?

  Surely, whoever shut the door in the floor of the carriage house will put two and two together. Samantha’s not here. The dog was in the passageway. Guess I’d better look for Sam in the tunnel, then.

  Unless . . . unless it was a lure, a trap. Unless I’m in here because someone wants me in here.

  It’s only getting colder.

  And my fists are raw from banging on Schmidt’s basement door. What was I thinking? Ryan is two stories up. This door is at the back corner of the basement, and this house is enormous. Ryan won’t hear me even if he
’s in the kitchen.

  Shivering, I rock back and forth. It’s so damn cold!

  I close my eyes and look for the map in my mind.

  There it is. Parchment. Veins of roads and rivers.

  It’s going to be okay.

  But instead of towns popping up, it’s trees. Trees, like the one Ryan recently reduced to a stump. Big, strong hickories that have been here longer than the roads.

  I see leaves of the past slowly tumbling through the breeze, wafting on the wind until they settle on the ground where my mother’s lying on her back, staring up at the sky, watching the clouds drift idly by.

  You know what I think, Sami-girl? I think there are thousands of tiny fairies in the sky, and it’s their job to keep the sky free from clutter. They’re sweeping the clouds from the sky. And the days when it’s cloudy—they have those days off.

  Did my mother spend the end of her days stuck in an underground prison, instead of enjoying the sky?

  I don’t want to be here one second longer, but I can’t lose this memory, can’t lose this moment.

  Some fairies are better at sweeping than others. During their shifts, the clouds move more quickly across the sky.

  I practically see her, lounging on that blanket, watching the fairies brush the dust balls from the sky. I’m cuddling at her side, and a book is tented on her flat belly. The Great Gatsby.

  A sense of dread darkens me, and I can’t think straight. My father couldn’t have—wouldn’t have locked me in here. Even if he did hurt Mom, he wouldn’t do that.

  Would Heather?

  My mother, my father, Heather. Love triangle.

  But Heather insists that wasn’t her in the picture. I wonder why she’d deny it, when I told her Dad already admitted their affair.

  What if there was more than one woman?

  I force myself to look up, in my mind, at the woman I’d seen in the passageway that day. Force myself to look beyond the mass of curly hair.

  But I can’t remember her face. I can’t picture anyone but Heather. Was it Heather I’d run into that day?

  Or . . .

  Curly hair. A face I’ve seen recently. Online. At the police station.

  It’s Trina Jordan!

  Cassidy’s right about the picture of Dad and that other woman, and Heather wasn’t lying. It’s not Heather. In that picture, he’s standing opposite Trina.