Rorschach hadn't wanted to leave him like that, but hadn't been able to help either. Eventually, he had had to leave, to wherever he went in the day, but he waited until Dan was up and dressed and holding a mug of coffee before he went.
Dan sat in his chair all day, watching the stairs. The coffee went cold, and when his hand started to cramp, he set it down. The radio was on, and a new report said that the body of a missing girl had been identified, but there were no leads on her killing. It went on to some sports event and Dan's attention faded off it again. His stomach growled, but he had no appetite. Sometime near evening, he must've dozed because when the chill made him shiver awake again, the room was dark, and cold eyes were on him.
There at the foot of the stairs stood the girl, hair to her waist, and one scarred arm pointing at his door. Her eyes were frozen in the same look of horror as her body had when they found it. They stared holes through him. Vanessa was her name, the report had said, and he tried to say it. She didn't respond. He got up, knees buckling as blood started to move in his legs again. He went to the door and opened it.
She stood there, nakedness a hundred times more horrible against the street, on the sidewalk in front of his door. Her arm was still held out, pointing across the street to the opposite corner.
"All right," Dan said and he stepped out to walk that way. He stopped at the corner, still shivering and wishing he had brought a jacket. He looked back and realized he had left his door wide open, but wasn't able to go back to close it. Rorschach would be a long soon. That would get him a lecture, but then something white caught his eye and the girl was staring at him from down the street, nearly two blocks away, but still close enough that he could feel her chill. She pointed again, and he started to follow.
She lead him for what had to be miles through alleys and around corners. He didn't know how long he had been walking until the sun started to rise. It was just a welling of color along the horizon, like golden blood from slit gray skin, but it meant that he had been walking all night long. His feet were throbbing and he became aware of the blisters he now had. She was still there, fading fast in the pale light, but pointing at a nondescript little house in a boring little yard.
Where was he? He had no idea, but in that house was the answer. Unless he was still dreaming, or crazy as a bed bug. They both stood there, the exhausted living man standing like a zombie on the street corner, and the dead girl on the opposite side. The sun rose higher as she pointed, and suddenly the front door flew open. A man, he noticed with some satisfaction (see? I did know something you didn't) as ordinary as the house and yard, walked out and drove away.
This was perfect. He could go in and have a look and hopefully put an end to this, and then he could use the guy's phone to call a cab. He started forward, but was grabbed swiftly and ruthlessly, and spun to have his back slammed against the street lamp. He was too tired and dazed to even fight back and just blinked stupidly into Rorschach's rapidly shifting mask. Rorschach was breathing hard, but whether from wrath or exertion, he had no idea.
"Lost your mind??" Rorschach hissed. "Door wide open! All lights on! Radio blaring! Had to ask every pedestrian for last 30 miles if they'd seen you! Brought your civilian identity to who knows how much attention! Tracked you! All! Night!" Anyone else would probably have been swearing at him. "What is WRONG with you??"
"It happened there," Dan said, nodding towards the house. He didn't want to point. That would be creepy. "I think the killer just left."
Rorschach exhaled hard three times and then looked over his shoulder at the little yellow house. He looked back at Dan. Vanessa was no longer in sight, and the sun was much higher. Other people were coming out and getting into cars and Rorschach let go of Dan so as not to attract any more attention. He made a frustrated sound and then his finger jabbed at Dan's nose.
"Knock on door. Keep knocking. Should bring out anyone else inside," he said. "I'll go in the back and let you in. Anyone watching will think the family opened the door."
"Ok," Dan said, and started across without even looking, but luckily the only car was heading the opposite way. Rorschach was still grumbling, but he went around a different way. The back door was locked tight and padlocked from the inside, so he broke a window and unlocked it. He could hear the rapping from the front door and crawled in quickly. The house was yellow on the inside too, like false sunshine. How did it not give whoever lived here headaches?
He opened the front door and Dan stepped in. His tired eyes squinted at the yellow too, but widened again at something he saw. Rorschach looked and saw only an empty doorway to a kitchen, but Dan hurried over as if beckoned. The kitchen was small and narrow and a slightly greener yellow than the rest. There was also a door with three deadbolts and a padlock. Dan looked at it a moment, then let his stare follow something else Rorschach couldn't see that landed on a tin sugar canister with a picture of a cocker spaniel on the side of it. He went to it and pulled out a handful of keys.
Rorschach watched as he went through them all and unlocked each lock. If a ghost wasn't talking to him, his deductive reasoning was vastly improved by sleep deprivation. The door opened to a flight of stairs leading down into the basement. Faint sounds came from the darkness down there, and a smell like mild sewage and strong suffering. Dan started down them as if he had his night vision goggles, but Rorschach felt around until he found the light switch and flicked it on.
The light was weak and yellow too, and revealed a table with restraints attached to it, shelves of things that didn't bear close examination, and three large reinforced kennels against the far wall. In the first and last kennels were two naked children. They had cringed at the light, pupils contracting painfully. The noise came from the last one. Her hair was long and tangled and matted with blood over each ear. She rocked and swayed and whimpered and bit into her own finger when she saw them.
"Who are you?" the first one asked. She was cautious, not going to ask for help until she was sure they were going to give it. There was the cold calculation of someone determined to survive by any means necessary in her expression. She needn't have worried. Dan was already grappling with her cage locks. Rorschach after a moment of frozen horror, hurried to the other one.
"That was Vanessa's cage wasn't it?" he asked, nodding to the middle one.
"We're not supposed to try to get out," she said, eyeing the lock like a starving dog would a roast turkey.
"He's not in charge anymore," Dan said. He nodded at the third cage where the deafened girl cowered obediently when Rorschach raised his foot to smash the hinges. "What happened to her ears?"
"We aren't allowed to talk to each other," the girl whispered. "But we had to! It was dark and we were scared. Vanessa would sing and one day he heard her. He put out Angie's ears and Vanessa's and would've done mine, so we couldn't hear each other, but she fought him and he stabbed too hard and she died. He didn't mean to!" she added when Rorschach hissed. "He swore it was an accident!"
"And it kept him from doing yours," Dan added. She nodded, far beyond being ashamed of it. There was a crash and the third kennel was kicked in. Dan finally found the right key and let the first out.
"Do we call the police," he asked Rorschach. "Or wait for Daddy to come home?"
The gleam that came with that remark was out of character enough for Dan that Rorschach snapped at him. They argued while the children watched. Dan was in no shape to fight, Rorschach reminded him. The police would need to see this place, Dan insisted. Only way to be sure he was punished was to do it themselves, Rorschach added. The deaf girl was the younger of the two, looking maybe thirteen. Dan had given her an afghan (also yellow)from an armchair to wrap in. The older one was still quiet and shrewd and who would ever know how much of her soul it had cost her to be so analytical of her own survival?
There was a suit jacket in the foyer closet that they gave her. Dan saw her sniff it and hug herself with it on. He felt a sick lurch at the thought that she might have some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, might have been so cautious because she hadn't wanted to be rescued. She certainly wasn't being nurturing to the younger girl, had made no move to hug or hold her hand as he would've expected two survivors to do. And for her part, the younger girl was content to clutch the afghan around herself and shadow Rorschach.
"What time does he come home?" he asked the other girl. She shrugged.
"We never had a clock," she said. "And sometimes we could hear him upstairs, but he might not come down."
"What's your name?" Rorschach asked next. She shrugged, looking sullen. His voice dropped dangerously. "Damaged too badly to remember, should go straight to psych ward."
Alarm flickered in her eyes, so she looked at her own feet. She muttered something Dan couldn't quite make out, but Rorschach nodded and made up his mind. He left Dan on the couch and took the children to a pay phone with some mail he found to make sure they had the address. Dan took a moment to rest on the bilious couch. Was the bastard color-blind as well as a monster? Maybe all the yellow was what had driven him crazy. Not that Dan was winning any sanity awards at the moment. As if summoned by the thought, he became aware of someone sitting next to him.
"You three weren't the first were you?" he asked without looking. "But you'll be the last." Cold engulfed him like an impulsive, icy hug. His head swam a little. Would it be better to let Rorschach kill this guy? Leave his body crammed into his own kennel? Ice picks forced into his own ears so he couldn't hear his own screams? It felt like the breath was being squeezed out of him, and the next thing he knew he was being shaken while a voice like sandpaper scoured across his addled senses.
"Time to go," Rorschach was saying. "Officers with children, coming to search house. They know it was me that called, but if they see you, they'll make assumptions and may guess right. Up. Now."
Dan grunted but reluctantly struggled back to his feet. He was swaying, so Rorschach slid an arm around his waist to hurry him out the back. They went over the fence and cut through a yard dominated by patio furniture. Dan was alarmingly cold, Rorschach noticed. Hopefully, if no one got a good look, they'd appear to be drunken revelers on the way home. It was a bit galling, but better than the alternative.
"You never did answer my question," Dan said once they were out of sight of the house. "Do you believe in ghosts?"
There was a very long pause as the blots contracted to the center of his face like a laser sight homing in, then spread out again.
"Believe in being haunted," Rorschach finally said. The sun was high in the sky now, but the shadows in the alleys were still dark enough to hide them. Behind them, lights flashed and a siren chirped, and voices shouted into radio handsets and a deaf girl who couldn't hear any of it began to cry when she saw a faint shape appear in the reflections on the police squad car window. It left a handprint in cold mist on the glass and then faded away for good.