Chapter 24 Jordan
Jordan
Now
The padlock Catherine gave me—the one she removed when she let me in here—is heavy in my pocket, proof that the door should open easily. Yet it won’t, no matter how many times I try.
I rattle the door, then tug on it, praying that I’ve been doing something wrong. When it still doesn’t open, I pound on the cage with balled-up fists.
“Hello?” I call out, praying that somebody will hear me. The dryer is still running in the laundry room at the other end of the basement. Maybe someone is down here. “I’m stuck. Is anybody there?”
I don’t get an answer, and no one comes running.
This is bad.
I squint past the cage wall toward the other end of the basement and the elevator but see no movement. I appear to be alone. How did the door even close like that, let alone jam? It doesn’t make sense because I still have the padlock.
I call out again, even as the futility of doing so dawns upon me, because if anyone had heard my cries, they would have responded the first time. Despite this, my heart sinks when I get no response.
Then I remember my phone. I’m still clutching it in one hand, the flashlight beam playing on the floor. I turn the flashlight off and decide to call Angelo, the doorman, who will come down and free me. Except that he won’t, because when I look at the screen, there isn’t any service.
Hardly surprising, given my location.
A wave of claustrophobia threatens to topple me into full-blown hysteria, but somehow I maintain my composure.
I fight back against the unreasoning fear.
Losing it down here won’t help anything.
If I can’t open the door, I’ll need to find another way out.
Maybe I can climb up and over the cage walls.
But when I look up, I’m dismayed to see a ceiling of wire mesh that effectively cuts off that escape route.
The cage presses around me, feeling suddenly smaller than it did before.
I wonder how often people visit this end of the basement, even as a disturbing thought rattles through my mind.
An image of Catherine or one of the other residents coming down here, days or even weeks from now, and finding my lifeless corpse, fingers raw and bloodied and nails ripped off from my final desperate attempts to claw my way out.
How long can a person survive, stuck in a place like this, anyway?
I have no idea, and I don’t want to find out.
Stop it. You’re being ridiculous, I chastise myself, because it’s true.
I’m not going to be down here anywhere near long enough for that to happen.
At worst, Sam will come home and wonder where I am.
When I don’t show up, he will ask Catherine when she last saw me, because he knows that I had a meeting with the board today about the coffee shop.
Then they will come down here and rescue me.
Except that I don’t want to be stuck in here for several more hours.
After rattling the door one more time, I turn and make my way deeper into the cage again.
Maybe there’s another way out, or even a service elevator.
But after a thorough search, I come up empty.
The cage is firmly attached to the back wall, and I can find no other doors or elevators.
I glance over my shoulder at the never-used crib, and the hair prickles on my arms, because I’m sure that the stuffed bumblebee was sitting on the left side, near the still-wrapped blankets, but now it’s all the way at the other end.
No. That must be wrong. My mind is playing tricks on me. Toys don’t move on their own. And obsessing over that crib and what it represents won’t make the situation any better. Thinking about the baby I lost, tumbling into that particular pit of despair, is the last thing I need right now.
I tear my gaze away from the crib and rattle the door one more time in the vain hope that it will open now. It doesn’t. I’m trapped. All I can do is wait for Catherine to return, or another resident to collect their laundry.
I turn and walk over to the velvet love seat that interested me earlier and sit down.
I close my eyes and lean back, trying to distract myself from thinking about the crib, and that toy.
The faint rumble of the dryer in the laundry room is comforting.
It reminds me that eventually, someone will come.
I listen for a while, until the dryer finishes its cycle and a deathly silence descends, broken only by the occasional knock of a water pipe somewhere off in the darkness.
Then I hear something else. A loud clunk that drowns out the knocking pipe. A sound that I recognize.
The elevator.
I jump back up and race back to the cage door in time to see Jennifer, the neighbor we met in the library at Catherine’s cocktail party, step out carrying a laundry basket.
“Hey! I need help back here,” I holler at the top of my voice. “I’m trapped. The door won’t open.”
To my utter dismay, she doesn’t stop or turn to look in my direction. Instead, she vanishes into the laundry room.
That’s when I remember that Jennifer is hard of hearing.
The panic surges back. I ball my hands into fists and slam them against the cage door, screaming at the top of my lungs. Again, my cries go unheeded, and soon the sound of a washing machine reverberates through the basement. Then, after a couple of minutes, Jennifer reemerges.
I redouble my efforts, yelling and pounding on the cage. But it’s useless. She walks back to the elevator. Then, to my horror, she snaps off the lights, plunging me into pitch-black oblivion.