Ramona's Escape

Ramona crawled through the hidden entrance under her bed and sat, her small, battery-operated lantern dimly lighting up the small space. She didn’t know who’d created the little tunnel and tiny room, but it offered a small escape from her miserable existence. Time when her guardian would be looking for her instead of barking orders or punishing her for imagined infractions. It was a pity that the tunnel would not offer an escape completely. Further digging would only bring her deeper under the mountain the building backed onto. At least her time in this place should be limited.

It was with this understanding that she’d started marking the days on the wall in her secret space. In the house, there would have been hell to pay if a single mark had appeared on the wall, intentional or not, so her count would have to be hidden here. Even one on paper, if found, would have been seen as insubordination and severely punished. Tears burned in her eyes as she made today’s mark. It was so frustrating! Why was she even here? Father’s work was supposed to have given him the summer off. Yet here she was, pushed off to an angry aunt while Father had to deal with some crisis. “No choice,” he’d said, when putting her on the train. How Father had ended up the only one in the whole world qualified to deal with it was beyond her comprehension. Why she couldn’t have just stayed home, even more so. She was old enough! Father’s excuse of having to work long hours every day rang hollow. She’d be off for university soon enough, and what was he going to do then? She had no intention of going to the university in town, staying under his control.

She lay back on the seat she’d formed from the loose bits and pieces that she’d managed to accumulate. Sixty days down. Another thirty or so to go. Father was not very precise when he dumped her. “Should be the end of summer,” he’d said. Closing her eyes, she wiggled in and tried to relax. She could only hide out for so long before her absence went on for too long and the punishment would not be worth the respite she got.

Some time later, she opened her eyes. Something didn’t feel right. She listened in the darkness for any sounds, hearing nothing. Then it clicked. Her lantern was out! Surely she hadn’t slept long enough for the batteries to die! She felt around in the pitch black for where she’d left the lantern. It wasn’t there. She crawled around, stretching each of her hands in a wide arc as she lifted them each in turn. Finally, she found it and tried the switch.

It turned on. Confused, Ramona lifted the lantern and looked at it. If the batteries hadn’t died, why had it gone off? She looked up and noticed another, far more shocking, anomaly. The wall in front of her had been wiped clean. Her sixty-day count, carefully marked each day, was gone. She stared at the wall and touched it, unbelieving. How was this possible? Up until now, there had been no evidence that anyone other than the original creator of this place had known of its existence.

A voice spoke from behind her. “The lantern was no use while you were sleeping. You should have turned it off while you were resting.”

Ramona turned as quickly as she could in the small space to face the speaker. Stunned, she could only stare as her aunt moved onto the chair she had so recently vacated. “Did you never wonder who it was that created this space? I knew when you started disappearing for hours at a time that you must have found my hiding place. Today you were gone for so long, I had to make sure you were here and had not simply run away somewhere.”

Ramona’s heart pounded and it seemed like forever before she found her voice. “You made this? You knew where I was? Why didn’t you punish me? You seemed to find a reason to punish me for everything else.”

Her aunt sighed. “Of course. Discipline must be maintained when infractions are noticed by others. Your father, while needing to leave you here, doesn’t trust me to maintain the level of discipline he expects. My housekeeper has been on leave these last two months and your father sent me Susan to replace her, as both housekeeper and spy. Fortunately, the majority of your time spent in here has been during her off-duty hours and other times I was able to cover for you.”

Ramona felt as though her whole world had tilted. Her tormenter had become her ally, and the kindly housekeeper, who she’d confided in both at home and here, had become a spy for her overbearing father. If she believed her aunt. “But… how did you make this space? Why?”

Her aunt smiled. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You father is a lot like his – our – father was. I needed to get away at times, just as you have from me. I used to watch a show called Hogan’s Heroes a lot when I was younger, and I dreamed of having a secret space underground like they did.” She waved her arm around. “It took me a while, but as you can see, while my hideout was not vast or organized like theirs, it was adequate for my purposes.”

The lantern began to flicker, and she grimaced. “I suppose we’d better get out of here. You don’t want to be stuck in here without light.”

As they turned to leave the small chamber, Ramona couldn’t help the one question that absurdly stuck in her mind, out of all the questions she wanted to ask. “Why did you take my tally off the wall?”

Her aunt exited the small space and waited for Ramona to join her before answering. “Ramona, you know better than to write on the walls.”