Alice Henderson - Voracious

Her stomach went sour as she rose, trying to make out the shape behind the curtain: a woman.

The knock came again, but Madeline stood frozen in the middle of the tiny apartment. After a moment’s hesitation she sat back down, opening her book once more. Then the knocking started again. Incessant knocking.

“Madeline?” came a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. “Are you in there?”

Who the hell?

“Please, Madeline. It’s a matter of life and death. We need you.”

Need her? No one had ever needed her before. Avoided her at all costs, but not needed her.

“It’s my daughter. She’s missing.”

The book fell out of Madeline’s loose fingers. Slowly she rose to her feet, then walked numbly to the door. Pulling aside the little curtain, she saw Natalie Stevenson, a young mother who had often whispered about Madeline at the grocery store or in the line at the post office.

“Your mom told me where I could find you,” Natalie said through the glass.

“My mom?” A daze filled Madeline’s head. She didn’t realize her parents knew anything but her PO address.

“Please.” Natalie’s tearstained face was pitifully red and swollen.

Then Madeline felt herself opening the door though everything inside her screamed to just lower the curtain and walk away.

Ten minutes later, Madeline raced across a field behind the Stevensons’ house, clutching the last thing little Kate Stevenson had been known to touch; a small robot action figure. She tried not to stumble, speeding faster and faster as she leapt through the tall grass. Clearing her mind, she let the images come to her freely.

The little girl in a white dress, playing and laughing behind the Stevensons’ house with a stuffed dinosaur and the robot toy.

Two older boys approaching. Teasing the little girl about her dad. “He’s a drunk.”

The girl, defiant at first. “No, he’s not.”

The boys continue taunting, malice in their eyes. “Saw him. Wrecked the company car. He’s a useless drunk.”

The girl, sobbing. “No, he’s not!”

“Didn’t you hear? Old Man Taggert fired him. You’re going to starve. He won’t work in this town again.”

“No!” The little girl dropping the robot, running out of the yard, clutching her dinosaur. Entering the field at the edge of the property.

The boys laughing, staying behind.

Madeline ran on. The blond grass whipped and stung her bare legs below her shorts.

In a place where the grass was smashed flat, she spotted something brown. She raced to the spot and looked down. The brown, furry face of a brontosaurus smiled up at her. Bending over, she picked up the toy. Emotions swept over her. Images.

The little girl in the white dress sobbing uncontrollably in the grass, chest heaving, thinking about her dad, of the stink of alcohol on his breath.

Memories of a time the girl had spied on him from the stairs as he pulled a bottle of vodka out from behind the worn couch cushions and took a long, deep drink.

The girl kneeling in the grass for a long time, sobbing until her chest shuddered when she inhaled.

Then dropping the dinosaur and running on, toward her secret place, a lightning-scarred hollow tree beyond the old dam.

The girl had left for it just a few moments before.

Clutching the brontosaurus tight under her arm, Madeline raced forward. Ahead lay the edge of the woods. Beyond that burbled the rushing white water of the North Cascade River and the old cement dam, abandoned in the 1940s. She raced to the edge of the woods and entered the forest, the rich scent of sun-warmed pine greeting her. Following the worn path that dam workers had used decades before, she strained her ears for any sound of the girl, but the gentle whisper of wind in the pine needles muffled the sounds around her. A pounding cacophony erupted, slowing her pace, but she realized instantly it was a woodpecker, high in the trees, thrumming away on a decaying tree. She ran on.

Soon the roar of white water replaced the whisper of wind. The air temperature dropped noticeably as the cool air blew off the river. The old dam came into view, a narrow expanse of concrete built over the tumbling teal water. The large turbines had been removed in the ’40s, leaving large holes through which the water now filtered.

On one side of the dam the glacier-fed river ran wide and deep. In the beginning of the century, when the dam was still relatively new, a lake had formed on that side of the barrier. But over the years it slowly drained away as more and more cracks opened in the old cement. On the other side of the dam, water gushed from the turbine holes with explosive force, returning to its native river form, free from its man-made confines.

Madeline stopped, staring at that white churning water, a vivid memory of her friend Ellie floating down those seething depths. She couldn’t do this. Not the river.

She stopped short of crossing the dam and looked around for the girl. “Kate!” she yelled. The roar of the water filled her ears. Even if the girl yelled back, Madeline might not be able to hear her.

The hollowed-out tree lay on the other side of the dam. To reach it, Madeline would have to walk out over the top of the dam, a narrow ridge of concrete spanning the rapids below. She hadn’t crossed that dam since the day she lost Ellie. She couldn’t do it again. “Kate!” she called.

Nothing.

Kneeling down into the soft bed of pine needles, she touched the edge of the dam, hoping to get an image that would tell her if the girl had run this far. Her fingers rested on the rough concrete, and images rushed into her.

Kate, reaching the dam and starting across it, hands thrust out to maintain her balance, eyes blurring with tears, barely able to see the concrete ridge under her feet.

Balance failing, arms windmilling, the girl, terrified, falling over the side.

Freezing water engulfing her, desperate swimming, rough rocks banging her knees and scraping her arms.

Then the black mouth of the turbine hole fast approaching, the water sucking her inside. Crashing into a clump of sharp debris on the opposite side of the hole, held there, stuck there, lungs burning with lack of air as the water flooded past her body, stealing her warmth.

Trying to scramble free, but too weak against the strength of the current, too hung up in long, snaking arms of old, slimy branches.

Madeline gasped and straightened up.

The girl was drowning.

Or dead already. Ellie.

Without thinking, she dropped the stuffed dinosaur and robot, tore off her boots, threw them to the side, and ran onto the dam. Leaping off where the girl had fallen, she drew in a breath as she plunged into the icy cold below. Instantly the numbing water knocked the air from her chest. She fought to the surface, gasped in fresh air, and then plunged back in, swimming up next to the dam. The force of water against her was incredible, and for a moment she didn’t think she’d be able to move where she wanted. It slammed her against the side of the dam and held her there.

The turbine holes lay on the bottom of the dam, and she managed to creep downward, using the force of water to steady herself against the dam. Her eyes wide in the clear water, she found the edge of an opening and pulled herself downward to peer inside.

White fabric filled the hole, plastered against the tumble of branches and mud beyond, and she realized it was the little girl’s dress, tossed in the powerful current. The hole reached back at least three feet, and Madeline could barely make out the girl’s hair-plastered face, just a hint of pale in the turbulence among a dozen twigs and sticks and leaves spiraling madly inside. While the openings in the debris were certainly large enough for water to get through, they weren’t large enough for a human to escape.