The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

  “This is it,” Megan said, bewilderment in her voice. “I found it.” She looked at Livia, locked eyes with her. “I know who took me, Livia. And this is where he kept me.”

  CHAPTER 56

  August 2016

  The Night of the Abduction

  Casey’s flashlight illuminated the bed in the corner, and he laid the girl onto the mattress. A chain slithered along the bare concrete, one end attached to the wall and the other to a thick leather cuff he fastened to her ankle. He pulled a knife from his pocket and snapped loose the zip ties that bound her wrists. She lay on her side, a deep, wheezing breath heavy with sedation expanding her chest every few seconds.

  By the time he turned, Nicole had made it to the bottom of the stairs, staring at him in the darkness.

  “Before you say anything,” he said, “I have to show you something. Promise, then we’ll talk. We just don’t have lots of time.”

  She was shaking her head. “This is too sick. She’s gonna freak out down here.” Nicole looked at the boarded-up windows that were scantly visible in the residual glow of Casey’s flashlight.

  Casey grabbed her hand, kissed her deeply. He was intoxicated with the process, the take that was again so easy and fluid. It filled him with energy he could find nowhere else. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To my world. I promise you’ll love it there. You’re the only one who would.”

  He pulled Nicole up the stairs and through the house and into the hot summer night, leaving Megan McDonald alone and unconscious in the cellar that would haunt her dreams. He pulled her as they ran, the flashlight bouncing through the night. Holding hands, fingers interlaced, they hurried past the house where he had deposited the Dee girl the previous year. He knew it would be empty. The next house came. Above the entry was the number sixty-three. He pushed through the door and stood in the entry foyer, listening. His pulse was up, and had his hand not been locked so tightly to Nicole’s, he was sure it would be shaking. He knew not to dote now, just have a look. Show Nicole. Prove to her that it was real. Let her see the power he possessed, and allow what they had just done to the girl from the beach party to fully sink in.

  He pushed open the cellar door and together they descended the stairs, led by the narrow beam of his flashlight. When they reached the basement, Casey peeked around the wall and brought his light up, pointing it at the corner. And there she was. The Georgia Tech girl he’d deposited long ago named Paula D’Amato.

  It was a genuine startle, where nearly every muscle in his upper body jerked, when Nicole screamed. She stared at the girl in the corner, curled on the bed and staring at them with glowing eyes blinded by the bright white light Casey shined on her. In an instant, Nicole pulled her hand free and ran up the stairs.

  She made it to the top of the stairs and into the foyer before his hands came around her waist. She let out a fierce scream as he grabbed her hard on the upper arm and lifted her off the ground, her legs still flailing. He finally corralled her, wrapping his arms around her so his chest pressed against her back.

  “Shhh,” he whispered into her ear. “It goes away. That feeling of filth and guilt. It leaves you, I promise. And eventually all that’s left is the need to do it again. You’ll see. You’ll feel it, too. I know you will.”

  “What’s down there?” Nicole asked through her tears. “What did you do?”

  Casey put her down but kept his arms wrapped around her. “She’s one of the girls I took,” he said into her ear. “Not a take for the club. Not as an initiation. A real take.” There was a moment of silence. “Paula D’Amato. We talked about her in the club. Do you remember?”

  Nicole shook her head as she cried. “No, Casey. What have you done?”

  “And soon, people will be talking about the girl we took tonight. People in this town and around the state. The whole country! They’ll be talking about us, Nicole. You and me.”

  He finally unclasped his arms from around her chest. Nicole turned slowly, saw Casey’s shadowed eyes alive with venom, some toxic stare that looked straight into her soul. In a quick, violent motion she pushed him away and ran. She pulled open the door and cut across the front yard that was strewn with clay and gravel. Without the aid of the flashlight the dark night disoriented her. She took several strides in the wrong direction until the silver tarnish of the moon reflected off her car and she righted herself.

  Her legs hit the steering wheel as she scampered in and started the engine. Shifting into gear. The car jerked forward as she stepped too heavily on the accelerator and maneuvered around Casey’s Buick in front of her, narrowly missing it. As she did, her headlights caught a glimpse of Casey as he appeared from around the front end of the Regal. Just a brief blur of his green shirt. She felt a thud as the front bumper struck him, and then the sickening sway as the wheel displaced upward when she continued over his fallen body. The rocking stopped as the wheels settled on the gravel. Nicole couldn’t see much in her rearview as she twisted a U-turn and sped away, back up the long, dark road she’d followed into this haunted place.

  The sedan rested in the darkness beyond the last home and crept slowly forward after the girl had hit the man. The driver rolled down his window as he pulled next to the body writhing on the ground. A quick assessment told him the man’s femur was badly broken, bent as it was at a hockey-stick angle. A fortunate bonus. Had he needed to expend time subduing this one, the girl might be impossible to track down.

  He stood from his car and stepped over the moaning man who begged for help, reached into the man’s car, and removed the keys, just in case a lucid moment came over him and he controlled his pain well enough to start his car and drive for help.

  “Please,” Casey said.

  Stoically, the man reached into Casey’s front pocket and fished out his phone. He dropped it, along with the car keys, onto the passenger seat as he climbed back into the sedan. The taillights of the girl’s car were still visible in the distance, far down the winding road that led out of Stellar Heights.

  Nicole was breathing heavily as she tore out of the abandoned subdivision, her adrenaline so powerful she was barely able to control her hands as they gripped the steering wheel. Her mind was incoherent and unable to process what had just transpired. Running would get her only so far. She needed help, and checked off the people she knew she couldn’t ask. Calling the police was not an option. There were so many reasons for this, but after considering only two—that she had assisted in kidnapping Megan and had also been involved in a hit-and-run—she stopped looking for more. She couldn’t call her parents, for obvious reasons. Her friends, soft and hysterical, could handle none of tonight. Nicole knew she needed someone smart and level-headed. Someone who would look past her failures. She needed Livia.

  The wheels screeched as she turned out of Stellar Heights and headed back to the beach party. She watched her rearview mirror for a few moments, but she knew there was no way for Casey to follow her. Colliding thoughts of guilt and disgust came over her. She cried as the thud echoed in her mind from when she’d hit Casey, and her stomach rolled at the thought of Megan waking in the black basement. The image of Paula D’Amato burned her eyes and was there every time Nicole blinked. God, how long had she been missing?

  There were no good solutions to these problems, and peeling back the events of tonight would be impossible. Still, she would try. It took twenty frantic minutes of speeding to find the frontage road that would lead back to the beach party. Twenty minutes to gather her thoughts. She’d go back to the parking lot, wait for Livia. She would do everything Livia told her.

  As she approached a stop sign, she grabbed her phone. She dialed.

  “Pick up, pick up, pick up. Please, Livia, pick up your phone.”

  As Nicole rolled through the stop sign, all her plans changed. She looked in her rearview mirror and knew nothing would be the same. The red-and-blue lights of a police car filled her mirrors.

  CHAPTER 57

  November
2017

  Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

  “I have to see for myself,” Megan said, standing at the back of the house. The plywood covering the windows still bright under the glow of her flashlight. “Come with me, Livia. Come with me so I can be sure.”

  Megan was off again, headed toward the front of the house. Livia followed, stumbling in the dark over the uneven ground and chunks of concrete. At the front door, she hesitated before she followed Megan into the dark house. She caught a glimpse of the number sixty-one above the door. The interior was a hollow cove of high ceilings and vacant rooms barely visible in the rushed glow of Megan’s flashlight.

  When Livia caught up to her, Megan stood at the door to the basement. She noticed the beam of the flashlight quivering. Livia reached out and put her hand on Megan’s arm to calm her tremor.

  “Megan, stop and talk to me.” Livia took Megan by the shoulders, the beam of the flashlight falling to their feet. “You said you know who took you. Tell me.”

  With the cellar door open, the staircase was a shadowless portal to a different world.

  “During my last therapy session, I got further than ever before. He came down the steps and I heard it. I listened during that session, more closely than I ever did before. I heard it, Livia.”

  “You heard what, Megan?”

  “And then, during my dream the other night when you were in the passing train, when you waved to me . . . I heard it again, just before I woke.”

  “Tell me, Megan. What was it?”

  “That sound I know so well. That sound I’ve known from childhood.”

  Livia waited.

  “Leather,” Megan said. “I heard the leather holster of a belt.”

  CHAPTER 58

  August 2016

  The Night of the Abduction

  Nicole heard Livia’s recorded voice come through her phone as voice mail picked up. She ended the call as the flashing lights filled her rearview mirror. Part of her wanted to scream because she knew there was no turning back. Part of her wanted to step on the accelerator and flee. But another part wanted this, exactly what was happening. Wanted to be cornered with no choice but to tell the police what had gone on tonight.

  She pulled to the side of the frontage road, her car pitching to a slight angle as the passenger-side tires settled onto the gravel shoulder. The officer came to her window as she rolled it down.

  “You know you sailed through a stop sign back there, young lady?”

  Nicole was crying. “I didn’t see it. I need help.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I hit someone. With my car. I hit my boyfriend. And there’s a girl who needs help. Two girls, maybe more. I don’t know.”

  “Slow down. Shut the engine off, please.”

  Nicole turned the ignition.

  “Step out of the vehicle, please. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Nicole climbed from her car, crying hysterically now. The officer put his arm around her and led her to the patrol car.

  “Here, let’s have those,” he said, taking Nicole’s keys. He opened the back of the car and helped her sit down. “Wait here for a minute. We’ll find out what’s going on.”

  He reached for her other hand and gently took her phone.

  “Did you make any calls tonight?”

  “My sister.”

  “I see.” The officer’s voice was gentle and caring. “Did you speak with her?”

  “No.”

  “Leave a message or a text?”

  Nicole shook her head.

  “Call anyone else?”

  “No,” Nicole said. “No one.”

  “Good girl. Sit tight, okay. I’ll be right back.”

  The officer helped Nicole glide her legs into the backseat, and then closed the door of the squad car. Nicole watched as he walked a perimeter around her car, the red-and-blue lights highlighting the scene in front of her. He shined his flashlight into the backseat, something caught his attention. Nicole wanted to scream at him that they needed to hurry, but her voice had left her. All she could do was stare. She watched him pull a handkerchief from his back pocket, shake it open, and use it to pull open her car’s door. Then she watched him lean in. He reappeared a few seconds later, something gripped in his hand. Only when he opened the patrol car’s door and sat behind the wheel did Nicole recognize the object he’d taken. It was the long fork from the barbecue set.

  “I bought that at a Goodwill store,” Nicole said through the chain link that separated them, although she wasn’t sure why.

  The officer doused the flashing lights and put the car into gear. He swung a rough U-turn and sped back down the frontage road.

  “We have to go to West Bay,” Nicole said, leaning toward the partition.

  Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

  “Oh,” Terry McDonald said. “I know where we’re going. Don’t worry, my Love.”

  CHAPTER 59

  November 2017

  Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

  “Tell me again,” Livia said. “A leather holster?”

  “Yes. From my father’s belt. He walked down these thirteen steps,” Megan said, pointing to the cellar. “He did it nearly every day for two weeks. And he did it wearing his uniform and his belt and his holster and his gun. I know that sound, Livia. I’ve known it since I was a child. And once you and I started this together, once you filled me in on what you knew, slowly everything made sense to me. The twisted memories in my mind unwound themselves and all the madness of those two weeks vanished. He never touched me, Livia. Never assaulted me because I was never supposed to be taken. Casey Delevan abducted me. The way you discovered he took Nancy Dee and Paula D’Amato. He brought me here for my father, but he had no idea who I was. When my father found me, sedated and asleep, he knew his problem was immediate and immense. The man he hired to take girls had abducted his daughter. After his discovery, my father couldn’t release me because I would lead authorities back to this house and to this abandoned subdivision. Too much had happened in these houses with the other girls for him to allow that. Too much was still happening, until recently, with Paula D’Amato. He couldn’t have this place discovered. So he kept me sedated for two weeks, fed me sedatives in my food and in my lemonade. He allowed the town’s search to die down. Bought just enough time for the pressure to lessen. And then, when he believed it was safe, he loaded my food with one more massive dose of ketamine, almost killing me the way he did Nancy Dee. I was nearly catatonic when he placed the burlap over my head and transported me to the bunker. I remember parts of the ride, almost an hour.

  “The bunker, he knew, would make the perfect story. It would be the greatest detractor from where he’d actually kept me and the other girls. Once he deposited me, deep in the woods, he left me there with the door ajar. When I woke up and was coherent enough to walk, I found the bunker door cracked open. Through the haze of sedation, I ran for my life. I didn’t escape, Livia. I did what he knew I would do. I found my way home.”

  Megan redirected her flashlight to the staircase.

  “I have to see for myself.”

  “We shouldn’t do this alone, Megan. We need to get help and sort this out. Make sure of the things you’re saying.”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” Megan said. “But I have to see this place again. I need to see that it exists somewhere other than my mind.”

  She shined the light at the thirteen stairs she knew would be there, and started down to the dark cellar.

  There was nothing—not in her years of schooling, or her single year of internship, or her four years of residency, or the last three months of fellowship—that could have prepared Livia for what she saw when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  They had tried the light switch, but the house was not live with electricity, so they had to negotiate the stairs under the guidance of the flashlight. When they reached the last step and sprayed the light across the basement, Livia
screamed when she saw the two eyes reflecting back at her, like a cat in the bushes.

  The eyes belonged to a skeleton of a girl who was draped in a ratty T-shirt many sizes too large. Her long hair was a knot of tangles, and her cheeks looked to have sunken like the elderly. The girl recoiled on her bed when the light found her, curling up into a ball with her knees to her chest and arms wrapped around her shins.

  “Don’t hurt me!” the girl shouted.

  Megan, on her own quest to this point, turned suddenly into the young, inexperienced woman she was, looking to Livia with wide eyes and a frightened face. Livia took the flashlight from Megan and shined it away from the girl, realizing that as it was the only source of light, the girl had no idea who had entered the basement.

  “It’s okay,” Livia said. “I’m a doctor. I’m here to help you.”

  “Is he here?” the girl asked in a panicked voice. “Is he with you?”

  “No,” Livia said, slowly approaching. “Just us. No one will hurt you.”

  The girl began rocking back and forth on the bed, still holding her legs to her chest. Livia couldn’t tell what was happening; she thought perhaps this girl was having a seizure. But once she moved closer, she saw that the girl was smiling, laughing almost.

  “Please help me,” she said. “Please take me from here.”

  “I will, sweetheart. I will,” Livia said. She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. The girl quickly took it and squeezed and reached for Livia’s embrace. Livia hugged her and matted her coarse, dry hair as the girl sobbed on her shoulder. Livia allowed the embrace to last only a few seconds.