Bathwater Blues: A Novel Read online

  Soon she’d finished everything but her cookie, leaving two bare chicken bones amidst an empty and cleanly licked foam plate. Two bites later, she said her goodbyes to the cookie as well.

  She’d expected to hear the girl next door again when the assistant showed up at her door, but Addie never heard a peep. She’d also been so focused on eating her own food, however, she realized she might have simply tuned it out if there’d been any exchange at all.

  Upon finishing her meal, in a stroke of perfect timing the footsteps returned, the small wooden flap opened, and a tall foam cup was carefully placed inside.

  “Wait!” Addie called, and hurried to the door. She dropped to her hands and knees at the opening. “How long do you plan on keeping me in here?”

  “I’m sorry!” The woman’s apology was bubbly and kind. “I’m not at liberty to say what the doctor has planned short term.”

  “Who are you?”

  There was a short pause.

  “I have your bedpan here, all clean.” The assistant slid it through the opening. “You should get some more rest now.”

  The trapdoor closed. Addie crawled to the door and spoke directly into its solid face.

  “I’ve rested enough!”

  But the footsteps were already retreating away into the house.

  She grabbed the foam cup and quickly gulped the water down. It was plenty, but she thought she could have drank three more. She left it standing before the trapdoor. Then she grabbed her bedpan and returned to her bed, standing before the window above it. Feeling exhausted, she had a thought, an idea, but decided it was ultimately worthless.

  She could break the bedroom window if she wanted. She could bash the glass away with her metal bedpan until it was cleanly broken out, and then flee into the wilds. She’d run the risk of falling on the broken shards below, but that wouldn’t be too hard to avoid, she thought. Then, with that in mind, feeling too tired to ever actually attempt it, she wondered why the windows weren’t barred or secured somehow. Surely the possibility of the very thing she fantasized had crossed her abductors’ minds.

  They were probably so isolated, she thought, so alone, she could escape the house and forever be lost to the wilderness. That was their security. They didn’t need bars on the windows because the windows wouldn’t actually take them to safety. There wasn’t any safety out there…

  She wondered if “the others” realized this as well.

  ✽✽✽

  The next couple hours were spent in anxious boredom. Addie cycled between a few choice activities: lying in bed trying to rest, as if any more rest could be had with so much mystery and doubt weighing on every thought; gazing absentmindedly out the window, the feather clouds passing over the horizon, birds falling and flitting from the long grass, blissfully unaware of the glass-trapped visage watching them with tired, despairing eyes; pacing between the four corners of her room, stopping to listen occasionally for the girl next door. She never heard a sound, not a shout or a sob or a sneeze. Addie wondered if she was even there anymore, or if something had been done to quiet her. Perhaps she’d been moved. Or worse…

  A door opened and closed somewhere in the house, likely the very same as before. At the window, Addie turned her head. The slow, even footsteps glided again toward her door and stopped. She stepped down from her bed and approached the door and waited patiently, eyeing the trapdoor like a dog awaiting its master’s return.

  Sweeping softly beneath the door, as though blown by a silent breeze, a new white envelope twirled in and stopped next to Addie’s feet. She snatched it up.

  Adelaide, again it read.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and tore it open. Another folded sheet was nestled inside, no piece of crayon wax to accompany it. She unfolded it and read carefully.

  Adelaide,

  I am glad to see you are curious. This is a good sign. I can answer some of your questions now, as I think you deserve some assurance, and I think it will provide wonderfully as a first test of trust.

  I am Dr. Edgar Lull, as you know by my last message, and I am simply someone who has taken an interest in your plight. You ask why, and that’s something we’ll delve into more in time. Just know, for now, that I have a plight of my own… and that is my inability to help as many as I’d like. I must make due with those I can, those with whom I inexplicably find myself connected. You are one. There is a system of sorts surrounding that, which not even I understand completely. Not yet. I hope our time together will prove to be a learning experience for us both.

  This place in which you find yourself is my home. It’s a place of much mystery, full of nameless forces which you will come to witness in the coming days, I hope. I’d like you to be excited by it, as I once was. I’d like it to awaken something in you, a potential you thought to be lost. It’s there, I know it. Give me a chance to help you find it.

  These answers might be vague, but it’s all I can say for now. You may keep this letter, if you wish. I do not require another signature. If you have other questions, hold onto them for now. You might find the answers soon enough.

  My assistant will be by again this evening with your supper.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. Edgar Lull

  Addie folded the letter, returned it to its envelope, and set it on the desk next to her bed.

  It all sounded very charming, she thought, but none of it really provided concrete answers. She still didn’t know where she was—she could be in an entirely different country, for all she knew. She also didn’t know anything more about Dr. Lull besides his name, and that he really liked “helping” people, whatever that meant. Perhaps he viewed her abduction as saving her life… saving her from herself.

  With her limited view outside, she couldn’t precisely tell the time of day. She guessed she had two or three hours before the assistant arrived with her next meal. With nothing to do but think, those hours would feel much longer. If she could lie down and sleep, she thought it would be bearable. But sitting on the edge of her bed, with no clock, her mind racing and looping, time stretched incalculably.

  Just as she brought her feet up on the bed, preparing to settle back on her lumpy pillow, there came a knock on the wall by the door. A voice came, soft and whispering. She got up and tiptoed to the wall. She sank to her knees and leaned against it, saying nothing at all.

  The knock came again, almost just next to her cheek pressed against the wall, and the words that came again were clear.

  “Addie,” the girl called, voice hushed. “Addie, are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Addie said.

  There was a long pause before she said anything else.

  “Do you know what’s happening?”

  Addie considered her letter, and wondered if the others had received similar ones. She wondered if they had even signed their letters, or if any of them had refused.

  “Not really,” she answered. “I just… woke up here.” She was reluctant to give away too much about herself to someone whose face she couldn’t even see. “Did you get a letter, too?”

  “Yes,” the girl said immediately. Then she hesitated. “What did yours say?”

  She was hesitant to say too much. She knew nothing about this girl, not even her name (an imbalance she wished to rectify as soon as possible) and yet she felt ashamed to tell the truth. What a silly, stupid mind she had, she thought, to feel insecure about such things at a time like this.

  “It was from someone calling themselves Edgar Lull, claiming to be a doctor. He says he wants to help me. What about you?”

  “Same,” she said. Nothing more.

  “What’s your name?” Addie asked.

  But once again, there didn’t come an answer. Addie remained sitting against the wall for five, ten minutes, waiting for something, anything, and heard nothing at all.

  “Hey!” she whispered angrily. “Are you going to answer me or not?”

  Apparently not.

  Addie got to her feet and returned to her bed.
She plopped down on it. The interlaced springs beneath the thin mattress squealed.

  What if, she wondered, this other girl wasn’t really like her at all? What if, in fact, there weren’t any “others” to be found? Perhaps this was all a bizarre test, a fucked up game being played, with her as the pawn. An experiment. Perhaps they wished to learn more about her somehow through forming a phony “trust” with the voice through the wall. The sudden thought caused her a great deal of anxiety. As overly elaborate as it seemed, given the rest of her current situation it wouldn’t be totally implausible. Perhaps she was more alone than she thought.

  Was it too late, she wondered, to still be dreaming?

  ✽✽✽

  The hours passed as slowly as she predicted they would. She spent the time investigating her tiny room down to its most minute details. She studied the dust-darkened baseboards. She studied the floorboards, the gaps in between, and even tested each individual one, imagining she’d find a loose board with a secret space underneath, perhaps some old relics wrapped in tattered cloth stowed inside. She studied her window more closely, tapping the glass and guessing at its strength. It didn’t open, she knew. It felt thick against her fingernail, but not unusually so.

  When she grew bored of her room, she watched the world outside. Clouds came and went, drawing their shadows across the landscape like bruises. The house’s shadow melted across the grass long and wide, getting longer all the while until the sky grew pink with sunset.

  She was kneeling on her bed, only her eyes peeking above the windowsill, when the assistant made her presence known again by the sound of the shutting door nearby. She climbed off the bed and waited expectantly by the small trapdoor. The footsteps arrived, keys jangled, the lock clicked. Addie sank to the floor and placed her face against the gritty floorboards, readying herself for a good view.

  The trapdoor opened. The woman was there, just her delicate ankles and her delicate hand as she pushed a new foam tray inside.

  “I didn’t forget this time,” she said.

  Following the plate, she placed another tall cup of water inside the door.

  “Take your food, and give me your bedpan if you’ve used it, please.”

  “When do I hear from him again? How long am I supposed to wait?”

  “Bedpan, please.”

  Addie, sighing irritably, grabbed her bedpan and gently handed it through.

  “How long are you going to make me use that thing?”

  “Thank you,” the woman said. She may as well have been talking to a machine. “I’ll be by later for any trash you have.”

  Supper consisted of steamed carrots, broccoli, and yellow squash, a helping of what seemed to be meatloaf, and a buttered biscuit on the side. Addie scarfed everything down in less than five minutes, including the water. She stacked her foam tray inside her last, same as her cups, and left them all by the trapdoor to be picked up later.

  She thought if she behaved, maybe they’d let her out sooner. The first letter had promised to send her back to her regular life upon her “recovery”. That’s what she’d taken from it, at least. If she was polite, she thought, and maybe even pretended to grow happier over the next several days, she could be released in no time. But then, another part of her thought it all sounded too good to be true. She’d been kidnapped, after all. Who were these people? She couldn’t guess at what they had in store for her, or whether they had any intention of letting her go by the end of it all. They could simply hold that over her head as long as they liked until they got what they wanted, she thought.

  Whatever that might be.

  Chapter Nine

  The sun departed, and night bled across the sky until it was a starless black. A silver-white moon hung low above the horizon like a sunken pearl, and its reflected light turned the ocean of grass a silver green, hazy and full of magic. Addie felt herself drawn to the window more now than ever, with sleep so far away for all her daytime napping. She kneeled on her bed and stared at nothing specifically, just took it all in, as she’d done the night before on her front porch shortly before the abduction. The silver grass swayed in a breeze, and while she couldn’t feel the breeze itself she felt its chill on the windowpane.

  The assistant had retrieved her trash as promised an hour or so ago, not too long after she’d delivered the meal. Following that, there’d been no warning or promise of another letter or any further instruction at all, and so Addie didn’t expect anything else until the next day. So it was a surprise, then, when the door (Addie quickly assumed it must be the entrance, as there was never any sound in the house until that door opened and the assistant arrived) was heard opening and shutting again, and those footsteps, still in heels, made their way to her. They stopped and Addie swiveled on her bed, sat on its edge, watching and waiting in the dark.

  “Adelaide,” the woman spoke. A short pause. “Are you awake?”

  Addie stood—or rather she sprang to her feet—and rushed to the door.

  “I’m awake.”

  She kept her eyes on the trapdoor, expecting to hear the usual sounds as the assistant unlocked it and pulled it open to deliver something. But there weren’t any sounds. Not for a minute or so.

  “Your letter was unclear before… I’d like to take you somewhere now, but I need to be sure you’ll behave. I’m going to ask this once, and you must be honest. It’s in your best interest to be honest, all right?”

  “Ask,” Addie said, heart pounding.

  “Are you willing to accept our treatment?”

  “I won’t submit to anything blindly.” She took a deep breath, rolled on the balls of her feet, anxious. “If you do anything I’m not okay with, or if you try to hurt me—”

  “I won’t hurt you. We have no intention of hurting anyone.”

  “Well… if ever I feel I’m in danger I won’t make any promises.”

  After a long pause, apparently thinking it over, the assistant said “That sounds fair.”

  There was a sound of metallic jangling in the hallway, and suddenly the trapdoor popped open at Addie’s feet. She took a step back in surprise.

  “I’m going to ask you to sit with your back against the door, with your hands through the opening behind you.”

  “What for?”

  “I have restraints here with me. I’m going to put them on your wrists, for my own safety.”

  “Did you not hear anything I just said?”

  “I heard everything you said, Adelaide. I understand. But I need you to trust me.”

  “Maybe you should trust me first. I won’t wear any restraints.”

  “Please. This is how it must be until things are more familiar. It won’t be a permanent routine, I promise. It’s only me, and there are four of you. This is for my safety. Without the restraints, I can’t let you out. The choice is still yours, of course.”

  So either she allowed it now, she thought, or she could sit in her room for days and days to come until she did. The choice—which didn’t seem like much of a choice at all, really—was obvious.

  She sat on the floor and slid herself against the door, her arms back around her hips and her hands reaching through the open trapdoor. A paranoid, irrational part of her brain suspected a sudden pain, a stabbing in her hands, as if it were all a complex setup for the woman to mutilate her somehow. She felt the cold metal on her skin and she heard the teeth clicking through the notches as the handcuffs were tightened around her wrists.

  “The door opens inward, so I’ll need you to stand back.”

  Sliding her back against the door, Addie quickly got to her feet and then stepped toward the center of the room. She pivoted around in the dark, brow pinched with fear. The door opened. A slab of black appeared in its place, the darkness of the hallway, and within that darkness an even darker figure stood. The woman entered the room, two graceful steps, bringing her arm’s length from Addie. The light of the moon through the window revealed her well enough: her milky shoulders smooth and thin under the straps of her
white sundress. In her light, curly, shoulder length hair, above her ear she wore a dainty white bow. She looked to Addie like she might be attending someone’s wedding ceremony, or possibly getting married herself without the expensive dress. But her frame, her slender beauty, was what struck Addie the most. She remembered seeing this woman—or her form, at least—across the street from her home, outside Carter’s apartment building, and lastly sitting on the bench at the cemetery.

  “Who are you?” she asked involuntarily.

  The woman smiled in the dark, eyes swallowed out of sight under her fine, sharp brow, and she brought her finger to her lips to suggest silence.

  “Later,” she said. “For now, just follow. We must gather the others.”

  She turned and left into the hall. Addie stood, lost in scattered thought, and finally chased after her. She stepped out, her room apparently at the hallway’s end, and with no light to guide her, she turned and saw the woman drifting away to the next door. She followed until she stood at the woman’s side, and the woman paused, regarding the closed door thoughtfully.

  “I talked to this girl,” Addie said. “Through the wall. Just a little.”

  Paying little attention to Addie, the woman stepped closer to the door, raised her small fist, hesitated, listened, and then knocked twice.

  “Joanna,” the woman spoke, just as she’d done at Addie’s door. “Are you awake?”

  They waited what seemed a long while. Addie was filled with so many feelings, so many curiosities and anxieties. She felt thrilled to be out of her own room, despite the handcuffs on her wrists, despite the eerie way the woman next to her continued to smile, so calm and secretive. She felt nervous, on the brink of wanting to flee someplace, anyplace that wasn’t here, and that confused her worse. The conflict between which her mind was torn was a muddied one. She couldn’t comfortably decide if she was safe or in danger, if she was hopeful or afraid, if she trusted this woman or desperately needed to escape her. She could barely concentrate on the now, on the door before them, and the distant, sharp-minded young woman waiting on the other side. Joanna…