by L. T. Vargus
The detachment has left his voice, some hushed reverence taking its place.
“They never talk. The girls who go in the box. Apart from begging, they never talk. Can’t bring themselves to engage with me, I think. They just cry and cry.”
Emily’s eyes flick to the ceiling. A fluttering lightness enters her skull.
It takes her a moment to process her emotional reaction to what he is saying.
She is proud. It makes no sense, but she is proud to be different. Proud that he sees something in her.
He goes on.
“This was what had to happen. I know it’s true. My whole life, I’ve been on the path to find you. We’re looking into the darkness now. Staring straight into it. And we have to decide, you know. Is there something there? Some glimmer of light, however faint. Some blip. Some flash. Some reason to wonder.”
She continues to stare at the eggshell surface above them.
“Is there anything at all? Or is it only the dark? The big nothing that stretches out forever and ever.”
She wants to cry. Wants to scream. Wants to thrash at the chains binding her to the box, but she does none of these things. She blinks. Looks at him.
“Need anything?” he says. “More water, maybe?”
She hesitates a moment.
“Yes, please.”
He fetches it, and she drinks. Chugging down another quart in three passes.
Again that almost smile quirks his mouth as he takes the empty jar from her.
“When you’re in the box, those bodily functions become everything, don’t they?” he says. “Eating, drinking, pissing, shitting. They occupy more and more of your thoughts, more and more of your time is spent worrying over them. And yet, those needs are so easily met. I’ve brought you food and water. Brought you the bedpan. Despite all that worry, in just a few minutes the body is sorted out. Easily satisfied. It’s your soul that really suffers, confined like that, but that’s harder to worry over, harder to comprehend. Your body is fine. Your heart pumps, your lungs breathe. The meat lives on and on, not even knowing the difference. But the soul gets twisted up from too much time in the dark. It changes, doesn’t it?”
Some strange relief washes over her as he talks. He is identifying with her, isn’t he? He understands, to some degree, what she is experiencing.
Even if she knows her fight will resume in time, she can see the glimmer of humanity in him again. A warped version of it. A madness having seeped into his thoughts, into his soul, if he has one. But the faintest bit of humanity nonetheless.
“But it’s like I said: That’s what we’re here for. To look into the dark. And that’s why I need to put this on you.”
He ducks. Disappears behind the wall of the box. Fiddles with something there. She listens for identifying details.
When he reappears, he has a plywood contraption in his hands. Homemade. Metal hinges. About the size of a hatbox until he unfolds it. The bottom of the square opens like a mouth, and she sees that it has double walls, that the interior of the box is carpeted.
“Hold still now,” he says, his tone soft. Almost tender. “I’ve had this for years, but I’ve never used it but once before. It never felt quite right, I guess. But this is the time. I know it is.”
She doesn’t understand what’s happening until he props her up in a seated position and begins to lower that open plywood structure over her head.
Now she sees. There’s a semi-circle cut out on each piece of that wooden mouth, and the pieces of this puzzle click into a place of understanding for her.
This will become the neck hole.
She bucks. Tries to rock down and forward to avoid the head box, but it’s too late.
He drives an elbow into her chest. Pushes her back and pins her. Speaks through clenched teeth.
“I said hold still.”
And the carpet closes in. Cinches around her on all sides. Encases her in another level of darkness. Imprisons her in a tighter space still.
Tighter, tighter.
It snaps when he closes it around her head. The edge of the neck hole rough against her skin.
The outside world deadens immediately. All ambient noise cut to nothingness by the barrier, by the nappy floor covering hung up around her skull.
She scrabbles in a panic. Arms and legs flailing. Pushing her deeper into the corner of the coffin box. Jamming her shoulders into that wall over and over.
Disorientation blossoms until nothing makes sense. Until everything outside of the head box barely seems real at all.
And even in the dark, she can feel how close the carpet is to her face. The way it mutes everything. The chemical smell of the textile. Somehow nauseating.
And this is just like being dead, she thinks. Just like being dead except that she is experiencing it. The infinite dark. The quiet. The total isolation from anyone or anything outside. She is getting a sneak preview.
Her breathing goes choppy again. Gasping. Choking.
Little sounds escape her lips. High pitched. Involuntary.
But the carpet muffles her whimpers.
Closes her inside.
Chapter 58
This time when Nicole woke the fire was out, and the room was cold. No flutter of orange coals animated the stove’s chamber, just the matte black of ash and shadow.
The tile floor stretched out in front of her, the room at its darkest since she’d arrived. A cold, dark chamber. Some monster’s dungeon.
She shifted in her seat, and a fresh wave of goose bumps prickled over her arms. The air nipped at her skin, dry and harsh, and the tingle of stirring flesh ached in places, especially her neck.
Her head rolled from shoulder to shoulder out of habit, tendons popping, muscles straining. She missed the warmth, the numb of sleep, wanted only to crawl back into unconsciousness for a while, but she knew, somehow, it wouldn’t happen that way. Not anymore. The end was near. The feel of it was everywhere.
She tested the cuffs, pulled her chains taut — still secure as expected, though the metal had gone cool to the touch.
She wanted to hold her breath, to listen, but she was too keyed up to do it. Her chest kept heaving, kept sucking in breath, whether she wanted it or not.
She didn’t realize Stump was in the room until he moved, the soles of his shoes scuffing the floor, the shifting hulk in the darkness revealing his position to her. He’d been standing against the wall in the far corner, but he moved toward her now.
The rush of air entering her throat was mercifully silent, not that it really mattered. A gasp would have been embarrassing somehow, cementing her powerlessness with a weak sound. She didn’t know why saving face meant anything to her now, but it did.
He took a few steps — slow, almost careful movements. His lip and brow curled, an expression she read as disgust.
Her heart continued to pick up speed as he drew near, pulse banging away in her ears. She could only maintain eye contact with him for a fraction of a second at a time, their eyes connecting and pulling apart over and over in rapid succession.
What the fuck did he want? She couldn’t tell, which seemed wrong. She could always tell what a man wanted, could read it in the set of his posture, in the folds around his eyes and lips. It was what she did for a living. Stump clearly wanted something from her. There seemed a strange curiosity in his manner, a tentative quality that struck her as at odds with the disgust she also read.
He pulled up to a stop a few paces shy of where she sat. Waiting, she thought. Waiting for what? His eyes flicked back and forth from her eyes to her lips. It almost looked like he was waiting for her to say something, waiting for her to weigh in on the proceedings.
And she wanted to oblige him and defy him, to scream in his face, but her mind was blank. Devoid of complex thoughts, of words. In the end, all she could muster was a whisper.
A little whistle formed in her mouth. Not a word. Not even a real syllable. Just the sibilance of an “s” sound.
That curiosity drai
ned from his face all at once, his eyes going dead.
“Quiet now. It’ll be over soon,” he said.
Chapter 59
Emily’s eyes are open, but she does not see. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t exist on this plane.
In this terrified moment after the head box goes on, her consciousness pulls back into the abstract, into the mindscape.
A drain opens where her skull gives way to the neck, deep within her head. A drain that sucks all of her down into the hole, away from this place.
Away from reality.
Into the nowhere.
But a voice persists there in her head. Her companion. Her only friend. The voice that’s been there since all of this started.
She cannot see her. Cannot even feel her presence. But her voice pierces the empty space. Disembodied.
Gabby watches for her. Narrates for her. Keeps her tethered to reality in some small way.
Emily. Are you there?
You need to come back. It’s almost over now — almost the end — and you need to come back.
I saw him. Looking through the hole, I saw him standing over the box. Just for a second. Checking on you, I think. Listening.
I don’t know what he expected to see. You’re lying in a box with another box on your head. A box within a box? Not much to look at.
His face was all screwed up like he was thinking, though. Concentrating. Wrinkled forehead. Lines around his eyes. Mouth all puckered.
There’s nothing up there now. Just that eggshell ceiling. It’s more white than gray at this point, though. Daylight, maybe?
Anyhow, I think he’s going to do it soon. One way or the other. I think he’s going to go through with it.
And you need to be ready by then, OK?
I know you’re tired. Know you need a little time away. I can understand it.
Your soul has retreated. Retracted. Disappeared within itself. It’s the only way it can rest, maybe.
I know it’s only for a while. I know he can’t break you like that. No one could. Physically, maybe. Any body can be broken, but not your mind. Not your soul.
So get your rest. Or whatever this is. Just be ready to roll soon, OK? That’s all I’m sayin’.
It’s lonely here without you. Empty and boring and strange.
I guess it’ll be lonely forever where I’m going. I think sometimes that’s why I’m here. To make sure you don’t go where I’m going. Or to try my best to help prevent it, in any case. If so, I like that. Hope it works.
The inside of the box smells like puke now. That acidic bite to it. The stench of sweetness. Is that new? Did it always smell this way? I don’t remember it, but maybe it did.
Maybe someone puked in it at some point. You’ve got to figure you’re not the first to get stuck in this thing, right? He had it all ready to go, you know? Already fitted with a lock. Already loaded with sand for no good reason, this little trench dug into it.
Hell, he even said he’d strapped that head box on somebody before. Their breath all steaming up the carpet for God knows how long.
Emily, you don’t know where these boxes have been. You’re probably going to want to wash your hands once you get out. Just sayin’.
I kid.
In all seriousness, I think you should stab Leonard Stump in the face as soon as you get out of here. A lot. Like a whole bunch of times.
Bite. Claw. Kick. Bludgeon. Whatever you can do.
Focus on his eyes, maybe. That’s arguably the weakest spot on the human body. A single fingernail can incapacitate a man of any size if you jam it into his fucking eyeball hard enough.
Remember the time we— Wait.
I can hear them now. Voices.
Talking. Fighting, maybe?
In the room, I think. It’s hard to tell with the way the sounds echo down the hall. Reverberating everywhere.
I don’t know who. I mean, it’s him, but I don’t know who the other is.
He’s coming.
Emily, it’s time.
Chapter 60
She had to open her eyes. The words repeated in her head, an endless, mixed up cycle: I have to open my eyes have to open them my eyes open open open.
It might have been seconds or minutes or hours later that they finally obeyed.
Darger’s head lolled to one side. Blackness all around her. The air felt close and thick, and the thoughts in her head had the viscosity of pea soup.
And then the dark closed in on her again. Lost in the abyss.
Awake.
Sort of.
Struggling to gain consciousness.
Open.
Again, her thoughts were slow. Had to open her eyes. Not sure why, but had to. Needed to. Something important to do. Time. Time was limited. No time for sleep or whatever this was.
Where was she? Maybe that would help.
It was a moment before she could determine whether her eyes were actually opened or closed. Her eyelids fluttered, blinked. Everything looked the same either way. Black. But there was a discomfort to having her eyes open. She wanted to close them again. To go back to sleep. But no.
Stay awake.
Eyes open.
She had the same sense of closeness on all sides, and it was then that she was able to get her thoughts in order enough to wonder if she was inside the box. The one Stump had put Emily in.
Wet, hot panic flushed into her skull, a tea kettle of boiling water dumped in with her brain. Instinctively, her arms flailed out at her sides. Only her right moved, and then just barely. But even so, something changed. The light.
In one place, the pure blackness had been replaced by a little bit of light. Blue.
Blue?
Not the box.
It was familiar, this vaguely translucent blueness. And something else. The sound when she moved.
Crinkle. That was the sound it made. Plastic or vinyl or…
The tarp.
In the back of the truck.
This realization jolted her a little further awake, though she was still groggy and confused.
She was cold, she realized. Shivering. The air was icy and raw in her nostrils and throat and mouth. It almost burned with cold. Filling her lungs and touching her insides.
How did she get back to her hiding place? Had she crawled here?
She tried to move again, shifting from her back to her side. With the movement came more swishy tarp noises, and then her senses seemed to snap on, like someone flipping a switch.
Pain.
Pain, somehow hot and cold at once. The heat of fresh blood and the cold of air touching the wet places.
Head wound. Those were the words that came to her.
The pain was everywhere. Shooting down from her skull, blinding bolts of agony that she somehow felt in her mouth, in her teeth. And the left side of her body was on fire. Beyond fire. A searing chemical burn. But then she wriggled, an involuntary movement in reaction to the pain, and it changed. Not fire. Worse.
Numb. Dead from the neck down. She felt nothing on the left side of her body now.
And then she remembered what happened. Why she was in the back of the truck, wrapped in a tarp.
She was dead.
* * *
In the fleeting moment when she’d looked down that gun barrel in Leonard Stump’s hand, Violet Darger had finally realized her own mortality. It seemed silly now, to have been so blind to it. Even back in Ohio, with James Clegg, when she knew she had to fight or die trying… she never really believed she’d lose. Part of her knew that she’d get through it.
She’d been lying to herself. The big lie everyone tells. She could have died. She could have made a wrong move or never gotten her hands on the pistol and drowned face down in the river that night.
She saw now how lucky she’d gotten with Clegg. And that was the real problem. No one got that lucky twice.
With blood crusted over one eye, she lifted the tarp with her good hand, looked at the left. She willed it to move. Concentrated on just the finge
rs, urging them to make even the slightest twitch.
By the end she was shaking, tears welling and spilling from her good eye. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t move the fingers on her left hand. Not even a little. It was only by some miraculous turn of fate that she wasn’t dead yet, she realized. But she would be soon. She could feel it the way you felt a coming storm. A certain charge in the air.
For the first time, she imagined what would happen if she died. When she died. Would they even find her? Or would Stump make her disappear like he had all those other girls in the desert? Hide her away in the sand until she was only bones and a few scraps of clothing.
It was hard to fathom. That she would just cease to exist. And the world would go on spinning the way it always did when someone took their last breath.
There was an arrogance to life. A feeling that, yes, death happened, and sometimes it was unexpected and perhaps even unfair, but that won’t happen to me.
But the veil of denial had lifted. Just now, Darger knew she was actually going to die.
She wanted to close her eyes. To stop fighting. To let it happen already.
She thought of the people she’d leave behind. Owen, who’d already lost his twin brother only a few months ago. She hated to think of him suffering another loss so soon. Her mother, who’d never stopped worrying about the risks of Darger’s job. And now she’d be proven right. Lastly there was Loshak. Her mentor and partner, and in many ways, the father she’d never had.
And then she snapped back to the reality of the whole scene — the big picture. She was going to die. So what? That would have happened anyway, eventually.
But this wasn’t just about her anymore. Stump had two other girls he planned to kill tonight.
Maybe that was why she was still here.
She wasn’t sure she believed in fate and destiny and all that. A big wheel with your predestined life turning as you lived through your days. Screeching to a halt when your time came. But she was sure of one thing.
She had an edge now.
She was still alive, and Stump didn’t know it.
He’d placed her in the bed of the truck until he was ready to dispose of her. She wondered if he’d planned to burn her first. To lock her in a trunk and light her up. A little gift for his old friend, Victor Loshak.
