Inside the house.
But it’s faint. I’m not going to worry about it for now. I’ll have Don check it out when he gets home. I shudder to think, but maybe we have a mouse.
As I’m filling up a pot with water, I hear more noise. Only this time, it’s not a rattle. I hear crashing and banging, bottles rolling around and breaking—and the noise is coming from downstairs.
Definitely not a mouse.
Grabbing the chef’s knife, I turn off the water and head through the kitchen to the basement door. I can feel my heart thudding in my chest, but I’m calm, grateful my children aren’t here right now.
I’ve got the element of surprise—but I’m hoping it’s nothing. Maybe some animal got in there or maybe even Don’s home and I didn’t realize it.
After flipping on the light switch, I walk down the concrete steps as the room comes into view. The sound, I’m certain, was coming from the wall where the wines are stored and, to see that, I need to get all the way down the stairs and turn a corner. As my foot reaches the floor, I hear something else.
It sounds like mumbling.
And motion. Crinkling, crunching, shifting.
My heart beats harder but I take in a slow breath, just like the teacher at the yoga center taught me. Control your breath; control your emotions.
I turn the corner and take in what I see.
The wine rack has toppled. Bottles are everywhere—some broken, some rolling. At first, I think Don’s going to be so angry, because some of those wines cost hundreds of dollars.
But then I see something else as I take more steps forward, the cause of the crash.
A person who looks to be lying on the floor but is still sitting in a chair.
As I step closer, I see she’s been duct taped to it—her hands are bound in tape around the back. There’s tape wound around her lap, keeping her stuck to the chair, and tape on her mouth so she can’t talk. She still doesn’t see me, because she’s not facing this way, and my shoes are nearly silent on the floor. Probably all she can hear are her struggles.
Finally, I’ve moved to where I can see her face—and she can see me. She’s a strikingly beautiful girl—blonde hair, blue eyes, thin, waiflike.
As her eyes take me in, I also see that she’s scared out of her mind. Her pupils nearly blot out the azure irises and she begins to struggle in the chair furiously, wiggling back and forth and making more noise.
Shit. I’m still holding the knife.
Turning, I place it on a small table behind me and then turn back to the girl. She has some cuts on her arm, and I don’t know if they came from the wine bottles or before she was here. Even though her clothes are stained with wine, they appear to have been dirty before and, as I get closer, I nearly gag from the smell, as if she’s been at a cattle ranch, rolling in the cow patties. But, swallowing, I fight the reaction because this girl needs my help. I have no idea why she’s here or how she got here, but I do know she didn’t do this to herself. As I reach my hand toward her face, she begins struggling violently again.
I say, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to take the tape off.” She stops struggling as I again move my hand toward the edge of the tape. “I’m sorry if this hurts.” As I try to gently pull, it’s not just tearing at her skin but a lot of her hair is stuck to the tape as well.
Stoically, she doesn’t wince or scream or anything as I remove it. Once the sticky gray tape is in my hand, she starts speaking frantically—but her voice is high pitched and rapid, and I’m having a hard time understanding her.
It’s Claudia, the girl from my dreams.
The girl from Dr. Wilson’s filing cabinet.
But the memory is gone, already fading, and—for the first time tonight—I’m truly afraid. Afraid that I’ll forget this, afraid that I won’t remember anything else.
And afraid that my life is in danger.
I breathe in deeply, pulling air through my nostrils, and flip on the light switch before walking down the steps. The air down here is cool, but everything is exactly how I expected to see it. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I turn the corner and see the area where that young girl was, but there’s no evidence she was ever here. The floor-to-ceiling wine rack appears to be undamaged, and it’s almost full, although there are a few slots for new bottles.
But curiosity gets the best of me and I get up close to examine it, wondering if it’s new. As my eyes scour it, though, I see evidence of damage and repair. Some of the pieces have been glued. It’s hard to tell unless I’m close and really looking for it.
I know it’s circumstantial and would never hold up in any court.
But it’s the confirmation I need to know I’m not crazy. I’m not making this stuff up in my head. It’s real—and it really happened.
So I decide to look through Don’s burner phone, wishing I’d thought to grab his other one in the kitchen. Too late now.
There are only a few numbers he’s texted with, so I pick the most recent one first and scroll to the top to begin with the oldest. At first, there’s only a lot of back and forth about package deliveries, mostly dates, times, and confirmations. But then there’s quite an exchange that happened around the time I was admitted to the facility.
Don’s text reads I’ll be bringing you two packages instead of one tonight.
No room here.
MAKE room. We had a major SNAFU.
There’s no room. I’m telling you.
Call me as soon as you can.
It’ll be a while. I’m with an intake.
This can’t wait.
I have a real patient right now. It has to wait.
I switch to the call log, because there are no other texts from that day. The log shows this number calling that number several times and, finally, that number calling this one, followed by a seven-minute conversation.
My stomach is growing sour as I go back to where I left off in the text messages. At the same time, I hear a lot of noise upstairs, a skirmish of some sort, maybe, but I have to ignore it.
A message from Don’s phone to that same number two days later says, I have another long-term package for you. Needs placement with you ASAP.
The other party, after some time passes, asks, Long-term?
Eyes for me. Someone to watch A when you can’t be around. To report to you if treatment fails to work.
This is unorthodox. It’s a bad idea.
Better than your idea. Call me.
I knew I wouldn’t have to look at the phone logs again to find that they did chat. Then the text messages return to what they were before. Every few weeks, there is a message from Don that says Package incoming followed by the other party sending a text back that says confirmed.
Until, about six months later, the other party sends this message to Don: You need to visit your wife. Looks suspicious if you don’t.
Like a jolt of lightning, a shiver crawls down my spine as I wonder if this is my supposed psychiatrist from the facility, Dr. Catherine Wilson.
Now my heart’s thudding in my chest again and I find myself taking deep, calm breaths to keep myself steady. I scroll through faster and there’s nothing else other than the usual package delivery messages. I also can’t help but notice that there are lulls, and those just so happen to coincide with times when I know Don would have been in Washington.