giant metal fists. He wanted to fall to the floor, curl up in a ball and plug his ears so he could not hear. He watched the smile on Linda’s face grow into something predatory, something manic. The cord to the phone seemed to glisten in the lamplight with venom. It was a snake plugged into the wall, and on the other side, miles away at his home, his goddamn home, its fanged mouth was opening wide for the strike, ready to plunge into Elaine’s throat and destroy her forever.
Steve yanked the cord from the wall. He pulled again, this time jerking the phone from Linda’s hands. He stood there holding the cord, watching Linda, her eyes still wide, only now with surprise.
“Jesus,” she said. “Can’t you take a joke?”
“Don’t ever — “
“Get real. I didn’t even dial her number.”
Steve’s whole body shook and he couldn’t get any more words to come out. When Linda reached out to touch him, he collapsed on the bed, as if her touch was the pail of water thrown on the wicked witch.
Traffic moved steadily now, the Corolla’s speedometer creeping up to sixty miles an hour. He’d thought a lot on the ride over here. A lot about Elaine. A lot about Linda. For all he knew, Elaine could be dead right now. For all he knew, Linda had hired some thug to have her kidnapped and killed.
If somehow he got through this, even if she wasn’t involved, he would tell her it was over. That he could never see her again. He loved his son too much, his wife—
He turned onto County Road Sixty. The city had disappeared, and there was farmland all around him full of dried up cornstalks resting in long black furrows. He checked his odometer, watched the miles tick by one at a time. When six miles had passed, he saw the abandoned farmhouse.
It had been painted white once, but the cancer of neglect and erosion had eaten at it, inside and out. There was a portion of wall missing and the profile of a stairway could be seen. It reminded him of a flap of skin pulled back from a jawbone, the teeth exposed in a fixed, grotesque grin.
He turned onto the overgrown driveway, gravel popping beneath his tires in a dissonant percussion. He got out of the car, taking a small flashlight from the glove compartment, and listened. The ticking of the Corolla’s engine could barely be heard over his own heart. There was the sound of wind blowing over the splintered wood of the house, the sound of dried leaves colliding with one another in a constant Sssshhhhhh. A light dusting of snow began to fall. He stepped toward the house.
There was something about this house. Something familiar. A strong sense of deja vu, perhaps. He carefully stepped through the missing section of wall. There were rusty nails, shards of glass, the sharp teeth of broken boards. Holes were poked in the ceiling and floor. He bent down on all fours, getting as close to one of the holes in the floor as he dared. He shined the small flashlight beam in the hole, but the light was swallowed up by the darkness.
“Elaine,” he called. “Elaine?”
He suddenly couldn’t move, didn’t think he’d be ever able to move again as the certainty of her death overwhelmed him. He was too late. He knew it. Maybe she wasn’t even here, maybe she was already discarded like garbage in a lake somewhere, or buried in a gravel pit. He knew it. Felt it in the fresh numbness that spread from his head down his spine and out to all of his limbs.
He heard movement behind him.
“Hello, Steve.”
He froze. It was her voice. Elaine’s voice. Coming from behind him. But that couldn’t be. That wasn’t possible, was it?
He scrambled to get up.
“Elaine?”
It was her. Standing outside in the falling snow. Staring at him, her face unreadable, unfathomable.
“I’m glad you found your way out here,” she said. “Do you recognize the place?”
“Are you okay?” Relief rushed over him, yet he still felt something was not quite right.
“Surely you’ve seen pictures of it in our photo albums. I grew up here.” Flakes of snow landed on her and melted. Steve stepped outside of the house.
“You’re okay?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That depends.”
“On what?” He stepped forward and reached out for her, but she backed away. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I thought—”
She turned toward the Toyota. “I’m glad you recognized the license number,” she said. “I wasn’t so sure you’d figure that out.”
“What’s going on?” Steve asked.
“Do you have the keys?”
Steve pulled them from his pocket, stared at them for a moment as if they were some evil thing, and gently tossed them to his wife. “I thought you were—”
“I’m fine.” Elaine opened the driver’s side door, bent over and popped the trunk release. She went around to the back of the car where Steve couldn’t see her behind the open trunk.
It was an elaborate prank. A joke. What was the occasion? His birthday was still a month away.
“Who was the guy in the ski mask?” he asked. Then it hit him. “Your brother.”
Elaine didn’t seem to hear him. In fact, the next words from her mouth made no sense at all.
“She’s still alive,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
She didn’t answer.
“Elaine?” The whirlwind of emotions going through Steve made it impossible to know how to feel. Relief? Surely relief, because his worst fear had been dispelled. Anger? Certainly anger for frightening him like this. But there was something else, something stemming from the tone of Elaine’s voice, of the way she stood hidden behind the open trunk of her car, of the words she had just uttered.
They began to sink in, the words like low voltage electricity crawling through his bones.
“Elaine?” He stepped slowly around the car and came to his wife’s side. He looked in the trunk.
There was a woman bound and gagged inside. A woman he knew, a woman only minutes ago he was ready to curse for the death of his wife. His mouth fell open as if his jaw had become unhinged.
Elaine squeezed his arm. “I can’t live like this,” she said. “I can’t live with her in your life, so you have to choose. You have to choose between me and Tommy, or her.”
Had she been in the trunk this whole time?
Linda’s eyes slowly opened, and when she saw the two of them hovering over her, she began to squirm. But there was not much room for movement in the trunk. The gag was too tight to allow anything but the slightest of sounds to issue from her mouth.
“It’s you, of course,” Steve said, struggling to get enough air behind his words. “It’s always been you.”
Elaine backed away. She shook her head, dislodging a light dusting of snow, and pulled something from her pocket.
“I found this out back while I was waiting for you to arrive.” She held it up. It was an old steak knife, its wooden handle chipped and stained, the serrated edge dull and bleeding rust. “I don’t know how long it’s been there, but when I saw it, I knew it had been waiting for us. Waiting for just this moment.”
“What are you saying?”
“I need more than your word. I need to know for sure.”
Inside the trunk, Linda Janson had grown still. When Elaine handed Steve the old steak knife, her eyes
