Her Dying Breath (38 page)

“I’m cold.” Ice crunched below her feet. Her socks had holes in them, the toes of her sneakers worn so thin she felt the sludge from the alley bite at her toes. “Mama, I don’t wanna go in there.”

“Shut up.” Mama’s thin body trembled as she dragged Brenda inside a rotting building that smelled like vomit. The faint light of a cigarette glowed in the corner.

“Please, Mama,” Brenda cried
.

“I said shut up! This won’t take but a minute.”

Brenda bit her tongue. She hated it when her mama yelled like that. Hated the dark places they hid and slept. She wanted to go someplace nice and warm with real food her mama cooked on a stove, not the scraps other folks throwed in the trash.

Sometimes Mama found peanut butter sandwiches behind the school, but they had bugs in them that crunched between her teeth. And spaghetti from the Dumpster, but the cheese tasted funny and something green was growing on the bread.

Her stomach was growling now. She tried to remember when they’d last eaten. Yesterday. Or maybe the day before.

Men’s voices rumbled from the corner as her mama’s shoes shuffled across the concrete floor. There were three men, all big, nasty looking, and they smelled rotten like old bananas and sour milk and sweat and pee.

She ducked behind her mama, hanging on to the tail of her shirt.

Her mama reached out her hand to the man. “Here.”

The big man with the lizard drawing all over his arm took the cash her mama handed him. “You know the price. This ain’t it.”

Mama’s knees were shaking so bad they knocked together. “Just give it to me now, and I’ll bring the rest later.”

“You want it, Jo-Lynn, you gotta play nice.
”

“I’m good for it, Leroy—”

The man’s big hand grabbed her mama by the neck. Brenda was so scared she thought she was going to wet herself.

Mama’s neck looked like a chicken’s, it was so skinny, and blue lines crisscrossed her thin hands. “Just give it to me, and I’ll do whatever you want.”

The man’s nasty laugh bellowed through the building. “Damn right you will, bitch.”

Mama swayed for a minute, her bones cracking. Sweat broke out on her mama’s arms. She needed the medicine bad.

“All right.” Mama turned to her. “Go over in the corner and wait, baby. I’ll be back.”

Brenda clutched her mama’s hand. “No, don’t leave me, Mama—”

Mama’s eyes turned wild then, and she slapped Brenda across the face. “I said get over there and shut up.”

Brenda’s face stung as she hit the floor on her butt
.

“Move it!” Mama yelled.

Tears flooded Brenda’s eyes as she crawled to the corner by a bunch of cardboard boxes. If the men left them here, maybe they could sleep in one of the boxes tonight. It would be better than on the wet ground.

But she didn’t want to stay if those bad men were here.

Noises sounded from the corner, the big man cussing.

Scared he’d come after her, she hugged her knees to her and buried her head in her arms. But she peeked up to see what they were doing to her mama.

The man with the cigarette stubbed out his cigarette. They pushed her mama against the wall and started tearing at her clothes, making animal noises.

Mama’s cries and grunts blended with the men’s. Brenda closed her eyes and tried to drown them out. But suddenly she heard footsteps. She smelled one of the men coming closer. His hand touched her hair.

“Come on, girl.”

Brenda screamed as his fingers curled around her wrist. He dragged her up, pulling her toward the other corner. Mama shouted, tore loose, ran over, and started beating the man with her fists.

“Run, Brenda, run!” Mama shouted.

Brenda kicked and screamed, then finally sank her teeth into his big hairy fist. He tasted gross, but she bit him harder, and he bellowed, then let go of her…

The sanitarium slipped into view, tearing Brenda from the disturbing images.

But a bad feeling seeped through her. Maybe that hadn’t been a dream…

She parked at the sanitarium, reminding herself that she’d come on a mission. The trees rustled with the wind as she walked up to the front. The stone turrets and gray mausoleum structure triggered other memories, ones that bordered on her memory banks but were still out of reach, as if obscured by a thick, dark fog.

Once in the building, she walked to the nurses’ desk and checked to see if her source was on duty. She was, so Brenda rode the elevator to the second floor.

A bustling hubbub of carts and voices greeted her as the elevator doors opened, and the pungent odor of alcohol, medicine, and fear permeated the air, making her stomach cramp. She turned, tempted to leave. Desperate to escape this place.

But she couldn’t. She needed answers. She needed to see the basement, where the experiments had been conducted. After Arthur Blackwood’s arrest, the police had sealed off the basement as a crime scene, and a forensic team had spent hours investigating and searching for evidence.

Now, she spotted the person she’d come to see.

Mazie.

The nurse motioned for Brenda to follow her to the break room.

“I want to see the basement,” Brenda said.

Worry deepened the grooves around Mazie’s age-lined eyes, then she gestured for her to follow her. “I guess it’s time you did.”

The bones in the coffin looked stark against the satin lining.

Jake raked a hand through his hair. “Well, he didn’t lie about Mom.”

Nick released a sigh. “It appears that way. But I want an autopsy to verify that these are her remains.” He struggled to wipe emotion from his voice. “And to verify cause of death.”

Jake’s face paled. “What are you suggesting? That she didn’t die in childbirth?”

Nick shrugged. “After all of Dad’s lies, he could have killed her.”

Seven carefully cut out the photograph of the senator’s son from the article on the front page of the newspaper, then added it to the collage on her wall. The other men who’d paid were there as well.

Brenda Banks’s photograph was situated in the center.

Even though the men had hurt her, had kept her prisoner so the Commander could continue his torture, she hated Brenda more than the men.

Because the Commander had spared Brenda, had saved her, when he had used
her
in his experiments as if she were nothing more than a lab rat.

The anguished face of the senator and his wife mocked her from the paper, and she took the scissors and slashed at the image, slicing straight across the senator’s face. Sweat dampened her palms as she mutilated his eyes and chin and nose until there was nothing left but tiny pieces of yellowed paper that she dusted off the table into the trash.

Pinpricks of joy mingled with rage, inciting her to mentally scroll down her list.

Brenda had to pay for leaving her there all those years. For being who she was.

Then she would deal with the Commander.

B
renda’s nerves tingled as Mazie led her down to the basement.

The dusty concrete walls echoed with the screams of children. Or maybe that was all in Brenda’s head, put there by what she’d learned.

“You knew what they were doing, Mazie?” Brenda asked.

The older woman shook her head. “No, not exactly. I got suspicious later, but Mr. Blackwood always had answers to cover things up. And Dr. Sanderson and Dr. Coker were always so generous donating their time at the free clinic that I never dreamed they’d hurt a child.”

“But they did.” Brenda touched the old gurneys that were pushed against the wall, disturbed at the sight of the restraints attached to the beds. The scent of chemicals, blood, and body wastes still permeated the air, the floor discolored with stains that had come from God only knew what.

“I didn’t know about the basement until the sheriff and his brother found out what was happening here,” Mazie continued.

“Why did you decide to call me?” Brenda asked.

“Grace Granger,” Mazie said. “I was in her room the night we thought she was coming out of her coma. She said some things that made me think back.”

“What kinds of things?” Brenda asked.

Mazie scratched her head. “About being taken to the basement,” Mazie said. “I don’t know if it was the coma, but it was like she suddenly remembered being here as a little girl and was describing things in detail. I started remembering then, and wondering.”

“Then Grace died?”

Mazie nodded, the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced in the dimly lit basement.

“Do you remember being down here?” Mazie asked.

Brenda glanced at Mazie, a snippet of a memory assaulting Brenda. She was four years old, hiding in the corner, her hands pressed over her ears. Noises…the carts clanging, the instruments scraping against metal, voices…

The cries…

“Yes, I was here,” Brenda said, her heart hammering. “I don’t understand why, though…”

She slowly turned in a wide circle, her body trembling as she was launched back to that day.

A loud scream, a woman’s voice, then sobs louder than she’d ever heard before. “Take her, get rid of her, I don’t want her anymore.”

Brenda lay limp on a bed, like a rag doll. Her body ached all over. Her head and stomach hurt. What had happened?

Why was Mama screaming? Where were they?

Clang, clang. More rattling. A terrible smell like medicine. A man’s deep voice ordering them to stick a needle in her.

She tried to fight it, kicked and yelled. She hated needles. But they stuck it in her anyway, and she started to cry.

Then it was dark. So dark she could barely see. Her eyes felt heavy. Her stomach twisted, like she was going to throw up. The room was cold, and she cried for her mama.

But no one was there.

Except in her mind there were men, men reaching for her. Pulling her down with their dirty hands. Tearing at her clothes.

No! She screamed and kicked. She didn’t want them to take off her clothes…