This detail drove home the horror of this girl’s…no, she was a woman now…this woman’s life more than anything else could have. Ginny remembered that smile, flashing bright with metal. The curly permed hair, the fashionable clothes. Caroline had been smart and bright and beautiful once. All of that had been stolen from her, replaced with…this.
“When the pains get worse, one on top of each other, it will be almost time. You’ll feel like you have to push the baby out. Like you have to use the toilet. You won’t be able to help it. But until then, you should rest and try to get through each pain as it comes.” Caroline said this calmly, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to be giving birth in a flooding basement, in the dark. “Linna and I will be here to help you.”
Ginny waited for the next pain, but her body seemed to have gone quiet. “I can’t feel it moving.”
Caroline said nothing at first. Then, softly, she put her good hand on Ginny’s belly. “It doesn’t matter. Your body will push it out, no matter what.”
More tears came, but Ginny forced them back. She clutched at Caroline’s hand. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry I didn’t figure this out sooner. I didn’t put the pieces together, they were all right there. I should’ve known. I should’ve…”
“How could you have known anything?” Caroline looked surprised, then sad. “My mother didn’t know. My brother didn’t know. Nobody ever did. But you’re here now. And this will all be okay. But first, your baby—babies don’t wait for anything.”
More contractions came and went, some longer than others. Ginny waited for them to form some sort of pattern, but they refused. Some were short, others long. She tried counting the minutes between them and lost track with their irregularity.
Ginny had no idea how much time had passed and asked to see her phone. Only half an hour since she’d come into this room. An hour, maybe a little longer since she’d last spoken to Sean. Not soon enough for him to worry. Not soon enough.
“Mama. Water,” the girl a little bigger than Carrie said.
“Yes, Trixie. I see it.” Caroline never lost her calm, flat tone. She sat on the bed next to Ginny and took her hand. “It won’t be long now.”
“Until the baby comes?”
“Or the water.” She’d proven her ability to laugh, but there was nothing like humor in Caroline’s voice now.
Ginny tried to think, to focus, to fixate on something her brain wanted to tell her was important. Something about…Carrie. Something about…the water.
And then she couldn’t think of anything but the agony. It tore at her. It consumed her. As though from far away, she heard Caroline murmuring to Linna, something about blankets. Something about a basin. But then the all-encompassing urge to bear down took over, and all Ginny could think about was pushing.
Hands moved her again, lifting her hips, in the almost nonexistent break between contractions, to slide something beneath her. Hands pressed on her knees, parting and pushing them back toward her hips. Hands cradled her feet, bare, the slippers lost.
It had never been like this. The pain had been a familiar echo, vaster but still not entirely foreign. But this grinding, desperate need to strain and push and expel…Ginny was helpless against it. She couldn’t stop it. Her body did what it was meant to do. If she died, she thought, her body would continue to birth this child.
She felt the baby move down the birth canal, inch by agonizing inch. Too slow, and too fast at the same time. A bright, red-hot center of pain burned between her legs as she screamed. The sound spiraled up and up until her voice broke.
“The head. I see the head,” Caroline told her. “The baby’s almost here.”
Ginny looked down between her legs to see Caroline and Linna both poised there, hands ready. The light from her phone had no delicacy. It made everything harsh. Ginny saw the flash of the other children’s faces, but Deke was solid and steady; he held the light focused firmly between Ginny’s thighs.
The inexorable need to push cycled back, and Ginny rode it. Her fingers clutched the bare mattress, digging into the now-sodden material. She growled with her efforts, her teeth gritting so tightly she thought a tooth cracked.
The baby was born.
For a breathless, eternal moment, the emptiness inside confused her and Ginny sagged against the pillows. There was no cry, no wail. She struggled upright, desperate, and croaked out a wordless plea.
Caroline bent over the child, then lifted it. The baby hung limply in her hands. Then it moved. Then it screamed.
Ginny had never been so happy to hear anything in her life.
Chapter Forty-Three
Ginny dozed with her baby tucked up close to her naked skin, both of them covered in a blanket and Noodles purring by her side. She was too exhausted to care how dirty it was. Caroline and Linna pressed on her belly, eliciting a fresh burst of pain and another hot slosh of something from inside her. They talked to each other in that mumbled, mangled language, ignoring her, while the other children were dispatched on errands Ginny didn’t understand.
She didn’t care.
For now, her son was safe. They were warm, though anything but dry. And Ginny was tired…so tired…
She didn’t want to, but forced her eyes open. Her vagina burned and ached. Someone had pushed a folded bundle of material between her legs. The baby snuffled against her, then went quiet. Ginny was bleary, but awake. Her mouth tasted sour, dry. She’d have given almost anything for a drink of cold water.
Ginny smoothed her hand over her baby’s soft head and marveled at the hair there. It was pale, not dark like hers. He took after Sean. Ginny wanted to know the color of his eyes, but didn’t want to shine the bright light directly on him. “You have electricity down here.”
“Yes. Sometimes. But it was better to use a flashlight with batteries, when we could. It’s so good to have light.” Caroline’s low voice drifted through the darkness. “We have two lamps, but the outlets down here are bad. When we try to use the stove, sometimes it blows the bulbs.”
Ginny thought of all the times the power had gone out. “It blew our fuses too.”
“He said he’d fix it. That and the heat, he got that directed in to us because it was so cold. But it never worked as well as he wanted. He said he could build things just fine, but he didn’t understand electricity. We have a couple candles, but the matches got wet. They were your candles…” Caroline paused and sounded almost shy. “He stopped letting us have them, and no matches, either. Because we might start another fire. And that would’ve been very, very bad.”
“Caroline, why did you wait so long before you sent Carrie to get me?”
There was a long, long silence.
“We had to know,” Caroline said quietly, “if we could trust you.”
The simple way she said it broke Ginny’s heart. She found the other woman’s hand, the one weighed down by the chain and shackle. “You can trust me.”
“He didn’t know we were saving food. He didn’t know we’d eat only half of what he brought us, eat the things that would go bad. I made us put the rest away, in case. He was getting old, you see. He said he’d be around forever, that no matter what happened he’d be there, but I knew better. So I made us put the food away. Batteries. The light bulbs, though he’d yell about how careless we were to break so many.” Caroline coughed again. The noise was rattling and thick. She spit to the side, into the water. “He always threatened not to bring more. To let us starve, or sit in the dark. But I always knew he wouldn’t. He didn’t want us to die, you know. He didn’t want us dead.”
Ginny shivered. “But…I don’t understand, Caroline. Why would you stay here? If Carrie could get out through the ducts to get food, to find me, why wouldn’t you send her earlier? I would’ve helped you sooner.”
The bed dipped as the children gathered around. Their mother looked around at them, then at Ginny
. “You’re here now.”
A pulse of hot fluid leaked from between Ginny’s legs. She grimaced, but there was nothing to do for it. “My husband is on his way home, but the roads are closed. He might not get here for a while, but if he doesn’t hear from me, he will worry. He’ll send someone or do something. But, Caroline…we can’t wait for that. You have to send Carrie out again.”
Caroline said nothing at first. She looked around at faces focused on hers. All of them were so quiet. They sat so still.
She looked at Ginny. “Yes. Carrie should go out.”
Carrie let out a low wail and shook her head. She ran from the room. Caroline held up a hand when her sister moved to go after her. “No, Trixie. I’ll go after her.”
Dragging her chain behind her, Caroline went into the next room, leaving the light behind. Ginny stared at the foot of the bed. Deke, the tall boy who’d held the phone while she gave birth. Linna, the oldest girl. Trixie, a little bigger than Carrie.
The circle of light stretched to the wall, and Ginny could clearly see a few of the drawings she’d noticed earlier. This one had six stick figures. One, the mother. Five children around her. She looked again at the group.
“One of you’s missing.”
“T-T-Tate.” Trixie had a stutter, either nerves or a speech impediment. “Huh-he got stuck. Huh-he was t-too big.”
“He said bad things would happen if we tried to get away,” Deke said flatly, the “he” in question clearly referring to George Miller, and not Deke’s brother. “Tate pushed him. He hit Tate’s head, and Tate wasn’t sure what happened. Then Tate said we need to try, Mama. We need to try. And he went—”
“Deke,” Caroline said sharply, a dark silhouette in the doorway. “That’s enough.”
The water, at least, seemed to have stopped rising. It sloshed against Caroline’s thighs as she moved toward the bed. “Carrie will go. But she’s very afraid. She’s not sure what to do.”
“Do you have a pen? Paper? Something to write with?”
“Everything’s wet,” Linna said. “The crayons are broke. The paper was in the cabinet. It’s ruined.”
Trixie let out a sob at that, and flung herself onto the bed while Linna rubbed her back.
Ginny was struck with inspiration. “My phone. I’ll type a note in it. She can take my phone and find someone. Go next door, give them the phone. They’ll see it. If not, at the very least, they’ll know it’s my phone, or figure it out. And she can tell them, can’t she? Where we are?”
Caroline hesitated. “Carrie is…special.”
“She’s very special,” Ginny said softly, seeing Carrie creeping up behind her mother. “Very special and very brave. She’ll know just what to do. Won’t you, Carrie?”
Carrie stepped out from behind her mother, and into the feathery edges of the light circle. “Scared.”
“Bad things happen!” Deke cried suddenly. “Bad things happen when we try to go outside! Don’t let her, Mama. Don’t let her go!”
“Deke, hush!” Caroline shook him by the shoulders. “You’re going to scare your sisters. Stop. It will be fine. We have to do this. You don’t understand, but we do.”
Horribly, Ginny thought she understood. Caroline remembered a life on the outside, but none of these children did. After living their entire lives down here, was it any wonder they might be afraid of what waited for them in the outside world? What horror stories had George Miller told them to keep them willingly imprisoned?
“Tate went out! Tate went out and he never came back! He got lost! Tate didn’t come back!”
The back of Caroline’s hand cracked across Deke’s face hard enough to send him splashing to his hands and knees in the water. He came up sputtering, backing away, across the room.
Ginny’s stomach churned at the violence, and she cringed, covering her baby as best she could.
Nobody else seemed surprised at Caroline’s actions. She spoke calmly, “Deke. I don’t want to make you go to the corner. Not now, like this. But if you can’t get yourself under control, you will go to the corner even if you have to sit up to your ears in this water. Do you understand me?”
In the white light, Deke looked extremely pale. Water sluiced over his face, mimicking tears. He nodded after a moment. “Yes.”
Caroline sighed. “Carrie, can you take this lady’s phone up through the ducts. Out of the house? Can you go outside?”
Carrie shuddered visibly. She hadn’t been splashed with water; her tears were real. She shook her head.
Again, Ginny was inspired. “Carrie. You know the other children? The ones you were playing with here in the house? Kelly and Carson, the night of the party.”
Carrie looked fearful, then nodded.
“They live in the house next door to me. You can go to their house and see them. Their mother is very nice, she’s a nice lady. Like me. You can trust her too.”
Caroline pushed the hair from Carrie’s forehead and cupped her cheeks. The chain clanked. “You have to be brave and strong, like Miss Ginny said. You have to do this for us, baby. It’s…well. You just have to. Okay?”
Carrie nodded again. Ginny gestured for the phone. Carefully, so she didn’t disturb her sleeping, still-unnamed baby, Ginny tapped a message into her phone. She saved it as a note, sent it as a text that failed, and added it to an email that also failed. It didn’t matter, once Carrie got the phone into a place where there was a signal, all of the messages would be sent. She checked the time too.
Five hours since the last time she’d spoken to Sean.
It seemed so impossible that all of this had happened in so little time, but she didn’t need a pinch to prove she wasn’t dreaming. She had the pain between her legs and the child snuffling lightly in her arms. She had the splash of water and five pale, wide-eyed faces staring at her.
“Do you have a plastic bag?” Ginny asked. “The kind for sandwiches. One that closes at the top. In case she drops it, so it doesn’t get wet.”
“No. We have a few plastic bags, but we used them to line the toilet.” Caroline shook her head.
“Never mind. She’s going up, right?” Ginny took a deep breath, determined to be positive. “Carrie. You hold it tight. Is there something else we can put it in for her? A purse or a bag we can tie to her?”
“I have a stocking,” Linna piped up shyly. “It got a hole. We didn’t mend it yet. She can use the match for it. It’s long enough that we can tie the end to her shirt somehow.”
“Yes. That will work.” Ginny held up the phone. “But once she takes it…we won’t have any light.”
Caroline smiled. “We’ve sat in the darkness before. We can do it again.”
Ginny cringed at the idea of sitting here in the pitch black with four feet of water all around her, the bed like a boat in an unstable sea. But it was the only option. She needed to get her baby out of here.
She checked the message one last time, hoping something had managed to get through, but nothing had. She thumbed the screen and tilted it to show Carrie. “See? Like this. You just push this button when you get there, you show it to them. Okay? That’s all you do.”
The phone looked twice as big in Carrie’s tiny hand. Ginny lost her breath when it looked like the girl was going to drop it over the side of the bed, but she caught it. Carrie pushed the button and held up the phone for Ginny to see.
“Yes. Like that.” Ginny took the phone, then the sock Linna handed her. “Okay. Are we ready for the dark?”
“Yes. We are,” said Caroline.
It was instant and total and unyielding, that darkness. But it wasn’t unfamiliar, and it was no longer terrifying. Carrie found her way into the ductwork. The rest of them huddled on the damp mattress, piled with equally damp blankets, trying to stay warm. The baby woke, wailing, and found Ginny’s breast. The sharp pull of his lips and tongue on the sensitive nipple
stung, and Ginny had no milk yet, but the baby sucked anyway and seemed content.
Ginny blinked, eyes straining, but the darkness here was total. It was something of a comfort, actually. She closed her eyes and let herself drift for a minute or so before forcing herself back to consciousness.
Caroline’s rusty laughter gritted out of the darkness. “Ginny. I lied.”
Ginny roused, trying to push through the wall of her weariness to understand. “About what?”
“Being ready for the darkness,” Caroline said. “Nobody is ever ready for it.”
Chapter Forty-Four
“I was thirteen when I figured out I could get my daddy to give me anything I wanted.” Caroline’s words drifted out of the darkness.
Ginny had no idea how long they’ve been sitting in silence. Someone had moved onto the bed to cuddle next to her. She thought it must be Trixie by the size and the flow of hair. Trixie snored lightly.
“Caroline, you don’t have to tell me this now.”
“Now,” Caroline said, “might be the only time I ever tell it.”
That would not be true; Ginny knew that. Caroline would have to tell her story a lot of times very soon. To the police, certainly. To her brother. To the media, if she wasn’t careful, or if she wanted to earn something for her pain. Still, Ginny thought she knew what the other woman meant. What better time to tell a story like this, but in the dark?
“All my friends liked my dad the best because he was always around to do whatever we needed. He could always drive us to the mall, or he’d drop us off at the pool and pick us up. And he’d sometimes stop on the way home to treat us to ice cream. He didn’t try to talk to us like the other dads did. He just listened. He let me pick the music. He was…cool. He was the cool dad.
“When I was thirteen, I wanted a bikini for the summer. My mother said no. She wanted me to wear a one-piece. But all my friends had them. She made me buy a babyish suit. I was the only one. The only one without a cool swimsuit. And my dad noticed.”