Five years ago, my niece Emily was taken. We always say ‘taken’ because she disappeared, and even at eighteen, she was the most responsible person I’ve ever known. The idea of her running off was next to impossible, and given her normally careful nature, a freak accident where she was never found seemed pretty unlikely. That left taking—someone snatching her, carrying her off for some terrible reason.
We knew when it would have happened. She had started working at the campus bookstore a month before her freshman year of college, and already she was being trusted with locking up on some weeknights. This particular Wednesday, the front door to the store was never locked. Campus footage showed someone wearing a dark hoodie going into the store just before closing, but never showed them or Emily leave again. Police assumed they both left by the back exit, which wasn’t covered by a camera at the time.
Whatever the case, the trail went cold there. Emily’s purse and phone were found at the store. There were no witnesses to where she had gone or clues as to who might have taken her. No taunting messages or ransom demands ever came, and after the first few weeks, law enforcement gently let us know they were going to have to move on even if we couldn’t.
And of course we couldn’t. Emily was my sister Jackie’s world, and mine too, if I’m honest. Part of that was because I had no children of my own and I’d always helped Jackie raise her. Another was just Emily herself—she was so good and happy and kind-hearted. I don’t know anyone that could be around her for more than five minutes and not love her.
The last five years have been hard for me, but they’ve destroyed my sister. She started drinking heavily, running with a rough crowd and moving from one sketchy boyfriend to another. It’s like she knew they were going to be abusive and crazy before she got involved with them and did it anyway, almost as though she was punishing herself for not somehow saving her little girl.
The one that lasted the longest was Kyle. After six months and him threatening to burn down her house with her in it, she got a protective order and changed her number. Or rather got a new number, because she still kept her old phone and number active, even if it wasn’t being used anymore. She never said, but I knew it was because she was afraid of getting rid of anything connected to her past life—the one with Emily in it.
As far as I know, that old phone sat in the top of a hallway closet for the better part of two years before one day last month. I’d come by to force Jackie out of the house—my idea was for us to go hiking, as she rarely left indoors anymore, and at first it went well. I could tell she enjoyed the company and the fresh air, and there were even a couple of times when I saw her smile a little. Catching those glimpses of my sister not just frozen and numb by her pain and loss gave me hope that, in time, she might be able to actually live again.
But then, when I was taking a picture of the river we’d just crossed, my phone slipped from my hand.
My eyes followed it as I missed a fumbling grab for it and barely stopped myself from pitching too far forward and tumbling to the hard ground below. The phone wasn’t so lucky—it hit a rock with a crunch, bounced against a second, and then went into the swiftly moving water beyond. I knew it was gone immediately, my mind already going through the steps I’d need to go through to turn off that phone and get a new one. Jackie came up beside me and patted my back.
“Sorry, Mar. Was it new?”
I shrugged with a frown. “New enough. I think I had six months left to pay on it.” I puffed out a breath. “Shit.”
“Ready to head back to the house?”
I was. And by the time we got back, a thought had occurred to me. I didn’t have an old spare phone lying around, but Jackie did. I worried she might get mad or upset when I asked to borrow it until I got a new one, but she didn’t. Instead she just nodded and gave a small, hollow laugh.
“Yeah, sure. Not like I need it, right? It’ll need to be charged though.”
I nodded. “Yeah, yeah, of course. And I’ll take good care of it and bring it back when I get the new phone, okay?”
Jackie didn’t respond, but just stared ahead at the road. Her stony silence told me it was better to just leave well enough alone.
I left just a few minutes after we got back to her house, old phone and bulky charger in tow. I was so tired I forgot about it until I was going to bed and plugged it up to charge, and it wasn’t until the next morning that I actually tried to turn it on. The screen lit up immediately as a cheery welcome jingle played through the tinny phone speaker. My stomach clenched as I saw the home screen’s picture was one of Jackie and Emily at the beach two years before she went missing. I was about to set the phone down again when a flashing in the corner of the screen caught my eye. It was a notification.
One unheard voicemail.
My stomach lurched. It was stupid, of course. It’d be some telemarketer, or a drunk dial from one of Jackie’s scummy exes, that’s all. No point in even listening to it to see if she needed the message.
Even as I thought this, my thumb was already going through the motions to call the vmail service and play the message. My heart was pounding, and it was everything I could do to even hold onto the phone now. It was suddenly something terrifying and repulsive, and I didn’t want it around, didn’t want to hear what it had to say.
What was wrong with me? I didn’t know, but I also didn’t think I could make myself bring the phone up to my ear. Fumbling with the unfamiliar buttons, I finally got the speakerphone to work just as the message began to play.
Oh God.
It was Emily.
Mama? I…if you get this…they have me. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, not really. No one I know, and they all use weird fake names when they’re around me. They’ve had me for…months? Years? I don’t know. I’m inside most of the time except for when they move me around. They used to move me a lot, but not for awhile now.
Th-they hurt me. They hurt me a lot. Sometimes I feel like they’re going to kill me, but they never do, and when I wake up, I can’t even see where they…well, it’s bad. And I think they’ve done things to me that are even worse than I remember. Just…try to find me. Not you—I mean police or something. These people are very dangerous. I—I think they do this a lot maybe. They don’t talk to me much, but everything is…it’s like being with a doctor or a soldier or something? Like you can tell they know what they’re doing even if you don’t know what they’re doing. So you stay away. Get some cops to come find me if they can.
Maybe they can trace the call. This is one of their phones—they forgot it and I…I hid it until I could sneak and call. Your number is the only one I remember. Maybe after this I’ll call 911 if I have time, though I don’t know who I can trust here.
I think I’m in or near a town called Empire. One of them said that name once before another one shut them up, and I saw a flyer outside that said Murphy Park. So if you find a place called Empire with a Murphy Park, I bet I’m near there.
I have…I have to go. I love you so much. You and Mary. I’m so sorry they got me. Please be careful if you look for me. And don’t worry if you don’t or you try and can’t find me. I think this’ll be over soon either way. They…I think they’re building up to something, so…I’m sorry. Just, if you find me, be careful of me. I feel so strange now. And…um…this will sound weird, but if the cops just find my body, like if I’m dead when they find me? Just ask them to bury me. Don’t you go around my body, okay?
Just ask them to bury me deep.
I played that message three times. It wasn’t a fake, we both knew it. And it was dated less than two years ago, meaning Emily had sent it over three years after she was taken. It meant she hadn’t been killed right away. That she might still be alive even now.
I could barely drive as I headed back over. My hands were shaking and my head pounded as tears streamed down my face. On the one hand, I had the first hope, the first truly good thing, that had come into our lives in years sitting in my pocket. On the other, that thin healing scab that was finally starting to form on Jackie’s heart? I was about to split it in two.
She didn’t react like I was afraid she might. Didn’t cry or fall apart. I played it for her twice and then she got on the phone and started calling the investigators that had handled Emily’s case five years earlier. One of them had retired, but the other was still working for the sheriff’s office. After ten minutes of Jackie insisting, he finally agreed to meet us that night up at his office. And for the next two weeks, we spent nearly every day pushing for some kind of progress.
Can you pull the cell phone records? We were told they’re only kept for a year. The GPS coordinates from the phone? Only kept six months. How about the number itself? There wasn’t currently a carrier account associated with that number, meaning the previous account had been closed more than a year before, and they couldn’t find an actual person to associate with the closed account.
In the end, the only leads were some general cell tower information that corroborated part of what Emily had said in her message. The phone call had come through a tower in a town called Empire. And in that town, there was a Murphy Park.
The investigator made inquiries supposedly, though I think that amounted to calling local law enforcement and seeing if they’d run across anyone meeting Emily’s description. We scraped together enough money to hire a private investigator to look into things further, but after the first couple of weeks, we never heard from him again either. According to his secretary, he’d left to go “into the field” a few days earlier but she couldn’t give us more details than that. The thing was, when she told us that it was in person, and she was packing up stuff in the office. The next time we called, the line was disconnected.
It was after that, when we’d run out of options and hope, that Jackie finally broke. It was as though she had been holding it together so we could find Emily, and the strain of it all had finally become too much. We were sitting on her porch, staring out at the darkening afternoon when her voice suddenly cut the stillness, raw and hot with a kind of sad anger.
“It’s my fault, you know.”
I frowned at Jackie. “What’re you talking about?”
She put her head in her hands. “I fucked it up. I should have kept that phone. Kept using it and charged, I mean. I always knew there was a chance it could be important to keep that number. I had a feeling. And then…when my baby needed me, I…I…” She trailed off as her shoulders began to shake with sobs.
I gently rubbed between her shoulders. “No, it’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. And…I mean, it wouldn’t have made any difference probably. We’ve tried everything.”
Jackie yanked away, her face hard. “That’s a lie. They would have had more records. Could have maybe traced the call or something. And I haven’t tried everything. I haven’t gone to look for her myself.”
Swallowing, I nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. But we wouldn’t know what we were looking for, right? Listen, I’ve got a call in to another P.I. A really high-rated one. I’ll put it on my card and we’ll get him to go find out what’s going on, yeah? I’ll hire him tomorrow. How does that sound?”
Staring into the distance, she just shrugged. “Sure. That sounds fine.”
I stayed over there another hour or so, and the next morning I lined up the new private investigator. I tried to call Jackie with the good news, but there wasn’t an answer. And when I went over to check on her, she was gone.
I spent the next two days looking for her: calling, asking people, going by and riding around. I was terrified something had happened to her or that…she had done something to herself. But as the police pointed out when I called them, there was no evidence of that. No indication of that or anything else sinister. Her car was gone, and there were signs that she’d packed a bag before leaving. Maybe, they suggested, she just wanted some time away from everything, and not telling her sister before she left wasn’t a crime.
It was on the afternoon of the third day that Jackie called.
I…I know, I know, Mar. I’m sorry. But I wanted to go to Empire for myself. See what I could find. And I knew if I told you, you’d either try to stop me or insist on going along. I didn’t want you being put at risk like that. And truth be told, in my heart of hearts I didn’t expect to find much when I got there.
The first day…I’d driven most of the night just to get there, but I was still hyped up. Wanted to get started on…whatever it was I hoped to get done by going. So I went into some of the stores and restaurants and showed Emily’s picture. Asked if anyone had ever seen her or heard about her being missing. I carried a couple of hundred of those old missing posters we still had and posted them all over too. Then I went by the sheriff’s office and the police department. They both remembered the investigator calling back when we found the voicemail, but they didn’t have anything else to tell me. Or at least they wouldn’t say anything else to me.
Because that’s the thing with that place. It’s…it’s not right. It’s a nice-looking town, almost like somebody’s dream of what a small town should be like really, and the people are all friendly, but something is behind their eyes. Like they are all in on a joke they aren’t willing to share.
By the end of that first day, I was about to go crazy. Wondered if I was already crazy. Paranoid. Looking for answers from the guy at the gas station or the place I ate lunch because I couldn’t accept there weren’t any answers to be found. Couldn’t admit that she’s really gone.
I’d gotten a room in the next town over, Jessica’s Resolve. I’d wanted one in Empire, but weirdly I couldn’t find any. There are motels and hotels there, but they all said they didn’t have any rooms free. And a couple of places they’d not-so-subtly suggested I go find a place in Jessica’s Resolve before it got dark.
That night, there was a knock on my door. My first thought was it was someone from the motel, but when I looked through the door…Mar, it was her! I swear to God it was. Standing out there like she’d just gone to get some ice or something. I threw open the door, but she wasn’t there anymore. Like she had just vanished. I looked around for her, screamed for her, and I didn’t see how she could have gone anywhere that fast without me seeing her, but she never came back.
I almost called you that night. I felt like I was breaking apart. Either she was still out there and needed my help, or I really was seeing things and I was the one that needed helping. But I was afraid. Afraid of confirming that it was all in my head, afraid of breaking the spell of whatever was happening there.
Because there is something magic here. I knew it as soon as I got into Empire. It’s not as strong in Jessica’s Resolve, but I can still feel it. Like a quiet hum from a power line. Something special is here. The air is thick with it.
But that’s not all. I…I’ve seen her twice more since then. Once last night, and again this morning. Just a quick glimpse and then she’s gone, but I know it’s her. She’s trying to tell me something or reach me and something is stopping her. I…I’m going back to Empire tonight. I’m going to find out what happens after dark and I’m going to get my baby back.
I had listened intently while Jackie talked, never interrupting for fear she might stop talking and hang up before I learned everything I could. Now that she seemed spent, I spoke to her gently, as though whispering to a wild horse I was afraid might break at any wrong sound or move.
“Jackie…honey, I understand. And I don’t think you’re crazy. But…um, you said you’re in a motel in a place called Jessica’s Resolve?”
There was a pause long enough I was afraid she might not answer, and then, “Yeah. It’s called the Pinwheel Motel.”
“Okay. How about you let me come and help you, huh? We can go back to Empire together. Would that be okay?”
I could immediately hear new tension in her voice. “No. Damnit, Mar, that’s why I didn’t want to call. I don’t want you to worry, but I don’t want you coming here. I’ve seen other stuff since that first day too. Stuff I don’t understand. I don’t want you around here. I just want to find our girl and get out.”
Sucking in a breath, I tried to keep my voice calm. “I get that. I do. And I appreciate it. But I can handle it. And we’ll have better luck if we’re both there together. Be safer too.”
“No. You’re already safe, and I want to keep it that way. I called so you wouldn’t worry, not to get you involved. I shouldn’t have ever said where I was. I…besides, I’m going tonight. You wouldn’t get here in time anyway.”
“Jackie, I’m heading out right now. Please wait for me. I’ll GPS it and get there as quick as I can.”
“No. Just stay away. Please.”
I went to respond, but she’d already hung up.
Jackie had been right. It was an eight hour drive, first on highways and then on country roads, and by the time ten o’clock came, my phone said I still had over two hours left to go before I reached Empire. It was as I was sitting it back down that it buzzed in my hand. Jackie was calling.
“She’s alive! Oh, God, I found her and she’s alive!”
I slammed on the brakes, stopping dead in the middle of a rural road as my hands began to shudder. “Really? You found her?”
Her voice was thick with emotion. “I did…oh I…Well, she found me really. I’d been riding around for awhile. Nearly every place was closed, and earlier than I’d have expected. The streets were mostly empty too. It was all very weird. But then I stopped at the park—you know the one she mentioned on the voicemail? I’d been over it three times during the day, but I decided to walk it at night, just in case.
“At first there was nothing. I was the only one out walking, and by the time I’d made a second circle, I was about ready to give up. And then I saw someone walking out of the woods toward me. It was her.
“She didn’t look like she had when I’d seen her for just a second or two the last few days. She…she’s been hurt a lot I think. She’s thin and worn-down looking. Dirty. But she came to me and recognized me. I think she’s in shock, but she was able to talk at least.”
I was crying now, my mind racing. “Did you take her to a doctor?”
“I…I was going to, but she said she didn’t want to. That she was okay. She just wanted to take a shower and get some rest. I thought about arguing, but I was so happy to see her, and I figured maybe she knew best what she needed. So I took her back to the motel and she’s cleaning up now.”
“Oh God. I…I’m so so happy. I…I’m on the way. About two hours away maybe, though I’ll have to reset the map thing for the motel. You said the Pinwheel?”
I could hear the happy tears in her voice. “Yes. That’s it. I…well, love you, Mar. Drive careful.”
“Love you too. See you soon.”
I sped the rest of the way there, making it to Jessica’s Resolve in an hour and a half and finding the motel shortly thereafter. There were only two cars in the long gravel parking lot of the Pinwheel, and I pulled in next to Jackie’s car. I’d forgotten to ask what room she was in, but before I could call her, something caught my eye.
Smoke was coming out from under the door of Room 17.
My first thought was fire, and I ran and started beating on the door, calling out to Jackie and Emily. There was no answer, and I realized that the smell filling my nostrils wasn’t of ash and fire, but a more acidic, rotting scent that make my stomach turn as I began to cough and choke.
Stepping back, I ran at the door, hitting it with my body, once, twice, and then a third time before it finally cracked and gave way. Stumbling into the room, I stared in shock and confused horror, unsure of what I was seeing.
It was a motel room, or it had been, but most of the furniture lay broken against the far walls and corners of the room. On the far side, I could see the door leading into the bathroom—the door hung askew and the yellow bulb over the sink showed the split open ruin of…what was that? It looked like some kind of large leathery ball or sack from a distance—its gray skin slick with some kind of shining liquid even as the dark opening coughed out more puffs of that foul-smelling smoke. I didn’t want to get closer to it, but I couldn’t have even if I wanted to.
Because most of the room’s floor was gone.
It looked as though something had broken through the floor there, broken through and tunneled deep into the earth. The hole was at least three feet tall and trailed back into the dark at a steep downward angle. None of it seemed possible, and for a moment I had the desperate, hopeful thought that I had the wrong room. This room was being rebuilt or condemned or something. There was something going on here that didn’t have anything to do with Jackie and Emily. I just needed to back out, call Jack, and find out…
I heard my sister scream from the darkness below.
“Jackie! Are you there? I’m here! I’m here!” My throat was tight with fear and it was all I could do to suck in enough air to shout down into that hole. What was this? A sinkhole? Maybe she was hurt down there?
Jackie didn’t answer, but instead let out another horrible, fainter scream. I couldn’t just stand up here and do nothing, and if I waited to call for help, it may be too late. Hands shaking, I turned on the light on my phone and crawled down into the ground.
The hole grew smaller further in, and it wasn’t long before I went from stooping to crawling on my hands and knees. I barely noticed. The walls and floor of the passage were lined with scrapes and scratches, and periodically I saw red smears that could only be blood. None of it made sense. The hole was almost a level tunnel now, and I didn’t see how the gentle slope downward would be enough to keep Jackie or Emily from climbing back out and going outside. Unless something has them, my mind whispered, unless something is dragging them down into the dark.
Gritting my teeth, I went on, and periodically I would hear a noise ahead of me, a bit closer now. Once I thought it was Jackie whimpering, but everything was muted and strange underground. If only I could…
I had come to a branching path. These dug out tunnels headed off in three different directions, and in that midnight crossroad, I felt small and exposed even with the weight of earth all around me. Maybe I should go back. Maybe I could help better by…I stopped the thought, ashamed of how afraid I was. How cowardly. No. I needed to help my sister. Find my niece. And now was the time, before I lost them both forever.
I shined my light around again, and at the edge of the beam I caught motion down the left tunnel. Turning, I crawled as fast as I could, ignoring the growing pain from the cuts on my knees and palms as I went deeper in. I was right, there was something…it was Jackie! Oh God, she looked into my light as something drug her away. Letting out a scream, I pushed forward, terrified I might lose them around a corner or new branch. I could hear Jackie muttering something now, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Her eyes were blank and staring, and I felt a terrible chill as I realized she’d stopped screaming, or even turning to look at me as I drew near.
Flinging myself forward with a grunt, I managed to grab her arm in one hand and a handful of her hair in the other, my discarded phone twirling to the dirt as I felt whatever was pulling her give a tug hard enough that it sent me forward onto my stomach. I was up on my knees again immediately, turning to sit down and pull on my sister as though she was a rope in a tug of war. The phone had come to a stop nearby and was facedown, so its light shone onto the ceiling of the hole and diffused the air with a pale and sickly glow.
At first I could only see Jackie, her expression blank except for her restless lips, arm slack as I pulled her more in my direction. But then I saw something moving toward me. Crawling up Jackie from outside the weak circle of light.
It was Emily, her skin grey and mottled, her eyes black as she stared at me with bared yellow teeth. She barely looked human, much less like the little girl I loved, but I knew it was her just the same. And when she let out a teakettle hiss, my heart thundered with fear even as it began to break again. This wasn’t shock or anything I could explain. Emily, this underground warren, all of it…it wasn’t right. It made no sense and it wasn’t right and oh God, she had Jackie’s arm now, pulling it away from me and she was too strong and how could any of this be and she was reaching for me now, reaching for my face and if she touches me I’ll go insane just let me die oh God I…
“Run.”
I looked down at the hoarse whisper from below me. Jackie’s eyes were clearer now, and when they met mine, they carried the same steely resolve she’d had when she was trying to find her little girl. I shook my head, but she cut me off.
“She’ll just take you too. Run. Before it’s too late.”
Trembling, I glanced back up at Emily. She had stopped her advance for the moment, her thin, dirty claw of a hand hovering a foot away from me like a threat. She looked down at Jackie and then back at me, her cracked lips spreading out into a terrible grin.
“Go, Mar. It’s the only way. I…I’ll stay with our girl.”
I wanted to argue, to fight for her, for both of them, but I was too lost. Too scared. So I let go of my sister. Began to crawl backward. I half-expected Emily to come after me, but she didn’t. She just smiled at me a moment longer and then began dragging her mother away until they were out of view and I was alone.
I…I don’t know how I made it out of there. The next thing I remember was being out in the parking lot of the Pinwheel, eyes almost swelled shut from the smoke and the crying as I fumbled to get my car started and get away. I drove until past sunrise, and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized I’d left my phone somewhere back in that dark.
When I finally woke up, I went over to Jackie’s place and got her old phone. I told myself I was just going to use it until I got a new one, but days passed and I never quite found the time to replace it. Instead, I kept looking at the pictures on it. Kept replaying that last vmail from Emily and crying myself to sleep.
And then last night, my phone…Jackie’s old phone…buzzed in the middle of the night, and when I answered, I heard Jackie’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey Mar. You should come back. Come back and see us.”
“Jackie? Is that you?”
“Course it is, silly. And Emily’s here too. We’re both here and we miss you.”
My heart ached for a moment, but then I remembered the thing in the dark. That was Emily now. And whatever was talking to me…
“You’re not Jackie. You sound like her, but you’re not really her. My sister and baby are dead.”
A rusty laugh crackled across the line. “That doesn’t make any sense. Come on, Mar. Come back and we can all be…”
I ended the call and flung the phone across the room, but it had barely landed before it was lit up and buzzing again. Stomach churning, I got out of bed and snatched it up, going outside to get a shovel and beat it to pieces before I started to dig a hole to bury it in.
I was crying as I worked. It felt a bit like I was digging a grave—a grave for my sister and Emily, a grave for a life I once had that was full of love and happiness. The phone lay on the grass like a venomous snake, black and shining and still, but far from safe. I kept shoveling, and when I was satisfied, I raked it into the hole and filled the spot in.
I’m getting a new phone and changing my number today. And when people ask me about my sister, my niece, I’m just going to lie. Not just to them, but to myself. Because I don’t want to remember the best parts of my life tainted that way. The people I loved the most tortured and corrupted into…I don’t know what…by something evil I don’t understand. All that love and happiness is just pain for me now, and all that fear and guilt is just poison that eats up my days.
So I’ll lie. And try to forget. And that part of me that still knows what happened? That still wants to find them again?
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