Behind Our Walls Read online

  "What..." Corrine started, but couldn't finish the question. Sophie wanted to get everyone out of town, somewhere safer until things started to blow over. Now it looked like "blowing over" didn't seem like much of a possibility. The feeling in the room seemed to be that they might have waited too long.

  She couldn't remember a time in her life when she had felt this afraid.

  The room began to spin and she heard a sound, quiet but persistent in the back of her head. She couldn't figure out what it could be as she looked around at the others. They stared at the television, various expressions of fear frozen on their faces, like being stuck within a still life image. The color began to melt out of the walls around them and she suddenly felt like she was falling, straight down into a boiling hot vortex.

  When Sophie opened her eyes, she was lying on cold concrete. She heard the sound again, more clearly this time, now that she had woken from her dream. It was rhythmic, banging against the wall.

  Rusted metal.

  Back and forth.

  Bedsprings.

  Sophie began to buck on the floor, trying to pull hands around that she now realized were tied behind her. She heard something else, in addition to that of the bed, a sound like crying.

  Corrine was crying.

  Sophie rolled over onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. It was only at that moment that she realized she had been stripped down to her underwear. The surroundings started to coalesce in her head, as the memories began creeping back. The house in the middle of the woods. The man at the dinner table, offering them all the help and support they needed. Reggie had been the one in the house, the house that wasn't his.

  She looked frantically around the room for anything she could use as a weapon, anything she could use to get free. It was only a matter of time before he came in here to do the same to her. She had to get free.

  There was a sound from somewhere above her and she looked up to see Rowen creeping down the stairs. They made eye contact and he pressed a finger to his lips, silently urging her to keep from making any noise. She nodded and tried to focus on her breathing, tried to stay calm.

  Just as Rowen reached the bottom step, Adam was on the stairs behind him. Sophie's heart jumped at the sight of him, and the look of rage that slowly grew onto his face as he heard the bed and Corrine's cries. Sophie saw the look of panic on Rowen's face as he reached out to hold him back, but Adam wasn't stopping for anything as he charged into the next room. The snarl on his face was so vicious, it make Sophie shudder. Rowen ran in as well, close behind.

  What happened next was almost too quick for Sophie to track. Adam ducked into the room and swerved to his left, out of Sophie's sight. Whatever could be said about Reggie, there was clearly nothing wrong with his reflexes. There was a gunshot and blood sprayed out from the doorway. Rowen dove into a roll as he made his way into the room, already bringing his pistol to bear as he rose up into a crouched position. Something whizzed past him and impacted the door frame, causing wood to explode violently as he fired his own weapon into the darkness. Sophie heard the sound of something heavy impacting the bed and watched as Rowen began to slowly advance.

  Rowen emerged from the room moments later and came over to Sophie, bending down to cut her loose. He produced her clothes from somewhere and looked away respectfully as she dressed, already walking towards the bedroom as she did so. Rowen stepped in front of her to stop her but she sidestepped him, moving through the doorway.

  Reggie was dead. Adam was also dead, having rushed into the room, likely without any real idea of what he was even going to do. He had charged in with no regard for himself, only wanting to help Corrine. Sophie felt a surge of guilt at how much she had mis-judged him. All she saw was a pissy, resentful boy who wanted to take out his anger on the rest of them. She would have never imagined him to be capable of something like this.

  Corrine was alive but that didn't seem to be saying much. She was curled up on the bed naked, but covered by a thin blanket, probably provided by Rowen. Her eyes were glossed over, staring blankly across the room as Sophie bent down in front of her.

  "Corrine!" She yelled right into her face, but saw no response, nothing to indicate or suggest life. She grabbed her shoulders and began to shake, only vaguely aware of Rowen's hand, pulling her back.

  "Stop," he said. "Stop, that isn't going to do any good. The more you push, the farther inside she's going to retreat. Just leave her alone and let's get this mess cleaned up."

  Sophie finally looked up at him. "How did you find us?"

  "We—"

  "What the hell is going on?" James burst into the room, looking frantically around with a clear look of panic on his face. "I heard shots from up on the road, what happened?"

  Rowen put his hands out to try and calm him down. "James, you shouldn't have just blown in here like this, you could have gotten yourself—"

  "Corrine!" He elbowed past Rowen and knelt over his daughter, reaching out to carefully brush a strand of hair from her face. "Just tell me what happened." His face reddened as he seemed to suddenly notice the nude figure of his daughter and he averted his eyes as he pulled the blanket up over her. She shivered at the sensation but offered no sign of being aware of his presence.

  "She..." Rowen seemed to be trying to think of the best way to phrase what had happened. "The guy who lived here was assaulting her." He nodded into the corner towards Reggie's body. "Adam charged in here to help Corrine, and the guy managed to get a shot off before I could get in here. Adam...Adam's dead."

  James glanced at the body of his once future son-in-law but offered nothing else as he turned back to Corrine.

  "Anyway," Rowen said. "You guys had been gone for too long, so we came after you. It wasn't hard to spot the house, and we could see your packs on the table from outside. It looked like someone had been searching through them so we figured something was wrong."

  Rowen glanced at Sophie and nodded towards the outer room.

  "Are you okay?" he asked in a low tone so the others wouldn't hear. "Did he..."

  "I don't think so," she answered, seeing the skeptical look on his face. "He drugged us. He stripped my clothes off but I think he started with Corrine."

  Rowen nodded and glanced back at the room where James sat in quiet vigil over his daughter. "We should probably check out the rest of the house," he said. "Just make sure everything is safe and see what we have to use. I have a feeling we're going to be here for a while."

  -8-

  The next morning, Sophie stumbled down to find Rowen and her father, eating dry cereal. They looked up as she walked in but only Rowen stood to greet her. She stared at the table apprehensively, trying to block out the memory of the drugged fog from the night before.

  "I'm going to sit down over here," she gestured to one of the over-sized chairs next to the bay windows and settled down, looking out over the lush expanse of forest that swept away from them. All she could see was the dark evergreens and for just a second, she could almost convince herself that everything was all right out there. They were just enjoying a weekend trip in a rented cabin. The grief soon chased that thought out of her head though, the memory of what had happened, just below where they now sat. She felt the acute offense of staying here, of using it for their own benefit.

  "It's not like it was his house either," Rowen said as he took the seat next to her. "You shouldn't feel bad about staying here like this."

  "I know," she said, glancing at the ceramic mug of water he handed her.

  "There's a pump outside," Rowen said, settling back and drinking from his own mug.

  She looked at her father who sat with his back to them, no indication that he had registered what they were saying. She listened to the wind assaulting the sides of the house and watched the tree tops wave at her before putting the water down.

  "So what are we going to do?"

  He swiveled the chair towards her and lowered his voice, although James seemed to be in his own universe. "Well, we were
lucky to happen onto this place. There's no way we're going to be able to move Corrine any time soon. She's still near catatonic from what happened and I'm not sure how long it's going to take for her to snap out of it. I would normally say that you would be the only one who could bring her back, but..." He trailed off, not voicing the thought.

  "But our relationship hasn't exactly been stellar as of late." She said it for him and he nodded slowly.

  "We need to give her time," he said. "She's got to want to come out of it and I don't think we can rush it. At least we're somewhere relatively safe. The house is set down below the road, and it's pretty hard to spot unless you're really looking for it. Even in the daytime, it's pretty well hidden by the trees and at night, the only way you'd see it is if the lights were on. There's a driveway that connects with the road, about a quarter mile up from here. I'm going to go and try to cut down some dead trees, pile them up so that hopefully it will be better concealed. I don't think we can stay here forever but it'll work for now."

  "Do you think I should try and talk to her?" she asked.

  He seemed to consider it but shook his head. "I don't know if it would be a good idea at this point. She went through two traumas with the assault and then seeing Adam killed. She needs to get a little better on her own and seeing you could just cause more stress if she's still angry at you."

  The chair scraped back from the table and she watched James wander off into the living room, browsing over the bookshelves for something to read.

  "At least there seems to be plenty here to keep us occupied," Rowen said.

  Not exactly her dream vacation. Her sister, in a near-coma and when she came around, would likely prove to be even more hostile than before. Their father, still barely a shell of himself. The closest she had to a friend anymore was Rowen, the one who she knew the least about. Somehow she would have to make do in this house that only seemed to amplify her loss. She wanted nothing more than to be able to leave, but also wanted to stay. Already she could feel the comforts of the chair below her starting to sap her will to move and part of her wondered if she would even have the strength to leave something like this behind.

  -9-

  As it turned out, keeping the lights on or off at night wouldn't have really made any difference.

  They moved Corrine into one of the upstairs bedrooms and for three nights in a row, Corrine woke abruptly, breaking free from her shock induced coma. Unfortunately, this meant screaming, so loud that Sophie imagined the sound rolling down the hills and being heard for miles around. Sophie and James tried to soothe Corrine, but ended up just restraining her, pinning her down to the bed to keep her from hurting herself. Her screaming became more shrill and panicked, even writhing hopelessly and it brought Sophie to tears every time, wondering what Corrine was perceiving happening to her. Was she with Reggie, perpetually locked in that moment?

  Eventually, she would start to wind down. The energy would bleed out of her and the screams turned into pathetic whimpering. Her breathing would go long and heavy and before too long, she would be snoring lightly. It was only at that point that Sophie would be able to find even a small amount of sleep.

  Rowen sneaked into the room under cover of the newly found silence, and nudged Sophie. She looked down at Corrine, her frail figure peaceful underneath the sheets, before following Rowen into the kitchen.

  "I don't know how much longer I can keep this up," she said. "She's my sister, but son of a bitch. If this was a year ago, I'd just be Googling home remedies for PTSD. I don't suppose there's any books out there?" The couple who had lived here kept an impressive library. No sign of a television or computer, but the far wall of the living room was literally floor to ceiling with books. Rowen shook his head.

  "Other than a set of encyclopedias, nothing that would be helpful. We just have to—"

  "Be patient. I know. I just don't understand how it's possible that I was getting more sleep on the floor of a gas station than I am in this secluded little house."

  "Yeah," Rowen said, shifting his foot uncomfortably. "About that. It might not be as secluded as we would like anymore."

  Her head snapped around at the comment. "What do you mean?"

  "I've been hearing more sounds from the road, like motorbikes. It could be nothing, just a few random people making their way past, but the point is that I don't think this road is as sparsely traveled as maybe we were hoping, initially."

  Sophie pinched her nose, shook her head and glared out the window at the landscape that now loomed ominously around them. "This doesn't change anything. We still can't leave with Corrine like this, and we can't get her to snap out of it any faster. All we can do is hope that she wakes up before someone finds us. At least it's mostly at night when she's screaming her head off. Most people probably won't be trying to make their way up or down that road in the dark."

  Rowen stood up. "I'm going to try and sleep for a bit."

  She nodded without answering. After several minutes, she stood and walked down the hall, to the entrance to Corrine's room. There were times when her sister was so quiet, and her breathing so shallow that Sophie actually started to wonder if she hadn't died at some point without them noticing. They were in a perpetual holding pattern. There was no way to know when Corrine was going to come back to reality and what scared Sophie the most is that they had no way of knowing what that reality would become once she returned to it.

  -10-

  Corrine woke up, one week to the day after their attack. Sophie found her sitting up, their father holding her hand and speaking to her softly while she nodded, tears glistening in her eyes. Sophie smiled and made to come around to the other side of the bed, but the daggers in Corrine's sudden glare made her stop cold. Corrine's voice was so quiet that at first, Sophie didn't even understand what she was saying.

  "Get out."

  "Corrine, I don't—"

  "Get OUT of here!"

  Sophie felt her mind go blank as she tried to understand why she was still being pushed away. It was pointless though, no reason to be found in the midst of her mania. Rowen was already coming out from the kitchen, having heard Corrine screaming.

  "Was that..." He trailed off at the sight of Sophie's tears, holding her close as she began to cry. Leading her off to the bay windows, he tried to calm her down. "How long has she been awake?"

  "I don't know." It was all she could manage before she started sobbing again. From the other side of the house, they heard Corrine yelling.

  "Oh, great. She's crying now? What the fuck do you have to cry for, you heartless—" Her voice cut off abruptly as they heard James whispering to her. Sophie managed to get herself under control, taking in long, slow breaths.

  "She doesn't know what she's saying," Rowen said. "You can't take any of that seriously. She probably just now found out about Adam."

  "What, it wasn't hard for me? I haven't lost anyone?"

  "No, I didn't mean that."

  She squeezed her eyes shut. She was yelling at the wrong person. "So what now?" she asked. "She's awake, what now?"

  "Well, I think she's still going to need a day or two to get back on her feet fully, but I think we need to start planning on making our way out of here."

  She nodded her understanding but it didn't make it any easier. As strong as her resentment for this place was at first, she had started to grow fond of it, used to the simple comforts that they had started to forget, after sleeping on the ground. She wasn't excited at all for the thought of going back to that.

  James walked into the room, pacing back and forth in front of them as if he expected them to argue with whatever he had to say.

  "Is she all right?" Sophie asked.

  James glanced over at her and seemed to smirk at the comment. "She will be. But I know we don't really have time to wait. I'm sure you two have been whispering in here about how to best deal with the problem child, but—"

  "That's not what's been going on here," Rowen said.

  "Whatever you want
to call it. My point is, I think that in a day or so, Corrine will be good enough that we can move on. Besides, I wouldn't ask her to ever feel comfortable or safe after what happened here."

  It made sense to Sophie, but it was also hard to not hear him taking some kind of a shot at her, a snarky remark designed to get a rise out of her so that he could then pretend to be holding to the moral high ground.

  "So what's the plan, then?" she asked. "I don't want anyone to think that I'm forcing you to do something you don't want to do."

  "Sophie," Rowen said, the guarded tone already in his voice.

  "No, really, I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable with me being overbearing, so what does the precious princess..." She heard the words coming out of her mouth and was moments late in reigning them in. The anger and the hurt in her father's eyes was clear enough and she cursed herself for not having more restraint.

  "The plan is to get out of here," James said, speaking with an icy tone. "Where we go isn't really important. We just need to find somewhere other than this to try and settle down for a while."

  She wanted to argue, wanted to understand why they were so hostile with her, so angry for whatever it was they thought she had done. She wanted this family to be able to heal, to be what it used to be, not this wandering band of angst and unspoken blame.