Devil's Den

by Jeff Altabef

  She wears a long-sleeved, plain, white T-shirt that fits loosely over her athletic frame, and faded blue jeans. She waves me inside without uttering a word.

  All things considered, she looks damn good. Better than I would’ve imagined except for the fear and anger that weigh down her eyes.

  She shuts the door behind me. I don’t know what to say, so I settle for the simple. Better to stick with simple than say something totally stupid. “Hi, Kate. Sorry I’m late. I got here as soon as I could.”

  She lifts her hand as if to slap me.

  I’ll take the blow if she delivers it. It’s the least I can do, and if it’ll make her feel better, I’m game.

  She freezes her hand in place and lowers it. “Hi? It’s been over sixteen years. I thought you were dead and that’s all you have to say. When I texted, I figured it would go into a digital black hole somewhere. I don’t know whether to hug you or kick you in the balls.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you either way, but the hug sounds better. You kick like a soccer player.”

  “Tough. I’ll decide later.”

  It’s stupid. I feel the need to defend myself, even though nothing I say will make a difference, and in fact, I’m defenseless. I should keep my mouth shut, but it opens and words blather out of it. “I told you I was leaving for good. I told you, you wouldn’t hear from me again. I never lied to you.”

  “No, you never lied to me.” She offers a half-grin, which probably means she isn’t going to haul off and kick me in the nuts, although I can’t be totally sure. She’s unpredictable. It’s one of the things I love about her—or used to love about her. My feelings jumble together, and I’m not sure what’s real or just echoes from the past.

  “You’ve always been an honest asshole,” she says. “I don’t care about the past. It’s long dead. I need help finding my daughter, Megan. Someone took her yesterday. Can you help me?”

  I never lie to Kate. We used to fight fiercely from time to time, but never because I lied to her. Even now I can’t and won’t. She’d see through me if I tried.

  “I know how to investigate. I can get people to talk to me. It won’t be pretty, but I won’t stop until I find out what’s happened to her. I won’t be hampered by any...rules.”

  “Good, fuck the rules. No one lives by rules anymore anyway. This is my daughter. I need her safe.”

  I nod, although she’s not being truthful. Most people have limits, even to save their own. Kate has them—I don’t.

  “Do you have a picture of Megan?” I want a visual image of the girl before delving into the particulars. Images help me sort things through. I can tell a lot about people by looking at them. In person is better, but a good photo will do.

  She hands me a photo disk. “This is my Megan.”

  I press the button, and my heart stops. The girl in the three-dimensional holographic image is beautiful, almost a carbon copy of Kate herself, but that’s not what freezes my heart. She looks at least fifteen years old. The math troubles me. I last saw Kate sixteen years and six months ago. “She’s beautiful.” I want to ask Kate who the girl’s father is, but I can’t find those words yet, so I settle on something easier. “Did you report her missing to the cops?”

  “Right,” Kate huffs. “They want a thousand dollars just to list her in the missing persons’ registry. To investigate, they demanded five thousand! I don’t have it. If I sold everything I’d be lucky to pull together two thousand. Besides, they take the money and never find anyone.”

  She’s right. The police are for suckers. Even the wealthy use private security when they want something done. “Okay. Tell me what you know. Start at the beginning and include as many details as possible.

  She sits on one of two chairs in the small living room. In reality, the living room is a simple hallway, a tidy ten-foot strip that connects the two bedrooms together. A small metal table separates the two chairs and a worn couch bumps against a wall.

  The couch and chairs are made from black, fake leather. Only a few dashes of color add life to the room: three small throw pillows, two pink and one blue, a white shag rug underneath the cocktail table, and one framed poster of a Monet print on the wall behind the couch.

  A flat screen hangs on the wall opposite the couch, but Kate’s draped a white sheet over it. The fuzzy outline of the Originalist’s logo rotates slowly on the screen behind the sheet.

  “You know they can still listen in on our conversation,” I say.

  “Better that then them seeing us. I’d shut the damn thing off, but one of my neighbors did that, and they carted her off last week. Conduct that’s Un-American. That’s what they said.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around lately.” I drop my duffel by the door and sit in the other chair. I can smell her perfume. It’s the same fragrance she wore when we dated: lilac with a trace of honey. It brings back memories of passionate nights, long walks, fiery arguments. The passionate nights bully the rest of the memories to the side.

  I don’t want to fall down that slide now. Her daughter’s missing, so I purge thoughts of her body from my mind and study the image of Megan instead. I’m usually good with ages, but teenage girls can be tricky. Sometimes they look older than they should. Maybe she just turned fifteen or maybe she’s closer to sixteen. Closer to sixteen would be trouble.

  Intelligence and even a bit of courage flash around the edges of the girl’s eyes. Her posture is strong. Her hands are on her hips and a stop-taking-my-picture grin on her face. I immediately like her. She reminds me of a young Kate, but that might be my imagination. I can’t fully trust my intuition with Kate so close, smelling of lilac and honey, and looking so good.

  After a few minutes, I look up, and Kate begins. “She left school yesterday at the regular time with her two best friends. They walked her usual route, and they separated two blocks away from here. Just two lousy blocks and she never made it home. I came home around seven and asked everyone along the way, but no one’s seen anything. If they did, they didn’t tell me about it.”

  “You sure she didn’t come home, even for a short bit?”

  “She never made it here. All her stuff from school is missing. She always leaves her backpack in the living room by the door. I’ve asked her a thousand times to put it in her room, but she never does. It’s our running joke.”

  I nod. “Okay, does she have any boyfriends? Most of the time these random events turn out not to be so random.”

  “She’s a good kid. She hasn’t started dating anyone yet. She’s never been in trouble. She’s a straight A student. Too good to be my daughter really. Everyone loves her. No enemies. I asked her friends already. No...”

  She doesn’t cry; she just pauses with her hand over her mouth, her fingers trembling. She’s fallen into some horrifying pit of what ifs that all parents must succumb to under these circumstances. If Dante’s right and hell has nine circles, she’s slipped into the ninth.

  I can’t see her like this, so I stand and engage her, forcing her to snap back into the present and out of the pit. “Which room is hers?”

  She climbs out of her sadness, walks to the door on the left and opens it. The ten by ten-foot square has barely enough room for a bed, a dresser, a tiny closet, one mirror, a small desk and a chair. One hundred square feet, and that’s it. Some prison cells have more space.

  It’s hard to find much of Megan inside. She’s taped several photos of her friends on one of the walls: four different faces, a close group, everyone smiling. She’s also taped a poster of Earth to the wall behind her bed.

  Kate presses a button on a small device on the desk, and a holographic image of the universe, flickers to life in the center of her room.

  This isn’t what I expect from a teenager’s room.

  Kate shrugs. “Megan’s into space. She wants to be a physicist, break the speed of light barrier, and travel the universe someday. She won the holographic projector in a science fair at her school. One day she might just...”

&nb
sp; Her mouth hangs open, and the grief acts like a roadblock that prevents any words from skirting around it.

  The room surprises me. I don’t have a ton of experience with teenagers, but they’re supposed to be messy. Megan keeps her room military-style neat. I close my eyes for a second and try to imagine who she is: smart, close friends, adventurous, strong. She wants to be an astronaut.

  I sweep my hand over the surface of her white, plastic desk. It’s clean and clear, except for a yellow post-it note. In a neat, block handwriting, it says, “The truth is hard to find, but it’s always worth the effort.”

  I’m not so sure. Some truths should remain hidden. Teenagers can afford that level of naiveté, but soldiers can’t. It’ll get them killed.

  The color has drained from Kate’s face and her eyes look distant. She’s sunk to a new ring of hell, the land of what ifs again. I can’t leave her there, and I have to ask. If I don’t, the question will fester and swallow me whole.

  “How old is Megan exactly?”

  Megan tosses onto her left side and then flips back to her right, stuck between sleep and consciousness. Eyes still closed, she struggles to recall a dream, which is unusual for her, to say the least. She rarely dreams, and even when she does, they usually flee from her mind and quickly recede to her subconscious where they belong. She finds them useless, annoying, and their meanings rarely clear or helpful.

  Life follows a set of scientific rules, the laws of nature. Dreaming about an alternative world where the normal rules don’t apply is pointless and counterproductive. Better to understand and fix the real world than be distracted over a fake, dream one.

  Still, this dream feels different; it was vivid, the details bold and important. Flashes come to her: a doctor peeling off her clothes with gentle hands, her body reluctantly complying with the doctor’s requests, an uncomfortable examining table, and one of those disposable patient gowns that never quite close when you try to tie them. The coarse cotton scratches her skin and a cool breeze sweeps against her naked back, leaving an army of goose bumps in its wake.

  The female doctor smiled. Megan tries to recall her face, but all she remembers is a purple birthmark, the shape of a football, on the woman’s cheek, and a flash of purple. The doctor assured her the examination wouldn’t hurt. She wanted to see how much Megan had sinned before she arrived on The Farm—had sinned!

  Megan bolts upright, her breath catching in her throat in frantic gasps. That wasn’t a dream. I did see a doctor. Her head aches, and her tongue feels fat and leathery. She wades through fuzzy thoughts. Where am I? How did I get here? Slowly, she forces her mind to focus, and she conjures memories from the prior day.

  A white van was parked on her street. The new paint job shimmered in the afternoon sun. She should’ve never walked past it. She should have listened to that queasy feeling in her stomach and went around the block. Then the asshole stepped in her way, followed by the two other kidnappers who punched her in the stomach and dragged her into the back of the van.

  Someone was already in the van. Amy! Amy was in the van, a little older than her with short black hair, and a pretty round face. She was so scared. Her lips kept trembling.

  Where’s Amy?

  Megan’s heart jumps and, for the first time, she looks outward. Rich morning light streams through windows. Five beds plus the one she’s in fill the room. They’re empty. The only other piece of furniture, a large wooden dresser with six drawers—one for each bed.

  What happened after I saw Amy in the van? She recalls random events as if she fell asleep watching a movie and can’t quite remember what happened clearly: her head crashed against the side of the van, a long-cramped trip, the air smelled clean when they opened the back doors, cows mooing in the distance. Cows?

  The door opens, and a young man strides inside. In his twenties, he’s handsome in a rugged way. Her mom likes old-fashioned cowboy movies, and this guy would fit comfortably in one. His deep-set almond eyes sparkle, and he has a strong jaw and athletic build. He wears a red jumpsuit and a light green beret tilted to one side. Three lime green crosses, each enclosed in a star, have been sewn onto his jumpsuit at his right shoulder. A symbol of some kind, maybe even a rank that indicates he’s important.

  Megan’s voice sounds higher pitched than usual, which pisses her off. “Who the fuck are you, and where am I?”

  He smiles. It looks kindly, and not at all sinister, which slows Megan’s racing heart. He doesn’t look like a monster, and he speaks in a soothing, tenor voice. A movie star’s voice.

  “I’m Buck. You’re at The Farm. Your memories are a little...uncertain because the doctor gave you a drug before she examined you to make that process...easier. I know nothing makes sense now, but everything will fall in place. We’ll explain it all to you. If—”

  “What happened to Amy? What did you do with her?”

  He shrugs. “She woke before you and has already started her transition. She hasn’t been harmed in any way. I’m sure you’ll see her later in the day. Now it’s time for you to start your transition. If—”

  “I want to go home. I don’t want to transition to anything.”

  “You’re going to be an Angel. You’ll find salvation here. But it would be best if you stop interrupting me and do exactly as I say. That way, you can start to find answers to your questions. Come on. Time to get up.”

  Megan steps out of the bed on rubbery legs. She wobbles and almost falls, but he grabs her arm and steadies her.

  When she figures she can stand on her own, she shakes him off. “I don’t want salvation. I want to go home. My mom will be worrying about me. Just tell me where I can find Amy, and we’ll be on our way.”

  Buck smiles a friendly, kindly grin that pulls light from his brown eyes. “You’ll change your mind soon enough.” He removes and then unfolds a long thin stick from a pocket on the leg of his jumpsuit. “These sticks are electrified. A simple touch will cause terrific pain. Don’t give me a reason to use it. I’d rather not hurt you. But the choice is yours.”

  “Sure.” Megan touches the side of her face and winces. “Tell that to the jackass who hit me. He seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Frankie has been disciplined for that sin. Come, you have much to learn.” He waves his arm toward the open door in an after you gesture. Under other circumstances, she might even consider it polite.

  At least that’s in the right direction. She isn’t going to escape from inside this room, so she takes him up on his offer and steps outside into the sun. The building where she had been sleeping is a small, white, wooden, single-story structure. Three other similar buildings are nearby, all larger than the one she just left. They form a well-maintained courtyard with neatly cut grass in the center and flowers lining the buildings. Used to the city, the courtyard looks odd and disorienting, as if she’s woken in a movie.

  When she breathes in, the air smells fresh, different from city air. It smells like a trip she took with her mom to a strawberry farm outside of the city. Her mom wanted her to see “where things grow.” It seemed stupid at the time, but it wasn’t. The sounds of cows, or what she assumes are cows, carry to her on a slight breeze. She’s never seen or heard a cow in person before.

  The chilly air bites through the long-sleeved T-shirt she still wears from the prior day. She looks for other people and finds two men in red jumpsuits in the distance down a dirt road. They both have two green cross-symbols on their shoulders, one less than Buck. One woman, who wears a lilac-colored jumpsuit, leans against the side of another white building across the courtyard. She looks familiar, and then Megan sees the mole on her cheek—the doctor who examined her.

  Buck points to the nearest building with his electric prod. “Mother is waiting for you. Come with me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you. I thought we talked about that already. I’m going home.”

  Buck grins a half-smile and nods approvingly. “You are a tester. You need proof to become a true believer. Don’t worry,
you’ll find your proof here. This is your new home. Your life has just begun.”

  She’s not going to wait for him to drag her off. Unpredictability is important. At least that’s what the self-defense expert her mom forced her to train with used to tell her. She darts forward and aims a front kick at Buck’s groin.

  He sidesteps her foot, swipes it aside with his elbow, and taps her leg with the electric prod.

  Pain explodes up her body. She screams and falls to the ground. It feels as if he’s chopped off her leg with a machete. Stars burst in front of her eyes.

  God, she wants to cry, but she won’t give him the satisfaction. Besides, crying is pointless and silly. It won’t change anything, and will only grant him power over her, and she won’t do that. He has enough already.

  When the pain subsides to a manageable level, she glares at him. “You get off on hurting girls? Is that what happens here?”

  He shakes his head and his voice sounds deflated. “I warned you, and I used the lowest setting. I don’t want to hurt you. Now get up, dust yourself off, and come with me. Mother is waiting.”

  Megan struggles to her feet and grits her teeth. “You’re probably not that tough without your stick.”

  Buck rolls his eyes and points toward the door to the nearest building. “Keeping Mother waiting is not a good idea. She’s a busy woman. She won’t like that.”

  “She’s not my mother,” Megan spits the words angrily, but she’ll comply for now. She needs to be smart; she needs a plan to escape.

  Buck opens the plain black door.

  Megan stumbles up the small stoop and inside. Her leg only partially responds to her commands. The building looks clean and well maintained: white walls, white tiled floor, and black wooden doors.