I walk, aware that the night sky is receding behind me. Is this how the others felt? Is it always the same? The bored voice, the instructions, the fading stars? I think it probably is. Dali is pragmatic, soulless. He doesn’t deviate from what works.
My eyes are still burning, though it’s tolerable now. I try to take in my surroundings as we walk toward a door. I see gray concrete walls, floor, ceiling. The room we drove into was small. The ceiling can’t be more than eight feet high. There’s a single bulb. The door he’s marching me toward is flat gray metal, windowless. Utilitarian. I note a camera in the upper right-hand corner.
Looks like Earl was right on the money, I think. Or close enough.
We reach the door.
“Open it,” he tells me.
I reach out, turn the knob, open the door. Beyond is a concrete hallway, probably thirty feet long. It turns right at the end. There are three doors along the left wall, and it’s all lit as unimaginatively as the room we’re leaving.
“Walk,” he says, still bored.
I move forward. I hear the door close behind us, and now I’m in a tomb. There are no sounds here, just silence and coolness. We reach the end of the hallway and turn to the right. There’s a metal stairway.
“Up,” he directs.
We march up and reach the second floor landing, which is the top. “Open the door.”
I turn another knob and open another door, and now we’re in a new hallway, much more terrifying than the one below. This one has a series of ten doors on either side. These are made of steel, and there are no knobs on them. Padlocks and hasps secure them from the outside in three places. I swallow back bile as I note the locked openings at the base of each door.
“Walk,” he tells me, and I walk, helpless to do anything else.
We come to the end of the hallway. As we pass each door, I have to wonder: Are there women in each? The last door stands open, waiting for me.
“Enter the room,” he tells me.
I balk, and the gun pushes into my spine, reminding me of his promise. I have no reason to doubt him.
“Enter the room,” he says again, that endless bored patience.
I walk forward. As I reach the threshold, he shoves me hard, and I stumble inside. The door begins to close immediately, taking the light with it. I scan my surroundings, seeing what I can: a bunk built into the wall, a toilet. Nothing else. I whirl around and watch as the door slams shut.
I launch myself against it. I can’t help it.
“Let me out, Dali, you piece of shit! I’m a member of the fucking FBI!”
I mean for it to be anger, but it sounds like terror. He doesn’t reply. I hear the locks being applied to the hasps.
“Dali!” I scream.
I can hear him walking away.
Then I hear nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The darkness is, as Heather Hollister had said, total. I thought some light might come in through cracks in the door, but Dali’s done something with all the seams to seal off any possible ingress of illumination. I hold my hands up to my face and stare at them. This is something my dad taught me when I was girl, when he wanted to get rid of my night-light.
“But it’s dark, Daddy,” I protested, eight years old and using my best little-girl-in-distress voice, the one that never failed to bend him to my will.
This time, he’d held firm. I saw my mother behind it. “It’s never completely dark, honey,” he said. “Look, I’ll show you. I’ll turn off all the lights, but I’ll be here with you when I do it, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed, doubtful.
He flicked the switch and everything turned to black. I felt the old panic rise, the same panic that told me to beware, there was something under my bed, something with the voice of a snake and the claws of a beast, waiting to grab my legs when my feet hit the floor.
“D-Daddy?” I whispered.
“I’m here, baby, don’t worry. Now, I want you to do something for me. I want you to put your hand in front of your face, and I want you to stare at it.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me, honey.”
I had no longer been afraid, of course. My father was with me, so the monsters would stay away. I brought my hand up in the darkness and stared.
At first I saw nothing at all, but as the moments passed, I became aware that Dad was right. The darkness wasn’t total. The moon, though only a quarter full and hidden behind a blanket of clouds, provided the barest hint of illumination through the curtains. The street-lamps in the distance bounced off the clouds and sent faint light my way. My hand ghosted into view. Just an outline, but it was there.
“I see it, Dad!”
I try it now. I stare and stare and stare. Time passes. I see nothing. Nothing but blackness.
“Shit,” I say, alarmed at how shaky my voice is already. I lower my hands. The clink of the handcuffs is strangely comforting in the otherwise complete silence.
“Work out your surrounds,” I say aloud.
I picture the room as I’d seen it before the door closed.
“Bed should be to my left.”
I move left slowly, until I feel the metal edge of the cot. I reach down with my hands and run them over the cool metal sides. I find the blankets, which are sparse and rough. A sheet covers a thin mattress, and a lumpy pillow sits at the head. I fumble further and find the bolts that were used to secure the cot to the wall.
“Like a prison bed,” I mutter.
It was apropos. This was a cell, right?
I straighten and turn, putting the bed to my back.
“Toilet should be to my right in the center of the wall.”
I walk to what I think is the center of the room, and then I face right and walk forward. I keep my hands out in front of me and soon touch cool concrete. I hunch forward, searching.
No toilet.
I remain bent over and crab-walk to the left. A moment later I feel the toilet, which is made of metal, not porcelain. Again, like a cell. Porcelain can be broken; its pieces can be made into knives.
“Don’t want anyone slitting their wrists, now, do we?”
I realize that the darkness throws off almost all of my spatial sense.
I was certain that I’d walked to the middle of the room, but I’d been off by almost three feet. My admiration for the blind is rising by the minute.
I decide to pace off my cell. I follow the front wall back until I reach the side wall to which the cot is bolted. I put my back to it and walk slowly, counting as I go. I keep each pace to what I think is a foot. I reach twelve by the time my toe contacts the far wall.
“Twelve feet. Okay.”
I walk the distance between. It’s five feet.
“Twelve by five. Gotcha. Bed, toilet. Blanket, pillow.”
I find my way back to the bed and sit down on it. I stare out into nothing. The blackness is oppressive in its completeness. I cock an ear and hear the low
