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As the truck closes in, I noticed the flood lights on top.
Detective Johnny Stroud.
I turn my cheek as we pass. He doesn’t know the vehicle, but I can’t be too careful. Is he looking for me? Or looking for his girlfriend, Gloria?
In the rearview mirror, I watch his taillights enter Deep Shadows.
“You’re going to get busted with Dr. Taylor,” I whisper, subconsciously willing Gloria to get back into her house.
Not my problem, I remind myself. Although as I drive back to the construction site I can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right.
I park under a tree next to the site, lean back my seat and close my eyes.
I was not prepared for what I woke up to.
30
Sylvia
Abloated maggot slithers up my big toe, white, fat, greasy. Twisting and turning like a hairless, eyeless rodent having just fallen out of it’s mother’s womb.
I’m not dead yet, I telepathically inform the disgusting little insect.
Not yet.
I can smell the rotting corpse a few feet away, decomposing on a pile of moldy hay. A cat or small dog, I can’t really tell. I think it’s a cat. We’ll call it a cat. Thousands—millions—of maggots swarm inside the open flaps of the dead creature’s stomach, writhing in what remains of its intestines and stomach lining. A surprising amount of flies, considering the cold temperature, spiral around the carcass, zipping in and out of the wounds, laying eggs, vomiting. One has taken up residence in the cat’s only remaining eye, settled right into the corner. It bothers me, this aggressive fly. There is nothing worse than having something caught in your eye. The cat’s lips are either gone or have shriveled upward because two rows of pointy teeth are on display, like it died baring its teeth. It’s tongue, however, lolls out of the corner of its mouth like a drunk.
It’s a girl. I don’t know how I know this, but I do.
Probably mauled by a fox, or maybe even a mountain lion, the feral cat had come into the barn to die, half its face torn away, one eye and one ear missing, her stomach shredded to pieces as she’d clawed to get away.
I imagine she came into the barn right before I did. Died not long after I was tied up. I wonder if she was still alive when he chained me to the wall.
I picture her, entrails dragging, leaving a bloody trail in her wake as she drags herself to the only pile of hay, seeking any comfort she can find.
Comfort that never came.
My nightgown is the same color as her fur. A steel gray, and just like hers, it is speckled with dirt, hay, and dried blood.
It’s funny, I asked for shoes and coat when he dragged me out of my house. With a black pillow case wrapped around my head and a knife at my throat, I Sylvia Stone, asked my abductor if I could get shoes and a coat.
I close my eyes and turn my head away from the cat, wincing at the pain in my neck. A sharp, searing pain that is only getting worse with each passing hour of my arms tied above my head. Bound at wrists, hooked to something hanging from the wall or ceiling.
I never saw his face. Never heard a word from his mouth. I was blinded, hog tied, driven to a barn out in the middle of nowhere, then tied to the wall and left for dead.
Why?
I can only assume I am playing a part in a larger plan, a small piece that fits somewhere between my mother’s murder twenty years ago and Rhett Cohen.
I wonder if I’ll get the chance to figure it out.
I let my neck hang, as if it were loose and broken, attempting to stretch the muscles.
My mouth feels like sand. My throat is raw from screaming.
I am beginning to get delirious. I’ve lost count of the hours. The sun has disappeared and come back up twice now. Or is it three times?
Squeezing shut my eyes, I wiggle my fingers, and attempt to move my hands in a circle. I can no longer feel them. I’m not even numb anymore. The zip-ties are too tight, cutting off my circulation. I wonder if I am going to lose my fingers, or even my hands.
