The Follower

by Koethi Zan

  ‘Where are we going? Am I allowed to ask?’ she said, her heart beating pretty hard by then. She was not going to fall for his bullshit this time.

  ‘Under a bridge. I told you.’

  She stopped. Stood still.

  ‘And what about the rest of it? Are you setting me up again?’ He tugged on her arm, but she didn’t budge. ‘I mean it, Reed. I need to know what’s going on.’

  ‘I swear. I swear I will not leave you. Come on. There’s a dam on the lake. And I know how to get into the tunnels underneath. That’s all.’ He paused. ‘You’ve spoiled my surprise.’ He looked genuinely hurt, but she didn’t believe it for a minute.

  They walked around the block to where he’d parked a beat-up silver Honda.

  ‘You have a car now? You’re too young to drive, Reed. Where’d you get this?’ She hoped against hope that it wasn’t stolen. She could not end up in a police station again.

  ‘I borrowed it. Relax, I have my brother’s license with me. Works every time.’ He opened the door for her with an exaggerated show of gallantry.

  Against her better judgment, she got in and he drove along a twisted maze of roads. Cora had no idea where they were, which would make it somewhat complicated to get back home if he did pull something on her.

  Finally, he drove into an empty parking lot and they got out. They stood at the railing by the edge of the lake, watching the water plummet majestically over the side of the dam. The even row of lights set within each cement archway bounced its rays back into the spray.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? I mean, for a public-works project. Anyway, the tunnels are fucking awesome.’

  He led her down several levels of cement steps. It smelled like mildew down there, as if the lock had been full of water until right that second. Ever more elaborate formations of green muck clung to the sides of the dam’s infrastructure the lower they went.

  She shivered.

  ‘You cold?’ He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. The smell of it was intoxicating. His smell.

  They came to a rusted metal door that was partially wedged open. A red sign read ‘Danger: Do Not Enter’.

  ‘Here. Step carefully. We can only get it open about eight inches. I hope no one else is in here tonight.’

  He was taunting her again.

  She wondered for a moment whether Joy and Johnny would be waiting there, laughing in that way they did, the way that told her that she was still and maybe always would be an outsider. Anything could be in store for her down there. So far from anything else, they’d be able to do what they wanted. She shuddered to herself, hoping that wasn’t the plan.

  Yet even then she was willing to risk it.

  As she pushed her body through the small opening she saw with relief that the dismal room was empty after all. A dim yellow industrial light shone from one side of the doorway. On the other side of the space a copper pipe ran from floor to ceiling, hissing softly. A red indicator light glowed from a metal panel mounted on the center of the wall.

  ‘How charming,’ Cora said with a laugh.

  He smiled and without a word set down the backpack he was carrying.

  ‘Hold, please,’ he said as he took out a blanket, a small lantern, and some matches. He lit the wick and spread out the blanket with a flourish.

  ‘Romantic, right?’ He indicated for her to sit.

  She smiled and sat down, leaning back against the cold hard wall. She just wanted to touch him.

  ‘Did you bring any weed?’ She needed it to calm her nerves.

  ‘Nope, but I have beer.’ He handed her a can and took out a second one for himself. They popped them open and each took a sip, then sat in silence for a minute or two. Cora wanted him to go first. He owed her that much.

  He finally turned toward her.

  ‘I’ve brought you here tonight for a reason, Laura Martin.’ He touched her nose softly as he said it and inched over closer to her. Her skin tingled. He took out a pack of cigarettes, tilted it toward her. She shook her head, so he put it back in his bag.

  ‘You’re a mystery,’ he began. ‘A very strange mystery. That won’t do. I want to know the truth about you.’

  Cora tensed up. Honestly, she thought, couldn’t they just make out?

  ‘The truth? You’re the last person to believe there’s any such thing,’ she said, hoping to deflect his questions.

  ‘Yeah, well, all kidding aside –’ He stopped, grabbed her hand, held it up to the light, flipped it over and studied her palm. ‘Where did you come from? Where do you live now? Why isn’t there a nice mother looking after a wayward girl like you?’

  She pulled her hand away, as if he could read the secrets in the lines of her flesh.

  ‘That’s really none of your business, now is it?’

  ‘Oh.’ His interest was piqued. ‘Sounds like there’s a story. What happened?’

  She didn’t answer, just sat staring at her palm, wondering for a moment if the answers were there after all.

  ‘Hello? Laura? What happened?’

  She looked into his eyes. Maybe if she opened up to him, he’d be nice to her. Maybe it would bring them close. Or maybe he wouldn’t like what he heard.

  She lay down, straightened a corner of the blanket, and turned over on her side. ‘I mean, really.’ She unbuttoned her top button and smiled. She felt brave for doing it.

  ‘Nice play, Laura Martin, but I really want to know.’

  She sighed.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I have a pretty good guess, though, given how we’re on the run all the time.’ She paused, deciding whether to say it. She took a deep breath.

  ‘I think my father took me from her. You know, like one of those custody cases you hear about on the news. Sometimes I imagine that she’s out there, frantically searching for me. I like the thought that someone really wants me like that. You know, with all their heart.’ Maybe he’d take the hint.

  ‘You think you were kidnapped? Whoa, that’s huge. That’s like, Amber Alert. Why don’t you go to the police?’ For the first time, he dropped his cool demeanor. He seemed genuinely interested in her answer.

  ‘Because I could be wrong. What if my father’s telling the truth? What if she doesn’t want me and gave me up to him? Then what? Then my father’s pissed and I end up homeless and alone? No, thank you.’ She shivered and pulled away from him.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find her when I’m older. Until then, can we skip the family drama?’

  She sat up and buttoned her shirt. Then something dawned on her. Of course. It was a set-up after all. She was starting to get the picture.

  ‘Is that why you brought me here? Did those two send you to get secrets out of me? Something the three of you could use to humiliate me? I guess I delivered. Now you can post a big sign at the school pep rally. Or maybe announce it over the loudspeaker. Is that what this is about?’ She stood up. She’d find her way back somehow.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I’m not going to tell anyone. Relax.’ He grabbed her hand, eased her back down to the ground.

  ‘I’m not out to get you, Laura. I just want to know you better, that’s all. That’s what people do, you know – they ask other people about their lives, their circumstances –’ he leaned in close to her face – ‘about their burning desires that will ultimately drive them into madness.’ He picked up her hand again and put it against his heart. ‘Feel that.’

  She felt his heartbeat, the firm muscles of his chest. Nothing else mattered all of a sudden. This time he unbuttoned his shirt and slid her hand underneath it onto his hot, smooth skin.

  With the other hand he started slowly unbuttoning her shirt, tugging at the fabric gently each time, sliding his finger delicately along the inside edge of her bra.

  ‘Just relax. We won’t talk about anything now.’

  He leaned toward her and their lips met.

  CHAPTER 20

  Julie lay on the bed staring at the window, too tired to both
er picking at the boards today. Her limbs were weak with exhaustion because sleep was another luxury she’d been robbed of lately. No matter what her body wanted, her mind kept her awake. All night long panic alternated with despair as she churned through her options, or rather, the dearth thereof.

  Today was Monday, at least it was in the calendar she’d created. Keeping track of the days helped her feel ordered, even if she’d had to randomly assign a place to start. On ‘Mondays’, ‘Wednesdays’, and ‘Fridays’ she exercised. Stretching, sit-ups, jumping jacks. Her muscles were deteriorating and even though it was hard to muster up the energy on so little food, she knew her legs had to be able to run if she ever got the chance.

  Today, however, she was too depleted. The woman was feeding her less and less, it was true, but mostly she was emotionally drained. She felt like giving up, except she wasn’t even sure what that meant, since she wasn’t putting up much of a fight to begin with.

  She turned over and shifted her gaze to the ceiling. Nothing like a new view to liven things up.

  She reached down absentmindedly to scratch a small tickle on her forearm. That’s when she felt something weird. She glanced down and then bolted upright, holding up her hands in horror.

  They were covered in spiders.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she screamed, jumping up off the bed.

  There must have been a hundred of them crawling on her palms, on the backs of her hands, out to the ends of her fingertips. Tiny black creatures with red eyes, tickling her skin all over, marching in unison up her arms, obviously determined to cover her, to fill her nose and eyes and mouth with their furry little bodies.

  No, not hundreds, it must be thousands. Soon they would cover every inch of her.

  ‘Jesus Fucking Christ. What the hell is this?’

  She frantically brushed them off onto the floor as she tried not to scream again. Her captors might do anything – might try to kill them by dousing her with bleach or setting her on fire. Better to deal with it alone.

  The creeping black specks had reached her clothes now and were disappearing into the folds of her shirt, slipping down under the elastic of her sweatpants. When she got them off one arm, there were more, another unit sent in for battle, climbing in between her fingers.

  ‘I swear, I’m going to kill every one of you fuckers. I swear to God.’

  She stripped off her clothes, her hands moving as fast as they could, and flung her shirt at the bed, beating it hard against the iron headboard. Spiders flew everywhere.

  The house must have an infestation. She must have been lying on a nest of them.

  With her hands shaking, she picked up her sweatpants and threw them into the sink in the corner of the room. She turned on the tap, drowning the little beasts and watching dozens of their tightly curled dead bodies float to the top of the water.

  ‘Die, you little bastards. Die. Die.’

  But just as soon as she’d killed one batch, there were more. She looked down at her bare feet. Oh, God, they were between her toes now, making their way up her legs. They were almost to her knees already. She slapped at her thighs as hard as she could, wiping their tiny smeared cadavers onto the floor.

  ‘How can there be so many of them?’

  She shut her eyes tight, wishing she could erase herself from planet earth. Then she opened them.

  They were gone. Just as suddenly as they’d appeared, they had disappeared. It was like magic. There was nothing on her skin, nothing on the floor.

  She stood there in the middle of the room, naked, her mind reeling.

  ‘What the—? This makes no sense.’

  In a panic, she inspected under her arms, the backs of her legs, and held up her hands in front of her face. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath, leaned down and squinted at the linoleum tiles, searching for any sign of them. She walked over to the sink, barely daring to look in it. She lifted her soaking-wet pants and held them up, dripping, to the light. Nothing.

  ‘You’re kidding me. No way, no.’

  This was worse than an infestation. Worse than a million spiders.

  This could not be true.

  Suddenly it was imperative for her to find those bloody spiders. She would not accept for a single fucking second that she had imagined them.

  ‘No, Julie, calm down. They were real. They had to be real.’ It was the most important thing in the universe at that moment that she find those horrible bugs.

  She threw herself down on her hands and knees, scouring the floor for signs of their dead bodies, looking for the survivors that must surely be scurrying back to their nest. She walked to the bed and ripped off the sheets, studying each filthy inch.

  There was not a single sign of them.

  She sat down hard on the stripped mattress.

  ‘I’m fucked,’ she said, shaking her head.

  Picking them up off the floor, she pulled the sheets to her cheek and her face melted into tears.

  ‘There’s no arguing against it now. I’m going insane. This is it. Totally, completely insane. They win. They’ve turned me into a mental case. Hallucinations are probably only the beginning. It’ll only get worse from here.’

  She stood up to pace the room, running her fingers through her tangled hair, squeezing her head between her hands so hard she thought it might smash her ears together through her brain.

  ‘So this is how it starts. I’ll be like one of those kidnapped girls on television who walk around in public in robes, never even thinking of escape, proselytizing some fucked-up religion while they smile pitifully, their far-away eyes all glistening and shit. So this is how that happens.’

  What if she started believing his bullshit about mystical spirits in the forgotten universe? Started speaking in tongues or something?

  Then she stopped, nearly knocked down by the force of her realization. She clutched the rail of the bed.

  ‘Jesus Fucking Christ. What if I become like her?’

  She was running out of time. She had to get out of that room.

  Right now though, she had to lie down and think. There was only one possibility. She had to kill these people. Yes, somehow she had to kill them. She pictured his face before her and thought of the exquisite pleasure of slashing a thousand bloody cuts across it, of smashing it in, or no, better yet, of burying him alive, watching his hands claw up at her through the dirt as he panicked. As he felt that kind of fear she felt every day.

  Her too. That bitch.

  ‘I’ll kick her to death and rip the skin right off her pudgy face. I’ll … I’ll …’

  Julie was panting. She sat up. She had to stop. She had to stop this right now.

  She picked up her sweatshirt from the floor and slipped it over her shoulders.

  What was happening to her? Look what she was turning into. She was letting the darkness take over. Where did these thoughts come from? These violent desires, these sickening images? She had to resist these feelings because if she lost her mind in here – if she did become his religious zombie, his follower – she’d never know how these urges might manifest themselves. This was how he would defeat her in the end. He’d make her an animal like himself.

  And then another far worse thought occurred to her. What if – she hated to think it – what if she’d always been like this underneath?

  What if this was her true character coming out when she didn’t have all the comforts of home: her plush bedroom, her gadgets, keys to the car, designer clothes? When she wasn’t walled into her suburban paradise. When the chips were down, is this what happened to her? Was this the truth then?

  In the face of hardship, would she just turn evil?

  Julie had always assumed she was a good girl. She’d done everything right, followed all the rules. She never hurt anybody. But look at her now. Was this what it meant to be a human being? That there was no such thing as ‘evil’, only circumstance? A roll of the dice and we think it’s character, but that’s not the case.

  All her smug ideals were in q
uestion now. She didn’t even know who she was anymore. And this, now, when she had to be strong, had to hold it together.

  She lay back down and stared at the ceiling, taking deep breaths as she clutched the sides of the mattress until her fingers hurt. She slid her hand down in the space between the bed and the wall and retrieved Pooh from where he’d fallen.

  ‘Sweet Pooh.’ She buried her face in the fleece and cried. ‘Where are they? Where are the police? Where are my parents? Where’s Mark? Has everyone given up on me?’

  Where were her SWAT teams, like she’d seen on TV, the ones dressed in riot gear, who would burst through the doors and carry her out of the house? There she would be then, a half-clothed, pale, ruined woman. Just a degenerate with scraggly hair and enough trauma to last a lifetime. Someone who would do anything to survive. Kill anyone, hurt anyone. A brutal damaged shell of a person who would never get over it.

  She stood up, her legs and hands shaking, and then fell back to her knees.

  They did this to her. They had taken everything away from her, even her innermost self. She wouldn’t let them get away with it. Even if they killed her and buried her a thousand feet underground.

  She crawled over to what she called the ‘south wall’. She had to impose an orientation simply to believe she existed in the regular physical world, to believe that this room was not a box floating in space on its own, in its own universe disconnected from everything else. No, that’s not what it was. It was connected to the rest of the house, which was connected to the ground, which ran around the earth to wherever her parents were now. To Mark. To her apartment. To her own bed with her own books piled beside it, waiting for her return.

  She came to the wall and put her hands on it, pressed her fingertips onto one spot and then another. She let the tears run down her face as she raced around the room, touching every object, pushing her fingers against them as hard as she could. She stood up and whirled in circles around the room, spitting on the floor, on the lawn chairs, on the bed, on her hands, wiping it everywhere.

  If they killed her, if she didn’t make it out of this room, goddamn it, she’d leave behind her prints, her saliva, her DNA on every possible surface. She spun in wild circles, touching everything.