The Labyrinth of Blue Towers:
The Disappearance of Jack Arneson
(A Sewing Box Mystery)
Chapter 1: Friday, June 10, 2011, 7:21 pm
Chapter 2: Saturday, June 11, 2011, 8:38 am
Chapter 3: Thursday, June 28, 1984, 10:10 am
Chapter 12: Saturday, June 18, 2011, 8:00 am
Chapter 26: Sunday. June 19, 2011, 2:34 am
Missy grew frantic. Her eyes stubbornly refused to adjust to the light. Was it due to the panic she was feeling or because she wasn’t allowing enough time? Blindly, she moved to the door and began to pound on it. “Kathleen? Kathleen!” she cried. But it was no use, the woman was gone.
They were trapped.
Instinctively, not knowing what else to do, Missy began to scream for help.
“Save your breath.”
Jeanette, still seated on the cot, cut her off. “She said the room was soundproof, which is probably true. Otherwise someone would have heard those poor kids. Don’t worry,” she began rustling in her bag. “I have my cell phone.”
Missy gasped. “Your cell phone? Your cell phone isn’t going to help us now. No reception, remember? We haven’t had any since we arrived.”
“Not for calling. For light.” And with that, she flipped up her phone and the tiny LCD display cut through the darkness like a knife. It wasn’t much light or comfort, but it did help calm Missy down a bit. She sank onto the end of the cot, next to her aunt.
“Now what?”
Jeanette offered a weak smile. “Let’s see what else my magic purse has inside.” Burrowing through it, Jeanette handed Missy items she thought might be of use: a fingernail clipper with attached file, a keychain with a tiny penlight built-in, and a couple of granola bars.
“Granola bars?” Missy was incredulous.
Practical as ever. Jeanette pointed out, “We have no idea how long we re going to be here Better start rationing these.” She took them back from Missy.
Missy was amazed by her aunt’s tranquil acceptance of their circumstances. “Are you kidding me? We’re not going to be here long enough to starve to death. There has to be a way out of here.” Taking the penlight, she rose and began checking the corners of the room.
Jeanette remained pragmatic, “If there was a way out, don’t you think those kids would have found it?”
“Not necessarily. They were little kids. With little brains. We’re big adults, with big brains.”
“Yeah, and look where they got us?” With eyebrows raised, Jeanette held out her hand, “You wanna split a granola bar?”
“No.” Missy was dumbfounded. “How can you think of food at a time like this?”
Jeanette shrugged. “I dunno. It helps me think.” She ripped open one of the foil packets and began munching on a bar. “Besides, not much else we can do.”
Her aunt’s cavalier demeanor was quickly getting on Missy’s nerves. She needed to motivate her. “How about that little file thing? On the clipper? Why don’t you see if you can jimmy open the lock or something?”
Jeanette sighed. “You’ve been watching too many movies. That lock, it’s definitely some kind of mickey-moused deadbolt. You mess with it and we may never get out of here.”
Missy returned to the door. She felt along the inside of its frame and then pressed an eye to it in order to determine if there was any space between it and the door. Nothing. Taking the penlight, she ran the beam along the outside edge of the door. No light escaped. She then tried the opposite side, and again, nothing. She repeated this process with the top and the bottom as well. The door was sealed tight, which, Missy thought, might explain the exceedingly musty air in the room.
Air! Maybe there was an air duct. The keychain proved too weak to get a good look at the ceiling. “Give me your cell phone.” Without questioning, Jeanette handed it to her Holding the phone over her head as high as she could, Missy travelled up and down the length of the room, following the wooden beams in the ceiling. All solid. While doing so, she noticed a series of small, theatrical-type lighting instruments recessed among the rafters. No doubt they were used for the actual filming of... Missy shook her head. She really did not care to think about it - not any of it. She had to keep her mind on the task at hand; getting out of this room!
Having walked the entire space, she ended up in the far left back corner. Here, she discovered a large black pipe of some kind, running from the floor to the ceiling. She got an idea. “Do you have a hammer or anything like that in that bag of yours? Something to hit against this pipe? Maybe we can get somebody’s attention that way.” She handed her aunt the cell phone.
Jeanette rooted about in her bag again. She came up with a plastic fork and spoon set, a mini stapler, an ink pen, a tiny pair of scissors, a short Phillips-head screwdriver, and a tape measure. “You know, if MacGyver were here, he’d know what to do with all this.”
Missy was not in the mood to laugh. She was disappointed. For the first time since the beginning of their little adventure the magic purse was letting her down. “I’m not seeing anything here that’s going to work.”
“Try the handle of the screwdriver”, Jeanette suggested.
Missy walked over to the pipe and gave it a try. She felt like she was playing a weird xylophone. Also, it sounded more like tapping, not the resonant kind of noise she was hoping for. In order to gain someone’s attention, she needed to create a sound that would make the pipe resound like a bell or gong.
“I need something bigger How about part of one of the legs on the cot?”
“No”, her aunt protested “Then I won’t have anything to sit on. And I’m not sitting on the floor. It’s cold and damp in here.”
Undeterred, Missy bent down to look at the legs of the cot. They were put together with some kind of nut and bolt assemblage. If she wanted a leg, she’d have to smash it to hell. She moved back to the pipe and tapped on it some more with the butt end of the ineffective screwdriver. As she was tapping, she felt a sudden burst of rage pour through her body. She hated this, feeling so helpless. What if no one heard them? She began kicking at the base of the pipe and that’s when it hit her. The heel of her shoe! Sure they were flats, but didn’t people routinely use the heel of their shoes like hammers? She whipped off her right shoe and began smacking its heel against the pipe. It produced a much better sound and seemed to actually reverberate a bit.
“Hey! Hey!” Jeanette raised her voice in objection. Missy stopped whacking her shoe against the pipe. “You do realize where that pipe leads, right? Right upstairs to the kitchen... the kitchen nobody uses!"
Missy was crestfallen. There was no arguing with that. The likelihood of there being anyone in this wing, at this time, to hear anything was slim to none.
Seeing this small truth take hold, Jeanette softened. “So let’s put a moratorium on the shoe whacking for now, okay?” Missy put her shoe back on and sat next to her aunt once more. “Besides,” Jeanette added, “it’s giving me a headache.”
“Sorry.”
“Me. too For ever allowing us Io get in a mess like this in the first place.” She set her purse on the floor between her feet. Gazing into it, she became contemplative. “We should have left a note or something back at the hotel. Let somebody know where we were going. You do realize that nobody knows we’re here.”
They sat in silence for a moment, allowing that hard fact to sink in. “Sheriff Paul will come looking for us,” Missy offered, hopefully. “He’ll notice we’re missing in the morning, when he learns were not in our room.”
“Yep, and he’ll assume we got in our car and went home. So, while he may put out an all- points bulletin for our arrest - if he bothers at all - there certainly won’t be any search parties combing the woods for us.”
“Well,” Missy searched for another grain of hope. “What about my car? Parked on the side of the road? Somebody will spot it.”
Jeanette shook her head. “Doubtful. I’m sure Kathleen will have it towed or push it into the ditch or something. She’s not a stupid woman.”
“1 don’t understand why she’s doing this to us.”
“She’s merely protecting her family and her business from scandal,” Jeanette offered.
“Yeah, but this... this qualifies as kidnapping, doesn’t it? She could be in big trouble.”
“Not if we’re never found,” Jeanette said meekly. “Who knows, maybe she’s on her way back with a gun or something."
That possibility had not occurred to Missy. “You think she’d kill us?”
“She stuck us in here, didn’t she?” Not the answer Missy was hoping to hear. Jeanette concluded, “Yeah, I have a feeling she’d like to make sure that we never get to tell another living soul what we know about Jack.
“Why do you think she told us all that?”
Her aunt sighed. “She's crazy, hon. And I don't deal in crazy”
Missy, remembering the theatrical lighting she’d caught sight of earlier, looked up to the rafters “He really was here, wasn’t he? I mean, right on this cot.”
The thought brought it all a little too close for comfort’s sake. Jeanette picked up her bag and hugged it to her chest. “Yeah, I know. Kind of creepy.” A beat of silence passed between them and then she added, “Let’s not talk about it anymore Not in the dark.”
Missy understood. At the same time, her mind was processing so much. It had been weird how all those items from the list just fell in place; the ashtray, the cigarette pack, the matches, the missing mallet...
Jeanette’s mind must have been working the same territory, for suddenly she blurted out, “Twin statues.” Missy looked inquisitively at her aunt. Jeanette explained, “The two statues of St. Peter? I don’t get it. Why two?”
“Maybe one was a spare,” Missy offered. “You know, in case the one got damaged or something.”
“Or maybe it was meant to go somewhere else, but never got there. And shouldn’t we be looking for a third? Two, not three... Twin Statues? And all that key business. It’s so... odd. Whose mind works like that?”
With no answers in sight, the two fell into a period of silent contemplation. Missy was concerned that time was passing too quickly. She glanced at the cell phone. It was 3:00 am! This was starting to feel like the longest day of her life. She looked over at her aunt and for the first time noticed how exhausted the older woman appeared. This had to be hard on her. Why hadn’t Missy been more concerned earlier? No doubt it’s because Jeanette had always maintained such a tough front, as if she could manage everything by herself, alone. But here in the darkness, all Missy saw was her aunt s vulnerability.
“Are you all right?”
Jeanette’s chest heaved, taking in a deep breath. “Yeah I feel better.” She looked at her niece “Sometimes a little quiet is good for the soul.” Missy nodded in agreement. Her aunt’s face took on a dubious expression “You know, this isn’t what your grandmother had in mind.”
The thought brought a strained smile to Missy’s face. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “No, probably not. She probably thought we were smarter than this.”
A full minute passed until Jeanette spoke again. “I don’t think she ever really expected us to try and solve this thing.”
“But we did. Only, no one will ever know unless we find a way out of here.”
That thought seemed to stir something in Jeanette. Her posture changed as dramatically as her tone. “Maybe we should hurry. The more I think about it the more likely I think that crazy bitch is coming back with a gun. Missy, get to work! This is a time for action, not reflection.” Jeanette rose and moved towards the pipe in the corner. “Let me bang on this pipe for a while. I need to get my blood moving again.” She stooped, undid one of her boots and began banging away. The heel on her boot was much more effective than the one on Missy’s flats. The noise energized Missy as well.
“Good, you do that and I’ll feel along the wall. Maybe there’s a loose block or some missing mortar.” Starting near the door, Missy began to feel her way along the wall, just as Kathleen had done earlier. Unfortunately, the room seemed extremely solid; nothing she touched wanted to budge.
The two women kept up their activities for some time, without another word exchanged. After about fifteen minutes. Missy, now in the middle of the wall to their right, was grazing her hand about chest level when she came across something that was definitely not concrete. It was smooth, like glass. And round.
It was a lens. The lens of a camera! She pushed against it. It would not move. She pressed hard with her thumb. Nothing.
“Jeanette! Jeanette!” she yelled
Her aunt stopped banging on the pipe.
“I think I’ve found something. The lens of a camera or something. Come feel.” Jeanette approached and Missy shined the light from the cell phone on the object. “We need something to push against it, to push it back. Something like... one of the legs of the cot.”
Missy went to the cot and up-ended it. Jeanette scrambled to move her purse out of the way. “Stand back,” Missy ordered. It was awkward as hell, and would take all the strength she had, but she was pretty sure she could manage it. Without dismantling the cot at all, she took a short run at the lens with the leg of cot, as if using a ramming rod. The first time she missed, but on the second try she nailed it. The lens moved back about a quarter of an inch. “Man they must really have that thing wedged in there.” She tried twice more. With the final run, the leg of the cot burst through the hole and Missy heard a muffled crash on the other side of the wall. Missy placed the cot back on the floor. By the time she turned around her aunt was already peering through the hole.
Jeanette turned back to Missy. “I can’t see a thing. It’s completely dark in there. And my cell phone is dying.”
“Here, let me try.” Missy pushed in next to her aunt and using the penlight on the keychain tried to make out what was on the other side. But the tiny beam was no match for the black expanse; she saw nothing, except the inside of the cinderblock. She tried sticking a hand through the hole, but the hole was too small. Damn. That horrible anxious feeling began rising inside her. She tried the keychain light, again, but in doing so, lost her grip on it “Crap!” She bent down to retrieve it. The floor was cold and slightly damp.
In order to shed some light on the situation, Jeanette stooped down with the cell phone. But it was too late - the phone went dead and with it, their only light vanished. The room went black.
“Oh my, God.” Missy began frantically feeling about the floor. That key chain was now their only working light. She had to find it. Fast. “Don’t move, don’t move,” she ordered. “You could step on it.”
That horrible anxiety that her mind had hinted at earlier now grew into full blown panic. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe! Without thinking, she rose, felt her way along the wall and found the open hole. She’d scream, she decided. She’d start screaming and never stop until someone found them. Just as she opened her mouth to yell, she heard some kind of movement on the other side. There was the beam of a flashlight moving jerkily about. It was moving toward her. Was it Kathleen? Had she come back for them? Did she have a gun?
Peering through the hole, a gruesome face, lit from below like something out of a horror film, appeared.
Missy screamed, as the face on the other side began to laugh.
It was Peter!
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Next week: Chapter 27
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1 comment:
OMG
I'm feeling anxiety! And Peter!!! I never trusted him. Or that bitch.
XOXO
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