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I tried to scream but no sound came out.
“I should get her,” Rachel said, moving out of the frame.
I gagged. I gasped for air, pushed back the hair from my face, covered my mouth with my hands and kept trying to talk, to tell them, to warn them, to save them, but I was mute. Dumb. Silent.
“I’ll go—write my name, okay? Take the camera.”
Rachel winked. “You got it.”
I fell to my knees.
Then she took Claire’s video camera—I couldn’t see her anymore—and pointed it at the blackboard. Scanned all of the names. She began to whistle. Her breath was white steam.
The sound echoed off the cavernous walls and filled my ears and mind. I crouched on the floor and hugged my knees to my chest, unable to breathe or speak or scream. The scrape of the chalk on the filmy, worn blackboard mingled with Rachel’s whistle and my mind processed nothing else until footsteps approached. The shot swung back away from the board to face Claire.
“The lovebirds are enjoying some private time.”
“Really?” Rachel asked. The camera tilted away from Claire. More jostling and chaos, then it pointed at Rachel again. “Mara’s okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Bad girl,” Rachel said suggestively.
A laugh. Claire’s.
And then a crack, so loud I could feel it.
“What was—” A panicked whisper. Rachel’s.
There was a metallic groan. Then the ringing, successive slam of thousands of pounds of iron fitting into frames.
“Oh my—” Panting. Screaming.
Interference and dust clouded my vision and the hiss and rush of static filled my ears. White letters appeared in the darkness that arranged themselves into the words FILE CORRUPTED. Then silence. The image on the screen went black. The scene in my mind went dark.
But just when I thought the footage was over, I heard the soft lilt of laughter. Unmistakably mine.
I didn’t know how much time passed. All I knew was that when I screamed again, there was sound but it was muffled. I tried to force my eyes to see, but I was trapped in darkness; there was no floor beneath my feet, no ceiling above my head.
Because I was not in the asylum. I was not in my room at home.
I was bound and gagged and in the trunk of someone’s car.
51
I DON’T KNOW HOW I GOT THERE.
One second I was in my bedroom, watching footage from Claire’s camera, hearing myself laugh, struggling to stay grounded and not let the flashback wash me away. And the next, I was covered in shadow as rough fabric scraped against my cheek, as my lungs were stifled by heat.
But I did know this: Jude was the only person with any reason to want to hurt me, and he had tried before.
Which meant he must be driving.
When the car hit a pothole I bit my tongue. Blood filled my mouth. I tried to spit but my mouth was covered: by what, I didn’t know. I sent messages to my arms and legs, begging them to move, to struggle, but nothing happened. I imagined myself contorting my limbs, arching and twisting against whatever restrained me, but I was loose and limp. A doll tossed around in a bored child’s toy chest, powerless to move.
He must have taken me from my home—my room—while my family slept, unsuspecting.
What had happened to John?
Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes. The texture of the trunk’s interior made my skin itch and burn. The muscles in my arms and legs wouldn’t move, which meant I must be drugged.
But how? We ate at the restaurant, not at home. I rewound the past hour in my mind but my thoughts were blurry and I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t.
The car stopped. That was when my slow, sluggish heart finally charged to life. It beat against every inch of my skin. I was soaked in sweat.
A car door slammed. Footsteps crunched on gravel. I lay there, helpless and hopeless, slimy and miserable. Fear made me an animal and my primitive brain could do nothing but play dead.
The trunk opened; I heard it and felt it and then realized that I still couldn’t see, which meant that I was blindfolded. I listened—there was water around us. It lapped against something nearby.
I felt big, meaty hands on my body, which was completely limp. I was shackled by terror. I was lifted out of the trunk and I felt bulging, thick muscles against my flesh.
“Shame,” a voice whispered then. “It’s so much more fun when you fight.”
It was Jude, absolutely.
There was pressure in my head—I must be upside-down. I moaned weakly, but there was nowhere for the sound to go.
And then I was set right side up, propped and arranged in a chair with my arms behind me, chafing against the back. My knees, thighs, calves ached. Smells and sounds—brine and salt, rot and water—were sharp, but thoughts were difficult.
My blindfold was slipped off, then, and I saw him. He looked older than I remembered, but otherwise the same. Bright green eyes. Dirty blond hair. Dimples. And two whole, intact hands. So harmless.
My eyes drank in the details of my surroundings and absorbed them like a sponge. We were in some kind of boathouse. There were life preservers stacked against one wall, two kayaks lying across another, and an old, rusty sign that read IDLE SPEED, NO WAKE propped up in a corner. It was well maintained, with a thick coat of grey paint slapped on, obscuring any flaws. There was one door. Jude was in front of it.
I scanned the room wildly for some kind of weapon. Then I remembered: I was one.
It was him or me. I imagined him being gutted, a slash of blood stretching across his stomach. I imagined him in agony.
“So,” Jude said.
I wanted to spit in his face at the sound of his voice. I would, I decided, if he ripped the gag off.
“Did you miss me? Nod for yes, shake your head for no.” His smile was an open sore.
A sour taste coated my tongue, but I swallowed, and imagined my fear going with it.
Jude sighed then, and his shoulders sagged with the movement. “This is the problem. I would like to talk to you, but if I rip the tape off, you’ll scream.”
I sure as shit will.
“There’s no one around who would hear you, and I’d get a kick out of it once, it’s true, but it would get on my nerves after a while. So what do I do?” He looked up at the ceiling. Ran his hand over his chin. “I could say that if you scream, I will slit Joseph’s throat in his bed when we’re finished here?” He withdrew something from his pocket. A box cutter. His watch glinted in the low light.
It was as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I coughed.
“Easy there, tiger,” he said, and winked.
He needed to die. He had to. I turned the image over in my mind. Jude, bleeding out, dying. I rewound it, again and again. Please.
“Yeah, that should work.” He took something out of his other pocket—a key. He held it up. “For good measure, remember that I can get into and out of your house whenever I want. I can drug everyone in your family and kill them while they sleep. Or make your parents watch me kill Daniel and Joseph? Anyway, I don’t know, there are a lot of options and I hate multiple choice. So let’s just say—there’s a lot I could do which I will do if you scream, and taking you was so easy I could laugh.” A smile appeared and a wholesome dimple deepened in his baby-smooth cheek.
I was disgusted by him and disgusted by myself. How did I get here? How did I let this thing in human skin chew his way into my life? How did I miss this? How could I not know?
“You understand? Nod yes if you understand.”
I nodded, my eyes brimming over with tears.
“If you scream without my permission, you will kill your family. Nod yes if you understand.”
I nodded and felt bile rise in my throat. I was going to choke.
“Okay,” he said smiling, “here we go. This might hurt a little.”
And then he ripped the duct tape from my mouth. I retched onto the slatted floor: that was when I noticed there was water beneath it. The ocean? A lake?
The ocean. I smelled salt.
Jude shook his head. “Gross, Mara.” He looked at me the way you would at a puppy for soiling a newspaper. “What am I going to do with you?” Jude looked around the room. His eyes settled on something. A mop. He stood up and cleaned the mess from the weathered wooden slats.
Trying to kill him was useless. He lived through the collapse somehow and anything I tried would fail. Jude realized it, because when he looked at me, he wasn’t at all afraid.
But even if I couldn’t kill him, I wasn’t powerless. I heard Noah’s defiant voice echo in my mind.
“Don’t let your fear own you,” he had said. “Own yourself.”
Jude wanted something from me, otherwise I’d be dead already.
Whatever it was, I couldn’t let him get it.
“I asked you a question,” Jude said, when he was finished. “You can answer.”
He wanted me to answer, so I stayed silent.
Something hardened in his face and I was glad, because he finally looked the way someone who bound and gagged and kidnapped someone was supposed to look.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked again, his voice quieter and infinitely more horrifying. “Look at me,” he said then.
Own yourself. I looked away.
Then he came close and pinched my cheek. “Look at me.”
I closed my eyes.
“You look pretty good, Mara,” he said softly.
Please, please let him die. Please.
“Your opinion,” I whispered, “means very little to me, Jude.” I opened my eyes. I couldn’t help it.
Jude’s smile had spread. He rocked back in his chair. “I bet that mouth gets you into all sorts of trouble.”
He exposed more of the blade he was holding, smiling the whole time, and a primal, instinctive shiver ran through me. He raised his hand, staring at the wickedly sharp edge.
“What do you want?” I was surprised by the strength in my voice. It fortified me.
Jude looked at me like I was a puzzle he was trying to work out. “I want Claire to not be dead.”
I closed my eyes and saw the words he left for me in blood.
FOR CLAIRE
My bones hurt and my mouth and arms ached from my position. “I want Claire to not be dead too.”
“Don’t say her name.” His voice was edged with razor blades. But then, seconds later, it was calm. “Are you going to bring her back?”
He knew what I’d done. That I killed her. And now he was punishing me; he’d been punishing me all along. This was revenge.
I had no idea what to do. I didn’t see a way out; I was tied up and trapped and I’d tried to kill him before but he didn’t die.
Should I lie? Pretend I didn’t understand? Or admit what I did since he already knew it? Apologize?
I couldn’t decide so I ignored the question. “I thought you were dead too.” I swallowed. Looked at his hands. “How are you alive?”
He rocked forward in his chair this time, until he was inches away from me. I felt his breath on my face.
He wanted me to flinch, so I kept still.
“Disappointed?” he asked.
He wanted me to say yes, so I said, “No.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
I couldn’t help it. “No.”
At that, a toxic grin spread across his mouth. “There we go,” he said softly. “Some honesty, finally. Don’t worry, I don’t hold that against you.”
“It was an accident,” I said, before I even knew that I’d said it.
Jude considered me for a moment, then gave a single shake of his head. “We both know that’s not true.”
“The building was old and it collapsed,” I said, trying like hell not to sound so desperate and fake.
He tsked. “Come on, Mara. You don’t believe that.”
I didn’t, but how did he know what I believed?
“I don’t believe that either,” he said. “You saw the video.” He shook his head. “God, that laugh, Mara. Really creepy.”
“How did you get it?” I asked him. “How did you get out?”
“How did you trigger the pulley system?” he asked me, moving closer. “How did you get the doors to close? Did you just think it and it happened?”
Was that how I did it?
“I heard the levers shriek and then ran to the doors, but they closed on my hands,” he said. His eyes studied my face. “You actually smiled at me when I turned to look at you. You smiled.”
The memory flickered in my mind.
One second, he had pressed me so deeply into the wall that I thought I would dissolve into it. The next, he was the trapped one, inside the patient room, inside with me. But I was no longer the victim.
He was.
I laughed at him in my crazed fury, which shook the asylum’s foundation and crushed it. With Jude and Claire and Rachel inside.
“What kind of person does that?” he asked, almost to himself.
Own yourself. My lips were dry and sour. My tongue was sandpaper, but I found my voice. “What kind of person does this? What kind of person forces himself on someone else?”
His nostrils flared. “Don’t pretend you didn’t want it,” he said sharply. “You wanted me for months. Claire told me.” Jude crouched next to me, his cheek close to my ear. He held up the box cutter in front of my eye. “This could happen two ways. One, you do it yourself. Two, I do it for you. And if you make me do it for you, I am going to take my time.”
The blade was so close to my eyes that I squeezed them shut reflexively. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you deserve it,” he hissed in my ear.
52
