She swung her light around, her heart full of wonder and joythe last she would feel for far too long. But where she imagined a puppy whimpering in his crate was a woman.
Her eyes were wide and shined like glass as tears streamed from them. She made terrible noises against the tape over her mouth. Scrapes and bruises left raw marks on her face and her throat.
She wasn’t wearing any clothes, nothing at all, but didn’t try to cover herself.
Couldn’t, couldn’t cover herself. Her hands were tied with ropebloodied from the raw wounds on her wristsand the rope was tied to a metal post behind the old mattress she lay on. Her legs were tied, too, at the ankles and spread wide.
Those terrible sounds kept coming, pounded on the ears, roiled in the belly.
As in a dream, Naomi moved forward. There was a roaring in her ears now, as if she’d gone under the water too long, couldn’t get back to the surface. Her mouth was so dry, the words scraped her throat.
“Don’t yell. You can’t yell, okay? He might hear and come back. Okay?”
The woman nodded, and her swollen eyes pleaded.
Naomi worked her fingernails under the edge of the tape. “You have to be quiet,” she said, whispering as her fingers trembled. “Please be quiet.” And pulled the tape away.
It made an awful sound, left a raw, red mark, but the woman didn’t yell.
“Please.” Her voice sounded like a rusty hinge. “Please help me. Please, don’t leave me here.”
“You have to get away. You have to run.” Naomi looked back toward the cellar door. What if he came back? Oh God, what if the wild man who looked like her father came back?
She tried to untie the rope, but the knots were too tight. She rubbed her fingers raw in frustration, then turned away, using her little light.
She saw a bottle of liquorforbidden by her father’s law in their houseand more rope, coiled and waiting. An old blanket, a lantern. Magazines with naked women on the covers, a camera, and oh no, no, no, photographs of women taped to the walls. Like this woman, naked and tied up and bloody and afraid.
And women who stared out with dead eyes.
An old chair, cans and jars of food on a shelf nailed to the wall. A heap of ragsno, clothes, torn clothesand the stains on them were blood.
She could smell the blood.
And there were knives. So many knives.
Closing her mind, just closing her mind to everything else, Naomi grabbed one of the knives, began to saw at the knot.
“You have to stay quiet, stay quiet.”
She nicked flesh, but the woman didn’t cry out.
“Hurry, please hurry. Please, please.” She bit back a moan when her arms were free, and those arms shook as she tried to lower them. “It hurts. Oh God, God, it hurts.”
“Don’t think about it, just don’t think about it. It hurts more when you do.” It hurt, yes, it hurt to think. So she wouldn’t think of the blood, the pictures, the heap of torn and terrible clothes.
Naomi went to work on one of the ankle ropes. “What’s your name?”
“I Ashley. I’m Ashley. Who is he? Where is he?”
Couldn’t say it. Wouldn’t say it. Wouldn’t think it. “He’s home now. The storm’s come. Can you hear it?”
She was home, too, Naomi told herself as she cut the other rope. Home in bed, and this was all a bad dream. There was no old root cellar that smelled of musk and pee and worse, no woman, no wild man. She would wake in her own bed, and the storm would have cooled everything.
Everything would be clean and cool when she woke.
“You have to get up, get out. You have to run.”
Run, run, run, into the dark, run away. Then this will never have happened.
Sweat rolling down her battered face, Ashley tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. She fell to the dirt floor, her breath wheezing. “I can’t walk yetmy legs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You have to help me. Please, help me get out of here.”
“Your legs are asleep, that’s all.” Naomi grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around Ashley’s shoulders. “You have to try to get up.”
Working together, they managed to get Ashley to her feet. “Lean on me. I’m going to push you up the ladder, but you have to try to climb. You have to try.”
“I can do it. I can do it.”
Rain whipped in on the slow, sweaty climb up, and twice on that short journey, Ashley nearly slipped. Naomi’s muscles twanged from the strain of holding the weight, of pushing. But on a last sobbing grunt, Ashley dragged herself out, lay panting on the ground.
“You have to run.”
“I don’t know where I am. I’m sorry. I don’t know how long I’ve been down there. A day, two. I haven’t had any food, any water since he . . . I’m hurt.”