“You’ve got to do something, Danny,” Samantha said.
Alexander lifted his mournful gaze from the stuffed puppy. “What can he do?”
“You’ve got to help us, Danny,” Samantha pleaded. “You’ve got to.”
Alexander turned his eyes from her to me. “What’s he gonna do? He’s just a kid like us.”
“Danny?” said Samantha. “No. Danny is strong. He’s so strong. He can stand on his hands on the high bar. You should see! And he’s fast too, fast as anything. No one can run faster than he can.”
Alexander shrugged. “What good is that? They’re grown-ups. And anyway, we’re locked in here.”
“No, but Danny is stronger than anyone,” Samantha insisted. “Really. You should see. And . . . and she has to come up here sometime. Doesn’t she? She has to come and get us, right? Maybe . . . maybe you could hit her, Danny. Maybe you could knock her down and run away and get help. You can do something. Can’t you, Danny? I know you can.”
Alexander stood up off the bed. He stood close beside me. He touched my elbow.
“Listen,” he said. “Don’t let them take me, will you? She’s coming for me next. I know she is. Don’t let them take me.”
I looked at him—at his eyes—and at her—at her tears—at their faces, one and then the other, both of them turned toward me.
“Help us, Danny,” said Samantha. She was starting to cry again. “You’ve got to.”
I was in the library bathroom. In the stall, sitting on the toilet lid. Sweating . . . my head filled with mist . . . the room filled with mist.
I slid one trembling hand under my arm and grasped my gun. I told myself not to draw the weapon, but I drew it anyway. I told myself to holster it again, but instead I rested its barrel against my forehead. I felt the edge of the bore against my skin, cold and black. I felt my finger curl itself around the trigger. I wasn’t really going to fire the thing—was I? I just wanted to blow those memories away, to blow them back into the darkness they came out of.
Help us, Danny!
I couldn’t bear to remember what happened next, but I couldn’t make it stop.
Night fell. Alexander wept.
The darkness in the tower room was thick. There were no lights here, none at all. Only the faintest glow—maybe from a streetlamp outside, maybe from the moon—came in through the windows, making shapes and shadows dimly visible.
Still wearing my clothes, I lay on one of the beds. Samantha was on the next bed over. Alexander was on the bed opposite. His sobbing and sniveling was loud and steady.
“Knock it off already, would you?” I said.
“I can’t help it. I’m afraid.”
“I’m afraid too, Danny,” said Samantha.
At the small sound of her voice, I had to fight back tears myself.
“We’re all afraid,” I said. “But what good is crying?”
“I can’t help it,” Alexander said again.
I tried to ignore him. I tried to think. I tried to come up with a plan of escape. I kept telling myself there had to be a way, but there was no way I could think of. Pretty soon, I was just daydreaming about it. I fantasized that our teacher, Mrs. Burke, would deduce that something was wrong and call the police . . .
But Alexander’s sobbing broke in on my thoughts.
“Would you stop it?” I said.
“I told you I can’t help it. I’m sorry. It’s the dark. I’m afraid of the dark. I’m always afraid of the dark.”
“Well, we can’t do anything about it, all right?”
“Don’t be mean to him, Danny. He’s just scared,” said Samantha.
“Well, I know that. I’m just saying. There’s nothing we can do.”
I lay there with my hands behind my head. I stared up grimly into the vast dark spaces beneath the roof. I thought if only Alexander would stop his crying I might be able to think of a way to get out of here. It was easier to blame him than to admit there was nothing I could do.
After a while, Alexander spoke through his tears. “I do have something that might help me. But you have to promise not to tell.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We won’t tell, will we, Danny?” said Samantha.
“Of course not. Who would we tell? What are you talking about?”
I heard the springs squeak as Alexander got off his bed. I sat up and watched his small shadow moving cautiously through the darkness. I heard Samantha’s blanket rustle and made out the shape of her—sitting up too, watching too.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
Alexander squatted down in a corner. Curious, I got out of bed and felt my way around the other beds until I was standing over him. A moment or two later, Samantha was there too, standing beside me. We watched as Alexander fiddled with the wooden panel low on the wall.
“I brought this from my stepmother’s house,” he said, speaking in a whisper now. “I had to hide it there too so she wouldn’t find it. I have a good way of hiding things. I thought of it myself. Sometimes the wood’s stuck on too hard but sometimes . . .”
I squatted down near him so I could see him better. Samantha crouched beside me. We peered through the darkness as Alexander worked his fingers into a short section of wainscoting at the base of the floor.
“If you can get one of these short ones off and make a hole in the wall behind it, no one can see it’s there. No one ever looks.”
He pried the panel away, revealing the small hole he had made in the plaster behind it. Samantha and I looked on, fascinated, as he fished with his fingers inside the hole and finally brought something out of it.
“What is it?” Samantha asked.
It was a package of some kind. Tinfoil—the faint light gleamed on it. Alexander laid it on the floor and we could hear it crinkle as he unfolded it. He lifted something up to show us. I couldn’t make it out.
Now I asked: “What is it?”
Even as I spoke, there was a soft scrape, a hissing flare, and then—then a blinding, startling flame. Alexander had struck a match—a small paper match from a nearly empty matchbook. Anxiously and with trembling fingers, he held the flame to all that was left of a candle, the last thin white disc of wax. The fire passed from match to wick. It faltered. We all caught our breath. But it held and steadied: a teardrop of orange-blue light.
It was wonderful. Just a little dome of pale white brightness encircling a central flame, but somehow it filled me with hope, and with something else—defiance. The dim, quavering glow brought Alexander’s tearstained face and Samantha’s small and frightened features out of the surrounding blackness and I could see the fire had sparked the same emotions in them.
“Cool,” I said.
“We can’t let it burn too long,” whispered Alexander. “There’s not much left. But sometimes . . . sometimes it helps just to see it for a minute . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “It does.”
“You were really smart to hide it there, Alexander,” said Samantha.
He beamed with pleasure. “I thought of it at my stepmother’s. She always made me sleep in the dark.”
“You don’t have a lot of matches left,” I said.
“I know. Only three. I have to find more somewhere. I have to. Another candle too. Maybe there’ll be one wherever they take me.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling hopeful. “It’s not like they’re gonna take us to a dungeon or something. There’s gotta be something there.”
“That’s right,” said Alexander, his eyes bright. “There’s gotta be, doesn’t there? It won’t just be a dungeon.”
We all gazed at the flame in hopeful silence.
“Well . . .” said Alexander. “I guess I better blow it out now.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Yes. You better save it.”
But he hesitated and he and Samantha and I all stared at the flame, savoring the light.
Then Alexander blew and the fire went out and Samantha’s face vanished and
Alexander’s face vanished and the deep, deep blackness of that tower room folded over all of us.
I sat slumped on the stall toilet. I’d lowered the gun from my head now. I cradled it against my chest with my two hands. I stared through the mist—in my mind, in the bathroom—and saw the children locked in that tower. I saw myself as a little boy and could feel everything the little boy felt: the fear and the helplessness—and the shame, more than anything, I felt ashamed that I was helpless.
Like the memories themselves, that had also been there inside me all along.
Alexander carefully wrapped the candle up in its tinfoil. He carefully hid it away again in the hole behind the wainscoting and replaced the panel. We all three went back to our beds and lay quietly in the dark, clutching our little courage to us. Alexander didn’t cry anymore.
I lay atop the bedding, my hands behind my head. With new determination, I tried to think of some plan, some means of escape. But it was impossible. Soon I was fantasizing again, daydreaming I had a gun or that I had superpowers and could break free and fly to the rescue, or that I was the brave knight in one of Samantha’s stories or one of her magical wizards with lightning blasting from my fingertips . . .
Oh, Danny, you saved us, thank you, thank you. I knew you could do it . . .
Then suddenly, the bolt was clanking back. The tower room door was opening. The dim gray light of dawn was spreading from the high windows through the room. My eyes jacked open and my heart hammered as I realized: In the middle of my fantasies, I had fallen asleep.
I sat up quickly, rubbing my eyes. There was the Fat Woman, a massive blackness in the faint morning. She lumbered into the room, smiling thinly. I felt a surge of fear: She might be coming for Samantha . . . She might be coming for me . . . But even as the thoughts formed in my mind, she waddled over to stand beside Alexander’s bed.
“Wake up, Alexander. Rise and shine. Your new father is here to take you home.”
Samantha was awake now too, sitting up. We both watched Alexander as he slowly got out of bed with the Fat Woman hovering over him. He wasn’t crying now. He was past crying. His pale face was a mask of grief and despair. His wide, frightened eyes gleamed darkly. He stood in his bare feet and looked across the room at me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I remembered the words he’d spoken yesterday, quiet by my side:
Don’t let them take me, will you?
The Fat Woman’s broad, pasty face flickered with a brief, perfunctory smile.
“Put your shoes on now. Then go to the bathroom and make pee-pee. You have a long drive ahead of you to your new home.”
Samantha and I watched helplessly as Alexander did as he was told. He sat on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes reluctantly, as if he could stall off the moment of departure forever. But soon he was done and was trudging to the bathroom. The Fat Woman busied herself straightening the covers on his bed. When she was done, she stood looking down at me and Samantha. She gave us the same perfunctory flicker of a smile.
“After he’s gone, I’ll bring you some nice breakfast. Your new parents won’t be here until tomorrow.”
Alexander came out of the bathroom. He shuffled back across the room, barely lifting his feet from the floor. I got out of bed as he passed me as if there were something I might do. Our eyes met. I tried to stare some courage into him. He turned away. As he went past his bed, he reached out for the torn stuffed puppy he had been clutching in his sleep. But before he got a full grip on it, the Fat Woman pulled it gently but insistently out of his hands and set it back on the blanket.
“Let’s leave that for the next children, why don’t we? There’ll be plenty of toys for you at your new home.”
That broke through Alexander’s fog of grief and fear. His lips trembled. He began to cry.
“I don’t want to go!”
He appealed to her—he appealed to all of us—with everything in him. But Samantha and I could do nothing. And the Fat Woman . . .
“Oh, now, don’t be silly,” she said. “You’re going to have a wonderful new life. Say good-bye to your friends now. Don’t keep your new father waiting.”
She took him by the hand as if kindly. She led him to the door. I stood and watched. Samantha sat and watched, clutching her fists under her chin.
Just as they reached the door, Alexander turned and looked back at me over his shoulder. He didn’t say anything. He only bit his lip, the tears running down his cheeks.
I wanted to run to his aid, to rescue him. I wanted that more than anything. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. I just stood there.
And then he was gone.
That look in his eyes—that final moment before the door swung shut—Don’t let them take me, will you: That’s what I had spent my whole life forgetting. I had stood there and watched him go and didn’t do a thing to help him.
I bent forward on the toilet seat. My gun in one hand, I covered my face with the other. I cried, the tears running through my fingers.
I’m sorry, I thought, I’m sorry!
I was so ashamed.
The moment the door closed on Alexander, I raced to the wall beneath the window. Desperate to do something, anything, I leapt up twice, trying to snag the grate with my fingers. It was impossible, out of reach.
“Samantha, come here, help me.”
She jumped out of bed, hurried to my side.
“What can I do?”
“Make a stirrup. Boost me.”
Small and fragile as she was, she bent down and linked the fingers of her little hands. I stepped into the stirrup.
“C’mon—up!”
I jumped at the same moment she tried to lift me and her rising hands gave me the extra boost I needed. I got the first joints of two fingers through the lowest wire and held on. Ignoring the cutting, excruciating pain, I hauled myself up the wall. Caught the grate in my other hand, and dragged myself up the grid of wires hand over hand. Already the strength in my arms was failing, but for a second or two, I managed to pull myself up to the window, managed to hold the position and peek through.
I looked down through the grate. I saw the man waiting for Alexander in the driveway below. Then my strength gave out. I gasped and lost my grip. I dropped to the floor, stumbling away from the wall.
Samantha followed after me.
“Did you see them?” she asked eagerly. “Did you see the people who came to take him? Did they look like parents?”
I stood openmouthed but silent. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t hide it from her either.
Alexander had been right. The man I had seen standing in the driveway below was no father, no one’s father. Standing in bright-eyed anticipation by his large, dark car. Flabby-faced, self-satisfied, rotten. Even my little boy’s eyes could see his foulness and degeneracy.
My stare met Samantha’s, and she understood.
“Danny!” Her voice cracked. She pressed her fists against her mouth. She looked so pitiful and frightened, I had to look away. “Poor Alexander!” she said. “He was so scared.” She cried with pity for him—and with fear. Her words came out brokenly through her sobs. “Maybe it’ll be all right. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe we’re going to nice new homes like the woman says.”
I nodded miserably. “Maybe.”
“But why wouldn’t she let him take the puppy? All he wanted was to take the puppy. We didn’t mind. Why couldn’t she just let him take it?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.
“He just looked so scared, Danny.”
“I know,” I said. “And he’s so afraid of the dark, you know, and he forgot to take . . .”
I didn’t finish. I turned to look at the hiding place, the wainscoting. Samantha, still crying, turned to follow my gaze.
“The candle!” she said. “That’s right. He forgot to take the candle. Poor Alexander. He hates the dark. He’ll be so afraid, he’ll . . . What? What is it, Danny? Why do you look like that? What’s the matter? What .
. . ?”
She fell silent as I pressed a finger to my lips.
We could already hear the Fat Woman’s footsteps laboring slowly back up the stairs.
Slowly, I stood up. My hand hung at my side, holding my Glock. I stared at the door of the bathroom stall, but I didn’t really see it. I saw the mist. I saw the past through the mist.
I murmured to myself, “We’ll wait until after dinner.”
The Fat Woman brought us breakfast: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk. Paper plates, paper cups on a tray. She put the tray on a chair.
“Here’s some delicious breakfast for you.”
Her voice was deep, coarse, toneless. Another perfunctory smile, and she was gone.
Samantha and I sat on the floor with the plates of food between us.
“She doesn’t even pretend to be nice,” Samantha said bitterly. “Not really.”
I chewed my sandwich. It tasted like ashes in my mouth, ashes with the consistency of leather. I stared into space. “She doesn’t have to,” I said. I heard my voice coming out of me as if it were someone else speaking. It didn’t even sound like me. It sounded dead—dead and somehow fervent at the same time. “She doesn’t have to pretend. She knows we can’t do anything. We’re just kids. She knows we can’t fight her. She can say she’s taking us to our new parents and she doesn’t even try to make it sound real because she knows we’ll believe her. Because we have to. We’ll believe her and just sit here and just go with her like he did, like Alexander.”
“Stop, Danny,” Samantha said with tears in her voice. “You’re scaring me.”
I looked at her. She froze. I could see she was afraid of me, afraid of what she saw in my face.
“No,” I said. “No. That’s good. That’s gonna help us.”
“What is?”
“She doesn’t think we’ll fight back. That’s gonna help us now.” I turned away from her, back to my sandwich. I took another bite, chewing and chewing the leathery tasteless mash. “She thinks we won’t do anything. She thinks we can’t. She thinks we’ll just sit here. That’s how we’ll get her.”