Then all at once, she remembered. No. That wasn’t true. The song remembered. And because of it, she remembered.
Neal pulled the van into Katie’s driveway. His wipers squeak-squeaked, squeak-squeaked across the windshield. The blades needed replacing; the rubber smeared the rain, failing to swipe it off the glass.
“This as close as you can get?” Katie said, poking her head between the front seats. She waved a dismissive hand at them and pulled open the side sliding door with a grunt. “Just kidding. I’m wet already. Thanks, guys. I had fun at the carnival tonight.”
“Night,” Madison said. “Call me tomorrow!”
Katie said she would, slid the door closed, and ran across the driveway up the front walk to the door. She pushed it open, turned and waved, and then disappeared inside.
“It was fun,” Madison said.
“I am going to be so sick,” Neal said. “I didn’t want to complain the entire night. I can already feel it in my chest.”
Madison playfully threw a jab into Neal’s arm as he backed the minivan out of Katie’s driveway. “You know why you didn’t complain the entire night? Because you were having fun and forgot to pretend to be sick.”
“I don’t pretend.”
She shouldn’t have said that. “You know what I mean,” she said.
“I know you think I have that hypothermia thing,” he said.
“Hypochondriac.”
“Same thing,” he said.
“A little different.” Madison held her thumb and finger up for him to see. When Neal didn’t laugh, or even smile, she rubbed the spot on his arm where she’d seconds ago punched him. “I was only teasing you. I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“But, you see, that’s what’s most annoying.”
“What is?”
“You’re apologizing for hurting my feelings with what you said.”
Madison shrugged. “I know. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“But you’re not sorry for what you said, because you think it’s true. It’s okay. You know what? Forget about it.” He made a left onto her street, and accelerated faster than usual, as if he wanted to get rid of her.
“Neal–”
“It’s all good.” He stopped in front of her house.
“See you tomorrow?” She unfastened her seatbelt.
“Yeah,” he said.
Madison did not see her mother’s car in the driveway.
“What’s wrong,” he said, and meant it, because even though he was clearly upset with her, he was still well attuned. Always had been.
“My mother’s not home yet,” she said. “I’m not going in there until she’s back. I’ll wind up killing Oliver if we have to spend even a minute together alone in my house.”
“I can stay with you, hang out in the van, or we can go grab coffee somewhere to kill time,” Neal said. “I don’t mind.”
Madison looked at her phone. There was no way her mother would be much longer. Her sixteen-hour shift had to be coming to an end. “She is probably on her way home, if I had to guess,” she said, and wished she’d been able to muster a bit more confidence in her tone of voice. She knew that Neal pitied her, and she hated it. She was cold, and the rain didn’t help, but there was no way she was going to have Neal stay, especially after she’d just hurt his feelings. Decided, she pushed open the passenger door.
Neal reached for her arm. Peripherally she saw his hand and scooted out of the minivan. “Maddy,” he said.
“Seriously, I’m good. I’m going to call her as soon as you leave, but I’m sure she’ll be pulling in any second now. Go on, go.”
“Go. You’re sure?”
“I had fun. I’m glad you came out even if you didn’t feel well. That means a lot to me,” she said, and before he could respond in any way she closed the door and waved goodbye.
Neal sat in his minivan, motor idling, and lowered the passenger window. “At least take this,” he said, and threw his hoodie at her. She caught it. “You can give it back to me tomorrow.”
“Deal,” she said, and pushed her arms into the sleeves. “Go on. I’m set now.”
“Got the hoodie, so you’re set.”
“My mom will be here any second. Go.”
Neal looked reluctant and torn, but eventually eased away from the curb and rolled down the street. She watched him drive away; watched as he stopped at the intersection, his rear red lights flashing on and off as he pumped the brakes.
She faced her house and couldn’t shake the dread that filled her. She hated the house. Any chance she could she called the place her mothers. It was better than living in a box, she supposed. And by doing so, she convinced others that she was happy, and that everything was okay–she convinced others, or it was a way to convince herself.
Since they’d moved into the house, her mother has almost always had some guy living with them. Madison couldn’t help but feel awkward and uncomfortable, as if she were the guest and didn’t actually belong there. At first her mother questioned why she spent so much time in her bedroom, and then as she got older, she’d ask why she spent so much time in her bedroom with the door closed. That was as far as Nancy took it though. Asking.
Madison zipped the hoodie to her neck, put on the hood, and pulled down on the drawstrings. She kept her head bent forward, hoping to block the raindrops as she checked her phone. She could text or call her mother, but felt pissed and decided to just start walking. The black sky matched her mood.
Punching her hands into the hoodie pockets was more out of anger than anything. It was made of cotton and seemed to drink up the raindrops. It did not keep her dry, and with the thing soaking wet it made her feel colder than she had felt before putting it on.
She saw a big puddle, and instead of going around, stepped in it on purpose. It was meant in defiance, but found she had to try not to smile to maintain any semblance of anger. That deteriorated as she came upon the next puddle, and the one after that.
When she realized she was shivering and how loudly her teeth chattered, she looked up. She could hardly believe where she was, where she had wound up, and removed her phone from her pocket. At some point the battery had died. If she was back at the carnival grounds, she must have been walking at least twenty minutes or so.
The place did not look the same. The carnies had torn down rides. The food and game places were closed up and transformed back into trucks and small rigs. It seemed like everything was on wheels.
If she tried, she could still smell cotton candy and popcorn. Unfortunately, more prominent was the rank odor of fat worms. She looked down at the paved lot and watched pulses ripple under ringed skin from tail to head and back again. The worms, not crushed or half-flattened, moved slowly toward somewhere else after being flooded up and out from under their soil homes.
The sound came from one of the tractor-trailers. At first, it she couldn’t place what she heard, or from where the noise came. She did a slow three-sixty, arms out, as if that might help her hearing.
No one else seemed to notice the sound, nor did they appear to notice her. None of the carnies she saw looked happy. There really wasn’t a reason for them to smile now. The marks were gone. It was cold, rainy, and they were busy ripping apart an illusion they’d only a week and half ago created. There hadn’t been many nice-weather days. She didn’t think they’d have made much money.
She almost forgot why she was even on this train of thought, and then she heard the sound again.
It definitely came from the tractor-trailer toward the back, parked closest to the main road. She looked left and right. No one noticed her.
No one was on the way toward the trailer to investigate.
Madison checked her phone one more time, just in case, but to no avail.
Whoever was inside the trailer, they wanted out. The banging was audible, but not too loud. Madison might not have noticed it all if not for the accompaniment of the–
“Help! Someone? Is anyon
e there?” And then the weak bangs from the inside of the trailer.
Madison spun around again. Nothing.
This wasn’t her business. She had no right to enter the back of this trailer. It didn’t stop her from walking up to the back doors. She laughed at the bumper sticker: I Would Rather Be Driving My Bugatti. She shook her head and lifted the heavy hook latch.
I am going to regret this, she thought, but still pulled open the door and walked it around to the side of the trailer.
Any noise from inside the trailer had stopped as soon as she’d started rustling with the back doors. The silence made her feel suddenly silly. Had she imagined the banging, the calls for help?
The more she thought about what she was doing, the more she realized it would be best to turn and run. If the carnies caught her, she could be arrested. Explaining that to her father was not something she wanted to think about.
She would give it one try, and only one. “Hello?”
She didn’t yell. Yelling would attract the exact attention she wanted to avoid.
One. Two. Three. Four.
She tried. She’d been mistaken. This was clearly a trailer for animals. She thought she might puke from the stench of waste. She couldn’t recall any animals at the carnival. Not even a small petting zoo.
It was time to go. Madison wasn’t even going to shut the door. Let the carnies think someone had accidently left it open. The need to flee nagged at her insides like an itch that could only be scratched by running away.
“Are you here to help us?”
The feminine voice Madison thought she just heard was soft and weak. “Who’s in here?”
There was a rustling. “Get us out of here. Quick, before they come back.”
Madison wished there was light. She couldn’t see into the pitch-black darkness that felt almost alive and moved around inside the trailer. She set her hands on what she could, and lifted herself up and into the trailer.
She heard people whimpering. She took her phone out of her pocket and tried it one last time. The phone display lit up. She unlocked the screen and activated the flashlight app. The battery died, the trailer fell back into the black, but not before Madison saw the horror of young children tethered with chains.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Madison said.
Someone screamed.
She turned around and saw someone on the ground below her. She kicked out at where she thought his head had been, but missed.
“You should be more worried about how you’re going to get out of here!”
Madison recognized the voice. It sounded familiar. She thought it was the redheaded carnie operator that wanted to accompany her into the funhouse. She couldn’t see a face, though.
The man whistled. It was loud, long. Clearly an alarm. He was telling people to come back to the trailer. Madison tried not to panic. She could not recall ever feeling this scared. Children lie chained to the inside walls of the trailer.
The kids were not the children of the carnies.
The children had been snatched and were stored inside the trailer.
And she knew about it.
They would never let her leave.
She jumped over the top of the man’s head. She landed hard on the paved lot. Pain shot up both legs from her feet and ankles to her knees, and burned into the muscle around her thighs like a spreading ring of fire.
She tried to run before she was back up on her feet, and lost her balance. Her hands slapped at and slid on wet pavement. Gaining traction in her boots was difficult. They were for fashion, little else. Just as she managed to get into a track runner’s stance, something heavy slammed into the small of her back. She flattened against cold pavement, her face pressed into a puddle. Filthy rainwater filled her nostrils. She spat and breathed out of her nose. Water kept rolling back in.
Flashlight beams scurried over the ground and up the back of the trailer.
“Are we taking her?”
“She’s not like the others,” the redheaded carnie said. She knew his voice now.
“She’s not that old,” someone said.
Madison could not tell how many people had come when the whistle alarmed. The flashlight beams of light fell everywhere, all around her. She knew they were looking at her, studying her. How could an entire carnival be involved with kidnapping? That didn’t make sense.
“It’s not age I’m worried about. She was here earlier with friends,” Redhead said.
“I remember her. She was with another girl, and some black kid.”
“So what do we do?”
“Get her outta here. Drain her. Dump her.”
“Drain?”
“Take four pints. Not more.”
Madison’s mind raced. Drain me? Dump me? Four pints? Four pints of what?
The strongest hands she’d ever felt grabbed her arms. Fingers like pliers tightened around her biceps. In one swift motion she was lifted off the pavement and slung over a shoulder.
Behind her, the trailer door swung closed, the latch replaced, and a lock secured in place.
Madison’s head rung.
Despite the bells behind her ears, she heard children crying. Sobbing.
A pickup truck pulled up. A door opened. She was tossed in, sandwiched between two men. Neither was the redhead.
Short, shallow breaths. Madison worried she would hyperventilate. She did not want to pass out. She wasn’t sure how she could prevent it. Her entire body shook.
“Mind if I drink while you drive?” the man on her right said.
“Better leave me something. I’m not foolin’ aroun’ here. I mean it.”
“Cross my heart.”
They laughed. Madison wasn’t sure what was funny.
The man on her right grabbed her by the hair and tipped her head toward the driver. Her ear was almost pressed against her shoulder. She cried out, more from the shock than from pain, but the pain was there, too.
The passenger ran two fingers down her throat, and along the side of her neck. “Can you smell that, or what?”
“It’s ‘cause she’s so a-scared,” Driver said. “I can smell that, too. The fear’s no good though. I don’t think. The fear lasts too long, and you get all them fearmones mixing with the blood.”
The blood? What did that mean? What did they have planned? “Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone a thing. You have my word. I don’t even know anything. I was just being nosy.”
“Being nosy just got you dead,” Driver side. “Tough lesson to learn. Sometimes it’s the only way.”
There was no lesson to learn if they killed her. She wasn’t going to mention it. Why correcting him even entered her mind made no sense, but it did. “Just let me go. I’ve learned my lesson. I have,” she said, and hated that she was crying, begging, that they had reduced her to this.
“Shut her up,” Driver said.
“My pleasure,” Passenger said. One hand held the top of her head, the other pressed down on her shoulder.
Madison screamed, it was loud, it was high-pitched and it stopped almost as soon as teeth pierced her neck and throat. As strength was sapped from her body, she worried only about the children in the back of that trailer. She worried about. . .
Chapter 10
“Madison. Maddy!”
A loud siren chirped over and over, and yet she still heard her father’s voice. A blur moved in front of her, past her. She smelled smoke. Someone was coughing, but she didn’t think it was her. Her brain felt loose inside her skull, as if it sloshed around between her ears and banged absently into bone. Her knees wobbled.
“Honey!”
She felt arms around her. Strong hands held her. She closed her eyes, opened them, closed and opened them again, hoping to clear the fuzziness. A haze enveloped her.
Something loud whoosh-hissed in front of her.
Was she lying down? She saw the ceiling fan above, the blades still. “Dad?”
The odor of smoke was overwhelming. It was the haze
above her. Something was on fire.
The kitchen.
She sat up far too fast. The loose brain bounced around, and she brought her hand up to her temples to steady the movement. She thought she might pass out. “Dad?”
There was a loud clunk sound next to her. She saw the fire extinguisher. In a moment, the loud chirping stopped. She watched her father pull a battery out of the back of the palm-sized alarm.
“What happened, honey? Are you okay?”
Am I okay? she thought. I don’t know. I don’t think so. “I’m okay.”
She wasn’t. Her mind filled with horrible memories. Her stomach churned acidic bile. Turning to the left, she planted a hand on the cold linoleum and vomited. She stared at the blood red puke that spilled across the floor. “I’m okay.”
Cold air surrounded her. A window was open, and the smoke dissipated some. “It’s okay,” her father said. “The fire’s out. Are you okay to move? I want to get you out of the kitchen.”
“I’m okay.”
She felt his arms slide under her legs and behind her head. As if weightless, she was in the air and gliding smoothly from the kitchen into the family room. He set her down on the sofa.
He stood up and coughed.
“What happened?” Madison said.
“Looks like the garlic bread is a little overdone. Didn’t you see the smoke?”
“Smoke?”
“The fire alarm was going off,” he said.
“I burnt dinner?” She thought she might cry. She knew her lips trembled. “I’m sorry. I wanted it to be a surprise for you.”
“Sweetie, I’m not worried about dinner. I came into the kitchen, and you were just standing there, staring out the window. It was like you were in some kind of trance.” Adam sat on the floor beside her. “You’ve got me worried.”
“I’m okay, I just. . .”
She didn’t have an answer. Well, she did, but not one to share. Madison was not ready to explain anything to anyone. Except maybe Neal.
Young Blood: The Nightbreed Saga: Book 1 Page 8
