Page 63 of The Quiet Tenant

“Put this on,” he says.

You don’t move.

“Over your eyes,” he says impatiently, likeDon’t make me change my mind.

You bandanna yourself blind.

He drives and drives and drives. It could be forty minutes or sixty or two hundred. You hear his breath, slow, with the occasional sigh. The tap of his fingers on the wheel. Pedals groaning underneath his feet.

Some jerks, followed by a never-ending straight line. The truck slows down. You hear the brakes, the gearshift squeaking this way and that. The engine goes quiet.

A tug at the back of your head. The bandanna slips off your face. You try to look around, but he grabs your chin so you’re forced to focus on him.

“We’re going to do this quickly,” he tells you. He’s holding the gun again, waving it in your face. “We’re going to get out of here and walk together.”

Then, the rules. “If you try anything—anything at all, we’re going back to the truck.” He waits, likeDid you hear what I just said?

You nod. He steps out of the truck, grabs a couple of items from the backseat—the handcuffs and the rope, from what you can see—and collects you on the other side. “Don’t look around,” he says, “just keep your eyes on the ground.” His hand clasps your left arm, so tight you feel bruises forming.

He walks you away from his truck and down a long, winding dirt path. You sneak glances. Already, you are learning to take what you can. You catch a flash of the house and the matching buildings surrounding it on the property. No neighbors. His garden, lovely and well tended. You want to cling to it all, but he is a man with a purpose, climbing a hill. He is a man taking you to a shed.

The door shuts behind you. You don’t know it yet, but this is when it happens. This is when your world freezes into a new shape.

At this point in time, the shed is a work in progress. Tools strewn across the floor, a bag of fertilizer in a corner. Foldable chair and table, a pile of magazines—porn or guns, you can’t tell for sure. Probably a mix of both.

This is his space. You will find out later on that he has started preparing it for the faint, distant, entirely theoretical possibility of someone like you. Someone he might like to keep. He has soundproofed it. Padded the floor with a rubber mat, run his hands on the walls and plugged every last gap with caulk. It’s not done, though. You are not the one he meant to keep. You are a spur-of-the-moment decision, an impulse buy.

He will return the next day to finish the job. He will nail a chain to the wall. He will remove his stuff, clear the space. He will make it yours. For now, he brings your hands behind your back and handcuffs you. Ties the rope around your ankles, knots it around the door handle.

“I need to go to the house for a minute,” he says. “I’m the only one home. If you scream, I’m the only one who will hear you, and I won’t be happy. Believe me.”

You believe him.

As soon as the door shuts behind him, you try. You wriggle your wrists, twist your ankles, reach for tools. But he knows how to handcuff someone. He knows how to tie a knot. And he knows to move his tools out of reach from the woman he just tied up in his garden shed.

You need to trust that people will look for you. Your photo will circulate on social media. Your parents and Julie—your throat closes at the thought of them—will put up posters. They will give interviews, plead for your safe return.

You need to trust that this is temporary, and one day the world will find you.

But there are things you know that he doesn’t. Things that will work to his advantage. Anyone who knows you will say that you haven’t been yourself. That prior to your disappearance, you became withdrawn. You fell asleep in class. Your grades suffered. You packed your belongings, left the city you loved and the people you knew.

A new story will emerge. Days will go by, weeks, months. People will say it to themselves at first, and then, as they get more comfortable, to one another: Maybe you went missing on purpose. Maybe you drove somewhere and allowed yourself to slip out of existence. You jumped into a ravine, fell into water. Maybe you started over somewhere else. Maybe you are free, finally, of your demons.

No one waits for their dead to come back to life.

Eventually, people will stop looking for you. They will stop showing your picture. They will let you fade away. They will stop telling your story, until one day you’re the only one left to remember it.

CHAPTER 42

The woman in the house

The fever goes down. You stop throwing up. He keeps bringing you food, but he doesn’t watch over you. His interest is dwindling.

The world comes back into focus. The indentations at the back of your head even out. The wounds begin to heal. When you wake up, your pillow isn’t caked with blood.

One evening, he shows up empty-handed. It’s time to go back downstairs, he tells you. Dinner’s ready.

You pull yourself up. The floor is water. The floor is the rowdy sea. You are on a ship, swaying. He says, Come on, come on. You steady yourself, one hand against the wall.I don’t know if I’m ready,you want to tell him.I’ve lost weight. I’m still so tired.But he knows what he wants. Your sea legs will have to carry you downstairs.

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