The Overseer (3 page)

Dominik rushed across the street, dodging between parked cars, knocking over a boxy plastic trash can, sending garbage spilling. Hannah dodged to the left, losing time from the circuitous route, but it was less than she would have lost from fighting the obstacle she’d been presented with.

Her feet splashed through puddles as she forced herself forward, chasing as fast as she could. From yard to yard, across another street, low-hanging branches snapping at her face. A tall wooden fence, knotted and old. Dominik clambered over the fence. Hannah followed, charging toward the obstacle, hands digging in as she made her way to the top—throwing her body over the other side. Her feet connected with something she didn’t expect—a trash can—and she lost her balance, hitting the grassy lawn with a painful lurch.

She looked up. Dominik was already making his way over the far fence at the other end of the yard. Hannah leapt to her feet.

The back door to the home opened, and a young boy—maybe ten—watched her rush at the fence.

“Mom! There’s someone in the backyard!”

Hannah ignored the boy, throwing herself at the next fence, pulling herself into place with her arms, tossing a leg over the fence, hitting the ground with a splash on the other side. She pushed herself up from the muddy puddle, covered in dirt, and gave chase once more as Dominik turned a corner. She came to the gate in the fence. Locked. Hannah slammed her shoulder into the gate, sending it flying open, propelling her into the front yard.

Rain covered her face, and she wiped the thick drops from her eyes. Her head turned hurriedly, side to side. He was nowhere to be seen.

What had happened? How had she lost him? He must have taken a different turn.

She walked into the street, looking around in all directions.

This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t let this happen. The girls were too young—thirteen at most. She couldn’t let this happen to them. She couldn’t let them disappear into the night.

Hannah pushed her hands through her soaked hair, trying to think. She needed to know where he had gone.

A set of headlights rolled toward her, a sharp honk on the horn, and she stepped out of the car’s way, the vehicle rolling lazily past.

The world was going on as usual. She was failing her charge, and the world didn’t even know enough to care.

She needed to pick up the trail again. She needed to see the past. A vision of where he had gone. She needed a magic wand to wave, to bring her the sight she needed.

But it didn’t work like that.

Hannah looked up at the rainy sky. “God?” she beseeched. “I can’t do this. I can’t find them. I need You and Your sovereign power and…”

No. She scolded herself. It’s like people to go to God, thinking they had something to say—yammering to an almighty God who formed the world from the palm of His hand. How like her to think that florid prayers somehow pleased God.

No, it was not her place to talk. It was her place as a creation of God to do something else…

“Listen,” she whispered to herself.

She closed her eyes and listened to the rain, her thoughts filled with her calling and mission.

No. She scolded herself again. Listening wasn’t done only with the ears but also with the mind and the heart.

She cleared her mind. Focused on her breathing. Focused on God.

The rain thundered in her ears, every droplet exploding against every surface of metal, asphalt, and grass. Each sound blurred into the other in a cacophony of white noise.

Listen
, she said to herself in her mind.

The drops faded toward the background, only a thumping rhythm of a select few drops tapping out an erratic beat. Bit by bit the rhythm thinned, only a few proud beats pounding out a pedantic march.

Listen
, she said to herself again, her body relaxing.

A single droplet of rain made a tiny plinking impact.

Then silence. The world without time. Where she wasn’t hurried or forced into action.

Listen
, she thought again. And then she heard.

Dominik’s shoes thudding against the path…

Leading away…

His ragged breath wheezing—

Removing him from the scene.

The cries of the girls reverberating in his mind—

Remembering the thud of blows.

The ringing slaps to tender faces—

The sobs pounding into his brain.

The house that he had been working from.

Creaking from the strain.

The place he was returning to.

Thunder rocked the air as Hannah’s eyes opened, lifting to the house in front of her. A sigh of anguish escaped her lips.

There.

Hannah quietly grasped the doorknob and felt the door swing lazily inward, left ajar by someone before her. Stepping into the house as quietly as possible, she paused. If he was in the house still, she didn’t want him to know. Not yet. There would be a moment soon, when she had something to report, that she would need to call the police to finish this. But visions of the past weren’t evidence enough. She needed to find the girls. To know for certain they were here before she did something that might spook Dominik.

She moved into the living room. Shoddy furniture bulleted with holes. An ashtray on the coffee table filled to the brim with dark ash and cigarette butts. The whole place reeked of stale smoke. Magazines littered the remaining surface of the coffee table—like a doctor’s waiting room.

Men, sitting in the living room—each waiting their turn.

A quick thump reverberated through her chest. These had been different girls, before the ones Hannah was looking for. Older—Russian? It wasn’t any easier to consider.

Her stomach churned, and she stepped into the next room— the kitchen. No signs of cooking or supplies. No one lived here. At least no one ate here.

Hannah looked at the table—a sprawling forest of vials, needles, alcohol, and soda bottles. She picked up a container of medicine, reading the label.

Flunitrazepam. Whatever that was.

There was a smacking sound, and Hannah turned. The back door hung open, the screen door slapping loudly in the rainy wind.

Dominik exiting out the back.

She thought about following him—but this was what she was looking for. This was where they’d brought the girls—she could feel it. If she was going to find the girls, she was going to have to do it here.

There was a set of stairs near the hallway, leading up. It felt right, like this was the way they had taken the girls.

The girls
, Hannah thought. She didn’t even know their names. But that wasn’t how this worked. She wasn’t called out of personal obligation. She was called to help them because it was her purpose.

Hannah reached the top of the stairs, looking around. There was a set of three bedrooms lining the hallway. She stepped toward one with the door ajar. The door pushed aside easily, revealing a virtually empty room.

An old mattress lay in the middle of the room, filthy blankets thrown across it in twisting heaps.

And suddenly Hannah saw the horrible truth of what had been happening here.

Dominik kicked open the door to the shed, scowling into the darkness as the spring rain shower assaulted the tin roof in a reverberating frenzy. He shoved the lawn mower to the side, ripping a canvas tarp away from a stack of tools. The cold canvas twisted with a kind of whiplash as its soggy corners tried to double over onto the shell of hard cloth that had molded itself to the stack of tools.

A toolbox scattered with a rough toss, and it hit the floor somewhere to the right with a raucous clatter. He kicked a bag of screws out of the way, and the contents went spilling in a deluge of tinkling barbs.

There.

Dominik grabbed the gas can by the handle and gave it a forceful jiggle. Half a can’s worth of gasoline sloshed inside the container, undulating on a swishing axis that caused the whole can to swing in a wide arc.

It was enough to do the job. To get rid of as much evidence as he could before whoever that girl was could find her way back here. Dominik hated the place anyway, all the time he’d spent there minding the shop while the others stayed in the big house across town. He wouldn’t miss it.

It would be obvious that it was arson. The investigators might even find some of the things they had been hiding, but with luck they’d be out of the state by the time anything was found—and the merchandise would be out of the country by then. And it wouldn’t be traced back to them. They’d made sure the lease wasn’t in any of their names.

Dominik reached into his pocket, found the metal object, removed it from his pocket, and flicked the cap open. His thumb spun on the back of the lighter, checking to see if there was enough fuel.

A tiny flame leapt upward, then was dashed out by the snapping of the cap back over it. He walked back toward the house in the rain.

Hannah backed away from the bedroom door, stumbled into the wall, and slid to the floor. Her body shook as she ran her hands over her head, trying to blot it all out of her head. So many girls had been brought through here. So much pain. And suffering. And hopelessness. So many monsters lurking in the shadows.

The walls remembered what had happened here—and they were closing in.

“O God,” she stammered in agonized prayer, mind freewheeling with the torment of it all.

And she felt something else: another calling—

She looked up at the ceiling and saw the wide hatch leading to the attic. A padlock dangled open at the end of a swinging latch that had been left undone.

She reached upward, and the trapdoor snapped downward as she grabbed at the string, tugging, the ladder sliding downward with a gentle pull. Hannah stepped onto the bottom rung and moved upward, compelled by purpose but delayed by dread.

She lifted her head into the attic. The floor was covered in brown carpet; drenched in dust that made her cough. Hannah lifted herself into the darkness. Tiny fingers of light glowed through the slits between the boards covering the one tiny window at the far end. The hatch below her swung gently upward, pulled back into position by creaking springs.

Her hands groped for a moment as she stood, hunched in the low space. A dangling string brushed her fingertips, and she tugged. The lightbulb snapped on from an overhead fixture, and

she looked around.

She thought she might never start breathing again.

Both sides of the attic were lined with bunk beds, chicken wire surrounding them in tightly fastened grids that filled in the gaps between small metal struts. Hinged doors with padlocks locked every set of beds, making each its own tiny prison.

Lurid underwear hung from hooks and littered the floor. Dirty clothes were piled in the corner.

Hannah walked to one of the beds, its door hanging open, and looked in. Sitting on yellowed sheets was a ratty stuffed bear with one eye missing. She picked up the bear and looked it over as a hot tear ran down Hannah’s face as she saw the face of the girl who had clung to this bear—

Maybe fourteen years old.

The bear fell from her hands and hit the floor.

Whoever these people were—she would stop them.

Wherever the girls were that they had taken—she would find them.