Annie May

Annie May

Musky. Wet. Concrete gritted against my cheek, the cold stone pressed against my jaw.

“Oh…God…” The sentence was somewhere between a cough and gasp.

Everything ached. Muscles throbbed in my temple. Cramping tremors tightened along my diaphragm and stomach. Breaths came in catches that whistled through lungs that hadn’t quite decided whether they worked. I was pretty sure ribs were broken from the fall.

The fall. Hazy memories formed along the edge of my consciousness. Two bodies, a haphazard grin. What was I doing here? Where the hell was I? Where was Adin? Adin, I need you. Help me…

I tried to lift up with my arms and bit back a whimper, listening to my wrist crack against the weight. Broken.

Something told me to be quiet, a small voice screamed in the back of my mind, “Shhhh, oh God, be quiet! Don’t let them hear you. Whatever you do, you can’t let him find you.”

It took everything I had, a deep recess of strength I didn’t even realize existed to lift up again on my uninjured arm. The elbow shook, threatening to spill the weight. With a slowness that had been born out of stubbornness, I got to my knees.

Where am I? Somehow, I was in a room where the only light came from the crack at the bottom of a door several feet above my head. The air tasted damp and old, and what little light was provided showed cracked concrete, windowless walls. A basement?

“Are you alright? That was a nasty fall you took, Miss.”

The voice was low, feminine and worried. All the same, the sound made my heart shudder. I tried to find who spoke through the small stream of light, but all I could see was the rusted tools that made crooked shapes—like tombstones against the horizon.

“Please…” I whisper, unsure if the woman could hear the quiet plea. “Please, please, please be quiet…”

“He’s gone for now, Miss.” A soft scraping sound, chains clinking. “They both are, but it ain’t long until they return and they find you here. Not long at all.”

“I…” I swallow. It’s not just me, is it? God, Adin… “No, we, we’ve got to get out of here.”

A soft, despondent laugh. “’Sfraid there’s not much luck for me either way.”

Her voice was soft, whispery in the way that only southern accents were. How she found herself in the middle of New York, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know.

“I don’t…understand…” More memories were coming by now, in painful flashes that made me whimper. I remember the couple stranded on the highway, how my fiancé Adin had decided to stop and try to help them because he’d seen the car seat in the back. “How could they?”

The chains clinked more, and I could hear iron scrape against concrete. On the edge of the dirty light, there was movement. A small shape rose from the edge of the wall and stumbled toward me, bringing the sound of moving iron and metal and stone with it.

“Funny how things work, ain’t it?” I caught glimpses of short, dirty blond hair and as she got closer I saw how the tattered sun dress struggled to stay on the starved body. Despite her depraved condition, there was something in her eyes—pale blue in the light—that screamed life. “Men much crueler than animals ever thought to be, yes. Must be ’cause men can think.”

“They…killed…” by now I can’t stop the sobs. They rose from a part that went deeper than my soul, from somewhere that reached past everything but the pain. I couldn’t stop the pitiful sounds, no matter how afraid I was that they would find me, how afraid he would find me. The cries hurt my cracked ribs, lancing pain through my chest and throbbing head—and still I cried.

“There, there.” She reached out her hands that were shackled by rusted metal and despite myself I leaned into the stranger, feeling her collarbone through her skin as she tucked my face into her chest.

“He’s dead.”

“Sooner or later we all leave those we love,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare think that don’t mean he ain’t watchin’ you. You need to pull yourself together now. If not for you, you hafta for him.”

“Run, protect yourself and grieve later…” Easy to think, but so much harder for me to do. There was only the horrific images of Adin’s death replaying in my thoughts as I cried. So quickly, they’d taken him—and in such a painful manner.

It took a moment, but something about how her hand ran through my hair calmed me. A strange smell—like roses after a few days of being picked—seemed to linger around her. A sickly sweet smell of decay and flowers.

“What do we do?” I whisper. “How can I get you out of those chains?”

She gave me a sad, knowing smile that I couldn’t quite comprehend. “There’s nothing you can do for me now.” She took my wrist and I bit back a whimper as she laid it against her lap. She ripped a piece of the bottom of her blue sundress with the dirt white lace. Grabbing an old handle to some forgotten tool, she placed it against my arm and wrapped it tightly with the cloth.

“We’ve gotta get you out of here.”

I shook my head. “No. I can’t leave without you.” I clung to her arm with my good hand. The stranger who I already loved more than I could understand shook her head.

“And what do you propose to do? Cut these here chains? If you can leave and get help, get the police, then that will help me more than watching them torture you.” Her eyes—sad and lost—pierced me. “I’ve seen enough of that here in this hell.”

I knew her words made sense. I knew that in my condition I couldn’t free her. Despite that, I hated that I even considered leaving without her. I could feel myself nod against my will. “How do I get out?”

She pointed above my head at our sole source of light. There was no stairs to it, and the light showed bloody scratch marks where someone had tried to escape before.

“I can help you lift up there, but mind your arm.” She stood and linked her arms through my shoulder to help me stand. After a moment of waiting, she let me go where I wavered before standing straighter. The pain in my chest had lessened, adrenaline and fear numbing everything except for the deep sorrow Adin had left.

“He’s gone…” I whisper.

“Don’t think about it now. You can mourn later.” Her voice had grown in urgency. “I can’t rest unless you help me stop them.”

“I don’t understand…”

“You ain’t the first, and, honey, you won’t be the last.” She put a hand on the back of my head. “I was their first and they’ve kept me here since. Twelve other girls I’ve watched them kill. But you? You’re special.” Her tone had turned excited and almost manic. “I can feel it. You’ve got a will to live that’s somethin’ powerful.” She pushed me toward the door. “Now you’ve got a roundabouts of twenty minutes to get outta this house. Watch for their car and go to the first house you see. Don’t stop, and don’t worry about me. The cops can help me better than you can. You understand?”

I nodded and fished my foot through her looped hands. She lifted me up with relative ease and I had a moment to wonder where the starved woman got her strength. My hurt hand hit against the door knob and barely steadied myself as I opened it and pushed my torso through the doorway.

“Pride broke them, it did,” I heard her say in breathless triumph. “Thought that just ’cause they didn’t have stairs, that their girls couldn’t get out.”

I laid on the linoleum floor, blinking into the blaring kitchen light for a moment. Everything was too sunny, too…normal…to equate to the ancient basement I’d just escaped from. After a moment, I stood and leaned over the entrance way to see if I could see the woman in the basement. Even though the light to the kitchen flooded the basement, there was nothing.

“Are you there?”

“Where else am I gonna go?” Her voice wavered back, strong and alive, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m coming back with help, I promise,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. When we get out of this you and I can sit down…”

“You need to go,” she interrupted. Now her voice sounded pained and sad. “Please…”

I didn’t answer her, turning to leave before she said, “Wait, Genevieve.”

“….how did you know my….”

“I’m Annie May Johnson and I need you to tell my folks down in Kentucky that I’m sorry. I shoulda never ran off with that man. They were right, all those years ago. They were right. Will you do that for me? Tell them I was real brave and real strong and real kind just like they taught me to be.”

“Annie May, don’t talk like that…”

“Will you?” She interrupted again.

Time was getting short, and she sounded desperate so I said, “Yes, I will.”

“Promise me, Genevieve.”

“I promise.”

“That’s good,” her voice sounded softer. “Now you go on and live your life and tell my folks they’ll see me soon enough.”

There was a rattling sigh, a chink and clink as chains fell and a rushing wind. “Annie May?”

No answer.

For a moment I stood there, repeating her name and praying for a response before I backed away and ran, leaving the door to the basement open and swinging in a new wind.

6 months later

The small air conditioning unit allowed some reprieve from the summer heat and I was glad for that. I sat in the living room filled with aging pictures of Annie May, waiting for her mother to return with the coffee. She didn’t look any older than when I’d seen her, even though the pictures were taken before 1985.

“The police told me what you said, Miss…”

“Please, you should just call me Genevieve,” I replied, smiling and thanking her for cup. She sat on the chair beside me and looked at me through aged eyes that echoed Annie May’s.

“They believe that you were hallucinating, that the fall you took made you see my daughter.”

I nodded. “They wouldn’t let me speak to you. They were afraid how you would react.” I cleared my voice. “I’m not even sure how I’m coping, and I barely knew her.”

“I don’t want to seem rude, but you couldn’t have known my daughter. She disappeared a near twenty five years ago.” For a moment the old woman was silent. “The police said that the couple had killed her within the week they’d abducted her.”

“I know what it seems like, and I know it sounds impossible, but your daughter helped me out of that basement.”

She looked at me, tears pooling into the crevices and wrinkles around her eyes. “That’s real cruel, miss.”

“My arm was broke, my ribs were cracked…” I took a deep breath and tried to keep the memories away, counting to three like my therapist said would help. Of course, it didn’t really. “I had a severe concussion and the door had been three feet above me. How do you think I could have gotten out without help? Your daughter told me what to do and she hoisted me up and out of that basement. Annie May saved my life.”

The old lady took a deep breath. “I think it’s time you left, Miss.”

I shook my head and set the coffee down on the coaster on the old wooden table. I reached out and the woman didn’t try to stop me from taking her hand. “I promised her I would come find you.” I spoke quickly to make sure she didn’t interrupt. “She wanted me to tell you she was sorry for leaving with that man and that you and your husband were right and she was sorry.” I smiled, feeling the tears crawling down my face. “She wanted you to know how brave, strong and kind she was, just like you taught her to be.”

Before she could say anything else I fished the aging blue cloth out of my purse, feeling the coarse denim and old lace. I hesitated for a moment, fingers gripping the aged cloth. This was all I had left to comfort me—I’d tied it around my cast at Adin’s funeral.

Let it go. I handed it to Annie May’s mother.

The woman’s hand shook as she clenched the dress fabric in her mottled hand. “Dear lord,” she whispered.

“Annie May wrapped my wrist in it so that I could get away,” I whispered. The woman’s shoulders began to shake with sobs that I was more than familiar with. I couldn’t help but be reminded in how Annie May had comforted me when I leaned forward and hugged her crying mother.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry you had to lose her.”

“All these years, I never knew what happened…” the old lady barely spoke through her tears. “I’m not sure if knowing is better or worse.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I stayed silent. The movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention and I looked to see Annie May standing at the doorway, a small smile on her face.

“Thank you,” she whispered.



Word Count: 2,994

Initially Submitted to: Boy, Have I Got a Story for You (entered:12/17/14). Prompt:None Second Place, Received Red Awardicon Link to contest: http://www.writing.com/main/forums/item_id/1848696-Boy-Have-I-Got-A-Story-For-Yo...

Submitted to: Twisted Tales Contest. (entered:1/17/15). Prompt:Story with a twist ending. No Placing Link to contest: http://www.writing.com/main/forums/item_id/1269187-Twisted-Tales-Contest