I sat very still, looking up at Mr. Harvey. I was starting to think about how strange it was that he had built such a shelter under the field. How he hadn't told anybody until I had come along, even though he had definitely put a lot of work into it in the first place. He was looking down at me and smiling now, his glasses softly glinting from the light of the flickering candles that lined the space. He stared at me for a long time before he spoke.
"Would you like a refreshment, Susie?"
Without waiting for my response, he turned and leaned down to grab one of the glass bottles of Coca-Cola that rested beside several small figurines. As he lifted the bottle, the end clinked against a ceramic bobble head dog, sending the head wobbling about on its axis. I wondered if my parents were starting to wonder where I was and began to think of a polite way to leave. Mr. Harvey was starting to give me the creeps.
"Actually," I said, reaching down to bring up the strap of my bag to my shoulder. "I have to go—"
"No. Be polite." Mr. Harvey was suddenly above me again with the bottle in his hand. His finger was pointed at me and the candles were lighting up his face in such a way that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. His eyes were beady and black. "You have to be polite. That's another rule."
Slowly, I let the strap of the bag slide off of my shoulder and rest on the floor beside my feet. My heart began to pound in a chest, a soft thud thud thud that pulsed in my ears. My eyes followed his pointed finger as it traveled up the side of my head to take the bottle opener that was hanging on a nail beside me to click off the cap. I swallowed. The head of the ceramic dog continued to wobble, up and down, up and down.
Mr. Harvey put the bottle opener back on the nail and let out a satisfied sigh. "Hmm, it's warm in here," he murmured pleasantly as he put the cap down on the bench beside me and straightened to take off his coat. He let out another sigh and looked at my frozen form on the bench. I was still holding the bottle of Coca-Cola loosely in my hand.
"Are you warm?" he asked me, sliding his arms out of the sleeves. "You can take off your coat if you want."
At that moment I knew. I knew why he had brought me here and what he was planning to do to me. A small voice inside me screamed, and for a moment all I could do was stare at the wall across from me and try to not let it show on my face that I knew what was happening. If he thought I was oblivious to what was going on, there might still be a chance of getting out before it happened. But the panic filtering through my brain was telling me otherwise.
Mr. Harvey had finished taking off his coat and was now staring at me again, a slow grin spreading across his face. He let out a soft humming sound and reached out his hand as if to touch me, and then, thinking better of it, turned and sat down with a satisfied "hmph" sound on the bench across from me. Knowing he had me trapped, he took his time looking at me more before he spoke. "You're very pretty, Susie," he purred.
I stared down at the ends of his knees, trying to stop myself from throwing up. The panic was getting difficult to stifle. "Thanks," I whispered.
Mr. Harvey smiled and chewed on his lip for several seconds. His eyes never left my face. "Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked.
I opened my mouth, but something was blocking my throat. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do. The mantra was rattling around in my head.
Off of his "Hm?" sound when I didn't answer, I slowly shook my head.
"No?" Mr. Harvey sounded triumphant. "I knew it, see, I knew you weren't like those other girls. I knew that."
"Mr. Harvey?" I didn't know what I wanted to say. Maybe I wanted to plead with him. Ask him to let me go.
"It's nice down here, isn't it?" he said, ignoring me. His eyes left my face to travel over the walls of the shelter. "Special…special down here, right?"
"Yes," I managed, trying to play along with him. "Yes, it is, it's very special."
"Mhm." Mr. Harvey was smiling at me. I looked down and felt the coolness of the glass through my gloves. In that moment, a sudden, crazy thought occurred to me. I squeezed the bottle tighter in my hands.
"Mr. Harvey?" I ventured again, my voice steadier than before. I looked up at him. "Why don't you take my coat? You're right, it is pretty warm in here."
Mr. Harvey blinked, and I saw a flash of surprise come across his face. He covered it quickly, however, and got to his feet. "Of course," he said. I saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed.
His eyes followed me as I stood and slowly took off my jacket, my eyes never leaving his as I slid my arms out of my sleeves, shifting the bottle of Coca Cola from one gloved hand to the other. I piled the coat into his arms and then took off my hat and gloves, stacking them on top of the jacket so that the abundance of fabric almost covered his face. I gripped the bottle tighter in my bare hands and waited. My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears I could hardly hear anything else. All I could do was wait for Mr. Harvey to turn to hang my coat on a hook attached to the wall beside the ladder.
When his back was turned towards me, I saw my chance. With one single swing, I smashed the glass bottle against the back of Mr. Harvey's head with all of my strength. The glass exploded upon impact, stained glass shards shooting out like butterflies, the splash of the drink spraying outwards all over the two of us. Mr. Harvey's legs gave out from under him and he collapsed onto the floor.
Once he was down, I let out the strangled, terror-stricken cry I had been holding stifled inside me and tried to bolt to the ladder, but his body was in the way. I backed away, my heart racing, reaching for something along the wall I could use to defend myself with if he got back up. My hand found a basket, and as I lifted the cloth my fingers felt something sharp. I looked down for a single second and clapped my hand over my mouth. It was a knife, the blade shiny and glinting cruelly in the candlelight. I picked it up with shaking fingers and pointed it at the still body of Mr. Harvey who still lay crumpled on the shelter floor. He still wasn't moving.
I let out another sob of terror, my legs shaking underneath me, not wanting to get close to him even though the trap door was only a few feet away. Sucking in a breath, I crept forward and kicked Mr. Harvey hard in the side, holding the knife in front of my body. He did not move, but I saw that his chest was still moving.
Acting quickly, I skirted past him, my back pressing against the wall of the shelter until I reached the ladder. I gripped the rough wooden slots with shaking fingers and began to climb. The knife dropped out of my fingers and fell with a clatter onto the floor beside Mr. Harvey's body, but still managed to reach the trap door. With a cry of desperation, I pushed against the wood as hard as I could.
The door swung open, and my head broke through the hole into the cold night air with a huge gasp, like I had been drowning underwater. Shaking and still sobbing, I clambered out of the hole and crawled several feet on the ground before managing to get to my feet to run across the field. The stars were beginning to come out, and all the streetlights had turned on.
"HELP!" I screamed. I reached the edge of the field and looked around desperately, but there was no one on the sidewalk. I ran across the empty street and climbed up the steps of the first house I saw. Its windows were glowing orange in the darkness. I could hear the voices of people inside.
I rang the doorbell and stood on the porch, shaking. I turned to the field, terrified that I would see the trap door open and Mr. Harvey running toward me to get me before I got help, but it was so dark at this point I could no longer make out anything in the field.
At that moment, the door swung open, and a middle-aged woman stood in the doorway. She was holding a baby crooked in her arm, and concern flashed across her face at the sight of my terror-stricken one. "David!" she called, turning back towards the hallway. "A girl from the high school is here!"
"Please," I croaked. "I need to use your phone to call the police."
The woman's eyes were big, and at that moment David, I assumed her husband, appeared. He saw my condition and turned to look at his wife. "What's going on?" he asked.
"There's this man, he put me in this secret shelter under the field over there," I said, pointing behind me, "and I think he was going to hurt me. I managed to get out but he's still there and I need to call the police."
David stared at me grimly for several seconds before nodding in consent. "We have a phone in the kitchen you can use," he said, walking back down the hallway. The woman motioned for me to follow, and I walked inside gratefully and followed David into the kitchen, where a phone hung on a hook against the wall. The door to the dining room was open, and I saw some kids I recognized from the middle school. They looked at me over their plates of food with wide eyes as I took the phone off the hook and dialed 9-1-1. I held the phone up to my ear and took a deep breath. I was still shaking.
"9-1-1, what is your emergency?"
"Hello," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "My name is Susie Salmon, I was walking across the cornfield on my way home from school today when I ran into this man who said he, um, he was my neighbor?" I swallowed hard. "He showed me this hidden den he built under the field, and when he got me inside he wouldn't let me leave and I think he wanted to hurt me."
"Okay, who was this man, dear?" the woman asked.
"Um, Mr. Harvey," I said. "I don't know his first name."
"Okay, and where is Mr. Harvey now?"
"He's still in the shelter now I think. I had to hit him to get out."
"Okay," the woman said. "And which cornfield? The one close to the high school?"
"Yes."
"And where are you now?"
"I'm with—" I looked at the woman and man standing in front of me, and the woman leaned forward and whispered, "The Richardsons."
"The Richardsons," I repeated. "They were the closest house I could find. They're right next to the field."
"Okay, we're going to send some policemen to the cornfield and some others to the house you're in. Can you give me an address?"
With the Richardsons' help, I was able to give an address, and I hung up. Then, with the Richardsons' permission, I called my parents and told them what had happened, and my father came over to the house soon after. Mrs. Richardson gave me a glass of warm milk, which I took in small sips until the police came. When they arrived, I lead them back into the field and managed to find the trap door after several minutes of searching with their flashlights. Inside, Mr. Harvey was just beginning to stir.
After they arrested him, Mr. Harvey claimed all he had done was lead me inside the shelter he had built for the neighborhood kids before I had attacked him for no reason, but when the policemen searched his house anyway, they found evidence that linked him to the past disappearances and deaths of several other young girls that had been marked as unsolved cases for several years. Mr. Harvey was then brought to court and convicted of almost all of the cases, and was sentenced to jail for life.
As for me, I managed to get through the trauma and became a stronger person because of it. Ray Singh became my first boyfriend, and we went to homecoming and prom together. By our first year anniversary, the other students at our school learned to accept him. I did well in school, and after we graduated I went to a university to study journalism and photography. By the end of my studying, I quickly got an internship and later a job photographing for a well-established magazine. I got married, had children, and lived a long, happy life.