Page 30 of Traces of Kara

When Mimi turned the corner into the hallway, a shiver ran down her back. The cream-colored walls reminded her of a sanitarium. The beeping of the alarm and the slapping sounds of her footsteps sent her mind into a tizzy of tricks. Anything can happen to me here. No one would know. “Dramatic much?” she whispered to herself, but she couldn’t lessen her growing fear. Goosebumps climbed up her arms. The bathroom was just a few steps away.

Mimi grabbed the doorknob and turned, opening the door only a few inches. Then she chided herself for being such a scaredy-cat. If Kara can do this, so can I. Only she couldn’t. She wasn’t brave enough. She wasn’t brave enough to protect her own daughter. How could she be brave enough to go into a darkened room in the recesses of the power plant? Her knuckles turned white. She reached in and flipped on the light, just as the alarm stopped ringing. Silence.

“H…hello?” she said to the empty locker room. I’m such an idiot. She took a deep breath, walked in, and jumped when the door slammed shut behind her. Hand over her heart, she laughed at herself. Mimi hurried into a stall and did her business, trying to ignore the fact that the only sound she could hear was that of her urine hitting the toilet water.

After washing her hands, she opened the door, peering into the hall. Mimi’s heart pounded against her chest, despite her best efforts to be brave. Which way had she come in? She looked left, then right. What had Jackson said? He hadn’t. The hallway ended on both sides where it connected to another hall. Mimi followed the hallway to the right, which ended in a large open room, similar to the one she’d crossed. She’d obviously gone the wrong way. A voice filtered down from above.

Mimi looked up through the open ceiling. “Ted?” she yelled. Her voice echoed. The voice she’d heard quieted. “Jackson?” she yelled. When no one answered, Mimi assumed they couldn’t hear her. There was a metal staircase across the room, and next to that, an elevator. Mimi hurried over. She put her hand on the handrail of the staircase and took two steps up, sighed, then looked at her hand.

“Damn it.” She wiped the soot from her hands onto the back of her jeans, then retreated, pushing the button on the elevator repeatedly. “Come on, come on.”

The elevator door opened and Mimi stepped in. She pressed the number three as the doors closed. The elevator breathed to life, jolted, then descended down toward the basement.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kara had already thrown up three times. Her legs felt like spaghetti. Her chest and stomach ached, and her head throbbed. In the shape she was in, escaping was out of the question. Roland had brought her to the back room, where he’d disappeared to earlier. He’d set up a place for her to go to the bathroom, over a grate that dropped into a cesspool below. He’d followed the line, he’d told her, and it ran directly into the river through an enormous metal pipe. Kara squatted over the grate now, her modesty long gone. Her innards twisted and pulled. She thought her colon might drop right out of her rectum. Her vision faltered to blurry, then back to clear. She held onto the wall as she pulled up her pants, moaning in pain.

“Why are you doing this?” she cried out. Roland did not answer. Why wasn’t he answering her? What kind of sick game was he playing?

“Roland?” she said louder. “Why are you doing this to me?” She slogged along the stone wall, making her way into the chamber where he’d first kept her. She felt the change from stone to concrete. Her eyes scanned the room.

“Roland?” she said. Had he gone? A surge of adrenaline kicked in. She followed the wall to the entrance of the room. Was it a trick, she wondered? “Roland?” she said again. There was no answer. Her heart raced. Her fingers gripped the edge of the concrete where it turned the corner into the hall.

“Ro…Roland?” She looked into the hallway, then back into the dimly lit room. The hallway was dark. She couldn’t see ten feet in front of her. She inched her hands along the concrete wall and turned into the hallway. She kept one hand out in front of her, palm flat, and left the other dragging against the wall. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She breathed through her nose, trying not to make a sound. Kara expected Roland to jump out at any second and grab her, or kill her. She didn’t know what he’d do to her, but she was sure it would be bad. She didn’t care. She clenched her jaw tight and walked forward.

A long, low hum broke through the silence. She stopped, every sense on alert. The hum stopped. She stood on trembling legs, unsure of what to do next. Move forward or go back? She looked behind her. No, she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go back. He’d have to drag her dead body back. She had to get out. She’d been so selfish toward her mother. Was this her due? She saw it so clearly now. She was such a bitch, so wrapped up in her own mess with Daryl that she’d snapped at her, belittled her. She’d even overlooked her. Her father had left her mother, and there was no way she’d do the same. She used that thought to pull her through the dark maze of hallways.

Her palm hit another wall. She gasped, pulling her hand back and holding her breath. She reached her hand out again, feeling the corner of the wall. Kara breathed in fast, her breath trembling, her heart pounding. She peered around the wall—darkness. How long could the hallways go on? Where had he gone? Maybe he’d left, or died. Maybe whatever they drank had already killed him. The thought gave her hope.

She wound her way through two more narrow passageways, finally coming into a long, narrow room filled with old motors, barrels, and generators. The graveyard. Kara knew just where she was. As a new employee she’d been given a tour of the facilities. The graveyard was the inside joke among the staff—the part of the tour whose name would send chills down the backs of new employees. She remembered the feeling. She’d known it was a test—blond girl runs from plant too scared to accept job—but she’d showed them. She didn’t even flinch while walking through the cobwebs at the entrance. There were no cobwebs now. She moved achingly across the room to the opposite side. Her pulse throbbed in her neck. She looked beyond the thick, concrete doorframe, down the hall from side to side, then back into the room. She knew the way out. She sobbed, feeling a wide smile break out, despite the bile rising in her throat. Kara turned into the corner of the room, retched unsuccessfully, then crouched as she caught her breath and waited for the burning pain in her side to subside.

The grating chain of the elevator shaft sent fear like fire through her veins.

She bolted to the right, down the hall and into a small maintenance room, the door closing with a thunk behind her. Kara had only been in the maintenance room once before, when she had been looking for the elevator maintenance man, Harvey, who no longer worked at the plant. She bumped into a rolling chair and snagged the telephone receiver from the wall, covering her nose with her other hand. The stench of something rotten assaulted her. She gagged, punching the red Service button over and over.

“Come on, come on!” she begged.

The line was dead. She cried out, slamming the receiver down once, twice, then finally gave up. She leaned her forehead on her arm and sobbed. She couldn’t take it anymore. She was too tired. Her body rebelled against her every movement. What had he done to her? She breathed in fast, heavy fits and spurts. Damn it. She had to get out of there.

A scampering sound sent her flying backward with a scream. She fell over the chair and landed on the floor, where she sat eye to eye, with the decomposing body of Kara’s ex-coworker, Paul Warren, a thick metal bar sticking out of his chest.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The coal belt ran from the old section of the plant to the crusher house, where it dropped coal into a massive crushing mechanism, and disseminated the pieces into an underground hopper. The conveyer belt only ran during delivery days, and Roland’s mind had become fuzzy. He couldn’t rely on the information that swam in his head. The antifreeze had seized his senses. It had taken all his energy to drag that damn pot smoker up to the coal belt. He’d thought about leaving the body where it was, but he didn’t want to chance it being found by other stoners, and having Marissa taken away. He pushed the bloody body onto the ash-covered belt, turning the face away, so he didn’t have to look at the gaping hole beneath it. He leaned over and threw up. Sweat poured from his brow. He touched the bottle of alcohol in his pocket. He could swig the antidote to the antifreeze now and still be okay. Marissa.

Laughter floated up from the level below.

Adrenaline fueled Roland’s strength. Laughter? Did they know where he was? Were they laughing behind his back? Were they laughing at him? Roland turned toward the sounds, breathing hard, heat spreading up his neck and cheeks. He could take them down, whoever they were. Stick to the plan, Roland, he told himself. His plan had already come up against too many hitches. He couldn’t risk doing something stupid. Cover your tracks. Don’t make more tracks to cover. He’d learned that on television. Roland had to get the stoner’s body onto the belt to transfer it down to the crusher house, and dispose of it for good. He pushed the body further onto the belt and pulled the long, metal lever that stuck out from the control board with all his might. The belt growled to life, shifting the belt slowly into its descent toward the crusher room.

The laughter stopped.

Roland listened to the silence. He had to move fast. He climbed onto the moving conveyer belt behind the body and lay flat, the belt vibrating against his fleshy stomach and arms as it descended the steep incline. This wasn’t part of his plan, but luckily he’d checked out the conveyer belt and the crusher house during his preliminary rounds of the plant. Being ready for anything was another of his favorite mantras from the television shows he’d watched. Every five feet there was a rumble and hitch, then the belt moved slowly again. Roland held his breath, watching through the open sides of the conveyer housing as the plant receded toward the sky. The crusher building grew closer by the second. He was almost there. Soon there would be one less body to deal with and he could get back to Marissa, and to his plan. Suddenly the belt stopped. Roland flipped around. The crusher house was only a few feet below where the belt had stopped. He kicked the body down the belt until it caught on the edge, hanging over the gaping hole of the crusher. Three swift kicks with his boot sent it spiraling down. It landed with a muffled thud.

He looked up at the building again. Two figures stood at the other end of the conveyer belt.

“That was weird,” Jackson said after he pulled the conveyer belt lever to the off position.

Ted stood in the open doorway, looking at the steep incline of the belt. It connected to the crusher house a hundred feet below. “Is it supposed to do that? Randomly turn on?” Ted asked.