Page 67 of The Whisper Place
“Valerie?”
“I know where she is.”
Kate
It all made sense now. The kind of sense that wavered in and out of focus, swelling into perfect clarity and then skittering away like bugs in the light.
Every day when Theo came to change my bucket and deliver my rations, he stayed a little longer, talked a little more. He still hunched in front of the door, blocking any path to freedom, and once I caught sight of a crowbar lying near his feet. He wasn’t taking chances, but he also wasn’t in a hurry to leave.
He was alone in this house where he’d lived as a ghost during his childhood, now with the ghost of his abusive father whispering to him from the shadows. I was the only living distraction inside these walls. Maybe that was why he’d taken me.
I drew him out slowly, planning our conversations the entire time between his visits. It was the only thing keeping me sane, my only tether to this reality, and an incredibly fragile one. The spiders still clawed in. I had visions of a prophet being digested by a monster. Screams that echoed inside my head. But I clung to the knowledge that Theo was coming back, memorizing everything he’d said last time and plotting what to ask next. I traced my questionson the clawed walls, murmuring to myself, rocking back and forth in blackness.
And gradually, it worked. Theo talked about how his dad locked him in the time-out room throughout his awful, literally-tortured childhood. A few hours at first, sometimes for the day while Ted went to work. And Theo wasn’t the only one. Ted had imprisoned his first wife, Theo’s mom, in here, too. He sounded clinical when he talked about it, his voice blank and dead. When I asked what happened to her, Theo said she abandoned them. But after he locked the door and went upstairs for the night, I pressed my face to the wood and ran my hands over the long, thin ridges that told a different story.
One day he brought a roll of toilet paper. Another day he brought a thin, used bar of soap. I used half my water that day scrubbing my skin raw and sitting in the sludge like a feral hog. I gradually moved closer to the door when I heard footsteps on the stairs, until we were only a few feet apart during our conversations, and I crouched on my feet the way he did, mirroring him even though I swayed and lost my balance a lot.
Eventually, Theo told me he’d come home one day this spring and found the house empty. Ted’s phone was there, his wallet untouched where it always sat on a bookshelf in the living room. He didn’t tell me how exactly he found out that I’d killed his dad, but the details he dropped were specific. There must have been hidden security cameras, eyes he didn’t want me to know too much about.
And I knew why he hadn’t taken the footage to the police. That morning, when he’d stepped out of the trees surrounding Charlie’s house, there was no more pretending. No more small talk. He knew what I’d done. It shimmered in the morning air, rising in every gaspof my burning lungs. I tried to speak, to hold him off as I fumbled at my pockets, but I couldn’t get the mace out in time. He twisted my arm behind my back, bent me over until I thought my shoulder would snap, and leaned down to whisper in my ear.
“If you’re quiet, I won’t have to hurt him.”
It was dumb, so incredibly dumb, but I flashed to an image of Charlie in bed, the covers twisted, a hairy forearm thrown over his face to block out the sun, and I did what Theo told me. I went quietly.
He put me in the trunk of my own car, the same trunk where Mom and I had chucked our bloody clothes and the shovels and sled. I could smell blood and bleach and exhaust. With every bump and jerk of the road, I could feel clods of dirt hitting the body. I thought it was the worst place I could be trapped until the car stopped. Theo opened the trunk and I saw where we were.
Not at a police station. Not in the woods.
He’d brought me to Ted’s house in Illinois and locked me in the time-out room because he knew. He understood that I would take jail in a heartbeat over this. That I would beg for prison. He’d been locked in here, too, had probably lost his mind inside these walls as completely as I was losing mine. It took someone who’d been tortured to understand what torture was.
And that meant I might understand him, too.
I was leaning against the door, my ear pressed to the wood for what felt like hours, when he opened the door to the basement. There was a lock on that one, too, but not a padlock. It opened with the steady click of a deadbolt that echoed through my skull. I pulled away, scrambling unsteadily back to a spot a few feet from the door and assuming the crouched position he expected by now.
The padlock opened with a key. I could hear the faint scrape and turn as clearly as if it were an airplane roaring overhead. Then the clunk of the padlock being removed and the squeak of the metal plate swinging away from the door. I counted the movements on my fingers, each broken nail pressing in turn against the concrete. The door swung open, revealing Theo in a mirror image to me on the other side. He flashed his light around the room while I hid my face. The routine was familiar now, almost comforting. I hoped he thought so, too.
“Hi,” I said, my face still buried.
He took yesterday’s paper plate and water jug and changed out the bucket. He did that first now, removing the smell of piss and shit, or at least the worst of it, before we started talking. The new food and water would come last, after he was done with me. Sometimes he threw them in and slammed the door. Sometimes he slid them across the doorway like an offering. Once, when I tried to ask him more about his mother, he locked the door without giving me anything. That was the first night I hallucinated the prophet and the whale. Today I was determined not to upset him.
“Thank you,” I said when the bucket was gone. The light lingered on my face and then jerked away. I dropped my hand and chanced looking up.
He leaned against the door, one hand hidden behind the frame, the other rolling the flashlight back and forth on the ground. It threw shadows across the walls, making patterns too sharp and fast to see.
“I know this is a lot of work for you, Theo. And I appreciate it. The fresh buckets, the food, the water.”
The speech was slow and unsteady on my tongue. Even though I’d spent hours memorizing the words, they felt like a foreignlanguage. They could break and split into meaningless sounds at any moment.
Theo spun the flashlight in a circle, making me dizzy. “If you died right away, you wouldn’t be punished properly.”
I nodded, swaying back and forth. The ground was moving underneath me, distracting me as ants crawled over my feet. The passing spin of the flashlight made their shadows breathe. “I know. I understand that now. But I’m still grateful. And I was just hoping . . .” I faded, putting a hand to the floor to stop the rocking. It didn’t help.
“Hoping what?” Theo finally asked.
“Is it too much to ask for tampons?”
Theo froze. The flashlight stopped moving. My hand shook as I took the filthy, blood-covered underwear from where it had been cradled in my lap and dropped it on the floor in front of him. He looked down, disgusted and fascinated, and that’s all I needed.
