Page 56 of The Vacancy In Room 10

The dirt is soft and loose this time, so it doesn’t feel like trying to dig into concrete. It’s nothing compared to the labor it took last time, thank God. And I was counting on that fact in order to do it alone. He’s not a big guy, and the grave is shallow, but I still don’t know how I’ll do this; just that I have to.

In the hot night air, I dig in silence again. This time my strength and determination comes from sheer terror. What if one of his cartel guys just pulls up at any moment—thrilled at the opportunity to waterboard someone or pluck out my fingernails with pliers instead of just executing me in a practical efficient way. I move as fast as I can and try to regulate my breathing that’s nearing hyperventilation.

He’s buried behind a huge cluster of oversize bushes, hidden from the road, so it takes me a moment to register the light I’m seeing is headlights coming from the east, and I start to panic. I will myself not to throw up and leave my DNA all over the damn place. I drop the shovel behind the bushes and rush to my car, which is parked about thirty or forty feet closer to the road—closer than last time. I parked there so, just in case someone came by, it wouldn’t look out of place—they would think I pulled off like a normal person for car trouble or a whiny kid or a fight with my spouse or something, but not pulled way out to a suspiciously off-road spot like we did last time because we’re complete morons and really bad at this.

I sit in my car and... God. Right, I don’t have a phone. I was gonna pretend to be looking up directions or something in case this person stops. And then I see it.

Holy mother of Mary. The short flash of red lights, and then the car pulls over, and it’s a cop. It’s an actual fucking cop. I’m gonna throw up. I’m gonna throw up right now. I pull a Wendy’s cup from the console and puke into what was left of a Diet Pepsi and then shove the lid back on and force back tears before he taps on my window. I need a story, and quick.

“Hey, ma’am. Everything okay?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yes. Everything is super.” Oh, God. Stop talking, I internally plead with myself.

“You lost? Flat tire?”

“Nope. I’m great,” I say... Where’s my story? What’s my reason?

“Can I get your license and registration?” he asks, and he must see my hands tremble as I hand the documents to him. He disappears back to his car, and what is probably three minutes feels like hours

I am stiff and I am numb. My neck is in knots, and my mouth is so dry I don’t think I can speak. I think about opening the door and running. How ridiculous—just the image of me running in the middle of the desert to nothing—with nothing—and a cop right behind me, almost makes me laugh. Or maybe cry. Actually, I think I might start screaming. I have an overwhelming urge to just start screaming like a lunatic and have him take me to a mental health facility somewhere. God help me. What do I do?

I should turn myself in before he finds out. I can tell the truth. We were scared—we...

He comes back and hands me my cards. “So what are you doing out here then, if you don’t have a flat or something?”

“Is it illegal?” I ask.

“No. But I just gotta make sure you’re not in harm’s way. Nobody else with you? No one in the trunk?” he says, and then smiles.

“Oh, like you think I’m being sex trafficked or something. Oh! Yeah, no. My fiancé is actually meeting me here. I know that sounds odd, but we live in different towns. See, I’m in Albuquerque, he’s in Amarillo, and did you know they are building a new housing development here?” I say.

He softens slightly. “I did hear that, yes. Upscale, with a pool in every yard they say.”

“Yep. So we are early buyers. They’re breaking ground soon, so sometimes when neither of us can make the long drive, we just meet in the middle here. We like to lay on the hood of the car and imagine our new life in our new house. It’s weird, but it’s a really long drive, so you know. It’s just nice sometimes,” I say, sweat dripping down my back, pricks of heat under my armpits.

“I think that actually sounds pretty nice,” he says. “Most of my stops out here are DUIs and speeding, so good on ya. Do you need me to wait with you until he gets here?” he says, looking around as if I could be in danger out here alone.

“Oh, no. Thank you, but I actually still have a few miles to go. I just pulled off to check my directions. It can all look the same out here, just making sure I turn off in the right place,” I say, and he tilts his hat and taps the top of my car.

“All right, miss. You have a good night. Good luck on your house.”

“Thank you, thanks. Bye,” I stutter and close the window. When he pulls away and his taillights fade in the distance, I start bawling until my ribs ache.

Who am I? What does lying so easily even make me? That was almost the end of my entire life as I know it. Now I do scream. I scream as hard as I can until my voice is raw, and I beat my fists on the steering wheel, and then, after enough time has passed, and I’m sure he’s not coming back, I get out and get back to work.

The hardest part is digging out a sort of ramp into the dirt—a slope that I can pull him up, the way I can’t physically do otherwise. I do get a grip on the loops of duct tape around his ankles, and I’m able to sit on the ground, dig my heels in, and use all of my core strength to pull him up in short bursts of energy. It’s exhausting, and it takes more time to fill the hole back in and cover up the slope I dug than I thought, but by midnight, I am back on the road, headed to the Colorado border.

When I get close to my destination, it’s almost 5:00 a.m. I remember this place from when I was a kid. South of Durango. We were on our way to visit my aunt who lived there. I was maybe eleven, and we camped near a national park, and it was so beautiful. It was nothing like the flat brown landscape I was used to. I was in awe of the hot springs. I was afraid of them at first when my father told me I’d boil to death if I went in, but after I saw other families in them, I went in, too, and it was like magic. I’d never seen anything like it. It’s weird because I remember not trusting my dad the same way after that. He might have been kidding, but it felt like I was lied to because he made me afraid and thought it was funny. I don’t why I’m remembering this right now.

We camped in an orange tent, and my mother was still with us then. We roasted marshmallows on sticks until they caught on fire and turned black. My mother said it was unsanitary to use sticks and to get a skewer, but we didn’t. We played flashlight tag and watched flecks of white ash float way up into the sky and dance around above the flames, and I had a Care Bear sleeping bag and a walkie-talkie, and we were happy. We were happy then.

I remember the abandoned well, too. When we took a walk through the woods the next day, there was a well deep back in the trees. There was a piece of plywood pushed over the top, and my father told me not to play near it. When I asked why he said because it’s a couple hundred feet deep and kids fall in them all the time and nobody can hear them scream. They just find their bones a hundred years later.

I was so afraid of it, thinking about a little girl my age curled up in the cold water on the bottom, her bones cracked and broken as she fell against the stones to the depths. I think about her crying for her mother as her pain and hunger slowly killed her. And then I tried to forget about it—to get the nagging images out of my mind.

I camped there one more time, with my brunch girlfriends who don’t speak to me anymore. This time they called it glamping, and we stayed in fancy cabins and drank prosecco by the hot tub and the fire was gas instead of wood. Nothing like that first experience, but it was when we drove in that I remembered that well for the first time since I was a kid. There was a wooden horse fence that seemed to go on for a mile butting up against the two-lane road into the grounds. It made me remember the well. It was next to a wooden fence, and so very early in the morning, I took my mug of coffee and didn’t even change out of my pajamas. I just shoved my feet into sneakers and made the hike out toward the main road until I saw the wooden fence, and I followed it.

There it was. As an adult, I realized that it was on the farthest edge of an eight-hundred-acre farm buried under tangles of brambles and ivy. There was no plywood on it this time, no well cap, nothing. I tossed a penny in and made a wish. Then I heard a car whoosh by and made the trek back. That wasn’t that long ago. It wasn’t that long ago at all. It has to still be there—forgotten and abandoned.

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