Lance took the bottle she’d extended to him and quickly downed half of it. “I hate soda,” he said after gulping. “Nothing but sugar and poison.”
Leah nodded as she watched the television show’s final scene. When it was over and the credits began to play, she used the remote to mute the volume and then turned to face him, her demeanor serious.
Lance picked up on her sudden mood shift, could practically feel the sudden burst of sorrow and fear that had flooded her system, as if she’d done well most of the evening in blocking out whatever troubling thoughts haunted her, but was now ready to let them break the dam.
“So what’s the real problem?” Lance asked, as gently as he could.
Leah took a sip of water, glanced once at the TV and then back at Lance. “Westhaven football has won three straight state titles. Each year, one player from the team has gone missing. None of them have ever been found.”
9
Three years.
Three football state titles.
And now, with a sinking feeling in his gut that threatened to dislodge his recently ingested pizza, Lance feared there were three dead high school students to round out the statistics. One of them for sure was dead, because Lance now had a good idea who the young man was he’d seen in Leah’s bathroom mirror. He hoped he was wrong, suddenly wanted to be wrong about this more than anything in his life. But he recalled that feeling of dread he’d experienced since arriving in town, the attack in the parking lot, and even Leah’s daddy’s somewhat inexplicable night off from work, and could not shake the feeling that they were the result of nothing but true evil. And true evil didn’t play games. True evil went for the kill.
An entire country, forty-eight contiguous states, and this is what I end up in the middle of on my first stop from home. Talk about luck.
“You already knew, didn’t you?”
Lance looked up from the floor, where he’d been staring as he’d processed what Leah had told him. She was looking at him longingly, expectantly, as if she desperately wanted him to say yes, he did already know, and he had the answer to fix it all. Maybe he’d made a mistake in telling her about his abilities. Maybe he’d inadvertently made himself out to be something bigger in her eyes than he truly was. The girl looking back at him from the opposite side of the couch was a girl looking for the truth she figured only he could provide.
But Lance wasn’t ready to tell her the whole truth. He would not tell her about what he could see. What he had seen. Not yet. It was still too early, and he was still afraid he’d come off as some sort of lunatic and she’d feel foolish and embarrassed and disappointed in herself for even considering trusting him. Leah was smart and headstrong, but she was still young and carried a lingering bit of innocence. Lance did not want to accidentally take that away from her.
But there was something else, a new feeling Lance could feel coming from her. Mixed with the look in her eyes—that longing look—that seemed to be more than just simply pleading for his help, but begging, Lance could feel her sorrow washing over him like a fine mist, cold and sticky and making his skin prickle. Again he got the impression that she’d been keeping something buried, something more important than she’d been letting on, and now she was tired of the masquerade and had removed the mask.
There was something very familiar about the pain coming from her. Lance quickly recognized it as a weaker version of what he himself was currently—
Oh. Oh no.
Lance ignored Leah’s question and asked one of his own. One he was terrified he already knew the answer to. “One of those boys … one of them was your brother, wasn’t he?”
At the mention of her secret, of the truth Lance had somehow managed to excavate from her inner thoughts, Leah closed her eyes and a single tear spilled from each, slowly trailing down her cheeks until they fell to the couch with audible plops. Lance sat still, unsure of what he should do. Part of him wanted to reach out a comforting hand, be a reassuring shoulder to cry on. But another part, a part that carried the echoes of his mother’s voice, told him that Leah was strong enough not to need those things right now; she’d been down this road before, often, and the best thing to do was to let his new friend move at her own pace. Lance was there to help, and a big part of that was going to be to listen.
So he remained where he was on the couch, slouched into the corner with one leg pulled under him, his other size fifteen sneaker flat on the floor. He never took his eyes off Leah, and when she was finally able to regain the composure she’d been so effortlessly displaying, she looked up at him with wet eyes and smiled. Lance smiled back.
Leah wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled. Lance wished he had a tissue to offer. “He was the first,” Leah said. “The first casualty of Westhaven High School’s historic football run.” Leah smiled again and gave off a small laugh. “God, he wasn’t very good, but he tried so hard. Loved the stupid game. I think he’d have been happy just being the water boy, just to be around it, you know?”
Lance nodded. He did know. He’d known plenty of guys like that in high school. Ones who would shoot baskets and run full-court with anybody all day, every day because they loved to play. But they didn’t quite have the skillset to back up the passion. They’d gladly volunteer to be equipment managers, statisticians, videographers, anything to be at every game and have an inside connection to the team. To be a part of the basketball family.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Leah asked.
“What?”
“The thing he loved is the thing that ended up killing him.”
Lance bit his tongue, citing compassion as the reason he asked, “What makes you sure he’s dead? You said none of the players had been found.”
Leah looked at him, and instantly Lance had known his bluff had been called. “Don’t patronize me, Lance. Don’t act like everybody else and pretend that bad things haven’t happened and that there’s still hope and all that other bullshit people always say to a victim’s face before going home and closing their doors and then shaking their heads and saying things like ‘Oh, that poor thing. Bless her heart. Such a tragedy. Blah blah blah.’ You know the truth, and I didn’t have you pegged as the type of person who would shy away from it.”
Lance sat, stunned. This girl is … wow. Just … wow.
His level of guilt at hiding the true nature of his abilities was growing stronger by the minute, but still he refrained. It wasn’t the time. He needed more information about what he was up against. “Okay,” he offered. “Your brother—oh, what was his name?”
Lance quickly regretted the use of past tense, but the damage was done.
“Samuel,” Leah said.
“Okay, so Sam was the—”
“No. Never Sam. He always liked to be called Samuel.” She smiled another sad smile. “He said it was more distinguished. No wonder he wasn’t a superstar athlete, huh? Concerned about things like that.”
Lance waited a beat before continuing, letting Leah finish off her memory. “So Samuel was the first of the three players to disappear, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then that’s where I need to start. Tell me exactly what happened, as best you can. Maybe we can put some pieces together.”
Leah looked at him for a long moment, and Lance wondered if she’d suddenly decided this was all a bad idea. Maybe she’d finally realized she was talking about something she normally kept locked away down deep to a man who was practically a stranger. But then, softly, she said, “You know, I’ve been over the details of Samuel’s disappearance a million times—with the police, with Daddy, with friends—and another ten million times in my own head. It’s never done a single bit of good. Nothing I saw and nothing I know has ever helped anybody come any closer to helping me get any sort of closure. My brother is dead, I know that.” She paused. “And I can’t explain it, honestly I can’t, but you’re the first person I’ve ever met who I think for some reason might be able to finally help me figure out why.”
And then, in a move that both melted Lance’s heart, and also made his skin come alive with electricity, Leah reached across the cushion that separated them and squeezed his hand.
With that simple touch, Lance’s own demons and problems dissolved for an instant, and all that remained was a will to help this young girl find out what had happened to her brother.
Him and two other boys who had obviously suffered at the hand of whatever force was after Lance as well.
For the next fifteen minutes, Lance sat in his corner of the couch, eyes fixed on Leah as she did her best to summarize her story.
Leah and Samuel’s mother had “gotten sick” a year and a half before Samuel had disappeared. Leah didn’t say what exactly had been wrong with the woman, but sadly, she’d passed on just a few quick months after falling ill. From there, Leah’s family home had become a disaster zone. Her father, who’d been an overly aggressive social drinker to use the politest of terms, had let go of whatever small part of the wagon he’d been holding on to. He was rarely seen at home without a bottle in his hand and rarely seen in town unless it was on a barstool. “He always went to work, though,” Leah said. “He never missed a single day at the mill. Even the days he could barely stand. Daddy’s got flaws—bad ones—but he’s loyal.”
Lance chewed on this information for a moment before asking, “And how was his relationship with you and Samuel, after your mother passed?”
Leah’s face fell, and Lance had a good idea what she was about to admit. “Not the best,” she said. “He loves us, don’t get me wrong, but he just … after Momma, and the drinking … he … I don’t think he ever meant to.…”
“He hit you,” Lance said. It happened every day in this country, but that didn’t make the sting any duller as he looked at this sweet girl’s face and imagined a burly fist connecting with one of her eye sockets.
Leah offered a sad, small grin and shrugged. “Only once with me. Nothing so bad. Just a hard slap across the face one day when I talked back. I knew he felt terrible about it as soon as it happened.”
“And Samuel?”
Leah closed her eyes, and Lance didn’t want to know what she was seeing behind her closed eyelids.
“Yes, it was worse for Samuel. I don’t know why. He never did anything wrong. But he just always seemed to be in Daddy’s way when the time came for an outburst. After all this time, part of me can’t help but wonder if he was doing it on purpose. Trying to protect me.”
“Sounds like a good brother.”
Leah’s face lit up. “He was the best.” Then she continued on.
When football practice had started and the new coach—Coach McGuire—had the team doing two-a-days in what could only be an attempt to figure out why these young men had only won a single game the previous season, Leah had started spending more and more time helping out at the motel.
“Daddy’s daddy owned this place until he died,” Leah said. “Daddy inherited it, and since it was all paid for and, like I said, Daddy’s loyal, we’ve always kept it. At that time, we had more hired help here, but I was sixteen and looking for a good reason to get out of the house and out of Daddy’s way. So I asked Daddy—one day when he was surprisingly sober—if I could work part-time. I said I wanted my own spending cash so I could go out with friends. I think he knew the real reason I was asking, but he was too ashamed to admit it.”
“And now you basically run the place?” Lance asked.
“Basically.”
“Impressive.”
“I don’t have much else to do. It keeps me busy, and I like helping people.”
“That’s a nice way to look at it.”
The two-a-days seemed to have helped, because Westhaven had won their first game of the season. And their second, and their third. The parents were happy, the fans were happy, the sports boosters were happy, but more importantly, the players were happy. The morale and camaraderie of Westhaven’s football team were high, and the intense schedule of grueling practices that Coach McGuire had created suddenly seemed more than worth it. Leah said that Samuel looked forward to practices and pre-game meals and film sessions even more than he usually did, and from what she gathered, the rest of the team felt the same way.
After the fourth victory in a row, Coach McGuire invited the entire team over to his house for a barbecue. Parents were invited as well, and even though Leah and Samuel’s daddy was unable to attend, Glenn Strang, father of Westhaven’s new placekicker and largest new donor to Westhaven’s athletic programs, was in attendance. He’d announced to everybody there that if Westhaven could win their fifth game in a row, they’d all be invited to a pool party at his home.
“He stood on top of Coach McGuire’s lawn mower to make sure he could be seen and heard,” Leah said. “Samuel said he looked like an expensively dressed meerkat, the way he suddenly popped up over the crowd.”
Westhaven won the next game, and Strang kept his word. After the first pool party, the Strang home became somewhat of a regular hangout for Westhaven players. Glenn Strang told the team that his door was always open if any of the boys needed a place to study, clear their head, stay the night, or anything.
“It was pretty weird, if you ask me,” Leah said. “It was like he was running some sort of shelter for the football team. I mean, his house is practically a mansion by this town’s standards, and Mrs. Strang was always home to help the boys with schoolwork, or fix them a good meal, and everybody seemed to genuinely like Bobby—that’s the Strangs’ son. But some parents started grumbling that their sons were spending too much time away from home. More specifically, too much time at casa de Strang.”
Lance had had similar team barbecues and parties hosted by parents of players or the coaches, and even the high school principal. But none of these people had essentially given him a key to their home and asked him to come by anytime for any reason. It wasn’t exactly a red flag, but it certainly was an oddity.
“But the trouble really started when word got out that a lot of female students were making their way to the Strang house along with the players.”
“Uh-oh,” Lance said. “So the place went from shelter to brothel?”
“Brothel is a little harsh. Some of those girls are my friends, thank you very much. But basically it didn’t take long for a group of horny high school boys to realize that if their parents wouldn’t let them take a girl to their bedroom and close the door, maybe they could find someplace to be alone with a girl at their home away from home. A place as big as the Strangs’ house, and with limited adult supervision, it was worth a shot. And it paid off for quite a few.”
“Interesting.”
Leah leaned forward, as if about to divulge some secret bit of evidence. “What’s always bugged me about the whole situation is, I don’t know if the Strangs knew about and were encouraging what was happening at their home, or they were simply naïve and ignorant. I mean, they obviously cared about the players and Bobby’s friends, but I’ve always wondered how involved they actually were in everything. How hands-on. Does that make any sense?”
Lance nodded. “I think so. Basically you want to know if the Strangs were the problem. Point-blank.”
Leah thought for a moment. “Yeah, basically. I just think their whole open-home policy was bizarre. And there’s no denying the link between the timing of their showing up and entering the players’ lives, and the team beginning to win, and … and my brother’s disappearance.”
“Did Samuel spend a lot of time at the Strangs’ house?”
Leah nodded. “Oh yeah. I used this place as my escape”—she gestured to the room around them—“and Samuel jumped all over the Strangs’ freestanding invitation to use as his. He was constantly there. He and Bobby Strang got to be very close.”
“What did your father think of that?”
Leah shrugged. “Daddy was still drinking a lot, and I think, just like with me and the motel, he knew Samuel was protecting himself. Daddy’s not dumb, he was just … br
oken for a while.”
“He’s better now?”
“He’s getting there.”
Lance left things at that. “So when did Samuel disappear?”
“Three days before the state championship game.”
“And that’s all? He was just here, playing football, spending a lot of time at his friend’s house, and then one day he was gone?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t notice him acting different at all, like something was wrong? Who was the last person to see him?”
“No, he seemed completely normal. Funny enough, it was Bobby Strang who saw him last. They had been in town, getting some burgers for lunch, and Samuel told Bobby he had to go, that he was going to see his girlfriend.”
“He had a girlfriend?” Lance asked.
Leah’s face grew somber again, and she took a deep breath. “This is the other part that kills me, the part I can’t understand. Samuel and I were always close, being only a year apart. It’s just the way we grew up together. We had no secrets. He still came by the motel as often as he could to say hi, or bring me some takeout for dinner, and we always talked about what was going on in our lives.”
“Okay.”
“And not once in all those visits, all that time together, even two days before he vanished, did he ever mention a single word to me about having a girlfriend.”
Lance had no brothers or sisters of his own and briefly let his mind wander to explore what it might be like to have somebody who shared his blood and was that close to him, somebody he could always trust and count on and speak freely to without fear of judgment. Somebody he could share his world with.
He quickly realized this person had been his mother, and his heart thumped a beat of anguish. God, how he missed her.
“So who was this girlfriend?” he asked.
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