John felt an unease taking Hope back to the room. He wanted more. He needed more. He wouldn't be able to stall the media leaks or the discharge for long. Now that Hope was talking and improving it was bound to come crashing in on her head. He needed to push... but maybe she was more fragile than he'd given her credit for. The spectacle outside seemed to say her inner turmoil was greater than he anticipated.

But not about "the man". Her turmoil came from her own feelings, not the actions of her captor.

When she spoke of the man who tortured her it was almost textbook clinical. Some monotone cliche's, guilt, anger, not as much pity for herself as most, but the thing that pushed her over was what she wanted to do to him. That's where the deepest wound was. Heaped up anger and plotting she didn't have the maturity or emotional cognizant ability to understand or work through.

Just like Alice.

He walked to his office giving Hope time to rest and get a meal in. Surely he could squeeze just a little more out of her today. He took out his wallet and dug his fingers deep into the crevice of a leather cut line made for credit cards and pulled out a flat small old silver key.

His hands trembled as he lifted it to the light. He instinctively reached for the phone to call his wife. Always a voice of reason when he was about to plunge into a decision he'd regret. As he placed his fingers on the worn number pad he sighed. No sense drudging any of this old baggage back home. Alice had done enough damage there.

He removed the bottom drawer of his desk and slid the false bottom panel with the small key. A single click and it sprang back revealing his private possessions. He turned his eyes toward the clock and made a promise. One hour. For one hour he would revisit the demons and then he'd lock it back. Surely he had enough composure for that!

He took out the photograph first.

Alice. Day 1.

The image was grainy, taken for an intake examination in his private clinic. Alice was seventeen years old when he first met her. In the picture she's wearing a bloody hospital gown which hangs down to her knobby knees. Despite her slight frame swimming in the oversized gown, it was easy to see her jutting bones poking through at the shoulders and hips. She was a crooked mass of bones who walked like a ninety year old.

He traced his fingers across the shiny surface. Remembering the moment he first laid eyes on the skeletal haunting figure the staff immediately took to calling "ghost girl."

It took six staff members to wash the blood from her and put her in actual clothes. Two ended up needing medical care after, and John received a bite on his left wrist that still had a traceable scar.

He squinted and brought the photo closer. Looking in those deep brown eyes--so off-putting against her almost translucently pale skin. She was the one. He knew immediately she was the girl he was born to save. No one had to tell him a single fact about her circumstances; but they did.

Alice was found in the Haynkin junkyard. Owned by Roger Mills who had been running it unassisted and off the radar for two decades. It took six deputies three days to execute and finish the enormity of the search warrant after one wayward teen on a binge wouldn't stop telling police he'd seen a ghost in a cage on the grounds screaming.

The boy was ignored and labeled a prankster until his parents called the mayor who insisted it at least executing a drive by check out the complaint. Officer Chris Smythe was assigned the easy duty. He reported feeling a need to take it further. A bad vibe leading him to the dot the car and enter the yard. His call ended with him losing an arm to a bullet wound for trespassing that would end his career in the field.

Alice was found three days later, no sign of Roger Mills, but booby traps and the pack of dogs he'd trained made it dangerous work getting in. Perhaps in a big city it would have been just a couple of hours, but this was backwood Michigan. Things took more time here.

He picked up the crime scene photos. The cage was from a petstore. Approximately the size of half a water closet. Big enough for Alice to sit in, but not stand.

She was non verbal and combative. Authorities estimated she'd lived in the cage for years. She had no fingernails, and her hair was so knotted and infested the hospital shaved it to the scalp--despite her growling and increasing agitation. No doubt further traumatizing the girl.

It wasn't until the haircut that she grabbed the shears and plunged them into an orderly's leg. Immediately they deemed her psychotic instead of traumatized and she was chemically and physically restrained and brought to the clinic.

John remembered all of this without opening a single file.

The police put her in a car, restrained and semi coherent from a drug induced sleep. Feeling confident and sorry for the tortured girl, officer Tanya Weston loosened the restraints in the parking lot and received immediate removal of two of her fingers to Alice's bite. The fingers were never recovered and it was believed Alice had eaten them.

John couldn't help rubbing his own wrist scar. Alice was miraculous, a case in a lifetime. He slowly scrolled through a few more photos until he found his favorite.

Release Day- Alice

Alice, peach colored skin and shoulder length hair glowing in the flash's reflection. Her bright eyes lined with happy tears and her lips curved into a smile.

Her arm casually draped around her doctor who stood stiff but whose glance was toward the young girl who had metaphorically climbed out of hell. His hands were clasped tightly around a clipboard containing his signature saying Alice was safe to release under supervision. His eyes though, there was no denying were directed at the camera. A moment for history. One for the books. A short lived victory captured while everyone held still.

John noted how much younger he was then. And naive. Alice. She did change his life forever though, there was no denying that.

Stacking the photos neatly back in the drawer he picked up the fat Manila folder.

Jane Doe 6/17/00. Aka - Alice White

He rubbed his hands across it waiting for his mind to scream at him to stop. A deep primal urge to open it, devour it, find the lesson he never seemed to grasp about the whole thing letting him know he was on the edge.

In all this time he'd still never found himself able to dip into anything related to the event to stop himself from drowning for hours, sometimes days. Like an addict he drown in the memories and what if's.

He placed the folder and the pictures back inside the false bottom of the drawer locking it, making sure it was indeed locked, and replaced the regular drawer above it. Not now. Now there was Hope. The clock showed two hours had passed. He scolded himself for opening it at all as he slid the key deeply back into the crevice of his wallet.

Not today. It wasn't the time. This time was about Hope, the girl hiding from her thoughts in a room she wouldn't be kept in for long. She needed a lifeline. Almost as bad as he did.

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Cryptic chapter. Yep. We're trudging deeper down the rabbit hole. Thanks so much for following me to the dark place. I needed a hand perhaps, depending on what's down there