The Keepsake

But it hasn’t stayed buried, thought Josephine as she lay in her prison. What happened that night has come back to haunt me.

Cracks of light slowly brightened in the window boards as dawn progressed to midday. It was just enough light for her to barely see the outline of her own hand when she held it in front of her face. A few more days in this place, she thought, and I’ll be like a bat, able to navigate in the dark.

She sat up, shaking off the morning chill. She heard the chain rattling outside as the dog lapped up water. She followed suit and sipped from her water jug. Two nights ago, when her captor had cut off her hair, he’d also left behind a fresh bag of bread, and she was enraged to discover there were newly chewed holes in the plastic. The mice had been at it. Find your own damn food, she thought as she greedily wolfed down two slices. I need the energy; I need to find a way to get out of here.

I’ll do it for us, Mom. For the primordial unit. You taught me how to survive so I will. Because I am your daughter.

As the hours passed, she flexed her muscles, rehearsed her moves. I am my mother’s daughter. That was her mantra. Again and again, Josephine hobbled around the cell with her eyes closed, memorizing how many steps it took to travel between the mattress and the wall, the wall and the door. The darkness would be her friend, if she knew how to use it.

Outside, the dog began to bark.

She looked up, her heart suddenly banging hard, as footsteps creaked across the ceiling.

He’s back. This is it, this is my chance.

She dropped down onto the mattress and curled into a fetal position, assuming the universal pose of the scared and the defeated. He would see a woman who had given up, a woman who was prepared to die. A woman who would give him no trouble.

The bolt squealed. The door opened.

She saw the glow of his flashlight beaming from the doorway. He came into the room and set down a fresh jug of water, another bag of bread. She remained perfectly still. Let him wonder if I’m dead.

His footsteps came closer, and she heard him breathing in the dark above her. “Time is ru

She did not move, even as he bent down and stroked her shorn scalp.

“Doesn’t she love you? Doesn’t she want to save you? Why doesn’t she come?”

Don’t say a word. Don’t move a muscle. Make him lean closer.

“All these years she’s managed to hide from me. Now if she doesn’t come out, then she’s a coward. Only a coward would let her daughter die.”

She felt the mattress sag as he knelt beside her.

“Where is she?” he asked. “Where is Medea?”

Her silence frustrated him. He grasped her wrist and said, “Maybe the hair wasn’t enough. Maybe it’s time to send them another souvenir. Do you think a finger would do?”

No. God, no.Panic was screaming at her to wrench her hand away, to kick and shriek, anything to escape the ordeal to come. But she remained frozen, still playing the victim paralyzed by despair. He shone the flashlight directly in her face and, blinded by the light, she could not read his expression, could not see anything in the black hollows of his eyes. He was so focused on provoking a response from her that he did not notice what she held in her free hand. He did not notice her muscles snap as tense as a bowstring.

“Maybe if I start cutting,” he said, “you’ll start talking.” He pulled out a knife.

She thrust her hand upward and blindly drove the spike of the high-heeled shoe into his face. She heard the heel thud into flesh and he fell backward, shrieking.

She snatched up the flashlight and slammed it against the floor, smashing the bulb. The room went black. Darkness is my friend. She rolled away and scrambled to her feet. She could hear him a few feet away, groveling on the floor, but she could not see him, and he could not see her. They were equally blind.

Only I know how to find the door in the dark.

All the rehearsals, all the preparation, had seared the next moves into her brain. From the edge of the mattress, it was three paces to the wall. Follow the wall seven more steps and she’d reach the door. Though the cast on her leg slowed her down, she wasted no time navigating through the darkness. She paced out seven steps. Eight steps. Nine…

Where is the damn door?

She could hear him breathing hard, grunting in frustration as he struggled to get his bearings, to locate her in that pitch-black room.

Don’t make a sound. Don’t let him know where you are.

She backed up slowly, scarcely daring to breathe, each step placed with delicate care so she would not give away her position. Her hand slid across smooth concrete, then her fingers brushed across wood.

The door.

She turned the knob and pushed. The sudden squeal of hinges seemed deafening.

Move!

Already she heard him lunging toward her, noisy as a bull. She stumbled through and swung the door shut. Just as he slammed against it, she slid the bolt home.

“You can’t escape, Josephine!” he yelled.

She laughed and it sounded like a stranger’s, a wild and reckless bark of triumph. “Well I just did, asshole!” she shouted back.

“You’ll be sorry! We were going to let you live, but not now! Not now! ”

He began screaming, battering the door in impotent fury as she slowly felt her way up a dark stairway. Her cast set off thuds on the wooden steps. She did not know where the stairs led, and it was almost as dark in here as it had been in her concrete bunker. But with each step she climbed, the stairway seemed to brighten. With each step, she repeated the mantra: I am my mother’s daughter. I am my mother’s daughter.

Halfway up the stairs, she saw cracks of light shining around a closed door at the top of the steps. Only as she neared that door did she suddenly focus on what he’d said only a moment before.

We were going to let you live.

We.

The door ahead suddenly swung open and the glare of light was painful. She blinked as her eyes adjusted, as she tried to focus on the figure that loomed in the bright rectangle of the doorway.

A figure that she recognized.

THIRTY-TWO

Twenty years of neglect and hard winters and frost heaves had reduced the Hilzbrich Institute’s private road to broken blacktop rippling with invading tree roots. Jane paused at thePROPERTY FOR SALE sign, her Subaru idling as she debated whether to drive down that ruined road. No chain blocked the entrance; anyone could enter the property.

Anyone could be waiting there.

She pulled out her cell phone and saw that she still had reception. She considered calling for a little local backup, then decided it would be a humiliatingly bad idea. She didn’t want the town cops laughing about the big-city detective who needed an escort just to deal with the scary Maine woods. Yeah, Detective, those skunks and porcupines can be deadly.

She started down the road.

Her Subaru slowly bumped along the fractured pavement, and encroaching shrubs clawed at her doors. Rolling down her window, she smelled the scent of decomposing leaves and damp earth. The road grew even rougher, and as she steered around potholes, she worried about broken axles and being stranded alone in the woods. That thought made her more uneasy than the far more dangerous prospect of walking down the street of any major city. The city she understood, and she could deal with its dangers.

The woods were alien territory.

At last the trees gave way to a clearing, and she pulled to a stop in an overgrown parking area. Jane stepped out of her car and stared at the abandoned Hilzbrich Institute, which loomed ahead. It looked exactly like the institutional facility it once was, made of stern concrete softened only by landscape shrubbery now surrendering to weedy invaders. She imagined the effect this fortress-like building would have on any family arriving here with a troublesome son. This looked like just the place where a boy would get straightened out once and for all, where there’d be no kid gloves, no half measures. This building promised tough love and firm limits. Desperate parents looking up at that unyielding façade would have seen hope.