That part was maybe ten feet square, with a low, sloping ceiling that was no more than six feet high at the far end; limestone walls shored up by thick crossbeams and a floor that was partly packed earth and partly bare rock. Root cellar. Houses in this section of the state, those built into hillside notches like this one, still had them; they made for relatively cool storage places in the hot climate. A hole had been bored through the rock from under the house and a length of one-inch PVC pipe inserted through it — probably for ventilation purposes. A four-outlet extension cord ran in here from a wall plug in the pantry; the fan was plugged into that. So was the object that had gleamed like a dead eye: a small TV set. The rest of the space was cramped with a rollaway bed, a rocking chair, a portable camper’s toilet, and a table piled high with magazines and artist’s tools — sketchpads, pencils, paints.
Nedra Merchant was crouched on the bed, her hands covering her eyes now — the posture of a child. Her fingers were cut and torn, two of the nails ripped completely off, all painted now with iodine. She’d tried to batter her way out with shelf wood, dig her way out with her bare hands: there was a pathetically small hole in the earth along one wall. She was stick-figure thin, her ribs showing, bones jutting against dead-white skin, her cheeks and eyes deeply sunken as if all the flesh were rotting away. Her hair was clean, washed within the past couple of days, and she’d been put in here with a fresh white dress that she’d taken off and thrown on the floor, and she wore lipstick that made her mouth look like a bloody wound. All prettied up and waiting for Baby.
The wound opened and words came out. “Turn off the light, Baby. It’s better in the dark.”
“Open your eyes, Nedra. Look at me.”
The unfamiliar voice brought her hands down; she blinked several times, peered at me through slits — and then shrank back hard against the wall. “You’re not Baby,” she said in a whimper.
“Who is? Who did this to you?”
“I don’t know you. What are you doing here?”
“I’m a friend. I came to help—”
“No. Where’s Baby? I want Baby.”
Looking at her, listening to her, had unleashed a storm of emotions in me — rage, compassion, a sickening remembered dread. It was as if I were back in that frigging Deer Run cabin, looking at myself after all those days I’d been chained to the wall, seeing myself as I would have looked if I hadn’t been strong enough, if my ordeal had broken me as Nedra Merchant’s had broken her. The parallel was terrifying. I had come away scarred but whole. Nedra Merchant was going to come away in pieces that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men might never put together again.
How long had she held out? A week, a month, two months, longer? Fighting until she couldn’t fight anymore, and then... what? Had she gone over the edge clawing and screaming or had she just let go? One thing for sure: When she’d landed it had been in a place that submerged her fear, turned hatred for her jailer into clinging need. In that soft, twisted place he had stopped being her tormentor and become her protector, the only person who could save her and set her free.
I wanted to kill him for what he had done to her, just as I had wanted to kill the man who imprisoned me. Nobody, no matter who she’d been or what she’d done in her life, should have to suffer the way Nedra had; the person responsible deserved to die for it. The impulse was so strong in me I began to shake. I had to take a double grip on the flashlight, clutch it tight against my chest to keep my hands still. The bloodlust, and the heat and the foul air, brought on a dizziness, a churning in my stomach. I needed to get myself out of here almost as much as I needed to get her out.
I moved toward her. Doing it slowly so I wouldn’t frighten her any more than she already was. But she scrambled backward anyway, came off the bed onto her feet. “No! Stay away from me; don’t come near me!”
“I won’t hurt you, Nedra.”
“Stay away!”
“I swear I won’t, I only want to help you...”
I kept on crooning to her, gently, moving all the while. She hugged the wall, crouched and motionless, until I was within two steps of her; then she yelled, shrill and wild, and flung herself at me with her hands hooked into claws.
Even as emaciated as she was, she had a maniacal strength. I dropped the torch and caught her wrists, but I couldn’t hold her. Broken nails raked across my neck; she brought up a knee that I turned away from just in time, took on my upper thigh. I drove her backward with my body, pinned her against the rock, got her arms locked down at her sides. She went right on twisting and straining against me, all boneless sinew and muscle, like a cat struggling for release.
“You’re safe now, Nedra, it’s all right, you’re safe...”
She spit in my face, twice; screeched obscenities in my ear. I went on crooning in a soft monotone. The soothing quality of my voice, if not what I was saying, got through to her; or maybe she just ran out of breath and strength. The obscenities trickled off into little mewlings, and her struggles grew feeble, and finally she sagged limply in my grasp.
I relaxed my hold a little, to find out if she was shamming. She wasn’t. I backed up, taking her with me; let go of her wrist and slid my arm up and around her shoulders and turned her toward the door. She came along all right, muttering something under her breath — the same words over and over, as if she were reciting some kind of lesson.
“I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care...”
I walked her into the pantry section, into the open doorway to the kitchen. There was sweat in my eyes from all the exertion, impairing my vision like rainwater on window glass; I couldn’t wipe it away because of my grip on Nedra. I saw movement on my right as we passed through the doorway, but indistinctly, and when I turned that way, blinking, she came alive in my arms.
She brought her heel down hard on my instep, emitting the shrill cry again, and then tore loose. I clutched at her, missed — and something hit me from the side, high up across the bridge of my nose. My vision went completely cockeyed. A second blow, hard on my left temple, thrust me backward; my feet slid out from under me and I went down, banging my head against one of the shelves.
I lost consciousness. Not for long — a clutch of seconds, no more than a minute. All at once, then, I was aware of a ringing in my ears, of pain. And then I was up on one knee, shaking my head, pawing at my eyes.
When I could see again I was looking at the door to the kitchen. It was closed now, shut tight. I heaved to my feet, stumbled to it, twisted the knob and shook the door; it wouldn’t open, wouldn’t open—
Baby had come back. And Baby had Nedra again.
And now I was locked in this hellhole in her place.
The claustrophobia started immediately, building fast, spiraling into raw terror. I started to shake again, a violent trembling like an old structure in an earthquake — shaking itself apart from the inside out.
Don’t panic!
I told myself that over and over, leaning against the door, but the part of me where the terror lived refused to listen. Curb the panic or it would cripple me, turn me into the same gibbering thing Nedra had become.
Off the wall, turn around — movements that brought sharp surges of pain in my head, face, leg. Pain, I thought. And I was seeing the boards from the torn-down shelf stacked against the wall. And in the next second, or what seemed like the next second, I had one of the boards in my hand and was swinging it like a baseball bat against my sore left knee.
I swung it again, then a third time, with as much force as I could muster. On the third blow the leg buckled and I was back on the floor. By then the pain was high and hot in my knee and inside my head — a fire that consumed the terror, reduced it to glowing ashes.