ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AMY SHEARN’s first book, a novel entitled How Far is the Ocean From Here, came out in July 2008 from Shaye Areheart/Crown Books. Her work has appeared in Jane, Modern Painters, West Branch, Salt Hill, the small-press anthology Hysteria, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing for NYU and Gotham’s Writers.

The Kidnapped

By Amy Shearn


Page 2


Geneva was focused on Santa now, and biting at a hangnail on her thumb as he spoke. They were talking, it seemed to Bob, about the Dells, about how they had come to be there, and about it being off-season. “Then we’re going down to Lake Geneva,” she was telling him, “My husband and our little girl and me. My name is Geneva, you know, so we just call it Lake Me!” She laughed and the bartender smiled. Bob listened instead to the deafening crunch of the orange chips collapsing between his molars. He’d been dreaming, lately, of losing his teeth. He’d been waking each night in a sweat, sure his mouth would be full of jagged, bloody bits.

Then Santa was saying, “Indians have a story about the Green Waterspirit of the Dells.” Bob leaned over, tapped at Santa’s arm. “A Miller Light, please,” he whispered, “or whatever’s on tap.” Santa reached for the pint glasses without shifting his gaze from Geneva, “and the Waterspirit rose out of the river to visit the people,” he was saying. Bob snorted.

The trivia machine—either the kid had started playing or it just went into default mode—dinged and dinged, stabbing into the quiet of the bar with synthesized bells. Bob stuck a finger in his mouth, trying to dislodge a shard of potato chip piercing his gum. He’d forgotten to pack his toothbrush, he now realized. He drank his beer too quickly, grabbed a handful of napkins from the counter and pushed them against his lap, thought of taking Geneva’s coat and dabbing at his beery crotch, but then thought better of it. She was protective of the coat. It was real rabbit fur, she insisted, and she had been given it by a man, a long, long time ago, from the looks of the thing. But Bob was so tired—he was too old for this kind of thing—that he just crossed his arms on the counter in front of him and rested his head while Geneva and Santa flirted.

Geneva had started working her way through her second bloody mary—right, and of course he was going to pay for this—when he stood up and took a dizzy step backwards. “Hey Santa,” he said. The bartender narrowed his eyes and Geneva laughed with a whoop. “I mean—” Bob waved his hand towards the kid, careful not to mash his words together. “Do you think she wants a burger or something?” Without waiting for a response he made his way towards the bathroom. The bar was long and narrow and seemed to lurch underfoot, like the train, where they should have been. As he stood peeing into the dingy trough Bob felt his heart thrumming blood throughout his body. He knew his toes, suddenly, his fingertips, the base of his balls, he knew his ribs and lungs and the warming surfaces of his cheeks. But when he got back to the bar, the kid was still sitting moonily by the trivia game, scowling as if her life depended on it, and Geneva and Santa were watching him, giggling like mad. “Oh, come on,” he said. “What?”

“Nothing, Mr. Grumpy-face,” said Geneva, laughing into her drink, which spattered up at her. She gave Santa a knowing look that made something heat up in Bob’s chest.

“What, you don’t think Kimmy wants a frigging hamburger or what? Don’t you think she’s hungry? She was just snatched from her bed in the middle of the night after all!” he said. He sat heavily on his barstool.

“Who’s Kimmy, sweetums?” Geneva watched him over the rim of her glass.

“What?” he said. He tugged at his string tie and ran his hands over his hair. He had to calm down. His jeans were drying off a little, at least there was that. He sat very still then and tried to hear his heart, tried to count his teeth and check with his tongue for chips or sore spots. At least things were exciting with Geneva. At least things were different. He couldn’t say that he’d ever been in a situation quite like this before.

Santa jabbed his thumb towards the kid. “What’s he talking about, ma’am?” he said to Geneva. “Snatched from her bed?”

“Oh!” Geneva waved her hand. “That? Oh. He’s crazy, that’s all.”

Bob got up, slapped a twenty on the counter, pressed the rest of the potato chip bag into his coat pocket, and stormed out of the bar. Only when he was outside did he notice, sheepishly, that he had taken the little pink suitcase with him. He leaned against the side of the building and ate some chip crumbs from his pocket, swiped a finger against his gums again. The sky was gray and cold. It appeared that none of the touristy shops Geneva had promised to the kid were going to open at all. A balled-up brochure skittered down the street. After a minute the kid came outside and took the suitcase from him, balancing its wheels on a crack in the sidewalk. Sandy-colored hair blew into her eyes. She’d left her hat somewhere, or maybe had never had it on at all. She said to him, “You gotta stop calling me Kimmy.”

“I know,” Bob said. “I’m sorry.”

The kid shrugged. “I don’t really care, but it’s making her mad,” and she jerked her shoulder towards the bar.

“Yeah. Well.” His head buzzed, and since the last beer his torso had begun to feel hollowed out, cavey.

“This is kidnapping,” said the girl. “Isn’t it,” she said.

They hadn’t put it that way. He hadn’t thought of it in those terms exactly. If it was Geneva’s kid, it couldn’t really be kidnapping, could it? Maybe he’d call the police. Leave an anonymous tip. End it all in a way that left him blameless, and back in the position of comforting Geneva. The kid wasn’t anything like Geneva. Geneva said she had left when the kid was still a toddler, and hadn’t seen her much since, and maybe this explained it. The kid’s eyes were large and dark, her face clean and pale. She shifted her weight onto one leg. “Did you hear that man in there?” she said. “He told her that the Waterspirit chased the devil from the hills, down into the bottom of the lake, and that’s why it’s called Devil’s Lake.” She looked at him.

“Gotcha,” said Bob. “That’s not true though.” He wagged a finger at her the way he imagined a wise father might.

“Obviously I know that. It’s called a myth. Don’t you think I go to school? Don’t you think I’m missing school right now?” The kid slammed her suitcase down and sat on it, her skinny legs sprawled out into the street. He rubbed at his eyes. Maybe they could get a room at the Top Hat Motel down the street, take a nap, take showers, watch some TV.

“Why don’t you tell her that?” he finally said.

“Why don’t you? You’re her boyfriend.”

Bob wanted to say something to the kid. Even though she was being lippy, or maybe because of this, the sound of her voice, that sweet, round, young tone like a bell, reminded him of his own kids. He wanted to lift her again into his arms then, feel the coiled warmth of her body, the smooth slip of her side he’d touched when he’d lifted her from bed and her pajama top had slid up; he wanted to stroke her stringy hair and hum her lullabies. He wanted to say, little girl, my little girl. But he looked at her and her face was so fierce that he remembered how he hardly knew her at all, how he hardly knew Geneva at all, and Jesus Christ, what had he gotten himself into this time—and Geneva came door-slammingly out of the bar, dragging her suitcase, throttling the precious coat in one fist, her mouth propped into a grin. “Okay, my darlings,” she said, brushing past them down the street, “Onward.”

The kid sighed loudly. Bob blinked. When had it gotten so bright out?

“Hey,” he said, “Hey look, shouldn’t we go back to the train station, figure it all out? Honeybun?” Geneva ignored this. Bob and the kid followed her, the kid hissing at Bob now and then, “You’ll be arrested!” or “I hope you guys have fun in jail!” Bob ignored this.

After a few blocks Geneva stopped and waved her arms around with some flourish. “Just wook at what Mama’s done!” And they did look: The Dungeon of Horrors, a shadowy storefront, had opened for the day. Lodged in its maw were a crowded bunch of skeletons, a rusty suit of armor, a plastic hunchback clutching its brain in one fist. A bored-looking teenager leaned against the ticket counter beneath an enormous blood-stained jaw. Near the teenager’s elbow was a sign reading No Refunds in dripping letters. Geneva fussed over the kid, licking her thumb and smearing it across the kid’s pristine cheek, something she’d probably heard about moms doing, while Bob pushed a crumpled twenty towards the teenager, who looked at him and said, “Uh, yeah, for three of you that’s thirty-three.”

“Thirty-three dollars?”

“Yessir.”

Bob took his last twenty from his pocket—the cash was supposed to last till Portland, and now it was gone—and rubbed at his eyes.

“Young man,” he said to the boy who now yanked three tickets from a spool, “Don’t let the world defeat you.”

The boy blinked at him and then laughed a little. “Okay, right. Thirty-four, thirty-five, five, and forty, here’s your change, enjoy the museum, authentically haunted for twenty years so watch out and please don’t touch anything or you’ll be the next exhibit.”

They arranged to leave their suitcases with him, and Geneva draped her coat over her shoulders and gripped Bob’s elbow and they entered the narrow corridor. The kid seemed interested, at least, or maybe was planning her escape. Bob saw her wipe at her spittle-cleaned cheeks with sleeve-covered hands. Without looking at them she ran ahead, calling, “Ooh, an executioner!”

Geneva dug her nails into Bob’s arm as they followed the kid. “Why won’t she hold my hand?” Geneva whispered. Bob pretended not to have heard. If this really was kidnapping, Geneva’s ex would find them eventually, and that meant police and—what, a trial? He would have to stop meeting women in bars. Geneva was fun, but if he was honest with himself, she’d been nothing but trouble. Maybe I like trouble, he thought. No, another part of him answered, no you don’t. Organ music rattled from a boom box encased in the wall somewhere and tattered cloths dropped from the ceiling. In the first exhibit, a guillotine lowered mechanically and a wax head rolled to the ground, reattaching itself to the body after a minute while the guillotine rose again. “You shouldn’t have said that,” Geneva said.

“What?” He felt dizzy again, and as they entered the next chamber—apparently vampires preferred strobe lights—he was afraid he might actually fall. He could just see it. He’d fall right on his face and all his teeth would break off at the gums. He’d have to collect them from the floor, feel the nubs in his mouth, taste the welling blood. And now that he’d be fired, likely, for not showing up at work this morning, he wouldn’t have anything like dental insurance, and he’d have to save up to buy false teeth. His teeth!

“In the bar, dummy. What do you think will happen to me if I get caught, did you think about that?” Bob saw in the heartbeats of white light that her eyes were welling with tears. “They’ll never let me see her again. I just want a chance, you know? It’s not fair that I don’t get a chance.”

He meant to apologize, to pat her shoulder as they left the vampire’s den for the torture chamber. (“Nooooo,” moaned the waxen prisoner on the Rack.) He knew what she meant, after all. But he remembered, as if by accident, that mocking look she’d shared with Santa back at the bar, and something in him tightened, and then she said, “And you, Mister, just imagine what they’ll accuse you of!”

“What do you want from me?” he said. “I mean, Geneva. What do you want?”

“What?” She pulled away from him. The kid, up ahead, turned to watch.

“Why did we get off the train here? It was your brilliant idea.”

“Wait a minute—” 



Published July 2008