Page 55 of The Vanishing Place

She had to escape.

Effie sat on the floor and stared at the chain around her ankle. She needed to get back to Anya.

I’ll be back. I promise.

No one would be looking for her—she hadn’t even said where she was going. Effie was a grown woman. An adult who’d left of her own volition. Who’d left them. Effie swallowed.

It was daytime—a fine veil of light covered the room. Effie reached a hand down her leg. The area around her ankle felt odd, deadened by the constant rub of metal. But still, what she was about to do was going to hurt.

Effie tested the range of motion in her foot, pointing her toes, then pulling them back, sending a twinge of pins and needles through her calf and heel.

It was going to hurt a lot.

Effie scrunched her eyes tight and puffed out her cheeks. “Come on. You can do this.”

She changed position, the steel links rattling on the hard floor. Her restraint wasn’t a solid cuff but rather a length of chain that had been looped around her lower leg, then secured with a large padlock, like a lasso.

“Okay…”

Effie straightened her foot, tucking her heel in, then she pushed down on the metal, her arms vibrating with the effort.

“Move.”

Slowly the chain edged down. But when she let go, it slipped back up.

“Fuck.”

Her ankle throbbed, the skin red and broken.

“Come on,” she panted. “Just move.”

Effie drove the chain downward. The hard knobs of her ankle pulsed with pain, but she kept pushing. “Please,” she grunted.

She let out a scream of agony and looked down. A jagged piece of steel had caught the thin surface of her skin, peeling her like an orange.

Blood leaked from the fresh wound, but Effie kept going. She thrust the weight of her body into it, but the chain held tight, clinging to her like a metal leech. She screamed again, the echo of pain mixed with frustration.

Then there was a thud on the door.

“Stop,” the woman begged. “Please, whatever you’re doing, stop.”

Effie’s arm fell limp and she collapsed forward.

“Please.” The voice was soft and scared. “Please. You have to stop. You have to repent. Or he’ll kill you.”

Defeated, Effie slumped to the floor, her hands and legs wet with sweat and blood, too tired to find words. And besides, what was there to say anyway?

Maybe the woman wasn’t even there.

Maybe she never had been.

As the fight leaked from her body, she closed her eyes, broken.