by Snow, Nicole
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Okay. Okay.
No, I don’t want Jim to see me coming. I don’t want him to have any warning that I’m onto him, so I park my car right behind Gabe’s. I bet that’s what he was thinking, too, but it scares me, knowing he's not picking up his phone.
My veins are going numb.
I'm having flashbacks. Everything bad in my life.
Soulless Casey Hicks and Richard drowning in foreign waters and Harmon's evil eyes.
My own stupidity, telling Gabe I didn't want him, didn't need him, always thinking there'd be another time to make things right.
“Gabe.” I whisper his name, one haunted syllable, clutching my hands in front of me.
He’d find some way to answer me if he was okay. I know he would.
There’s no way a slim twig of a man like Jim Appleroth could get the drop on a giant like Gabe...is there?
I slip my Glock into the waistband of my jeans in the back, hiding it under my shirt, and bend to lift the hem of my jeans to tuck my Dad’s hunting knife into my boot. I take the back street running behind ours, so there’s no chance of Grandma and Monika seeing me through the kitchen window.
I circle around the back of Jim’s house, peeking over his fence. The yard is empty, the windows dark. No Gabe. No sign of a struggle. No anything.
The house is too still, almost like it’s already abandoned.
My heart surges up my throat. No. No.
The moving van is still parked on the street. He can’t have run away with her yet, not unless the moving van was a red herring to throw us off and he never intended to go to Montana at all.
I can’t believe he's planned that far ahead, even if he might be an evil genius.
He’s here.
Joannie’s here.
And I’m going to find Gabe safe and sound.
I carefully, silently unlatch Jim’s back gate and slip inside. Across the carefully tended lawn, to the back door.
I start to raise my hand to knock before I realize the door is slightly ajar, the latch not hooked.
My heart throbs a violent rush of panic. Alarm.
The sixth sense I developed in the Navy kicks into high gear. One inch at a time, holding it so it doesn’t creak, I ease the door open and step inside into the rear foyer. I'm angling myself so I can look both outside and inside at once, keeping my back to the doorframe and then to the inside wall.
The little rear hallway is lined with tables piled with strange knickknacks. An assortment of Kewpie dolls, all of them chipped and broken. Little odd net satchets. Other bizarre tiny dolls, missing eyes or with scratched faces or torn clothing.
All covered in a choking layer of dust. I cover my mouth both to keep from sneezing and to hold in a horrified sound. Jim always seemed so perfect and put together on the outside, but as I creep from room to room in the empty house, I uncover the nightmare truth.
This place is a freaking mausoleum.
A shrine. Not to a person, but to the idea of a little girl who's long gone, from the dusty lace frills everywhere to the dolls, the little embroidered pillows, the children’s books in stacks in the living room, all covered in a fuzzy grey patina.
It's taking everything I have not to drown in goosebumps.
Only the bedroom looks in any way lived-in, but seeing that four-poster canopy bed isn't any better. It’s a princess bed, little girl sized, but I can see Jim curling himself up to fit into it every night and hugging the flopping, half-unstuffed teddy against the pillows to his chest.
I’m going to be sick.
He’s been hiding this psycho carnival house from us for years. His daughter's death must've broken him completely, and I can’t help but think, even as my skin prickles with goosebumps, that if we’d just known, we could've gotten him help before it got this far.
Before he crossed the point of no return and this man, this monster, took Joannie. No matter what pity I may feel for a grieving, shattered man...
Some things are unforgivable.
And some wounded predators deserve no sympathy.
Especially when I check the kitchen next. I want to vomit again.
Jesus, I’ve eaten things prepared in this festering rathole of a room, filth everywhere, crusted dishes covered with rotting food in the sink. But when I open the fridge, the chill white light inside chases away my disgust, my pity, to replace it with sheer gut-twisting fury.
Baby food.
Jars and jars of baby food, most of it apple cinnamon, lined up in rows on the otherwise empty shelves.
I don’t know if I want to scream or shoot something.
Is this what was inside those disgusting apple tarts? Is this what gave him away, a man on a tired, baking rampage, completely losing his mind?
I settle for taking several slow, centering breaths, trying to get myself under control.
This is officially enemy territory, and I’ve got to be tactical. On my guard.
I slip the Glock from my waistband and hold it at the ready, angled down, but ready to pivot at any moment, the safety thumbed off with a click.
I’ve covered every room of the house. So far, there's no sign of Jim.
One more time through, side-stepping, trying to keep my feet silent, but there’s no hiding the faint creak of the old floorboards under my weight. He’s got to be here...but where?
“Jim?” I call, pitching my voice carefully.
If I can get him to answer, even once, maybe I can hide and get the drop on him once I know what direction he’s coming from. I keep my words calm and pleasant, like I’m just dropping by for a late-night house call.
Borrow some batteries, maybe a fuse for the fuse box, good old cup of sugar, a bucket of blood or two...nothing threatening. Nothing alarming. Let his psychotic breakdown work in my favor.
“Jim, it's Sky! Grandma sent me over. You home?”
There’s nothing. I even check the bathroom, the closets, the pantry, anywhere he could hide. He’s tall, but he’s thin, and he could scrunch himself into a cabinet.
I nudge the kitchen and bathroom cabinets open one at a time with the muzzle of my Glock, peering inside gun-first before carefully closing them again. I almost discharge when a skitter and a glint of beady eyes startles me.
But it’s just a rat, darting across the space beneath the kitchen sink. Damn.
The entire house is silent, eerily so.
All I can hear is my wildfire heart bleeding into my own breathing.
I'm missing something.
The baby food in the fridge says Joannie’s here, but where's he keeping her?
There’s no sign of anything else for a baby, not a diaper pail or toys or walker. No crib. Has he been sleeping in that bed with her?
No, he’d probably be afraid of rolling over and crushing her, unless he’s even more deranged than this bizarre dollhouse shows. There’s something I’m not seeing. Something in this darkness, hidden by the light.
Wait. The light.
I’ve been so focused on what’s hidden in the shadows that I missed the light. It’s coming from behind the open bedroom door, where there should be nothing but the wall in the hallway.
I creep closer, leaning with one shoulder braced against the wall to peer behind the door.
There’s another door there.
Narrower, shorter than the others in the house, but embedded in the wall as an afterthought, the light seeping around it and underneath it in thin beams. My heart pounds faster.
I shut my eyes for a split second, readying my nerve.
What will I find when I open this door? A linen closet? A second bathroom?
Or what I’ve been looking for all this whole freaking time?
I reach over and quickly turn the handle just enough to unlatch it, then grip my Glock in both hands and use it to nudge the door open. It swings back enough to bump into the bedroom door, then stops, revealing a staircase out of every nineties' slasher flick: narrow, rickety wooden stairs li
t only by a single exposed bulb on a chain. Cobwebs are everywhere, papering the water-stained concrete walls, nothing at the bottom but a swallowing darkness, a thick murk the light doesn’t penetrate.
Is Joannie down there?
Is Gabe?
I take a shaky, cold breath that tastes like my fear and all the blood rushing through my thumping heart, then edge forward and place my foot on the first step.
Only for the cold kiss of metal to part my hair. It presses sharp against the back of my throat, paralyzing me in place until the only part of me moving is the rapid rise and fall of my breath and the slow, slow trickle of sweat tickling down my throat.
“Really, dear?” Jim Appleroth says, his placid voice sending a swarm of creepy-crawlies into my skin, its very mildness full of menace. “Why couldn’t you have let it go? I gave you every chance, Skylar. I didn’t want to hurt you. You could've been my daughter, you know. But now you’ve gone and ruined everything. You really should've listened to my warnings.”
I can’t move. I can’t speak. The horror of this is too much.
Deep down, some part of me still hoped, held onto some thin thread, that somehow this would turn out to be a horrific misunderstanding. That somehow Jim would still be a good person, the person I’d trusted, but by some twist of magic he’d somehow lead me to Joannie and the world would turn right on its axis again.
But none of it's happening. None of it's happening now, and my gut is a block of solid ice as he pushes the mouth of the gun against my nape.
“Down,” he orders.
I’m too overwhelmed to fight him, and the narrow doorway has me trapped with walls to either side and Jim at my back. The only way is forward and down.
I’ve still got my gun clasped in both hands, but there’s no way to turn to fire at him, and if I try to shoot over my shoulder, he’ll shoot me first. Or I’ll risk injuring myself with a ricochet off these close walls. So I reluctantly stumble forward, down the creaking steps, Jim’s presence a hot and loathsome thing at my back.
“You should be happy,” he says. “You’ll get to see Joannie and your boyfriend one last time.”
I freeze. Gabe. Gabe’s definitely here.
But my sudden motionlessness wins a hiss from behind me, before Jim bites off, “Don’t disobey Daddy.”
I barely have the warning of his hand between my shoulder blades before he shoves me.
There’s a half-lucid second when my training kicks in, where I manage to swing my Glock around before the world is just a rush tumbling by, the jolt of pain as my shoulder hits the stairs, then my side, then my hip, then my head, then my shoulder again.
Everything tumbles too fast. Too blinding. Over and over again in starbusts of impact pain until that burst becomes an explosion as I land hard on my ankle on the concrete floor. I catch a faint clatter of my gun sliding off somewhere. The red shot of agony searing up my leg feels much louder.
Gasping, struggling, I curl forward, grasping at my leg, trying to sit up. My vision’s nothing but flashes, my head ringing, but it’s not so bad that I can’t hear a familiar sound I’ve been missing for months.
Joannie.
Oh my God. It's really her.
She’s laughing. She’s somewhere in the room, and the stab of both relief and pain hurts more than my ankle. Gasping, I twist around, searching.
At last, I see it.
A crib, hints of motion inside. No sign of Gabe, but my Glock...
It’s right there, under Joannie’s crib.
I just have to get to it. Shoot Jim.
Then take my niece and get the hell out of here.
I try to stand, but my leg collapses beneath me, showering me with agony. Hissing through my teeth, I gather all my strength. I’ll drag myself to Joannie and that gun if I have to, hand over hand. Anything for my niece. Anything to keep her safe.
Anything to make my family whole again.
And yes, anything for Gabe. He's the one who led me here. He's the one who owns my heart. He's the one who I owe my soul, and I'll give it to him in a deluge, if we somehow make it out of this.
I haul myself across the cold, scraping concrete floor a few feet at a time.
I'm actually making progress, too – then a blow stabs down in a rocking shockwave of pain, across the back of my head. My face whips to one side, and then a foot slams down against my back, shoving me down and knocking the breath from me.
It all happens in a split second.
I’d never realized that old man was fast like a freak, but suddenly Jim’s all over me, flipping me onto my back and shoving his gun between my breasts.
One loose finger on the trigger, half a pound of pressure, and it’s lights out. But right now, it’s not the gun I have to worry about. It’s the hand on my throat, crushing down hard, blocking off my airways until every breath I try to take in becomes a painful lump trying to force past that narrow passageway and my vision goes dark. It's like someone spilled ink in my eyes and it’s spreading, spreading, blacking me out, threatening to erase me completely.
“Skylar, you fool,” Jim growls, none of the kind, gentle stranger I'd known my whole life in his voice.
At first, I freeze, too afraid to struggle with that gun on me.
But for a moment I grasp at his hands before my fingers go numb. It’s strange how it feels, dreamy and distant, the horror receding down a dark tunnel where there’s only a sense of floating.
Plus the eerily calm look on his face, like he’s a wax doll stuck in that pleasant smile and Mr. Rogers façade.
He’s going to kill me while he's smiling, won't he? Kill me with the same expression he had when he hugged Monika and told her she was the prettiest girl on the block. He’s going to kill me when he’d said you could have been my daughter, and in my fading consciousness, I realize he means it literally.
That could've been me in this basement.
Could've been me calling him Daddy and not knowing any better, and years down the road it could be Joannie staring up at him while he chokes off her air because suddenly she’s no longer useful to him when she’s not obedient enough as Daddy’s little girl. Or when she's uncovered the awful truth.
I can’t die like this. I can’t die and leave her to her fate.
With the last spark of life in me, I struggle for the strength to move, the strength to fight.
Only for his pressure on my throat to suddenly vanish as a blur of motion and massive bulk shoots over me, slamming into Jim and bowling him off me.
I suck in a desperate breath, still coughing, choking, curling forward.
When the cloud clears from my eyes, I realize that hulking mass was Gabe.
Gabe throwing Jim across the room and slamming him into the wall, while Jim’s gun goes flying.
Gabe as I’ve never seen him, dark eyes livid and wild, teeth bared like a wild animal, a roar on his lips and his face transfixed in a lion's raging mask.
But he’s uncoordinated, his bulk moving slowly, and even as he bears down on Jim, the old man pops up and moves like a lizard, skirting around and coming at him from behind to jab at the backs of Gabe’s knees.
Gabe goes down hard, dropping to his knees and rocking forward.
He starts to push up but Jim’s on him, crawling onto his back, bearing him down, striking at the vulnerable points on the back of his neck and waist and spine. All while my man lets out a furious roar and twists backward, lashing out at him.
Gabe, hold on, I'm coming, I think to myself.
I can barely move, my entire body shaky and my brain swimming with oxygen deprivation, but I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to stop this.
While Jim stays distracted, I drag myself toward Jim’s gun.
It’s only a few feet away, near the foot of the stairs. I keep one eye on the gun, one on Jim and Gabe, as they roll and grapple.
Jim manages to get an arm around Gabe’s throat from behind, clinging on and squeezing down hard.
Gabe rears back, clawing at his
arm, and just as I grab the gun and swing it around, they go rolling in a frantic, thrashing tangle of fury and curses.
Right in front of Joannie’s crib.
I can’t do it. I can’t pull the trigger, even as I take aim.
There's no clear shot without some risk of hitting the baby. Goddamn it, no.
It can't end like this.
Worse, my vision's still spinning, seeing doubles and triples, blurring back and forth.
It's a sick joke. After I threw my life into finding my precious girl, now there's a real risk of shooting her instead of Jim, especially with how they’re struggling.
But I have to do something. I have to think. I have to wait for the perfect opening.
I waver, silently pleading for them to move, for something, but Gabe’s face is going blue and Jim’s not letting go. Gabe isn't his unstoppable, bulldozer self, nine-tenths of his overwhelming strength sapped by whatever that freak drugged him with.
“Gabe!” I shout, hoping he can fight, do something, anything to –
His eyes roll toward me, red veins showing against the whites.
Something crosses between us, some spark, some knowing.
And then he stops fighting Jim and flings himself against the crib, spreading his broad bulk, his arms, with Jim still clinging to his back, choking the life from him like a demented monkey.
I don’t understand. Not at first.
Until suddenly, I do.
I have a clear shot at Jim’s back. No way I can miss, even with my vision blurring and my hand shaking. And even if the bullet goes through or misses...
It’ll hit Gabe. It’ll bury deep in that broad wall of muscle that’s sheltered me for weeks.
And now it’s sheltering Joannie.
He's sacrificing himself.
“Sky!” he bellows, his voice a dull roar. “Do it, do it, woman! Pull the damn trigger before it's too late.”
Shaking, I stiffen my aim. Of course, I hesitate.
I want to scream at that brave, wonderful man. It’s hot, frightened tears blurring my vision now.
I can’t let him do this. But I don’t have any choice.
Not if I want to save them both before Jim strangles Gabe to death. I swallow back the lump in my throat, searching for that iron core I forged inside myself all those years ago.
