NINETEEN
Erin’s eyes snapped open at the sound of heavy footsteps against the ground. Her space inside the box was so cramped she could hardly move.
Her claustrophobia was real, making her heart race. Breathe. Calm down.
Pressing her lips together, she forced herself to remain quiet. If the footsteps continued on, she would scream. Because that could mean there were other people, hired help who came by to feed the animals. Even now she could hear pigs grunting and ducks quacking. The rooster would crow at sunrise.
But if the footsteps stopped, that would mean it could be him. In that case, she would stay quiet. If he opened the lid, she could use the splinters of wood she’d collected to gouge his eyes out.
Being confined did strange things to her mind. She had no idea how long she’d been in the box. She’d been drifting in and out of sleep, hot during the day and cold at night.
Two nights or three?
If she thought about it for too long, she could convince herself she’d been trapped in the cramped space for a lifetime.
Dry mouth and stomach cramps made her crave water and food. She’d eaten a couple of bugs that had dared to creep inside her space. Or had she imagined eating the bugs?
Waiting, trying not to make a sound, she lifted her arms a few inches. Up and down, up and down. Keep the muscles working. Inwardly, she recited Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to keep her mind occupied on anything other than the footsteps. Stay strong. Be ready.
The footsteps stopped, seemingly right outside the box.
She froze. It was him.
Holding tight to the pieces of jagged wood, her fingers clenched tightly around her makeshift weapons.
“Good morning, Erin. Are you still in there?” he asked.
The sound of his voice gave her goose bumps. She closed her eyes, swallowed her fear.
“If you want any chance of getting out of there alive, you need to follow orders, my darling Erin. Do you hear me?”
The clinking of metal sounded. A lock?
Sunlight poured in. Blinding her.
And then she felt a single drop of water hit her forehead.
Squinting one eye, she saw that he hadn’t opened the lid, but only a tiny door above her face. How had she missed that?
It was small. The size of a single pack of cigarettes. There was no way she could move her arms, let alone take a swing at him.
“You must be thirsty,” he said. “Open your mouth.”
She did as he said, her mouth parched.
A handful of dirt hit her face. She spit and coughed. Dirt got in her eye. Tears dribbled down both sides of her face. He was taunting her and enjoying it.
“Good girl,” he said. “Just having a little fun. Come on. Open up. This time I’ll give you some water. I promise.”
She kept her mouth shut. Said nothing. If she opened her mouth, he might shove something worse than dirt inside.
He knelt down close enough that she could see his face clearly through a squinted eye. “You’ve spent two nights in the box without food or water. I know you’re thirsty. So open up or I’ll have to force the issue.”
He knelt down and pinched her nose closed. When she opened her mouth to take a breath, he shoved an upside-down open water bottle into her mouth. She swallowed once before she felt as if she were drowning. She couldn’t breathe. She yanked her head to one side, forcing him to let go of her nose and drop the water bottle.
She sucked in air through her nostrils, then coughed and wheezed.
“If you had followed orders,” he told her, “you were going to get to feast on fresh vegetables and fine cheese.” He laughed. She knew it was a lie. This was all part of his psychological torture.
“But now,” he went on, his tone filled with false sorrow, “I can see that you’re not ready to cooperate with me, which means you’ll have to share your tiny space with my friend S-S-S-Stan. I found him in the garden. He looks pretty harmless—for a snake, that is.”
She screamed as the heaviness of the snake’s body slid across her face and neck. And then again when the tiny door above clicked shut.
He stood there for a moment, hands on hips, listening to her muffled screams and looking out at the pasture, where he could see the gray mare. The box used to be in the barn, but a few years ago he’d decided it was time to burn it and get rid of it once and for all. He’d dragged it down the dirt path toward the house, but it was heavy, and he’d gotten only halfway before changing his mind. Now the box sat in a grassy spot at the side of the pathway leading from the house to the barn.
After Erin stopped screaming, he walked away, surprised to realize how much he missed Garrett. Garrett had been the only one of his sheep who had done everything he asked and more. He’d never complained, never cried or whined. And now he was dead, thanks to the bitch in the box.
The box was not a fun place to be, and it might teach Erin Hayes a lesson, just as it had taught him once. His father used to put him in the box a few times a year. The first time he’d thought he would die and nobody would ever find him.
When he’d turned twelve, not long after Sue Sterling had paid them a visit, things had changed.
For the worse.
His father had become creative with his methods of torture. Instead of putting his only son’s splayed hands on a red-hot burner, beating him with a belt, or throwing him in the box, he’d found ways to exploit his fears and phobias. His dad had begun to threaten to cut off his feet or his ears or peel off his fingernails. Psychological torture at its best. Designed to mess with his mind and cause stress. He’d lost sleep thinking about what his father might do. Never mind what he’d already done.
He’d once found a book his father had been reading about torture from medieval times to modern day. After Sue Sterling’s visit, his father had learned to torture in ways that didn’t leave marks. He used a cane to whip the soles of his feet. The worst pain was when his father had extracted a sore tooth because Mom was not allowed to take him to the dentist. After his dad had attempted to pull the molar, part of the bone that had supported the tooth had shifted and poked through his gum. It took about a year for the exposed bone to erode and for the pain to subside.
After feeding the chickens and collecting eggs from the coop, he gathered a tin can of oats, a brush, and a shovel before making his way to the pasture, where he clicked his tongue and waited for Misty, an old swayback mare, to see him and come his way. Misty was his best friend. The only living creature in the world he cared about.
As soon as Misty spotted him, she trotted his way. As she ate the oats he’d brought her, he pulled the brush from his back pocket and used the soft bristles to rub the horse’s neck. “How are you doing, girl? You look good.”
Misty lifted her head and looked toward the barn, ears perked.
“It’s okay, girl. He’s not going to hurt you. Never again. Dog is locked up in the basement, remember? He’s living in the cell he built with his own two hands.”
Misty went back to eating.
“I know. I should have killed him already, but that would have been much too easy—for him, not me. The man caused Mom and me and you nothing but grief. Not a day went by that he didn’t call me weak and stupid. He needs more time to think about the things he did wrong. He deserves to be punished, maybe for eternity.”
Even as he spoke the words out loud, he knew they weren’t true. He wasn’t weak and stupid. He was strong. He was a survivor. He didn’t want to hurt people, but he felt as if he had no choice. Sue Sterling could have stopped his father, but she’d chosen to ignore what she’d seen with her own eyes.
And what about all those other people who’d seen the cigarette burns on his hand and the infected bite marks all over his body? In the end, nobody cared. He wasn’t heartless. They were.
After Misty finished the oats, he surprised her with a carrot. Then he patted her on the rump, grabbed the shovel, and made his way to the big oak tree in the middle of the pasture.
As he’d been doing for as long as he could remember, he put his ear against the trunk and listened to the vibration as the tree hummed with life. Seconds passed before he gazed out at the tall grass and weeds, then turned so that he faced west. He then counted his steps until he found a plot of ground that had not been disturbed and began to dig.
He would need two holes. Or maybe just one this time. He had an idea. It had been a while since he’d purposely staged a corpse for the authorities to find. If his calculations were correct, there were six bodies buried in the pasture. Every once in a while he liked to change things up, though, and leave a corpse or two somewhere shocking, somewhere small kids and their uptight parents would run into the dead body, a sight that would be forever ingrained in their brains.
It was always risky, but also exciting, making what he did for a living so much more fun.
At that very moment, he remembered the girls stored away in the extra refrigerator in the garage. He’d been so busy he’d forgotten all about them. How long had they been in there, he wondered. A year? Maybe two?
One thing for sure, he needed to get Garrett out of the house. The stench of his decaying body had already filled the basement and the room above.
His mind was made up.
One hole was all he needed.
He had no idea how long Erin Hayes would last in the box, especially since he planned to torture her with hope, his favorite kind of torture. He would give her enough water and food to keep her hanging on by a thread. And he would feed her words of encouragement. Tell her everyone was looking for her and that he was even thinking about letting her go.
All lies.
“What are you doing?”
His head snapped up at the sound of a female voice. She stood there, watching him work. He dropped his shovel. How had he not seen her standing there before? “Zee? What are you doing here?”
“I spent all day in the park waiting for you to come. When you didn’t show up, I decided it was time to go in search of you.”
Her straight black hair was a tangled mess, and her long dark jacket that flared at the knees was torn and dirty. Her face was smudged with dirt and blood. He leaned closer. Yep. She’d definitely suffered a bloody nose.
There were many miles between Rainbow Park and his small farm. How could she have possibly found him? It defied reason. He’d known within minutes of their first meeting that she was highly irrational. She had multiple brain disorders, including schizophrenia. He’d studied mental disorders in college. He knew all about her illness, which was why she’d fascinated him the moment he met her. Without medication and therapy, she had to be a walking time bomb. “Have you been taking your medication?”
“What are you digging a hole for?” she asked, ignoring his question. She looked around, then marched through high grass and stopped at a rectangular-shaped patch of ground that had been disturbed.
Garrett’s wife was buried there. Grass and weeds had sprouted, but it would take a while before Mother Nature did its thing and the grass grew tall enough to hide the spot from curious eyes.
“That was my last compost area,” he said happily. “It was time to make a new one. Once I dig the hole, I’ll add newspaper clippings, wood chips, and dry leaves to get it started. After that I can put kitchen waste, food scraps, et cetera, into the pile, and it’ll all make for a wonderful fertilizer for my garden.” He pointed to his right, where even from here he could see juicy red tomatoes growing from a vine. He’d always prized himself on his green thumb.
She looked semi-impressed. But then, in the blink of an eye, she pointed to the house. “Is that where you live?”
He raked his dirty fingers through his hair. “Why are you here, Zee?”
“Why didn’t you come to see me?” she shot back, angry.
He wasn’t ready to tell her the truth, that he’d come upon a young woman stranded on the side of the road and couldn’t pass up such a golden opportunity. So he asked, “Can I be honest with you?”
“You know you can.”
“I was afraid that if I kept coming around, you would grow tired of me,” he lied. “I couldn’t let that happen.” He did his best to appear forlorn, as if he gave one shit about her.
She wasn’t the touchy-feely sort. He knew that because his hand had accidentally brushed against hers once in the park, and she’d had a conniption. But still, he thought she’d at least try to comfort him with kind words. Instead she started walking across the pasture, following the path toward the house.
Damn it! He grabbed the shovel and started after her.
Zee was only a few feet from the box when Erin decided to yell for help. Zee ran that way, stopping right outside the box. “Is someone in there?”
“Help! Get me out of here!”
Zee looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide and questioning.
He hated to hurt her, but she’d left him with no other choice. “This is your fault,” he told Zee as he raised the shovel and swung hard.
Bam. Zee fell to the ground.
“What’s going on?” Erin cried. “Who’s out there?”
“You should have kept your mouth shut,” he told the stupid girl in the box as he knelt down close to Zee’s crumpled body and watched the thin line of blood trickle down from the top of her head and across her nose. “Look what the bitch made me do.”
He dropped the shovel, grabbed two fistfuls of Zee’s hair, and dragged her toward the house.