Richard Hale - Frozen Past

He looked into her brown eyes and saw she was telling the truth. Something nudged back into place inside of him and he took a breath. “What did it say?”

“The message?”

He nodded.

“Maybe you should wait ‘till you’re sober.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I need to hear it now.”

She looked him in the eyes again and nodded. “Let’s go turn the TV on,” and she stood, reaching for his hand to help him up.

“TV?”

“Yes.”

He grabbed her hand and suddenly felt a little better. He was beginning to feel again and maybe that was a good thing. He stood slowly and leaned on her all the way into the kitchen where his little TV sat on the counter. She turned it on and tuned it to the local CBS affiliate. The story was still running.

Ellie was bound to a chair in some kind of basement. She could hear water dripping nearby just behind her and someone periodically moving around above her through the ceiling. She had no idea how long she had been down here, only that her wrists ached and she had to pee.

She was still groggy from whatever her father had used to knock her out, and her mouth tasted like rubber. It made her a little nauseous and she wished she could have a drink of water. Her mouth was so dry her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth.

“Hello,” she tried to shout, but her voice was just a hoarse squeak. She tried to conjure up some saliva in her mouth, but nothing seemed to come. “Hello!” She managed a little louder this time and she heard what sounded like a chair slide across the floor above her and then footsteps as someone walked over her. A door opened and the footsteps made their way down a staircase getting closer to her. She started to squirm. The man she now knew as her father came from behind her and stood towering in front of her. He was huge and she remembered trying to run into him that night in front of Mr. Lolly’s house. It had been like hitting a brick wall.

He smiled at her and reached out a hand to touch her face. She flinched and turned away. When he did not touch her, she opened her eyes and saw he was now frowning. He moved behind her and worked on her wrists, untying the bindings. Her hands came free and she rubbed them trying to work some feeling back into them.

“Can I have a drink?” she asked.

He walked to a mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. Handing it to her, he sat down in a chair in front of her. She gulped the cold water too fast and started coughing on it. She couldn’t help it, it felt so good.

“Go easy,” he said. “It will make you sick.”

She was surprised at the deep voice. She expected some babbling psychotic fool, but he sounded normal. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“Keep you with me for a bit,” he said.

“Why?”

“You have a purpose in this life and you and I are going to fulfill it.”

She wasn’t following him and her confusion must have shown on her face because he almost chuckled.

“You are destined for something special and I will help you reach it.”

“What am I destined for?”

“Not now,” he said standing. He pointed to the mini-fridge. “Drinks and snacks are in there.” He pointed to another door. “Bathroom there. You cannot escape from here, so don’t even try. You’ll waste your energy and probably hurt yourself. There are no windows and only one door out which is metal and barred with a padlock and strong hasp.” He turned and walked for the steps.

“You are my father,” she said.

He looked at her like she was accusing him of something, which in fact she was.

“Only in blood.” He climbed the stairs and she heard him locking the door behind him. She was alone.

She stood weakly and had to hold onto the back of the chair until the room stopped spinning. Maybe she should sit back down. Looking around the unremarkable space, she saw shelves behind her that held only a few old tin cans and a dilapidated cardboard box. Leaning up against the shelf was a mop inside of a bucket. The floor was bare concrete and the only other furnishings were the chair she had been tied to, the chair her father had sat in, the mini-fridge, and a small table.

She walked slowly around the space and stopped at the door for the bathroom. She opened it and groaned. The bathroom was a closet with a toilet seat sitting on top of a five gallon bucket. A roll of toilet paper was sitting on the floor next to it. She didn’t know if she could do this, but she had to go so bad her screaming bladder won.

It hadn’t been too awful. At least she wouldn’t have to pee her pants.

Feeling a little stronger, she walked over to the mini-fridge and opened it up. A few bottles of water and a single diet soda were on the top shelf. On the bottom sat a turkey sandwich from a vending machine, an orange, a package of peanut butter crackers, and a Ding Dong snack cake. She grabbed the sandwich package and opened it. Taking a bite, she gagged and then spit it out. It was bad. Swigging some more water and rinsing her mouth out, she went into the bathroom and spit the water into the bucket. He was trying to poison her.

She decided she wasn’t hungry, so she went over to the shelf and looked in the tin cans and the box. Nothing of any value in the cans, just some rusty bolts and screws, but the box was a surprise. It was filled with old pictures. Snapshots of her mother and him. She took the box and pulled the chair over to the small table and started going through them. He must have put them in some kind of chronological order because they started off with pictures of the two very young. They looked so happy. Wedding pictures followed along with pictures in front of what looked like a new car, then the house she now lived in with her mother. The trees in the yard were so small and new. Her mother and father (she couldn’t get used to calling him that) were standing in front of the house smiling and holding what looked like a keychain up for the camera. The next picture was of them both standing in the kitchen with tags still hanging off of the appliances. She was looking at him, so happy and content. This couldn’t be the same man who had killed all those kids and now held her captive.

There seemed to be a big jump in time, because the next picture was of her brother as an infant. He was chubby and pink, and holding on to a giant finger. Her father was smiling. The next picture showed the two of them together out front with him holding the baby. He was beaming, but she was not smiling. Ellie had no idea who the photographer was.

She flipped through more pictures of the growing family and a trend was beginning to show. Her father looked happy most of the time, though a few shots looked strained, but her mother rarely smiled and in a few, she wore huge, dark sunglasses that covered half of her face. Her brother was growing and there were pics of him crawling, sitting in a high chair, standing and holding onto a table, and playing with some toys. Her mother was not in any of those. There was one picture of a house she did not recognize. Neither her mother nor her father were in it.

The last ten or so were something else entirely and she held on to each one, feeling the anguish her mother must have been feeling. She was pregnant with what must be Ellie and standing alone, or a step or two away from her husband. He was glowering in most of them, and she never smiled. In one, her mother appeared to have a bruise on her cheek. She wasn’t sure though, because all of these last ten or so had giant red ‘X’s’ drawn over her mother’s face. Added to the last picture in big red letters was the word, ‘Bitch!’

Ellie sat there holding the pictures in her hand, trying to put herself in her mother’s shoes. She shivered at the thought. Her mother had suffered for a long time and this man had been the sole cause of it. Ellie wondered when her mother realized she had married a psychopath. Was it the first year? Second? Or had she known all along, living in denial? Ellie hoped to be able to ask her one day. Somehow she felt her father had other plans.