Lisa Gardner - Gone

Dougie seemed indifferent to the physical realm. Pain, cold, heat, hunger. Nothing bothered him. When Rainie mentioned it to Quincy, he’d dug up a research study on how some children, in situations of chronic abuse, learned to disconnect themselves from their own bodies. It was a form of coping, he told her: Their abusers hit them, and the children literally didn’t feel a thing.

That was the first time Rainie had begun to wonder about Stanley Carpenter, to think that perhaps Dougie really was telling the truth. The lack of physical evidence remained puzzling, however. If Stanley was beating his foster son, shouldn’t Dougie have bruises?

A few weeks ago, however, she’d had a startling insight into that riddle. It was shortly thereafter that Dougie had started to hate her in earnest.

“I can’t find any rocks,” she said now. “You?”

“Nope.” Dougie started splashing around the wet floor instead. It kept him distracted and, hopefully, warm.

“Seems odd,” Rainie murmured. “In a basement, you’d think you’d find all sorts of stuff. Discarded tools, old toys, forgotten debris. Guess our friend did his housekeeping.”

Dougie stopped splashing. Across the dim space, she could see him scowl.

“Dougie,” Rainie said quietly, “you know I used to be a police officer, right? I’m trained for these kinds of situations. I’m going to get us out.”

“You’re hurt.”

“You don’t need hair to escape from a basement,” Rainie said lightly.

Dougie’s gaze dropped to her arms. He had felt the cuts, then, and he had understood.

“This is what we’re going to do,” Rainie declared briskly. “We’re going to break those lightbulbs. Then, we’re going to bang real hard on that door and demand food and water and some warm clothes. We’re going to make such a fuss, he’ll have no choice but to open the door. And then, we’re going to play a little game of hide-and-seek.”

“I don’t like hide-and-seek.”

“But this is a good game, Dougie. The man is going to come looking for us, and we’re going to run away from him. We’ll be ghosts, flitting back and forth, quicker than the eye. Before he knows it, you’ll go dashing up the stairs, boom, boom, boom. Once you’re at the top, I want you to run as fast as you can. Out of this house, to the closest neighbor you can find. Then all you have to do is ask them to call the police, and they’ll take it from there.”

Dougie was not an idiot. “If I were the man, I’d bring a gun,” he declared. “Definitely, I’d have at least one gun. And maybe a snake.”

“The man and his gun-and his snake-are my problem, Dougie. You, I just want focused on running up the stairs.”

“I like snakes.”

“All right, here’s the deal: If he brings a snake, you can tackle the snake. But if he brings a gun, then you run for the stairs. Swear it?”

Dougie considered her offer. Finally, he nodded. He spit on his palms, rubbed them together. Rainie spit on her palms, rubbed them together. They shook, Dougie’s version of a solemn vow. They had done it once before, when Dougie had offered to show her his stash of secret treasures and she had sworn never to tell anyone its location.

She still remembered that afternoon. The gray mist shrouding the moss-covered trees. The gnarled old oak with a hollowed-out knot just the right size for a metal lunch box. The impassive look on Dougie’s face as he took out his mother’s charred photo, her soot-covered rosary.

“My mom’s dead,” Dougie had said, the only time he’d ever spoken of her in Rainie’s presence. “So I live with other families. Until I burn things. People don’t like that.”

“Why did you set fire to your mother’s photo, Dougie? I think that would make her very sad.”

“My mother’s dead,” Dougie repeated, as if Rainie didn’t understand. “Dead people don’t feel anything. Dead people aren’t sad.”

Then he looked Rainie right in the eye and tore his mother’s picture in half. Rainie got the message: In Dougie’s world, dead people were the lucky ones. But she was willing to bet that if she snuck back to his treasure trove later in the week, she’d find the battered photo taped back together. Because Dougie still belonged to the land of the living, and he still felt things, no matter how much he hated it.

Now, she and Dougie retreated to the staircase. With no ammunition to throw at the light, there was only one other thing she could think to do.

“Dougie, if you sat on my shoulders, do you think you could reach those bulbs?”

Dougie’s eyes lit up in the dark. “Yes!”

“We’ll take the cotton strips,” Rainie decided, “and wrap them around your hands. You get on my shoulders, and then with your fists, see if you can either break the bulbs or wiggle them out of there.”

“Yes!”

Of course, without use of their hands, getting Dougie on her shoulders was easier said than done. Dougie balanced on the top step. She stood three steps beneath him. He spread his legs. She leaned down and eased him back onto her shoulders.

Very slowly, she straightened. With her arms bent at the elbow, she could just grab his ankles. Her bound wrists, however, limited her movement, making it impossible to counter every motion he made. She had an image of Dougie leaning back too far and both of them crashing down the flight of stairs.

She almost said something, but at the last minute held her tongue. Dougie was unpredictable during the best of times; she didn’t want to give him any ideas.

He shimmied a bit from side to side on her shoulders, trying to get comfortable.

“Okay,” he called down.

Very carefully, she climbed to the top. “Well?” she asked breathlessly, neck aching, legs wobbling.

“I can touch them!” Dougie reported triumphantly.

“Then let’s do it.”

She could feel him stretching up, his body reaching into the black void above them. For a moment, the weight eased off her shoulders and she realized he must be half hanging from the metal grill. She heard creaking, then a load of dust wafted down. Rainie bit her bottom lip to fight the sneeze.

“It’s… stuck,” Dougie gasped.

“Then break the bulbs. Just smash them with your fingers. It doesn’t have to be pretty. But, Dougie… hurry up.”

The strange, painful sensation was returning to her left side, as if electrical currents were ping-ponging madly down her leg. Her left knee spasmed, and for a moment, she feared it would buckle, her entire leg collapsing. She gritted her teeth, fought through the pain. Just this once, for God’s sake. Just this once…

She could feel moisture on her arms. The knife wounds had opened; she’d started to bleed.

Then, the light tinkle of shattering glass.

“I got ’em!” Dougie punched through the first bulb, then the second.

“Oh, thank God.” She eased down one step, then another, collapsing forward and depositing the boy above her. “Good work! Now we just need to-”

The basement door opened. Rainie had an instant impression of dazzling light, haloing a figure in black. She squinted reflexively, throwing up her arms to shield her eyes.

“Holy shit!” the man said.

And Rainie heard herself scream, “Dougie, run!”

She threw herself up the stairs, shoulder connecting with the door just as the man came to his senses and moved to slam it shut. For an agonizing moment, she was suspended on the top step, leaning precariously forward as the door weighed against her. Her eyes were shut, retinas burning from the sudden brightness after living for so long in the dark. She could feel movement against her legs, Dougie scrambling forward.

The weight behind the door suddenly disappeared. She crashed, staggering forward.