The Never List (4 page)

     CHAPTER 4     

The first day in the cellar was probably the hardest, even though he did not come down at all. It was my orientation into a life of total disorientation.

The cellar looked exactly the way I would have expected a dungeon full of abducted girls to look: stark, dismal, forbidding. I had been left on a small mattress covered with a white fitted sheet that seemed clean enough. Cleaner in fact than any we’d had in our dorm room. The room was large, and the steep wooden steps that ran along the right-hand wall led up to a solid metal door. I would learn to memorize the creak of those steps.

Our prison had dingy gray walls, dark stone floors, and a lone bulb hanging from a cord above us. The box stood in the smaller space to the left of the stairs.

Tracy, whose name I would learn later that day, slept next to me, chained to the same wall facing the cellar steps. She looked
deceptively frail that first time I saw her, balled up tight in the crevice where the wall met the floor. She scowled in her sleep, the grimace on her pallid face visible beneath her overgrown bangs, blackened at the tips from some long-ago dye job.

Between Tracy and the wall to the right was a small corridor. I couldn’t see where it led from my vantage point, but would discover soon that Jack had installed a serviceable but spare bathroom, containing only a toilet and a sink. I would quickly come to realize how immaculately clean we were expected to keep ourselves with only those bare-bones facilities.

Christine was shackled to the wall on the right, about five feet from the steps. She lay on her side, asleep or dazed—it was hard to tell—her limbs contorted awkwardly, splayed across the floor. Her matted blond hair had been twisted tightly and draped over her shoulder. The combination of her position and the tiny, even features of her face gave her the appearance of a china doll that had been played with too roughly and then discarded.

Each of us was tethered with one long, heavy length of chain—it would vary whether we were fastened by the wrist or ankle—and each link, one inch by two, was rusty enough for its coppery dust to rub onto our skin, leaving false scrapes all over our bodies as we hauled it around. The left wall was empty, but I saw a small metal circle jutting out, just so. Room for one more if he wanted.

I knew it was morning only because of a small crease of light that crept between the slats of the single boarded-up window. I would have screamed, but I was too afraid. I couldn’t even get my first words out when Christine and Tracy finally woke up. I was obviously in shock, but even in my confused state, I was glad I was not alone.

Tracy rubbed her face and turned to me sadly. Without a word, she crawled over to Christine and shook her awake. Christine turned the front of her body toward the wall, then buried her face back in her hands, mumbling.

“Christine, come on, meet the new girl. She’s up now.” Tracy turned to me and gave me a half-smile. “I’m very sorry you’ve had to join us. You look like a nice kid. It’s a shame. The other girl—you know her?—has saved one of us from something we were very afraid of, and so, I must admit, for that we are very glad.”

“Where is she?” was all I could muster, my voice choked off by fear.

At that Christine sat up, her translucent blue eyes glittering as they slid nervously to the box. I followed her glance and started to cry.

“Tell me. Tell me. Where is Jennifer? Is she in
there
?” I was still whispering, afraid of what was lurking upstairs.

Christine turned over to face the wall again. This time her shoulders were heaving, so I could tell she was crying. It was enough to bring tears to my own eyes, and I wondered if I would be able to hold back the sobs building up inside me. When she turned back to me again, though, she was smiling, even as the tears poured down her cheeks. It was then that I decided she was not crying over the horror of my condition and hers. These seemed more like tears of relief.

Tracy adjusted her chain so she could get closer to Christine, carefully twisting and folding it over to make a solid loop on the floor. She knelt down beside her against the wall, maneuvered Christine into her arms, and shushed her quietly.

“Relax, Christine,” Tracy said soothingly, as though she were her only child who’d just had a bad, but not dangerous, fall.

Tracy gave Christine a small kiss on the cheek, then started in my direction, pulling her chain and recoiling it carefully at her feet in a slow, methodical rhythm, as though she were engaged in some kind of avant-garde dance. The chains clinked almost musically. Drag, lift, settle. Drag, lift, settle.

She came close, very close, and I instinctively drew back as she
continued. “I’m afraid your friend has not been lucky. But you are lucky. I mean, considering.”

I started crying, wondering what kind of perverse world it was down here. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, willing it away.

“Where is Jennifer? Where is my friend?” I had found my voice at last and was practically screaming now. “Jennifer? Are you in there? Are you okay?”

Tracy ignored my question and went on, “You have one thing going for you. Christine and I are very experienced cellar residents. We’ll show you the ropes, as it were.” She laughed as though she’d made a joke. Christine also made a noise apparently intended to indicate amusement. I didn’t find it funny at all, and in that moment I wasn’t sure whether to be more afraid of my captor or of these thin, dejected girls stuck here at the end of the world with me.

Not taking her eyes off me, Tracy walked over to the stairs, pulling her chains along behind her. Drag, lift, settle. There was a cardboard box at the bottom of the last step. She lifted out two worn-out but clean-looking green hospital gowns. She tossed one to Christine and pulled the other around her shoulders. She reached back into the box and pulled out a third.

“Ah, see, he is providing for you already.” She threw it over to me. It was soft from many washings and smelled freshly laundered.

“Your royal robe,” she said dramatically. “And our weekly provisions. Good thing you arrived on a Sunday night. Mondays are good days for us.”

I grabbed the gown and put it on following Tracy’s example, with the opening in the front, but wrapped tightly around me. Tracy lifted more items out of the box—canned goods, a loaf of bread, a gallon jug of water—and placed them along the wall in neat order.

I was now crouching on the floor, clutching the thin mattress
like a child clutches its doll, staring at the box and wondering why Jennifer wouldn’t answer. Tracy continued, ignoring my state.

“For the most part, we’re left to our own devices down here during the work week. It’s different in the summer and during holiday breaks. Those are tough times in Cellar Land. The weeks are short in any event. Four days of freedom—a term I am using very loosely, obviously—then three days back in the trenches. You see—get ready for this one—our man is a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, with an emphasis on the ‘psycho’ part. He has
classes
. He attends
conferences
. Meets with
advisees
. Presumably they have graduation ceremonies and parent visiting day and other special occasions. And during all those events we are spared his presence, and we live here in peace and harmony. As long as he has left us enough food and water, that is.”

“How do you know all that?”

“From Christine, of course.” She looked over at Christine, who seemed to have fallen back asleep, though it was hard to tell. At any rate, she was very still, her knees tucked under her body, her chains neatly coiled beside her. “Christine was his star student. Well, that was over two years ago. He may have a new star now, for all we know, right, Christine?” Christine opened one eye. It darted from me to Tracy as she whimpered quietly.

All I could hear ringing in my ears were the words
two years.

“His name is Jack Derber.” Tracy said the name deliberately and clearly, but at the same time she scanned the room warily, as though afraid the very walls might reach out to grab her as punishment for saying it aloud.

“And since we know that juicy little tidbit of information,” she continued, “we can rest assured that he will never, ever, ever set us free. We are supposed to die here when he’s finished with us. Christine and I speculate that that will be when we get too old for what he wants, or sooner if we are too much trouble. That is why we
behave very, very well. We are such good little girls, aren’t we, Christine? He can, after all, replace us quite easily, can’t he?” She looked at me pointedly. “And he only has so much room down here, as you can see. It can’t be cheap to keep us all alive and kicking.”

I could barely follow her drift, but it suddenly didn’t seem so friendly. Then something stirred in the box, and all three of us jerked our heads toward it. Silence again. Tracy went on.

“I have developed a strategy down here, which I urge you to adopt. Christine, I’m afraid, has not been very adept at it, and as I think you will see, her failure to follow my advice has worked to her detriment. You must stay strong, physically and mentally, and learn whatever you can. We, my dear, are waiting for our miracle.”

Miracle
. I winced at the word, so contrary was it to everything I believed in. Tracy noticed.

“Yes, I know, a miracle is not such a great thing to have as your only option, but I have given the matter a great deal of thought, and that’s all we have. All we can do is ready ourselves for it. I have a simple motto: ‘Eat whatever you’re fed, sleep whenever in bed, don’t let him fuck with your head.’” She laughed jaggedly at her own sad joke again before continuing.

“The most important part of your body right now is your
brain
. As you will soon see, our enemy’s favorite—not only, but favorite—form of torture is psychological, so you need your mind to
work
. You have to keep him out of your head. Never tell him anything about your life before. Never.”

“A Never List,” I whispered, more to myself than to her. “And Jennifer? What will happen to her?” I was finally able to ask the question without becoming hysterical.

Both of them looked away. Christine, her eyes cast to the floor, whispered something under her breath that I thought I could just make out.

“Forget her as soon as you can.”

     CHAPTER 5     

After I read the letter, I spent another three days alone in my apartment. I canceled my shrink visits and didn’t answer the phone. Dr. Simmons left three messages, and Agent McCordy four. I knew they were worried, but I could not explain to them that I was gearing myself up for a major break with my post-traumatic lifestyle, a break I was only halfway ready for myself.

I didn’t have the courage to tell Dr. Simmons that after ten years of our psychological struggle together—the tears, my long stares off into the distance while she waited patiently, the circles and circles we spun in as we churned through the facts of my life, picking over every memory except the ones I still couldn’t touch, the ones she most wanted to delve into—she couldn’t do anything more for me. We were at a dead end. I needed to do something real.

After the first year of therapy, I was able to recite the facts of
my captivity by rote. It was as though they had happened in some alternate universe, to some other person. A litany of terrible things I could mumble out across the room to keep Dr. Simmons at bay. New details whenever the conversation seemed stale, whenever she started demanding more of me.

It was a history I revealed in isolated images. Me, blindfolded, my feet in chains hanging from the I-clamp bolted to the ceiling. Me, on the table, spread out like an insect for dissection, a catheter running to my bladder, filling me up milliliter by milliliter. Me, in the corner, strapped to a chair with my wrists cuffed behind me, a surgical needle piercing my tongue.

Facts. Details. Specifics.

Things that happened to someone else. Someone not here anymore.

Ostensibly, I was opening up to Dr. Simmons, telling her my darkest secrets. But she always seemed to know that in reality I was pulling away. I could tell the stories, but I couldn’t feel them anymore. They were like poems repeated over and over until all the meaning had drained out of them.

So for years now we had stood at a stalemate. Hours of sessions wasted, while she waited for me to make a move forward. But now, maybe, that’s what I intended to do.

On the fourth day I called McCordy. He answered on the first ring.

“McCordy here.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“Car—Sarah, is that you?”

“It is. Listen, I wanted you to know that I am fine. I read the letter. You were right. Mumbo jumbo. I promise not to freak out like I did before, okay?”

“So why wouldn’t you answer your phone?” A hint of suspicion sounded in his voice. “A second longer, and we would have sent in
the paramedics. You would not have liked it if we’d had to break down your front door.”

“Why didn’t you then?” Silence on the end of the line. “You talked to Bob, right? You knew I was still ordering in and therefore not dead. Clever. Anyway,” I began, trying to sound carefree, “I’ve been thinking about what you said and … I’m going on a little trip.”

“I’m glad I am sitting down. That’s … wonderful news. But are you sure you’re ready to do that? Shouldn’t you start with something simple, like the grocery store?”

When I didn’t answer, he went on. “May I at least ask where you are going?”

I sidestepped his question.

“I need to think, and to do that I need to get away. I’m taking some time off from work. I happen to have a lot of vacation days left.”

“Not surprising. About the vacation time, I mean. Have you, um, talked to Dr. Simmons about this?”

“N-n-no. Not yet. But she’s my next call.”

I took a deep breath as I hung up. After all, I was not a prisoner. They were not my jailers. I
could
go on a trip, and I
did
have a lot of accrued time. These things were all true.

What was not true was the actual vacation part. I had an idea. The letter had not given me any distinct clues, even though something about it tugged at the back of my mind. I decided, however, that three days was enough to wait for the memory to jog, and since nothing was forthcoming, I had to move on to Plan B. I would listen to Dr. Jack Derber. His wife, Sylvia, was supposed to “show me the path.” Well, maybe he was on to something. Though not necessarily what he intended.
Sylvia, show me
, I whispered resolutely as I put the phone in its cradle.
Show me.