“No, you girls certainly did not tell me that,” Dad said, his face relaxing. “I want to hear everything. Do I have to camp out for tickets? How much will the concert T-shirts be?”
Then he smiled that younger-Kennedy smile that had been good enough to land my fairy-tale-beautiful mom back when she was 100 percent alive, and we finished our dinner.
BETH
Beth slumped on the dirt floor, her surroundings still so black she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. She counted her heartbeats, tapping them out on the cool earth with her fingers. Sixty heartbeats was a minute.
One one. One two. One three.
Sixty rounds was an hour.
Sixty-one. Sixty-two. Sixty-three.
Nothing changed. The darkness didn’t shift, the smell of gravedirt didn’t recede, no sounds but the rabbit thump of her heart.
One hundred one, one hundred two, one hundred three.
She first heard his footsteps as a counterbeat, a slight tremor overhead that made her lose count. She sat up, slowly, fighting waves of dizziness. She scurried backward until she reached the cold slap of a concrete wall. Her mouth was dry, lips cracked, her thirst a living thing. She’d already peed twice, reluctantly, in a far corner. She had to pee again.
Overhead, a heavy door creaked and screamed. The noise sounded like it came from the ceiling, but it wasn’t close, not yet. Then careful hangman’s footsteps on stairs, distant but nearing.
Then silence, except the salty crush of her heartbeat.
She tried to swallow it as the dark swallowed her.
Keys jingled on the other side of the dungeon door.
She chewed her tongue to keep from screaming.
The door opened.
What came next happened so fast. More darkness outlining him, not true belly-of-the-beast blackness like she was in. Regular dark. She caught a glimpse of what looked like a hallway behind him. She drank up that detail, swallowed it like icy water.
He stepped into the room and closed the door after him.
Blackness again.
She heard the clink of metal being set on dirt, smelled the kerosene, then burned her irises on the flare of a lighter. The illumination that followed was immediate and warm. A camping lantern.
He set it on the ground next to two metal pots. “I’ll leave it here if you’re good. You scream, I’ll take it away.”
The flickering flame underlit him, turning his face into a demon’s mask.
He’d visited the diner so many times. Sat in her section. She’d felt mildly flattered even while something about him made her uneasy, like whispers along the tender curve of her neck. But who do you mention that to? Who would listen without telling you to appreciate the attention?
Be happy.The guy likes you.
“You don’t want to burn it all up, though,” he said, bringing her attention back into the room.
The room.
It was a cube, maybe twelve-by-twelve feet. Cement walls. Dirt floor. A single door. She craned her neck even though it hurt terribly. Wooden beams on the ceiling. She’d explored it all on hands and knees, and then standing. There were no surprises.
“It’ll eat your oxygen, and you’ll suffocate.” He stepped aside and pointed toward the bottom of the door. It was sealed with a rubber ridge.
He’d planned to bring her here.
Or maybe she wasn’t the first.
