Brian Freeman - Thief River Falls

She left the hospital far behind as she drove into the night.

The ruts in the snow at her parents’ house told her the story.

The tire tracks were fresh. Lisa could see where the police car had parked, and she could see the boot marks where they’d gone to and from the doors in the front and back. She could see it all in her mind so clearly that she wished she could claw out her eyes. Deputy Garrett at the front door, Deputy Stoll at the back. The two of them storming into the house, hunting upstairs and downstairs, coming outside with a boy squirming in their grasp.

Tell me you made it to the basement, Purdue.

Tell me they didn’t find you.

Lisa didn’t bother hiding the Camaro this time. She parked at the curb and ran for the door. It was all darkness around her, no lights to be seen. She went inside the house, and she could smell the presence of strange men. The air was cold. Everything was still. Her eyes adjusted, and she could make out familiar shapes, things she’d known for decades. But nothing moved inside the house where she’d grown up. No one made a sound. No one was here. Even the ghosts of her family stayed away and left her alone.

“Purdue?” she called.

Her voice broke and grew plaintive. “Purdue, are you here?”

She knew where she had to go. The basement. If he was still here, that was where he would be. She didn’t even bother with the flashlight on her phone as she made her way in the dark. The house guided her by feel, by years of experience. She found the old basement door that never quite closed right, and it squealed as she opened it. There was a light switch by the stairs, but she left it off. She didn’t want light; she didn’t want anything that was white. Darkness was fine. She took the stairs one at a time, descending underground, feeling the air grow even icier around her. Down here, there was no light at all. None. It was a black box, a coffin, a grave where you could be buried forever.

She inched toward the foundation wall.

As she did, echoes of her childhood caught up with her. She could hear the whisper of Noah’s voice as they played the game and the heavy footsteps of their brothers upstairs, hunting for them.

“Where are we going, Lis?”

“I found a hiding place. It’s the best hiding place ever. They’ll never find us here.”

“But where is it?”

“In the crawl space. Behind Mom’s boxes.”

“No! I don’t like it there. It’s too dark.”

“Big baby, there’s nothing to be scared of in the dark.”

That had been a long time ago. Lisa had learned since then that there were plenty of things to be scared of in the dark.

“Purdue,” she called. “It’s me. It’s Lisa. I’m here — it’s safe to come out.”

No one answered.

“ Purdue. Please. Answer me, my sweet. Tell me you’re here.”

The basement was silent. As silent as a tomb. She had no choice now; she had to turn on the flashlight and fill the walls with a harsh white light. She lit up an old wooden chair. She lit up plastic bins stuffed with old clothes. She lit up children’s games and books and broken fans and the dull steel of the furnace, and finally, she lit up the dirty concrete blocks of the foundation and the dark gap below the floorboards. She saw the boxes where Madeleine had written Noël .

She walked right up to the boxes and shined her light into the blackness. “Purdue?”

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t there. She knew he wasn’t there, but she began to yank out the Christmas boxes anyway, ripping them from their places and dropping them on the floor, hearing the tinkle of glass as fragile ornaments broke. She was destroying her past, destroying what she had left of Madeleine, but she tore away every box until the crawl space was vacant. Until she could see the entire hiding place, where she’d huddled with Noah. The jutting nails in the floorboards that had ripped her clothes. The knots in the wood. The message scrawled in her childish hand on one of the boards in red marker: Lisa and Noah were here .

Empty.

The crawl space was empty. They’d taken him.

Lisa sank down onto the cold floor. She turned off the flashlight and sat in the total darkness. She couldn’t see anything, and all she could hear was the sound of her hopeless sobbing. She cried and cried. She’d failed Purdue. She’d made this boy a promise, and she’d gone back on her word. She’d sworn to keep him safe, and now he was gone forever.

She had no idea how long she sat there. Her skin was frozen to the touch. She cried until she ran out of tears. She had thought the Dark Star that took away her family was the deepest, loneliest galaxy she would ever visit, but somehow, this was even worse. She felt in a trance. And she knew where she had to go, what she had to do. It was as if, for the past two years, there had been a sharpshooter poised near her, taking out the people in her life one by one.

Until there was only one target left.

One more bullet that needed to be fired.

Lisa got off the cold floor. She staggered back to the stairs, still in darkness, and made her way through the family house. First floor. Then the second floor. She was barely aware of what she was doing before she found herself in her parents’ bedroom, with the closet door open. She stared at the metal rod stretching from wall to wall. She remembered opening the door that awful day, seeing her father hanging there, remembered screaming and screaming, unable to do anything but scream until Noah found her and dragged her away.

That old belt. That old brown belt he’d used. How many times had she seen him slip it through the loops in his corduroys? That old belt eventually became a killer.

Lisa had a belt, too.

She undid the buckle and took it off. It dangled from her hand, the hangman’s noose. She knew how to do it, but then, she was an expert, because the picture of her father’s face in the closet was burned into her memory. She could see exactly how the belt had been looped over the rod and tightened around his neck.

I failed you, my sweet.

She could feel them around her now. The ghosts. Gerald. Anton. Charles. Samuel. Madeleine. And Danny. There was room in the cemetery for another plot beside him. She took a confident step into the closet and swung her belt over the high rod. She needed a chair, and there was a makeup chair in the bedroom, so she dragged it into the closet with her.

Lisa climbed onto the chair and rested on her knees.

The belt was right there, waiting for her. All she had to do was tighten the loop around her throat and kick away the chair. Yes, she would struggle. People always did. It was an instinct. But that wouldn’t last long.

She felt strange. She’d expected the ghosts to be happy with her decision. She’d expected to see their arms wide open, welcoming her, smiling, laughing, everyone together again. A dance of the dead. Instead, all she could see were shadows where their faces should be and hear them calling like the whistle of the wind through the old windows. Nooooooooooo. That was what they said. That was what the wind said.

No.

Lisa knelt on the chair for a long, long time, but eventually, she realized she couldn’t do it. She put the chair back. She retrieved her belt and strung it back around her waist. Then she sat on her parents’ bed and wondered what to do. Her whole soul was consumed by emptiness, and she needed to fill it somehow. She needed to do something.

She found herself saying aloud, “Noah, I need you.”

It took her by surprise. Then she said it one more time, and she realized she was crying again.

“Noah, I need help.”