Prisons of Stolen Dreams
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Prisons of Stolen Dreams
Christopher St. John Sampayo
Edited by: J. Ellington Ashton Press Staff
Cover Art by: Michael Fisher
http://jellingtonashton.com
Copyright.
Christopher St. John Sampayo
©2018, Christopher St. John Sampayo
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. All rights reserved.
Any resemblance to persons, places living or dead is purely coincidental.
This is a work of fiction.
Table of Contents
Prologue: The Kidnapping Sarah Guzman
Verse One: Through the Storm
Verse Two: After the Rain
Verse Three: The Open Doorway
Verse Four: The Prodigies
Verse Five: The Narrative of the Light
Verse Six: The Forest of Uncertainty
Verse Seven: The Elegance of Structure
Verse Eight: The Dark Prodigies
Verse Nine: Lessons
Verse Ten: The Other You
Verse Eleven: Fractured
Verse Twelve: An Endless Waltz
Verse Thirteen: The Weaver’s Apprentice
Verse Fourteen: The Journal of the Brain Weaver
Verse Fifteen: The Beginning of the Fall
Verse Sixteen: The City in the Dark
Verse Seventeen: Another Time, Another Place
Verse Eighteen: Aria
Verse Nineteen: The Monster Triumphant
Verse Twenty: All That Could Have Been
Verse Twenty-One: The End of Space, The End of Time
Epilogue: The Land of Lost Children
Prologue: The Kidnapping Sarah Guzman
Pamela lived a life that was defined by absence. Absence painted who she was. Absence haunted her. Absence was the condition that plagued her.
In many ways Pamela’s life had been taken from her. She lived as a person who was dead but not dead. Only one thing propelled her through her days. That one thing was hope. Hope was the only thing that gave Pamela a semblance of life. Hope sustained her. Hope gave her a purpose. It gave her a routine.
Every day Pamela woke up at 7:00 am. She made herself a simple breakfast of eggs and toast. By 10:00 am she was ready to leave the house.
On cold winter days she would bundle herself up in a jacket and put on her gloves. She would then gather the things she needed for her trip.
Pamela did this seven days a week and she never broke her routine. She even did this on Christmas Day. She felt it important to do this on Christmas. Christmas was once a happy time. It had been a time filled with laughter. Now Christmas was filled with silence in Pamela’s home. Each Christmas as she began her routine she said a little prayer. She only wanted one gift. It was the only gift she would ever dream of for the rest of her life. If this gift was granted to her she would never need anything else.
As she woke up today she looked at her calendar and saw that Christmas was now eight days away. In that moment the hope that was what remained of her life flared in her chest. Maybe, just maybe this would be that special Christmas, she thought. Please, let this be the year.
She prepared her breakfast and then sat alone at the kitchen table to eat it. The house was quiet. As Pamela ate her breakfast the only sound in the room was the scrape of the knife against the toast as she spread butter over it.
Pamela stared into space while she ate. When her meal was complete she took the few dishes she used in its preparation and put them in the sink. She then prepared to leave. She passed the guest room where her husband Henry slept. The door was closed. She knew he was not home right now. He had already left for work. She was alone in the house. In truth, however, the loneliness at this moment was not much different than the loneliness when he was home. They had been together for almost 20 years but now they were strangers to one another.
Pamela went to her room and dressed. She then proceeded to the living room and picked up her box. The box was heavy. It was almost too heavy for Pamela to carry. However, it was again hope that gave her the strength she needed to lift the box. Pamela stopped at the entranceway of her house. She put the box down and put her coat on. She picked up the box again and stepped out into the cold of the December day.
When she was in her driveway Pamela placed the box on top of her car. She then opened the passenger door and put the box into the passenger’s seat. Minutes later her drive had begun.
Today Pamela was driving to a town that was 180 miles away. The box in the passenger’s seat carried her purpose. It carried her hope.
In the box was a stack of papers. These papers had a picture on them. The picture showed a young and beautiful girl. The girl in the picture was smiling. Below the picture was a name. It was Pamela’s daughter’s name.
It read: Sarah Guzman.
Underneath the name were two dates. One of the dates was the date when Sarah was born. The other date was the last time Sarah was seen. Besides the numbers of the dates there were other numbers on the fliers as well. These numbers were phone numbers. There was a phone number for the local police and there was a phone number for the FBI. There was one more phone number on the flier. It was the phone number that most represented Pamela’s hope. That number was Pamela’s home phone number.
At the top of the fliers in the box was a word in giant bold black letters. The word was, “Missing.” The only other words on the fliers were part of a statement before the numbers. It was a statement that read, “If you have seen Sarah please contact the following.” Pamela would often find herself looking over the fliers and thinking how simple the statement written on them was. In that statement Pamela reflected on one particular word quite a bit. She reflected on the word “please” in the statement. There was so much weight in that word. There was much of Pamela’s soul and desperation in those six letters. Many could never understand how powerful the plea in that one simple word was.
Pamela drove in silence. The only sound on her trip was the steady hum of the car’s tires meeting the road. She found this sound to be a comfort on her trips.
It had been 804 days since Sarah had gone missing. Pamela tried not to count the days but she could not help it. A little over two years had passed. Pamela had missed two of Sarah’s birthdays. She still celebrated them. That was if the word celebrate could be used in this context. Perhaps, remembrance was a better word in this instance. Pamela had a remembrance of her daughter each year on October ninth. On that day she would sit alone in Sarah’s bedroom. She would have with her a cupcake which she prepared that afternoon. She would put one candle on it. She would light the candle. Pamela would then sing happy birthday in the silence of her daughter’s room.
She would blow out the candle and sit alone in Sarah’s bedroom. She knew that outside the four walls of the room the world somehow went on. It still lived and breathed despite the way that Pamela’s life had been shattered.
Henry could not handle her being this way. He told her she needed to move on. Pamela couldn’t. She tried to make Henry understand how her life was frozen now. She could not move beyond the point where her daughter had been taken. She tried to explain this to him. She tried to make him understand that she had carried Sarah in her womb for nine months. During that time Pamela felt deep love and warmth for the life sh
e was carrying. When Sarah was born she became Pamela’s world. Now Pamela could not have a life without her daughter.
Henry would become frustrated when she told him these things. As time went on he would become angry. Then Pamela noted that he simply stopped trying to convince her to move on. Instead he moved on.
A world can change on a moment. A life can hinge on the outcome of events beyond a person’s control. Pamela’s life had become something different and unrecognizable after the day that she went up to her daughter’s room to find it empty.
Pamela would never forget the day. It was February twelfth and it was a Saturday morning. Pamela was in the kitchen when she began to notice that Sarah had not come to the table for breakfast. This wasn’t strange. It was a weekend and sometimes her daughter slept late. However, as time passed Pamela continued to note the empty seat at the table. She called for her daughter. There was no response from Sarah’s room. Pamela became worried. Was Sarah sick? She walked down the hallway to her daughter’s room. The door to Sarah’s bedroom was not locked. Pamela pushed the door open.
The first thing Pamela noted was the cold. She would spend many days wondering if the cold had been real. She would wonder if it was cold from the open window with the curtains billowing or if it was the cold from the chill of knowledge that something was very wrong.
Sarah’s room was empty. The window was open. Pamela screamed for Henry. She heard him come running behind her.
When Henry saw the empty room with the open window he told Pamela to call the police. As she did so he put on his jacket and began searching the neighborhood. “Maybe she just snuck off,” Henry said. However, in their hearts they knew this was not the case. Sarah was a good girl. She was a little girl. She was not a child who would crawl out of her window at night.
The police arrived shortly after Pamela’s phone call. They took the matter very seriously. A person was not considered missing for 24 hours, but a 9-year-old girl missing from her bedroom with an open window was a matter where haste might make all the difference.
They immediately began searching the area but they did not find Sarah. Shortly after the police arrived the FBI came. They questioned Pamela and they questioned Henry. The questions were general questions at first. Then the questions became more pointed. Where had Pamela and her husband been on the night that Sarah disappeared? Had the little girl recently been punished? Did she ever have bruises on her body? Pamela knew where they were going with these questions. She knew the FBI thought there was a possibility that Pamela and her husband were being deceptive. Pamela knew her husband had nothing to do with the matter. She eventually became angry at the FBI’s questions. She screamed at the agents. What mattered was that her little girl needed to be found.
The police and FBI searched the house. They found nothing that indicated Pamela or her husband were involved in any foul play. However, they did find something in Sarah’s room. They dusted the windowsill and found fingerprints on it. They also found footprints outside Sarah’s window. The footprints indicated a large man had been there. The forensics specialist with the FBI noted that there were footprints to and away from the window. The footprints away left deeper impressions. This seemed to indicate that the perpetrator had been carrying something when he left.
A police net was thrown up in the area. Bulletins were placed on the news. First this was done locally then nationally. The FBI searched the law enforcement database but found no matches for the fingerprints. They asked Pamela and Henry if they had seen any strangers around the house recently. Had anyone come to the house selling something or looking for assistance? Had they seen any suspicious individuals in the neighborhood? A large man perhaps? Pamela desperately tried to remember if she had seen anyone who matched that description. Her daughter’s life could hinge on her remembering. She could not remember any strangers in the area. Because of this Pamela felt like she had failed somehow. She felt like she was responsible for this.
Time passed. News stories about Sarah still happened from time to time requesting anyone who knew the whereabouts of this young girl to please call local law enforcement.
Eventually Sarah became just a picture. She became a picture on the news. She became a picture on a missing person flier.
In the beginning the FBI was contacting Pamela daily. Then they contacted her weekly. Then Pamela stopped hearing from them. Now it was Pamela who was always calling the agents who were assigned to her daughter’s case. When she spoke to the FBI agents in the Missing Persons Division they told her that they were still looking. She knew however, with the passage of time that their statements of actively pursuing the investigation were less likely. Her daughter had become an unsolved case to them. Her daughter was just a picture in a file.
Pamela took matters into her own hands as best she could. She started her own attempts to keep the memory of her daughter alive and fresh. She wanted people to keep looking. This is where her desperate hope became born. Pamela would work beyond exhaustion in the hope that her daughter was still alive somewhere. She would work in the hope that Sarah might be found.
Pamela made her fliers. Each day she would take them to a new town or city. Over time she drove further and further away from her home. She would post the fliers on every powerline or bulletin board she could find. She would ask shopkeepers if she could put her fliers on their windows. They would nod. They looked at her with sad eyes. Their eyes showed that in their minds they understood the futility of her actions. However, Pamela would not let that deter her. She would hold on to hope.
That was easier said than done at times. Sometimes despair would wash over Pamela. In truth it was one of the reasons why every day she grabbed her box of missing child fliers and drove far away. Home was a reminder. The silence in the house was a mockery of the life that had been removed from it. Pamela told herself that life still existed. It was simply no longer in the house.
Sometimes at night Pamela would go into her daughter’s room. She would go into Sarah’s room and she would cry. She would cry for the loss of her daughter. In the dark with the moonlight streaming through the window, that awful window, Pamela would remember when she and her daughter would play together in the room. Pamela sometimes cried herself to sleep in the room that had once held her daughter’s laughter.
Now the room was silent. The house was silent. The house no longer had laughter.
***
Life was strange. Life was odd. Even in the face of tragedy it went on. Some healed. Others did not. Some were able to hide the scars. Pamela’s marriage shattered. Henry and Pamela remained married but their life together was a husk of what a marriage should be. Her husband eventually found a mistress. Sometimes he would stay at the house. Sometimes he would not. When Pamela found out that Henry was sleeping with someone else she was heartbroken. One day when she picked up Henry’s jacket to hang it she noticed something sticking out of the pocket. It was a receipt for a hotel. Sarah knew the hotel. She drove by it sometimes while grocery shopping. She had never been to that hotel.
She confronted Henry with the receipt. He denied anything was going on. He told her that she was paranoid and then he told her that she was crazy. However, Pamela knew. They both knew. Henry began yelling and then he began screaming. Finally, he admitted to her that he was sleeping with someone else. He told Pamela that it was because she couldn't move on. He told her he could no longer live in the past. He told Pamela that the woman he was seeing helped him forget.
They did not divorce however. Even Henry could not be so cruel as to abandon her. She knew he still loved her. But time and pain had eroded away much of what they once were. He needed to move on. He needed to find peace in his life. Pamela could not.
At times this made Pamela angry. She was angry that he could forget so easily. Pamela was angry that he could forget even if it was only for a few brief instances each day in the arms of his lover. Pamela could not forget. In the end though she had to admit to herself that she understood.
&nbs
p; Pamela’s world became lonely. All she had was her routine built around her prayers and her fliers. Pamela reflected on this now as she pinned a flier of her daughter to a bulletin board. She had driven three hours north of her home today and was in a laundromat.
As she put up her flier on the bulletin board she could not help but notice the fliers of other children on the board. She took a moment to step back and stare at the other fliers. Before her was an ocean of missing children. She thought of each life represented in each flier. Each flier was a life and a world shattered. Each flier had a distraught parent. She understood that parent’s pain all too well. They either held on to hope as Pamela did or they had moved on. Henry had done that. She wondered how many of the parents of the children in these pictures had moved on. Perhaps they had forgotten about these particular fliers they had left in this particular laundromat.
Amongst these images of shattered worlds was now a picture of Pamela’s daughter. She was just another drop in this ocean of sadness.
Pamela would still hold on to her hope. She hoped that one day her daughter would be found and returned home. She hoped that one day her house would know laughter again. However, that hope was always trailed by a specter of fear. The fear came from the thought that one day Pamela would learn of a grim fate that had befallen her cherished and beloved daughter. The place in her mind where this fear lingered was like a spot in her brain that she would not look into. She would not look into the fear that could crush her. Instead she would focus on the hope. Pamela had to do this. Hope sustained her and without it she might be completely broken.
As Pamela stared at the wall of missing children she clutched her fliers to her chest. In a sad way her fliers were an embodiment of her hope. They were a physical manifestation of what she clung to each day in her heart. Each flier represented the possibility that the right person might see it and her daughter might be returned home.