A Vow of Silence
When a boy is found at the bottom of a well slowly filling with water, the race is on to rescue the other victims, all in unidentifiable locations. The only problem is that the boy, the only witness, has been voluntarily mute since he was a child. An outcast, but highly brilliant, he dodges every attempt to ask about the man who kidnapped him. His family life, as well as that of the other known victims, comes into question as the agents begin to doubt whether or not this unsub actually exists.
Chapter Four: a voice without words
The girl named Clarisse was not born mute, nor did she voluntarily decide to stop speaking one day for some inconceivable reason. Her brand of silence was etched against the fair skin of her throat, a small imperfection that had stolen her voice three years ago. It no longer hurt except when she screamed and if she didn't want anyone to see the thin slice of white, all she had to do was choose her clothing carefully.
It inconvenienced her, sometimes, but Clarisse had never been a talkative child in the first place. What she wanted people to know she expressed clearly through her expressions and body movements, and few people ever got the wrong idea around her. Her little sister was a hyperactive ball of excitement, her complete opposite, but they didn't argue too often. Her father, a single father since his wife left him with Clarisse and her sister, had divorced precisely because of that silence.
They were a strange household, but if anyone dared point that out, they would be quick to visit the nurse's office. Even though her family might not have been the closest, as her father was always working and she and her sister were different enough that they had almost no interests in common, they still loved each other. She had to say that she had a fairly happy family life, despite the absence of her mother, who was still in France with her new boyfriend.
Three years ago, in the car accident that stole her voice, Clarisse had almost lost her life, as well. It had been just her father and her, when they still lived in France. It was a freak accident like any other, an accident that could have happened anywhere else in the world at any time. Her father's skills as a certified doctor had probably saved her life until the paramedics arrived, but he could not save her voice.
She never wished for it more than now as she sat at the bottom of a filthy, muddy well filling with water. This place was secluded, no doubt, but if she had had a voice, she could have screamed even harder before she ever wound up here. It irked her that the others refused to at least try and call for help. Most of them were silent, except for that one boy who annoyed her because he did nothing but cry.
On the other hand, it was far too quiet at the bottom of this well. She might have been mute, but Clarisse's life was full of vibrant sounds. At first, living in the suburbs had disoriented her, since she was used to the consistency of the noises found only in cities. Aside from the occasional birdcalls overhead and the crickets' chirping, it was completely silent. She couldn't even hear any cars on the nearby road.
She refused to accept that this was where her life ended. There had not been any time to think about that in the car, and so the moment had come and gone before she knew what happened. She had flittered between life and death then, but it was for a relatively short time and she was hardly conscious while her father worked. It was nothing like this tortuous anxiety at the inevitable.
It took all of her self-control not to scream or hyperventilate and think of how it would feel when she could no longer breathe, when icy water was all that surrounded her. She pushed those thoughts away as they came, but she wasn't very good at ignoring those types of things. They returned no matter what she did to avoid thinking about dying here, unknown and forgotten. Would anyone even find her body?
She brushed her fingers against the rough stones in front of her, but there were no grooves large enough for her to latch onto so she could climb out of here. The hose was hanging somewhere above her head, but she definitely weighed too much to use it without dislodging it from its source. If it did that, the water would stop, but that meant she would still have no way of getting out.
It was a much worse death to slowly die of starvation down here for weeks than to drown in a matter of minutes. She didn't touch the hose, even if the water was beginning to creep up her body, soaking her clothes completely. Whether or not she closed her eyes, the complete darkness choked her in its grip. Without the moon directly overhead, she couldn't even see the outline of her hand. Wherever she was had absolutely no light present.
Clarisse must have fallen asleep at one point, because when she woke, it was to a brightness so intense for a moment she believed that she had to have died and passed on to Heaven. The glare flickered on and off or, rather, back and forth as the people overhead scrambled about to save her from the well's clutches. When Clarisse realized that she wasn't dead yet and that there were people here, she forced her frozen and cramped limbs to unfold.
The water, to her amazement, had risen quite a bit. She stood, shaking it off and shivering all the while as she inclined her head up at the opening of the stone rimmed well. A bright, painful sensation struck her in the chest, just as bright as the light that had woken her from her lethargic slumber.
She thought of her father and sister how she had seen them last and just managed to wipe the grin off her face as a figure lowered himself down into the well. It was a man in a dark outfit and bulletproof vest with white letters spelling out FBI on the chest. He managed to grab her around the waist and she in turn wrapped her arms around his neck, despite the numb cold that prickled all along her limbs.
"You're Clarisse, right? Your father's waiting for you at the hospital," he reassured her before he started up the precarious, rickety ladder that had been thrown down the side of the well. Clarisse grinned to herself, a wild, insane grin she could not control. She would never admit that she wanted to see her dad or her sister so badly, but while she was still in the dark, facing away from all other people, she allowed herself to entertain that thought.
Ha, you didn't win after all! They found me, they found me, she thought through chattering teeth and quivering legs. The paramedics were right there, ready to take her off the FBI man's hands and transport her to the hospital. She had never liked the place her father worked in, even though she had grown accustomed to staying there for one reason or another. It was always such a mundane, painful place.
The abandoned, ramshackle farm that would have served as her final resting place wasn't much better. She could only see warped shadows, twisting around buildings and objects like the creatures out of a gothic novel. Even the shapes of the people who had rescued here were distorted and uncertain until they walked into the light from the police cars or ambulance. Wherever this was, there was only darkness, with tiny points of light further on down the road.
Despite herself, she had rushed into her father's arms the moment the paramedics released her. She did it, not expecting him to return the gesture whole-heartedly, and was pleasantly surprised when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and ruffled her damp, tangled hair with his other hand. A faint, tired smile was on his lips, and he didn't speak as they stood in the lobby for a few moments before the doctors had to take her.
Her father always looked a bit older than his age when he was at work. She supposed it was the nature of his occupation, but it had been a subject of annoyance for her and her sister since they were small. Still, she couldn't appreciate even this version of him more than at that moment.
"Your sister is waiting for you at home. She doesn't want to go to sleep until she sees you, but my shift does not end until late tonight. I'll stop by your room later so we can talk to her over the telephone. Is that okay?" her father asked as the other doctors - his colleagues - arrived to bring her to the exam room. She nodded once, a sharp nod which meant that she understood with no confusion.
The police came around even later, just after she had managed to send her sister off to bed with her father's help. Even though the nine year old girl must have been exhausted by this time, she stuck to her word and stayed up the entire night since she learnt that Clarisse had been found. She had to admit that even her little sister's normally annoying rambling was a joy to hear compared to the silence at the bottom of that well.
"Can you tell us anything about the man who kidnapped you? Did he say anything to you while you were with him?" It was a woman asking, miraculously, in French.
Blinking, Clarisse stared at her. Even at home they tended to speak English nowadays, so it had been a while since she heard anyone speak her native tongue. She signed to the translator sitting beside the agent, indicating that it was okay if they spoke in English, and that she wasn't sure how much she could help. Still, she would definitely try if it might help catch the bastard who did that to them.
"You can understand English?" asked the woman who was also an FBI agent. Clarisse nodded. "One of the boys who was kidnapped along with you said that you couldn't understand it."
She shrugged; she wasn't sure who it was that the agents were talking about, but she didn't exactly make a concentrated effort to talk to the others while they were held captive. Most of them were quiet and only that one boy tried to speak to everyone else. She ignored them for the majority of the time, so perhaps it had just seemed that she couldn't understand English.
"Okay, why don't we start at the beginning? How did this all happen? You can take your time. Try to close your eyes and go through what you were doing that day slowly." The woman's voice was calm and steady. Clarisse was particularly attentive to people's voices, now that they could no longer hear her own and her world was partially locked in silence.
She thought for a bit. It was the weekend. Her younger sister stayed at the local daycare whenever their father was working, on weekends which was often, and Clarisse didn't mind staying home alone. She was old enough now, and she and her sister had such contrasting personalities that they tended to argue when left to their own devices for too long. Most of the time she didn't have a reason to leave the house.
She did leave, though, to fetch the mail. Since she was leaving for only a minute, she didn't lock the door and didn't notice anyone sneak inside the house. There were only a few other kids playing around outside in their front yards, but she figured that most of them were inside or in the back.
When she returned, the man grabbed her, gagged her, tied her up, and tossed her in the closet until it was dark enough for him to sneak out of the house. He had to have known that her father wouldn't pick up her little sister that night, because she was staying at a friend's place. That night was her father's late shift.
Clarisse paused to reach for the styrofoam cup on the hospital tray. She might not have been speaking, but she was tired from the whole ordeal. The exhaustion in her limbs had numbed them completely and it took all of her energy to continue signing to the translator. The FBI agent asked her if she wanted to stop for tonight, even though they both knew that they didn't have the luxury of time.
She continued. The man, who was tall and strong, but dressed in dark clothing and was therefore unrecognizable, had forced her to drink from a bottle of water that made her lethargic and dizzy. He drove her to wherever it was that he kept them - a cold, dank basement with wooden beams for a ceiling and cool grey concrete for a floor.
There were two others - children now identifiable as Skylar and Harper Adair. Skylar, hidden in the corner, didn't talk when Harper tried to speak to the both of them. He hardly even glanced up when the man returned with another kid a day later, or when Clarisse fought him tooth and nail each time he entered the room.
She glanced at her bruised hands and arms and grinned. It was worth the effort.
And, strangely, Prentiss noted as the young girl told her story, she had also believed Harper Adair to be a boy. It might not have been an important detail, but she filed the information away just in case it did mean something.
- I am not dead! I actually had most of this written for a while now, so I decided to finish it up. I've been reorganizing my stories (by actually making outlines), so hopefully updates won't be so horribly slow anymore. I usually don't update because I've forgotten what's happend in the story by the time I sit down to write again.