Lies That Bind Us(80)

I give her a weary look and then something rises in my heart, a mixture of anger and righteous indignation.

“You want to see?” I say, getting to my feet. “Fine. You’ll see.”

I turn and stride erratically for the head of the stairs, leaving Gretchen, Kristen, and Brad in their rooms, steadying myself on the rail and picking my way carefully so that I don’t trip on the hose. Melissa is at my shoulder and actually catches hold of my elbow as we walk, like we are on some girls’ night out.

She guides me, following the bright line of the hose in the gloom, to the half-open door into the cellar, Marcus stumbling at our heels. The stairwell is dark, and I am struck by a sudden dread of going back down there, even with the others. I think of the thick liquid blackness of the cell speckled with my blood, the creeping bull-headed man-monster I locked down there . . .

My head swims. Something isn’t right, but I can’t focus to see what, and Melissa is already propelling me down the stairs, the battery lamp held over her head, Marcus behind her. I see the stack of tools from which I took the hammer, the bright-yellow generator, nestled there like something toxic poised to strike: a scorpion, perhaps . . .

“Where?” snaps Melissa.

“What?” I say again. The thick fog of confusion is filling my head once more. Something is wrong.

“You were chained up in a cell.”

“Yes. I broke my hand to escape.”

“Where?”

“What?” I say, my head thick, my voice faraway.

“Where is the cell, Jan?” says Melissa.

I turn around stupidly, then realize that she is pressing the lantern into my good hand. I take it and hold it up. There is the passage to the stairs we have just come through and the mesh door on the other side of the chamber. I go through it, picking my way between ancient wooden crates and pallets till I come to another heavy door, its timbers barred. I don’t want to open it, but I feel Melissa and Marcus watching me, waiting. I hold the lantern in the fingers of my left hand, not touching it with my shattered thumb, and use my right to press the latch until I feel the door shift. I pull it. It sticks. I yank harder, an unfocused anger building inside me, flowing down my arm and into my hand. The door scrapes open.

It is a cupboard. There are shelves, mostly empty, some with moldy boxes and folded hessian sacks spotted with mouse droppings. There is no passageway. No door.

I turn, bewildered. The light from the lamp falls on Marcus’s face, and I see not confusion, but disappointment and a swelling horror.

“It was here,” I say. “I was chained up down here. I know I was.”

“No, Jan,” says Melissa. “I’m sorry, but you weren’t. You made it up, didn’t you?”

And then, as I stare at them both, Marcus speaks.

“God, Jan,” he says. “What did you do?”





Chapter Thirty-Six

“Nothing,” I say. “I didn’t do anything. I escaped from the cell, and I saved your life . . .”

As soon as the words are out, I know they are the wrong thing to say.

“Oh,” says Melissa, realization dawning. “That’s what this is.”

“What?” I say. “No, I mean, I really . . .”

“Fuck,” says Marcus, turning away, his eyes wide with shock. “You set this up so you could rescue me? What the fuck, Jan? People could have died! They still might.”

“No!” I say. “It’s true.”

“It’s not, Jan, is it?” says Melissa. “You want to be the hero, to make everyone like you, so you arranged this. You are lying to us again, aren’t you? I think you even lied to yourself.”

“Is that right, Jan?” asks Marcus, appalled. “Is this another fib to make your life feel better?”

No! It isn’t. I haven’t been lying. I didn’t make it up.

“That’s pathetic,” says Melissa. “I’m sorry, Jan. But it is, and I’m not going to cover for you this time.”

“No!” I say. “It’s all true. I was chained up. There was a cell . . .”

“Where, Jan?” says Melissa, and her confusion has gone too. So has her compassion. Now her face and voice are hard, simmering with barely contained anger.

“Here!” I say. “Or . . . somewhere. There were railway lines and—”

“Railway lines?” Melissa sneers. “Jan, this time you’ve gone too far.”

“I’m telling the truth!”

I didn’t invent it all to make my life feel better, more interesting, to make myself a hero. I didn’t. I swear to God. Not this time.

Melissa turns to Marcus, taking charge. “We need to call the police and an ambulance,” she says. “I don’t know as much as she does about carbon monoxide poisoning, but we need to get help now.”

“There were railway lines,” I say, stuck in the mud of my own thoughts. “I came up into the foyer and turned, but the phone table wasn’t there . . .”

“Be quiet, Jan,” says Melissa. “We’re trying to figure out what to do.”

“It wasn’t there,” I muse aloud. “I mean, it was there, but it wasn’t where it should be, where I thought it would be.” I stretch out my right hand, as if reaching into my memory to snatch up the dead phone receiver, then retract it and reach with my wounded left. It is almost there in my head now. I just have to push through the fog a little farther. “It was on the other side, because . . . because . . .”