Hidden Moon

by K. R. Thompson

  As he broke the kiss, he whispered, “I love you.”

  Then he was gone.

  I went back to the swing and sat down. I wanted to soak up a few moments of silence before I went inside and got ready for the game. I ran my hand absently down the wooden armrest.

  “Ow!” I exclaimed as a chunk of wood came off in my palm. I pulled the splinter free and looked at it. A tiny bit of blood stained one end, but it wasn’t sharp enough to pierce anyone again, so I threw it down on the porch to inspect my hand.

  I felt a weird jolt under my feet as if the boards of the porch had come alive and rolled like a wave, though I didn’t see a thing.

  I sat there for another minute, and when nothing else happened, I got up from the swing.

  Suddenly, I dreaded going to the game. It was a feeling that washed over me quickly, and made me want to go find Adam.

  Nah, I thought, I’m just imagining things. Nothing is wrong, I just have to cheer at the game. Everything is fine.

  FIFTEEN

  EMILY RAN STRAIGHT into me. She wrapped her arms around me as soon as I cleared the front door. “Nikki,” she wailed.

  “What? What is it?” I asked as I tried to dislodge her from my legs.

  “Fred, it’s Fred. I’ve lost him, Nikki.” Tears streamed from her eyes, and she started to hiccup, “I can’t find him anywhere.” At the last word, she bawled, shrieking octaves that only a distraught toddler could reach.

  “It’s okay. We’ll find him. C’mon, I’ll help you,” I coaxed. I patted her brown curls until she calmed down. A few errant tears squeezed out of her eyes. She took a deep breath, wiped her running nose on the back of her hand, and then nodded.

  Ick, I thought. I grabbed her other hand and took her upstairs to search her room. I dove into the toy chest, shook out the covers on the bed, and searched the closet, but couldn’t find a clue as to the stuffed bear’s whereabouts.

  “He’s not there,” Emily said, watching me got ready to crawl under the bed. “I done looked.”

  “You mean ‘you’ve already looked,’“I corrected, bending over to search through a mountain of dolls.

  “That’s what I said,” she sniffled and wiped her nose again. “And I done looked there, too.”

  “Okay.” I puffed out a breath and straightened back up. “Where haven’t you looked?”

  She took a long look around the room. “I’ve looked everywhere.” Her bottom lip quivered, and the tears started up again, I bent over and picked her up.

  She wrapped her arms and legs around me, then buried her face in my hair, and whispered, “I’ll never find my Fred, Nikki. Not never.”

  I patted her back as I carried her back downstairs. “He’ll show up. He’s not lost, just misplaced is all.”

  “Who’s lost?” A muffled voice came from the other side of the screen door.

  Catching the door with her foot, our mother came in with her arms full of grocery bags. She made her way to the kitchen to set them on the counter.

  Emily wriggled in my arms. As I set her down, she ran over and locked her arms around our mother’s legs.

  “Easy, honey.” Mom wobbled with the sudden force, nearly dropping a carton of eggs. She peered down into her youngest child’s face. “What’s going on, baby?”

  “I’ve lost my Fred, Momma,” Emily said solemnly, as if to make certain she had relayed the seriousness of the predicament.

  “Okay, let me finish this up,” Mom said as she tossed salad mix into the refrigerator.

  Emily stood patiently, and beamed a smile at me as if she was sure of her mother’s ability to fix any problem, regardless of magnitude. Apparently, big sisters just didn’t cut it sometimes.

  “Go ahead and get ready, Nikki. You don’t need to be late. I’m dropping Em off at a friend’s house later, so we may not be here when you get home.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. I would have loved to have the excuse to stay and watch my little sister instead of going to the game.

  “Absolutely. We’re fine, and we’ll find Fred, no worries,” she said. “Have fun tonight, honey.”

  “Okay,” I gave her my fake-smile and went upstairs to get my cheerleader outfit on.

  “Since you’ve checked everywhere else, I’m betting you’ve left Fred in the car earlier today.” I heard Mom’s voice carry up the steps before the front door closed.

  As the house went silent, I eyeballed the green and white outfit lying on my bed. “May as well get it over with,” I mumbled, grabbing the top and pulling it over my head. I hoped the Keepers would find Tiffany, and bring her skanky butt back. Then maybe everything would quiet down, and I could find a way to quit the cheerleader squad. For some reason, Tiffany stayed on my mind the whole way to school until I reached the football field.

  The evening was cool. I shivered, wondering whose idea it was to start football season on what was the coldest night I could remember. I stood on the side of the field with the rest of the squad and rubbed my bare arms, hopping lightly from one foot to the other. I took a deep breath, watching as it condensed and floated in front of me like mist the second it left my lips.

  The game would start soon, and then hopefully I would warm up. A quick glance to either side of me proved that I was in the minority of the group freezing to death. Most of the girls had jackets or hoodies, and were standing patiently as they waited for the game to begin. I only counted three of us that stood with our teeth chattering.

  After what seemed an eternity, the doors on the side of the school burst open and a sea of green and white helmets ran out to the field. The Bland Wolves, playing on their own field, were welcomed with a cheering crowd and a few, chattering cheerleaders. The opposing team, the Valley Bears, rallied on the opposite side of the field.

  The pompoms swished up and down, as we began our routine and started to warm up.

  I felt anxious and I didn’t know why. My heart started racing and my palms started to sweat. One pompom slipped out of my hands and I had to bend over to pick it up. When I straightened up, I swooned and took a step backward, smacking into the girl behind me.

  “Watch it,” she warned under her breath.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, I tried to catch up with the rhythm of the routine. I felt clumsy, as if the moves we had practiced for weeks were new to me. I did my best, but still was out of time with the others.

  I caught Ronnie giving me a strange looks, as if she were trying to figure out what planet I was from and how she could send me back there.

  I tried harder and did a little better, but was still off by a second from the others. I shook my head, trying to focus. I felt terrible, as if something were looming in the shadows to swallow me. Dread choked out my voice, and I gave up chanting with the others and tried to keep moving to the beats of the music. I felt like a robot, moving in short, choppy motions that should have flowed.

  I took a wrong step and collided into the girl beside me. Avoiding the disaster of the whole squad, she barely kept from whacking into the girl next to her and setting off a domino effect.

  I jumped out of the line, apologized to her, and then started toward a nearby bench.

  “Are you okay?” Ronnie asked over the music as I walked by.

  I nodded. “Dizzy,” I mouthed and pointed to the bench.

  She gave me a quick nod and I plopped rather ungracefully onto the hard wooden bench, backed by the speakers. I breathed in long gulps of cool air. My heart was still hammering, so I focused on the field, and the school band that marched across.

  Suddenly, I was staring into my little sister’s huge, terrified brown eyes. I glanced down to a big hand covering her mouth as her own small hands tried to pry it free. Terror seeped inside me as I watched her fight.

  “Emily,” I screamed, and suddenly was back again at the football field, standing near the bench. With all the noise, no one had heard me. The cheerleaders kept with their routine while the music blared beside me.

  A flash of opal-white skin caught my ey
e across the field in the bleachers. She sat at the edge, and her blue, fathomless eyes were fixed on me.

  Wynter had heard me scream.

  She looked at me with such a sorrowful expression, that I felt as if my own heart were breaking. She lifted her hand towards me and said a single word, and then disappeared as if she had never been there. I blinked.

  Emily’s brown head popped up in my vision again. The tight corkscrews of her hair bounced as she was carried around a set of bleachers, toward the dark edge of the forest.

  She was here at the game. Those bleachers were on the far side, where no one sat on account of the poor view. I ran around the side parking lot, to the far side of the grounds and the trees came into view.

  Beware…Beware! Wynter’s warning whispered in my mind.

  All sense of caution left at what I saw lying on the ground. Near the trees, Fred, Emily’s cherished bear, lay sprawled in the dirt. I started sobbing and bent to pick him up. I was too late. Someone had taken Emily. Hysterical, I turned to run for help.

  I sensed him behind me a second before pain exploded in my head. Everything went black.

  SIXTEEN

  I WAS COLD. Shards of ice seemed to be running along my bones, chilling my blood. I stretched, trying to feel my legs. One thing was certain, I wasn’t dead. It hurt too much. But where was I?

  I lay still, trying to get my eyes to focus in the darkness. My eyes adjusted on a small crack of light that was shining down from high above. My head was laying against something hard and slick, propping me up at a weird angle as if I were a marionette with no strings. Uncomfortable, I lay still and tried to take a mental inventory of my body. Everything from my chest down ached in a surreal way, as if it wasn’t really my body, but someone else’s. The back of my head, by far, felt the worst. It felt as if my heart had decided to move there and work at thumping its way out of my skull.

  Calm down, I thought, take deep breaths.

  Getting my wits about me, I tried flexing my feet. Nothing broke there, just numb. A small current lapped up, splashing cool and wet against my neck.

  It’s okay, it’s just water.

  Forgetting any attempt at being calm, I sat up. The dark, murky water reached my waist, baring my chest to cold, stale air. I sucked in a startled breath. I sat motionless, resisting the urge to sink back into the water, which seemed a few degrees warmer.

  It’s okay, I told myself. Adam will come for me soon.

  Heartened by this idea, I focused all my energy on finding him. Surely, he would know I needed him. He always knew where I was.

  Adam, please. I need you.

  I couldn’t hear him, I stretched my thoughts out farther, seeking any link I could find. Everything was quiet. Getting worried, I tried to send out feelers for the others and took down all my mental blocks that had been keeping everyone out.

  Erik. Ed. Michael, Tommy?

  The darkness answered me in silence. Where were they? My mind hadn’t been so alone in months. I hadn’t been so alone in months. And I didn’t like it. Wherever I was, something had to be blocking me, or maybe I was just too far away to hear them.

  Silently, I prayed I wasn’t in a Deadland. But even if I were, I knew that I had to do something. That meant I was going to have to get moving and find a way out of there.

  When I moved, something other than water brushed my hand. A faint sparkle glimmered eerily a few inches from the surface. Moving more out of fear than curiosity, I pulled up the small disc shaped charm out of the water between my thumb and forefinger.

  The small golden chain was hung on something. I took a better grip and gave a quick tug.

  A bloated, white hand popped up to the surface, palm up. I shrieked and jumped to my feet, sending water flying in every direction. The hand floated back down, the charm bracelet sparkling like a homing beacon. I backed up against a wall, the sudden contact with cold stone knocked my breath out in a quick whoosh. That lack of air was the only thing that kept me from screaming when I saw the rest of her.

  She lay on her side, her lifeless eyes stared at me. She looked like a broken, discarded doll. Long, blonde tendrils floated like snakes as her head swayed gently back and forth in the water, as if her neck were broken. A gaping hole was all that remained of her throat. I shuddered as I remembered the doe Adam had hunted, as his jaws clamped around the slender, delicate neck and tasted the gush of warm blood and the crunch of bone.

  I gulped.

  All at once the air was putrid and vile, thick with the scent of death. My stomach heaved and I ended up throwing up everything I had eaten for the past decade. Finally, with nothing left to lose, I looked back over at her.

  The familiar green and white outfit, identical to the one I wore, was shredded, leaving her shoulder and chest bare. The short skirt was pushed up around her waist. One strong, once graceful, leg was lying at an odd angle behind her. Her feet were bare. Long, shallow cuts in the shape of a giant claw furrowed her pale flesh from shoulder to breast to stomach. Her killer had not left her pretty. My eyes welled and spilled over as I looked at her waxen face.

  “Tiffany. I’m so sorry. Whatever you had done, you didn’t deserve this,” my voice came out hoarse and whispery.

  I lay my head against the cool, stone wall behind me and cried while my thoughts ran rampant. My subconscious kept warning me, You may be in a Deadland. This will happen to you and they’ll never find you here.

  “It won’t happen to me. I won’t let it,” I argued with Tiffany’s still body as if she were the one who had thought the words instead of me.

  My eyes fully adjusted, I stayed close to the wall of the small underground chamber, keeping one hand on the wall to steady me. The water, once at my knees, went up to my hips in some places, as I made my way around the small room. I ignored the small bumps of floating things in the water, since I was certain that I didn’t want to know what they were, and concentrated on keeping my footing.

  I realized there was no other exit as I came full circle to where I had started. The only way out was the way I had come in, which had to have been from above. I squinted up at the little crack of light. I had to find a way up. I made another circle, this time keeping both hands on the wall, feeling for any handhold I could get. I slid my hands against the cold rock until they sank into mud.

  Ecstatic that I had found a way up, I made my way slowly up towards the light. For every inch I went up, I seemed to slide back two.

  “You can do it, you can do it,” I chanted, ignoring the scrapes of small rocks that dug into my stomach as I pushed upwards with my legs and grabbed for any hand hold I could find.

  After what seemed hours, I made it to the top and probed the small crack with my fingers. It was only a couple inches wide and solid rock was all around it. I took my fingers back out and pushed as hard as I dared against the roof. It didn’t give at all. I shoved harder, adrenaline coursed through my body as panic set in. I couldn’t die here, I had to get out. This rock had to move. Forgetting that I sat precariously on a steep mud wall, I shoved with all my strength, hitting the rock as hard as I could with my hands. The shock reverberated back down my arms a millisecond before I lost my footing and went half-sliding, half-bouncing back down the wall and landed in the water on my butt.

  I threw my head back and screamed as loud as I could in frustration. I curled my knees up to my chest, and hid my face in my hands. Hot, angry tears seeped between my fingers. I would never get out of here, I would be like the others, just another missing girl. The Keepers would look for me and never find me. Mom would never know what happened to me. What if they never found Emily, either? Mom would be all alone, with no one to help her if both of her girls were gone. I eyed the dark, putrid water as something pale and bloated bobbed inches from me. Some part of my brain reasoned that my little sister may very well be down here with me as well. I looked down at Tiffany’s blonde tendrils and imagined Emily’s dark curls floating in the water.

  I stifled the urge to scream and for
ced myself to take deep breaths. The air filled my nostrils with the stench of rotting flesh. My stomach, having found some small particle of food deep down, surrendered, and sent me vomiting against slick, wet wall. Drained once again, I leaned my forehead against the cold rock and forced myself to concentrate on Adam.

  I wondered if he could sense at all where I was. If he couldn’t, would he think me dead? Would he stop looking if he knew all he would find would be my bones? Would he mourn me forever or would he find another? Would it be Hannah? That thought of Hannah had me back on my feet, more determined and frustrated than ever.

  I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of absolute satisfaction. It felt as if everything was right with the world, I was on top, and nothing would bring me down. I would do as I wished and no one would stop me.

  He’s coming back, I thought, panicking. The killer hadn’t left me here to die, yet. I glanced over my shoulder at Tiffany’s broken body, and prayed that wasn’t his intention. Deciding it would be better to know what he had planned, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, steeling myself against the fear that roiled in my stomach.

  I shouldn’t come back here so soon. He may find me out, but I can’t help it. I need to smell her fear and hear her beg for her life. I heard her scream a minute ago, so I know she’s awake. Did the other girls frighten her? Or is she just hurt? I can’t help it, I must know. I have time. He won’t find me here now. He knows the others are searching. He’ll stay away for awhile.

  The double sensation of panic and relief surged through me. The killer had heard me, but maybe someone else had, too. If I could only keep him talking to me, maybe someone would find me. I concentrated on taking deep breaths; I would need my wits about me. I couldn’t let myself get out of sorts.

  I heard him above me and the rock above moved as if it were light as a feather. I was bathed in blinding light. I blinked up at the man who squatted near the edge of the hole. As my eyes adjusted, I looked up in shock at the familiar face with a silver streak of hair. Emotions mixed and twisted inside my head. Shock and fury ran through me as I looked up at Reuben.