Little Secrets (29 page)

The inexorable need to push cycled back, and Ginny rode it. Her fingers clutched the bare mattress, digging into the now-sodden material. She growled with her efforts, her teeth gritting so tightly she thought a tooth cracked.

The baby was born.

For a breathless, eternal moment, the emptiness inside confused her and Ginny sagged against the pillows. There was no cry, no wail. She struggled upright, desperate, and croaked out a wordless plea.

Caroline bent over the child, then lifted it. The baby hung limply in her hands. Then it moved. Then it screamed.

Ginny had never been so happy to hear anything in her life.

Chapter Forty-Three

Ginny dozed with her baby tucked up close to her naked skin, both of them covered in a blanket and Noodles purring by her side. She was too exhausted to care how dirty it was. Caroline and Linna pressed on her belly, eliciting a fresh burst of pain and another hot slosh of something from inside her. They talked to each other in that mumbled, mangled language, ignoring her, while the other children were dispatched on errands Ginny didn't understand.

She didn't care.

For now, her son was safe. They were warm, though anything but dry. And Ginny was tired…so tired…

She didn't want to, but forced her eyes open. Her vagina burned and ached. Someone had pushed a folded bundle of material between her legs. The baby snuffled against her, then went quiet. Ginny was bleary, but awake. Her mouth tasted sour, dry. She'd have given almost anything for a drink of cold water.

Ginny smoothed her hand over her baby's soft head and marveled at the hair there. It was pale, not dark like hers. He took after Sean. Ginny wanted to know the color of his eyes, but didn't want to shine the bright light directly on him. “You have electricity down here.”

“Yes. Sometimes. But it was better to use a flashlight with batteries, when we could. It's so good to have light.” Caroline's low voice drifted through the darkness. “We have two lamps, but the outlets down here are bad. When we try to use the stove, sometimes it blows the bulbs.”

Ginny thought of all the times the power had gone out. “It blew our fuses too.”

“He said he'd fix it. That and the heat, he got that directed in to us because it was so cold. But it never worked as well as he wanted. He said he could build things just fine, but he didn't understand electricity. We have a couple candles, but the matches got wet. They were your candles…” Caroline paused and sounded almost shy. “He stopped letting us have them, and no matches, either. Because we might start another fire. And that would've been very, very bad.”

“Caroline, why did you wait so long before you sent Carrie to get me?”

There was a long, long silence.

“We had to know,” Caroline said quietly, “if we could trust you.”

The simple way she said it broke Ginny's heart. She found the other woman's hand, the one weighed down by the chain and shackle. “You can trust me.”

“He didn't know we were saving food. He didn't know we'd eat only half of what he brought us, eat the things that would go bad. I made us put the rest away, in case. He was getting old, you see. He said he'd be around forever, that no matter what happened he'd be there, but I knew better. So I made us put the food away. Batteries. The light bulbs, though he'd yell about how careless we were to break so many.” Caroline coughed again. The noise was rattling and thick. She spit to the side, into the water. “He always threatened not to bring more. To let us starve, or sit in the dark. But I always knew he wouldn't. He didn't want us to die, you know. He didn't want us dead.”

Ginny shivered. “But…I don't understand, Caroline. Why would you stay here? If Carrie could get out through the ducts to get food, to find me, why wouldn't you send her earlier? I would've helped you sooner.”

The bed dipped as the children gathered around. Their mother looked around at them, then at Ginny. “You're here now.”

A pulse of hot fluid leaked from between Ginny's legs. She grimaced, but there was nothing to do for it. “My husband is on his way home, but the roads are closed. He might not get here for a while, but if he doesn't hear from me, he will worry. He'll send someone or do something. But, Caroline…we can't wait for that. You have to send Carrie out again.”

Caroline said nothing at first. She looked around at faces focused on hers. All of them were so quiet. They sat so still.

She looked at Ginny. “Yes. Carrie should go out.”

Carrie let out a low wail and shook her head. She ran from the room. Caroline held up a hand when her sister moved to go after her. “No, Trixie. I'll go after her.”

Dragging her chain behind her, Caroline went into the next room, leaving the light behind. Ginny stared at the foot of the bed. Deke, the tall boy who'd held the phone while she gave birth. Linna, the oldest girl. Trixie, a little bigger than Carrie.

The circle of light stretched to the wall, and Ginny could clearly see a few of the drawings she'd noticed earlier. This one had six stick figures. One, the mother. Five children around her. She looked again at the group.

“One of you's missing.”

“T-T-Tate.” Trixie had a stutter, either nerves or a speech impediment. “Huh-he got stuck. Huh-he was t-too big.”

“He said bad things would happen if we tried to get away,” Deke said flatly, the “he” in question clearly referring to George Miller, and not Deke's brother. “Tate pushed him. He hit Tate's head, and Tate wasn't sure what happened. Then Tate said we need to try, Mama. We need to try. And he went—”

“Deke,” Caroline said sharply, a dark silhouette in the doorway. “That's enough.”

The water, at least, seemed to have stopped rising. It sloshed against Caroline's thighs as she moved toward the bed. “Carrie will go. But she's very afraid. She's not sure what to do.”

“Do you have a pen? Paper? Something to write with?”

“Everything's wet,” Linna said. “The crayons are broke. The paper was in the cabinet. It's ruined.”

Trixie let out a sob at that, and flung herself onto the bed while Linna rubbed her back.

Ginny was struck with inspiration. “My phone. I'll type a note in it. She can take my phone and find someone. Go next door, give them the phone. They'll see it. If not, at the very least, they'll know it's my phone, or figure it out. And she can tell them, can't she? Where we are?”

Caroline hesitated. “Carrie is…special.”

“She's very special,” Ginny said softly, seeing Carrie creeping up behind her mother. “Very special and very brave. She'll know just what to do. Won't you, Carrie?”

Carrie stepped out from behind her mother, and into the feathery edges of the light circle. “Scared.”

“Bad things happen!” Deke cried suddenly. “Bad things happen when we try to go outside! Don't let her, Mama. Don't let her go!”

“Deke, hush!” Caroline shook him by the shoulders. “You're going to scare your sisters. Stop. It will be fine. We have to do this. You don't understand, but we do.”

Horribly, Ginny thought she understood. Caroline remembered a life on the outside, but none of these children did. After living their entire lives down here, was it any wonder they might be afraid of what waited for them in the outside world? What horror stories had George Miller told them to keep them willingly imprisoned?

“Tate went out! Tate went out and he never came back! He got lost! Tate didn't come back!”

The back of Caroline's hand cracked across Deke's face hard enough to send him splashing to his hands and knees in the water. He came up sputtering, backing away, across the room.

Ginny's stomach churned at the violence, and she cringed, covering her baby as best she could.

Nobody else seemed surprised at Caroline's actions. She spoke calmly, “Deke. I don't want to make you go to the corner. Not now, like this. But if you can't get yourself under control, you will go to the corner even if you have to sit up to your ears in this water. Do you understand me?”

In the white light, Deke looked extremely pale. Water sluiced over his face, mimicking tears. He nodded after a moment. “Yes.”

Caroline sighed. “Carrie, can you take this lady's phone up through the ducts. Out of the house? Can you go outside?”

Carrie shuddered visibly. She hadn't been splashed with water; her tears were real. She shook her head.

Again, Ginny was inspired. “Carrie. You know the other children? The ones you were playing with here in the house? Kelly and Carson, the night of the party.”

Carrie looked fearful, then nodded.

“They live in the house next door to me. You can go to their house and see them. Their mother is very nice, she's a nice lady. Like me. You can trust her too.”

Caroline pushed the hair from Carrie's forehead and cupped her cheeks. The chain clanked. “You have to be brave and strong, like Miss Ginny said. You have to do this for us, baby. It's…well. You just have to. Okay?”

Carrie nodded again. Ginny gestured for the phone. Carefully, so she didn't disturb her sleeping, still-unnamed baby, Ginny tapped a message into her phone. She saved it as a note, sent it as a text that failed, and added it to an email that also failed. It didn't matter, once Carrie got the phone into a place where there was a signal, all of the messages would be sent. She checked the time too.

Five hours since the last time she'd spoken to Sean.

It seemed so impossible that all of this had happened in so little time, but she didn't need a pinch to prove she wasn't dreaming. She had the pain between her legs and the child snuffling lightly in her arms. She had the splash of water and five pale, wide-eyed faces staring at her.

“Do you have a plastic bag?” Ginny asked. “The kind for sandwiches. One that closes at the top. In case she drops it, so it doesn't get wet.”

“No. We have a few plastic bags, but we used them to line the toilet.” Caroline shook her head.

“Never mind. She's going up, right?” Ginny took a deep breath, determined to be positive. “Carrie. You hold it tight. Is there something else we can put it in for her? A purse or a bag we can tie to her?”

“I have a stocking,” Linna piped up shyly. “It got a hole. We didn't mend it yet. She can use the match for it. It's long enough that we can tie the end to her shirt somehow.”

“Yes. That will work.” Ginny held up the phone. “But once she takes it…we won't have any light.”

Caroline smiled. “We've sat in the darkness before. We can do it again.”

Ginny cringed at the idea of sitting here in the pitch black with four feet of water all around her, the bed like a boat in an unstable sea. But it was the only option. She needed to get her baby out of here.

She checked the message one last time, hoping something had managed to get through, but nothing had. She thumbed the screen and tilted it to show Carrie. “See? Like this. You just push this button when you get there, you show it to them. Okay? That's all you do.”

The phone looked twice as big in Carrie's tiny hand. Ginny lost her breath when it looked like the girl was going to drop it over the side of the bed, but she caught it. Carrie pushed the button and held up the phone for Ginny to see.

“Yes. Like that.” Ginny took the phone, then the sock Linna handed her. “Okay. Are we ready for the dark?”

“Yes. We are,” said Caroline.

It was instant and total and unyielding, that darkness. But it wasn't unfamiliar, and it was no longer terrifying. Carrie found her way into the ductwork. The rest of them huddled on the damp mattress, piled with equally damp blankets, trying to stay warm. The baby woke, wailing, and found Ginny's breast. The sharp pull of his lips and tongue on the sensitive nipple stung, and Ginny had no milk yet, but the baby sucked anyway and seemed content.

Ginny blinked, eyes straining, but the darkness here was total. It was something of a comfort, actually. She closed her eyes and let herself drift for a minute or so before forcing herself back to consciousness.

Caroline's rusty laughter gritted out of the darkness. “Ginny. I lied.”

Ginny roused, trying to push through the wall of her weariness to understand. “About what?”

“Being ready for the darkness,” Caroline said. “Nobody is ever ready for it.”

Chapter Forty-Four

“I was thirteen when I figured out I could get my daddy to give me anything I wanted.” Caroline's words drifted out of the darkness.

Ginny had no idea how long they've been sitting in silence. Someone had moved onto the bed to cuddle next to her. She thought it must be Trixie by the size and the flow of hair. Trixie snored lightly.

“Caroline, you don't have to tell me this now.”

“Now,” Caroline said, “might be the only time I ever tell it.”

That would not be true; Ginny knew that. Caroline would have to tell her story a lot of times very soon. To the police, certainly. To her brother. To the media, if she wasn't careful, or if she wanted to earn something for her pain. Still, Ginny thought she knew what the other woman meant. What better time to tell a story like this, but in the dark?

“All my friends liked my dad the best because he was always around to do whatever we needed. He could always drive us to the mall, or he'd drop us off at the pool and pick us up. And he'd sometimes stop on the way home to treat us to ice cream. He didn't try to talk to us like the other dads did. He just listened. He let me pick the music. He was…cool. He was the cool dad.

“When I was thirteen, I wanted a bikini for the summer. My mother said no. She wanted me to wear a one-piece. But all my friends had them. She made me buy a babyish suit. I was the only one. The only one without a cool swimsuit. And my dad noticed.”

Caroline's voice was low and warm, like melting butter. Or maybe Ginny was melting, dissolving into the darkness and shadows. She put a hand between her legs and it came away wet, the smell of copper strong on her fingers. She was bleeding. A lot.

“He took me to the mall and gave me money to buy a new suit. He saw all my friends wearing them. He wanted me to have one. To be like them. They fought about it, really loud. Brendan hid in his room with his music playing loud, but I could hear them in their bedroom. He won the fight. He always won the fights. And he brought the suit to me; he tossed it down on the bed, and told me to try it on. To show him how it fit. So I did.”

Pause. A breath. Silence, but for the sound of water, trickling.

“I figured out then that I could get whatever I wanted out of him. Out of boys, in general. With just a little show of T and A.”

The phrase seemed oddly innocent, but fitting.

“Do you know,” Caroline asked suddenly, “if she knew there was something going on? My mother, I mean. She had to have known. Didn't she?”

Ginny couldn't tell if Caroline was desperate for affirmation or denial. “I don't know.”

“She knew,” Caroline whispered. Then, even softer, “Do you think she misses me? Will she be happy to see me again?”

“Oh, Caroline. I'm so sorry. But your mom passed away.”

More silence. The baby made a meeping grunt, but settled. Ginny's thighs stuck together when she moved.

“So…I'm an orphan.” Rusty, grating laughter became a sob. “Just as well. Just as well.”

Ginny had lost track of time long ago. She listened for the sound of shouts or voices, but heard nothing. “These rooms…soundproofed?”

“Yes. He built this house like this, you know. Back before he even met my mom. He built this house himself.”

Ginny's lips pulled back from her teeth. “Jesus Christ.”

“He told me he was taking me to the beach for the weekend. As a special treat. We weren't supposed to let Mom know. He said nobody could know, or they'd want to come along. That's why he picked me up on the way home from school. I was walking. I was just scuffing my feet along in the leaves and thinking about going to the football game the next day. He pulled up in a van. I didn't know it, and I would never ever have gone inside.” Caroline paused. Coughed. She coughed for a long time, and when she stopped, her voice had gone rough and thick with phlegm. “But I saw it was my daddy, so I got in.”

“Someone reported it. The van. They saw you get into it.”

“But they didn't know it was him. Obviously. They thought a stranger took me.”

“Yes,” Ginny said.

Caroline snorted. “They were right.”

A sound like distant thunder rumbled, then stopped. Ginny felt the vibration in the bed, or maybe just thought she did. She strained, listening. They all did. But nothing else happened.

“When he showed me the bookcase, the hidden stairs, I thought it was amazing. So cool. And then when he showed me this little space, like a playroom, I thought it was so much fun. He told me this was our place, our special place, that nobody would ever know about it, and until he left me there and didn't let me out, I thought it was going to be great.” Caroline sounded tired. “Also, he lied. Because it wasn't just our special place. Not until later. Not until after.”

“After what?”

“After she died,” Caroline said wearily, casually. “I wasn't the first one.”

“Oh. Oh God.” There should've been more words than that, but Ginny had none.

“Her name was Terry. She was jealous of me, right from the start, because I had long hair and pretty teeth. She didn't have teeth. He'd pulled them so she couldn't bite.”

“Please. You don't have to tell me this.”

“I have to tell you this!” Caroline hissed. “I have been waiting for too long to tell someone this!”

Ginny shut up after that. Caroline talked. Ginny listened.

“He never touched me, not until she died.” That seemed to be an important fact. “He promised he'd let me out. But I saw what he did to Terry. I didn't want to lose my teeth, or have him cut my hair. I thought someone would find me. I mean, I was in the house. In the goddamned house, right? How could they not know? How could they not hear me screaming? I did try to get away. So he put on the chain. And then…a baby.”

At every pause, Ginny hoped Caroline wouldn't say anything else. She prayed for someone to find them. But other than another rumble that sounded like distant thunder, there was only blackness and Caroline's voice.

“He took it away from me. It was a boy. He said I wasn't old enough to take care of a baby. I was fifteen by then, or…I think I was. I lost track of time. I made marks, for a while, on the wall. But he saw them and erased them. So he took the baby. It was small anyway. I think it would've died. I think…it did die. Didn't it, Ginny? Did my baby die?”

Ginny thought of the bones in her backyard. “I think so, honey. Yes.”

Caroline gave a shuddering sigh. “Then came Tate, and he let me keep him. Said I needed something to keep me occupied when he couldn't visit me. Tell me something. When did my mother die?”

“I'm not sure, Caroline. But I know that she and your brother moved out of this house about a year after you went missing.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh,” Caroline said. “Oh. She didn't stay? So she didn't know. Really? She didn't know I was here?”

Mrs. Miller might have suspected something, but it couldn't have been this. “I don't think so, honey. I'm sure she didn't know. I think she really thought you were…gone.”

“She thought I was dead.”

“Yes. I think so.”

Caroline gave a barking sob. “Oh. Okay. That's good. That's good, you know? Because she just thought I was dead, she didn't leave me here on purpose.”

“No. I don't think so.” Ginny reached blindly to find Caroline.

Caroline turned and pressed herself to Ginny's shoulder. Her tears were hot and wet on Ginny's neck; the baby gave a startled cry. Ginny put her hand between Caroline and the baby, but didn't push the other woman away. She cradled her as best she could.

“No, Caroline. She didn't leave you here on purpose. I'm sure of it.”

They sat that way for another interminable amount of time. Ginny had never known kids to be so quiet for so long, but thought perhaps they'd all fallen asleep. Her muscles were stiff, and her back ached. Every movement sent another hot pulse between her legs, and her head spun.

“I'm bleeding,” Ginny said. “Too much, I think.”

“I thought once the children came, he'd leave me alone. He promised, after each one, he would take us all upstairs. After the ones that didn't make it, he always said he would take me to the hospital. But he never did.”

“How many times?”

“I don't know,” Caroline said, but Ginny knew that was a lie. No mother who lost a child could ever forget it, no matter how many times it happened.

“Caroline, I feel really bad. I feel really sick. I'm losing too much blood.”

“Wait.”

The bed moved as Caroline got up and returned a few minutes later. She took away the material bunched between Ginny's legs and replaced it with another. Ginny forced her mind from thinking of germs. Sepsis. Her breath shuddered. Oh God. Where was Sean? Where were the police?

“Shh. Shhh, listen.” Ginny sounded drunk. She wished she were.

Deke spoke up. “It's Tate!”

“Tate's gone,” Linna snapped. “Don't be a dumb-bum. Tate went up and he didn't come back. He's dead!”

“Tate knew he was getting old. Tate said, what happened if he died? What would happen when he didn't bring the food? So Tate tried to get the key, the special key, but he pushed Tate down so hard it cracked his head open. And then he went crazy.” Deke was sobbing, shouting as Caroline and Linna tried to shush him.

His shouts startled the baby awake. He began to wail. Ginny rocked and soothed, but nothing would calm the infant.

“Tate said the only way out was through the walls! And we didn't have food anymore, it was gone, and the heat was off, the 'lectric was off, it was cold! Tate went up,” Deke said, more quietly, “and he didn't come back.”

“When did Tate go up?” Ginny asked. “Not so long ago. After we moved in, right? It was after that. George died in the hospital, and we bought the house four months after that. Your food ran out. Your power ran out. And Tate went up, into the duct, and didn't come back.”

The furnace. The flickering lights. Oh God.

The flies.

Ginny heard herself muttering, though her words were a slurred jumble of sounds she couldn't distinguish, even to herself. She struggled to move, to get up, and felt herself falling into a different sort of darkness. She clutched her screaming baby. She would not drop the baby. She would not drop her son.

The sound of thunder wasn't distant this time.

“Ginny! Wake up! You have to get up! Now!”

Ginny fought the waves of black and red, the swirling descent of gray. Someone shook her. Someone tried to take her baby from her arms, and she screamed, fighting.

The roar grew louder. So did the sound of water. Someone pulled her, got her standing, pushed her toward a spindle-legged chair shoved in front of the dresser. Which she could see.

There was light.

Faint, from the room outside this one, but after so long in the dark, any speck of light was bright as a star. Ginny put one hand on top of the dresser, the other cradling her shrieking child. Screams were good, better than silence. Better than a baby who made no sound. Someone shoved her from behind, and her muscles protested as she tried to lift her leg and get on top. Something ripped inside her, something slid down her thighs, something thick and tearing her on the way out.

Clarity hit her along with the pain. The rumble and roar had been the basement wall collapsing. The water was rushing in, frothing and foaming and rising.

The ceiling in these rooms was not high.

Trixie was already crouched on top of the dresser. There was no room for Ginny there. Instead, Ginny put her baby there, one hand on her son to keep him from toppling off. The naked infant squalled in fury.

The water rose.

Caroline and Ginny clung to the dresser. On the opposite side of the room, Linna, clutching the cat, and Deke had scrambled on top of the table. The water had already reached their shins and was still climbing. Their backs pressed to the ceiling, necks angled.

Impossibly, the water rose.

It was up to Ginny's chest, and filled with rubble. Something sharp hit her leg and sent her swirling into the muck, her head under the water with barely enough time to grab a breath. She came up choking, flailing with one hand, the other hooked into the dresser's metal handle.

“Asher!” Until that moment, she hadn't known what she wanted to call her baby. But now she knew there was nothing else to call him.

Ginny got to her feet and put a hand on top of the dresser, found her son and held him in place. She didn't need a chair to get to the top of it now, because the water buoyed her. Trixie shuddered, and Ginny took her hand. She looked into her face, realized she could make out the sight of the girl's dark eyes, her open mouth.

The water rose and pushed her upward, to the low-hung ceiling. She clung to the dresser. She kicked to keep herself from being swept away. She focused on Trixie's face.

“I'm here,” she cried. “I'm here. I'm here.”

Someone shouted her name. More light poured into the room, bright and glaring and focused in beams. Flashlights. Men in boots and yellow overcoats.

And Sean.

He grabbed her, but she wouldn't let go of the dresser without Asher safely cradled against her. Firemen, the other men were firemen. They shouted, pointing, grabbing at Linna and Deke. Sean, hair plastered to his face, reached for Trixie and pulled her from the dresser, into the water that was now neck high. Ginny held her son over her head and moved, following him, the front of her nightgown gripped tight in Sean's hand.

Somehow, he pulled them out, over the remnants of the collapsed basement wall and the dirt that filled the space. Down the corridor that rose at the slight incline so that by the time they reached the metal door, propped open with a large metal shaft, the water was only to their knees. Then they were through the door, the stairs in front of them and the firemen with the other children close behind them.