by S. B. Caves
‘It’s a possibility,’ she replied stubbornly.
‘You’re right. It’s highly improbable, of course, but it is a possibility. So this person wants you to know that they know where Autumn is after all these years,’ he pinched the envelope at the corners and held it up like an exhibit of evidence, ‘yet they leave no way for you to contact them. Of course, they could’ve just tried knocking on the door, but why go to the trouble? So the envelope,: there’s no phone number, no email address and no stamp. It makes you wonder why they bothered getting an envelope at all, doesn’t it? And then we have the handwriting. I’m obviously no forensic expert, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that whoever wrote this was either a child or mentally … impaired. I’m guessing a child, who probably giggled the whole time they wrote this crap. Or maybe they used their left hand to disguise the handwriting. In any case, it’s stupid, Francine. You’re projecting something on to it that isn’t there.’
‘Fine.’ She reached out to snatch the envelope and he pulled it away. ‘Can I have it back?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘Not yet,’ he said, sterner this time. ‘I need you to see reason. What you do regarding our daughter affects both of us, do you understand? Sure, you could take this letter to the police and they’d probably indulge you for a little while, but when you’d gone they’d laugh at you. They’d extend you the courtesy of not making you into a complete joke to your face, but there are others that won’t be so kind. Do you have a computer at home?’
‘Yeah.’
‘All right. Well tomorrow, go online and type in Autumn Cooper-Wright. There’ll be a bunch of videos on YouTube, things like “Top 10 Mysterious Disappearances”. Then, of course, you have the blogs and the conspiracy websites, all with their own ideas of what happened to her, ranging from alien abduction to the possibility that you and I killed her and buried her in the hills.’
‘Jesus Christ. Just stop it, would you? You think I don’t know all the horrible things they say about her online? I’ve seen more than I can stand.’ She looked away from him, and for a moment she was sure she was about to cry. She took a deep breath and the emotion passed. ‘I do my best to keep away from it.’
‘Look, all I’m saying is that if you want to go out there chasing shadows, there’ll be plenty of people willing to help you. And none of it will do either of us any good.’ He placed the envelope carefully on the dashboard and the two of them sat there, the silence swelling. Rain flecked the windscreen, and the skinny, leafless trees swayed on the sidewalk. Eventually, Will said, ‘I should get back. Will you think about what I’ve said?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ she replied.
‘Good. If you want, I can let you know when that TV thing is going to be. I don’t have a date just yet.’
‘Sure.’
‘Okay. Well, drive safely.’ He opened the door and got out. Just before he closed it, Francine leaned over the seat.
‘If I get any leads on this thing, shall I call you?’
He shook his head and laughed mirthlessly. ‘Why does it always have to be like this with you, Francine?’
‘I won’t ever stop looking, Will. You can lecture me until you’re blue in the face. But I won’t ever stop.’
‘Fine. Then I’d rather you didn’t call me up and get me involved in this ridiculous crusade you’re on.’
‘Finding our daughter is ridiculous to you?’
‘There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, Francine.’
‘And nothing has worked yet, has it?’
His fingers drummed a loose pattern on the roof of the car. ‘Drive safely,’ he said again, and closed the door.
She watched him jog back to his car and waited for him to pull away before she turned her ignition on. As she drove off, she passed the car with the young teenage couple. Through the steamed windows, it looked like they were laughing.
2
At five a.m., a full two hours before her alarm was due to sound, Francine kicked out of the twisted sheets and got dressed. She wasn’t sure whether she’d dozed at all, but guessed that she’d probably managed to snatch a few minutes of shallow sleep. Her mind had whirred incessantly, the caffeine and anxious excitement making it impossible for her to switch off.
It was still pitch black as she drove to the gym, but it had stopped raining. It wasn’t unusual for her to put a shift in on the free weights before work, but today she’d given herself enough time to swim too. The pool didn’t open until seven, so she did the rounds on the cross-trainer, the treadmill – upping the incline almost vertically – and her usual dumb-bell routine. All the while she’d been eyeing the punchbag. She’d always wanted to use it but couldn’t trust herself not to scream as she unloaded on it. She wasn’t really sure how to go about hitting the thing, but the place was virtually empty, so she could afford to look silly. She picked up a pair of gloves that lay by the side and slipped them on, then gave the bag a few jabs for practice. It felt good. Once she’d settled into a rhythm, the volume of punches increased, as did their ferocity. Soon her arms were throbbing and her lungs flamed inside her. She punched until she could no longer lift her hands, her slick forehead resting against the bag.
Afterwards, she swam for an hour without stopping. She couldn’t remember ever having done that before, especially after such a strenuous workout, but she wanted to push her body until she’d burned all that anxiety to cinders.
Her body was a patchwork of pain by the time she sat down at her desk. It was as though she’d given her mind a spring-clean, sifting all that sludge, and now she could focus. She worked solidly through to lunch, processing invoices and sending out reminders, only stopping to confer with colleagues where absolutely necessary. All of the six employees crammed into the tiny back office of Worldwide Golfing Supplies knew Francine’s story, and they had never tried to engage her beyond routine chit-chat. That suited her fine. When she’d first started, one of the other accountants, a divorcee named Henry who drank lots of black coffee and ate neatly cut ham sandwiches for lunch, asked her if she would like to go for a drink some time. Francine offered him only sincerity in her reply: no, she didn’t want to go for a drink – not now, not ever. She hoped her expression would dissuade any future attempts at courtship. He didn’t ask again.
As usual, she left her desk and went for a stroll during her lunch hour. She stopped at Starbucks for a cappuccino and bought a newspaper from the corner store before walking to her car. She liked having lunch in her car, comforted by the notion that at any second she could turn on the ignition and drive away forever.
She began skimming the newspaper, waiting for her cappuccino to cool. Quite suddenly, the lack of sleep and the exertion of her morning workout seized her. She could feel her eyes losing focus on the page, her head dipping. She placed the cup in the holder and closed her eyes. Very soon, she was out.
When she woke, her coffee was cold and a girl, maybe eighteen years old, was standing in the centre of the parking lot, staring at her. The wind whipped the girl’s hair about her face, tugging at her frumpy dress. She had scrapes and scabs lining her legs and was drowning inside a man’s bomber jacket. Francine yawned, looked at the clock, then back at the girl, who still hadn’t moved.
She got out of the car and stretched. The girl turned on her heel and cut briskly across the parking lot, casting glances over her shoulder before vanishing through the automatic doors of the small indoor market.
Francine returned to her desk ten minutes late from lunch, but nobody seemed to notice. While she was in the middle of composing an enthralling email to their suppliers regarding low stock on fluorescent golf tees, it began to rain again. The first drops plinked against the window, and then a low rumble of thunder distracted her. She stopped typing and looked out into the parking lot. The girl in the baggy bomber jacket was standing next to her car, peering curiously inside like a child at an aquarium. Francine stood up and watched as the girl cu
pped her hands around her eyes and pressed herself up against the car window for a better look, before walking round to the passenger side, idly running her finger along the bodywork, then scoping out the back seats.
‘What’s she doing?’ Francine muttered to herself. She walked out of her cubicle and left the office, hurrying down the corridor before taking the stairs two at a time. Pushing through the double doors of the reception, she marched toward the car. ‘Excuse me? Can I help you?’
The girl had been looking through the back window when she snapped upright at the sound of Francine’s voice. From a few yards away, Francine thought she saw something amiss in the girl’s expression. It was only as she neared that she noticed that she was severely cross-eyed, her pupils pulling away from one another like magnets. Kermit the Frog, Francine thought. She has eyes like Kermit the Frog. Given the distraction they presented, those eyes made it impossible to tell whether the girl was pretty or not. She appeared gaunt, birdlike almost, her hair a blonde so dull it bordered on silver.
‘I said, can I help you?’
‘I put a letter through your door. Did you get it?’
Francine stopped in her tracks, so suddenly that her feet splashed down in a puddle, soaking her ankles. ‘It was you?’
The girl backed away, still running her finger across the car’s wet metallic surface, her pupils not committing to any one object. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Her voice was deep, with a guttural tone that came from her belly. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘I know where she is,’ Francine said. ‘You know where who is?’
‘Melody,’ the girl said, edging around to the front of the car as Francine neared. It was as though the two of them were playing a tentative game of musical chairs. ‘Mel … Your daughter.’
‘My daughter’s name is Autumn.’
‘I know her as Mel,’ the girl said, raking the wispy hair away from her face. ‘Nobody calls her Autumn.’
Francine’s throat squeezed closed, locking in a pocket of air that had simultaneously tried to rush out of her lungs. She choked, pain rocketing through her stomach. She felt light-headed. ‘Wait … hold on a second, please hold on …’ She took a minute to compose herself, to try and get her breathing back on course. Thunder boomed overhead. Taking shallow sips of air, she said, ‘My daughter’s alive?’ Her voice almost fractured with desperation. ‘Where is she?’
‘Not close.’ Without turning, the girl pointed behind her. ‘Long way off.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I just made it out myself, and first thing I did was find you. People maybe think we’ve been dead a long, long time. A lot of us are still alive.’ After every few words the girl’s mouth tugged to the side, some kind of facial tic that made it look like she was wincing in pain.
Francine wiped her palms on her trousers. ‘So you know my daughter, do you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?’ She made every effort to give the words authority, but her voice betrayed her.
‘If you’re tired, little girl, close your eyes and go to sleep, close your eyes and go to sleep, close your eyes and go to sleep. If you’re tired, little girl …’
An icicle stabbed Francine in the heart. ‘Where’d you hear that?’ she whispered. The lullaby had strangled her, stealing her breath. ‘Did … did Autumn sing that to you?’ Again she tried to approach the girl, and again the girl shied back. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.’ She could feel panic rising in her. One wrong step and this bird would flap away forever. There were too many questions clogging her mind, too much adrenalin pumping in her blood. ‘Shall we get out of the rain? We can go back to my place?’ She saw the girl’s odd eyes widen, her mouth tugging into a grimace. ‘Or a restaurant? If a restaurant is better, I can get you some dinner. I can understand if you’re nervous.’
The girl looked away, staring off at the cars whooshing down the wet freeway in the distance. Very slowly, her head began to sway, like she was feeling the vibe of a tune only she could hear.
‘What’s your name?’ Francine asked, hoping to conceal the desperate edge in her voice.
‘Lena,’ the girl replied, using her index finger to doodle on the wet hood of the car. Francine saw that her brittle hands were covered in scabs, the nails chewed down to the quick.
‘Lena, I can help you. If you’re in any danger, or you’re scared of something, I can help. You tell me what you want to do.’
‘I’m very hungry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t eaten nothing good for a long time.’
‘All right, that’s a start. Would you like to grab a hamburger and a milkshake? Or something else? Anything, you can choose.’
She shrugged, ever so slightly. ‘Burger.’
‘I could go for a burger, too. There’s a McDonald’s about five minutes away. We can drive there or walk. Whatever you’re comfortable with.’
‘I’m not getting in the car.’
‘Walk it is, then. Let me just get my umbrella.’ Francine unlocked the car door, reached into the back and withdrew the umbrella. She opened it out and held it high above her head. ‘You must be freezing. You could come under here if you like.’
Lena’s lower lip was quivering and the tip of her nose had reddened, but despite this, she gave a short, definite shake of the head. Francine shrugged and led the way out of the parking lot and across the street to the small strip of stores that preceded the McDonald’s. All the while she ensured that she kept stride with the girl, slowing down to match her pace, anxious that at any moment Lena could change her mind and bolt off like a spooked horse. She thought about making small talk for the journey, but it didn’t seem appropriate, especially over the crash of the rain. No, it was better to walk in silence and let Lena dictate how and when she would drip-feed the information.
‘There’s a Pizza Hut too, if you’d prefer,’ she said, pointing over at the red and black logo opposite the golden arches.
‘McDonald’s please,’ Lena replied, staring down at her feet as she walked. She wore strange white and pink sneakers that instead of laces had three straps of Velcro. Francine almost expected to see the heels light up as she walked.
The automatic doors slid apart and the oily smell of French fries wafted over them in greeting. The luminous green booths were mostly empty, yet the tables still bore the greasy remains of the lunch-hour rush. They went to the counter and Francine saw the young clerk’s eyes drift over Lena. Once he’d taken in her unusual attire and odd disposition, her brow furrowing as she stared open-mouthed at the menu, his face grew wary.
‘Lena, what would you like to eat?’ Francine asked. When the girl didn’t immediately answer, she offered some help. ‘Did you want a Big Mac? A cheeseburger?’
It was difficult to tell which part of the menu she was looking at. For all Francine knew, each eye could be reading a different section simultaneously. ‘I changed my mind,’ she said with a seriousness that momentarily unbalanced Francine. ‘I want nuggets.’
Francine ordered a quarter-pounder meal for herself and a nugget meal for Lena. The clerk put the food together on a tray, watching Lena closely as though she were a wild dog that’d somehow got free of its leash and could attack at any moment.
They went to the closest and cleanest booth, although the surface of the table was flecked with crumbs and dotted with a rogue splodge of ketchup. Francine smiled at Lena and pushed the nuggets towards her. Lena’s ugly fingers scurried out, flicked the box open and selected one. She held it up to her nose, then pressed her lips against it as though testing its warmth before nibbling it. Francine removed the greaseproof paper from her own burger and took a bite in an attempt to put Lena at ease, though she could have quite happily tipped the whole meal in the trash. Her stomach felt watery and loose, the food becoming a flavourless lump sticking to the roof of her mouth. Something about the rodent way that Lena ate made her even queasier, so she set her burger down and sipped her soda.
‘How’re the nuggets?’
Lena licked crumbs from her lips then sucked her finger. ‘I thought they tasted different.’
Francine wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. She let Lena dissect another three nuggets, her hand whipping out like a cobra striking to retrieve individual fries before eating them in three quick bites.
‘Where have you come from, Lena?’
‘The big house. In the woods. That’s where we lived.’ She looked up suspiciously, holding a nugget in both hands, then added in a lower voice, ‘Me and Mel. And the rest of them.’
‘Someone was holding you there?’
She nodded once, very slowly. The strange variation of fast and slow movements only served to unsettle Francine further.
‘Who was keeping you there, Lena? Do you know his name?’
‘I know all the names of the men at the house.’
‘Would you be able to tell the police?’
The girl’s lips parted and stretched into a smile, and for a second, both her eyes looked straight at Francine. A low, hiccuping chuckle fell out of her mouth. ‘They already know about us. What do you think – we just go missing and nobody knows?’
‘Why did you contact me, then?’
‘I made a promise to Mel. And she made one to me. We said that if either of us ever got away, we would contact the other’s parents. That’s what we said.’ She paused, cocking her head to the side as though listening to instructions from some unseen adviser, then added, ‘It’s difficult for me to do this. I’m very scared.’
‘Have you not been back to your own parents yet?’
‘My mom died of a stroke; not a stroke of luck, I guess. She’s long gone. Don’t have any other family.’ She shrugged, then shook her head. ‘I found you in the phone book.’
