Prologue
There are some moments in life more potent than others. You know them for how they change your coming days forever.
The second most potent day of my life started with me running away in a stranger’s truck and hiding in the basement of a family I had never met. I was being hunted. They wanted to hurt me, to take me back. Or maybe this was the last straw; maybe this time they would just kill me.
Maybe I would let them.
I had crawled into a corner behind a tattered sofa. The baby in my arms mumbled in her sleep. In the faint glow from the ajar skylights, barely enough to look by, I focused on her little face, on the fuzz of auburn hair blazing over her head and the blue-green eyes, open a crack in deep sleep.
I had promised to look after her. I had promised Gerald I would look after her, this child who wasn’t mine but would have to be from now on.
I couldn’t die. I couldn’t—for this little girl, I couldn’t. After months of faded hopes, there was finally someone who needed me. Someone for whom I was the whole world, in every sense of the word.
I had to live. I would live. And I would be free while I did that.
There was loud banging on the front door of the house, the sound reverberating through the walls and reaching my ears like the flapping of death’s wings. I shrank into myself, placing a light hand over the child’s mouth without thought, like I meant to smother any screams she might utter. The wall behind my back was cold and damp, its chilling fingers caressing my back and whispering the secrets of graves.
My fractured foot was twisted into an uncomfortable comma, the pain blazing a trail of fire up my leg. Hitching a wild gasp up my chest, I pulled it closer with a shaking hand, the panic lending strength to my already failing resolve. The baby whimpered in my tightening grip.
“Open up!” came a deafening bark, surprisingly clear this deep down in the bowels of the house. I crammed my lower lip in my mouth.
A minute elapsed. I listened to my heart beating in my throat.
“Where is the bitch?” This time the question came from inside, for it was clearer and louder than before. I hadn’t heard the keys turn or the door open, but the men were in. They had let them in.
“Who?” The question was posed by a timid female voice. “Who are you talking about? What are you doing?” She sounded alarmed. If my life hadn’t been hanging by a frayed thread, I would have smiled.
“Get out of the way, bitch,” the man—someone I couldn’t place—said. This time there came the sound of a thunderous crash, followed by the song of shattering glass. There were decorative ceramic plates on the mantle, I remembered. Had he pushed her into them? The fine sheen of sweat on my forehead pooled into large drops, snaking into my eyes. The baby moaned, burrowing her head into my chest as if she sought milk. I started to shake.
“Mom?” came another woman’s voice, this one high-pitched and terrified. She had been up in her room, I knew. “Mom, wha—”
“Go upstairs, Tasha!” the first woman ordered, frantic. “Stop doing this! There’s no one here. Who are you looking for?”
Wood splintered. Furniture legs dragged against linoleum flooring. “Where are you, little bird?” sang the man. “Where are you? Is this where you are hiding? Come out, baby doll, and we won’t hurt you. Come out...”
“Who are you looking for?” This time the first woman sounded more exasperated than timid. A dull roar surged in my ears. I swallowed to keep the bile down.
“A girl,” a different, still unfamiliar, voice said. While the first man had been too loud and too broad, almost growling, this one spoke in cultured and smooth tones, as if he was bored with the ongoing affair.
I didn’t recognise either of their voices. He didn’t come. I couldn’t help a smile from leaking over my lips. He didn’t come.
“A girl about your height,” the soft spoken man was saying, “with dark hair and brown eyes. She would have been scared, and asking you to hide her. I do hope you didn’t listen,” he added with pretend concern. “That won’t go down too well for all involved.”
“A girl?” the woman exclaimed. “You thi—” Loud thuds interrupted her—boots on stairs. My senses were so heightened with adrenaline that I felt myself in the room, right there with them. “Where do you think you are going? There is no one there!” The thuds continued, followed by a squeal. “Don’t touch her, you filthy bastard! Tasha, come here!”
The loud man laughed and the girl shrieked once more. Then came the sound of pattering feet, and: “Baby, are you alright?” asked the mother. “Did he hurt you?”
Whatever Tasha said was too low for me to hear.
“No one need come to harm, madam,” the soft-spoken man said. “Just tell us where the girl is, if you have seen her.”
“I have seen no one!” the first woman protested. “Do you think I would let some random girl come into my house this time of the night? Do I look mad to you?”
There was silence for a moment, during which I pulled the baby still closer. She lapped at my neck, completely at ease.
Something crawled up my bare foot, over the dried blood and swollen flesh, something with too many legs. I swatted at it with a shaking hand, tears springing to my eyes as I bit down harder on my lip. The baby breathed into my ear, sighing an airy lullaby.
“There’s no one here, sir,” the harsher man reported.
“Keep searching.” I could hear the impatience in Softy’s voice. The smashing and shattering continued.
At long last came the moment of judgement. The knob on the basement door rattled.
The breath left my lungs in a strangled wheeze. The baby jumped, her eyes starting to flutter. I smoothed a trembling hand down her back, sure that I would be dead—or worse—in the next ten minutes. I stared at the bruise on my inner thigh, at its four fingers and a thumb, and wondered if my heart would finally give out.
“Open this door!” came the fatal order. “Where does it go?”
“That,” said the older woman, her tone sharp, “is the basement. And here,“—the sound of tinkling keys—“go ahead and see what’s there too. There. Is. No. One. Here.”
The keys jingled louder. I dragged a thick curtain lying on the ground over my head, pulling the child back a little so I could stick her thumb in her mouth. She gurgled deep in her throat, then started to suck. I pulled my legs yet closer, the blinding pain all but drowned in a surging wave of raw panic, and let the billowing cloth settle over us.
The door whooshed open.
“Where is the light?” the soft man asked. Steps descended the staircase.
“The bulb popped two days ago. We haven’t gotten around to fixing it,” the older woman explained. Thud, thud, thud, pronounced their strides. “There is nothing down here, I keep telling you.”
“Hmm...”
The click of a torch being turned on was ominous in the dead silence of the basement. The crashes resumed. I tightened my arms around the child, breathing in her ear to drown out the sounds.
It was a minute or two later, as the frantic search continued, that I felt the many legged creature on my leg again. I tried to sit still. I tried so, so hard. I sucked in a silent breath and counted till ten as my ears caught on fire and my nails all but dug into the baby’s back.
But I must have moved, for the curtain shifted.
I froze. No, no, no… They hadn’t seen. They couldn’t have seen. They—
“Now,” said Softy, “what was that, I wonder?”
I died a little on the inside.
