There were three windows, but each had been barred widthwise with planks of plywood, leaving only thin slits through which to view outside. She peered through the narrow opening of the window above the sink. A rolling forest of pines, elms, and maples receded from the house to an ashen horizon, but the landscape told her nothing about where they were being held. Metro Atlanta was full of wooded areas.
The door to the walk-in closet was at the other end of the bathroom; the knob was missing from that door, too. She pushed it open, and found a vacant, musty space crisscrossed with cobwebs.
A roll of cheap toilet paper stood atop the tank lid. She flipped up the cover. The bowl was dry, no running water, but she didn’t care.
She nudged the door shut with her foot, yanked down her sweat suit bottoms and panties-it took a bit of shimmying to do it with her hands bound-and lowering herself onto the cold seat she emptied her bladder.
She thought of Jada having to urinate with that giant pervert looming nearby. An almost crippling wave of rage crashed through her.
Hold on to that emotion, she told herself. Bottle it up. Save it for when the moment is right.
After finishing on the toilet, she checked out the double sink vanity. A big mirror, shaped like half a moon, had been affixed to the wall. Her reflection in the glass was murky, as if she were as insubstantial as a ghost that might fade into the shadows at any moment.
Vaguely troubled by the sight, she looked away and got on her knees. She opened the cherry wood cabinet doors. In the dimness inside, she noticed a faint glimmer.
She squinted, leaned in closer.
It was a length of drainage pipe, curved at one end like a candy cane, about six inches long and an inch in diameter.
She carefully dug it out. She hefted it in her hands, pleased by its weight.
If she swung it at someone and connected, it could do serious damage.
Returning to the bedroom, she concealed the pipe underneath the mattress, near the baseboard.
Like her rage, she would save it for an opportune time.
Getting to her feet again, she crossed to the bedroom door. Someone had hung the door so that the hinges and the lock were on the outside of the room. She turned the brass knob. As she anticipated, it was locked.
Next, she went to the closest window. Two strips of thick wood covered it widthwise, fastened in place by nails driven into the surrounding wall.
She gripped the edges of the bottom slat, braced one foot against the wall, and tugged with all her might. Her arms trembled from the effort, but there was no give in the wood at all. She might as have been trying to pry loose an iron bar.
She gave up and looked between the boards.
A big backyard of smooth, reddish-brown dirt led to a perimeter marked by tall maples and pines. In the dense shadows among the trees, about twenty yards away from the property line, she glimpsed railroad tracks. They curved through the trees and wound out of sight.
Chewing her lip, she stared at those tracks.
She turned around and looked at the bedroom as if through a fresh pair of eyes. She noted the hardwood flooring. The crown molding. The marble gas-log fireplace. The tray ceiling.
Why did she have the feeling that she had been there before?
24
They were back.
That morning, in his single-wide trailer situated high on a tree-dotted shelf of land above the banks of Dog Lake, Ed stood at a bedroom window with a pair of binoculars and observed the white van returning to the same home it had visited last night. Those same two men had climbed out, but he hadn’t been able to see what they were doing because they pulled the van into the garage, out of sight.
It troubled him.
He had wiped clean a spot on the grime-filmed glass to facilitate his surveillance. The window was cracked open-he’d never had air-conditioning-and the dingy curtains, stirred by a cool breeze, rippled around his hunched shoulders. At least a dozen members of his family crowded around his legs, licking, chuffing, sniffing, snorting, whining, and moaning, all in a bid for his attention.
Normally, he spent his days playing with the dogs, petting them, feeding them, talking to them. That morning, however, he was oblivious to his canine family, riveted by the mystery unfolding across the lake.
He had been keeping a close watch since last night, when he’d returned home after finding his black Lab and the two young strays. He’d dragged a kitchen chair with a wobbly leg to the window and had fallen asleep staring across the dark water, a puppy curled in his lap. He figured the van had departed sometime after he dozed off, because that morning, it had come back.
In the grayish light of dawn, he’d read the words painted in big blue letters on the side paneclass="underline" LB’S HEATING amp; COOLING.
It was, he was sure, the same van from the night before. What kind of heating company visited a house in the middle of the night?
For many years, he had strictly limited his interactions with people. He had not held a job since returning from the war, and for his wounded leg, he received a disabled veteran’s check each month that covered his modest expenses. He paid his few bills through the mail, visiting the local post office every few months to purchase a new supply of stamps, speaking as little as possible to the clerks. He consumed only canned goods and carbonated beverages that he purchased from the supermarket where he cashed his benefit check, stocking up on such a huge amount of items during his visits that he shopped only a few times a year; the dogs, full-fledged members of his family, ate the same foods as he did. He never entertained company, and warned away all visitors with a NO TRESPASSING sign posted at the end of the long dirt driveway. People would not appreciate his important rescue work, and might summon Them to take away his family and sentence the beloved souls to the gas chambers.
Likewise, he didn’t own a television set, computer, telephone, microwave, or radio. He didn’t have electricity. Electricity and electronic devices were vehicles by which They could invade your mind, jam your mental frequencies, and make you one of Them.
You had to be cautious. You never knew who might be one of Them. That was Their power; outwardly, They looked like everyone else. But of course They were not.
They were unquestionably vile creatures who appeared to be human, and They were intent on world domination. They were the ones who captured innocent animals and gassed them to death; They were the ones who raped the land to erect awful homes; They were the ones polluting the air and spreading litter. They were everywhere, and the only way to ensure that you did not become one of Them was to reduce your risk of exposure.
His only interest, other than his dogs and avoiding possible interaction with Them, was his collection of phone books. He usually found them lying atop someone’s trash, or sitting forgotten in plastic bags in driveways. He had accumulated tall stacks of the guides dating back over twenty years. Since he lacked phone service, he had no pressing need to call anyone listed in the directories. He kept the books on hand just in case, in some dire, unimaginable emergency, he should ever need to locate a phone and place a call.
In spite of his isolation from society, Ed knew there was something unusual about a heating and cooling company visiting a house late at night. It made no sense to him.
But if the employees of the heating company were actually working for Them, he shouldn’t expect to understand it, as the things They did in secret were as alien as the dark side of the moon.