Chapter 9

Chapter 9

T he next morning, Lou is doing better, but I still stick to my plan. I put her in the box and place a few drops of chloroform on a gauze bandage. It's thin enough to allow Lou to still breathe. I stop several times to check on her and I am relieved when I reach Dease Lake around two in the afternoon. I buy the current issue of the Vancouver Sun in a mom-and-pop store, glad to be able to even get my hands on a daily newspaper. Apparently, Lou is also the number one topic in Canada:

MISSING LANTERN GIRL: ARE THE brOTHERS TO BLAME?

"A shame," says the aged man behind the cash register in a troubled tone. I look up from the front page, which I've already skimmed.

"Excuse me?" I raise my eyebrows questioningly.

The corners of his mouth are drawn down like someone who experiences stomach pains, his eyes looking sadly at me.

"Now they say the girl fled from her brothers. But family is everything, isn't it?"

Maybe in Dease Lake , I think cynically. "You're probably right about that," I reply loudly. "I read the girl got lost."

The furrows in the old man's face deepen like ditches. "Did you see the picture of the girl?"

I nod mechanically. He may be old, but he's also a man. His eyes say it all. I know what he's thinking. Girls like that don't get lost, they are stolen from the world. By men like me.

I murmur a brief salutation and get back on the road.

As I turn off the Cassiar Highway onto one of the nameless roads , I hear pounding from somewhere on the underside of the camper. At first I think it's the engine, but after a few seconds, I realize it can only be Lou. A moment later, I hear her scream.

She woke up too early! She's in the box! Alone in the dark .

I brake so hard, the tires squeal and the motorhome lurches a few yards uncontrollably over the bumpy road. My stomach clenches. Lou needs to get out of there before she loses her mind from fear.

I run to the back, take off the panel, and unlock the box. I'm struck at how quiet it suddenly is. The lid snaps down, I lean forward and see Lou. My heart wants to stop beating.

She lies on her side, eyes narrowed. Her body shakes violently like I have never seen before.

"Shh, quiet. I didn't have a choice." My words have no effect. She trembles even more, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

It's imperative I explain everything to her, then I'm sure she'll calm down again.

"I'm going to get you out now," I say clearly so she can understand.

Her eyes widen as if I had announced her death sentence. For a moment, she looks me in the face. Confusion crosses her features. Confusion, realization, and bewilderment. For a split second, I wonder if she recognizes me and what exactly she remembers. Does she remember that I grabbed her from behind and drugged her?

I raise my hand carefully. "I'm not going to do anything to you, Louisa." I lean forward and grab her upper arms to pull her out. In the next moment, she starts screaming again. No words, just high shrill noises like an excited marten.

I pull back. "Lou, it's Brendan. We've been traveling together for the past five days. You probably don't remember, but you trusted me."

She slaps my arms, unable to stop screaming, growing worse and more hysterical.

"Calm down, Lou!" I almost have to yell to drown her out. She catches my thumb and bends it backward. The pain kindles my impatience. "Everything's fine. Dammit, calm down!" I grab her upper arm and clamp my fingers around it like a vise. Suddenly, she becomes rigid as if resigning herself to her fate.

Sometimes, pain is the only thing that helps . A disgusting thought out of nowhere! Her whimpers don't make it any better.

Being harsh will only scare her more, Brendan!

I ignore my concerns; she has to get out of the box and obviously that is only possible by force.

"I don't want to hurt you. Stop fighting me!"

I slip a hand under her hip and pull her out with a jerk. Only now do I realize how much her body still suffers from the drugs. Her muscles are completely limp. Standing over her, I roll her onto her stomach and pull her up on all fours, one arm above and one arm below her chest. Despite the situation, I can't help but feel a tingle run down my spine as I hold her and she squirms in my grip. I can feel her warm skin through the sweaty fabric, smell her sweat, the fleeting residue of Nivea lemon.

I'll never let you go, Lou .

I feel like shit. I am a shit! Can't I think of something normal in her presence?

A second later, she pukes on her hands. A green liquid spreads across the PVC floor. Without thinking, I hold her with one arm wrapped around her and bundle her long hair into a ponytail.

"That's from the chloroform. It won't last long."

She flinches and vomits again.

It's my fault for giving her those wretched drugs. On the other hand, it doesn't help any of us if I feel bad about it.

After a few minutes, she is even more exhausted than before and hangs in my grasp like a rag doll.

I clear my throat so she doesn't startle when I say something. "I'm going to put you on the bed now. That's all," I add quickly, feeling her flaccid muscles tighten.

With a single jerk, I pick her up and lower her onto the down comforter. As I look at her from above, my insides cramp. The tingling on my back gives way to an uneasy feeling of fear.

Her cheeks are as white as snow and barely stand out against the flaxen hair. She turns her head in my direction without seeing me.

Stop being afraid! I want to scream, but can't get a sound out. She clutches the blanket with her hands, every muscle tense. Her petite body just continues to tremble. And on. And on.

"Do you need to use the bathroom?" I ask, mainly to say something normal.

She flinches again, shaking her head. At least it's a different reaction rather than screaming and trembling.

"Tell me when you do and I'll help you."

Hesitantly, her gaze wanders up to me and gets stuck on my face. Fear flickers like heat in her eyes. What does she remember? What does she still know and what has she forgotten?

I think of her hug, her cheek against my stomach, her arms around my waist. Everything in me contracts. There is a need within me that burns with an intensity that makes me dizzy. I want her so bad, my brain is in a haze.

At some point, I realize how intensely I am staring at her. I quickly look away. At least that's what you do with shy or wounded animals. And Lou simply reminds me of a wounded deer that can't escape.

"I've put you on the toilet a couple of times. Don't you remember?" I get back on topic to break the silence between us.

Another shake of the head, then she closes her eyes. Maybe she's not able to keep them open yet or she just doesn't want to look at me.

I take a step toward her and consider taking her pulse, but then she might start to hyperventilate.

Can one die of fear?

I wouldn't know. There were times I wish I could have.

I look down at Lou for a while, completely at a loss as to what to do to lessen her fear.

When I bump the covers, the down crackles and Lou opens her eyes wide again as if the sound were a harbinger of violence. "I'd give you something to drink, but I can't for twenty-four hours after the anesthesia," I say awkwardly.

I look at her and she looks at me like I'm a five-headed alien about to perform horrific experiments on her. "It would be too dangerous," I continue. "You might pass out again and choke on your own vomit."

Her lips are trembling. She turns her head to the other side.

I take a deep breath and exhale through my nose. "Lou, I know you're probably scared, but I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."

She presses her dirty, wet fist to her mouth tightly. Again, she convulses. She's so miserable lying on this bed that it hurts to look at her.

I can't suppress a sigh. "Okay, I'll leave you be for now. You'll just have to see for yourself that I'm going to keep my word."

Silence.

Okay! So first, I need to find a place to rest for the night.

I'm almost at the cab when her voice stops me.

"Why me?" It's only a whisper, but it hits me with unbridled force.

What should I tell her? Because you're my Little Miss Sunshine? Because you made me smile? Because you saved my life on a day I wanted to die?

My heart is pounding hard in my chest. I could give her hundreds of reasons.

"Because you're so full of life," I simply say. It's the truth. A simple fact. Life gushes out of Lou like she's had too much of it.

For a moment, I am terrified and wonder if I can swallow up all her life like nature swallowed me up when it was only us. Maybe I'll suck up Lou and then there'll be nothing left of her.

I drive deeper and deeper into the forest on the unpaved road and simply park the RV alongside the ditch.

Briefly, I check on Lou, but she's dozed off again. That's probably best for her in the current situation. As I carefully take her pulse, I realize how long it's been since I've had a flash despite being constantly under stress these past few days. It's probably thanks to Lou. Having her with me is good for me.

We're already far up north and the sun is still high even though it's already late afternoon. I sit cross-legged by the road, amid deep blue lupines, poppies, and feathery foxtail grass swaying silently in the wind.

I don't know what to do for Lou so she'll be less scared. In the past, I have never had contact with girls. At least not with the likes of Lou. Never has a girl or woman touched me as tenderly and innocently as she did when she wrapped her arms around me.

My gaze falls on a brimstone butterfly fluttering frantically around the lupine flower clusters. Lou is like that butterfly. I have to be careful not to crush her. To be honest, I don't even know how I would have acted toward her if she had volunteered to come with me. I have no idea how normal relationships work. In the slums, you had to abide by strict rules and hierarchies. With the monster anyway. And I don't recall anything of the time before that. It seems to me that since I was born, there has only been me and the man. I don't even know how long I was imprisoned with him, but it must have been at least eight years.

It is not until the age of three or four that a child has clear memories of what has happened. At least that's what the psychologist I saw about the flashes told me.

Lost in thought, I pluck at a few blades of grass.

The attacks came unexpectedly. Actually, at the time, I thought I was done with the past because the nightmares had stopped. I had started to partake in fights and finally found an outlet for my anger. Then came the first flash, which was short. The second, however, lasted several minutes. I experienced more and more and they lasted longer and longer. They became increasingly worse. In one particularly violent attack, I dove out of the second-floor window. The Bones were under the impression I was popping pills.

Since I was only 16 and had no guardian, I went to see a Mexican doctor who treated migrants with no health insurance. He referred me to his friend, Dr. Watts, a psychologist.

"The way you describe it, it sounds like a flashback," Dr. Watts shared at the time. She looked like a typical doctor, with a neat bun and horn-rimmed glasses, sitting in the middle of a cream-colored room—I was in the corner, a spot I had chosen myself. She was wearing a cornflower-blue suit—I, my new jeans and a decent black shirt. I had bought the clothes with the money I had earned from my first job. Finally, something that was mine, smelled like me, was clean, and wasn't torn. Yet, in her presence, I still felt like I was wearing my stinky gray clothes from Thorson Ave.

"A what?" I asked because I didn't know the word.

"A flashback is reliving a traumatic memory. Do you remember a traumatic event in your childhood, Brendan?" She spoke as softly and quietly as I had imagined a psychologist's voice would be.

I remained silent.

"You know trauma is an emotional injury that you fail to cope with. So far, we have not learned anything that works to deal with such a situation. There are states of extreme helplessness, a loss of control, which leads to questioning one's own understanding of the world. And of course also to a change of one's self-image."

Dr. Watts must have assumed I didn't know this, but that was not the case. I would have just expressed it with much simpler words.

"Sometimes a smell is enough to be catapulted back in time. Trauma knows no time. Because all possibilities of coping have failed, it is not stored in the brain as a past experience. So it's always present, in a state of limbo, and activated by a trigger as if it were happening again."

"So a trigger would be an odor?"

"A trigger can be anything, even a speck of dust on your boot if it's connected in some way to what happened." She thought for a moment. "It's unusual for you to have amnesia afterwards…meaning a lapse in memory from the time of the flashback. That would suggest a split personality, but it's too early to speculate."

"All I really want to know is when and how it will stop." That's all I was interested in.

"That's entirely up to you, Brendan. You have to try to work through the trauma and integrate it into your personality. Maybe under hypnosis. That would be one of several possibilities."

"I can't do that." I'd rather be beaten with a bullwhip like a loser in a fight. I would never go back. Physically, mentally, or otherwise. The way Dr. Watts said trigger and trauma pissed me off, as if she knew about me and could see inside me. All the hatred and anger, the feeling of having to destroy something in order to be able to think at all. Sometimes, it felt as if all of my being was only anger. And then I felt nothing at all again like my soul had been evacuated. After escaping Thorson Ave, I thought every human would feel this way. It took me a long time to realize that I was the only one who somehow functioned differently.

"Why isn't it possible? What reason do you have for not trying it?" she asked after a moment of silence.

"I can't do it. Never." Maybe I raised my voice, I don't know.

She looked at me with omniscient X-ray vision. For a long time. For so long like only the man had ever looked at me. Not even one of my opponents, they would never have dared. But there she sat, looking me straight in the eye. And I felt smaller than her. Much smaller.

"Trauma isn't merely an emotional injury, it's always a loss, Brendan. It's the loss of innocence." She paused as the man had done when he wanted to add weight to his next words. I looked back as if I could bring her to her knees with my gaze, but she wouldn't back down. "Trauma is the loss of a life that could have been lived if the injury had not happened. In a way, you lost your life. You have become someone other than who you could have been."

"I don't care who I am today. It has to stop!"

"A pity."

"What's a pity?"

"That you don't want to find out who you are."

The words flutter past me. You have become someone other than who you could have been . Why am I thinking about that conversation right now? Is it because of Lou?

Of course it's because of Lou. I wouldn't have abducted her if I was someone else. But I can't turn back time. And if I could, to when? Was there a time in my life that would be perfect to start all over again? I have no idea. A lot was out of my control, but Lou, Lou is in my hands and now it can be perfect, it has to be.

A sudden gurgling in the RV's underbelly makes me sit up and take notice. I know what that means. Lou must have turned on one of the faucets. Presumably in the bathroom. I specifically told her to call me when she had to go to the bathroom!

Angry, I jump to my feet and in three big leaps I'm in the motorhome. I immediately glance at the bed: empty! From inside the bathroom, I hear a strange smacking noise that I can't make sense of. Is Lou trying to climb the walls?

Before I can stop myself, I rip open the door. What I see is beyond comprehension.

Lou is standing in front of the sink or rather some resemblance of the former Lou. Now her face is covered with blue soapy cream and white foam. She looks like the Smurf girl—only without the hat. Heavens, she can barely stand upright, yet she still got up! She could have hurt herself! The thought makes me angrier. She must listen to me! I have to make sure she listens to me.

"What are you doing there?" My voice is strained and I sound pissed off. Great, Brendan, well done! Like that'll scare her less!

She just looks at me wide-eyed. The foam is everywhere, even on her lids, eyebrows, and inside her nose. If she wanted to wash, she could have taken a shower and I would have helped her somehow. If need be, I would have given her a bucket to sit on. My help is probably not what she wants. Jesus Christ—I put her on the toilet, she hugged me!

The fresh smell of Wild Ocean Dream fills my nose. Suddenly, I see how wet her eyes are, as if they're about to overflow. Maybe she's thinking about her home. In here, it smells like her home. Suddenly, I feel like the biggest asshole.

Slowly, so she doesn't think I'm hitting her, I hold out my hand. "Give me the soap, Lou."

She barely flinches at her name. "Don't call me Lou. You don't know me," she whispers shakily.

"Of course I do!" It slips so easily over my lips. And I do know her, though I am a stranger to her. I'm only realizing that now. I'm a total stranger to her. "Give me the soap, Louisa," I repeat, but no less demandingly.

"No!" She clutches the soap to her chest as if she never wants to give it up.

No?

"I told you to call me if you wanted to use the bathroom," I say sternly. "Did you drink any water?"

Defiantly, she shakes her head while spraying soapy foam on my boots. At least she listened to me on that one.

"Good!" That's a start. I point to the faucet. "Wash that off!"

"No!"

I find this reply annoying, but somehow courageous. Mostly surprising. As if I wasn't standing in front of the Lou I know, but a completely different girl. I carefully examine her from top to bottom, which is a bit difficult because the blue foam is all over her. I could grab her right now and put her in the shower to show her how her no fares to my yes . Then again, she is in dire need of some Wild Ocean Dream after these past five days.

"Okay, then stay that way!" I say, seemingly indifferent, and nod toward the bed. "Come on back! I suppose you're done using the bathroom."

She recoils and stays put. I've had enough. "We need to get going!" I grab her arm but she evades me, slips on the floor, and lands with her butt on the toilet.

"Going where?" She stares at me in fear.

I smile. Maybe because she realizes that her resistance isn't going to work and that it feels good even when it shouldn't.

"Further. Further away from where I picked you up."

I take the soap from her and set it on top of the cupboard. Then, I grab her arm and pull her with me. This time she doesn't resist and reminds me more of Lou in the photos. That's good. Everything should be easy with her. Dealing with her should also be easy.

I stop in front of the bed.

She doesn't move, but I can feel a tremor running through her body and she stiffens up so I don't notice.

"Are you going to lock me in the box again?" A terrible terror lies in her whisper, as deep and as dark as the place I know. She looks up at me, wide-eyed, her whole face twisted in fear as if anticipating a punch or worse.

Suddenly, I know exactly how she feels as if her fear were a mirror of my soul.

For a fraction of a second, everything is there again. The tightness around me, the feeling of not being able to breathe, the sweaty shirt that made me cold, the pants that were wet for other reasons, the stench, and the disgust.

I don't flash, maybe because I'm looking at Lou and her fear is stronger than the power of my memory. Her eyes are still fearful and pleading, and I see myself looking at the man, fearful and pleading.

Mechanically, I shake my head. "The road will be empty enough that I can keep you out here. I only needed the box in the beginning." I release her upper arm and only now realize how tightly I was gripping it. Stiffly, I go to the window, push two slats of the blinds apart and peer out. "Unless, of course, you try to run away from me," I add quietly. It sounds like the menacing hiss of a whip, but the warning has to be there, even if I don't intend to act on it. I don't want Lou to be unnecessarily scared, but she must never, ever try to run away. She must not even dare think about it. She must know how dangerous it is to challenge me. Not the Brendan I normally am, but the part of me that acts during a flash.

After a while, I turn back to her. She's still standing in the same place as if not daring to move without my direction. Foam runs down her body and forms a puddle around her feet. When I see her, my tension instantly dissipates.

"We continue now," I say as kindly as I can. "You'll stay back here and lie down again."

She crawls awkwardly onto the bed without taking her eyes off me.

"And now?" she asks softly.

I go to the kitchenette in the front and retrieve two pairs of handcuffs and an iron chain from a secured closet. As I walk back with it, her eyes widen and I wonder how much longer this can go on.

"Nothing is going to happen." I nod to the brackets on the walls. "These are just so you don't do anything stupid while I'm driving." I clip the handcuffs to each end of the iron chain and snap one to the bracket on the wall. "Your wrist."

She presses her lips together.

I wait. I don't want to use force again. We look at each other. There's something in her eyes that startles me. I know it all too well: anger. Hurt pride, the will to hide it, and resignation because she knows how it will end.

"I don't want to hurt you."

Lou's lips remain pressed together as she offers me her arm. But you are , her eyes accuse me, and she's right, of course.

Where would I be today if I had become who I could have been? Lou would certainly not be here and where would I be?

I squeeze the cuff so it's snug enough but doesn't cut into her flesh. It snaps into place with a click. "Stay away from the blinds."

She nods imperceptibly.

"I'm serious, Louisa, do you understand?"

"What's not to understand about that?" she whispers. "You give an order, I have to obey."

"It's not quite like that," I concede.

She looks at her tied hand.

Yes, it is!

I know she thinks that. I do too. Anything else would be a lie.