The remains

by Vincent Zandri

  No way across the open water. No way across. No rocks, no felled tree, no shallow land bridge. The house in the woods was located on the opposite side of the stream. Michael was held hostage in the basement of that house.

  I made my way back upstream and stood on the edge of the bank, feeling the oily mist on my face, feeling the stream’s white force. I had to think like Molly. What would Molly do if she were in my boots? I knew exactly what she would do. I stuffed the flashlight into my jeans, teetered on the edge of the white water and gulped down my dread.

  I jumped.

  Chapter 61

  We skip and hop our way down the porch stairs, onto a narrow path that leads out into the woods. Molly has regained some of her strength. Groggily, she pulls me along.

  “ Come on,” she says in a muted but screaming voice. “We can make it out of here if we try.”

  But I’m slowing her down. I’m so scared I can hardly move. We’re identical Siamese twins, joined at the wrists. I’m crying, tripping, struggling to keep up.

  Together we fall along the path.

  Molly screams, “Get up! Get up!”

  I cry, try to lift myself, but we fall again. I try again to raise myself up and this time it works. We raise ourselves up together. We hobble along the path until we hear the sound of the stream.

  “ All we have to do is get across that stream,” she exclaims. “Then we try for home.”

  We keep moving, playing the man’s strange game of cat and mouse. All the while the sound of rushing stream water gets louder, more forceful. When we come to its edge, Molly asks me if I’m ready. Ready to jump in, that is.

  She would pull me in if isn’t for the gunshot.

  Chapter 62

  The ice cold whitewater dragged me downstream in a direct path for the drowning pool. I held out my hands for anything I could latch onto. Body twisting and turning in the water, I grabbed onto a rock with both hands and arms. For maybe a second or two I managed to stop my downstream progress toward the pool. But it didn’t take long for the smooth, moss-covered rock to betray me. As the frigid water pulled at my body and the rock slipped out of my hands, I felt my body once more being carried away.

  My head and body were pulled underneath the water’s surface. I swallowed the water and felt myself drowning. Until my head would once more reemerge, only to be sucked under again. Deeper this time, the water filling my lungs, choking me.

  But instead of panic, an explosion of anger erupted inside of me. It built up and up until nothing mattered anymore. Not my pain, not the cold, not exhaustion, not the suffocating sensation of drowning. Not fear. There was only the need to beat the stream, to beat my fear, to put an end to Whalen. To get to Michael.

  Despite the pull of the rushing water I yanked the flashlight from out of my pants and flicked it on. I ducked under the stream’s surface and righted myself so that my chest and legs were parallel with the streambed. I shined the light in the direction of the opposite bank. An instant passed before I located a felled tree that had been completely submerged by heavy water.

  As I came upon the tree, I took aim at one of its thick branches. With my good hand, I grabbed hold of the branch, grasping it as tightly as I could. It worked. Pulling myself up and out of the stream, I spit out the water that filled my mouth and lungs. Then I sucked in a deep breath of sweet oxygen. Pulling myself in toward the tree, I planted my right foot in the secure place where the branch met the tree’s thick trunk. With my last breath, I heaved my torso up and over the stream bank.

  Chapter 63

  I stood frozen, water-soaked and afraid. But I was also proud of myself. Confident. It must have been the way Molly felt so many times in her life. I swore I had to be smiling. I could feel the muscles in my jaws constricting, tightening. A smile, despite everything that had happened to me in the woods.

  My drenched body shivered.

  I shined the light upstream. Through the trees and the thick brush, I could make out the clapboard farmhouse. A dull beam of flashlight lit up the exterior wall. Just ahead of me was a narrow trail. I burst into an all out sprint along that trail in the direction of the house

  Body tingled, head buzzed, lungs filled with oxygen. My feet moved rapidly beneath me, the pain in my legs having all but disappeared. Not ten feet of trail separated me from the house in the woods when a hand reached out, grabbing hold of my long blonde hair.

  Chapter 64

  He’s right behind us. The mad man is following us the entire time. He grabs Molly’s hair, pulls it back.

  She screams. He laughs.

  “ Cry, cry, cry,” he spits.

  He pulls mine. I begin to weep. I fall, bringing Molly down with me.

  There’s a pistol barrel in our faces. He is holding the pistol that he now tucks into his pant waist. Bending, he grabs my left foot and Molly’s right, starts dragging us back across the narrow foot trail to the house.

  “ Little kittens lost their mittens. Cry, cry, cry, little kittens.”

  When he gets us to the porch, he pulls out a long silver knife from the sheath on his belt, cuts the tape that binds our wrists. I lie still on the ground while Molly jumps up, tries to run. But he is too quick for her. He grabs hold of her T-shirt, drags her back down and once more whips her over the head with the pistol grip.

  Molly goes to sleep again.

  That’s when the devil grabs hold of me. The devil drags me up the porch steps, in through the open front door, across the floor, through a door that leads to a black, rank basement.

  He pulls me down the basement stairs by my hair. My spine pounds against the wood treads. At the bottom of the stairs he pulls me across the cold dirt floor. He handcuffs me to something. It’s pitch dark. The place smells of must, urine and death. I’m shivering with fear and disbelief.

  An overhead light is turned on.

  I can see that I’m chained to this iron pipe in the middle of a square-shaped room. It’s a basement room constructed of stone, concrete, narrow windows located at the very top of the walls. Heavy gauge wires hang from the exposed rafters. Besides the wires are big hooks. They look like the hooks the farmers use to hang their freshly butchered meat. From where I sit, I can see that the hooks are stained with blood.

  For a time the beast just stares down at me. He’s breathing hard.

  “ What are you going to do to me?” I beg, the handcuffs tight and cutting into my wrists.

  “ Cry, cry, cry, little kitten,” he sings.

  I scream.

  But only the devil can hear me.

  Chapter 65

  Whalen Let Go Of my hair and pressed the pistol barrel against the small of my back.

  “Walk little kitten. Walk away.”

  I did it, without a word of protest. I wasn’t frightened anymore. I felt resolved somehow. I knew what was coming, where I was going. I’d known for a while now where I was going. I’d been there before. In a strange way I wanted to go back down there. The situation reeked of inevitability, as if I’d been waiting for this moment for thirty years; as if what happened to Molly and I when we were twelve was merely a prologue to this very moment in time. I wanted to go back down there if only to be with Michael; to finish this thing while holding him tightly.

  We entered the house.

  Whalen used his own flashlight to light the way across a floor that over three decades had become even more warped and rotted. When we came to the door that led into the basement, I could see that an electric light was already on.

  When he gave me a shove, I resisted. But when he pushed me I lost my footing and fell.

  I slid down the wooden stairs, my body slamming against each wood tread. By the time I landed, I thought I’d pass out from the pain. My vision was distorted, going in and out of focus.

  He descended the stairs, the soles of his leather boots stamping the wood treads one by one. I could already smell him. When he made it to the landing, he tucked his pistol into the waist of his filthy dungarees. He slipped his hands un
der my arms, dragging me across the dirt floor. My head hung so that I was staring up at the exposed beams, at the wires and meat hooks that still descended from them.

  He reached down and touched my lips with his fingers. But when I bit his hand, I tasted blood.

  He reared back with his hand, slapped my face.

  As he straightened up, I laid my head back. The figure caught my eye. The figure of a man. Arms, legs and torso hanging upside down from the ceiling. Bare feet chained to the rafters.

  Michael.

  Whalen had hung him upside down like a slaughtered animal. My eyes filled with the sight of his lifeless body. I screamed without making a sound. I sobbed without shedding a tear. I died but with a beating heart.

  Chapter 66

  I am nearly delirious with fear by the time he drags Molly down into the basement and lays her out beside me. I can see that she’s awake, her eyes going from me to him to me again. He looks at her with a calm confident smile.

  I sense that Molly is about to scream, cry.

  But she doesn’t. She grits her teeth, stares the devil in the eye and spits in his face.

  He reaches out, slaps her.

  “ Don’t struggle against him, Bec,” she insists. “Promise me you won’t struggle.”

  I look away.

  Chapter 67

  I came to.

  How long had I been passed out?

  Long enough for him to dig a good sized trench in the dirt floor. For a time I just locked my eyes onto him; watched him working, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. That wiry body soaked with sweat, plastered with dirt and filth, reeking of tobacco. Tiny, yellow teeth ground against one another while he worked, shoveling one spade full of dirt at a time.

  Then he caught sight of me.

  He saw that I was conscious and he smiled.

  “Hello little kitten,” he said, softly. “Cry, cry, cry, little kitten.”

  I knew then that what he had in store had nothing to do with his old motivation-his taste for young girls. There would be no touching here. No violations.

  There would only be death.

  He reached for me. I had no strength left in me to resist. He dragged me the few feet to the trench. He dumped me in. I did a complete roll, landing on my back. I heard him laugh. At least, I thought it was a laugh. It might just as easily have been a sob. He was standing above me, the little monster of a man looking almost huge now. God like.

  He had that shovel in his hand.

  He stabbed at the dirt pile, retrieved a shovelful of earth, held it over my prone body, and tossed it into the trench. The dirt smacked my body, sprayed into my face. It invaded my mouth, nostrils and blocked my air supply.

  There was something inside the dirt. Something other than rock and gravel and clay. The black and white-colored shards of bone. The very old bones covered me. A jaw bone, the teeth still embedded in the broken jaw. A small portion of skull cap. A leg bone. Here finally were the remains of the victims of Whalen’s torture. At long last, the bodies had been found.

  Another shovelful of bone-filled dirt fell onto me, this one down by my feet.

  He was burying me alive, adding me to his basement cemetery.

  Yet another shovel of dirt slapped my face. I coughed, choked as a worm wiggled in my mouth. I tried to wipe the dirt from my eyes, but all strength was bled out. I was already dead. I could still see him, but only through a cloud of dirt and pain.

  The bone shards and dirt kept coming, filling the trench, filling my mouth and nostrils. With each shovelful, another bit of life emptied out of me.

  I was still alive, but already dead.

  Chapter 68

  Molly doesn’t resist.

  I don’t resist when he unlocks me from the radiator, grabs my hair.

  No struggling.

  Our passivity seems to make the monster sad. He has Molly on the dirt floor on her back. He’s pinning her shoulders against the floor. She does nothing to resist. He can’t go through with it. He can’t do it. He grabs hold of me.

  I don’t resist.

  He throws me on my back.

  I don’t resist.

  His lips form a pout. He stands up and begins to cry.

  “ Cry, cry, cry,” he chants through his own tears.

  Molly and I turn to one another, lie on the dirt floor hugging one another. Until Molly spots something. Only a few feet away, a shovel. She lets go of me, lunges for the shovel and grips it in her hand. She sits up quick, raises the shovel high, brings it down hard on the monster’s head.

  He drops face first to the dirt.

  Molly drops the shovel and takes me in her arms. We shiver, we cry and we hold one another.

  We did not resist.

  We did not resist.

  We did not resist.

  Molly gets back onto her feet. She wipes her eyes, stemming a silent flow of tears. Marking the right side of her face is a streak of brown mud.

  “ That’s enough, Bec,” she says, with a stone face.

  With that, she reaches her hand out for me, helping me up off the dirt floor.

  Chapter 69

  Then I spotted somebody else. A short, squat silhouette of a man.

  I stared at the man through the dirt and tears. Only I was aware of him.

  Franny.

  It was Franny and he had something in his hand. An iron bar of some kind. A two or three foot length of rusted rebar.

  Franny.

  Franny was holding the iron bar two-fisted over Whalen’s head. Unaware of Franny’s presence, the monster went about his work filling in the trench, burying me. It was all happening now in slow motion, one frame slowly following another as that iron bar came down, smacking Whalen in the center of his skull. Even from deep down inside the trench, the sound of metal coming down against skull and bone was like a mallet smacked against a rotting pumpkin. His black eyes went wide as knees gave out; as he collapsed onto my dirt-covered stomach.

  Franny dropped the iron bar to the floor.

  He came to me, bent down, and extended his left hand.

  “Safe. Safe, safe, safe.”

  Chapter 70

  With Franny’s help, I managed to get back up onto my feet. As the fresh dirt fell off of me, I stood wobbly, out of balance. I spit out dirt and the skeletal remains of the long departed. I tried to spit out the taste of death.

  But it was impossible.

  Even to Franny I must have appeared a strange and desperate sight with my filthy clothing, cuts and bruises, and dirt-matted hair. Outside the house now you could hear the sound of thunder. Reaching out to me, Franny tried to brush off some of the dirt from my arms and face.

  I grabbed hold of his hand and kissed it. I felt my lips on his hand. I smelled his skin, listened to his breaths. He averted his eyes and stared at the dirt floor.

  Not three feet away, Whalen’s body occupied a trench meant for me. An open grave. His head was bleeding. Not a muscle in his body moved. Now I knew for certain that the monster was finally dead.

  Cry, cry, cry…

  But what if he wasn’t dead? What if he was alive still?

  Behind me, Michael’s body hung upside-down from the ceiling, a blood pool directly below him staining the dirt floor, soaking it.

  I wanted to go to him. Franny somehow knew this.

  “No, Rebecca. NO! NO! NO!”

  He put his arm around me, lifting me up off my feet. As I burst into tears, he carried me across the floor, up the stairs, out of the house and into the woods.

  Chapter 71

  A gray dawn erupted over Mount Desolation as we moved fast through the forest. We took no chances. By the time we made it to the stream bank, we hit the water running. Franny held onto me, wrapped his arms around me, keeping both our heads and shoulders just barely above water, feet kicking beneath him against the current.

  As I held onto him with all the strength I had left in me, Franny pumped and pumped. But the drag of the storm-driven white water was too powerful, too rel
entless. Almost immediately it began to drag us downstream. I didn’t care. I wanted to drown. Still I held on, my arms wrapped around his shoulders and neck, fingernails digging into his skin. But how I managed to hang onto him without being swept away I did not know.

  The frigid, white water was a shock to my body.

  But I didn’t scream.

  We were pulled under. But I didn’t panic, even when I swallowed water into my lungs. The water pulled us down. It poured over our heads. It filled our mouths. Until suddenly we reemerged gasping for breath, the water flowing out of our nostrils and mouths like blood from stab wounds.

  I knew that if the stream were any wider, it would have consumed us entirely.

  But the stream was not wide. I knew that without the heavy rain, the stream would not run full with heavy white water. But now it ran swift and heavy because of the torrential rains. Despite its pull, momentum was on our side. As the opposite bank approached, we swam and kicked. The cold water injected new life into our veins. It washed away the blood and the dirt that came from the devil’s basement.

  When Franny reached out with his free hand and located a handhold along the opposite bank, I knew for sure we would survive. Pulling me in toward him, he wrenched my forearm from off his neck. At the same time, I was able to locate a thick tree root that stuck out of the bank. I gripped the root with both hands while my legs and feet continued their downstream trek, twisting my body sideways until parallel with the bank.

  Now side by side in the stream, holding to the bank, I somehow managed a breath. With drenched bodies and faces, we gazed at one another for the briefest of moments before thrusting our bodies up and out of the fast water onto the safety of the solid earth.