3Mr. Whittaker, the magnate himself, was a man with a lot of bravado. He thought pretty highly of himself. I wasn't oblivious to the rumors passing around town, either. People said that he'd been born with nothing, and built his oil empire up from the ground up. A true rags-to-riches story, except instead of becoming some sort of good-hearted philanthropist, he'd become obsessed with his wealth and reputation. Don't get me wrong - I'm not the usually the type to go around making assumptions about people without getting to know them first, but I think ordering the construction of twenty-foot-tall statues of everyone in your family is just a tad arrogant.
The statues weren't built on-site. I don't know if it would have been better or worse, seeing them constructed day by day or having them appear all at once. Three gigantic
effigies of the beautiful Whittakers, their bronze surfaces even shinier than the real thing, if not quite as stiff. Whittaker in his tux, the wife with the pinched face, and Caroline standing between them. The statues didn't just go in his front yard or anything like that; no, he bought the deed to the town park and put his immortalized family as the centerpiece.
The way things were going, it seemed like he was trying to make our town into his own creepy little paradise. There was speculation about his plans to drive all of us out of town so he could rebuild from the ground up. It's funny how it sounds odd when I write it now. At the time, it felt like Whittaker was some sort of all-powerful being that could do with the town what he pleased.
The year after the statues, they started drilling for oil. My mother told me it should have been obvious from the beginning. He hadn't come for the greenery and lakes. No, he had come to oversee the operation, and it wasn't going to be a small one. I suppose it should have bothered me more. You should have seen the reactions when the news got out - but me? I was seventeen by then. Almost ready to move out and find my own way in the world. I was more preoccupied with thoughts of my future.
But what happened that summer was enough to tear me out of my own thoughts. In July, before the drilling commenced, our town had a homegrown tragedy. I'm sure not everyone would opt to call it that, but then again, not everyone had their head on straight at that time. Caroline Whittaker was kidnapped in the dead of night. People had gone missing in our town before - drunks who had stumbled off into the woods while they were wasted off their asses, or kids who had strayed too far from the path, but they were nobodies. This was the biggest thing that had ever happened in our town. Everyone knew by the following day. We knew by the police cars that peeled into our town, one after the other in an orderly row, rattling on the bumpy roads. I remember there being more cars than there should have been, but hey, this was a Whittaker, not to mention a pretty white girl — I guess it's a miracle the entire police force didn't show up on our doorstep.
I didn't say it, but I was sure it was just a rebellious thing. With parents like that, I wouldn't have blamed her. I suspected that she was in a nightclub somewhere, or slumming it in a big city. She was on a beach in Costa Rica. Shopping in Dubai. I don't think I was the only one who thought that, either - nobody really thought it was a serious matter, which made all the swarms of police and news reporters seem a little comical. Despite all the media publicity, the Whittakers started showing themselves even less before in our town, and then not at all. And if you asked now, years after the whole thing went down, they would never admit it, but there were some people who were glad that it had happened. I don't know how anybody could be that vindictive, but the sentiment was undeniably there, like something sour lingering in the atmosphere. For a while, she was all that people talked about. When a week passed and Caroline didn't come running back, I thought nothing of it. Two weeks went by. I wondered if she was on the last leg of her little trip. Then, three weeks. There was the possibility she'd taken a detour before returning home. When the month had come to an end and Caroline was nowhere to be seen, that was when I began to have my doubts - not that she was alive, that I was still sure of for some unnamable reason, but that she was safe.
One month, and then another and another and another until Caroline's name faded from our lips. Nobody saw the Whittakers leave their house; people wondered if they had moved out in the dead of night. I doubt that her parents ever made peace with it. It's not like they had another perfect child to move on to, and Caroline was supposed to have inherited her father's company when she was older. They'd lost all that in the blink of an eye.
Personally, I was adamant in my belief that Caroline was alive somewhere in the world. Something terrible had happened to her, and I didn't know that was "something" was, but it seemed impossible that she was truly dead. Yes, I was in denial over someone that I hardly knew. I can admit that now, looking back on that strange time. I knew that if I looked too deeply into it, I would realize that the odds that she was almost certainly dead. But I was good at steering myself away from the topic, and that was enough to keep it out of my mind.
I graduated high school with decent grades and practically no knowledge of what existed outside of the town boundaries. I decided I was going to remedy that. Saying goodbye to my mom and dad was hard, but they understood that I had to leave. The next few years flew by. So much compacted into such a short period of time — with everything changing in the blink of an eye, I changed too, and soon my childhood in that sleepy little no-name town seemed farther away than the dim stars in the city sky. You don't need to hear the details of my life in the six years that I left home. I grew up, got my degree, married a writer against the wishes of a family I had grown apart from by then. To tell you the truth, when I finally decided to revisit my hometown, it was Jonathan's idea much more than mine.
It was over a late-morning breakfast of pancakes and coffee that he brought it up. "Now that the car's fixed, why don't we somewhere this weekend?"
"Where do you have in mind?" I put down my mug, surprised. He was more of a homebody than I was.
"The place where you grew up. You know everything about me, Samantha, but I've never met your parents. It's only fair, isn't it?" he said, smiling.
I wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea - I knew it meant having to talk to my parents again, and awkward encounters with old friends - but Jonathan was so insistent that I told myself to suck it up and pack my things for the trip. I remember the drive clearly. We listened to pop music on the radio with the windows rolled down, feeling silly but having fun nevertheless. It was only when we started nearing our destination that the mood shifted. It wasn't tense, just contemplative and quiet, with the sight of the dense, luscious green trees lining the road bringing back a rush of memories.
It was scary how little the town had changed. The faces were older, but otherwise, everything was exactly as I had remembered it. The houses were as quaint as ever, and it being the middle of spring, the air was heavy with a smell that was green and vital. The reunion with my parents went much better than expected - I guess they'd finally come around, and they welcomed Jonathan with a homemade meal and polite smiles.
As my dad regaled Jonathan with stories about me as a clumsy little kid and my mom loaded more food onto his plate, I glanced at the photos hanging on the walls and reminisced about my childhood. Dinner was delicious. It had been a weird sort of day, but the beef stew and fresh-baked bread was so good that any trace of residual anxiousness slipped out of sight and out of mind. I guess that was why I built up the courage to ask my mom the question.
"So, mom, did they ever find that girl who went missing when I was a teenager? You must remember. I think her name was Carol, or Courtney." Truth was I remembered her name perfectly.
My mom's eyes bore into me. "Ah, the Whittaker girl. Her name was Caroline. Pretty girl, wasn't she? No, they didn't find her, Samantha. It's such a pity. There was so much hope at the beginning, too." I knew she was being genuine. My parents were one of the few who had never held much of a grudge against the Whittaker family.
"What happened to her parents?" I asked.
"They left town for good about a year after Caroline disappeared," my father cut in. "I don't think it needs to be said that they terminated all of their drilling plans. Losing a daughter like that... I can't imagine what it was like for them."
This sparked Jonathan's interest, and we spent the next ten minutes talking about Caroline, the tragic case of the beautiful girl who had vanished one night and never returned. Suddenly things were as fresh in my memory as they were when I was seventeen. I remembered the last time I had seen her. Something about that particular incident had bothered me, but I'd forgotten about it soon after.
It had been in the park. I was sitting on a bench, hands tucked under my legs, waiting for one of my friends to show up. I was so absorbed in something that had happened the day before at school that I didn't even see Caroline when she first walked in. It was only when she came closer that I realized it was her, blonde hair and all. I was
a little stunned. It was pretty early in the day, and nobody else was at the park except for the two of us. I'd never seen Caroline up close before, and certainly not when there was nobody else around - now that she was pacing nervously only meters from me, I could see the delicate outline of her profile, even the silky texture of the shirt that she was wearing. And I could see the nervous look on her face. It was fear, sure enough: her hands wouldn't stay still, and her eyes were wide and shining. She was walking in short, speedy bursts before stopping altogether and standing still. She kept glancing up at the statues of her family, an ugly expression coming over her features every time she did. I didn't say anything to her. I only watched as she untied the jacket around her waist and put it on even though it was a sunny day. One of the Whittaker's cars appeared around the corner soon after, and she slipped into it, never even realizing that I was there.
It scared me how well I remembered the whole thing. That night, as I snuggled under the covers in my old room, I kept going back to that memory, replaying it in my mind the way you might an especially entrancing scene in a movie.
The next day I walked around town aimlessly with Jonathan. He likened himself a photographer even though he only had one clunky old camera and had never taken classes, and every five minutes, he had to stop to take pictures of whatever he thought looked interesting. Huge oak trees. The church steeple. Flowers in full bloom. Finally we reached the park, and I could tell how excited he was when he saw the statues.
I had been wrong about things being the same as I had left them: the statues had fallen into disrepair. Any trace of shine was gone, replaced by a thick layer of rust that marred their handsome features. The eyes looked as soulless as ever. With the whole creepy aura and troubling history, I doubted anyone had come near them in a very, very long time. Jonathan exclaimed that there was a "morbid beauty" in them, and insisted
that I get up onto the pedestal to get a better shot. He was too heavy for me to boost him, so it had to be me.
I reluctantly agreed. Hey, don't get me wrong - it was the last thing I wanted to do, but he was so enthusiastic about it, I couldn't say no. Jonathan helped me up onto the base of Caroline's statue. I stared up at the rusted creature. I had to hold on to the leg
for balance, and the texture underneath my hands was gritty and unpleasant. I took the photo with my free hand and gave the camera back to Jonathan. I jumped back down, letting go of the statue's leg.
When I was safely on the ground, I noticed that my hand had come away from the statue wet. It was strange, because when I had put my hand onto the thing, I hadn't noticed any wetness - it must have leaked out of some minuscule crack. I sniffed it and nearly threw up.
"Jesus, Sam, what is that?" Jonathan asked. "Is that from the statue?"
I was still gagging. "It's disgusting. Oh, god. It smells like - it smells like -" Suddenly it hit me what it smelled like.
"Jon, I need you to boost me back up."
His brows furrowed. "Wait, what do you-"
"Just help me up." The look on my face shut him up right away. Only one thing was on my mind. I needed to confirm something that I had suspected since I was a teenager, but never bothered to test out. Once I was back on the pedestal, I gave the statue a hard rap with my hand. It made a blunt noise. Jonathan had a metal water bottle with him, and I told him to give it to me. I slammed it against the statue again, this time using all my force, and it was just as I suspected: still a blunt impact noise, but now a suggestion of a ringing echo. The statues were hollow.
A shadow of an idea was forming in my head. My stomach was a tight ball, my heart beating dizzily fast. I touched my hand to the same place as before, and yes, there it was, a crack, leaking the tiniest rivulet of liquid.
"There's something inside."
He stared up at me. "What?"
"There's something inside this statue. Jon, we need to call the police."
I will tell you the rest of the day as clearly as I can. I don't remember all of it. Time changes when terrible things are happening.
The police arrived. Well, they arrived twice - first the sheriff from a town a few miles away from ours, then the real deal, a fleet of cars with sirens flashing red and blue. What I do remember, I remember in snapshots: the crowd pouring in. The confused clamor. The cops asking people to kindly step away from the statue. The smell still on my hand. The man in the uniform who drilled a hole into the metal and twisted away when he was sprayed with a ribbon of black water. The crowd watched. People covered their mouths and noses, first with their hands, then with fabric. The crowd kept watching, this time behind a yellow tape perimeter, as the statue was painstakingly opened up over the course of several hours. The pedestal base had once had a latch door that could be opened, allowing for access to the inside of the statue, but that had been cemented shut seven years ago. News reporters rolled in. I stood at the edge of the crowd with Jonathan, and barely responded to anything he said. I was watching. We were all watching. That was us making up for the watching that we had failed to do in the past seven years.
We watched and waited. Waited and watched. We watched the dark water coming out in trickles at first, then as the cement in the pedestal was chipped away, we watched it pour forth in one big rush. It pooled for a second before sinking into the grass and staining it dark. The smell was so pungent that I turned away and emptied my stomach onto the ground.
We watched as the colorless broken thing that was once Caroline Whittaker was removed from the statue by two workers in hazmat suits.
Caroline Whittaker had never gone away to Costa Rica or Dubai. She had not had her organs stolen or been trafficked to some foreign country or simply shot and left to die.
She had been kept alive for forty-one days inside her own statue, decaying, losing her mind in a space that had no light and no sound. She could not scream; her vocal chords had been cut.
The one thing she did have? Water. The interior of the statue had been filled with water up to Caroline's neck, so if she wanted a drink, she could have it. The water that her body had been stewing in for seven years after her death.