The Remains (23 page)

Now side by side in the stream, holding to
the bank, I somehow managed a breath. With drenched bodies and
faces, we gazed at one another for the briefest of moments before
thrusting our bodies up and out of the fast water onto the safety
of the solid earth.

WE EMERGE FROM OUT of the house in the woods
arm in arm.

I’m still crying. But Molly is not. I know
she’s convinced that the monster is dead. Even I believe he’s
dead.

Molly is a rock.

She shushes me, tells me it’s going to be
okay. She leads me through the woods, to the sound of water running
brusquely over rocks.

When we come to the stream bank, she sets me
down. She makes like a cup with her right hand, reaches into the
stream and brings a handful of the water to my mouth.

“
Drink,” she says.

I do as she tells me.

The crystal clear water is cold, life
renewing. It tastes pure, sweet.

In my mind I see him, what he tried to do to
us. I’m sure he’s dead, but I’m frightened he’ll come back for us.
But I say nothing about it. So long as Molly is with me, I can bear
anything.

“
Don’t worry,” she insists. “The monster
is dead now.”

She tells me to lie back. She dips her hand
in the water once more, then brings the wet hand to my face. I can
smell her hands. She runs her fingers through my hair, over my eyes
and lips. She washes my neck and arms. She touches me softly,
bathes my body and my legs. Finally, she washes my feet with the
cold stream water. When she is done, she sets her own feet into the
stream and washes her own body. I watch her wash her hair with the
water until it is dripping wet.

When we are washed we sit on the bank in
silence, allowing ourselves to dry in the cool air. Although we are
shivering from the cold we don’t feel it. We feel only the recent
memory of that afternoon. We feel a pain like we have never felt
before and never will again. We never talk about saying anything to
our parents about the attacks. It’s already implied that we’ll
remain silent about exploring dark woods our father forbade us to
enter.

As the sun begins to set, Molly takes my
hand and leads me to the place in the rocky stream where we can
easily cross.

She kisses me on the forehead.

“
I am you,” she says. “And you are
me.”

Together, we head for home through the
trees.

FOR A TIME THAT seemed forever, we ran in a
downhill direction toward the fields of tall grass. There was no
talking. Not that Franny would have said anything anyway. But there
was simply no breath left in our lungs. In my lungs anyway.

On the outside was the vision of the fields
and my parents’ house looking small and isolated in the distance.
But on the inside my heart beat, pulse soared, blood pumped through
wiry veins while the misty cool air of a new morning burned up lung
tissue.

We didn’t head for my parents’ house. Instead
I followed Franny through the fields, limping up a gentle incline
until eventually I spotted the Scaramuzzi farm. By this time, the
day was warming and I was having trouble breathing and keeping my
balance. Then as though a car crashed into me, my chest
constricted, the center cramped in tight pain, a shooting jolt of
lightening in my left arm.

When I collapsed, Franny stopped.

He came to me, bent down and lifted me up in
his arms. He carried me like that all the rest of the way.

When finally we made it to his house, he set
me gently down onto the porch.

Although I couldn’t really see her, I heard
Caroline Scaramuzzi gasp. She wasted no time dialing 911. I was in
and out of consciousness as she spoke with the emergency people, as
I mumbled the words “Michael… inside house… in woods… Michael.”

I wasn’t scared. I was no longer in pain. I
was caught up in a semi-conscious state I’d never before
experienced. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was dying. Dying
wasn’t so bad. Dying meant that I would see Molly before the day
was out. As the life began to seep out of my earthly body, I knew
without a doubt that I wouldn’t die. Not really.

Before long, I was flying.

A
HELICOPTER WAS CALLED in to transport me from Brunswick Hills to
the Albany Medical Center. After being lifted off the porch floor
of the Scaramuzzi house, I found myself floating far above the
valley. I was lying on my back, a translucent oxygen mask covering
my face. When I turned my head to the left I could see the deep
blue/green water of the Hudson River; the way it snaked itself from
north to south between the cities of Troy and Albany. There was the
loud-
whump-whump-whump
noise of the chopper blades—a sound I felt deep inside my
chest.

When I turned my head I looked for Michael,
as if everything that had transpired over the past dozen hours was
an elaborate nightmare. But instead I spotted Caroline Scaramuzzi.
She was strapped into a seat that folded out of the aircraft’s
sidewall. From where I lie belted to a collapsible gurney, I could
see that she was dressed in her usual blue jeans, thick fisherman’s
sweater and green Crocs.

I felt Michael’s absence like a hole in my
belly.

I locked eyes with Caroline. I allowed her
image to guide me back to the land of the unconscious.

ANOTHER DAY PASSED BEFORE I woke up. Lying in
the hospital bed, I had no other choice but to believe the truth: I
was alive. How did I know this for sure?

First off, my head ached. My temples pounded.
I felt empty on the inside. Nauseous and so very thirsty. I tasted
only my own bitter breath. There was the vague odor of alcohol in
the air. All was quiet.

A glance over my shoulder did not reveal
Franny, or Caroline for that matter. Rather, it revealed Detective
Harris. The tall, suited man smoothed out his cropped hair, gazed
into my newly opened eyes. Maybe it had something to do with my
imagination, but I swear he was trying to work up a welcome smile
when he said, “You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

A smile. For certain he was smiling.

Attempting to shift my shell-shocked body up
against the headboard, I wrenched and strained to no avail.
Movement proved an impossible dream. Any kind of movement, no
matter how slight, caused a sharp pain to pulse up and down my
spinal column. It also caused the heart monitor to which I was
attached to pick up speed.

“Michael?” I whispered.

Harris crossed his arms.

“Michael is still recovering from surgery,”
he said, looking away. “He’s lost a lot of blood Rebecca.”

I tried to move, but I couldn’t.

“Michael’s alive? But how…”

I needed to see Michael. I needed to know
that I wasn’t dreaming.

“You can see him soon,” he explained. “But
Rebecca, I need you to talk to me; tell me everything.”

I laid back, stared up at the ceiling,
breathed.

After a time, I proceeded to lead him through
the whole ordeal. From the time Michael and I returned to my
apartment on Thursday afternoon, to Franny’s rescue of me inside
the basement of the house in the woods.

For a time Harris just sat there chewing on
the information. Clearly something wasn’t sitting right with the
detective. He stood up, turned his back and stared out the window
onto the parking lot below.

“By the time my men got to the house in the
woods,” he said. “By the time we got to Michael, Whalen was gone,
vanished.”

I felt my insides tighten up. I wondered if
the monitor picked up the change.

“
We
followed a blood trail out of the house and into the woods. But
after a while it disappeared, along with our suspect.” He shook his
head, eyes peeled out the window. But when he turned back to me, he
tried to plant a same smile on his face. A reassuring smile that
screamed
lie
.

“I don’t want you to worry,” he assured me.
“If his head injury is as bad as you painted it, there’s a good
chance that his body will be found in those woods as early as this
morning or this afternoon.”

How had Whalen had been able to leave the
half-way house without being detected? How was he able to follow me
for all those weeks and months? How was he able to kidnap Michael
and me if he was supposed to be reporting to a job or a half-way
house?

I shot the questions to Harris. Did it
angrily, bitterly, as if he were personally responsible. In turn he
shrugged his shoulders, bit his lip.

“Half-way houses are not prisons, Rebecca,”
he offered. “Parole officers are not ball and chains. Ankle
monitors can be hacked and removed, if you know what you’re doing.
The system of keeping a twenty-four hour watch on a parolee, even a
violent offender like Whalen, is not perfect. All it would take for
him to get some extra time outside the house is a little money and
maybe the confidence of one or more of his counselors. That’s about
it, I’m afraid.”

He put his hand on my hand, squeezing my
fingers. He told me not to think about Whalen anymore.

I looked up at him, into his eyes.

“Thirty years ago,” I said, “when Whalen
dragged us into the basement. He never actually…” I hesitated,
because I didn’t know how to say it.

“He never actually what?”

“When he had Molly on the floor, she turned
to me, told me not to resist. She made me promise not to resist.
When she allowed Whalen to do what he wanted, he no longer wanted
to do it. He couldn’t go through with it with either of us, because
we wouldn’t resist him.”

The detective nodded. His hand was still
holding mine.

“But he still violated you,” he said. “He
hurt you and he hurt your sister. He abducted you and held you
against your will.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about my
confession; how to feel about the possibility of Whalen still being
alive.

“Get some rest,” Harris said, releasing my
hand. “You’re going to need it.”

I closed my eyes. It felt good to close my
eyes. Already I felt myself nodding off.

“Dead,” I mumbled in my near sleep state.
“Find… the devil… dead.”

BY THE TIME I opened my eyes again, it was
going on late morning. A nurse was standing beside the bed. She was
holding my left hand in her hand, the pads of her middle and index
fingers pressed against my wrist. When she was through, she jotted
some information onto a clipboard.

She then tossed me a smile for the
brokenhearted.

But I was also a woman whose leg had been
grazed by a bullet, who’d suffered a mild heart attack, plus two
broken ribs, a hairline fracture in my right hand, numerous
abrasions, contusions and lacerations.

The nurse shifted her eyes toward the
door.

“Looks like we have some visitors,” she said
before slipping out the door.

Enter Caroline and Franny.

Franny, my hero.

Caroline, dressed in her jeans and Crocs;
Franny, dressed in his baggy jeans, red T-shirt, bright yellow
suspenders, thick gray-black hair all mussed up.

“Come here, Franny,” I whispered, my voice
forcing itself from out of dry mouth and burning throat.

There was something in his hands. Another
canvas. It dawned on me then, there had to be a fifth painting.
That is, if he were to stay true to all five senses. This must have
been the fifth and final one. He set it against the chair, its
image facing the opposite direction. He came to me, stood up
against the side of the bed, face down, eyes staring down at his
shoes.

“Can I hug you?”

Out the corner of my eyes, I saw Caroline
smiling.

“Go ahead Franny,” she pressed. “It’ll be
okay.”

Without shifting his eyes, he leaned into me.
I took hold of him. Although I had very little strength left in my
arms, I hugged him as tightly as possible.

“Thank you, Franny,” I whispered into his
ear. “I love you.”

I felt a tear run down my cheek. I felt my
face touching his. I knew he could feel the tear against his skin
too.

“You’re my friend,” he mumbled.

I let him go. He stood up, went back over to
the corner, where he stood by the painting, as if guarding it.

Caroline turned to him.

“Fran,” she said, reaching into her jeans
pocket, producing a five dollar bill. “Go down to the cafeteria.
Get a hot chocolate and a piece of pie. You can enjoy it right
there. When you’re done come back up here.”

Without a single word of objection, Franny
took the money and, mumbling something happy about pie and hot
chocolate, exited the room.

Caroline
turned to me then. With pursed lips, she approached me. She had
something in her hand. A paperback book. My old dog-eared copy
of
To Kill a
Mockingbird
it turns
out. She set it on the bed beside me.

“I thought you might want this,” she
said.

Then, pulling one of the chairs closer to the
bed, she sat down and exhaled. She asked me how I was feeling, if I
needed anything. She told me she would take me down to see Michael
as soon as he was out of recovery. She would do it even if she had
to strap me onto her shoulders. Then she told me not to worry about
anything. That if money was an issue, she would take care of it.
She told me not even think of arguing with her.

I didn’t.

Then she began to tell me a story about the
past. Not my past, but her past, my father’s and mother’s past. It
was about an event that took place back in the early 1960s before I
was born. Back when my father had just begun his career as a state
trooper for Rensselaer County, back when the house in the woods was
not a house in the woods at all, but a house surrounded by
farmland.