by A. C. Ellas
Nobody molested him as he waited for the door to open. Nobody spoke to him. Nobody even came close to him. Gary and his goons were conspicuous in their absence. Jason understood the actions of his classmates. He was being punished for turning them in. Not that he’d had any say in that. The Guild monitor had pulled the information out of him.
Of course, he didn’t at all mind the silent treatment. He didn’t like them anyhow. If they wanted to ignore him, so much the better. He could get his work done, free of harassment. It would be a refreshing change. So he lifted his head and smiled at all the scowling faces. Let them hate him. He was better than they were.
The pinballs ricocheted across his skull painfully and the whispers of the bugs were almost overwhelming, but he wouldn’t let them win. He wouldn’t let them see him hurt. They could curse him all they wanted. He didn’t care. He didn’t. As he went into the school, he almost had himself convinced.
Chapter Seven: Nick
Nick stood in his bedroom in front of the dresser mirror. He was carefully rubbing lotion onto his skin, just below the hated bag. The constant rubbing of the bag on his skin kept resulting in itchy rashes. Gilly had recommended a steroid cream, which did seem to be helping. But still, it had to be applied, which meant even more contact with It.
Finished, Nick put the cap back on the tube and wiped his fingers clean on a hand towel he kept on top of the dresser for just that purpose. Before he could pick up his shirt, Evie poked her head in. “Hey, Nicky…” her voice trailed off as she saw the reflection of It in the mirror.
Her eyes were locked on It, her face draining of color. Nick was too shocked to move as she whispered, “Oh, god…oh god, oh god, oh god…” She ran, abruptly pulling her head out of the doorway and slamming it closed just as Nick finally got over his own shock of being discovered.
He turned, a moment too late. “Evie!” he called, but what came out was barely above a whisper in strength, so he tried again. “Evie!” This time he bellowed loudly enough for the whole house to hear him, but his sister didn’t come back. Nick fell to his knees with a sob, a dagger of ice twisting in his heart.
Nick threw on his shirt, tears drying on his cheeks. He felt empty, like he was falling into some yawning abyss, hollow, cold and so alone. Evie hates me, he thought with despair, she hates me because I’m a freak. He grabbed a jacket and ran lightly down the stairs, making almost no noise at all. Father had taught him the value of a light, silent step, and he used that skill now unthinkingly. He ran out the front door a moment later, turning at the gate to run down the street to the end of the block and then down the steps of the maglev shuttle station. In the city areas, the shuttles ran in underground tunnels, only emerging into open air when they reached the countryside.
* * * *
When Evie ran into her bedroom sobbing, Gilly immediately dropped what she was doing. She turned off her hair dryer, went to a knee and wrapped her arms around the hysterical child. Gilly just held Evie until the girl seemed calmer. Then, she guided her over to the bed and sat them both down so that she could discover what the problem was.
Gilly stroked Evie’s hair. “What’s wrong, honey? What happened?”
“Mommy,” Evie sobbed. “I saw that…that thing on Nicky’s belly and I freaked out. I was so scared, so angry…”
“Angry?” Gilly asked in surprise. “You’re angry Nick didn’t tell you?”
“No, I’m not angry at Nicky,” Evie clarified between sniffles, “but at that bastard who did it to him. I didn’t know. I never imagined it was that bad.” She began to sob again. “It’s all my fault. Nicky wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for me.”
Gilly sighed heavily as Evie sobbed into her shoulder. “Honey, it’s not your fault. Shhh. You didn’t make your father do that, you didn’t cause Nicky to get hurt. Stop blaming yourself, Evie.”
“It was my fault. Nicky wouldn’t have gone to see that guy if it weren’t for me. All my fault,” Evie wailed, “’cause I told him we were out of yeast and almost out of salt.”
Gilly rocked the girl comfortingly. “Evie, that doesn’t make it your fault. The fault lies with your father. He did those things to you and your brother. It was wrong of him, you didn’t deserve it, you didn’t cause it and you’re not the blame for it.”
Evie sighed softly, trembling in Gilly’s arms but no longer sobbing.
After a moment of silence, Gilly asked, “What did Nicky say when you saw it?”
Evie sat up, taking a deep breath as worry blossomed on her features. “He didn’t say anything, but when I ran out crying, I heard him call my name. I was so upset, I couldn’t bear the thought of going back in there.”
Gilly stood up, pulling Evie up with her. “We’d better go check on him, honey.”
Evie nodded silently, placing her hand in Gilly’s as they walked out of the bedroom together. Nick wasn’t in his room, and his jacket was gone. There was no note, no indication that anything was amiss, but somehow, they just knew that Nick was in trouble. They checked downstairs and outside, too, just to be certain. There was no sign of Nick anywhere.
Gilly went to her computer console and plugged a jack into her data port. “Don’t worry, Evie, we’ll find him. He’s a minor, so I can track him via his data port. Any time he uses it, no matter how minor the use, a record will show up, giving me a time and location.”
Evie blinked. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
Gilly smiled. “Well, for most people, it’s not. But I am the chief of Child Protective and Nicky’s legal guardian. That enables me to do this.”
* * * *
Nick stepped out of the shuttle and walked away from the station quickly, without looking back. He hardly recalled the trip, other than as a blur. He knew that he’d better stop using his data port, but then, out here, it would hardly be necessary or even usable. His feet turned down the proper path as his eyes took in the familiar sights of the small village near his father’s house. It would still be a two-hour walk, he knew, before he saw home once more.
He hoped that he’d manage to conceal his tracks from Gilly, but he couldn’t count on it. But then, would she expect him to go back home? Wouldn’t she think that he’d be happy to avoid the place where he’d been abused, even tortured? It wasn’t the house he wanted anyway, but the mountains and the trees and the quiet peace of the wilderness. Always before, when the pain had threatened to overwhelm him, he’d turned to the wilderness for comfort, and always, he’d come back with peace in his heart once more.
He inhaled deeply of the fresh mountain air as he walked easily down the overgrown path. Soon, he’d be back in the territory with which he was the most familiar. He could vanish in a twinkling even here, for he was not unknowledgeable about the terrain for miles and miles around the village, but it was the mountains west of his home that he knew best. Those mountains were his destination.
* * * *
Gilly tapped her fingers on the edge of her console, frowning as the results came up. “Nicky!” she exclaimed in exasperation.
Evie looked at the map with a puzzled expression. There were a lot of dots giving Nicky’s location, but they all seemed to have the same time, and they were randomly scattered all over the city area, at great distances from one another. “Is that right?”
Gilly shook her head. “Your genius of a brother apparently wants to be left alone. He knew I could track him through the data port, and he knew he couldn’t erase his trail…so he mirrored himself, creating multiple false entries for each real entry.”
Evie’s eyes grew wide. “Wow. What will you do?”
Gilly pursed her lips, glaring at the map. “We’ll have to try to outthink him the old-fashioned way. We need to guess where he’d go.”
Evie glanced at the map, shrugging. “I don’t know, Mom. Nicky’s way smarter than me.”
“Evie, don’t sell yourself short. Now, think…where would he go? Where would you go if you were him?”
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p; The girl nodded then began to pace as she thought. “Nicky wouldn’t go to the city,” Evie finally said quietly. “That wouldn’t be like him. He probably wants to be alone.”
Gilly nodded. “That stands to reason. He’s unhappy about that device, to put it mildly. I’d argue that you’re more alone in a crowd than in the wilderness, but he’s young and might not think that way.”
Evie had turned to Gilly, eyes widening. “Wilderness. Mom, Nicky loves the wilderness. His wilderness—the mountains and forest near the house. I’d bet he thinks you’d never even consider that he’d go back there. But he doesn’t care about the house, just his wilderness.”
Gilly’s smile grew little by little as she thought about it. She turned back to her map, looking at the entries carefully. “Yes, here it is,” she said. “Look, the maglev station, one passage sought, destination the Ozark station.”
“That’s the real one then. Nicky went to his wilderness.” Evie took a deep breath and sighed. “We’ll never find him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Mom, Nicky knows that wilderness like the back of his own hand.” Evie shook her head. “Maybe better. And he knows how to survive off the land. He was teaching me how to live rough when it happened.”
Gilly’s eyebrows shot up. “Live rough?”
“That’s what Nicky called it. He meant the ability to live comfortably alone in the deep woods, without any other people, without anything but really basic equipment, completely without technology and modern conveniences. He said once I could do that, we’d be able to escape from Father forever.”
“I see.” Gilly unplugged the jack and stood up. “Well, let’s make the attempt anyhow, okay?”
* * * *
Nick walked into the abandoned house, eyes flicking at the familiar sights, now coated in a layer of dust. He walked quickly to his old room and pulled his pack out from under the bed. Everything he needed was in the pack, but he opened it up and double checked the contents, just to make sure. Everything was accounted for, so Nick closed the pack and slung it over his shoulder. After a moment’s hesitation, he rolled up the heaviest blanket on his bed, strapping it to the pack before he walked out of the room.
A minute later, he was out of the house, walking down the path, eyes looking up at the mountains he was quickly approaching. He decided to go up to the unicorn valley. The same genetic engineers who’d created the long-extinct slaves races like the Rovania had also created some of the animals out of mythology. Nick had never seen a dragon, but he was aware that they existed. Unicorns were slightly more common, and he had seen those, for a band of them lived in the mountain valley he was heading for.
The unicorn had as much in common with mountain goats as with horses and didn’t care a whit about a person’s virginal status. Like all wild things, they were shy and elusive, avoiding all people when they could. But they were beautiful, and he enjoyed watching them. The fact that he’s taken Evie up to the valley several times before never even crossed his mind as he started up the arduous trail.
* * * *
Evie and Gilly got out of the hovercar in front of the house. Gilly commented, “He can’t have beat us here by much. It’s got to be a long hike from the shuttle.”
“Two hours or so,” Evie agreed, looking around a yard she’d thought she’d never see again. “Three if you’re taking it easy.”
Gilly nodded. “Okay. Well, I think we should check the house and the barn first, just in case. No use running around in the woods if Nicky’s hiding out indoors.”
Evie shrugged. “It’s probably a waste of time, but I guess it’s better to be certain.” She led the way into the house, pausing in the doorway. “Nicky did come in here. See? His footprints in the dust, going in and coming out.”
Gilly looked down at the floor, nodding when she saw the tread marks left by the teenager’s shoes. “Yes, I see. Let’s go in and check anyway. Then, we’ll look in the barn.” It didn’t take long to search the house. Thankfully, the police had been thorough in their cleanup, so there weren’t any bloodstains to freak Evie out. Having cleared the house, they walked toward the barn.
“We never used the barn for anything,” Evie commented as they neared the dilapidated structure. “I’m not even sure how it’s managed to remain standing.”
Gilly smiled. “We’ll be careful, right?”
“Right,” Evie agreed, and then, they walked in. Gilly hadn’t thought about what might be in the barn or considered that the police had no reason to go into the dangerous, old building. So when Evie made a strangled, whimpering noise of shock and ran out of the barn to collapse, vomiting into the weeds a few feet outside the door, Gilly wasn’t prepared for it.
Her own eyes took in the scene before she darted out to comfort Evie. She saw the ripped clothing, the ropes, the ugly, sharp implements and the blood. A lot of old, dried blood on the straw-covered dirt. She gathered Evie into her arms. “Oh, god, honey, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, tears running down her cheeks. “I didn’t think that one through, and I knew about it. I forgot that the barn was where it happened. I’m sorry you had to see that, honey.”
Evie took a deep, shuddering breath. “Poor Nicky. I’m so glad he killed that son of a bitch. The bastard had it coming. He really, truly did. An’ I don’t care if he was my father! I don’t care if I’m a bad person for hating him!”
Gilly smiled weakly. “I don’t think you’re a bad person for hating him, Evie. I think you’re a good person who was hurt badly. Hating your persecutor is normal, honey. That doesn’t mean you’re bad.”
“Nicky wouldn’t agree,” Evie said glumly. “Nicky always said we owed him our respect because he was our father. He said it was wrong to hate him.”
Gilly handed Evie a bottle of water from the bag she was carrying. “Honey, I don’t agree with Nicky on that one. He’s not always right, you know. He’s as human as the rest of us, and that means he can make mistakes. And I’ll bet he wouldn’t tell you that now, either.”
Evie drank the water gratefully, rinsing the taste of vomit out of her mouth before asking, “Now what, Mom?”
Gilly looked around at the trees, the mountains just to their west and more trees. This place was so isolated that it might as well be another world. “I don’t know. Did he ever share any favorite places? Any special places?”
Evie nodded, her expression thoughtful. “There was one place…a special place that he took me to see several times. It’s not an easy hike, though.”
“Let’s do it. It’s our best bet.” Gilly smiled encouragingly as they stood up. Evie led the way around the house, heading toward the looming mountains.
The trail was beyond not easy, it was an arduous climb, at times nearly impassable by the out-of-shape woman and the young girl, but they pushed on regardless, somehow making it over obstacles that Gilly would have turned back at the sight of if she hadn’t been so worried about Nick. They reached a narrow passage that ran straight and only slightly sloped for nearly a hundred feet, causing Gilly to sigh with relief.
She indicated that they should pause as she pulled two more water bottles, handing one to Evie. She took a swig of her own then said, “You weren’t kidding about the difficulty of the trail.”
“This is one of Nicky’s easy trails, Mom. At least, he calls it easy, ‘cause there’s no real rock climbing involved. To Nicky, if he doesn’t need rope and pitons, it’s an easy hike.”
Gilly blinked in surprise. “I had no idea that he was into things like that. He must have been going stir crazy at my house, with no mountains to play on.”
Evie chuckled. “Maybe. We should continue on. If we stop too long, we’ll stiffen up and it’ll be that much harder to get going again.”
As they started walking, Gilly asked, “Did Nicky teach you that?”
From behind them, Nick’s soft voice replied, “Yes, I did, but Evie picked a bad time to remember it. Stop.”
Gilly spu
n in place, eyes finding Nick after a moment, on a different patch of rock, above and behind them. Evie looked up at him, clearly wondering what was going on. Nick was hardly paying attention to them, a fact that Gilly was quick to notice. The boy’s attention was very focused elsewhere, somewhere ahead of them.
“Back up to the head of the section you’re in,” Nick commanded absently, still paying attention to whatever it was.
They complied, though Evie shot him several disgruntled glances as they backtracked. “What’s going on, Nicky?” she finally asked. “Why’d you run off without saying anything? Why’d you come up here all alone?”
Nick ignored her second two questions. He pointed ahead of them, further up the trail. “Look there, at that slightly overhanging rock. Do you see her?”
Gilly looked, brow furrowed. She saw a rock that leaned over the trail, but that was all. There was no woman anywhere near it. “I see a rock,” she stated flatly.
“I don’t see anything, either,” said Evie.
“On top of the rock. Look very closely, she’s well camouflaged.”
Gilly looked at the top of the rocks and saw only smaller rocks. No women, nothing. “All I see are rocks, Nick. Care to explain what’s going on?” Her temper was growing short at his stubborn insistence of there being a woman on the rock.
Evie suddenly drew in a sharp breath. “Ohhh, is that what I think it is?”
Gilly glanced at the girl in surprise. “What do you think you see?”
Evie pointed also. “That rock, the golden one?”
“Yes, next to the reddish one. What of it?”
“It’s not a rock.”
Gilly blinked at the golden-colored rock. “It’s not? Then what is it?”
“A mountain lion,” Evie announced calmly.
“Very good,” Nick replied in confirmation. At Gilly’s surprised look, he added, “She’s usually not out hunting at this time of day, which is worrisome. She had a pair of cubs earlier this year, so if the hunting has gotten bad enough that she’s out in the middle of the day, then she might be desperate enough to attack people, too.”