“There’s a couple of steps further down,” he said.
Kimberly felt the cold iron as he placed her hands on what felt like a railing and she started to walk wondering where this would lead her to, since there was no lower level than the basement. Was there?
“Okay you can open your eyes now,” he said when they reached the end of the stairs.
Cautiously Kimberly opened them and blinked a few times to get used to the light. Behind her she saw a long and winding iron staircase. Joseph turned her around. “I found this when I was redecorating the room down here,” he said.
Kimberly gasped as she looked into what looked like a cavern. Old dusty bottles as far as the eye could see.
“Isn’t this amazing?” he asked.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s bourbon. You know like other people have wine cellars, then this appears to be a bourbon-cellar. These bottles are more than fifty years old. And look at this, this table over here,” he said and walked away from Kimberly.
“What is that?”
“It’s for Black Jack,” he said. “I tried to clean everything to make it look nice for you. “It has been down here for a long time. Maybe your aunt’s husband created this place or something. Maybe it’s even older. Who knows? I think it is awesome. Talk about man-cave.”
“So when did you find out about this place?” Kimberly asked.
“About a month ago,” he said.
Kimberly touched one of the bottles and got dust on her finger. “So why now?” she asked. “Why are you showing this to me now?”
Joseph stared at her, his eyes flaring with madness, she believed. Or maybe she was just imagining things.
He started to laugh. “What? I can’t share this with my wife? I wanted you to taste some of the bourbon. Come.”
Joseph went to an open bottle at the counter and poured some of its content into the two glasses next to it. Cards were spread out on the gambling table, two cigars lay smoking in the ashtray.
“Here,” he said and handed her the glass. “Taste this. It’s really good.”
“Who have you been playing with?” Kimberly asked looking at the green table.
“What’s that?”
“There are dealt cards for two players and two cigars in the ashtray.”
Joseph looked at it, then laughed again. “Ah that. Just me being messy, it’s all. Now cheers.”
He lifted his glass towards hers and drank. Kimberly never liked strong alcohol much but this one she emptied in the first try.
“There you go,” Joseph said, his voice hoarse probably from the cigars. “Now have another one.”
She drank the second one and soon the room started to spin. Kimberly sat down on a barstool while Joseph poured her another drink. She really didn’t want anymore, she didn’t like how it made her lose control, but somehow she drank it anyway.
“I want to move,” she finally said.
“What’s that, dearie?” Joseph said, his voice blurry.
“I want to get out of this house. I don’t like it here.”
“Pah,” he said and poured more into her glass. “You just need another one. Here let me pour you one.”
“No, Joseph. I am serious,” she said with a sob. She grabbed his sleeve and looked into his eyes. “We have got to get out of here before something bad happens.”
“What could happen?” he said drinking from his glass again.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I am afraid. Constantly. I am tired of being afraid. I want you back, Joseph. Ever since we moved in here you have changed. I don’t like it. You’re so different.”
“Here have another one,” he said and poured more into her glass.
Kimberly drank it and the room spun even faster now. The barstool wouldn’t stay still either and she felt like she was falling. She got down from the stool and held onto the bar counter.
“I don’t feel so good. I need to…I think I need to get out of here.”
“Nonsense. We were just getting started,” Joseph said and downed yet another glass.
Kimberly tried to look at him but he wouldn’t sit still. Come to think of it everything in the cavern was moving. Or was she moving? Kimberly started to laugh.
“What’s the axe for Joseph?” she finally asked and pointed before she slipped and almost fell. She managed to grab a hold of the counter with the other hand.
Joseph laughed. “Here have another one,” he said.
Kimberly could no longer stand on her legs and sat on the floor. The glass was put in her hand and she drank it even if she tried not to. When she looked up again, the cavern was filled with people. Women in hats and nice dresses and men in suits all smoking cigars and some sitting at the table, gambling. Joseph laughed and laughed. Music was playing and Joseph pulled her arm to help her get up. He laughed and swung her around and around till she felt nauseated and had to stop.
One of the fancy guests got up from the recliner and let her sit in it. Kimberly laughed and panted to catch her breath, while the room continued to spin and people talk and dance. Soon the noise drowned out every thought Kimberly had in her mind and seconds later she dozed off in a sea of dancing stars.
Chapter 53
May 2016
“What happened? Why are you so upset?”
Shannon tried hard to get some sleep, but Jack kept tossing around in the bed. He got up and walked back and forth in front of the window. He had been like that ever since he came back from putting Betsy Sue to bed.
“She annoys me, that’s what happened,” he said. “Telling me all these weird stories of ghosts and whatnot. I can’t trust anything she says, can I?”
Shannon sat up in the bed and turned on the nightlight. Jack stood in the middle of the floor only wearing his boxers. She missed the time when she could enjoy looking at him like that, when they were all over each other and their biggest problem were the preparations for the wedding. Why couldn’t she just be allowed to worry about napkins and centerpieces, instead of whether she would ever see her son again or not? It felt so unfair. Finally she had a little piece of happiness, and then this happened?
God if you’re there. Why do you let these things happen?
“She’s just a scared little girl who has lived the past five years of her life incarcerated in a house somewhere with a crazed person. She probably needed to make up stories like this to survive, to keep sane.”
“She’s full of stories all right,” Jack said with a snort. “Why can’t she just tell us the truth? She knows what’s at stake. She knows we’re trying to locate our son. Why all the acting? Why all the untruth stories?”
“Maybe they’re true to her,” Shannon tried. She didn’t really want to defend the girl. She was as frustrated as Jack was.
Jack snorted again and sat on the edge of the bed. Shannon curled up, pulling her knees up under her chin, feeling so hopeless, so lonely. Next to her on the pillow laid Bobby, his ear torn off. Jack had brought it in and thrown it angrily on the bed. Shannon had cried when seeing what happened to the bear. Now she felt like crying again. But there were no more tears left. She praised the fact that there was no alcohol in the house.
“Come to bed, Jack. We have hardly slept in days. We both need it. I can hardly look out of my eyes.”
Jack rubbed his hair, then got up from the bed again. He walked to the side of it. “You’re right,” he groaned and grabbed the corner of the cover.
Shannon turned off the lamp on the nightstand next to her and Jack was just about to crawl under the cover, when he stopped.
“What the…?”
Jack stormed to the window and looked out.
“What is it?” Shannon asked.
“It’s her,” he said. “Betsy Sue!”
Shannon jumped out of the bed and ran to the window as well. In the yard she spotted Betsy Sue climb the fence of the backyard.
“Where the heck is she going now?” Shannon asked puzzled while Betsy Sue landed on t
he pavement and started running into the street.
“That’s a very good question.”
Jack grabbed his pants from the floor and put them on.
“What are you doing?” Shannon asked.
He swung a sweater over his head and pulled it down to cover his body. “I am going after her.”
Chapter 54
May 2016
I caught up with Betsy Sue when she crossed through Forsyth Park. I stayed far enough behind her to not make her know I was following her. She moved fast, but I had no trouble keeping up with her pace.
It seemed like she was following the route we had taken earlier in the day when driving around. She made a couple of turns, then came back to the same street again. It felt like she had memorized the route even the wrong turns.
Soon we entered the small street with the small shops that we had seen earlier in the day. Betsy Sue slowed down as she reached them and then she stopped in front of one of them.
The doll-store.
Three dolls were displayed in the window. Betsy Sue put a hand on the glass. I watched her look at the dolls for a few minutes and remembered that I had seen her flinch in the car, when we had passed this store. Why, I still didn’t know. But I had a feeling I was getting closer to the answer.
Betsy Sue didn’t stay long. Suddenly she walked away from the window, turned on her heel and started to run. I set off after her as she ran into the street and turned around the corner of a building. I ran after her, but as I turned around the same corner, she was gone.
Puzzled I continued down the road till I reached another street corner and looked around it, but there was no sign of the girl.
Where the heck did she go?
I continued down another street, looking around every corner, before I decided to go back where I had seen her last. I walked to the doll-store, but there was still no sign of the girl. I had lost her.
Damn it!
I searched for her for about half an hour before I decided I’d better get back.
Shannon was sitting in the living room when I returned. The reporters had taken off and left us alone for the night.
Shannon jumped to her feet when I entered.
“What happened? Where is Betsy Sue?”
“I lost her,” I said and closed the door behind me.
“You lost her? How?”
“I don’t know. She disappeared suddenly around a corner. I couldn’t find her after that,” I said gesticulating wildly. I was very annoyed with myself.
“You think she knew you were there?”
I threw myself on the couch with a deep sigh. “I don’t know. I tried my best but she might have.”
Shannon walked to the window and looked out into the night. “What do you think she was doing anyway? Where was she going?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. She seemed to follow the route we had taken earlier by car. My guess is she did remember something but that she didn’t want us to know. Maybe she’s trying to get back. I followed her to the doll-store. She stopped in front of it and looked at the dolls on display. After that she disappeared.”
“The doll-store, huh?” Shannon asked and looked at me.
“There is something about that store. I remember I saw her flinch when she saw it while driving past it. She knows that store.”
Shannon looked at me. “Or maybe it was the dolls.”
“What do you mean?”
“She said they were thirteen girls at the doctor’s house, right?”
“Where are you going with that?”
Shannon approached me. “What if they weren’t girls? You know how Betsy Sue has a very vivid imagination. A lonely girl who talks plays with birds, talks to ghosts, plays cards with them and thinks they’re real. Maybe there are other things she imagined being real while trapped in that house.”
I stared at Shannon while gazillion thoughts went through my mind. She was on to something here. “The head came off! Of course. She told me she accidentally ripped the head off one of the girls and then the doctor put it back on. That makes totally sense.”
“They’re dolls,” Shannon said.
“And the doctor’s house is filled with them.”
Chapter 55
May 2016
Trevor Bryden woke in his bed with a start. He sat up in the darkness, panting, sweating. He had been doing that a lot lately. What was it with all these nightmares? It felt like bad omens.
Just like those stupid birds!
Ever since he had seen them around the house just before his dad died he had hated those black flying rats.
Trevor cleared his throat and got out of the bed to get a drink of water. His hands were still trembling from the nightmare, when he grabbed his glass and poured water in it from the fridge. Trevor drank while staring out the kitchen window, into the small back yard. Light from the streetlamps lit up the lawn. Trevor loved his yard and had just planted roses by the fence. Beautiful long rosebushes that were going to cover that ugly wooden fence towards the neighbor’s house. The Bryden house wasn’t among the biggest around here, but it was the best maintained. That’s the way it had always been and that’s the way it would continue to be, had Trevor anything to say in it.
He looked out at the bushes and felt satisfied with his choice of flower. Roses had been his dad’s favorites. He had loved the garden as well and taken good care of it when he lived there, before Trevor inherited the house after his death. Trevor was desperately trying to keep the yard the way his father would have liked it. He believed he had managed pretty well.
Trevor finished his water and put the glass on the counter, when he heard the sound.
“CR-R-R-UCK, CR-R-R-UCK, CR-R-R-RUCK.”
He lifted his head with a gasp.
The ravens! They are back!
Trevor looked out at the flock of birds that suddenly had arrived and covered most of his back yard. He watched as they landed in his beautiful bushes and started picking his roses, piercing them with their beaks. The flowers scattered and were nothing but petals, as they slowly fell to the ground one after the other.
“I’ll be damned…not the roses!” he exclaimed, then went for his shotgun in the living room.
Trevor grabbed the gun, his nostrils flaring, his eyes blazed. With angry steps he walked to the door that he slammed open before he directed the gun at the birds. He was panting loudly while standing at the back porch, aiming at them.
“Get away from the roses you freaking rats!”
Trevor hoped the birds would move if he made enough noise, and a few of them did take off into the air, but only to come back again, darting towards him, croaking, and screaming.
One grabbed his hair and pulled off a big lock, then took off. Trevor screamed and fired his gun at it, but missed. The other birds became even louder and attacked the roses even more aggressively. Trevor fired the gun at them and a few took off, but only to return seconds later picking at the roses, making the petals fall to the soil.
“My roses,” he yelled. “My beautiful roses.”
Trevor ran down the steps into the yard, yelling at the birds, waving his arms and the gun desperately to scare them away. Storming through the yard, he somehow knew he would fall, even before he did. He didn’t know how he knew. Maybe it had been in one of his dreams.
As he ran across the lawn, he felt his foot hit something and soon after he tumbled to the ground, face first into the pile of fertilizer that he had bought to spread out over the ground and the roses the very next day, to keep them healthy. Just like his father had taught him to.
He had poured them all out on the grass, so it would be easier to spread out the next day. His mouth was filled with the small blue balls and he couldn’t breathe. Trevor coughed and lifted his head, then spat out the balls. The birds were circulating above his head.
Trevor spat and spat till the taste got away. He found the gun lying in the grass next to him, then looked up and thought he saw something. Or someone. He couldn’t quite fi
gure it out. The birds were screaming above his head as he picked up the gun and aimed it at the figure standing between his beloved rosebushes.
“Who’s there?”
Ravens soon swarmed him and he shooed them away. When he turned to look again, the figure in the rosebushes was gone. Thinking it was something he had imagined, Trevor got to his feet. He walked to the bushes and picked up some of the flowers that had been pulled out and landed in the soil.
“Damn birds,” he mumbled to himself looking at the leftover rose petals in his hand.
Trevor tried once again to scare the remaining birds away, but they only took off for a few seconds before they returned. Trevor roared and yelled, and swung the gun around in the air, before he got ready to shoot once again, when he realized he had run out of ammo.
Grumbling he walked back through the house and into the kitchen. Being small as he was he always kept a ladder in the kitchen to be able to reach the top shelves where he kept the stuff he never used much, like the ammo for his gun. Trevor left the gun on the kitchen table, then climbed the ladder and found the packages in his dad’s old cookie jar. He grabbed them, then climbed down again, but as he turned to find his gun, it was no longer there.
“What the he…?”
Had he forgotten it outside? Trevor stormed out on the porch and found the gun leaned up against the wall.
Oh you old fool, he thought to himself and grabbed it. The black ravens were still going at it in the yard. But not for long. Trevor was determined to get rid of them, even if he had to shoot each and every one of them.
Trevor was about to lift the gun into position when he noticed the rocking chair on the porch was moving like someone had just been sitting in it.
What the heck?
He decided it had to be the wind. What else could it be? An animal maybe. Or maybe the wind. Yup, just the wind. Had to be.
Trevor moved on. With the gun lifted, his eye in the seeker, aiming at the birds, he stepped out on the stairs, but just as he did, he felt a push in his back, that made him trip over the first step, and tumble down the rest of the stairs, holding onto the gun while he fell. He saw the rock as he approached it and knew in that moment that it was over, that the birds had ended up getting the last word.