Paradox Lake Read online

  “Tim,” I say, “please, please bring me something to eat. Maybe you can bring me one of those delicious dinners you brought us from the general store. Please, Tim.”

  More footsteps overhead. He’s doing something. Rummaging around the drawers. Maybe he’s preparing me something to eat after all. More thunder. Louder this time. The storm is once again intensifying.

  “Tim, please,” I plead. “I love you, Tim. I love you so much. I need you. Don’t keep me down here like a caged animal. Come release me and make love to me, Tim.”

  The basement door opens. The kitchen overhead lamp illuminates the staircase in a funnel of dull yellow lamplight. I make out footsteps descending the staircase, dead weight. I spot Tim’s long legs and boots. He’s got something in his hands. A tray with food on it. He makes it to the bottom of the stairs, and starts towards me, pulling the string on the overhead light. Harsh white light fills the square space. Insects scatter. Out the corner of my eye, I see the garden snake slither under the rock wall. A long centipede uses its hundreds of legs to search for the dark depths the single light bulb can’t reach.

  Tim isn’t smiling, but the tray he holds with both hands contains the spaghetti and meatballs I didn’t finish earlier. Looks like he’s a true believer in not wasting your leftovers. Bending at the knees, he sets the tray down in front of me. Aside from the small bowl of food, there’s a folded paper napkin and a metal fork resting on top of that. Immediately, I eye the fork, and my hand begins to gravitate towards it. But Tim is too quick, too smart. He takes hold of it.

  “How about I feed you instead,” he says. “Whaddaya say, Rose?”

  I plant a false smile on my face while looking for his pistol. Maybe if I can somehow grab hold of the pistol, I can blow his brains out. But he’s not carrying it. He must have left it in his pickup.

  “Sure, Tim,” I say with a heavy heart. “That’s very thoughtful.”

  He twists some spaghetti onto the fork tongs, then stabs into a small bit of the meatball. He raises it up to my face.

  “Open up wide, Rose,” he says. “Here it comes.”

  Thunder roars outside the house. It’s loud and forceful enough to rattle the place. I take the forkful of spaghetti into my mouth and chew.

  “Now isn’t that good?” he says, like he’s speaking to a three-year-old seated in a high chair.

  He digs into the spaghetti again, stabs some more meatball. He places it before my mouth.

  “Here comes the spaghetti train,” he says, in a playful voice. “Chew, chew, chew.”

  Is he freaking kidding?

  More lightning and thunder. The crash is so loud and violent it steals my breath away. The lights inside the house flicker. Is the power about to go out again? I can only hope so. I take the spaghetti in my mouth, slowly chew.

  “I’ll have to keep one eye on the power,” Tim says. “This storm keeps up, the whole town of Paradox will go dark. That would be a real problem, don’t you agree, Rose, honey?”

  “I do,” I say. “I hope Anna is okay.”

  “Oh,” he says, not without a little laugh. “She’s being well cared for, believe you me. She’s warm and dry where she is. I love you and Anna so very much.”

  I swallow. The food might taste good, but the last thing I am right now is hungry, and it is literally making me sick to my stomach. But still, no choice but to play the game. I need for Tim to trust me.

  “Well, that makes me feel much better, Tim,” I say. “You know how I worry about her.”

  “I can bet the Moores worried about Sarah Anne, too,” he says, forking up more spaghetti and meatball. “Have you noticed yet how much Sarah and Anna look alike? They even share a similar name. Anne and Anna. And you, Rose, you look very much like Sarah’s mom. It’s really so very uncanny. It’s like you have both come back to us from the dead. The second you walked into the general store, just last week, we thought we were seeing ghosts. It was a miracle happening before our eyes. We knew right then and there that we had to have you both.”

  I open my mouth and he shoves the food inside. Every chew takes a supreme effort, but I do my best with it.

  “Who is we, Tim?”

  He smiles and shoots me a quizzical look, like I should somehow know the answer to that question already.

  “Why, I’m surprised at that question, Rose,” he says. “You should know by now how close Ed and I are. We’ve known one another since grade school. Sure, he’s a little slow and yes he grew up in poverty in a house in the woods with no electricity or running water.” He laughs again. “Heck, I think his parents were also his cousins, or they were brother and sister or some bat shit craziness like that. You know how those backwoods people can be. I bet you’ve seen Deliverance on Turner Classic Movies.” He giggles. “You got a pertty mouth …”

  My heart, now racing in my throat. Nausea is building up inside me. The spaghetti is starting to come up. I can’t help what’s happening inside my body. My revulsion at Tim, at what he’s telling me about the animal who is now surely holding my daughter captive while they both relive some sort of fantasy about Sarah Anne Moore and her mother.

  More thunder. The storm is directly overhead. It’s like a battleground outside the house. The lights flicker on and off. I need to get the hell out of these chains, even if it means killing Tim.

  “Tim,” I say, after the thunder subsides, “did you kill Father O’Connor?”

  “Do I look like the kind of man who can skin a man from top to bottom in less than thirty seconds flat?”

  “Ed,” I whisper.

  “Of course, Ed,” he says. Then, with a sad shake of his head. “Why Father O’Connor decided to drive out here to make a check on you girls unannounced is beyond me. But then, that’s the way he is. Or was, anyway.”

  “Did you kill Sarah?”

  “Oh my gosh, no,” he says, spinning up yet another forkful of spaghetti. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret. Would you like to hear it, Rose?”

  Of course he wants me to say yes. This is all a great big fantasy for him. It will get him off to know I want to hear all about his sick little secret.

  “Yes,” I say in a trembling voice.

  The word makes the food come up on me all the more. He must see that my face has got to be turning pale with nausea. Or maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he’s too wrapped up in his memories and his present-day fantasy. He shoves the spaghetti into my mouth.

  “Chew it all up, yum,” he insists.

  I chew and do my best to swallow.

  “Well, on the morning Sarah was killed, Ed wasn’t alone. You see, I made it possible for him to find her. I was the one who used to stalk her day in and day out. But it wasn’t up to me to touch her. That was for someone like Ed to accomplish while I watched. It was really something when he finally found her naked on that little piece of hidden beach. You should have heard her scream. It was so, so beautiful the way he forced himself on her. And when he started to bite her like he was the Big Bad Wolf, it was all I could do to control my excitement. And now, here you both are, back in our arms again.” He smiles. “So to speak.”

  More lightning and thunder. This time two or three bolts that light up the entire Moore house. Three immediate blasts follow. The lights flicker. I vomit all over Tim.

  “Jesus Christ!” he barks, dropping both the bowl and the fork. “Sarah’s mom would never puke on me. You’re not playing right, Rose.”

  I grab the fork, stab Tim in the face. The power goes out. The basement goes pitch dark.

  CHAPTER 43

  HE SCREAMS.

  I stab him three or four times, then drop the fork and grab the chain, wrap it around his neck. I squeeze both ends of the chain with all my strength. Instead of fighting me, he’s got both hands pressed against his bleeding face. I can only wonder if I stabbed him in the eyes. If I blinded the sick bastard.

  I, too, am blind now that the basement has gone black. But when the lightning flashes again and the bright electric light
spills in from the open basement door, I can see his bleeding face is turning red. He’s gone from pressing both his hands against his stab wounds to trying desperately to loosen the grip on the chain wrapped around his neck. The light flashed for only an instant, but it was enough for me to make out his purple tongue protruding from his mouth and how the blood is pouring down his face from the eye I gouged out.

  The rage in me is something I’ve never before experienced, never knew myself capable of. I never knew I had the strength. But then, have you ever seen a sculptor’s hands and arms? We are built of tinsel strength, and I am using every ounce of it to kill this demented son of a bitch so that he never touches another woman again. Never rapes or kills another woman.

  When he drops flat onto his face, I know I’ve done my job. I sit back against the pilaster and suck a deep breath. My heart is beating so fast and so hard, I swear it’s about to explode right out of my chest. I need water. But most of all, I need to grab the key from his pocket so I can unlock myself and go after my daughter.

  Reaching into his pocket, I search for the key. I find only some cash and small change. I toss it aside and go through his opposite pocket. The key is there. I immediately unlock the padlock, then pull the chain out of the metal shackle that surrounds my neck. I’m just about to place the shackle around his neck, when I feel the hand reach out and grab hold of my ankle.

  Dropping onto my stomach, I kick at his face with my free foot. I do my best to plant the tip of my pointed boot in his bloody eye socket. He screams in pain, releases my leg. Standing, I use the chain like a whip and slap him hard on his back. He screams again.

  “You bitch!” he shouts. “You bitch. You don’t play right. I will get you for this.”

  I whip him again, then toss the chain and run for the stairs. But the place is pitch dark. I can’t see where I’m going, and I run face-first into the staircase. I hear him getting up and coming after me. Using my hands to guide me, I come around to the foot of the stairs and start climbing.

  “No, you don’t!” Tim barks. “You don’t leave me like this! Not when we’re so in love.”

  I’m four steps up the staircase when again he grabs hold of my right ankle. I turn to look at him over my shoulder. Lightning flashes and I see his bloodied face and beard, and the gaping bloody hole of an eye socket. His teeth are stained with blood. He looks like he wants to sink his teeth into me.

  I kick at him with my free leg and once more he falls back. I continue to crawl my way up the stairs, on all fours. The tears stream down my face. I’m screaming bloody murder. He grabs hold of my ankle again and this time he is able to grab hold of the other ankle. He starts pulling me back down the staircase, my chin slapping each tread as he yanks on me.

  When I come to the bottom, he turns me around and tears my shirt. I punch him in the face but it seems to have no effect. He slaps me and pushes me back onto the stair treads. I have no defense at this point. No way to stop him. But that’s when I remember I have my cell phone stored in my back pocket. Can it be used like a weapon? It has a glass screen. Maybe if I can crack the glass, I can somehow use it.

  He starts unbuckling my belt. I pull out the phone, slap it against the tread. Lightning flashes, and for a split second, I see that the screen is shattered. I then slap the phone back down on the stair tread and I finger the now broken glass. Managing to locate a triangle of glass that’s maybe four inches long, I jam it into his temple.

  He rears back against the stone wall. His scream is not a scream at all, but more like the wail of a badly injured animal. A gut-shot animal. I don’t hesitate to turn then and bound up the stairs, two at a time. Closing the door behind me, I quickly go to the kitchen table, grab hold of a chair. I also steal a steak knife from out of the drawer. I haven’t yet returned to the basement door when I see it slowly opening.

  “No!” I scream. “No you don’t!”

  White lightning fills the kitchen, and I see Tim’s bloodstained hand slipping through the now open door. I thrust the blade into it. He screams again. I pull the knife out and stab it again and again. Shrieking, Tim pulls back his injured hand. That’s when I open the door and push him backwards. He tumbles down the wood steps like a bearded rag doll. Closing the door again, I shove the chair back under the knob to secure it.

  Turning, I press my back against the door panel, drop the knife to the floor, and weep.

  CHAPTER 44

  ANNA SITS IN the chair and faces the Wolf. He’s stripped her of her t-shirt and now she’s dressed only in her pink panties and a red-hooded robe that doesn’t hide her bare breasts. She’s both horrified and ashamed of her nakedness. But she feels something else too. She feels a rage building up inside her. It’s an electric rage like no other.

  “I want you to say something else,” the Wolf says from down on all fours as he slowly circles his prey. “I want you to say, ‘What big claws you have.’”

  “Fuck you,” Anna says through grinding teeth.

  Her words take even her by surprise, because it’s nothing she’s ever imagined herself saying to another adult. How would her mother react? Perhaps her mother would be all for it considering she’s being held captive in this basement by a madman who thinks he’s the Big Bad Wolf and she’s Little Red Riding Hood. She’s never met Allison, her late older sister. But she suspects Allison wouldn’t hesitate to curse this madman up one side and down the other.

  “Play right,” the Wolf says. “Play right or I will sink my fangs into you, I promise you that, Little Red Riding Hood … my Sarah Anne.”

  The storm rages outside the old farmhouse. The electric white light leaks in through the narrow windows located at the top of the basement’s stone walls. Thunder rocks the forest and the nearby lake.

  “Say it!” the Wolf screams. “Or I will make sure Tim chops your mother’s head off and displays it in her studio.”

  Anna starts to cry. She doesn’t want to cry because it shows weakness and fear. But she can’t help it. She’s desperate.

  “What big claws you have,” she whispers.

  “Louder,” the Wolf insists, circling her until he comes to a stop at her backside.

  “What big fucking claws you have, you creep.”

  “The better to tear into you, my dear,” he says, digging into her back with his filthy claw-like fingernails.

  CHAPTER 45

  MY PHONE IS dead and the power is out. But then, what difference does it make? My cell phone is entirely shattered now. I left it on the basement staircase. I can’t go back downstairs. Not with Tim down there. He’ll kill me on the spot. He could be dead, of course. But I can’t take the chance that he might still be alive and kicking.

  My mind spins while the wind blows and the rain spatters against the big picture window that overlooks the lake. It’s coming down so heavy, and the night is so dark, all I see is blackness. But when the lightning shoots down from the sky in a frighteningly jagged bolt, I not only see the lake, I spot the angry white-capped swells that top it.

  Anna is out there, somewhere …

  As much as I hate to admit it, I know where she is.

  The wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone.”

  Anna is in that old house in the middle of the woods.

  Ed the Creep’s house.

  Picking the knife back up, I go upstairs to my bedroom, find a red windbreaker in the closet with an attached hood. I put on the windbreaker and place the hood over my head. It’s not much, but at least it will provide some protection from the heavy rain.

  Heading back downstairs, I make way across the living room floor, but pause at the basement door, press my ear against it. Nothing but silence. Is Tim knocked out? Is he dead? Or has he somehow found a way out of that basement? I’ve never entirely explored the space, so for all I know, there’s a door that leads to the outside. It’s entirely possible. But I can’t think about that right now. All I need to focus on is rescuing the only daughte
r I have left.

  The flashlight is resting on the counter. I press the latex-covered button. A round beam of white light shines against the wall. The batteries are still good. Let’s hope they last awhile. The woods will be impossibly dark.

  The steak knife in one hand and the flashlight in the other, I go to the kitchen door and open it. I step out into the angry Adirondack elements in search of Anna.

  Crossing over the lawn, I enter onto the Paradox Lake trailhead. As the rain pours down on me and thunder rumbles in the distance, I swear I make out the sound of a car or truck door slamming shut. Is the sudden bright white light that shines through the narrow openings in the trees and brush a set of headlamps? Or just more lightning? I might pause to investigate, but I can’t afford to waste more time. There’s also the distinct possibility Tim has found his way out of the basement by having busted through the basement door and now he’s back in his truck on his way to Anna. Who knows what he will do to her when he catches up to her. I gouged his eye out. I stabbed him multiple times in the hand. I pushed him down the stairs, knocked him out. He will want his revenge, and if he can’t take it out on me, he will take it out on my daughter. He and Ed will love every minute of it. Anna is the spitting image of Sarah Anne, after all. She is their new Little Red Riding Hood.

  I head deeper into the woods.

  I don’t walk. Instead I jog, the branches and twigs slapping me in the face, causing my eyes to tear. Between the tears and the rain, I can’t see three feet in front of me. But I keep going. Pulse pounds in my temples. Breathing grows shallow. My entire body is soaked, the clothing sticking to my skin. Lightning cracks overhead. It strikes a tree. The tree breaks in half and crashes down only a few feet from me. The thunderclap that accompanies it steals my breath away. I stop, drop to my knees in a puddle of muddy water, and try to catch my breath.

  Shining the light on the downed tree, I can see that it’s smoking in the place where the lightning hit it.