We Are Always Watching

by Hunter Shea

  West’s heart sank a little lower.

  Grandpa Abraham hadn’t lied.

  Faith pulled on the door’s handle, crying out, “I’m going to get you out, Rayna! I swear!”

  “Help me, Faith. Please.”

  Desperate, Faith grabbed an old shovel and hammered the door, sending blue sparks everywhere.

  West grabbed the handle as she reared back for another blow.

  “Stop!” he said. “I don’t think my grandfather was lying when he said the room was rigged in case someone tried to get in without the key.”

  She wouldn’t let go, her chest heaving. Faith glowered at him with half-moon eyes. “Did he tell you what would happen?”

  “He didn’t say exactly how he rigged the room, but it didn’t sound good.”

  “Do you know where the key is then?”

  “He keeps it on him.”

  The steel shovel head hit the floor with a deafening ke-rang. West stepped back, giving her space. She looked like a feral child trapped in a corner.

  She said flatly, “That’s what I thought.”

  Faith pulled the shovel from his loosened grip. West didn’t have time to register what happened next. She went into a batter’s stance, the shovel high over one shoulder.

  When it slammed into his ear, a high-pitched whine exploded in his brain.

  He was unconscious before he realized he’d gone permanently deaf in that ear.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  No one was home at the Simmons house. Abraham had refused to get out of the idling truck. Matt hammered on the door to no avail.

  “West? Are you in there?”

  He’d have come to the door by now, Matt thought. Dammit, where is everyone?

  Stepping off the porch, a quick glance at the truck’s headlights set him off balance. He dropped to a knee.

  “You need help?” his father asked, much to his surprise.

  Matt waved him off. “I’ll be fine.” He got up slowly, taking small, measured steps to the truck. “We might as well go back home. If West isn’t there, I’ll have to call the cops.”

  “You need to be missing twenty-four hours before they’ll do anything.”

  “West is fourteen. I seriously doubt they’ll sit on their asses for an entire day.”

  Matt hoped to holy hell it wouldn’t come to that.

  One thought kept flooding his brain, unbidden and unwanted.

  What if the Guardians took him?

  He could have set off from the house for Faith and been intercepted by one of them.

  Please God, you can’t do that to us. You hear me! You just can’t do that.

  After an awkward three-point turn, they sped back to the farmhouse. Matt fished his cellphone out and called James. His friend answered on the first ring.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need you to come over,” Matt said. “West is missing.”

  “I’ll be right there,” James said, hanging up.

  They almost missed the entrance to their property, the truck fishtailing and clipping a hedge.

  “Try to get us back in one piece,” Matt said, gripping the door’s handle to keep from sliding into his father.

  “If you can drive any better you’re free to do it.”

  The front door to the house was wide open.

  Debi must have found him and forgotten to close it.

  Which made sense. Her relief would have overridden everything.

  The truck came to a rough stop. Matt’s forehead hit the windshield hard enough to bloom a whopper of a headache.

  “Jesus,” he hissed, rubbing his head.

  “You’ll be fine,” his father said, getting out.

  “I need you to help me inside,” Matt said, despite every cell in his body crying out for him to crawl on his hands and knees rather than accept a hand from his old man.

  But that would take too long to get in the house.

  “Aren’t you glad I’m around?” his father said with a sloppy smirk. “What would you do without me?”

  As he helped him from the car, draping Matt’s arm over one shoulder, Matt replied, “There’s not enough time in the day to list everything.”

  His father chuckled. It sounded so odd, considering the backdrop. And it made Matt uneasy. “You know, I gave you a master course in being a smartass. I’m sure it helped you up there in New York.”

  They walked inside, Matt trying to extricate himself from his father’s grasp, but his legs deciding otherwise. “Deb? West?”

  No answer.

  “What the hell is going on?” Matt said. He called out again, louder and more urgent.

  His father plopped him down in a chair in the foyer.

  “I need to get to my bedroom,” Matt said.

  “And I have to look outside.”

  “Outside? Why?”

  “Just stay put.”

  His father stomped through the house and out the back door. Matt lurched from the chair, reaching for the banister. The walk down the hall was like traipsing through a funhouse. He wanted to vomit. He thought he would pass out.

  Neither happened. Stumbling into his room, he collapsed on the bed, rolled to his side, and pulled his night table’s drawer open.

  Concentrating through his double vision, he fumbled for the gun and shoved it in his pocket.

  Where was everybody?

  Now even his father was gone.

  ***

  Debi awoke with a gasp.

  Her ankle throbbed.

  Something was in her mouth. It felt like a wet rag. When she tried to pull it out, she found her hands were bound.

  Her heart went into overdrive.

  Where am I?

  She looked around, realizing she was seeing the field through a pair of slits in something that covered her head. The fabric felt rough against her nose.

  In fact, her entire body was tied up, her arms splayed out as if she were crucified.

  Pure, unfiltered panic flowed in an acidic burst of bile that singed her throat.

  How did I get here?

  West!

  I thought West was outside.

  Then I… then I tripped or something.

  No, I didn’t trip. It was like someone grabbed me.

  The more she woke up, the greater the pain flared in her ankle.

  Then the unimaginable hit her.

  She was tied to a stake in the middle of the untended field. The sack over her face was burlap and old, judging by the smell.

  Someone had turned her into a scarecrow!

  Debi tried to scream through the wad of bitter cotton in her mouth, tears and snot streaking down her face.

  The Guardians had tricked her.

  Did that mean they had West, too?

  What were they going to do to them? Why make her a living scarecrow?

  She shrieked and shrieked, her lamentations so soft, they didn’t even disturb the crickets.

  ***

  Abraham went back to his truck, grabbing the sawed off shotgun he kept behind the driver’s seat. Adrenaline had overpowered the alcohol in his bloodstream. He was straighter than six o’clock now.

  Fishing keys from his pocket, he slowly and quietly undid the lock on the storm doors leading to the cellar.

  Those sons of bitches weren’t playing by the rules.

  He’d warned them what would happen, hadn’t he?

  He shouldn’t have shown the kid. But he had to know. Abraham saw a lot of himself in the boy, underneath all the bookworm nonsense. It went beyond their similarities in appearance. If West only knew how much his grandfather looked like him when he was his age. It was like looking in a mirror.

  He’d grown up soft in the suburbs, but Abraham sensed something special in his grandson. He’d thought, in his boozy haze, that they could share a private moment, form a bond that had never materialized between him and Matt. West had a darkness in him. Shit, it just took one look at his walls, at the books and magazines that he obsessed over, to see it.
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br />   But the boy was so skittish, he probably took off like a jackrabbit with no clue about where he was going.

  That was the best case scenario.

  It was the one he clung to, at least until they got back to find Debi missing.

  Shit was hitting the fan all right.

  He winced when one of the doors made a sharp squeal.

  Fuck it. So much for the element of surprise.

  He ran down the concrete steps, his finger on the trigger, happy to show them what happened when you went too damn far.

  ***

  Something bad must have happened, James thought when he pulled up to the house. It was lit up like the Fourth of July.

  “They’re probably inside scared shitless,” he muttered to himself, running to the front door.

  It was open, which was surprising.

  “Hey, Matt, you in there?” he called from the safety of the porch. He’d given his old friend a gun but he didn’t know if Matt really knew how to use it. If he was on high alert, James had no desire to have the words ‘friendly fire’ in his obituary.

  “In here,” Matt answered.

  James found him in the bedroom. “Where is everybody?”

  “I don’t fucking know. Every time I turn around, someone else goes missing.”

  James took out his own peacekeeper.

  “What do you mean, missing?”

  Matt’s eyes were wild, literally swimming in their sockets, rimmed red as raw steak. “First West, then Deb, now my father. I have to find them.” He got up, swooned, and collapsed back onto the bed.

  “I’m calling the cops,” James said, reaching for his cell phone.

  “You can’t! They might hurt them.”

  “You mean the Guardians?”

  Matt nodded, his body caving in on itself.

  “You know they have them?” James asked, feeling as if eyes were at his back.

  “I don’t for sure, but what else could it be? My family wouldn’t just run off into the night.”

  A rusty screech of metal gave James a start. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know. Think you can help me?” Matt said, reaching out.

  James pulled him to his feet, one beefy hand around his friend’s waist.

  “Sounds like it came from the front yard,” James said.

  They hobbled down the hallway. James halted at the sight of a sheet of paper tacked to the screen door. He pulled it free with the hand that held his gun and showed it to Matt.

  NO MORE WATCHING.

  James felt Matt’s body freeze up, his own blood chilling as if he’d been transfused with liquid nitrogen.

  “Shit,” Matt said, trying to keep on his own two feet.

  “Murderers!”

  They turned to face the voice.

  James saw the butt end of a rifle a nanosecond before it hit him between the eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  West unsteadily rose out of the fog, feeling like he was going to puke his guts out.

  His hands pushed into something soft and crumbly.

  He was outside.

  When he touched the side of his head that was throbbing to the beat of a manic samba, it was like feeling a body part that was somehow disconnected from the whole. The entire side of his head felt numb… was numb.

  But there was more to it.

  His hand brushed past his ear.

  He couldn’t hear a single thing.

  Tugging on the ear that may or may not have been attached to his head only elicited more pain, not sound.

  Deaf and disoriented, he struggled to stand.

  He looked around, saw that he was in a sunken depression in the field. Very little weeds or vegetation grew in the oblong clearing.

  “Faith?”

  She’d been with him, down in the basement. Yes, he was sure of that.

  He’d wanted to see if the girl in the room was her sister.

  And it was!

  Yes, Faith’s voice got the girl to speak.

  Then… nothing.

  “Faith? I need help.”

  The agony ripping his brain in two assisted his stomach in emptying its contents with a meaty splash.

  One word kept repeating itself: concussion.

  After laying the contents of his stomach bare, all he wanted to do was lie down and sleep. He was so tired. Maybe if he closed his eyes for a little while, he’d wake up able to hear out of his left ear. It could all be just a symptom of the concussion.

  Had he hit his head in a fall? And what made him fall?

  Dropping so his knees, he swayed, trying to focus on the stars, but they were too bright, blinking too fast. It hurt.

  “This is where he killed her.”

  West turned fast, lost his balance. He didn’t see anyone.

  “I’ll bet she took her last breath right where you’re kneeling. Of course, this was all filled with water then.”

  Something… someone, rustled in the tall grass.

  West inhaled sharply when Faith materialized like a specter.

  “I think I need a doctor,” he croaked.

  “I hear she struggled. She was strong. Stronger than any other girl. Even most boys. It wasn’t easy. But he did it.”

  He tilted his head to the right so he could hear her. Why didn’t she care that he was hurt?

  “He didn’t just kill her that day. Everyone died. And everyone since has been born dead.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m hurt real bad. Please, can you help me get back to the house?”

  Faith squatted just out of his reach. Her face was fuzzy in the dark, in the pain and confusion.

  “You know about Stella, don’t you?”

  West struggled to keep his eyes open.

  “Stella?”

  Faith’s hand lashed out, slapping him hard across the face, snapping him fully alert.

  The slap opened up the dark partition in his brain.

  Faith hit me with the shovel in the basement!

  Why? And why is she talking about Stella?

  “Do you know why he killed her?” She sneered at him, the beautiful girl he’d fallen head over heels for replaced by a grinning lunatic.

  He struggled to speak. His teeth hurt, his tongue seeping copper from the blow. “Sh… she… she drowned.”

  “She did. But she had a little help.”

  He sat back on his rump, trembling. He suddenly felt so cold. “You mean, the Guardians killed her, too?”

  Faith loomed over him, hands on her hips.

  “No, West. The Guardians didn’t drown your late aunt. They saw, but by then it was too late.”

  The effect of the slap was wearing off. Sleep, wonderful, painless sleep, was crying out. “I don’t understand.”

  “But you will. Before the night is over, you will.”

  ***

  Debi heard voices – distant, words indecipherable.

  One of them sounded like West.

  She struggled against the ropes binding her to the post, swaying her body back and forth.

  Scarecrows were light and still, sentinels over the fields.

  Unless they cemented the post she was tied to, it might give way if she could get enough momentum going. The gag in her mouth was bitter, vile juices slipping down her throat.

  But she kept silent. It was best to let them think she’d passed out, or worse.

  She rocked, barely moving at first, tensing her back, arms, and legs.

  There was a faint popping sound from the wooden pole.

  Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Come on, give way!

  She felt her body dip to the left, then stop. Her struggling attempts to shift to the right met by total inertia.

  Which meant there was only one way to go.

  Sagging like dead weight, Debi willed gravity to claim her body, to pull her back to Mother Earth.

  The wood gave a sharp crack, tiny splinters ripping like uncooked spaghetti.

  Debi braced herself.
r />   The pole snapped in two.

  The board supporting her right arm broke on contact with the fall, nearly separating her shoulder. The pain was unlike anything she’d ever experienced outside of childbirth. She hit the ground face first.

  Biting hard on the rag in her mouth, she managed to pull her damaged arm free, using it to untie her other arm and legs.

  She pulled off the hood, tugging on the gag. So much had been stuffed down her throat! She looked like a magician pulling colored scarves from her mouth.

  Debi got to her knees, panting.

  They didn’t kill you. Was this a message? What kind of game are the Guardians playing?

  More importantly, where was West?

  Was that his voice she’d heard?

  It hurt to stand, pins and needles stabbing her feet and hands. At least her ankle wasn’t broken. It was a slight sprain at best. She trudged as quietly as she could through the field, hoping against hope that she’d find her son before them.

  ***

  Abraham was surprised to find the basement empty and the door to Rayna’s room locked. After a careful sweep, he felt the coast was clear enough for him to open the door and check on his insurance policy.

  The girl was pretty much where he’d left her – unconscious on the bed, the stench of urine overpowering, the tray of uneaten food on the floor.

  Little thing was willing herself to die. He gave her food and water every day. It wasn’t his fault if she didn’t make it.

  No matter.

  He locked the door, keeping the shotgun at his waist, ready to empty both barrels into anything, or anyone, that moved.

  No more fucking around.

  The chickens were coming home to roost.

  Well, might as well make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

  Rayna was where she needed to be. They’d have to kill him to get the key.

  I’ll bet they want that more than anything.

  They didn’t realize they’d already taken all the good parts of him decades ago. Personally, he had nothing left to give. And they knew it, which is why they’d left him alone those years after they’d murdered his wife. They wanted him to die a long, slow, lonely death.