TITLE: Starvation Angel
AUTHOR: Vehemently (vehemently@yahoo.com)
SPOILERS: none in particular
RATING: R, purely for disturbing subject material
CATEGORY: X-File
ARCHIVE: Gossamer; The I in FBI. Others please ask.
DISCLAIMER: Characters you recognize belong to Chris Carter
/ 1013 and are used in loving violation of Title 17 of the
U.S. Code.
SUMMARY:
Bernadette, people are searching for
The kind of love that we possess . . .
* * * * * * *
Starvation Angel
by Vehemently
* * * * * * *
Dana Scully awoke in that strange way of sleep-in mornings:
with a slow, growing realization that the dream she was
having wasn't actually taking place. She felt her arms
clasped to her chest, one hand curved between her breasts;
with her eyes closed she reached up and felt her face and
found that she was crying. Only now did she notice the
heaving sobs which had thrown her out of dreaming, and the
hand cradling her right breast as if to stifle her distress.
She sat up quickly, in the dark, eyeing the corners of the
room. Already the loose bits of the dream were fading into
imagination and reference -- something about a long tan
hallway, and that beat-up old blue car she had in college.
And the dead child crying, and being lost in a dark room that
had no walls. She wiped the tears off her cheeks swiftly, but
the paranoia was more difficult to dismiss. Her throat hurt,
as if she had been choking. Scully didn't know what to think.
The telephone next to her bed did not ring -- if she were in
a movie, it would, and she could confess her vague terror
while her social defense grid was still down. For once,
Mulder was asleep somewhere, hopefully in his bed, hopefully
not dreaming at all. Scully threw off her covers in an
attempt at decisiveness, and went to the bathroom for a drink
of water. Palming the acrid cold water from the tap, she felt
the drops rolling down her chin to the hot flesh of her body,
and her heart was still beating inordinately fast.
Carefully she avoided looking in the mirror at herself.
Tousled hair and the otherworldliness of sleep were too
vulnerable to be seen, right now. Scully padded back to her
bed, sure in total darkness of her surroundings, brushing
fingers against the edge of her night table. She climbed back
into bed with only a glance at her glowing clock: 4:12 am.
Too early by half, and too late to return to restful sleep.
Irritably Scully rolled over, trying to find a comfortable
position so she could drift off. The blanket was all the way
up to her chin, as if it could ward off further fears.
**
It hurts. There's something important I should be thinking
about but it hurts and I can't think about anything else.
An awful headache in the front that pulses down the right
side the way Mom describes her migraines and maybe that's
what it is. But I can taste blood in my mouth and a slow ache
on my wrists and there's something terribly wrong. I can't
open my eyes.
My eyelashes are crushed to my cheeks and they tickle a
little. By wrinkling my forehead I can tell there's a cloth
over my face, over part of my face, something tight so my
eyes won't open. I don't want to move, something bad will
happen if I move, so I just lie still and count what body
parts I can feel. Wrists, ankles, a line around my front --
that dull hurt like being touched on a sore spot with hay. I
breathe and can feel my elbows against my waist. No shoes, I
think. Why am I barefoot.
What's going on. There's blood in my mouth so I don't open it
to ask. I don't know if someone's in the room with me -- I
don't know what room I'm in. Something awful is here. My head
throbs like a heartbeat, in time with it, I can feel it hot
in my neck and all of my skin is on fire. My breaths come in
little gasps and I can't stop myself. Something awful. What
something. Something awful.
When I start to feel lightheaded I know I must be panicking,
like that time Julie wouldn't go on in the school play, and
Mr. Cray had to go get a paper bag for her to breathe in. She
sat on the floor and all the teachers knelt around her and
maybe that's what's going on with me. But I can't open my
eyes to know and nobody's putting a paper bag in my face. I
think about Mr. Cray, and how he kills bees with his bare
hands, and I know he wouldn't panic. He sits on his desk in
front of the class and says We have a problem, and then he
starts to give us clues to solve the problem. And when he
stands up and writes on the board, and turns back to us when
we get it right, it feels so good to know we solved the
problem.
I don't think he's here. I can't smell that chalk smell he
always has. He would help me solve this problem. He would
lead me to what the clues mean. He would pick up his fat blue
chalk and write on the board:
1) sight -- nothing. Eyes are closed by a cloth. Bandaged?
2) hearing -- nothing but heartbeat. Too loud to tell about
anything else.
3) taste -- blood. No medicines and I can't taste what I had
for lunch.
4) feel -- headache, tightness at arms and legs, lying on
side. I'm lying on something hard like a board or the floor.
5) smell -- nothing. My nose isn't covered so I can breathe
OK.
Writing down in my head in blue chalk makes me calm down a
little. It's just a problem, like in class. Mr. Cray tells
me, Now speculate what kinds of things could be happening.
What kinds of things. Maybe I was in an accident and I'm
blind. They took me to the hospital and I'm blind so they
covered my eyes. Maybe I fell off the jungle gym and I'm just
lying in the teachers' lounge with a blanket over my head,
like they did for Tim when he got sick that one time.
Lots of maybes, but I can't remember anything since lunch and
I'm hungry again so it's a long time. Something awful is what
it is, something bad enough to not remember. Mom's gonna be
so sad, if I'm hurt bad. Maybe she'll be in the hospital with
me. What are we going to do, Mom? Help me, Mom. Mom would
tell me to pray to God. Something's wrong and I don't know
what to do. There aren't enough clues to figure out what the
problem is, Mr. Cray. I'm scared and I don't want to cry, I'm
too old to cry now, but I'm so scared. God, help me.
**
They arrived at the mother's house at nine the next morning,
and the red rims of eyes showed that the mother had not slept
at all. A man in a sober navy suit introduced himself as a
lawyer, but while Scully was still thinking, Already? she
realized he was someone from the mother's office.
He jutted his unremarkable chin and handed her his card, with
his name and firm blazoned in royal blue. The mother just
shook hands limply.
Mulder stood back from the interview, as he often did,
scrutinizing reactions and gathering his vague impressions.
Scully knew he enjoyed discomfiting people, standing around
tall and silent, but his grave expression and the case's
circumstances suggested a different sort of silence. Scully
arranged her skirt as she sat, fussing, and finally she
turned to the chintz couch on which the mother perched.
"You didn't see any strange behavior out of Bernadette when
she left for school in the morning?" Scully's tongue felt
furry, her consonants slurred, but the mother did not notice.
She just shook her head and crushed a tissue.
The lawyer leaned forward, as if confiding in a friend.
"Bernie follows a schedule, always. She's never late getting
home, or she calls the office." He straightened his lapels, a
nervous gesture. The mother was staring at him, and Scully
imagined poison in that glance.
"She hates when you call her that," was all the mother said,
and then she looked at her lap and the strangled tissue. She
used it to wipe her eyes, which were dry. "He's my boss,"
apologized the woman, her dark curls bouncing as she gestured
with her head. The lawyer put his hand on the mother's
shoulder. Scully realized the woman was wearing day-old
clothes and felt a little guilty for speculating about the
man's false familial gestures.
They resolved to go to Bernadette's room together, Mulder
trailing behind as if idle, but his scrutiny of the
photographs on the stairs belied his laconic shuffle. The
girl was dark, bony, turning eleven in a month. Various
lengths of hair and degrees of baby-fat roundness were
arrayed without order in walnut frames. She was an only
child.
Scully was so tired and four adults did not fit comfortably
in the bedroom. The lawyer displayed some tact and guided the
mother back down the stairs. The tissue was put to use again;
this time the eyes were wet. Mulder flipped morosely through
the plastic notebooks the girl kept at the foot of her bed.
Scully saw his broad fingers bending the pages and was
suddenly bothered by his size.
"Do we know what happened to her father?" asked Mulder
suddenly. He did not look up. Avoiding looking at him, Scully
turned to the bureau before she answered.
"Vincent Golka. They divorced when she was three; he died
when she was seven." So much for the custody-kidnapping
theory. Scully had rediscovered in the field what she learned
in the classroom: a child who disappears with a relative may
be found alive, but a child who disappears with a stranger is
almost assuredly dead. There was no way yet of correlating
this case to one of the other serial child-murder cases that
habitually dotted the national map. Scully suddenly felt
dirty, pawing through the girl's sock drawer, finding a much-
folded note from a boy named Bobby.
So far Mulder had not advanced an alien-abduction theory, for
which Scully was grateful. She did not want to argue with him
when he was so moody; it drew out her rancor and her
impatience. Mulder just sat on the neatly-made bedspread --
he looked absurd, a monster, on the rainbow print -- and
touched the notebooks with his heavy hands.
"Poetry," he said obliquely, gesturing. "Bad, but considering
she's ten, it's not so bad." A page flapped into the air.
"Part of a diary. Some movie star's name in loopy cursive.
Half a homework assignment."
Scully said what she knew he meant. "She didn't run away."
He looked up at her, his expression a little seasick. "No,
she didn't."
**
Big D is who I see when the cloth comes off my eyes. I was
dreaming about a special angel who would hold my hand till
I was better, a shining bright angel with tears in her eyes.
I woke up shaking, and then I heard the footsteps that woke
me up, and he picked me up by my arms till I could lean
against a wall. Now I'm squinting at him after too long in
the dark and he just looks at me, like I'm a bug he's poking
with a stick. I don't know if I should say anything, or if
he's taking me to the hospital, or if I'm dreaming every-
thing. I just look at him, trying to blink sleep away since I
can't move my hands to pinch myself.
He gives me a big toothy smile like he always does and it
makes me feel so much better, I smile back at him. "Am I hurt
bad?" I ask, to show him I'm tough, but his smile falls off
his face and he just stares at me for another minute. It's
kind of bright in here, I guess there's a fluorescent light
on the ceiling, so his eyes are milky-pale with little tiny
points of black. His face is empty and he's scaring me again.
It must be pretty bad after all. I count the wrinkles on his
cheeks so I won't have to look into those eyes.
I feel his hand in my hair, soft and careful. I lower my head
and he moves his hand more, and it feels good, comforting. He
makes a little noise that sounds happy. While he plays with
my braid I look around at the room, it's all plain gray
concrete with a little couch against the other wall. A stack
of magazines, and a pile of blankets, maybe this is a hideout
Big D keeps just for himself for when he can't handle the
grownups any more. What am I thinking. He's a grownup too. He
is squatting in front of me with his fingers tickling the
hairs at the back of my neck with a silly look on his face,
still wearing the red plaid shirt he always does, and then I
look down at myself and I know everything.
My hands are right in front of me. They are crossed in my lap
with my palms facing up. They are tied with twine, hairy
strings wound around and around my wrists. God, do you see
this? They are tied with twine. I am tied up. Big D is
rubbing my neck and I am tied up. I look even further and my
feet are tied up too, slung together and the twine makes
white marks it's tied so tightly. I saw that movie even
though Mom told me it would give me nightmares. She was right
and it did but now I know what's going on. I know exactly
what's going on and Big D looks at me confused when I start
screaming.
**
The school was dull and tinny as middle schools often are.
Scully was glad to leave it, and forbore being angry at her
partner for disappearing to the police station early. If he
wanted to be chummy with the local detective, she would let
him, and get the work done herself. She knew she was being
unfair to him and she didn't care. Interviews with the
principal down to the janitor had not contained any great
revelations about Bernadette's movements the previous day.
Josiah Cray's ashen face swam before her as she approached
the Bureau car and it made her tremble. The teacher had
seemed so capable when he stepped into the long dim brown
hallway, and she had watched as his confidence putrefied
under her questions. The rain outside only made the hallway
darker.
She had learned very little from Cray in exchange for his
horror; now he was back in his classroom as the children
straggled back from recess in the gym. Scully closed her eyes
against his explaining Bernadette's absence to the class.
Abruptly she dashed a pair of tears from her cheeks and
jerked the car door open. She could not blame the drops on
the rain, which had slackened to a drizzle. This was no time
to be sentimental. The child was dead already, more likely
than not.
She ducked into her car just in time, as a news van swung
into the school parking lot. A white van, marked only by the
transceiver on its top -- minus the equipment, it was a
kidnapping vehicle if ever Scully saw one. It would hit the
local news by five, if they didn't break in on the soaps
before then. In this struggling small city, Scully didn't
doubt the reporters would ignore the taboo against
identifying child victims. She pulled out into traffic more
forcefully than was necessary, flicking on the radio, and
drove herself for a lap around the edges of the city before
she was calm enough to head to the police station.
Her anger at last cooled to plain melancholy, Scully was
rounding a turn when the radio started to play that old
Motown song "Bernadette". She pulled into the police parking
lot and sat in the car, mesmerized by the lead singer's
cri de coeur for his girlfriend, ringing out in counterpoint
to the windshield wipers.
But while I live only to hold you
Some other men they long to control you
But how can they control you, Bernadette
When they can not control themselves, Bernadette
It was a strange, magical moment, as if the radio were
speaking directly to her, as if the song and the singers and
the rain were created just for this moment of convergence.
She sat in the car, engine running, until the song was over
and the spell broken. Then she shuddered, clearing her head,
and dodged bullet-sized raindrops on her way into the
station.
In the detectives' bullpen, there was cursing. Detective
Wozniak nodded at her presence, and asked, "Did you hear on
the radio?"
Scully shook her head, splattering rain.
Wozniak turned away, and poked a cassette tape into a player.
"This just came off the oldies station, WOMR. Listen."
She listened, and heard that rubbery voice of radio
announcers, saying, "And this is for Bernadette Golka, we
hope you get home safe. Folks, if you see her, call up your
neighborhood watch or the police. This is the Four Tops, with
'Bernadette.'" Behind Wozniak, Mulder made a noise of
disgust. None of them looked at each other. They all knew
that bringing attention to her absence would only incite her
kidnapper. Scully was a little ashamed at her earlier
behavior, glad that she had been alone.
Wozniak did not stop the tape and the song began again.
But while I live only to hold you
Some other men they long to control you
But how can they control you, Bernadette
When they can not control themselves, Bernadette
This time Scully heard the lyrics and they became ugly,
creepy, a foretelling. She did not know what to think, now.
**
It's so boring in here. He untied me while I was sleeping but
all he left me was the stack of magazines and they're all
full of naked pictures and no stories or articles. Naked
pictures and I'm naked too, he took my clothes when he took
off the twine. He's not here so I don't have to think about
that. It's God's problem for now, it's my angel's problem.
She'll think of what to do when that time comes. I curl up on
the couch wrapped in all of the blankets and stare at the
empty wall, pretending it's a TV. I don't even know what time
it is, or what day, or else I could pretend I'm watching my
shows. If it's Thursday then Felicia will be investigating
Mac's deals again, she just can't leave well enough alone. I
think something's going to happen with Lucky and his
girlfriend on Friday, some kind of cliffhanger. Mom hates
that show, but she's at work so she doesn't know I watch it.
I wonder if Mom's at work today. If it's still Wednesday then
she is I bet, maybe she doesn't even know I'm missing yet. I
wish there were windows so I could guess whether it's day or
night. Big D left me a TV dinner, but it was cold by the time
I woke up and I can't eat all of it in case I'm hungry later.
It's later and I'm hungry, but he hasn't been back at all so
maybe he's going to wait till I'm asleep again before he
comes back. I still have the peas and the dessert and I'll
keep them till I can't stand it any more.
It was actually kind of funny, eating the turkey dinner with
my fingers. But in all the stories people escape from jails
by picking the lock with a fork so maybe that's why I don't
have any silverware. I can't even find the lock, it took me
feeling the walls to even find the door, so I guess Big D is
smarter than everybody thought. My angel isn't so hot at
giving me clues. I don't know what he's doing or what he has
planned, but I can guess it's something terrible so I don't
even think about it. Next time he's back he will leave me
more clues and I'll solve this problem. I'll figure it out,
drawing in my head with Mr. Cray's fat blue chalk.
Come back, Big D. You scare me but at least it gives me
something to do. If I start talking to a dream angel I will
know I'm really crazy. I can't talk to her but I need
somebody to talk to. I'm afraid I'll just turn gray like the
walls and shrivel up to nothing.
**
The next day it was sunny and warm, an impudence to the gloom
that had settled over the police. It was so unlikely that
nobody saw her taken, and yet there it was. The children in
her class kicked their heels against the wall as they sat,
sober, in interview. Scully had a headache and was tired of
hearing the rosy gloss the children put on their answers.
"Everybody likes her," said a boy named Bobby. It occurred to
Scully to wonder if he was the Bobby of the note she had
found earlier. Then she was repulsed at her invasion into the
girl's privacy. The boy went on, "She never gets sent to the
principal. And she's good at word problems, everybody wants
her on their team. She's good at everything."
Mulder, returning from a different interview, made a
noncommittal noise as he came in.
Bobby turned to his new audience. "She always helps people,
you know? I just moved here last year, and she was all nice
so I wasn't left out. She's even nice to the janitor. He's
weird in the head." Mulder raised his eyebrows as if
interested, but his glance at Scully said something else. She
thanked Bobby and sent him back to the class, and he left
wide-eyed, excited, as if he did not understand that the girl
was probably dead.
Mulder shifted, unable to fit his body into a child's chair.
His stance might have seemed a casual sprawl if she did not
know him so well. "One of the boys wanted to ask her out," he
offered, touching his fingers to his lips. "The girls are
calling her a tomboy, but they like her. She's the best at
dodge ball in the class." He stopped, and stared into space.
If he was thinking of his sister they did not acknowledge it
between them. Nor had he mentioned her own resonances, for
which she was grateful.
Wozniak broke the tension by wandering into the room,
flipping through his tiny notebook. "No records so far on the
school employees or the neighbors. Nothing on the registered
sex-offender lists for her neighborhood." This vulgar
presence startled Scully back to business.
"Her face is all over the news now," she said, and resigned
herself to it. "We'll have enough volunteers to start walking
the woods. If we're lucky, she isn't buried too deep."
Mulder's face sagged, but he wasn't shocked. Wozniak, on the
other hand, visibly startled before his face turned red.
His hand reached out to point, but nothing emerged from his
mouth. Scully watched him impassively, her surety doing its
work better than words ever could. She could see the
glassiness that presages tears in Wozniak's eyes when he
cursed, turned away, and left the room. She envied his
naivete immensely.
Mulder was at her side, and she hadn't noticed him
approaching. He took her elbow and guided her out the door,
after Wozniak. He didn't say anything, only walked alongside
her down the dim hall, breathing in her hair. To the clicking
accompaniment of her heels, Scully felt the brittleness in
her throat and the hard frown wrinkles around her mouth.
Mulder's hand, brushing up and down her back. She closed her
dry eyes against the sunlight.
**
When he opens the door I'm ready. I can hear it, the key in
the lock from the outside, so when the door swings open I
jump up from the couch and bang my shoulder into the edge and
smash it back into him. He makes a big noise "Oof!" and I
pull the door open to see if I got him. He is staggering
back, and I take the only chance I'll get, jumping past him
and racing down the hall. God, God, God. I can hear him
swearing, using the words Mom smacked me when she heard them
from my mouth. I can hear him breathing hard right behind me,
and I'm running as fast as I can, past windows with sunlight
in them, down steps, and he grabs the blanket I tied around
my waist. He pulls on it, pulls and I'm so terrified I scream
and wriggle out of it, wriggle free. While he's sorting out
the blanket from me I turn a corner and there's a front door.
Outside it's cool, getting towards evening, the sun late and
falling red in front of me, shining bright. West, that's
west, I'm thinking stupidly, standing in his front yard. I
start running, any direction, I don't know, down the street
wishing my angel would guide me, and it's only when I have
gone a whole block that I realize I am naked. I am naked and
running down a street with woods on both sides, a thicket of
creepers and tall weeds leading into walnut and maple trees.
No houses I can see at all, noplace to go for help. I put my
hands over my titties and keep running, my feet raw against
the pavement, and up ahead a stop sign. I go past it, see a
car ahead of me, but it's empty as I go past. Another, nicer
maybe, and I trail my fingers on the wooden paneling as I go
past. It's parked in front of a house.
A house, wood and not painted in a long time, a house with no
lights on even though it's getting dark now. I stand in the
front yard, and start up to the steps, then stop, and I can't
decide whether to try the door or keep going, what if they
won't help me, what if nobody's home. Help me decide. I am
jumping up and down crying when I hear a car's engine, and I
know Big D has come looking for me. I take off running down
the street, the car roaring in my ears, it must be right
behind me. I cut across a front yard, seeing another house,
this one with lights on, and I shout and shout but the wind
of my running takes the sound away from me. The car right
behind me, heavy footsteps thumping on the ground, and I know
I'll never make it.
He tackles me while I'm still a long way from the house.
His heavy arm wraps around me, one big sweaty hand over my
mouth so I can't scream again, his hand is so huge it covers
my nose too and I can hardly breathe. He lifts me up and I
try every trick I ever used on the playground, jackknifing
against him but he is so huge and he lifts me up like a toy
and marches back to the car. It's a blue car. He has gone up
on the grass, the engine is idling, and he climbs into the
car with me in his lap, that one huge hand still covering my
face.
I don't know how he drives back to his house, but he does it,
even as I kick at his knees. I can't quite reach the pedals
and no matter how I pull on the wheel he is stronger and
keeps it going straight. He is swearing above and behind me,
his breath hot in my hair, he calls me bad words and the sky
is going dark. It's night and he carries me back into the
house again. I've never been to his house before. I don't
know where I am. I am stuck here and now he'll be ready if I
try to get away again. I'm stuck here and he'll do whatever
he wants to me. There's no solving this problem, is there.
He shoves me into the gray room with one last swear word and
locks the door behind him. Then he turns off the lights and
leaves me here, in the dark, in the complete dark, like the
night outside, and I collapse crying on the couch. I dream of
my angel tonight, only now she is sitting in the corner
crying with me.
**
The rest of the afternoon had been a blessing of inconse-
quential details, organizing volunteers into squads for
tomorrow's search. Laid-off construction workers and an
entire high school homeroom and housewives and off-duty cops
had milled the police station lobby, mixing between groups
and then self-segregating again, awaiting orders. Hushed
gossip had hedged around the main topic of conversation.
Now it was late at night and she was free even of the
requirement to be social and professional. Mulder was as
familiar with her moods as she with his and he did not
comment on the mirror over the bureau in her hotel room,
turned to the wall. He sat patiently shuffling papers on her
bed, sitting in his sweatpants while Scully locked herself in
the bathroom to think.
But there were no thoughts in her head, so presently she
emerged and asked him what he thought. He looked at her with
his sad eyes, the eyes that penetrate too far, and she turned
away. He cleared his throat before launching into his theory,
all the apology she would get.
"She's not part of any discernible pattern. The guy who's got
her likely isn't, or hasn't been, serial. That's a start."
She stood loose before the bed, waiting for him to go on. His
eyes were on his hands, now. "There's still a chance
Bernadette is alive. Lucy Householder was kept alive for
years."
He was lying to her. Not in fact, but in assumption, and she
had known him long enough to be insulted at his soft-
pedaling. The dead child sat between them, forbidding. She
couldn't say anything, only bore into him with her own eyes,
and he had the grace after a long while to look guilty.
"Anyway, it seems unlikely she would get into a stranger's
car," he said at last, and Scully allowed her professional
shell to come over her. She climbed onto the bed beside
Mulder and looked at the papers he held. "She's old enough to
know better. And if there had been a struggle, chances are
someone would have seen something."
Between them he waved the list of neighbors and school
employees. On that list was their suspect, probably. It made
Scully's eyes ache. The list was too long -- forty or so
names and addresses -- and short enough to imply a
proliferation of murderers. She was marshaling herself
against the unfairness of it when her door started thumping
frantically.
Mulder flitted off the bed and towards the door, catlike in
his weaponless movements. Scully was lifting her gun when she
heard Detective Wozniak's voice from outside, shouting
frantically. "Agent! Wake up, Agent Scully!"
A nod between partners and Mulder opened the door. Wozniak
seemed not to notice the tense readiness of his audience as
he stepped inside. It was nearing midnight and he was still
in his ill-fitting suit jacket, a five o'clock shadow
darkening his jaw. He clutched a scrap of paper in his hand
like a reprieve from Hell. "A sighting," he confided, eyes
jumping with excitement.
Scully felt her face screw up in disgust, and was about to
round on both Mulder and this gullible detective for their
stupid alien fantasies. But Wozniak continued, smoothing the
paper he held and offering it. "An old woman down in
Loose Pines heard something early this evening -- a girl
crying in her yard, and then a car, and some shouting. She
didn't even think of Bernadette till the 11 o'clock news."
"Wait, wait." Mulder waved his hands, hunching his shoulders.
"She didn't see Bernadette, but, but what?"
"She's an old woman," Wozniak gasped, swallowing against his
heavy breathing, "and she can't see so well. But she lives
alone down in Loose Pines, and she heard things that could be
our girl. I've got a uniform down there already."
Scully watched Wozniak's shoulders shake as he calmed his
breathing, the paper he held between his fingers trembling.
Mulder was clearly being caught up in it, rushing back to his
hotel room to change out of his sweatpants. She was so tired.
She didn't want to accept this sliver of hope. It was too
great a burden. She shooed Wozniak out of her room and pawed
through her suitcase for her pantyhose.
**
I know what is going to happen now and it's almost a comfort.
He wants me to behave and be good so he can do whatever he is
going to do but let's face it: he will kill me when he's done
so there's no reason for me to behave. He'll kill me anyway
so what's the point. Either way I go to heaven and get free
of this stupid room. I keep thinking it to myself -- he'll
kill me anyway -- but I don't say it out loud because I
figured out he might be watching me with cameras. I can't see
them, but on Dateline they had cameras you could hide in a
picture frame. He turned on the lights, and now he leaves
them on, and he isn't doing that for me. He's got to be
watching. He knows everything I do. He is the grownup here
and I am the child.
The couch isn't very comfortable, it's a scratchy fabric and
a really ugly orange color, but it's all I have, so I put up
with the lumps. All the blankets in the world aren't enough
to make me feel clothed. I know he will be coming back again,
and he will see me and know what I've decided. God will
understand. That's why He let me dream about the angel. The
TV dinner tray is sitting on the floor and I haven't touched
it at all. I didn't even pick up the peas that spilled on the
floor when he slammed it down. It's sort of satisfying to see
him so mad but I didn't say anything to him or even let on
I'd noticed him. I just sat in the couch and looked at my
fingernails. There's dirt under my fingernails from outside.
I keep realizing maybe that was the last time I would see
outside, see the sky, and I want to cry but there's no more
crying inside me.
The door comes open and he's standing there, hands on hips.
Still in his red flannel shirt, he must only own one shirt.
I don't look directly at him but I think there's a frown on
his face.
He comes in and picks up the TV dinner. He's wary around me
all the time now, ready for me to jump at him. As he
straightens he eyes me and says, "Aren't you hungry?"
I don't say anything. It's hard, I want to talk back, I want
to say something good that will make him feel small and give
me back some power. I don't say anything. I am doing what Mr.
Cray does when Tim gives him lip: I Am Not Dignifying That
With An Answer. This is all the power I have left, refusing
to talk to him, refusing to play by his rules. God will
understand. I pick at my nails, smelling the rich dirt smell
and closing my eyes, trying to imagine my back yard. Playing
in the back yard with Julie and the MacNamara twins, teaching
Julie's baby brother to walk in the grass last summer. I will
never play there again.
Big D doesn't like it. He drops the TV dinner, which clatters
on the floor, and now I know the peas will be everywhere. He
reaches out and grabs my jaw, turns my head forcibly so I
have to close my eyes not to see him. So I close my eyes,
forcing myself not to wrinkle my nose at his bad breath,
sitting still like a statue of a girl instead of the real
thing. A gray, gray statue in a museum, still, serene, no
worries. There's no man here. I imagine a beautiful shining
woman, standing in front of me admiring the statue I am. She
thinks I'm pretty, she thinks I'm tough. Maybe she is my
angel. I know Big D says something but I am hearing the
bright woman say nice things about me in my head so I don't
hear him clearly and that way I can't answer if I wanted to.
He shoves my head away and I bounce on the couch, my whole
body going limp. I keep my eyes closed, trying to kill the
sudden hope that he'll think I'm sick and take me to the
hospital. He won't do that. He growls some awful curses and
walks away. The door closes behind him and then the lights go
out again. This time he won't turn them back on till he's
ready to do what he wants to do. I will never see the sun
again.
There are peas all over the floor and I can smell the turkey
dinner, even cold it smells great but I've decided what to
do. I'm not playing by his rules, period. Even in the dark he
might know I was weak and took a bite and I won't give him
the satisfaction. If I die of hunger I won't give him the
satisfaction, and at least that way I died my own way instead
of letting him do things to me. I huddle in the absolute dark
and wonder what dying will be like, if I will know it when it
happens. God will hold my hand. The beautiful angel woman
will hold my hand.
**
It was very late and the old woman, an Anita Popovich by
name, was getting less and less coherent. Already she had
described her experience six or eight times, and her
phrasings were becoming rote. It had been hours since she
called the police, and more hours before that since she had
heard the child in her yard, and the time was slipping away.
Scully squeezed her hand as kindly as she could, and told the
old woman how helpful this information would be.
Standing, Scully looked around the dim house, a rickety wood
contraption better suited to Little House on the Prairie. The
few lights in the house were all on, and still her surround-
ings were in half-darkness; Mrs. Popovich's blindness was so
severe she hardly bothered with lamps at night.
Mulder was standing by a window, still staring at the house
next door. He had questioned them two hours ago, at which
time they had replied testily that they hadn't been home and
that they needed their sleep. It was doubtful they would be
of any more help in the morning, and they were the closest
neighbors by far.
Despite herself, Scully was beginning to believe that
Bernadette was still alive, or had been at sunset. She came
to stand next to Mulder, wondering what it must be like, to
escape one's captor only to be taken again. She thought of
the horrifying blank of her own abduction, the haze of
helplessness that kept that memory locked away. Almost better
to be dead, she thought, and then was shocked at her own
musing. Mulder stood beside her, silent, staring out the
window.
"Some kind of girl," he muttered, after a long while. Scully
looked up at him, and he continued. "She somehow got out of
wherever she's being held. She got up to this house, and
cried in the front yard. Maybe she didn't think anyone was
home. She shouted for help. She did everything right." Scully
caught herself rooting for the child. She felt Mulder touch,
release, then take her hand in one of his own. She closed her
eyes against the death of that clever little girl.
Wozniak broke their reverie with his brand of physical
enthusiasm, hefting a large flashlight and a folded paper
onto the coffee table. "Agents," he said, ignorant or
tolerant of their philosophizing. "Still no luck in the
woods, but it's so dark we could trip over her and not
notice. We can get dogs in there at dawn. I got a map of the
neighborhood. I think we'll have more luck canvassing in the
morning than now." Scully decided optimism was this man's
only refuge; be had become brighter as she herself slid into
despair.
She consented to hold the flashlight as he and Mulder
wrestled open the folded map. All of them got down on their
knees, elbows on the table, as Wozniak circled Mrs.
Popovich's residence in red. Their job would be made simpler
by the fact that the house sat at the edge of the woods; only
three or four homes lined the street in that direction,
nearly a mile distant. Even so, it would be a long morning of
questioning to come.
". . . and team three can take Russell Road down to Waverly,"
Wozniak was saying, apparently to Mulder, who could look
attentive even when he was miles away. Scully stopped
herself, and rewound this statement in her mind. She tried to
sift through her memory and couldn't quite capture something.
"Mulder? I'm sorry detective. Mulder, do you still have that
list of neighbors and school employees on you?" He stared at
her, patting down his suitcoat.
"I left it in the hotel room. What?" He leaned closer,
intent, and Scully could see in her peripheral vision
Wozniak's distrustful look. She shifted uncomfortably under
their gazes, trying to recreate that almost-flash that
stopped her.
Slowly she said it: "Russell Road." She closed her eyes, but
it was no clearer in her head. A hand on Mulder's forearm, as
if she could suck from him his visual memory. "Didn't
somebody on the list live on Russell Road?"
"I don't know," confessed Mulder, at the same time that
Wozniak jumped up, muttering "I'll check." He rushed
brusquely out of the house to his squad car, leaving Mulder
and Scully poleaxed in the living room.
"She can't have run far," they told each other, eyes wide.
Mulder straightened, stood, his hands fluttering around.
"Automatic hostage situation, we'll need SWAT. Do we have
enough for probable cause, just by the location? They can't
make us wait till morning, can they?" He paced a short
circle, and Scully, kneeling on the floor, looked up at him.
They remained like that, he in motion and she very still,
till Wozniak returned from the car. He was walking now, with
a perplexed expression on his face. He stopped in the
doorway, leaning, and gave them both a long look. Mulder fell
still and the silence in the room was oppressive.
"Derek Duramian. 34 Russell Road." Wozniak frowned, as if
doubting his own words. "The janitor."
She could hear Mulder punching the air, or some kind of
masculine adrenaline response. Scully closed her eyes and
covered her face with her hands.
**
It has been a day, I think, since he went away and Big
D has not come back. I know it has been a long while, because
I got up off the couch to pee in the corner twice, stepping
on the spilled peas with my bare feet and making squishing
noises between my toes. It's still dark and I'm so hungry,
I'm hungry and thirsty, I didn't realize it would be so hard.
I can't feel anybody holding my hand now.
Mom will be so sad when she finds out I'm dead. It's sort of
awful to wish for it but I know I will die anyway so I don't
feel guilty at all. I can imagine Mom in my head, in her
black suit she wore when Grandma died, and her makeup will
run down her face as she cries for me in the church. I wonder
if she'll invite Mr. Cray to the funeral. I wonder if he'll
come.
I am thinking these thoughts when suddenly the door booms a
hollow noise, a noise Big D never made before when he came to
see me. Thud thud thud, over and over, and if it's a new way
to drive me crazy he might be succeeding. It's like hearing
the footsteps coming at me from behind, knowing I could be
caught, and I can only sit twisted in my blankets and watch
where I know the door is. The noise stops, then it gets
deeper suddenly, as if he's banging on the door with a
baseball bat or something heavy. A crack and then another,
and skinny pale shafts of light are coming from the doorway,
showing bright specks of dust dancing away from the thud thud
thud. The hinge gives suddenly with a squeal, and the door
falls in.
The sun blinds me, a pure square of light, like God staring
at me. I screw up my eyes and shrug the blankets up around
me. There is a silhouette in the doorway, head and shoulders.
Now is the time. I didn't starve to death after all. It's
over. I reach out for the angel to take my hand.
**
Scully stood in the living room, examining the bachelor dinge
of the place, the way the walls were marked gray where hands
had moved over light plackets and doorways. The floor was
dusty and bits of paper and a few dishes marked the
furniture. A great sagging Barcalounger sat in the middle of
the room, a throne placed in front of the TV. Scully stood
still, cataloging her environment, listening for the SWAT
boys' little shouts of cleared rooms and encouragement.
Derek Duramian already sat in the back seat of the squad car
outside, surprised in his bed just as the sun rose. He stared
sullenly at anyone who approached him and said nothing at
all. He did not appear to have an opinion of a police team
tearing his house to shreds.
Mulder had gone on ahead, as reckless as ever, and SWAT
looked him up and down and let him join in the advance team.
He was somewhere in the house now, pawing through piles of
dirty laundry for the body, holding to a hope even he knew
was desperate. Scully had already holstered her gun and stood
with her arms crossed, blocking from her mind the masculine
loneliness of her surroundings. The ambulance waited outside,
doors open, the social worker and paramedics fidgeting in the
early morning sunshine.
A commotion caught Scully's attention, armed men in black
bunching in the hallway, nervous clearings of throat and
glances in all directions. She recognized that unease, or
something much like it, in medical students with their first
corpse, trying to decide whether the first incision could be
made with dignity. She knew they had found something even
before Mulder came into the living room.
He bore a pile of dirty blankets in his arms and a pale,
blank expression on his face. She looked up at him from
across the room, voiding apprehension from her mind with
brute force, and watched him open his mouth but say nothing.
Somewhere in her head was a rebuke for moving evidence from
the scene of the crime, but surely Mrs. Popovich's testimony
would be damning. All that remained was the dead child, and
then Scully realized with numbed shock that that was what
Mulder carried so reverently. He stood just inside the
doorway and looked at her tenderly, strangely, and she
withered under his gaze.
She was struggling to contain a frown and to say something to
fill up the awkwardness when the pile of blankets moved.
Scully felt a physical jerk go through her, watching as the
blankets fell back a little. The body twisted so its head
rested against Mulder's chest, and dark brown eyes blinked
myopically at the world. It was only when the girl started
screaming that Scully became aware that the child was alive.
Stumbling past the Barcalounger, she came to Mulder's side
with no coherent thoughts in her head. "Bernadette," she
heard herself repeating, "Bernadette." Her hands reached up
of their own accord and touched that dirty, tear-streaked
face, captured and calmed the waving arms. "Bernadette,
you're safe." The screaming subsided to low sobs and the
child cried into Mulder's collar. Scully muttered reassuring
noises and held the girl's head and kissed her hands, folding
them together as if in prayer. Suddenly she realized why
Mulder carried Bernadette in dirty blankets; inside the
woolen nest in her partner's arms the girl wore not a stitch.
Mulder tucked Bernadette's head under his chin, as naturally
as if he had children of his own. He stared down at Scully, a
funny look on his face, and she abruptly realized her cheeks
were wet with tears. She turned away, wiping her eyes, and
gathered up the shreds of her control.
"Let's get her to the hospital," she said, her voice low to
avoid cracking. "Let's notify her mother." She led Mulder out
to the ambulance, where the nervously idle dithering broke up
into efficient barked orders and the hand-wringing of the
social worker. Her partner carefully lay his burden onto the
stretcher, blankets and all, and she remained curled up in
her dirty raiment even on the crisp white sheet. As the
paramedics hovered over her, the girl twitched, wild-eyed,
and Scully twitched with her.
"It's okay, honey," she murmured, trying to sound sure.
"They're the good guys. They're taking you to the hospital,
and then you'll get to see your mom. You want to see your
mom, right?" Bernadette nodded at that, her face still a
rictus of crying, and Scully found her hand clutched so
tightly it went bloodlessly pale. The stretcher began to
move, being loaded into the ambulance, and Scully went with
it without question. She spared a quick look back at her
partner, who stood in the daylight in his bulletproof vest
and his tear-stained dress shirt, hands loose at his sides.
They nodded at each other and Scully knew they would find
each other at Bernadette's bedside.
Scully took a seat in the ambulance, as far out of the way as
she could get in the cramped area. The vehicle started up,
and the uniformed man next to her started into his routine,
checking things off on his clipboard. Above her head, the
sirens began their crescendo of wails, and Scully felt a tug
on her hand. Bernadette was staring at her, lying almost
straight under her modest coverings, gravity and distrust in
her white features.
She said, "I knew I would get rescued," and turned away.
Scully didn't know how to respond to that dignified doubt.
So she hid her confusion and with her free hand she smoothed
the dirty brown hair away from the girl's forehead.
"Of course," she lied.
* * * * * * *
end
NOTES: Longtime residents of Connecticut may recognize the
basic scenario, which I have stolen from events that really
happened about ten years ago. I remember watching the news
when the girl was rescued, her being herded away from her
prison under the TV lights. Come to think, she should be in
college by now.