Authors: Blake Crouch
Because I was in hiding I was forced to keep a distance from my neighbors.
No matter how well I liked someone in the village, if I were to form a bond of any sort I’d be jeopardizing my freedom.
So in the five years I’d resided in Haines Junction, no one had ever been invited to my cabin for dinner and I’d never accepted an invitation to anyone else’s home.
I would’ve loved to have spent Christmas or Thanksgiving with some of the interesting people I’d met while living here but it was too risky.
Loneliness was the price of my freedom.
But to my Live Journal community I could bare my heart—albeit cryptically—and they could lay open their souls before me.
Their companionship brought me tremendous comfort.
I was no longer ashamed of myself and it disheartened me that I ever was.
When I’d sent my last email of the day, I glanced through the window at my back.
Though I couldn’t distinguish them from the buildings across the street, the haze of snowflakes was apparent against the distant backdrop of evergreens.
I smiled.
The first snowfall of the season still excited that southern boy in me who’d spent most of his winters in North Carolina where snowstorms are a rarity.
Before leaving I visited the webpage of a local news station in Charlotte, North Carolina.
I browsed the website each time I came to this computer lab.
It was my only method of checking in on Elizabeth, John David, and Jenna Lancing, the family I’d deprived of a husband and father.
Even if something were to happen to them I’d probably never know or have the chance to prevent it.
But it eased my mind to peruse the news of Charlotte and its suburbs, if only for the symbolic gesture of me watching after my best friend’s wife and children.
Once I’d seen that the headlines didn’t reference the
Lancings
(and they never did) I entered Beth and Jenna and John David’s name into a search engine.
Nothing came up.
The only successful search I ever conducted concerned Jenna who had turned thirteen in August.
Last winter she’d won the hundred meter freestyle in a middle school swim meet and I stumbled upon the results which had been posted on her school’s webpage.
I’d been tempted to send her a congratulatory card.
The
Lancings
still lived in the same house on Lake Norman.
But for all I knew, Beth believed that I’d murdered her husband.
So I’d settled for merely printing out the swim meet results and highlighting Jenna’s name.
A dogsled magnet still held that page to my refrigerator door.
When I stepped out of the library it was midday and the snowfall had frosted
Kluane
Boulevard, parked cars, the woods, and rooftops in a delicate inch of powder.
I buttoned my vest, pulled a black toboggan down over my ears, and strolled back up the sidewalk toward my Jeep.
The village was so quiet.
I could almost hear the snow collecting like a subconscious whisper.
I anticipated being home and the fire I would build and the peaceful hours I’d spend in its warmth, writing while the forest filled with snow.
God, I loved my life.
6
KAREN Prescott woke, the darkness unchanged.
She sat up, banged her head into a panel of soundproofing foam.
Consciousness recoiled in full.
She felt around in the dark for those familiar invisible objects of her small black universe: the two empty water bottles at her bare feet, the huge coil of rope, the
gascan
, the blanket.
Her head throbbed with thirst, her jaw was broken, her fingertips shredded from picking glass shards out of her hair.
The car was motionless, its engine silent for the first time in hours.
Karen wondered if it were night or day and for how long she’d lain in her bathrobe on this abrasive stinking carpet, still damp with her urine.
How far was she from her Manhattan apartment?
Where had the man with long black hair gone?
Perhaps the car was parked in front of a convenience store and he was inside using the restroom or filling a cup at the soda fountain or signing a credit card receipt.
Maybe the car sat in the parking lot of a Quality Inn.
He could be lying in bed in a motel room watching porn.
What if he had a heart attack?
What if he never came back?
Was the trunk airtight?
Was she whittling away with each breath at a finite supply of air?
He’ll let me out eventually.
He promised.
I’ll keep calm until—
She heard something.
Children’s laughter.
Their high voices reached her, muffled but audible.
Karen wanted to rip away the soundproofing and scream her brains out for help.
But her captor had warned that if she yelled or beat on the trunk even once, he would kill her slowly.
And she believed him.
The driver side door opened and slammed.
He’d been in the car the whole time.
Was he testing her?
Seeing if she would scream?
As his footsteps trailed away, she thought,
Spending a Friday night by myself in my apartment isn’t lonely.
This is lonely.
7
ME and Josh and
Mikey
were playing with a slug and a magnifying glass I took from my big brother’s room.
My brother’s name is Hank and he’s eleven.
I’m only seven and I hate it.
Mikey
found the slug on his driveway before he left for church.
He isn’t afraid of slugs so he picked it up and put it in a glass jar in his garage.
I’m not afraid of them either.
I just don’t like the way they feel when you touch them.
We were playing at the end of my street where no houses are.
Mom says if I want to play in the road this is where I have to do it since no cars ever come down here.
She doesn’t want me to get run over.
Mikey
had pulled the slug out of the jar and put it on the road.
It was crawling very slowly.
It left a silver slime trail behind it.
Josh made me give him the magnifying glass.
He’s very bossy sometimes but he’s bigger than me so I have to do what he says.
“Get out of the light, shrimp,” Josh said to
Mikey
.
Mikey
moved.
He’s more afraid of Josh than I am.
Josh is nine.
He has his own BB gun.
When Josh held the magnifying glass over the slug the sun went through it and made a bright dot on the slug’s back.
“What are you doing?”
Mikey
asked.
“Just watch.”
“What are you doing?”
Mikey
asked again.
“Shut up!
I’m trying to concentrate!
Billy showed me how to do this.”
I wanted to know what he was doing too.
It was sort of boring just watching Josh hold the glass.
After a long time the slug started smoking.
Josh laughed and got real excited.
“Do you see that?” he yelled.
“What are you doing?”
Mikey
asked.
“I’m burning him,
Mikey
.”
Mikey
got up and went home crying.
He’s only six years old and my mom says he has a very tender heart.
Josh asked if I wanted to do it but I told him no.
The slug wasn’t crawling anymore.
Or maybe it was and I just couldn’t tell.
I heard a loud whistle.
Josh looked up.
“Oh no, my mom,” he said.
Josh dropped the magnifying glass and took off running down the street.
I watched him go.
He could run very fast.
He was scared of his mom.
She turned mean after his dad went away.
I stood up and stomped on the slug in case it was hurting.
It stuck to the bottom of my shoe like nasty gum.
I was getting ready to go home when a man got out of a gray car that was parked at the end of the street near the woods.
He was very tall and had long black girl hair.
He came toward me.
I was afraid but he didn’t even look at me.
He just walked right past me up the street.
Something fell out of his pocket onto the road but he didn’t notice.
I went over and picked it up.
It was shiny and expensive-looking.
“Mister!” I yelled.
The man turned around.
“You dropped this.”
The long-haired man came back.
He looked down at me.
He didn’t smile.
Most grownups smile at little kids.
“You dropped this,” I said.
He opened his hand and I put the shiny thing in it.
“What is it?” I asked.
It looked very neat.
“A laser pointer.
It makes a laser beam.”
His teeth were scary—brown and jagged like he didn’t brush them ever.
“How?” I asked.
“Open your hand.
I’ll show you.
Come on, it doesn’t hurt.”
I opened my hand and a red dot appeared.
It was the neatest thing I ever saw.
“You should see it at night,” he said.
“If it were dark I could shoot this beam across Lake Norman and it would light up an entire house.
But you have to be very careful.
If you shine it in your eye it’ll blind you.
You want to try it?”
“
Yessir
.”
He handed me the laser pointer.
“Push the gray button,” he said.
“Shine it on my hand.”
I pushed the button and shined it on his hand.
The long-haired man sat down in the road and took his laser pointer back.
Then he took a piece of yellow candy from his pocket and ate it.
I wanted one too but I didn’t ask.