Stay Where I Can See You

TW: mention of child abuse and blood.

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The last bit of dirt fell from the shovel and I could finally breathe again.

By the time I got to the house, Birdy was the only one still alive. The thicket of dense brush I had to push through to get back to her was surrounding the house and I felt the scratches forming on my arms as I pushed through their nettles. The top of the cabin roof came into view and I could see the crooked weather vane that knocked on the roof when it was windy. Not that there had been much wind lately. The woods had felt strangely still for as long as I could remember.

Birdy was huddled up against a birch, watching me finish. And even though she had just passed fifteen years old, she sucked her thumb. Trauma has a way of regressing someone, I guess.

The oblong mound of dirt felt obvious in the sea of fallen twigs, ancient brown leaves and newer yellow ones that had fallen in the past month. It was dark, but the moon was bright enough to see the cold air huffing from Birdy’s mouth. She used to pretend she was smoking when we were younger. We’d walk along the creek near the house that always smelled like pollution and rot. She’d run ahead, thinking there could be something more past the next tree. Or maybe the next one.

“Just stay where I can see you, okay?” I’d tell her.

She learned quickly enough that there was nowhere to go. You could run, but you’d just die in these woods. So I’d tell her stories in our room of what we’d do when we got out. After a while I stopped. It felt cruel. And she stopped believing it after the first year or so.

But I still dreamed of a way out. For a while it was the only thought I had. I couldn’t kill him. Drawers were locked. We didn’t have access to anything sharper than a spoon.

But today I ran. I ran for so long I couldn’t even walk anymore. There was still nothing but woods. No landmarks. No roads. It was easy to get turned around in these trees. The sun strobed through the white bark until I couldn’t remember if I was going straight anymore. I promised her I’d come back with help and I couldn’t even find a road. A river. Nothing.

When I realized I could hear Birdy screaming, I knew I’d run in almost a full circle. How? How did I end up back here?

I followed her screams all the way back to the cabin.

Birdy was seven years old when she got here. She was so scared. The newcomers were always terrified. I thought about all the ones who didn’t make it as long as me and Birdy had. I should have felt proud.

I didn’t.

Birdy shifted, bringing me back to the present. I looked out into the expanse of the forest, to the other mounds of dirt that I couldn’t really see anymore. It was fitting that Father was buried here. Where he’d buried so many others.

“Hey,” I said, dropping the shovel and moving toward Birdy. “It’s okay. We’re going to get out of here.”

She didn’t say anything back. The blood on her sweater looked black in the moonlight.

“I’m going to go look for a map or something. Do you wanna come in with me?”

Birdy slowly shook her head no. I stared at her for a moment, wiping my hands on my dirty jeans. I didn’t like leaving her out here in the dark, but we had to get out of there.

The cabin was nicer than someone would expect for the man he was. Obsessively clean. Sparse furniture, and everything had its place. I remembered when Mother was still alive and there was a hum of warmth echoing through the space. The picture of her still hung on the wall, the only dusty object in the house. It was a relic in our little museum that wasn’t allowed to be touched.

I remembered the fight. When Mother found his secret room. The way her body looked on the floor when she died. Purple and pink around her neck. The red polka dots in her eyes.

She didn’t respond when I begged her to wake up. The last thing she’d ever said to me was, “Run.” But my legs didn’t work and time seemed to stop. I watched him throw her into the wall. Then his hands were around her neck. Then she was gone.

I don’t remember the rest.

For a little while he kept me in that cellar room hidden behind strategically placed pieces of wood. It was cold. There were a few cups and a faucet. A collection of girls' clothes in the corner. It smelled like urine.

I remember the rest in pieces. I finally came back upstairs at some point. Mother’s body was gone and the house was clean as if nothing had ever happened. I remember not being able to walk over the space where her body had been. I used to walk around it as if I’d be electrocuted if my body touched it.

He didn’t talk to me much after that. I never asked about Mother. And I was never allowed off the property again.

Over the years, more girls made their way into the cellar. Father would come home with a small heap over his shoulder, wrapped in blankets. No noise or struggle. He’d make his way down and I could hear the metal door open and close. He’d come back up again and act like nothing had happened.

I spent most of my time in my bedroom. I’d built a space in my closet where my monster couldn’t get me. For a little while I believed it, even when I grew old enough to know better.

At twelve, I followed him outside. A storm was coming. The air smelled charged. I saw for the first time what he did with them when it was over. I hid behind a tree, covering my mouth so he couldn’t hear me breathing.

After that night, I knew I needed to follow Mother’s advice.

But then something changed. It was two days later that Father brought home Birdy. She was a tiny bit of a thing. A few years younger than me. Blonde and doe-eyed. Her clothes were slightly large on her, making her look even smaller than she was. It was the first time Father didn’t bring a girl down to the cellar.

I never understood why Birdy was different. There was nothing extraordinary about her that I could determine. He gave her breakfast when she woke up. She cried for her mother. He hit her hard enough to tell her it wasn't acceptable. She didn’t understand the rules yet. She took a few more hits before she got it.

After Birdy got there, I knew I couldn’t leave her.

I tried to comfort her. To keep her quiet and teach her how to keep the monster away. I invited her into my closet. She finally began speaking to me a few weeks after she got there. After he brought home another girl. That one went down to the cellar.

She learned the routine quickly. We shared a bed and she’d tell me about her life. About her last birthday party. About her dog, Taco. We made up stories about Taco the weiner dog coming to rescue us. Eventually I knew I couldn’t wait anymore for someone to rescue us. I had to leave, even if it meant leaving her behind. I had to try.

Last night felt like the right time. He was in the cellar. It was a clear night. I’d spent three days sneaking bits of food under my shirt that I could take with me. I couldn’t wait anymore. I made a makeshift bag out of a big shirt and took what I could. Birdy begged me to stay. I begged her to go. Neither of us bent.

So I ran.

I ran and ran until I heard her screams and I realized that I’d just been running in circles. How was that possible? I pushed through the brush until I came upon the scene outside the cabin.

She was still screaming as she plunged the rock into his head over and over. I’m not sure what happened, but I needed to get her away from him.

“Birdy!” I yelled as I ran over.

It took her a minute to realize I was there. I pulled her off of him and hugged her as hard as I could.

“It’s okay! It’s okay!”

I moved us both away from him. Her face was freckled with his blood. She was still holding the rock like it was a shield.

“You came back,” was all she said.

I looked back to Father. I tried to imagine this moment for years but it didn’t feel as satisfying as I thought it would.

He groaned.

“No, no , no—”

Birdy dropped the rock and began to shake her hands around her as if she were trying to shake something off of them.

I bent down and grabbed the rock.

He opened his eyes for just a moment and saw me hovering over him. And for the first time in my life, he looked terrified of me.

I hit him hard. Again and again. Until I heard the gurgle in his throat and watched as his chest stopped moving. I let out a scream of my own, something primal and raw that felt like it had been stuck in my bones and in my blood and through all the sinews of my muscles, looking for an escape.

Birdy watched as I grabbed the shovel from the side of the porch and began digging. Grunting with every shovel full of dirt that I pulled from the earth to cover him. When I was done, I looked back over to Birdy and wondered what would happen to us. Would we stay together? Would we get out of here and find some kind of peace without each other? Where would I go?

A part of me wanted to go back into the closet and hide again. But I had to be there for Birdy. I moved fast.

Back inside the house, everything felt smaller. Maybe it was. For a moment I expected to hear him somewhere in the house. The silence that echoed felt wrong. I found myself hesitating to go into his office. For years, I’d imagined the horrors I’d find behind this door. The knob turned slowly in my hand.

The room was disappointingly ordinary. A desk sat beneath the window. Two big filing cabinets occupied the wall. Newspapers stacked cleanly on the floor. A leather folder sat on the desk, exactly in the center. Nothing about it looked sinister until I opened the folder.

Photographs filled it from front to back. Girls. Hundreds of them. Beneath the pictures were newspaper clippings, yellowed with age. Missing children. Search efforts and reward notices. Dates were written in his scrawl. I felt myself lowering into his chair as I flipped through the pages. Some of them had hair clippings taped to the page. Next to them, observations.

I threw the book and grabbed my head, covering my eyes for a minute just to catch my breath. My hands shook. I took a breath in. I ripped open each drawer as I cried, looking for anything that could tell us where we were. A lot of the papers had “The Montana Standard” printed on top. Are we in Montana? I kept looking for anything else that could help us find our way to help.

There was nothing here. Maybe his keys were in the kitchen. I didn’t know how to drive but I could try. We had to try.

As I got to the kitchen, I was surprised to see Birdy standing there looking disheveled and fragile. She looked over at me slowly.

“Hey, I know you’re scared but it’s gonna be okay,” I said, moving to hug her. “He can’t hurt us anymore. We’ll figure something out. He has to have keys—”

“Why?” She interrupted.

“Why what?”

“Why did you bury him?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her.

“He deserved it.”

“Is that what he did to you?”

I didn’t understand what she was asking.

She wasn’t looking at me directly, but she lifted her arm slowly and a cellphone appeared in her palm. I’m not sure where she found it, but my heart skipped a beat in relief as I moved toward her.

“Oh my God, where did you—it doesn’t matter. Does it work?” I asked, reaching for the phone but she pulled back.

“Is that what happened to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We don't have time for this.” I reached again. She stepped back.

“I always wondered if you were out there. With the others,” she said. “You never find your way out of the woods. You always come back.”

I let out a confused laugh that didn’t sound like me. “What are you talking about? We need to call for help.”

“I will.” Her voice broke around the word. “But I don’t think you can leave this place.”

The room seemed to fold inward. I looked around as if something would give me an answer.

For a second I wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. I was in the dark. Under the ground. I could hear the dirt piling up. There was wood above my face and the dirt was falling through the cracks. I could smell the damp earth and feel the little grains of it on my cheeks, my lips, my eyes. I could suddenly taste it in the back of my throat. I could hear myself screaming, crying, but the sound was so close like it was trapped in the box with me. My hands were above me, clawing at the wood until one nail bent backward and tore. I remembered the white hot pain of it. I cried for my mother, as if she could hear me from wherever he’d put her.

I staggered back from Birdy and hit the counter hard enough to stumble.

“I don’t think you can come with me, Kenley.”

I looked down at my hands. The dirt beneath my nails. The scratches on my arms that never stung. The cold in me that never warms. All those days running through the woods that had no end.

Birdy held the phone against her chest. “I thought you were imaginary when I first saw you in the closet. You talked to me. He couldn’t see you. Not until tonight. Tonight he saw you.”

I remembered his face then. The terror in his eyes. Not a fear of dying but something else.

Reckoning.

I couldn’t breathe.

“No.”

I shook my head. Ran out the door.

“No!”

The woods stretched before me, silver beneath the moonlight. But they weren’t empty. Figures stood between the trees. A little girl in a purple raincoat. Another in a nightgown. Another in a school uniform. They were looking at me. Then there were more. And more.

The realization of how many there were hit me. My knees nearly gave out.

Birdy followed me out.

I looked back at her in panic. “This isn’t happening.”

“I think it is,” she said, tears quietly coming down. “I have to get help. But I think you have to go with them.”

And I knew. They were waiting for me. They couldn’t go until I did.

Neither could Birdy.

I stood on the edge of the treeline as I watched her calling 911. She told them her name. They told her to stay on the line. I touched my face as if to confirm I was real. But I knew. I looked back to see her coming closer. My mind was spinning.

“But what if…” I didn’t know what else to say. My voice creaked. “I can’t leave you. I can’t—”

She grabbed my hand. “If I get scared I’ll go to our closet until help gets here.”

Was this real?

We sat on the stairs in a sort of shock, looking out through the trees as the girls peeked out to see if I was coming. Little laughs escaped. Girls waved.

I held Birdy’s hand. “I’m scared.”

She nodded. “Me too.”

I stayed until headlights washed through the trees.

“I’ll tell them about you,” Birdy said, leaning down and kissing my hand in hers. “They’ll think I’m crazy but I’ll tell them you stayed with me all these years. That you protected me. That he got me to replace you but you’d never leave me.”

A realization settled over me. Father had buried us all here. Birdy was going to unbury us. She was going to tell the world. I felt something loosen inside me. Not relief or happiness. A burden that finally found somewhere else to rest.

We both stood up when we heard the sirens closing in. We looked at each other, and Birdy grabbed me into an embrace that felt final. But this couldn’t be the last time, could it? It just couldn’t. I squeezed her hard and felt her crying against me. I pulled back, holding her face in my hands, wiping at her tears.

“Stay where I can see you, okay?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded.

I waited at the tree line until the police cars pulled in. I watched Birdy step into the ambulance. The police stayed behind. There were lots of lights and voices and noise that had never filled this place before.

For the first time in a long time, the wind found its way through the trees.