The Answers Are In The Forest

by Katie Kaleski

  Rusck pulled his gray t-shirt over his head. He bit his lip and scrunched up his nose as he raised his arms up to shoulder height.

  “Want me to help you?” I asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  I was sure it was the totally wrong moment to be drooling over somebody, but it was something you just couldn’t ignore. A beautifully fit, half-naked boy—well, almost man—stood in in my bathroom. I pulled out a washcloth and some medical supplies, running the washcloth under warm water. But I scratched the tip of my nose and hesitated before I started to dab at his chest.

  “Should we take you to the hospital? That looks really bad.” His wound was open, pulpy-looking, and bleeding. Bruises already started to appear.

  “It’s not deep or anything. It looks worse than it is.”

  I made an eek sound and started by cleaning up the trails of blood that led down toward his bellybutton, gently wiping over each muscle and his smooth, light brown skin. I slowly worked my way up to his wound and began dabbing at it. He grimaced a bit.

  “What if you broke your sternum or cracked a rib?” I asked, worried that he wasn’t showing me how hurt he actually was.

  “I didn’t. Bruised, maybe, but I should be okay.”

  “But what if the rock just slightly chipped your ribs, and you didn’t know, and that bone fragment came loose, got into your bloodstream, and jabbed itself into your heart, and then you all of a sudden collapse dead?”

  Rusck let out a little laugh. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “I watch a lot of crime TV. These things can happen.”

  “Gabby, look at me.”

  I looked up into his dark brown eyes.

  “I’m fine. Okay?”

  I sighed. “If you insist, but should we call the police?”

  Rusck shook his head.

  “Why not? Somebody assaulted you.”

  “If I go to the cops, that’ll be the end of me helping. If my parents find out I was here…”

  I pouted my lips and cut him off. “Okay, I totally get it.”

  Rusck was quiet for a bit before he spoke again. “Um, Gabby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did this night really happen?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “It’s all just so…”

  “Bizarre?”

  “Yeah. Is my brother really possessed? That can’t be, can it?”

  “I want to say no, but…”

  Rusck sighed and looked down at his wound.

  I put my fingers on his chest next to where he got hurt. “I’ll put some gauze over that.”

  “Okay.”

  “What if that person comes back?”

  “Exactly why you’re not sleeping here tonight,” Rusck said.

  “But where will I sleep?” I asked, placing the gauze over his wound.

  “I’ll sneak you into my room.”

  I ripped off some medical tape and fixed the gauze in place. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, don’t worry.”

  “I’d actually like that. Thanks.”

  I went and grabbed some clothes and my backpack and threw a note on the kitchen counter for my mom that said I was staying at a friend’s house. The two of us jumped in Rusck’s car and took off for what we hoped would be some comfort and a feeling of safety.

  When we pulled up to Rusck’s house, the only light that appeared to be on was the one in the living room.

  “Aren’t your parents gonna hear us?” I asked, standing behind Rusck as he unlocked the front door.

  “I always come home late when I work.”

  “But it’s super late. It’s, like, one thirty in the morning.”

  “I’ll think of something if I have to. C’mon.”

  I followed him inside where the living room was warm and inviting, from the yellow light of the lamp to a cinnamon smell in the air, definitely much better than my house. We met no obstacles going up to his room and stood facing each other in the middle of his bedroom.

  “Should I sleep on the floor?” Rusck asked.

  “This evening, all must sleep in the same bed. It’s for our safety, and also, I’m kinda scared.”

  Rusck nodded, bit his lip, and gave me a pensive look.

  “What?”

  “You don’t seem so scared.”

  “Trust me, I am. I’m just good at making it look like I have it together.”

  Rusck laughed. “As you have seen, I am not.”

  “I can imagine a lot of people freaking out when they meet rabbit carcasses possessed with the spirits of dead children. My question is this, though. How come the rabbits gave you a panic attack, but you went straight after the person outside?”

  Rusck sighed and sat on the edge of his bed. “It’s like with the rabbits, there’s all this uncertainty about them. Are they real? Am I seeing things? I mean, they’re fricking ghosts. That stuff isn’t supposed to be real. It’s all so confusing. And then with that person outside, it’s for certain. There’s a person, right there, looking totally suspicious. I felt we were in danger, so I reacted.”

  “But you didn’t feel in danger with the rabbits?”

  “No, just totally unsure and confused.”

  I gave him a smile. I wasn’t sure if I totally understood his reasons for his different reactions to the two situations, but that was okay because, at that moment, there were so many other things I couldn’t understand that I had to worry about.

  “You know,” Rusck said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I feel I should tell you something.”

  “Does it have to do with the rabbits?”

  “In a way.”

  “Okay.”

  “It was last school year,” Rusck said. He took in a deep breath, lay back, and started talking to the ceiling. “I kinda had the same reaction like in the basement.”

  “A panic attack?”

  “Yeah. I get them now in certain situations and sometimes out of the blue.”

  “But did something specific trigger it that day?” I asked again.

  Rusck nodded while still looking at the ceiling. I lay on my back next to him. He turned and looked at me. “There was a dead rabbit in my locker.”

  “Oh my god, that is horrible. Somebody put a dead rabbit in your locker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “No, they never found out. But now, it seems like something.”

  “Like it’s connected.”

  “Maybe?” He turned onto his side, propping his head up with his hand.

  I rolled onto my side next to him. “Could be. And maybe if I heard the whole story from you about the day Creed went missing, it would help me to piece things together a bit more.”

  Rusck sighed. “I doubt that.”

  “But what’s the whole story behind that, Creed disappearing?”

  “That’s pretty much it. Saw him after school that day, and we didn’t see him again until a few days later.”

  “That’s one of those things you’re just supposed to hear about on the news.”

  “Yeah, we became the news. Ten o’clock news story, local teenage boy missing, and then local missing teenage boy found alive. Everybody thought we’d find him dead.”

  “That must’ve been so scary.”

  “It was, but everything that’s going on now kinda ranks up there with it.” Rusck scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “Do you think that person tonight has to do with the rabbits, the murdered children?” I asked.

  “I have a sneaking suspicion they do.”

  “We’re gonna have to do some investigating tomorrow. We have to find out more about these kids and my landlord’s dad.”

  “I don’t want to press him, but maybe Creed again too,” Rusck said softly.

  “Tomorrow after school,” I said.

  Rusck closed his eyes and spoke without opening them. “Hey, Gabby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you believe in destiny, fate, or something along that line?�
��

  “I believe in a lot of things, but fate has never been one of them. Things just happen. Why?”

  Rusck sighed and opened his eyes. “I just feel like you were brought here for a reason.”

  “Perhaps.” I studied his beautiful face in the shadow of the night. His nose almost touched mine, and his lips were so close. He reached up and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. I put my hand on the side of his face as we stared at each other, so wanting to kiss him, but it wasn’t the right time.

  Rusck smiled, closed his eyes, and drifted off. I rolled in close to his warm body and drifted off myself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Pssst, Gabby,” someone said off in the distance. I quickly sat up and looked around. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. Someone started laughing. I turned to see Rusck slipping on a t-shirt and smiling at me. “Do you always wake up with such oomph?” he asked.

  I put my hand on my chest and sighed. “I was just startled for a second, there.”

  “Get your clothes on quick, so I can sneak you outta here.”

  “Okay.” I swung my feet to the ground while catching a look at Rusck’s chest. He had the gauze on his wound peeled back and was inspecting it. “That looks awful,” I whispered, walking across the room to him. A huge purple and blue bruise spread out from his raw, bleedy-looking wound.

  Rusck looked at his chest one last time, put the gauze back, and slipped down his shirt. “Like I said, it looks worse than it is.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Now, get going, okay?”

  I nodded, grabbed my backpack, and went to his closet.

  “You don’t have to go in the closet. I won’t look, and my door is locked.”

  After I got dressed, I slipped on my jacket and backpack and slinked down the stairs with Rusck. His mom was in the kitchen, and it seemed his dad was already gone. We headed for the front door.

  “Just wait a couple of minutes and then ring the doorbell,” Rusck told me.

  “Okay,” I said, taking a seat on the front step.

  While I waited the couple of minutes, I took in how picturesque Rusck’s neighborhood was, from the bright colors of the houses and perfectly painted wood fences to the pretty little gardens. Everything looked so new, just beginning its life as a neighborhood, but it all made me think of Donna, Kevin, and the others, whose lives would never have new beginnings again. The minutes passed, so I stood and rang the doorbell.

  Rusck answered the door and shouted over his shoulder. “I’m leaving now.”

  “Who’s at the door, Ruscky? his mom asked.

  “It’s Gabby. I’m going.” Without waiting for a response, Rusck closed the door and stepped out onto the porch.

  ***

  Rusck and I sat side by side at computers in the school library so we could begin our research. We both skipped out on first period.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” I said, thinking how morbid it was searching for missing and murdered children online.

  “We should start with Donna. She was the first one to seek you out,” Rusck said, typing the name Donna into the search bar.

  “We don’t even have a last name, anything.”

  “But we have a year, we think, right? Sixty years ago. And the location. Well, that’s if she’s from here.” Rusck typed in missing children, Donna, 1958.

  The screen filled with results. All children and people missing. The description on some said the body was found.

  “This is so sad. Look at all of them.”

  Rusck swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “Try that one. It says Donna.” I pointed to one link toward the bottom of the computer screen. The article popped up, and so did the picture of the missing Donna.

  “She looks too old,” I said, taking in the black and white photo of a girl wearing a cardigan and a big smile with ringlets that fell around her face.

  “The article says she was fourteen.”

  “Oh, gosh. This is going to wreck me.”

  “Creed almost had the same fate as all of these kids listed,” Rusck whispered.

  “Hey,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “But he didn’t, okay? And we’re going to help them all.” I had made a number of bad decisions in the past. For once, I’d make the right one and help those kids. Maybe people could see I wasn’t so bad after all.

  Rusck licked his lips and clicked to the next page and the one after that.

  “None of these kids are who we’re looking for. What about local newspapers?”

  “I think ours is The Post Tribune.” Rusck pulled it up and found the archive page. He typed in the same information, and a whole list of articles came up, but then a new screen popped up in front of them. “Dammit. They want us to pay for access.”

  “What kind of crap is that? I don’t have a credit card.”

  “Neither do I, but let me ask the school librarian. Maybe they have access to some sort of archives.” Rusck got up to go ask, and I stared at the screen with all the sad stories. All those people out there, not knowing what happened to their missing children.

  Rusck came back and dropped into his seat. “They don’t. She said we ought to be glad there’s even books and working computers in the library. She then started to go off about school budgets, but after she vented, she asked me what I was looking for, and she told me to try The Center for Missing Children’s website.”

  “Why didn’t we think of that? Was that around back then?”

  “I don’t know. Okay, here it is,” he said, pulling the site up. “Search for missing children. We don’t have the whole name, so I guess just the first, and we’ll assume Illinois. Crap, it won’t let me type in the year. It’ll take forever to scroll back that far.”

  “Maybe it’ll pull something up with the little we have.”

  He hit the submit button, but the search came up empty.

  “Try that,” I said, pointing to his computer screen. “It says ‘unidentified map.’”

  He clicked it. “Oh, Jesus. This is a list of unidentified bodies and where they were found, so none of them have a name.” Rusck sniffled and wiped at his eye with the back of his hand.

  “Oh my god. So awful, but what if there wasn’t ever a report filed that she was missing? What if her body was just found?”

  “She could be one of these children, maybe. No, maybe not. So many of them are teenagers. This is making me angrier and angrier.” Rusck balled his fists and tapped his knuckles on the tabletop.

  “Well, fuck. Librarian say anything else?” I asked.

  “She said we could try the library downtown. They have a microfiche room.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Newspaper articles used to get scanned, I guess you could say, or perhaps photographed, I honestly don’t know. Old newspapers are, like, on film you have to run through a machine that has this big screen so you can read them.”

  “We’re taking a trip,” I said, getting up, ready to go so we could try to find a least one clue, one piece to the puzzle.

  “But first, I bet we can find stuff online about Kevin and more recent ones.”

  “Good point.”

  I took a deep breath as Rusck typed in Kevin, missing children, and 1998. He clicked on a link, and Kevin appeared before us. My heart became even heavier than it already was.

  “Oh my gosh, there he is,” I said, sniffling. I normally wasn’t a sensitive person, but this was all so horrible. Kevin had one of those infectious smiles and beautiful green eyes, with spiked chestnut brown hair. He had a ring in his eyebrow. He was so happy and alive in the picture. “Somebody hacked him to pieces. How could somebody do that to him, or these other kids?”

  “Whoever did this is a psychotic monster. I hope we can bring these kids some kind of peace.”

  “So do I. And thinking about it, what if these all aren’t related? Because if the murders started sixty years ago, would they still be killing?”

  “Who’s getting killed?” I hea
rd from behind me. I jumped about a foot out of my chair and grasped my chest because my heart nearly escaped. Olive stood behind us.

  She laughed. “Whoa, whoa, calm down, chickie.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You scared the crap outta me.”

  “Whatcha two doing?” she asked with a mischievous grin.

  “Some research,” I said as Rusck read the article about Kevin.

  “What you reading, there?” Olive stuck her head over Rusck’s shoulder. He made a clicking sound with his tongue.

  “What, are you two going to his vigil or something?” Olive asked after she saw the article.

  “Vigil?” I asked.

  “Yeah, over in Grainsville. My grandma lives there, and he was, like, her neighbor’s cousin’s best friend or something like that. His parents won’t give up hope that he’s out there somewhere. It’s really sad.”

  “Beyond sad,” I said.

  Rusck nodded.

  “So, what’s really with you two? Are you guys, like, going out, or what?” Olive asked.

  “No,” I said. “We’re working on something together.”

  “Each other?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Your face. I’m sorry. I’m just messing with you.” She shoved me in the shoulder and turned back toward the computer. “Gosh, he wasn’t much younger than us.”

  “He never had a chance to become older than us,” I said morosely.

  “You think he’s dead?”

  I nodded.

  Olive frowned. “You need to get a new hobby. Check you later, gotta back get to class. I have a feeling you two are supposed to be in class too.”

  I waved, and we continued our research instead of going to our next class. Next on the list was Liesel, but that search came up empty. Same went for Jacob. Did nobody ever notice they went missing? Did nobody care?

  “Timothy,” Rusck said under his breath.

  The hair on my arms stood on end.

  Timothy, from Charles, Illinois, went missing on October 22, 2017 and had yet to be found. He was an active fifth grader who had a love for spelling and exploring. His parents thought he might have gone off exploring that sad day last year when he was most probably kidnapped. They prayed for his safe return.