David Silva - The Disappeared

“No, it’s not the best part of town. I think I’ll look for somewhere else to stay tonight.”

The lieutenant took a business card out of the middle drawer of the desk and handed it to him. “Give me a call and let me know where you’re staying, all right?”

“Sure,” Michael said, glancing down at the card. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

Someone was in the apartment.

Teri was sure she had heard the front door close. She pulled back the bed sheets and sat up, her heart frantically racing a track in her chest. She grabbed her robe off the foot of the bed, tied the sash around her waist, and went to the bedroom door to listen.

“Time to get up, little missy.”

A whisper.

A man’s voice.

Close.

The bedroom door was unlocked. Teri reached out, her hands trembling, and engaged the lock, then took several absent steps backward. It wasn’t Walt, she knew that much. And she didn’t want to think who it might be. Only that it might be no one at all, just the sounds of a strange apartment.

“Little miss—ssie,” came another call, and there was no mistaking this for the creak of an old floor board or the wail of a hot water heater.

Teri fell back on the bed, and grabbed at the phone with a sudden loss of motor skill that knocked the receiver off the cradle. The receiver did not reel in easily, but slammed first off the bed frame, then off the night stand before she was able to regain control of it. She tapped out a desperate 9-1-1, and raised the phone to her ear.

She was suddenly breathing heavily, and for a moment all she heard was the sound of the air entering and exiting her lungs. It was the sound of someone just beginning to lose her breath.

“Come on! Come on! Come on!”

No answer.

Teri hadn’t taken her eyes off the door, even as she had dialed. Now, as she hammered out the numbers again, she thought she could see the brass door knob beginning to turn and the sight sent a wave of dread through her body.

“Little miss—ssie .”

The voice was not one she recognized. That piece of information swirled around inside her head, compared itself with the voice of Mitch, and then concluded she really couldn’t be certain one way or the other. Teri held her breath and listened to the phone. The reality—that there was no dial tone—took a moment before it sank in like a heavy stone upon her chest. There was no dial tone. The phone was dead.

“Time to get up, little sleepy-head.”

This was followed by what at first sounded like a huge explosion. Teri’s body did the rattle of a marionette and she let out a whimper that felt shameful. He had brought his fist down against the hollow-core door like a hammer. She dropped the phone

“Gonna let me in, little miss—ssie ?”

No, I’m not going to let you in.

There was an aluminum-sash window into the room, covered by a thin veil of curtains that did little to keep the sunlight out during the day. Teri had opened and closed the window several times since she had begun her stay here, and she knew outside was a two story drop to a concrete walkway below. She looked from the door to the window, back again, and found herself unlatching the window and gazing down at the cold, chalky concrete below.

Behind her, the man’s fist came down against the door again, sending a wave of thunderous hot air rolling across the room like an earthquake. Teri felt it pass through her. She recoiled and briefly considered the window again.

“No way to treat a guest now is it?” he said.

It was his foot that came down against the door next. He had wound up for this one, she imagined, because the door splintered around the molding and made an ugly sound that reminded her of a bone breaking.

He tried the knob again, unsuccessfully. Then, drunkenly, sloppily, added, “Almost together again, dearie.”

Teri started for the lamp on the night stand, on the far side of the bed, closest to the door. One final kick and the door exploded into the room, nearly torn completely from its hinges. In the doorway, like an image out of a nightmare, stood the silhouette of a man whose entire body seemed to be venting rage. His glowering eyes narrowed. He swung his arm across his body and slammed his fist sidelong into the door, and didn’t flinch when Teri knew it must have hurt. A cut opened across the back of his hand. Blood began to gush forth in a crimson tide.

“Together at last.”

There was a moment of paralysis in Teri’s mind when she realized this was not the man she had expected, nor was it a man she knew. His eyes, which had narrowed at first, now seemed to grow larger. She shook herself free of the paralysis and wrapped her hands around the cool ceramic base of the lamp. In one swift motion, as he crossed the distance between them and reached for her, Teri swept the lamp off the night stand and swung it.

The motion startled him slightly. He tried to pull back and the lamp caught him across the face with little force. The shade collapsed and left a mark where the metal frame had scratched him on the cheek. It turned bright ruby red almost instantly, and Teri thought how close the color of blood matched the color of his eyes.

“Jesus! You little bitch!”

The man’s face flared. He swung wide with a closed fist and his knuckles brushed past Teri’s face so close she could feel the air current across her ear. She fell back against the wall with a heavy thud. The back of her head took the brunt of the impact.

A moment passed, maybe two, but no more than that, then Teri drifted dreamily into a wistful, ethereal duskiness. She smiled, drunkenly, and let herself be drawn all the way into the darkness.

When she awoke, only a scant few seconds later, Teri found herself on the bed, her legs dangling over the edge, the man hovering above her. He grinned through tobacco-yellow teeth and let out a laugh that smelled sour from whiskey. “Welcome back, little missy. Couldn’t bring yourself to miss this part, eh?”

He was tugging at something, and for a moment Teri thought—rather crazily she was soon to realize—that he was trying to make the bed with her on it. He gave another tug. Then Teri rose the final wave up from her blissful reprieve and realized it wasn’t the bed sheets he was tugging at… it was her panties.

She managed to position her knee between herself and the man’s chest, feeling a bit dull all the same and wondering distantly how she had put herself in this position of fending off a complete stranger. For a moment, he seemed to brighten with her resistance, his lips curling back into an odd mutation that was part grin, part sneer. Then Teri flexed her leg and brought her foot up solidly against the man genitals.

A huge sour breath poured out of his mouth, followed closely by a coarse, throaty groan. He fell back against the wall, both hands clutching at his crotch.

Teri rolled off the side of the bed, landed on her feet and was out of the bedroom faster than she had ever imagined possible. She stumbled her way down the hall, hands pushing against the walls, keeping her from losing her balance. In her mind, she quickly made the decision to go for the front door. Surprisingly, though, the man was right behind her, moving with care now, in obvious pain, but moving just the same.

She rounded the corner and followed her instincts into the kitchen.

Behind her, realizing she had trapped herself, the man stopped in the doorway. He was bent over and breathing hard, his face flushed an angry red. “When I get done, bitch, it’s gonna take ’em a month to piece you back together again.”

His left hand was pressed flat against his belly, as if he were trying to keep his intestines from spilling out. A knife materialized, seemingly out of thin air, in his right hand. He raised it to eye level and the light from down the hall glinted off the cold steel blade like the last light of her life.