Authors: Maggie Mitchell
After he withdrew from the room, they heard a key turn in the lock, a bolt slide neatly into place.
Callie leaped up and flew to the window, pushing aside the plain white curtains and posing transfixed in the faint moonlight that slipped through a narrow breach in the clouds. After a minute Hannah followed. They stood together, their nightgowns merging into a single white blur. The darkness made the strange landscape otherworldly; their surroundings were a mystery. (Not until the next day would they catch their first glimpse of the dense woods, the jagged mountains.) Callie pushed the window open and leaned out into the night, gulping in the chilly mountain air, her long, golden beauty-pageant curls falling forward. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel!” Hannah said in a whisper, laughing, because she had been thinking of fairy tales since their arrival at the isolated lodge, and also because it was a relief to laugh, a sharp and surprising pleasure. But Callie scowled. “Spare me,” she said, her voice full of scorn—for what? All things childish or whimsical, Hannah guessed. Hannah
was
childish, Callie thought, feeling superior. Framed by the window, they whispered in the dark, offered up wisps of their lives back home, their impressions; kept their fears to themselves.
Downstairs, the kidnapper paced. Unseeing. He listened for their breath, thought he could feel it, like waves on a rocky shore.
* * *
The girls slept better than they should have, and in the morning they found that the kidnapper had unobtrusively liberated them: the door was unlocked. Their steps were quiet on the sturdy wooden stairs, and the man didn’t seem to hear them until they had crossed the big room to the kitchen area, sparsely but neatly furnished, stopping just a few feet behind him. They stood like storybook children in their long white nightgowns. Hannah registered once again how pleasant-looking he was—and how handsome, though it made her feel strange to catch herself thinking this. Tall, with dark hair waving neatly back from a sculpted face. Old, of course, from the girls’ perspective—but in that movie-star way that made age almost irrelevant. Kidnappers, in Hannah’s imagination, had been scruffy, unkempt, unwashed, faded-flannel-wearing, with blunt features and cruel wet lips. Like men she had glimpsed at truck stops. This kidnapper looked like the perfect English teacher might, had he walked straight out of a television set. She felt shy; she knew shyness wasn’t necessarily the most appropriate reaction to the situation. As if to compensate, she quickly inspected the room for weapons: no TV-style gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans; no cruel knives resting suggestively on countertops; no chains, no handcuffs. Hannah felt herself blush when she saw that he had caught her inspecting the room for the paraphernalia of danger. The flicker of amusement she discerned seemed to imply that he knew exactly what she was thinking.
If so, he said nothing, and with the same sense of inappropriateness, she found herself appreciating his tact. Callie did not share Hannah’s appreciation; she would have preferred candor, cards on the table. “Girls! Good morning,” the kidnapper said cheerfully, sounding more paternal than criminal. “Help yourselves.” There was a box of Rice Krispies on the worn wooden table. A carton of milk, a bottle of juice. He had set out bowls and spoons and glasses, indicating the girls’ places. They sat.
The sun shone as brightly and purely as it ever had. The air that drifted in through the open windows smelled sweet and mossy. Hannah and Callie asked no questions, and the man offered nothing but light, pleasant banter; no explanations, no threats, no apologies. “I hope you were comfortable upstairs,” he remarked rather formally, no dark undercurrents in his voice. “I love the sound of the wind in the trees, myself, and the smell of the woods. If you were city girls, of course, it might be a bit of an adjustment, but you’re both accustomed to isolation. If you listen hard, you can hear all sorts of animals in the woods—you should try it tonight,” he added, flashing them a quick grin. His teeth were white and even, his nails neat and immaculately clean. Everything about him vouched for his harmlessness. The girls listened and ate their Rice Krispies. How easily charmed they were, the kidnapper thought, almost happily.
Later that summer, when they had not only the courage and presence of mind but also pressing reasons to ask the obvious questions (What do you want with us? What are you planning to do with us? Why us?), it was somehow too late. Much later, Hannah would wonder what might have been different had they given voice to their curiosity that morning, had they resisted the seductions of sun-warmed pine and breakfast. Might
everything
have been different? (And how different would they have wanted it to be?—that was the question doomed to lurk wordlessly beneath the surface, unconfessed.)
But for the moment it did not seem urgent to press him. After breakfast he presented them with new clothes: plain dresses of stretchy cotton jersey, matching hooded sweatshirts, packages of Hanes underwear, white canvas sneakers. (In the weeks to come they would go barefoot, mostly; later, when it was over, their sneakers would look practically new. Callie would want to keep hers, but the shoes would be taken from the girls, required as evidence.) The dresses had short sleeves and fell just below the knee; Hannah’s was dark green, and Callie’s navy blue. Callie enjoyed all costumes and took to this one willingly; she was well aware that this prim garment flattered her blue eyes, hung gracefully on her lengthening frame. Hannah noticed that sometimes Callie even adopted a slightly revised way of moving, better suited to her new attire—a little more demure, almost somber. Hannah examined the dresses closely to determine whether Callie’s was nicer in any way or more flattering, but she had to admit that they were identical; each the correct size, and each color chosen to complement their respective hair and complexions. (Eventually they would try switching them, just for a change, and he would insist that they trade back.) That first morning, when they traipsed downstairs to display themselves, he regarded them with satisfaction, as if they represented an accomplishment, a minor victory.
It was Hannah who asked, that first day, what they should do. What he wanted them to do. He was sitting on the cracked brown leather couch, reading a book. Callie glared at Hannah, as if the question were somehow beneath their collective dignity. But if there were rules, Hannah wanted to know what they were; that was the kind of child she was.
The kidnapper looked up. The question took him by surprise. He waved his hand toward a tall bookcase on the other side of the room. “Play,” he said. “You’ll find lots of books and games and puzzles and things over there. I’m sure you can find something to amuse yourselves.”
Play
. Later that would remind Hannah of the scene in Charles Dickens’s
Great Expectations
in which Miss Havisham instructs poor bewildered Pip to play with the supercilious Estella. At the time, the command seemed perverse: how do you
play
with someone you hardly know, with someone else you hardly know as an audience?
We need something with rules
, Hannah thought. She went obediently to the bookcase and began rummaging through the shelves. When she found three worn old decks of cards, she sat down and began to count them, making sure each deck was complete. After a minute Callie sauntered over as if she might have other places to go, and lowered herself rather provisionally onto the braided rug facing Hannah.
Callie didn’t know any decent games, to Hannah’s secret delight, so Hannah taught her Crazy Eights and Gin Rummy, games she had learned from her mother on rainy Saturday afternoons. That’s what they did on the first day. They played cards. The man continued to read his book, but they could tell that he was also listening to them. After a while he got up and strode out to the porch, where he sat in one of the Adirondack chairs. Callie was facing the door and could see a sliver of him through the crack between the blinds and the window frame. His sweet pipe smoke crept in under the door. They were glad when he left the room, or so they believed, but there was also a sharp absence. An edge. They missed the sense of someone to please, someone who might offer praise. They noticed that they missed it, and wondered at themselves. They wondered, uneasily, if they had been boring him.
Hannah beat Callie effortlessly at first, but Callie learned fast. This interested Hannah: if you kidnapped a beauty queen and a spelling bee champion, it might make sense to assume that you had decided to acquire a pretty girl and a smart girl. But there was no denying Callie’s cleverness.
They were exceptional: exceptionally pretty, exceptionally smart. Both of them. And old enough to know it.
* * *
Once he had them, he didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Identifying them, tracking them down, rounding them up, getting them to the middle of the Adirondacks—that had been the meticulously planned part. So Hannah speculated, at first, and confirmed, later in the first week, when she found the files he had assembled on each of them. Two dust-free manila folders wedged between Edgar Allan Poe and an illustrated book about northeastern wildflowers.
He must have meant them to be found,
she thought—meant
her
to find them, even, since she was more likely than Callie to explore the bookcase. Still, Hannah was furtive, not wanting to be caught. Knowledge is always powerful; knowledge no one knows you have is even better. Callie was upstairs; he was sitting on the porch. She could see a strip of his shirt through the crack in the blinds; if he got up suddenly, she would have enough warning. She laid the folders on the floor and flipped them open.
He had all of their press clippings, Callie’s glossy pageant smiles alongside shots of Hannah brandishing her spelling trophies with a curious combination of smugness and reserve. “Local Girl Sweeps Regional Pageants, Aims for the National Stage.” “Sixth Grader Nails ‘Vichyssoise’ to Claim State Title.” Quotes from parents and teachers about their promise, their talent, their preternatural poise: “She’s an exceptional young lady,” Hannah’s sixth-grade English teacher had told the local paper. “We expect Hannah to go far.” “We’re all very proud of Callie,” the principal of Callie’s school had said. “She’s the whole package.”
Who are these girls?
Unreal, far away: Callie and Hannah dolls.
More disturbingly, there were snapshots. Even as Hannah studied them, trying to identify what he had seen in each of them, she began to feel as if she were being watched: Callie in a heavy winter coat, sulky, emerging from a grocery store with a grim-looking woman (surely the despised stepmother); Callie stepping onto a school bus, her back to the camera, recognizable from her long blond curls and a hint of her perfect profile. Hannah on the front steps of the library, arms full of books, her face strangely closed off, hair falling forward; Hannah trudging in the direction of home, her left foot angled forward as if she had just kicked a snowball along the sidewalk; Hannah entering a shoe store with her mother, looking back, almost as though she suspected someone was watching her.
Which someone had been
. How long? How often? These were winter pictures. He had cryptic notes on each of them: “Leaves for school 8 am. Walks. Same route every day, always alone. Arrives 8:15.” And worse: “No sign of friends.” Had there been other girls in the running? Had he winnowed down a longer list? She tried to imagine him prowling through Glastonbury, Connecticut, snapping pictures, unnoticed, alarming no one. Maybe she had even seen him, or perhaps her parents had.
This was what Callie had meant when she told Hannah, during a quick gas station stop when they were still on the road, that he had chosen them. Did Callie know about the files? About the scouting missions?
A shadow crossed the floorboards in front of her, and a hand brushed her shoulder. She jumped, scattering the photos, wrenching her head around, wondering how he could have gotten behind her, busily spinning explanations, apologies. But it was Callie, not the man.
“I saw those already,” Callie said, rather loftily, poking at the files with her pointed toe. She had startled Hannah deliberately; Callie envied the other girl’s poise, liked to prove it could be shaken. “In the car, before we picked you up. He had them with him.” Callie often found ways to remind Hannah that she had been first. “See? I told you he picked us. He
researched
us. We were the ones he wanted.” Hannah followed Callie’s gaze to the photo of the girl with the blond curls boarding the bus.
The files didn’t change anything, exactly. But Hannah didn’t forget them. They stayed with her, like a soundtrack, sometimes ominous, often soothing. Rising and falling, setting a mood.
* * *
After five days he stopped locking the girls in their room while they slept, or when he went out. And he did go out, usually once a day. They didn’t always know where. Sometimes to the store. Later, the laundromat, though he took only his own clothes, not theirs, for obvious reasons. (They washed theirs by hand, playing
Little House on the Prairie
, a TV show they had seen in reruns when they were younger. They imagined bonnets, lace-up boots, a fire to tend.) People had to be searching for them, desperately trying to trace them, but they had no way of knowing: no TV, no newspapers. They didn’t know what “town” was or how far away it might be.
How could there be a town?
Hannah wondered when he returned one day with groceries. The world had shrunk to this cabin, these woods.
Sometimes they quizzed him as they became more at ease. “Did you go to a diner?” one would ask. “A bar?” the other would chime in. “The dentist?” “A chiropractor?” “A taxidermist!” Until finally he said no, no, and the sadness in his eyes disappeared for a moment. When he seemed happy, it was impossible to be afraid. “Where would you go?” he asked once. “If you could drive into town.” He watched them, searching, and they knew that their answers mattered. “The movies,” said Callie. “Of course!” he said. “Naturally the future actress would go to the movies. Well, trust me, Callie, there’s nothing worth seeing at the moment, so you’re not missing anything. And you?” He turned to Hannah, who had been waiting for the question and dreading it, trying to come up with an answer. Not a real answer—the truth was that she couldn’t think of anywhere in the hypothetical town that she would want to go. What she sought, as usual, was the perfect answer, the answer that would please. But her mind was blank. “Well?” he pressed, and she could tell that he saw too much, read her too clearly, knew perfectly well that there was nothing she wanted. “Ice cream,” she said lamely. “I would go out for ice cream.” He tossed his keys in the air, caught them neatly, tucked them in his pocket. “Really?” He didn’t believe her; she could see it. She didn’t even want him to. She knew it was a childish answer, and common. She had let him down.