Towering

by Alex Flinn

  The man shrugged. “Suit yourself. But it’s cold out there, and you said you wanted information on Zach.”

  “You said you knew where to find him.”

  “I might. But first, I need to know why you’re looking for him.”

  I looked down. “No reason. I mean, nothing bad.”

  “Are you sure?” The man’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been completely truthful so far. I mean, you told Henry you were staying with the Brewers, but that’s not true, is it?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Didn’t think so. You’re really staying with Celeste Greenwood.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “But how did you know?”

  He laughed. “Little thing called Caller ID.”

  “Oh. I forgot they had that here. So many other things are a little . . . retro.” I could feel the warmth coming from inside. In fact, he had a fire going. Somehow, that made it seem even colder out.

  “So why are you looking for Zach?”

  “I know someone who wants to see him.”

  “Who? Old girlfriend? Or creditors?”

  “No, nothing like that. No one who wants anything from him, just someone who liked him once, a girl, a friend.”

  “A girl and a friend, but not a girlfriend?”

  I decided to lie. This guy would never know. I could tell the truth when I met the real Zach. “My mother, Emily Hill, she was a friend from school.”

  The guy opened the door farther, taunting me with the heat. “So you’re saying Zach is your father?”

  “No, n-nothing like that.” I could barely keep my teeth from chattering. “J-just a friend.”

  “Why don’t you come in? If I was wanting to kill you, deserted as it is here, I could have done it by now. Or the cold would do it for me.”

  I looked inside. The fire was inviting, and there was a dog lying by it, wagging its tail, almost like Josh’s hardware store.

  I stepped forward.

  The door slammed behind me.

  From behind a pillar, the guy I’d met on the first day, Henry, stepped forward.

  “Okay, Wyatt, why don’t you tell me why you’re really looking for Zach?”

  42

  Rachel

  After Mama left, I lay in bed, missing Wyatt, but I knew it was too late to call. Wyatt had told me that the phone in his house would ring and wake everyone. That’s why I had to wait for him to call me.

  I was sorry. For all the disadvantages of my upbringing, the one advantage was that I had never missed anyone. Now, I did.

  Since I couldn’t call Wyatt, and I couldn’t sleep, I did the only thing that interested me.

  I took out the letter.

  It was surprisingly crisp looking considering the date on it was almost eighteen years ago. It was written on white paper with blue lines and stuffed in an envelope that was the wrong size. The handwriting was pretty, in purple ink.

  Dear Danielle:

  Are you okay???? I’m worried about you. Your last letter has me so freaked out. You have to know that it sounds a little (please don’t take this the wrong way) crazy. Is it pregnancy hormones? Fear of your mother? Those weird hallucinogens you took before you got pregnant? All understandable (especially about your mother—she sounds a lot different than I remember her!). But please hold it together. I wish you could come stay with us until your baby comes. I know it’s hard for you. But my parents are just barely managing not to throw me out of the house due to my own, er, delicate condition. I can’t spring you on my mom—especially since she (again, no offense) never liked you very much. This would sort of prove her right and I hate to prove her right!!! Is there someplace else you can stay? I read once about a home for unwed mothers. Do they actually have those, do you think? Or is it just something in books? Also, my mom mentioned that sometimes, when people want to adopt a baby, they’ll find a pregnant girl and pay all her living expenses until she gives birth. I told Mom I am not doing that, but maybe you would. It would allow you to run away.

  I know what you’ll say, that someone is after your baby, that that druggie Suzie Mills told you Zach was dead, and that you need to protect your baby because she’s some kind of magical creature or whatever. But that’s the part that sounded crazy. I know we always wanted to think of ourselves as special, but face it: We’re not. We’re like maybe a million other girls who met a guy who said he loved us—then found out he didn’t. Zach is probably in the city with some other girl.

  Honestly, Dani, you need to get out of your fantasy world. The child you’re carrying (which you somehow already know is a blond girl) is not the key to thwarting an enchanted drug ring. There is no destiny, no prophecy. She’s just a baby!

  Please tell me you’re getting some help.

  I love you but—again—I’m worried.

  Emily

  After reading the letter four times, I fell asleep.

  I woke to the morning’s first light, and I said, aloud, “Call me.”

  It may have been my imagination, but I thought I heard him say, “I’ll be there soon. An hour, maybe.”

  But by eight o’clock, I still hadn’t heard from him. Perhaps, I thought, I could simply call and, if the old lady answered, hang up (that’s what Wyatt had called it) or say I had made a mistake dialing the number. Did people do that? And then, Wyatt might realize it was me and call. Probably.

  I knew! I’d say I was a friend of his, if the woman answered, a friend from town.

  I turned on the telephone and touched the square that said, “Phone.” A list of names and numbers showed up, Mom, Josh, Astrid. Who was Astrid? Celeste Greenwood. I touched that number. The phone began to make a noise, more like rattling than ringing. It did it twice, then someone said, “Hello.” I drew in my breath.

  It was not Wyatt.

  I had meant, if someone who was not Wyatt answered, to remain calm, to simply say, “Hello?” and ask to speak to him. That would, I suspected, be a perfectly normal thing to do.

  Instead, I sat, mouth slightly open, listening to the voice on the other side of the phone, saying, “Hello? Hello? Who is this?”

  The thing is, I knew that voice. It was too familiar not to recognize. And I knew if I recognized her voice, she would also recognize mine.

  I touched the part of the screen that said, “End call.”

  43

  Wyatt

  “I told you why.” I try to act like everything is normal, like it’s not creepy at all. “He was a friend of my mom’s. She said to look him up. No big deal. If you don’t know anything about him, I’ll go.” I made like I was going to walk out.

  I saw a flash of silver, a knife. Then, it was against my neck.

  “Stop right there,” Carl’s voice said.

  I did what I was told. I stopped. He signaled me to sit down on a dirty sofa. I sat.

  “Now, listen you little punk.” Even in the dim light, I could see spit flying out his lips as he spoke. “We know you’re lying. Not just suspect. Know.”

  “You couldn’t because there’s nothing—”

  “Zach never went to school with your mother or anyone else around here. He came into town for a month or two. He did two things while he was here. One was work at the bar, and I think you know what the other thing was.”

  Involuntarily, I nodded. He’d gotten Danielle pregnant. But why? Why would he come to town, specifically to meet one girl? Or maybe he left when he found out about her being pregnant. Except, judging from her diary, she’d never told him.

  Carl nodded. “So you do know about Danielle.”

  “Danielle’s dead. That’s all I know. I’m staying with a woman, her mother. You know that, of course.”

  I was trying to play dumb, real dumb, but also, nice. Specifically, I was trying to be a kid you wouldn’t want to stab.

  “She talks about Danielle all the time, so I got curious. That’s all.”

  “That’s not all,” Henry said behind me. “The old lady, she wouldn’t have kno
wn about Zach unless Danielle told her. And Danielle wouldn’t have told her.”

  Did these guys know Danielle? It sounded like it. “Okay, I found her diary. She talked about Zach. But the diary ended after she found out he skipped town.”

  Now, I wondered, had he skipped town? Or had someone killed him? Had these guys killed him?

  “I don’t know what happened to Danielle any more than you do. Any more than anyone does. Her poor mother . . .” I realized Mrs. Greenwood definitely hadn’t had anything to do with Danielle’s disappearance. “Her mother’s always crying about her, and I found the diary, so I thought this Zach guy might know something. That’s all. Obviously, if he’s d—gone, he doesn’t know.”

  “We don’t care about Zach,” Carl said. “We want the daughter.”

  “Daughter?” I tried to look confused.

  “The daughter. The one you’ve been visiting. She’s hidden somewhere, and you know where she is.” Henry was there again, with his knife. They wanted Rachel. Would they really kill me to get to her?

  I wasn’t telling them. I didn’t know what they wanted with Rachel, but I knew it wasn’t good. If they were looking for her because one of them was her long-lost grandpa, they wouldn’t have lured me here, and they wouldn’t be threatening murder.

  I made my choice. I would do what I hadn’t done with Tyler and Nikki. I would be brave. They wanted Rachel for some bad reason, and I wasn’t going to let them have her.

  I looked at Carl, felt the knife digging into my neck, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I go out to ski with a girl named Astrid. That’s all.”

  And then, I closed my eyes and waited.

  But instead of the sound of a cut to the jugular, I felt a rough hand on my arm. Carl’s voice said, “Well, let’s see if you remember after a few hours downstairs.”

  He grabbed me, opened a door I’d thought was a closet. Instead, there were stairs, leading to gray darkness. Henry took my other arm, and they frog-marched me down.

  44

  Rachel

  Mama was the lady Wyatt had been living with, the lady Wyatt called Mrs. Greenwood. And, since Mama was Danielle’s mother, that made her my own grandmother, my real, true grandmother. My face was warm, yet I was shivering. I drew my mother’s coat out from its hiding place and wrapped it once more around me. I inhaled deeply, the scent of my mother’s house, my grandmother’s. How I longed to go there. I felt, finally, that I had a history. If only I could see them.

  But Mama would be angry if she knew. She did not want me to see, to talk to anyone. A boy climbing through my window would still be strictly forbidden. But perhaps, the fact that Mama knew him, knew that he was kind and good, would make up for the fact that he had entered my bedroom.

  Probably not.

  And that he kissed me.

  Definitely not.

  And yet, I wanted desperately to talk to her, to someone. Even more than I usually wanted to talk to someone.

  Where was Wyatt?

  It was very early, still. I knew I was being unreasonable. But those who are not trapped in towers could not possibly understand the special concern of those of us who are. We get lonely.

  Still, I walked over to my window, opened it, and leaned out.

  The cold air on my face made me feel alive. Below, the coat warmed me. I scanned the snowy ground below to see if he was coming. No one there except a bird, perhaps a hawk, circling overhead, looking for its morning meal. I wondered if hawks ever got lonely. They did not flock together, as other types of birds did, crows or blue jays. No, a hawk’s life was a solitary life. Like mine.

  I threw my head back and yelled his name: “Wyatt!”

  The sound was swallowed by the morning. No one heard, not even the hawk.

  Still, I stood, staring, watching the still, silent, painted world until I started to shiver and had to close the window.

  Now, the clock said ten. He had said he would come early. Where was he?

  45

  Wyatt

  I struggled against them, but they were strong, freakishly strong for such old guys. Did they have some kind of magical strength? I couldn’t resist them. I had expected the stairs to lead to a cellar, or even something smaller, a hole in the ground, or an abandoned well like the one the killer in The Silence of the Lambs used to imprison his victims, small and dark.

  The landing of the stairs was dark, but Carl immediately turned me and led me to a door, which opened on to another stair.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  For all the world, it looked like hell. When the door opened, a dull, red light pervaded the room, and it was warm, warmer than I’d been in weeks. The door slammed behind me, and I continued down the dark, creaky stairs. I struggled, but struggle was no good. It only made me more afraid of falling. Henry had a knife, and they both were strong, stronger than I’d imagined.

  The stairway seemed blocks long, creaky, hollow, and as I trudged farther, the heat got hotter. The light grew redder. I expected to see the biblical face of Lucifer. Instead, I only saw more red light below, more black darkness to each side. I heard a sort of roaring noise. Was it a monster? Were they going to feed me to it? Before all this happened, I would never have believed in a monster. But at this point, I had climbed a tower. I had seen a girl with healing tears. I had seen a ghost, and I was not convinced it was my imagination. If magic was real, why not monsters? Why not the gates of hell? The closer I got, the louder the roar, and I pictured a hellhound, gnashing his teeth.

  I would never see Rachel again. What would become of her, alone in the tower? Would she grow old and die alone? Or would some other guy come to her rescue? And would she know what happened to me, sense it, somehow, as I had sensed her existence, had known she was there in the woods. Even now, I heard her voice crying, “Wyatt!”

  It was amazing that, faced with my own death, my first, my only thought was of Rachel. Maybe not amazing. I had seen, faced death before, and it couldn’t scare me. Leaving Rachel scared me.

  So many steps. Would this never end? But as long as I was walking, I was alive.

  Finally, though, we reached the bottom. I stumbled a bit, expecting another step, and backed into Carl. He tightened his grip on me, then pushed me around the corner.

  It took a moment for my eyes to focus in the new light. It was not the mouth of hell which, I guess, was a good thing. It was a room, a cave about the size of a hockey rink. The roar came from a waterfall on one side, blue water rushing down the cave walls. But it was what it was watering that was so weird.

  The light came from huge lights hanging from the ceiling, a greenhouse of some sort, artificially lit. Below the lights hung thousands of plants, suspended with no dirt, but growing. Each plant was a vine with a dozen or more bright blue flowers.

  I remembered reading about hydroponics in science class once. That must be what this was. The plants got nourishment not from sun and soil, but from the artificial light and possibly, from a substance that was being sprayed on them by dozens of workers in blue jumpsuits. They all looked forward, like they didn’t even see us.

  The substance wasn’t water. It came from a dark blue river, carved into the granite that glowed red, flowing through the hydroponics garden. At one end, it formed a waterfall to water the plants. That was the water I heard. Several rowboats were tied to a makeshift riverbank, and more workers rowed through the “field,” picking the blue flowers and carefully placing them into bins on one of the boats. When the boat was filled, two boys got in and began to row.

  “What . . . what is all this?”

  “Nothing. Just a cave. None of your business.”

  But, of course, I knew. This was the green, the salad Danielle had eaten that had made her hallucinate. It was a drug, and these people, these zombies, were on it. They were growing it here, and that was what the old man’s daughter, the others who’d disappeared, had been addicted to.

  But why did they want me? Or Rachel? What could we do? />
  “We need the girl,” Carl said.

  You mentioned that. “For what?” I asked even though I knew it didn’t matter. I wasn’t giving her up no matter what. “So you can bring her here and turn her into one of them?” I gestured at the zombie workers who were carrying buckets of water from the blue waterfall to the plants. They all looked like they were staring at a television that wasn’t there.

  “The workers are happy,” Carl said. “See, they’re smiling.” He gestured toward a girl with a painted-looking smile on her face. Blond and blue eyed, she could have been Rachel’s sister. “Besides, we only want to talk to the girl. Zach was more than an employee. He was our nephew. Now, he’s gone so, of course, we want to meet his daughter.”

  “You expect me to believe that you kidnapped me and are holding me at knifepoint, all for some sentimental family reunion?”

  “She’s been taken away from us, hidden all these years. Who knows if she’s safe.”

  “She’s safe from you.” A guy my age walked by, looking straight ahead. “I’m not telling you anything.”

  “So you do know where she is?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Then we’ll go with plan B,” Carl said, “lock you up and get the information from the old lady.”

  “The old lady? Mrs. Greenwood? But she doesn’t know anything about this, about . . .” I stopped myself before I said Rachel’s name. “She’s just a sweet old lady who lost her daughter. If she knew about the girl, her granddaughter, she’d be with her. She’d have taken her someplace.”

  “That’s what we always thought, assumed for a long time. But when you showed up, came to live with her, we realized she must know.” That was Henry. Carl gave him a hard look.

  But I said, “Why?”

  “Because of the prophecy. She had to know that the girl was the one who—”

  “Would you shut up!” Carl bellowed.

  “Why? You have him here. I’m the one who told you about him. Why should I shut up?” He sounded like a little kid more than an old man.