The Repossession (12 page)

‘Where am I? Who? What’s going on?’

‘It’s the Fortress, Genie. You’re in the Fortress.’

‘But how?’

‘You’re next,’ Denis told her. ‘We’ve seen the list.’

A girl with red hair came forward and gave her a hand

to pull her up. Genie grasped it and although she felt an electric static shock, the hand passed through her own and she fell back.

‘I don’t get it?’

‘We’re here, Genie. We’re alive. You’ll be here soon.

We know it.’

‘No!’ Genie protested. ‘I’m not going there. I can’t go there.’

Denis pressed a hand to Genie’s shoulder. Her skin fizzed a little, even though she couldn’t feel any substance.

‘We’re waiting for you, Genie. You can get us out.

You’re the one.’

‘Get you out of what?’

‘The Fortress,’ several called out at once.

Genie shook her head.

‘Denis, I don’t understand? You haven’t changed a bit.

Do you stop growing here? What are they doing to you?

How do you get here?’

There was a sharp electronic noise that hurt Genie’s ears. A red light began to flash around her and abruptly they were gone.

Genie rubbed her sore head. She discovered she’d fallen in the bathroom. Woke to find Marshall was putting a plaster on her forehead.

‘Cut your head on the bath. You’re going to have a nasty bruise.’

She couldn’t speak. She’d been inside the Fortress and the kids were alive! She glanced at the wall. The cuttings were all still there. She looked more closely at a Japanese girl. Miho Tanaka. She had been standing behind Denis, silently watching her. She’d been missing two years, like Denis. Several of the faces on the wall were familiar and none of them had aged. How was that possible?

‘I was there,’ Genie whispered. ‘They’re still alive, Marshall. I’m telling you. They’re
all
still alive.’

‘Best you lie down a while, girl. I got to feed that pig of yours.’

He walked her out of his bedroom and over to the old leather sofa in the lobby where she let him sit her down, swing her legs over. He put a cushion under her feet. ‘You stay put for a while, OK? You’re still sick and you need rest.’

And then he was gone.

Rian woke suddenly. There was someone in the room. He saw movement. A light was flickering, then came on bright. Somewhere a radio snapped on and music floated up from below. ‘Genie?’ he mumbled. He turned, realizing that the sheets he was lying on were damp. His

throat was red raw, he felt twenty pounds lighter and he had a pit of despair in his stomach.

He saw the flicker of movement again and turned. He saw nothing but the window and the sunlight casting a shadow on the wooden floor.

He sat up. He blinked. There was a girl sat right across the room from him staring at him. It wasn’t Genie. Then the girl was gone, vanished, didn’t move a muscle, but vanished all the same. He decided he was delirious.

He’d just seen a weird ginger-haired girl with wild green eyes and bushy eyebrows. He had to be going crazy.

‘Genie?’ he cried out again, but his voice was weak and he sensed no one could hear him.

He walked unsteadily on weak legs to the bathroom.

The sun was pouring in through a small window. How many days had he missed? As he emptied his bladder, he was looking at the yellowing newspaper cuttings on the wall. He was startled to see the girl. Renée Cullins, from Cedarville. Colour of hair – ginger-red, particular markings: broad eyebrows, green eyes, small tattoo of a rose on back. Hadn’t seen the tattoo, but the hair and those eyes were exactly her. This girl had been in the bedroom watching him. What the hell was going on? He shook his head. He was absolutely delusional.

He tested the water in the sink. It was surprisingly hot.

The power was back on. He took a shower and felt a million times better for it.

‘Hey, not fair. I wanted a shower. Don’t use all the hot water, OK?’

Genie was looking at him. She was smiling. She was real. Please God, he hoped she was real. She had a nasty bruise on her head and a small plaster on a cut.

‘How do you feel?’ she asked, stripping off to join him in the shower.

‘You coming in here?’ Rian asked nervously. He hadn’t been expecting that.

Genie laughed. ‘Yeah. You shy? You’ve been lying next to me naked and sweating like a pig for days – so I’m sure you can’t be so shy, Rian Tulane.’

Rian got out of the shower. He wasn’t ready for this.

Nearly lost his balance too, his legs were made of rubber.

Genie blew him a kiss and walked under the hot spray.

‘Hell, I need this. I stink. I washed our clothes. Power came back on four hours ago. Nearly jumped out my skin when the radio came on.’

‘You OK? What happened to your head?’ Rian asked, quickly covering himself with her towel. She was acting so spookily normal. She really seemed happy. Just like the girl he’d fallen for so many months ago.

‘Fell, knocked myself out.’ She shampooed her hair.

‘Lot of weird stuff to tell you, but I’m glad your fever’s gone. You are better, right? There’s oatmeal to heat up in the kitchen. Just add some milk. It’s still OK.’

‘Where’s the old guy?’ Rian asked.

‘Gone to Cedarville to get provisions.’

‘You trust him?’

‘I guess. Hey, you stole my towel. Can you find me another? God, it’s so good to be clean. You look like hell, by the way. Who’s Renée?’

Rian nearly jumped out of his skin. ‘Renée?’

‘You were talking about her in your sleep.’

‘I was not.’

‘Sure you were. I came up an hour ago and you were going, “Oh Renée, Renée,” like she was loving you up.

Someone I should know?’

This was too much. ‘I was not talking to anyone called Renée.’

‘I didn’t say you were talking, but she was . . .’

Genie had rinsed off the shampoo and was looking at Rian and what he was staring at. She turned to face the wall and the missing kids newspaper clippings.

‘There’s more of these downstairs in his bathroom.

Thirty-four in all. Can you believe that? Every kid missing from Spurlake and Cedarville, right the way up to Lytton, not counting us.’ She was looking at the seventh

one along. Renée Cullins – aged fourteen when she’d gone missing last year. She looked back at Rian and he seemed utterly freaked. ‘What? Was she here? Did you see her?’

Rian handed her a fresh towel from the cupboard as Genie turned off the shower. ‘She was sitting in the room, watching me. I wasn’t talking to her. I was asleep. I don’t get it. How did she get here?’

Genie now knew for certain that the same thing had happened to both of them.

‘Don’t be spooked. They just want to talk, they’re lonely, I think.’

Rian was looking for his clothes. He wasn’t sure how to deal with this or just how normal Genie seemed to think it was.

‘Are they . . . are they ghosts?’

Genie smiled. ‘Uh-uh.’ She leaned forward and kissed Rian on the shoulder. He put out a hand towards her, still nervous about the whole situation for some reason.

‘They aren’t ghosts. They’re alive. They’re alive just like me or you.’

‘But why here?’

‘Because they can, I guess. I fell and hit my head on the bath downstairs. See the bump on my head? They came to me when I was out. Denis first, came with a few

friends. Then later when I was lying down. Denis thinks we can help them. I told Marshall about him. His picture is on the bathroom wall downstairs. Marshall says all the kids are dead. I told him they weren’t, but he didn’t believe me.’

Rian didn’t understand either. He was annoyed he couldn’t find his clothes. He discovered he was embarrassed to be naked with Genie and feeling dizzy and hungry too. Everything was just a little crazy now.

‘I never knew you were so shy. It’s kinda cute. Your clothes are in the dryer downstairs. Don’t worry, no one is going to steal them.’

Rian felt his throat and tried to swallow. God, it hurt.

Genie was so damn beautiful, so damn happy. He was being an idiot. He knew that. He was just freaked by everything, that was all. Wasn’t well yet.

‘You need food,’ Genie told him. ‘Oatmeal practically killed me when I ate it but it’s kept me going all day.’

She suddenly remembered something. ‘Oh yeah, the pig’s back. Ate a ton of stuff that wouldn’t keep and she looks so happy on the lawn.’

Rian finally smiled. Genie couldn’t be beat. She always knew how to make him feel good. He grabbed her and pulled her close. ‘Love you, Gen.’

Genie pulled away a moment. ‘That’s what you told

Renée an hour ago. You sure it’s me?’

Rian frowned. Then smiled again, realizing she was joking. ‘Everything’s too crazy for me. Way too crazy.’

Rian spread out a map of the Cascades Mountain region on the kitchen table, while Genie was sifting through a ton of clothes from goodwill bags she’d found under the stairs. Stuff that must have belonged to Marshall’s ex-wife and his kid when he was younger.

‘God, shoulder pads. This is like an Eighties’ treasure trove.’ She held up a sparkly sweater for Rian to see and he laughed.

Genie coughed and it hurt her chest. ‘We both need to take another pill, I think. Marshall said we had to finish the course.’

Rian was studying the map. ‘He said it was called the Fortress? You sure? It isn’t on the map.’

‘It’s a nickname. Is there a reservoir? It has to be close to the hydro power station. He said it was huge.’

‘There’s nothing on this map. Not even the first place we washed up near. That glass building. I mean it was a big glass tower, right? They don’t even have any road that leads to it.’

‘You sure you’re looking in the right place?’

Rian nodded. He checked the date on the map. ‘It’s

only a year old. They can’t leave stuff off. I mean . . .

can they?’

‘Power’s on. Google it. Google can see everything.’

Rian smiled. ‘Genius. OK, where’s his computer?’

They went looking for it. Tried every room, but couldn’t locate it. There wasn’t even a satellite dish outside, now they thought about it.

‘You can’t live out here without a connection, surely,’

Rian was saying. But they both knew somehow that Marshall had, had deliberately cut himself off from the whole world. Perhaps the ex-wife had driven him over the edge.

An hour later they were standing upstairs when they heard a vehicle’s wheels crunch on the gravel outside.

Rian looked at Genie.

‘Kill the light.’

She dashed for the switch.

They ran to the window, pulling the blind to one side.

Marshall was slowly climbing out of his old Chevy truck, the dog excitedly running around his legs.

‘We’d better go down,’ Rian began, but halted, pulling Genie back.

Another SUV came in behind Marshall’s. Rian recognized the driver and the four-by-four pick-up.

‘It’s a Spurlake cop. Bastard called the cops.’ He turned to Genie. ‘Grab stuff. We got to go.’

Genie ran for the bedroom.

‘Don’t forget the pills and sweaters.’

Genie grabbed as much as she could, frantically looking for a bag to stuff them into.

Rian watched the cop help Marshall in with his packages. Never seen a cop do that before, but . . . a cop’s a cop and he’d want to take them back to town.

Genie was back, breathless. ‘We can climb out by the back bedroom, get on to the garage roof and drop down.’

Rian was annoyed. He knew neither one of them was well enough to leave the farm. They needed another day at least to get over this infection and he still didn’t know which way to go. Worse, he’d left the map down on the kitchen table.

‘Come on,’ Genie was whispering. ‘We’ve got to go.’

They jumped down to the garage roof and from there down to the backyard. Genie caught her sweater on a nail and heard it rip. She swore. It was so dark and cold.

There was a clear sky overhead filled with stars. The moon hadn’t risen yet. There was no way they’d get far in this dense blackness.

‘Damn, it’s freezing, not supposed to be this cold

yet. We should have brought blankets,’ Rian told her, grabbing her hand.

They ran for the trees. Genie was full of regret. Too late, she realized that she’d grown to like it here.

Marshall was making coffee. His son came back down the stairs with a piece of paper in his hands. He entered the kitchen, patted the dog and sat down.

‘I guess they ran when they saw my uniform.’

‘That was stupid. They’re sick. They survived the flood, but it’s going to be very chilly tonight. Temperatures plummeting. Weather’s gone crazy. It’s still August for God’s sake, not supposed to be this cold yet at night. Damn it, son, I told you to wait behind till I spoke with them. They were bound to run when they saw your uniform.’

Miller sighed. ‘You didn’t tell them I was a cop? You get any names?’

‘No, never got around to telling them. Didn’t want to spook them. Girl’s called Genie. Boy’s Ri, or something.

They’re good kids. Not your usual runaways. She says he rescued her. Probably a romantic notion.’

Miller frowned. ‘Genie? Well that’s a turn up. I figured she’d drowned for sure.’

‘You know her?’

‘Not exactly, but she wasn’t lying. She was rescued from hell. I’ve met her mother and that fool Reverend Schneider. That girl must have a real will to live because she was seriously abused, Dad. I can’t prove anything, but there was something evil in her home and it sure wasn’t her.’

‘She mentioned this Reverend Schneider. Seems her mother is close to him.’

‘He’s got a lot of influence in town. Leads marches and vigils every time a kid goes missing. He’s got half the town believing Satan’s coming for their kids.’

Marshall looked at his son and sighed. ‘Well she’s really scared of him. You going to call it in, play dog-catcher?’

Miller shrugged. He was reluctant.

‘Any idea where they’re headed?’

Marshall pointed to the map on the kitchen table.

‘Your guess is as good as mine. I tried to warn the girl off. They were a bit freaked out by the clippings in my bathroom. She knows one of the kids.’

‘All of us know one of the kids. We’ve already been through this, Dad. The Chief went to the Fortress twice in the past year and saw nothing suspicious. The kids are going somewhere, sure, but not there. There’s absolutely no evidence—’