Rude Awakening (12 page)

‘Mary Ellen,' Dalton said, a slight whine in his voice, ‘I don't understand. Where are we going? I really need to get my car and go home! I'm super tired!'

‘Then close your eyes,' Mary Ellen said, a dreamy smile on her face. ‘I'll wake you when we get there.'

‘Get
where
?' Dalton demanded.

The smile grew. ‘You'll see.'

Holly Humphries had decided that this entire thing was a hoax and there was no movie. It had taken her a while, as she had been fairly deep in denial, a place where Holly was quite comfortable. After all, Holly did claim to be an actress, although at the age of twenty-three she'd had fourteen jobs, and not one of them – until Mr Smith – had been an actual paying acting gig. She'd worked at a video store, a supermarket, a dry cleaners, Wal-Mart, a multiplex movie theater (where she got fired for watching the movies instead of working), McDonald's, Dollar General and several more stores, all for minimum wage. At one point, a friend told her that the city was hiring workers at the waste water treatment plant and training them, and that they were looking for women because they didn't have any and were supposed to have some.
And
they were paying big bucks just for the training! So Holly signed up for the training program and lasted long enough to find out what waste water actually was.

Her highest paying job was at an adult video and book store. Unfortunately, she never got a paycheck because she lasted less than a day. When the first customer came to her counter with a video featuring a picture of a naked, big-busted woman tied down with chains, Holly took the opportunity to inform him that he was a creep and could use some intense counseling. The management felt her customer relations were less than what they sought. She was asked to leave.

But as much in denial as she might have been, the realization finally came to Holly. Mr Smith was up to something other than making a movie, and somehow it involved this poor little boy. Like maybe a kidnapping or something. There was only one person here to save him: Holly Humphries. She could see the headlines in the Tulsa paper now: ‘Young Actress saves Child from Demented Psycho,' ‘Kidnapping Scheme Foiled by Holly Humphries, Actress (Résumé on Page 6)'.

Unfortunately, her heroic exploits were thwarted by the fact that both she and the boy were tied up. But the dampness of the old barn was getting to Eli, and his breathing became raspy again.

‘Mr Smith!' Holly called out to the man sitting dejectedly at a table halfway across the barn. ‘He needs his inhaler again!' When he didn't reply, she said ‘Mr Smith, please! He can't breathe!'

Finally ‘Mr Smith' turned around, saw the inhaler on the table and picked it up, tossing it to the girl.

‘His hands are tied, Mr Smith! Please!' she said, exaggerating her agitation.
Acting
the part of a helpless victim.

‘Mr Smith' got up, walked over to where the ‘breathie' lay on the ground and picked it up. He took it to the child and roughly pushed him over, untying his wrists from behind his back. ‘Here,' Mr Smith said, ‘breathe.'

He shoved the ‘breathie' at the boy and walked off. Holly leaned down and whispered to Eli, ‘Use your breathie, then untie my hands, OK?'

He nodded his head, inhaling deeply. After two deep breaths, he stuck the inhaler in his pocket and, looking for ‘Mr Smith', and finding him with his back to his victims, began to quietly untie Holly Humphries's hands.

‘Oh, yeah,' he said, a smirk on his face. ‘That's Greta. Dr Hawthorne's
personal
intern last year, if you know what I mean.' From the sound of the laughter there was no doubt that everyone knew what he meant. ‘I heard she had to leave the program.' He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don't know why. But you know that old saying, never shit where you eat.'

In a funk, Emil sat on a bale of hay, staring at his reflection in the dull gleam of the van he'd used to kidnap the boy. How could he have gotten the wrong boy? How could this have happened? What kind of luck did he have that this . . .

And then it dawned on him. It wasn't bad luck at all. It was Jean MacDonnell. She did it to him again. And now she was laughing at him. She'd gleefully handed him the wrong child, and now she was sitting up there in her house on that silly hill they call a mountain around here, laughing at him.

But he had an idea that would turn her smile upside down. How funny would it be – hilarious, really – for her to find this little changeling she'd given him in pieces on her front steps?

Holly tried not to get antsy – after all, Eli was just a baby, really. He couldn't help it that he was having a hard time untying her restraints. But she also couldn't help herself. ‘Hurry!' she urged in a whisper.

Which, of course, stopped the four-year-old in his tracks. ‘I can't!' he whined.

‘Shhh!' Holly said, then quickly cooed, ‘It's OK, Eli. It's OK. Just do the best you can so we can get away from here, OK?'

He nodded his head and rubbed his dripping nose on his sleeve, then set back to work, trying to untie the rope from Holly's wrists.

Dalton woke up to silence. Well, not exactly silence. He could hear birds cooing, wind whispering through tree branches, but no engine noise. The minivan was stopped, and he was alone. Dalton was sitting in the shotgun seat, which had been put in the reclining position. He found the handle to bring the seat back up, lifted it and tried to orient himself. He had no idea where his sister was. The driver's side door was open, which meant the overhead light should be on, but it wasn't. He saw that the keys were in the ignition. He finagled himself into the driver's seat and turned the key.

Nothing happened. Just the
click
–
click
– of a dead battery. Where was Mary Ellen and how long had she been gone? Dalton figured it must have been for a while if the open door was able to have killed the battery, unless the battery was already in bad shape. Had Mary Ellen mentioned a bad battery? He tried to remember, then he realized Mary Ellen hadn't told him much of anything lately.

He got out of his sister's minivan and looked around. He had no idea where he was. A dirt road in the middle of nowhere, lots of tall trees and that appeared to be that. Finally, he cupped his hands around his mouth, making a small megaphone, and called out, ‘Mary Ellen!' as loud as he could. There was no response.

Dalton looked up at the star-studded sky, thinking it had only been yesterday – or was it the day before – not long ago, that he'd wished upon these very stars, wished that he and his Sarah would live a happy life.

God, what a joke, he thought bitterly. Him and his Sarah. Ah, change that to Geoffrey, please. How could he be such an idiot? To think that a girl as lovely as that one
appeared
to be would want him? That any girl would want him! He held his head up to the sky again, and resigned himself to a life lived in solitude.

Mary Ellen sat on a rock, watching the water fall into the pool below. She'd come as far as she could. The one place she remembered being happy: Mountain Falls.

She and Rodney used to come here when they were in high school, sit in the front seat of the car and listen to the radio, to Huey Lewis and the News, Boy George, Cyndi Lauper. They would kiss and touch but never go too far. Mostly, they'd just hold each other and stare at the waterfall, making plans for their life together.

She wasn't sure when it went bad or why. But she really hadn't felt that good since Rodney, Jr was born. It had been a hard birth; she'd bled a lot and had to have transfusions. She hadn't been able to breastfeed her baby, as she'd been too sick and dehydrated. She felt she never bonded with Rodney, Jr the way she had with the other two. She also felt that her bond with those first two children was slipping. As was the bond with her husband. Things weren't right and she didn't know why.

Maybe this was the end of the trail. The dead end. Nothing forward except the cliff that could take her flying into the pool below. The thought of flying made her smile. She'd had a dream once that she was flying. It was the best dream she'd ever had, and, try as she might, she never could get it to come back. In the dream she was trying to catch something, or somebody, but they were going too fast, and she was running, running, running, trying to catch up, but her feet were going too slow for the rest of her. Finally, she just picked them up – her feet – and off she went, flying after whatever it was she wanted. Then, of course, as dreams tend to do, it switched and she was no longer after anyone, just flying for the sake of flying. It was a wonderful feeling, full of joy and wonder, even if she didn't get very far off the ground. Hey, it was
her
dream, and she could stay
almost
grounded as much as she wanted.