Chapter 4

Chapter 4

L os Angeles feels like I'm stranded in a science fiction city. It's harder than I imagined. Colorful houses, palm trees, and cars pass me in a blur, leaving behind nothing more than a jumble of colors. And there are people everywhere. The whole city is full of them. Suddenly, my project seems impossible.

I pull up at a gas station on Sunrise Avenue and grip the steering wheel with both hands. I'm freezing cold but sweat is running down my face.

I can't do this. I just can't do it. Too many colors, too much noise, too many people .

I take a deep breath through my nose, reach for the cell phone on the passenger seat, and look at an old screenshot of Lou. She winks at me and I immediately feel the warmth flow back into me.

Come on, Bren, she seems to be saying. It's really easy.

Is it, sun girl?

She is beaming. Of course!

Of course! A smile flashes through my mind as I start the engine. Everything's kind of easy for you, isn't it?

I drive on with sweaty hands and only calm down again when I come to a familiar area.

I'm home , I think mockingly.

I park the RV in a secure parking lot on the Los Angeles River and walk the stretch toward Compton. The rows of flat-roofed houses are only a few miles from Hollywood Boulevard. Even from here, I can still make out the skyscrapers downtown: a gleaming silhouette of black and silver. Huge, yet tiny compared to the gigantic mountain peaks of the Yukon.

I walk along the concrete Los Angeles River where artists have left their colorful graffiti and come to the abandoned railroad tracks. That's where, at the age of twelve, I passed the initiation for one of the most notorious gangs: two minutes of gang beating and a round of waterboarding. After that I was one of the Bones, one of many youths in the ghetto who had fallen through the social cracks. Except I wasn't African American, Latino, or Chicano. Luckily, that didn't matter to the Bones. The gang slogan became my personal religion: Fight or die . After fleeing my stepfather, I wanted one thing above all: never to feel weak again. Life in the slums is hard. If you can't fight, you will eventually become a victim again—of the state, of rival gangs, or of starvation.

I jump the rails and pull the hood of my sweater down over my face. Nobody should immediately recognize me. A lot of time has passed. I have no idea which gang is in charge here at the moment, who has beef with whom, and whose territory borders whose. Also, Jordan Price's brothers may still be searching for me. A week after the fight, they put a bounty on my head for whoever would bring me to them alive. In our circles, nobody owes anyone anything. And I haven't paid up yet.

Warily, I look around, but it's quiet. Only two African Americans with black scarves walk by me. Black Bloods. Both no more than twelve, still too young to be dangerous to me.

After a few blocks, I come to the border between Compton and Lynwood. Strange feelings of alienation, self-loathing, and old fears well up inside me, familiar companions with a common cause. I had vowed never to come back here, but when Ramon asked me where I wanted to meet him, I told him Thorson Ave. without thinking. The street where I was trapped until I was twelve and where I saw little more than the dusty stretch in front of the front door.

I slow down the last few feet, the hot Santa Ana wind on my face. This stretch of Thorson Ave. is unpaved and my feet whirl a mixture of ocher sand and dirt through the air. I remember kicking up the pebbles when I escaped.

Why did I choose this particular place, this street, as a meeting place?

I look around with a strange feeling in my stomach. The shabby residential area looks deserted as if the residents had left years ago. For a long time, this might have even been the case for the last house on the left. According to Ramon, my stepfather disappeared a year after my escape.

My heart starts beating faster. The house seems different than I remember. The bulky lattice fence surrounding the property is gone, leaving only a low brick wall and a waist-high gate. I stop directly in front of it and let my eyes wander carefully over the building.

The crumbling gray stucco has given way to a white facade and two royal palms have replaced the overgrown undergrowth in the front yard. Curtains with turquoise squiggles hang in the windows to the left of the door and a blue curtain with fire engines billows in the wind in the one on the right. A teddy bear mobile dangles directly from the glass.

A strange sight—the house looks like a foreign body in this area.

Had I truly been trapped behind those walls for so long? Chained to the concrete walls of the closet, not seen by anyone else on earth? Why didn't the neighbors notice what was happening behind those walls over the years? Didn't they care? Did they even know I existed?

I circle the property. The yard is still surrounded by the same bushes, but through a bare spot, I discover the rotten staircase that leads from the outside area to the basement. The tiny elderberry bush on the corner has grown as tall as a tree and next to it the privet blooms, in front of which Blacky lies buried.

A shivering chill runs through my arms despite the warm temperature. The smell of fresh wood and varnish fills my nose. And I smell him. His sour sweat, the cheap aftershave, and the whiskey.

No . I shake my head vigorously. My name is Brendan, I'm not a child who can't defend himself anymore. I'm twenty-two. The little boy from back then doesn't exist anymore .

The smell fades, sinking to the spot in my mind that doesn't age. This place holds too many memories. Too many—and yet too few. Back then, it had seemed to me as if time stretched out endlessly. After my escape, I suddenly had the feeling that I had hardly lived. During my imprisonment, there were too many identical days, always the same feelings. Too much fear. too much loneliness. Infinite loneliness. And even boredom. I toiled in his workshop until I dropped, and naturally, I didn't have any friends. My playmates were the school books he gave me, that's all I owned. Two gray pants, two gray shirts, always alternating every three weeks—much too cold in the winter. The silver coin I had hidden in a crack in the floorboards was the only thing that belonged to me. I remember the hours I did skill exercises with it, finger exercises, heads-or-tails games. I stared at the bird and the treetops on it for several months until I could have drawn it by heart. But I had neither paper nor pens in the windowless room, I only got them for my assignments.

"Bren?"

The voice pulls me out of my thoughts. I turn and spot Ramon less than ten feet away.

"Shit, it really is you!" he exclaims and takes a step back. "I can't believe…" He stops and narrows his eyes at me.

"Ramon." I don't know what people say when they meet again for the first time in years. I can't even tell if I missed him. I just stand there for a moment and stare at him. He still wears his short, dark dreadlocks, which protrude from his head like a halo, looking like a cross between a punk rocker and Jesus Christ. Somehow, the sight of him calms me, I can't say why. I force myself to nod to him. "Nice to see you again." I guess that works.

"Such a polite Slumdog Prince. Brendan, he who knows the Latin name for every bone he breaks…" Ramon grins, but then becomes serious again. "Dammit, Bren…" His fingers tremble as he strokes his spiked dreadlocks. "What are you doing here? If you came for the cash…"

"You don't owe me anything," I say quickly. But I owe you so much . Only now do I realize how thin he's gotten. His crystal-blue eyes are bloodshot and it's not only his fingers that are shaking. But I won't ask him what happened to him like he never asked what happened to me. A rule of decency in a life devoid of morals.

He looks at me suspiciously. A look that doesn't match his soft features, never has. "No one here gives up their cash."

"I have plenty of money, remember?" I take a step toward him and he immediately backs away.

"You burned through it in three years and now came to collect debts? Damn, where have you been anyway? At first, I thought Price's brothers…but word would have gotten around…"

"I'm not coming back. I just want you to get me a few things."

"You're not coming for the fucking cash and you aren't coming to settle things with Price once and for all?"

"No." I shake my head. "There is nothing to settle. But I need… I need things that you can get easier than I can right now."

"And then my debt is paid?" Ramon raises his eyebrows.

I could scream. I hate this fuss about debt and payment. As if that would make anything better. How much would my stepfather have to pay to redeem his debt to me? First, what would he have to pay me with? Money, blood, or life? Some debts can never be repaid. Like with me and Jordan. And even if his brothers killed me, the guilt would be just another passenger in my grave on the way to hell.

"You don't owe me anything," I blurt out impatiently. "I already told you then." I want to shake him. "You needed money, I gave it to you. Consider it a gift."

Ramon smiles timidly and his tense posture relaxes. "What do you need?"

I dig out the list from my pocket that I wrote on the way and hand it to him. "It's all on there."

He frantically unfolds the paper and wipes his dripping nose with his forearm. He looks sick, sicker than a mere cold. "Chloroform, knockout drops, atropine…sleeping pills. Dimenhydrinate? Knockout gas?" Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks. "I don't want to know what for, do I?"

"No, you don't." I point to the paper. "I need the stuff undiluted; it has to be absolutely pure. I don't want any messed-up shit, okay?"

Ramon nods. "Chloro and the gas…that's gonna take a while. I can get the other stuff pretty easily."

"How long do you think until you have the chloro?"

Ramon shrugs. "A week or two, maybe three."

"That's alright. If you make it sooner, I'll pay you an additional thousand dollars." I'm in no hurry. It's still a while until June 25th, but I think he needs money. I want him to have it, that way he won't bug me for more. He's done so much for me, he deserves it. Lost in thought, I look at the renovated house and imagine how he had smashed the window with bandaged fists to get in. The monster had been out shopping. A couple of Bones had stood guard while he was searching for old documents of mine in the apartment.

"Are you on crystal or what?" I hear him asking.

I mentally tear myself away and turn around again. "Because of the narcotics?"

"Because of the narcotics, because of the narcotics," he mimics in an affected manner, then his voice drops. "Fucking shit, I'm not talking about your drug list. Have you looked in the mirror recently?"

I know what I look like: hollow cheeks, furtive gaze and stunted facial expressions. "I've been alone for a long time," is all I say.

Yes, I have been alone for a long time, but that is going to change. Everything is going to change with Lou and that's the only reason I'm here. Have come back, as Ramon says. For a moment, I think of her silky blonde hair sparkling in the evening light and I immediately feel better. Like a thousand tons fell off my shoulders, like none of this meant anything. It's merely a tiny step I have to take to reach my goal.

"Where have you been, Bren?"

"Far away."

"Where?"

"Better you don't know."

"And why are we meeting on this very street, in front of this house? Bren, are you listening to me?"

Yes, why here? I didn't have a flashback, it's a miracle. Did I want to prove to myself that I could face my past without a flash? But then I realize I will never be able to control these seizures. Situations that seem harmless catapult me back, while moments when I do expect them, nothing happens. But I knew that anyway, didn't I? So why am I really here?

The monster is gone, long gone. I'll never find another way to take revenge for all those years.

I walk toward the house step by step, feeling the warm wind on my face like tender fingers caressing it. I will trap Lou the way I was trapped behind these walls.

I was too young to remember anything else. During my life, there were only these walls as if they were the center of the world. His world.

For years, I wondered what was out there; how the air smelled in the streets, how the sun felt on your skin, or how a laugh sounded.

But I will treat Lou differently than he treated me. I'm not putting her in a windowless closet. She will live under the blue skies of the Yukon, in green, expansive pine forests. She can dress however and eat whatever she wants. She can feel what she wants. I want her to be happy with me, I definitely don't mean to harm her. I merely want her to be with me and one day she will understand why I abducted her.

I look at the back of my hand, at the pale scar left from my failed attempt to escape my handcuffs.

I know it will take a long time for Lou to realize that the Yukon is her bliss. And the wilderness is a dangerous place. Sometimes more dangerous than L.A.

"I'll also need double-lock handcuffs," I say out loud, mentally scanning the interior of the RV. "Eight pairs, no, better ten. All made of hardened steel. And iron chains. Also ten."

I hear Ramon's footsteps behind me. He stands next to me and clears his throat awkwardly. "Iron chains?"

I close my eyes briefly, feel the hard pull of the unyielding bonds on my arms and shoulder blades. During the drive, I thought I might chain myself up during a blackout. That seems to be the best solution to not endanger Lou, either. So the chains will be for both of us. "They can't be from the hardware store, most of them are too heavy." They shouldn't hurt Lou unnecessarily. "Is Dexter still alive?"

Ramon nods.

"Get some of his and I'll try them." I have no idea what Ramon is thinking and I don't care. Luckily, he's someone who doesn't ask questions.

Again, I stare at the walls, which now glow as white as the pompous mansions of Beverly Hills. The curtain with the fire engines billows in the wind behind the tilted window, the teddy bears on the mobile bobbing up and down as if they were rocking. A child's laughter penetrates my ears. Definitely a boy.

Perhaps he has the perfect family. Mother, father, child.

Something about this image makes my heart heavy as lead. It pulls me down, down into the depths of the basement, into the dark, somewhere I don't want to be, never again. I don't want to feel this. Not this weight of millions and millions of tons. A sharp pain explodes behind my forehead, becoming a crimson fog that seeps into every cell of my body.

For seconds, I feel like I'm getting lost in a haze as if my thinking is being flooded by another consciousness. Images of Lou float past me. Handcuffed Lou, held captive by an iron chain on the wall of the RV. She pulls and tugs at the bonds but cannot free herself. And the longer and harder she tries, the more desperately she cries. I try to put myself in her shoes, but there's a wall. I feel nothing. No pity, no regrets. Just satisfaction that she'll be mine. I have the right to abduct her. It will never be as empty and cold as it used to be. Never. I'll make sure she'll never leave me. And if that means that her initial time with me is going to be in chains, then so be it.

"Bren?"

The red fog inside me disappears like someone pulled a plug. I watch the rocking teddies. What was I thinking about just now?

Mother, father, child. Lou in chains. Why was I so indifferent? Why didn't I feel anything?

I mechanically shake my head. I do not want to do that. But it will be necessary. A part of me knows. A part of me can do it. No regrets, no pangs of conscience. Maybe the part that never left the basement of this house.

Everything's kind of easy for you, isn't it?

Of course!

She'll get over it, Bren, for sure. She wants an adventure .

My heart is no longer heavy and that's a good thing.

Once Ramon leaves, I return to the RV and search for a parking space in front of a Walmart where I can park for free. First, I close all the curtains, then I sit down on the two-man bench, a pen and a blank sheet of paper on the table in front of me. For a moment, I do nothing, just let my thoughts and images flow. I can't get the renovated house out of my head. It seemed so different, suddenly everything seems somehow wrong. He shouldn't be gone. He should be locked in that house forever!

With a sigh, I pull my phone out of my pocket and look at Lou's screenshot. Nothing seems wrong with her, on the contrary. All is good.

When I feel better, I pull out my grocery list from last year and make a new one. I calculate how many canned goods remain from my winter storage, double everything else, and add another winter ration for good measure. So the supplies will definitely last until Lou is out of the woods. I really don't want to go back to civilization before then. Lou is supposed to adjust to life in the wilderness. Obviously, it would be best if we never had to go to another place and live on what the forest has to offer.

I feel myself becoming more and more relaxed as I follow my train of thoughts.

I spend the next few days exclusively in the RV so I don't have to go out among people. Every other day, I change parking lots so that nobody notices the mobile home. Once, I even drive past a dump station. With a tingle of anticipation in my stomach, I jot down many more things I hadn't yet thought of: fake license plates for the RV, double rations of medication, pads, tampons, and all that girly stuff I have no clue about. And of course lots of extras of the stuff Lou likes: lemon cookies, chocolate donuts, pancakes, waffles, lots of sugar for coffee, pine nuts, pasta, sundried tomatoes, and pickled garlic.

After a week, I purchase the materials I need to attach the chains on an early morning in a hardware store that is not busy yet: metal plates, screws, eyelets. I've seen it all for so many years that I don't need to make a list for them. For the assembly, I drive to a parking lot in a large commercial port where nobody will notice the noise. I distribute the mounts fairly evenly, only adding more in the sleeping area. Sleeping in chains can be torture, especially if the chains are always in the same place—and especially at night, I will not be able to do without imprisonment for a long time. For the day, I bought some cable ties and bells from the hardware store to make bracelets out of them, a kind of signal so that she can't escape unnoticed. Finally, I exchange the mirror in the bathroom for a shatterproof version—to be on the safe side.

Once I'm done with my tasks, I have no choice but to wait for Ramon and research chains. Only when I have decided on a model do I start shopping.

In order not to attract attention, I visit malls and supermarkets all over L.A. one by one. Three times, I black out, twice I make it back to the RV just in time to chain myself in the sleeping area. I'm less fortunate at Trader Joe's. The flash catches me as someone smelling of varnish and wood oil walks by. I don't know exactly what I did, but when I come to, the organic apples are spread out on the floor and a shelf has toppled over. The only way to appease the owner is to pay him more money than he's probably made in the last two months. At least I didn't hurt anyone.

Two weeks after the seizure, I drive to an abandoned auto repair shop near the commercial port. The whole street is a collection of bankrupt businesses, not even hooligans come here to vandalize. The perfect place. With a dark, eerie feeling in my gut, I stare at the workshop I scouted out last week. The door to the former reception room is hanging partially off its hinges and all the windows are shattered. Desolate, like the lead-gray sky and the cold wind blowing inland from the Pacific today.

This is going to be the hardest part of my plan.

With a deep sigh, I get out and carry the large wooden planks into the former inspection room one after the other. Then I get the rest of the lumber, the drill, and my tool box.

For a moment, I look at the rectangular planks on the floor. I chose the extra light wood of sanded birch. As if that makes a difference!

My throat closes up. The wind whistles through the shattered windows, making me shiver. The spooky feeling inside me gives way to a kind of cold rigidity. I have to think about cemeteries. About old cellars. The coffin. How can I do such a thing? How can I even think about that after what I've experienced?

I wipe my mouth and chin with clammy fingers and shake my head. I have no choice. Over and over, I've weighed my options. The national parks the Scrivers stop at are quite a few days' drive from the Yukon. If I take Lou with me, she won't be sitting well-behaved in the passenger seat next to me. I'm sure lots of AMBER alerts will be issued, so I have to stash her out of sight…somewhere.

Like a treasure .

The whistling wind grows louder, sounding like the eerie song of a ghost choir. The door rattles against the frame in a monotonous rhythm. I light a cig and pace in front of an old lifting platform. It's late May. Supplies are stocked and all the other little things are purchased. The week before last, I insulated the hollow space under the double bed with acoustic foam. I was hoping to simply put Lou there, but since I had to slam on the brakes the other day, I realized how dangerous that is. She could be thrown uncontrollably through the space, especially if she's sedated. And then she could break her neck…like Jordan. If I also line the hollow space with blankets, she could suffocate if she is in an unfavorable position. I won't have time to check on her every minute. A week ago, I ripped out the insulation again and tried to put an extra wall in the space, but the wood paneling was too thin for that. I almost disassembled the bed construction into its individual parts.

Then, an idea came to me that has kept me up during the nights: I have to build a box for Lou. A crate is the surest way to get her to the Yukon unscathed and undetected.

Feeling a dark chill, I go to one of the broken windows and look at the RV. The inscription Travel America strikes me as mockery. I'm doubting myself, maybe for the first time since I considered abducting Lou. If I'm willing to put her in a box, how far will I go to reach my goal?

After a deep drag, I toss the cig outside and face the boards. Just looking at the wood makes me nauseous, which doesn't help.

But it has to be done. For Lou and for me.

I've already received all the birch boards and lumber in the right size from the hardware store, I just have to assemble them. I take the first board and drill a hole through it where I marked it. My hand is shaking and I stop. The wind sings its song of ghosts and graves. Shadowy thoughts of narrowness and darkness swirl through me. Death. Torture. Darkness. I grit my teeth and keep going, drilling all the holes in the boards. I find it difficult to breathe. Before I move on to the next step, I take a look at Lou's screenshot.

She beams at me. My stomach clenches. I can take her to the Yukon, chain her up if I have to, but using the box is cruel.

I put the phone back in my pocket and reach for the drill again. I can hardly hold it. Angry at myself, I set it aside and clench my hand. So tight it hurts. As if I could force my fingers to stop shaking.

Pull yourself together, you weakling! It's not you that'll go in that box, it's Lou! And that's exactly why you'll sedate her. Not only so she'll be calm, but also so she won't be afraid!

I take a deep breath, open my fist, and hold my hand at eye level. It's still shaking. Fuck! I'm a real loser if I can't build this shitty box. Lips pressed tightly together, I reach for the screw. This work is important. I have to do it right, the result is for Lou's safety. End. Of. Discussion.

I screw the first two squared timbers to the boards without looking at Lou's picture again. Pangs of conscience don't help. I put Lou out of my head, focus on what I'm doing. Drilling and screwing. I imagine building a box for my supplies. My hands calm down and the stoic part takes over. I manage to connect the remaining boards and the wood and drill a few more air holes in the boards before I attach the latch to the lid.

My heart pounds as I examine the finished work, but it's not because I'm afraid. I feel too bad to be proud of having made it, but I'm immensely relieved. Considering I've managed this, I can do everything else, as well.

That night, I have an aberrant flash. I managed to chain myself up, but during the blackout, I must have smashed a pile of dishes, that would at least explain the pile of broken glass I find the next morning. A cupboard door has been torn off and is lying on the floor. If I were to have an attack in the Yukon, I'm sure the best thing would be to chain myself to a tree outside.

Having cleaned up the mess and fixed the door, I start shopping for Lou's clothes around noon. I order most of them online and have them delivered to Ramon's address. Some of the things I can't find at all and I end up selecting a few pieces that I like. I realize that I favor black a lot even though I've enjoyed seeing Lou in a white shirt.

Besides ordering the clothes, I find a medical student on the darknet who is willing to share his knowledge of narcotics with me for cash. After all, I just want to sedate Lou, not kill her. She also has to be awake enough to drink water and go to the bathroom, but not be able to remember anything afterwards. And under no circumstances should she know that I'm transporting her to the Yukon in this shitty box.

I carefully write down all the combinations, but still memorize them. The only remaining problem is the chloroform. I can't give drops to Lou, I only have a rough dosage. So I decide to test it out on myself. But for that I need Ramon. For the first time, he has scruples and I have to double the amount I offered him so he agrees to knock me out.

In the end, we need four tries to get the right dose. The first few times he used too much chloroform. I was gone after a breath or two, but it took me a long time to come around. A little too long, Ramon said. I don't want to take any chances with Lou. The chloroform comes from a chemical company's warehouse that some of Ramon's buddies broke into. It hasn't been diluted, so it is much stronger than I anticipated. On the fourth try, Ramon only used half of what we used on the third try. It took longer to get me into deep sleep, but only two minutes to wake up. I made a note of this dosage and, estimating Lou's weight, calculated hers.

Now there's only one thing left to do. I'll have to be around people, but I'll first have to take care of my appearance. If Lou sees me in my current state, she will never come with me. And that's ultimately what she has to do to make my plan work. Come with me and get into the RV—the rest should be easy.