Redemption Road(125)

He waited for her to wake, then choked her once so she would know it was real. “We’ll start slowly,” he said; then choked her like that so she would have no doubt. He took her to the edge of blackness and held her there. Small movements of his hands, whispers of air. “Show me the girl. Show me the child.” He let her breathe once, then rose to his toes and leaned into it as she fought and choked. “Shhh. We all suffer. We all feel pain.” He put more weight on his hands. “I want to see the real you.”

He choked her long and deep, then hard and fast. He used every trick he’d ever learned, tried a dozen times more, but knew it wouldn’t work.

The eyes were swollen shut.

He couldn’t see her.

*

Channing didn’t know why she was still alive. She knew pain and darkness, thought she was in the silo, then realized there was movement, too. She was back in the car. Same smell. Same tarp. She touched her face with bound hands and realized most of the darkness came from swollen eyes. She could barely see, but knew she was dressed and breathing and alive.…

A strangled sound escaped her throat.

How long?

She relived his hands and the blackness, the yellow trees and his hungry face.

How long had he tried to kill her?

She swallowed, and it was like glass ripping her throat. She touched her neck and curled more tightly in the dim, blue space.

Where was he taking her?

Why was she still alive?

Those worries ate at her until a more disturbing one twisted through the tangle of her thoughts: his face beneath the trees. No hat. No glasses. He’d looked different in a way she couldn’t process; but sober now, and desperately alive, she remembered where she’d seen him.

Oh, God …

She knew exactly who he was.

The revelation terrified her because the truth of it was so perverse. How could it possibly be him?

But it was, and it wasn’t just the face. She knew the voice, too. He was making calls as the car worked from one street to the next, making calls and muttering angrily between them. He was looking for Liz and getting frustrated that he couldn’t find her. No one knew where she was; she wasn’t answering her phone. He called the police station, her mother; and once—through a crack in the tarp—Channing saw the blur of Elizabeth’s house. She recognized the shape, the trees.

The Mustang was gone.

Channing sobbed after that and couldn’t help it. She wanted to be in the car with Elizabeth, or in her house or in the dark of her bed. She wanted to be safe and unafraid, and only Liz could make that happen. So she said the name in her mind—Elizabeth—and it must have leaked through into the real world, because suddenly the car slowed to a hard, rocking stop. Channing froze, and for a long moment nothing happened. His voice, when it came, was quiet. “You love her, don’t you?” Channing squeezed into a ball. “It makes me wonder if she loves you, too. Do you think she does? I think she probably must.” He went quiet, fingers drumming on the wheel. “Do you have a phone? I’ve been trying to reach her, but she won’t pick up. I think she might answer if she saw your number.”

Channing held her breath.

“A phone.”

“No. No phone.”

“Of course not. No. I’d have seen it.”

A long silence followed, heat under the tarp. When he started driving again, Channing watched a stretch of buildings and trees, then a span of chain-link stained with rust. The car started down, and she felt the sun disappear, caught glimpses of yellow houses and pink ones, the long slide into some dim hollow. When the car stopped again, he turned off the engine and silence filled everything for another terrible minute.

“Do you believe in second chances?” he asked.

Channing smelled her own sweat, the fog of her breath.

“Second chances. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be useful to me if I ask?”

Channing bit her lip and tried not to sob.

“Useful, damn it! Yes or no?”

“Yes. God. Please.”

“I’m going to take you out of the car and carry you inside. There’s no one around, but if you make a sound, I’ll hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

She felt the car rock and heard the hatch open. He lifted her, still in the tarp. They crossed bare dirt, went up stairs and through a door. Channing saw little until the tarp came off; then it was his face and the four walls of a dingy bath. He put her in the tub and cuffed an ankle to the radiator beside it.

“Why are you doing this?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

He stripped silver tape off a roll.

She watched it, terrified. “Please, I want to! I want to understand!”

He studied her, but she saw the doubt. It was in there with the crazy and the sadness and the grim determination. “Be still.”

But she could not. She fought as he slapped tape across her mouth and wrapped it twice around her head.

*

When it was done, he stood above her, looking down. She was small in the tub, and horrified, a tiny thing the color of chalk. She said she wanted to understand, and maybe she did. But no one looking in could appreciate the beauty of what he was trying to do. She’d use the same words as the cops. Serial killer. Dangerous. Deranged. Only Liz—at the end—would understand the truth that drove him, that he did these things for the noblest reason of all, the love of a precious girl.