Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 11/01/12 (18 page)

 
This is New Jersey suspense writer Jenny Milchman's first paid
professional publication, but it will be quickly followed up (in February of
2013) by the release of her debut novel,
Cover of Snow
(Ballantine).
The author currently serves as chair of the International Thriller Writers'
Debut Authors Program, and she is also the founder of Take Your Child to a
Bookstore Day, which was celebrated, in 2011, in more than 350 bookstores in all
50 U.S. states and four foreign countries.
 

 
It seemed to be darkest in the closet at midday. Ellie didn't know
why. Maybe because of how light it was outside, noonday sun glaring, just before
she got locked in. The floor of the closet was carpeted, and the door sill
shushed against it. Not even one crack of light could enter.

Ellie hated the dark more than anything else. More than the mixed-up jumble of
hidden things her mom threw in here, everything that didn't have a place
anywhere else. More than the smell, which reminded her of her grandmother. Or
the feel of the hot, wooly coats that sometimes brushed against her. The worst
was the pure, unblinking dark.

"David!" she screamed. "Lemme out!"

She could scream until her throat was raw, and had. Till she coughed blood, and
couldn't make one sound more. It didn't matter. David never let her out till he
was ready.

In the bright, safe rest of the house, he was wrestling with his best friend. A
loud boy who lived next door, bigger than David. She never heard David make a
single grunt when they wrestled, though. He was silent, action only, whipping
his body around, freeing himself from an arm or a chest, before flipping Brad
onto the ground and pinning him there. Ellie had seen him do it, his eyes both
fiery and satisfied, as he lay heaving on top of Brad. It was after David caught
Ellie watching that he started locking her in the closet for real.

Turning the latch. Leaving her there for hours at a time. Ellie didn't have a
watch—and she couldn't have seen it in the dark anyway—but she
knew by how low the sun was in the sky when he finally let her out.

When she was very young, as little as five, it hadn't gone on for as long, and
David had stayed close by, keeping watch outside the door. That was three years
ago, and their mom didn't leave them alone in the house yet. All Ellie had to do
was start screaming—and she began screaming the second she went in there
anyway, so horrible were the back reaches of that closet—and her mom
would come and get her out.

"David!" she'd exclaim. "Why was your little sister in the closet?"

Ellie would be hidden in the folds of her mother's skirt, tears pouring
soundlessly out of her. The dark still clutched at her throat, like a glove.

"I dunno," he always muttered. "We were playing hide-n'-go-seek!" Or sardines. Or
Jack and the Beanstalk. It was never true, any of it. David didn't play games
with Ellie.

"Not in the closet," their mom would reply briskly. "I don't know what all is in
there now. And it could scare her. You know Ellie only stopped having nightmares
last year."

Actually, Ellie hadn't stopped having them. She'd just stopped calling for her
mother after one. She could remember the latest now, some kind of huge winged
animal—not a bird—pressing down on her. She woke up smothered,
fighting her blankets.

"Okay," David would say, every time, head hanging. "I'll tell her to play
somewhere else."

"Don't look so upset," their mother replied, chucking David under the chin as she
began to walk out. "Little girls do all sorts of silly things. That's why you
have to be the big brother."

David would look up at their mom, giving her that sunny grin that always made her
take a step back and, whatever she might be doing—and their mom was
always doing something—stop and smile back.

"Go on, let her out. I can't stand that noise anymore."

It was Brad's voice. Ellie hadn't realized she'd been screaming, but she must've
been because her throat was doing that dead thing again. If she tried now, no
sound would come out.

Then her brother spoke.

"No," David said. "This time she isn't getting out."

 
Ellie never moved when she was in the closet. Not an inch. She sat
in exactly one spot, the carpet like burrs under her palms.

She didn't know what she'd find if she moved.

Or, what would find her.

Her mom had lived in this house forever—before David had been born and
their dad had left even—and she'd always shoved everything they didn't
need anymore in the closet. On the shelf high above Ellie, boxes and clumped-up
things threatened to topple down, which was why she always ducked, trying to
protect her head, so that when she was finally let out, her neck would ache for
hours.

"Why are you holding your head like that, Elizabeth?" her mom once asked.

"Because David—" Ellie had begun.

"David what?" her mother replied, in a patient, jokey tone, ready to smile at
Ellie's response. But her gaze had already lit on her son, and Ellie knew if she
spoke now, her mother wouldn't even hear.

Behind her in the closet loomed shapes Ellie couldn't see so much as feel. Ellie
never even knew if her eyes were open or shut unless she reached up and felt the
lids. The darkness was so solid it filled up her mouth, like dirt.

Once something had roared in the closet, a loud, blustery roar that emitted an
actual gust of wind. Ellie had screamed and catapulted herself forward into the
door so hard she needed stitches. She didn't get them—her mom was a nurse
and did up the cut on her forehead with a butterfly—but Ellie figured
that really hadn't been enough from the way the cut still seeped for days
afterwards.

It turned out that Ellie had fallen—there were times she dozed off while
in the closet, which astonished her, but her mind did do this funny splintering
thing, stopping only after she'd jerked to with a start—into the
Dustbuster. David had hauled her out that time—there was a crack in the
door he'd taken pains to repair—laughing at her.

"Scared of a vacuum cleaner," he'd scoffed.

The Dustbuster was just one of the things that caused Ellie to stay stock still
now until her imprisonment was over. The thought of that roar, the feel of its
hot, dusty breath on her again made her shudder. But this time David had said it
would never be over. He wasn't going to let her out. Ellie didn't think she
could stay in the dark for much longer. It felt like it already had been
hours—long past the longest sentence he'd ever inflicted upon
her—and everything outside the closet was quiet. No Brad thumping and
huffing, no final thud signaling David's victory. If Ellie started to scream
again, would they even hear her? Her throat was still too raw to produce much of
a sound anyway. Ellie opened her mouth and tested it, feeling panic when only a
dry whisper came out.

Terror-stricken, Ellie suddenly scampered forward, carpet rasping under her
fists. She got onto her knees and began scrabbling around for the closet door,
finding the softer streak of putty right at forehead height where she'd hit it
that time, and which her mom never detected under the new layer of paint David
had added.

She began beating with her fists. She could make noise with her hands even if her
voice was dead—maybe she'd be able to break through the patched spot and
at least let in a saving bolt of light. Even if David really wouldn't let her
out, even if she was trapped in here forever, died in here, she could stand that
if she could just have a little light—

The soft spot in the door didn't give, but a piece broke off and punctured the
tender skin on her wrist.

Ellie let out a soundless scream. She looked instantly away, unwilling to see
whatever could be making her wrist hurt this much. Her whole arm was hot. But
Ellie couldn't see even if she had wanted to; she just knew something was in
there that didn't belong.
Shit.
A curse word that she sometimes heard
David say, but which she'd never dared use herself, erupted in her mind. She
forced her other hand down to try and find whatever was sticking out of her
skin.

Her hand came to a stop a good three inches above her wrist. In school two years
ago they'd done measurement, discovered why a ruler was better than a hand span
for figuring out how big things were. This piece of wood had to be about three
inches long.

Ellie was going to have to get it out.

Yank it out, then quick press the wound against her jeans, in hopes of making the
blood stop. She knew that from her mom. You couldn't bleed for very long or you
died.

She didn't want to die in the dark.

Ellie let her good hand float above the dagger of wood. Somewhere, in some deep
invisible part of her, she knew what it was going to feel like when she touched
that stick that had no business being inside her body.

It was even worse than she feared. Her voice returned enough to allow a low, weak
moan when her fingers finally touched the tip of the splinter.

"I can't," she whimpered.

Her mother's voice floated into her consciousness.
Can't what,
Elizabeth?
she asked, sharing a smile with David.

Ellie's fingers clenched, and she pulled the piece of wood straight up.

It seemed to take forever to leave her body. She felt it as it did, a long, slow
sucking, then release. Blood spurted out, and she crushed her wrist against her
thigh.

Then she heard voices.

Her brother was coming back.

 
David's and Brad's rooms faced each other across the narrow slit of
lawn between their houses. Sometimes at night they played this spotlight game,
where one person left his light on and the other person turned his off.
Whoever's light was off could see everything that went on in the other person's
room. Ellie had never dared look herself, but she'd see David there a lot,
humped beneath his windowsill like a turtle, peeking in at Brad.

They were best friends. She wished she had a best friend who lived close by. She
wished she had a best friend period.

"What happened?" Brad said now.

"Whaddya mean, what happened?" David replied in his lazy voice, the one their mom
said sounded exactly like their dad's.

"She got quiet."

"Yeah," David said. "She does that."

Ellie could make out sounds as the boys arranged themselves, draping their bodies
over furniture, kicking stuff out of the way. The bleep as someone turned on his
DS.

"You sure she's still in there?" Brad said. And then he laughed, a funny laugh.
It took Ellie a minute to figure out why the laugh sounded funny, and in that
time the dark didn't bother her quite so much. It was funny because Brad sounded
nervous.

"Shut up," David said. "I'm gonna finish this level."

Ellie twisted to look behind her. She felt the movement in her wrist, and bit
back a yowl. Her voice had come back.

The dark was so thick back there, it pressed against her. No telling what might
be in it. If she scooted backwards, Ellie had the very real feeling that she
might disappear, simply fall off into the place that was left when you weren't
in this one anymore, and keep falling forever.

Her chest heaved up and down in little hitches like when she'd been crying for a
long time, pushing small sighs out of her.

She made herself stop breathing so hard. Her voice was back; now she could make
noise. And for some reason, Ellie didn't want to make any noise.

All the pounding on the door she'd done earlier had disturbed things in the
closet. Things that were piled up on the shelf had shifted, and Ellie suddenly
realized that something was about to fall.

She'd taken gymnastics once. It was during one of the times their dad had come
back for a while. She barely remembered it now, just that she'd liked it,
especially the tumbling on the slick red floor mats. Despite her policy of not
moving in the closet, she tucked her head down and rolled just as something
heavy and cold whistled past her and fell onto the carpet, making a heavy,
muffled
thunk.

"What was that?" Brad's voice again.

The hole in Ellie's wrist had started bleeding when she moved, but it was only a
trickle.

Ellie wasn't able to see what had fallen right beside her, almost on top of
her—she'd felt its breath as it went past.

"Shut up," David said. "I almost got this."

"Are you really going to keep her locked up in there?"

A second or two went by. "Who?"

"You know, your sister."

Ellie snaked out the arm that wasn't bleeding. She let her fingers feel around in
the darkness, like the tentacles of some never-seen bug. They touched metal.
Cold, round, long metal, with a little chain at the top. It was a lamp.

Ellie could remember this lamp; it had sat on the table next to their mother's
bed. If she tiptoed down to her mom's room in the middle of the night, to ask
for a drink of water or an extra blanket on the bed, her mom would reach a
sleepy hand up and pull the chain, and light would spill over her face, her
half-closed eyes.