Chapter 5:
Dark Place
ITEM 15: Jillian’s third post-kidnapping journal entry
Item Source: Jillian Blairington
I awoke in a dark place. My head felt fuzzy like it was buzzing. Rolling over hurt ’cause my hands were tied behind me pretty tightly. My arms had a tingly numbness that said the cords were biting into ’em even through my shirt. My feet were bound, too, but that was less annoying. I grunted but that only aggravated my head, so I quit that. My stiff clothes clung to me like a glove, a cold, uncomfortable glove at that.
Danielle.
The thought brought me wide awake, just like a nice bucket of ice water. I sat up too fast and fell over the other way into a cold wall. I shook my head to clear it, only gaining more pain. On the nice side, whoever the meanie-heads were who kidnapped me, they didn’t bother stuffing nothing in my mouth. Leaning my head against the coolness coming from the wall felt good, so I let myself rest there while I thought.
I had another one of those weird dreams where I can hear a conversation I know I shouldn’t be able to. Sometimes I fight these dreams by pushing ’em back and pretending I never heard ’em. It ain’t normal to hear things while you’re sleeping. Only Nana and Dr. S. know it ever happens, but I trust ’em both not to blab it across the world. If we told most doctors, they’d probably wanna study me or something. It’s our secret. I had to tell someone, so this ought to do the trick.
Oh, I suppose Danielle knows, too, but she wouldn’t say nothing to the wrong people. Daddy Three knows, too. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s kid cousin; a lot of people know my secret.
Don’t fret. Don’t fret. No threat means don’t worry yet. Nana said that so it must be true.
“Darren—”
“Shut up; no names!” snapped another man, obviously Darren.
I recognized his voice as that of the first man who kidnapped me.
“You want the little freak to wake up and come hunting you down someday?” demanded Darren.
“You’ve been watching way too many movies, man. That stuff I gave her would take down an angry pit bull.”
“You don’t know these kids like I do,” Darren muttered. “Freaks, all of them.”
“I thought you said we only wanted the little kid. I don’t like this complication. The—”
“You saw how the kid reacted,” Darren replied. His voice sounded quiet but mean, like a coiled spring fixing to take someone’s eye out. “Besides, kidnapping and murder will draw just as much attention as a double kidnapping. This way, at least the boss can put his own spin on it. He can kill the other girl later if he wants, but it’s a lot harder to undo a murder.”
The two men fell quiet.
“Aw, stop it. You’re like an old, worrying woman,” Darren said, breaking the brief silence. “We’re getting paid well enough, aren’t we?”
“Money’s one thing, but I didn’t sign on to snatch kids.”
“Think of her as an overgrown lab rat,” Darren said soothingly. “The experiment failed, and we’re here to clean up the mess.”
“Clean up? As in kill?”
That’s all of the conversation I remember. Only hearing part of the conversation is probably the most frustrating part of the dreams. Overall, it’s a pretty useless skill to have, though I must say I’ve probably overhead more Christmas and birthday gifts than anyone else in the world. The downside is that anytime I say something I’m not supposed to know Momma just thinks I’ve been eavesdropping on her. I guess she’s right, but subconscious eavesdropping don’t count. Dr. S. says I ought to tell Momma about the dreams, but she don’t know Momma like I do. Momma would probably bust a button if she knew.
I replayed the dream a few times, kinda hoping to remember the rest. I had that eerie feeling they was talking about me and not in a good way.
Got to find Danielle.
I moaned, wanting to ignore the thought, but an answering moan made me whip my head around. The sudden movement brought sharp pain to the back of my head, and it really was a rather stupid thing to do since the whole place was dark anyway.
“Danielle?” I called. My voice barely came out as a whisper. I swallowed and tried to work up enough spit to move my tongue about.
Some rustling sounds said she was moving about a little. The moans and groans coming from her said she’d probably gotten the same thing I had gotten. Whatever the drug was, it wasn’t very nice to one’s head.
“Jillian?” Danielle called. She sounded unsure, like she wanted to not hear me reply.
“I’m …”
Something shifted in my head, and I passed out again. I think I fell over. I dreamed again, too. This time, I saw a man in a dark blue suit with a bright red tie talking on a phone. His words didn’t mean much to me at the time, but I listened anyway, as I hadn’t yet figured out a way to break out of one of those dreams.
“Tell the governor I’m working on it. He can pay the ransom if he wants to, but it’s not going to help. If he wants Benjamin back, he’s going to have to trust me.”
The dream ended with the sound of a door opening. Really bright white light streamed in. I whipped my head away but not before getting a painful eyeful of light. Tears sprang to my eyes even though I had ’em clenched shut. The door swung shut again, pitching the room back into deep darkness. A short while later, a candle was lit somewhere above my head. Now that I think on it, I guess everything was above my head ’cause I was lying down.
A warm, comforting hand landed gently on my forehead. “Shhh, it’s all right now,” whispered a woman with a funny accent. Her voice reached out and begged to be trusted. It felt kinda comforting, like the softness of the candlelight.
I thought the voice might have sounded familiar, but then again, I was a bit out of sorts at the time.
“All will be right again soon,” said the lady. “You’ll be back with your mum before you know it.”
The attempt at friendliness tore something inside me. It made
me so mad I cried, sending salty tears and snot all down my face. A lot of things frustrated me. I felt real lonesome; though that was stupid ’cause Danielle was not farther than strong spitting distance. I missed Momma and Nana and Jimmy and my New Daddy all at once.
Without another word, the woman brushed at my face with a tissue.
It bothered me that I couldn’t see her. The candlelight made me blink, and I was blubbering too much to take notice of her looks.
I want to go home!
I held in the whine ’cause it wouldn’t have done any good to say it.
“There now, no more crying. All will be explained in time. The more you cooperate, the less we’ll have to hurt your friend.” The lady spoke the threat in such a pleasant voice that it took a full three seconds for her meaning to kick me in the teeth.
I sniffled, trying to stop crying and failing at it pretty handily. I breathed so hard I gave me the hiccups. That just made matters worse, but at least the woman laughed a little and didn’t talk no more about hurting Danielle.
My tummy grumbled something fierce. Nana woulda been horrified.
The woman stopped brushing at my face with her tissue and leaned back. Her ankles cracked with the movement. After a short pause, she stood up. Her voice floated down at me from the darkness above as she said, “I’ll send Dustin in with some food momentarily. You mind what I said about cooperating and this will be over and done with.”
***
ITEM 16: Danielle’s second journal entry
Item Source: Danielle Matheson, via 54 Post-it notes
I woke up with the headache of all headaches. Whatever that big jerk had shoved into my arm was like drinking hard and taking meth at the same time. (Not that I obtained that bit of knowledge via personal experience.) A very nasty kick in the head would have been kinder. In addition, my arm ached like I’d had a dozen shots and then pitched thirty innings of softball. My hands still stung too, but everything else hurt so much that that particular pain seemed negligible. I tried shaking my head, hoping that would clear away the pain. Big mistake. The pain morphed from not-so-good to very painful to excruciating. It felt like my brains wanted to leak out my ears. If that would have stopped the pain, I’d have been tempted to take the trade.
My first thought was, Owwwww. And my second thought was Jillian!
I think I said her name out loud, but I can’t be sure because I’m pretty sure I passed out again. I seemed to be doing a lot of that. I might have opened my eyes or just thought I did. It didn’t really matter because, like I said, I didn’t stay with it very long. I sensed another person in the room and had the sensation like I wanted to vomit before blissful nothingness slipped me past the headache.
The second time I woke up, I forced myself to lie still and finish the waking process with the least pain possible. Not that I could have moved anyway, since these people obviously had trust issues and had tied me up as well as giving me that wonderful naptime cocktail. My headache came back down to tolerable levels, though every heartbeat was like a dull hammer being slammed to the floor millimeters from my skull. My eyes felt all gummy like I’d slept for a month; my eyeliner must have melted or something.
I must look a scary sight.
I winced, partly at the head pain but mostly at the stupidity of worrying about my eyeliner at a time like this.
Someone had left a candle burning a few feet from my head.
Well, that’s dangerous.
Nevertheless, I let myself enjoy the candle’s comforting glow.
What do I do?
Thinking was hard, thanks to my drug-muddled brain. I spent a full minute concentrating on breathing deeply and letting my mind wander back through the last few hours, trying to ignore the clammy touch of my clothes against my skin. Futile as it was, I desperately wanted to find something I could have done differently to make things turn out better.
The tingly sensation in my arms reminded me that my first priority ought to be to get loose.
How in the world did Nancy Drew do this a dozen times?
If Nancy were a real person, she’d probably have brain damage from the number of times she’s been knocked out via good old-fashioned brute force. If this was the price one paid to be a detective, I’d have quit the first time a threatening note floated my way. But I hadn’t been threatened, neither had Jillian, or her family, to my knowledge.
What gives? Why me? I practically whined the questions.
A rumble from deep within my stomach made me resent the kidnappers’ lousy sense of timing.
Ten minutes, just ten minutes, and we would have been happily fed.
Frustrated, I flexed my arms, trying to loosen the bonds. I succeeded only in hurting my arms.
Use your senses!
I closed my eyes and listened, only to hear my stomach announce its empty state again. I sniffed in deeply, which was dumb seeing as I was currently on the floor and probably besieged by a million dust mites. It made my nose itch, but I squelched the urge to sneeze.
“The lady said she was gonna send Dustin in with some food,” Jillian said. She sounded strange, older and calmer somehow. Her voice was not defeated per se, but it held a calculating quality I’d never heard before from anyone, let alone a child.
I craned my neck around to see her, but it was awkward because I’d landed on the floor near the center while she was somewhere near the back wall, effectively above my head. I could tell the room was tiny, even though the candlelight led to lousy depth perception. Sometimes you can just sense things like that. It’s like the walls were all crowding purposefully close, trying to make us sense their presence. Or maybe the drug was just playing with my head.
“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to hold my voice steady. Nearly gave myself a sore throat for my trouble.
Why doesn’t she sound scared?
“Hungry,” Jillian replied. Her Southern drawl sounded longer through the semi-darkness. “This place is mighty creepy.”
“The whole situation’s creepy,” I agreed.
The door swung open, blinding us both. I groaned and blinked furiously, not that it did much good.
“Are you here to be my friends?” asked an absurdly young voice.
I’m in a bad dream. I’m in a bad dream.
I tried to pinch myself but the ropes holding my arms stymied me. Eyes streaming tears, I squinted hard. The figure silhouetted in the doorway appeared tall, but I assumed that was due to my poor vantage point.
“Mum says you should eat now,” said the boy. “Here, roll over, I need to cut the ropes. She told the chaps not to tie you up, but they only listen to her sometimes.”
My brain rapidly tried to take it all in and respond, but I couldn’t get past the general impression that this kid could have been a male clone of Jillian. I didn’t have to see his face to hear the bouncy energy that zipped through the air around him. The British version of mom threw me as well, but my weird factor was pretty much maxed out for the month.
I did as the boy instructed, figuring if he was going to stab me to death it could hardly make my situation much worse. I’m usually not that fatalistic, but like all people, I have my weak points and my breaking points. I was hurtling toward a breaking point.
It took the boy about a minute to cut through the ropes around my ankles. As soon as he finished, I shook my legs, grateful to be able to move again.
“Dustin, are you done yet?” inquired a woman’s voice.
“Not yet, mum,” Dustin answered.
The woman came into view a few seconds later. By this time, my eyes had adjusted enough to the hallway light so that I could look at her without tearing up.
“Well, if you turned on the lights, it might go a good bit faster,” the woman commented. She waved her hand at a sensor on the wall and the room lit cheerfully, making me blink. “Here now, why don’t I finish up with this one while you catch your sister up?”
I can recall her words clearly enough now, but at the time, the whole sister comment went right over my head.
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