What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (11 page)

Gideon’s face blurs into Larkin’s and then back again. Both faces have a hole in the forehead where the bullet from my rifle struck. I stare at the hole, a deep purple intrusion, sunk into the skin. How far does it go? I wonder. To the center of his brain?

I hold my hand up before my eyes and study my fingers. I think of the one they called Needle, using one of his long white fingers to probe the wound, to explore the hole I had made in Gideon’s skull.

I reach down and touch the wound myself. The flesh of Gideon, of Larkin—the face keeps transposing, switching from one to another—is now as cold as clay, lifeless. I watch my own index finger, moving beyond my control, as if it’s no longer a part of me, start to work its way inside the hole. I’m both disgusted and fascinated. A second later, I’m awake.

When I open
my eyes I see a bottle of water. It’s not an unopened bottle but a battered plastic one liter container with the original label missing. I snatch it, unscrew the top and let the water slosh into my mouth, not caring if it’s poison or what it tastes like. It’s warm, flat, with a strong metallic taste but I drink deep, letting it trickle luxuriously down my throat. Then I start choking and have to slow down.

Past the water bottle is a plate. On the plate is a hunk of bread and an apple. I snatch at the bread, tear at it with my teeth. The crust is hard, the soft flesh of the inner loaf stale and bland but it feels like a miracle to hold this thing in my hand, to be able to chew and chew. To be able to take another sip of water.

Soon the bottle is empty, the apple entirely consumed save for the seeds and the stem, every crumb of the bread devoured.

I lie back down, close my eyes, take deep even breaths. A few minutes pass before the full effect of the food hits me. I’m still hungry, still thirsty but I begin to feel a sense of wellbeing. That terrible gnawing hunger I’ve felt for so long recedes a little. It’s easy to swallow again. I know the hunger will begin nipping at me soon enough but maybe by then someone will have brought more food.

I finally sit up and take some time to look around. I see that I’m in a small basement room, dim shafts of light wavering through the broken glass of sooty window panes near the ceiling. It’s completely still, totally silent. I’m beside an enormous, ancient furnace, a rusting hulk that looms over me. There are mops and brooms and dusty tools scattered around, everything broken and rusted.

I’m lying on a dirty mattress. The plate and the bottle were set on the cold cement floor next to me. The floor is grimy and littered with scraps of paper, clumps of dust, hair, broom straw and mop yarn.

I notice mouse droppings in the dim light and wonder if part of the bread had been nibbled at while I was sleeping. The thought makes me nauseated for a moment but that might be because I ate so fast. The nausea passes and I promise myself I will be awake the next time food is delivered and keep it from touching the floor.

Finally, I push myself up from the mattress. When on my feet again, I feel wobbly, lightheaded. I hurt all over. It feels like I’ve run a marathon with a heavy pack on my back. My head starts to ache.

I begin walking around this cellar, this basement I’m in.

It’s a large space, the lower level of a large building. There are double metal doors at one end painted gunpowder gray. I make my way haltingly across the room toward them. The muscles in my legs and back and shoulders fight me every step of the way.

When I reach the doors, I push and pull on the handles but they won’t budge. I flip a row of light switches by the doors, looking up at the florescent light fixtures above me but none of them work, not even a flicker.

That’s ridiculous, Gillian. Where would the electricity come from?

It gets easier to walk and stand the farther I go. Slowly, I make my way all around the outer wall of the room, in no hurry, feeling my way in the gloom. I’m convinced that whoever put me here made sure that there was no easy way to escape. And where would I go if I did get out? Someone might be waiting right outside the door.

The smeared, sooty windows are too high to see through and too small to crawl through. If I could climb up to them, I’d have to try to squeeze myself through a tiny space lined with broken glass. And the Black Riders might have their motorcycles parked just beyond these cellar walls.

There are stacks of old iron bed frames and dusty boxes full of moldering paperwork, books, dishware and clothes. There are bicycles with their tires flat and their greasy chains drooping on the floor. There are chairs and tables and narrow old-fashioned school desks, nearly all of them in some way broken, missing legs and arms and seats.

A few of the broom handles, a shovel and some shards of broken crockery I pick up and muse over for a while, thinking about their possible use as weapons. I find a box with some silverware including butter knives. Maybe if I can take the next person who enters this space by surprise… I find a mop bucket in a dark corner behind the furnace where I can relieve myself.

In the farthest recess of the cellar, where the light doesn’t reach, I feel the surface of another door. It’s a plain wood door and it’s unlocked. When I turn the knob and find I can push it open, my heart starts thumping and my mouth goes dry. Maybe it’s something they overlooked. An exit. It’s pitch black in this hallway or stairwell or whatever it is. I run my hand along the wall for the light switch, toggle it back and forth just in case, by some miracle, it works.

Ignoring the image of rats scurrying out of the way, enormous spiders dangling in front of my face, I push my way into the room, walking blindly, holding my hands out before me, waiting to feel something, like a railing, like another door. My hands brush the top of a vacuum cleaner—I can feel the bag—and my feet kick against more boxes.

Soon I’m stopped by rows of dust-coated shelves. There’s not much on the shelves, a few plastic bottles of what I guess are old cleaning supplies. In back of the shelves is a wall of cold cement. I make my way around every corner of the room. It’s disappointingly small. I wade into a thick tangle of spider webbing at one point and it gets in my mouth, my eyes. Disgusted, I stumble from the room, trying to wipe myself clean.

It grows dark outside and light again before anyone comes to the door.

When I finally hear the shuffle of feet just outside the double doors, the hunger has been back for a while. It feels worse than before. I’ve been lying curled on the dirty mattress, my stomach clenched tight like the fist of a bareknuckle fighter. It’s hard to concentrate on anything. Only when I sleep do I get some relief. Weak light sifts through the grime-smeared little windows ringing two walls of the room.

I hear whispering, people jostling against each other. By the time I’ve struggled to my feet, woozy and unsteady, it’s too late to think about grabbing a broom handle or a jagged sliver from a broken plate. I curse myself for being so muddle-headed that I hadn’t thought to bring weapons to the mattress with me, hide some of these things close by.

One of the doors is shoved open and slams against the cellar’s inner wall. It’s dim in the passageway just outside the room but I can see a row of heads, maybe four or five people, all about my height or taller, all about my age. For some reason I was sure only one person would show up to deliver the food and that I might have a fighting chance.

“We have something for you,” the voice of a female says. I don’t recognize it. “Bring us your plate and the water bottle and we’ll give you this.”

I stay where I am, standing on the mattress, the huge metal ducts of the furnace hanging over me like the long arms of a protective uncle.

“How long…” I have to clear my throat. It feels like I haven’t spoken in a month. “How long do I have to stay here?”

“We’ll have to see what they decide,” someone else says.

“Hurry up!” the female says. “Do you want to starve to death?”

My mind fills with questions.
Why did you finally decide to feed me? Where am I? What comes next?
But I want the food and water more than anything.

I pick up the empty plate and bottle and drag myself over to the group in the doorway. None of them have ventured inside. They stand in a deep pool of shadow and none of their features are distinct. They nudge each other and pull back a little as I approach. There are at least five of them.

The girl who spoke finally takes a few steps into the room and sets a dish and another plastic bottle on the floor. I can see, just for a few moments as she passes through a shaft of weak daylight, long brown hair tied neatly in a ponytail, a thick, soft-looking sweater and the face of a young girl with big eyes.

The girl grabs the knob of the open door and pulls it shut behind her without waiting for me to give them the other plate and bottle. “That was close…” I hear her say as the group clumps back down the passageway. I hear laughter, shouts, feet clattering into the distance.

I set the empties near the door so they can grab them next time and pick up what they brought. I stuff a hunk of bread into my mouth—not as stale this time—and hurry back to the mattress.

A string of
days passes, at least five, maybe six. Time blurs. The only thing that changes is the light, slanting in from different directions as the day goes from morning to noon, to night. I find a box of marking pens and realize I could start making hash marks on the wall to signify each day that passes but, by the time I think of doing this, I’ve already lost track of how long I’ve been here.

The high point is when food is brought once a day. It’s always the same group who brings it. They don’t say anything to me, don’t answer my questions. Every day while the hungry hours slowly pass, I picture myself charging at them with a shovel or lurking in wait behind the door with a butter knife in my hand. But it seems pointless.

What would happen if I whacked one of them on the head or cut one of their arms? They’d beat me back, slam the door shut and probably let me starve. But I can’t accept the idea of just giving up. Escape seems impossible. Taking revenge on all of them at once seems impossible but I have to keep thinking about it. Thoughts of escape and revenge are all I have. Along with memories of the past.

The food they give me is not enough. My arms and legs are feeble and my stomach feels as tight as a drum. I’ve learned to make the water last rather than gulping it down as soon as I’ve finished eating. There’s an old, corroded sink in one corner of the cellar but the faucets don’t work. The pipes groan but not one drop comes out. There’s always the same bread, an apple, sometimes half a plate of mushy oatmeal.

And I feel so dirty, encrusted with filth, coated in dust and grime. If they left me here long enough, they might come down one day and find my mummified body curled up on the mattress like an antique, sawdust-stuffed child’s toy.

Water.

Water to bathe in, water to drink.

I keep having that dream where Larkin and I are talking about having all of us, the boys and the girls, go swimming in the creek together. I wish I had told him that was a fine idea. When I wake up, I have a horrible feeling that I missed something important—the memory of the two of us jumping into the water together, swimming side by side under the hot summer sun.

One day the
door opens to reveal only one indistinct shape standing in the murky half-light of the cellar. Whoever this person is, it takes an eternity for them to say anything, to do anything but stare at me. From my spot underneath the furnace, by squinting hard, I can make out the small, thin body of a young man. He doesn’t appear to be carrying anything, no plate of food, no bottle of water.

My head swarms with tiny black specks as I push myself up from the mattress. It’s darker than usual. Rain is beating at the windows. Thin trickles of damp are making their way through the cracks, seeping down the walls.

This boy keeps standing there, not saying a word. I ease myself back so I’m squatting on my heels, waiting for him to break the silence. At last he takes a few steps into the room. “God, it stinks in here.” The voice is familiar but I can’t place it at first.

“What did you expect?” My voice is a croak, ragged and frail. I feel like a ghost talking. I’m angry that whoever this is, they didn’t at least bring me some water.

I get to my feet and shuffle toward him. I feel like I’m a hundred years old, creaky and wizened. As I get closer, I can see his face a little better in the rain-dimmed daylight and realize it’s William. I stop about a dozen feet away from him and we stare at each other.

“Where’s your friend?” I say. “Jendra?”

“She’s busy. We don’t do everything together.”

“But I bet you’re disappointed she’s doing something without you.”

He makes a face like I’m a fool if I think I can get under his skin.

“Don’t annoy me,” he says. “Because I have good news for you.”

“Good news?” I look past him, at the murky passageway framed by the open door. If I was healthy, I could simply shove him out of the way and run past. If I was eating enough, I could take a broom handle and smack him unconscious. But he must know how weak I am.

Even so, he watches me warily, like I’m a caged animal that just slipped through its bars. But he seems weakened as well. Without Jendra, he’s visibly less confident, diminished. He’s missing his better half, the more powerful of the two.

I edge a few steps closer and he holds up his right hand with his palm outstretched, signaling me to stop. I try to think of something, anything I can do to take advantage of the situation but my mind is sluggish, my arms and legs possessing all the power of soggy noodles.

“Very good news. We’ve talked it over and—if you promise to behave yourself—we can let you up above.”

This stops me in my tracks. The words take a few moments to make sense to me. It doesn’t seem possible that he’s standing here, saying this after all I’ve been through. That it’s this simple.

He holds his hand up higher and takes a step back, as if he thinks I’m going to try to charge past him. “But we’re going to be watching you. All the time. The younger ones you were traveling with are with us. In fact, they’re here is this building, right above where we are. And you don’t want them to get hurt, right?”