Before I Disappear

by Danielle Stinson

  My hands clenched into fists. I couldn’t stop what happened to my mother any more than I could’ve avoided hitting that poor animal. But I could make damn sure it never happened again. I would just have to become better, smarter, more capable. Strong enough to fill the shoes Dad left behind, and that meant I had to start doing a lot of things I didn’t like.

  Teeth gritted, I went back to the trailer for the box above the closet where we kept the last of Dad’s things. My hands closed around his old pistol before letting it go in favor of something more subtle.

  “Let me have it, Charlie.”

  Charlie’s eyes moved from the dying animal in his hands to the knife in mine.

  “It isn’t time,” he said.

  “It’s suffering.” I meant the words to be gentle. Fear and anger turned them hard. “Nothing should have to suffer like this.”

  We both knew I wasn’t talking about the rabbit.

  When I’d gone into the trailer, Mom was still lying in the same position. It had been more than sixteen hours since she’d locked us in the bathroom. Fourteen hours since the monster left to buy more booze. Thirteen hours and twenty-seven minutes since I’d wiped the blood off my mother’s face, hitched up the trailer, and hit the highway, my eyes anxiously scanning the rearview for the glare of chasing headlights.

  “Pain is part of life, Rosie.”

  I blinked, and my brother was there, one finger gently stroking the creature’s matted fur.

  “Why?” My voice broke. I spackled it back together. “Why does it have to be?”

  “Because there is beauty in it, Rosie. If you know where to look.”

  Charlie held the rabbit, and I cried on the side of that Kansas road. The sun set, cars passed, night came, and still, we stayed. Until my tears dried up, and the rabbit stopped breathing, and we’d buried its mangled body in the hard dirt next to those sunflowers.

  I don’t remember how long it took, but I remember climbing back into the driver’s seat with a new resolve. I wouldn’t let our circumstances make us easy targets anymore. Not when asking for help was the same as begging for punishment, and we had had enough. I would just have to learn to do anything, become anything I had to become to ensure that this never happened again. So I made my promises, and started the engine, and I never looked back again.

  Until now.

  A switch flips inside of me as I zero in on the man lying on the ground. I don’t know what happened to the town, or what’s going on with my body, or even if I’m losing my mind. But I know one thing for sure.

  Charlie wouldn’t leave a rabbit to die alone on the side of the road. He would never forgive me for abandoning a stranger like this.

  Carefully, I reach under the hiker’s rib cage. It’s like trying to move a mountain. The guy is six feet plus of solid muscle. He’s also strapped into one of those harnesses rock climbers wear.

  All my earlier intentions of gentleness fly out the window. I straddle his hips for leverage, grab one powerful shoulder, and heave.

  EIGHT

  My eyes lock on the familiar face below me. The shock lasts for less than a second before necessity takes over. Later. I can worry about what Ian Lawson is doing here later. Right now, I have bigger problems.

  I reach for Ian’s pack and stagger under its weight. The thing is loaded. In the side pocket, my fingers close around something round and hard. I pull it out.

  Every bit of blood in my body goes straight to my head.

  The compass in my hand is a silver antique with a vintage glass face. I turn it over, already knowing what I’ll find. Delicate lines are etched into the tarnished silver, forming an elaborate pattern.

  Charlie gave me this compass last December for my seventeenth birthday. He never told me where he got the money, and I never asked because the gift was strange and beautiful, just like him.

  How did Ian get this? The compass lives in a tin box, locked away in Rusty’s dash. Ian must’ve taken it, but when? And why? It’s not worth much. What possible reason could he have to steal it? Unless he didn’t steal it. Unless …

  Charlie gave it to him.

  If Ian saw Charlie out here after the town disappeared, he might be able to tell me things. Like if Charlie was okay, or if Mom was with him, or even which direction they were headed.

  In order to ask him, I’m going to have to stick around long enough for him to wake up.

  Eager to speed up the process, I drop the compass into my pocket and keep rummaging through his pack for first aid. Gray light sifts through the trees over my shoulder as I finish cleaning him up. The odd angle of the rays trips an internal alarm. I bolt to my feet.

  This isn’t right. It can’t be past noon, but already the sun is hanging low behind the trees. Judging by the lengthening shadows, it’ll be dark within the hour. Somehow, I’ve lost half a day.

  A cold wind rushes over the gorge, whipping my hair across my face. A fresh crop of gooseflesh sprouts across my skin. It isn’t just the missing hours, or Fort Glory’s disappearance, or the fact that I’m seeing things. By my calculations, this spot can’t be more than a few miles from the road. Where are the media choppers and the National Guard? Where are all the people trying to figure out what happened to Fort Glory?

  This quiet is wrong. Even if I weren’t planning to hang around and grill Ian about the compass, walking through this forest in the dark feels like a really bad idea.

  Focus. I have to focus on the problems I can fix.

  I dump the rest of the pack on the off chance Ian’s managed to fit one of those mini tents along with half of REI. My search turns up a reflective silver tarp.

  I lean over Ian’s body and study him like I’ve wanted to do since he first walked into the diner a week ago. It’s impossible not to stare. Scars or no scars, the boy is beautiful. Not in the same way Mom or Charlie are. Ian’s beauty is more rugged. Back at the diner, I would’ve put him at nineteen, but this close, there’s a vulnerability about him that is almost boyish.

  Who am I kidding? Ian is two hundred pounds of lean muscle with a violent criminal record. Compass or no compass, the smart thing to do would be to give him a wide berth.

  The tugging in my chest returns full force.

  My shoulders droop. If I walk away now, I won’t be able to face myself in the mirror or look my brother in the eye when I finally find him.

  More important, I’d be blowing my best lead.

  An hour later, it’s full dark. The tarp is draped over two boulders, anchored with some rope and half a dozen silver clips I found in Ian’s pack. Every muscle in my body aches, but on the bright side, the pain in my eye is a distant memory.

  All I want to do is collapse, but I assemble a pile of kindling near the opening of our shelter. It takes me three tries before one of the matches finally catches.

  I’m gathering the strength to drag Ian under the tarp when a shadow moves in my peripheral vision.

  I swing around.

  Nothing. Just an endless parade of tree silhouettes.

  The blackness to my left stirs again. I inch sideways to keep the invisible threat in front of me. For a second, I wonder if I’m seeing things—if this is like the strange tugging in my chest or the phantom pain in my eye. Not a chance. The woods are too quiet. Even the insects have swallowed their songs. It’s out there. Some hidden danger. I can feel it. Circling me in the dark.

  My trembling hands close around a scraggly branch with a few leaves still clinging to the end. I grip it in my fist. I wait.

  There! Two eyes gleam in the shadows. A creature steps out of the trees.

  I recognize the bobcat from the descriptions in my guidebooks. The animal isn’t huge, but it flashes a set of impressive teeth. The cat slinks toward me, ears pressed back. The guidebook said that bobcats are shy and rarely attack humans, but this one isn’t afraid of me or my pathetic excuse for a fire. Is it sick? Rabid?

  My hands are shaking so badly, it’s hard to keep hold of the branch.

  The cat pr
owls close enough for me to glimpse the darkness glittering in its hazel eyes—the same darkness I saw in Officer Jensen and that dog back in Maple.

  Right before it ate a man alive.

  Ian groans. The bobcat zeroes in on him. A pink tongue darts out over gleaming teeth.

  Every instinct in my body is screaming for me to run but my legs are cemented to the spot. Memories fill my head along with the sounds of my mother’s cries. I’ve been here before—forced to choose between facing down a monster and leaving them to someone else.

  Ian’s eyes flutter open. They lock on mine, confused, searching, and suddenly, I’m trembling as much from anger as from fear.

  Rage greets me like a long-lost friend. It floods my system with violence as I dip my stick into the flames. The leaves catch, forming a flimsy torch. Heat licks up the wood into my hands as I focus on the creature in front of me. If it kills Ian, it will take away any knowledge he has that might help me find my family.

  I can’t let that happen.

  The cat growls again. This time, I growl back. I let it see the truth in my eyes. I’ve faced down worse and survived. Not by running, or hiding, or pretending it isn’t happening. By fighting.

  Ian stirs as I step over him, forming a barrier between him and the bobcat. The animal takes a test swipe with one paw. It knocks me backward, directly on top of Ian. The branch slips through my fingers as I roll to the side.

  The bobcat is on Ian in a burst of deadly speed. Jaws flash as it bends over his throat. I watch it happen and another monster—the one I keep locked behind that wall inside of me—rattles in its cage.

  A guttural scream leaves my lips as I grab the torch and stumble back to my feet. I lunge at the cat, swinging wildly. For the first time, the animal gives me its full attention. It prepares to spring, and I prepare to die, and then something happens that neither of us is prepared for.

  The cat whines deep in its throat. A new hesitation enters its eyes as they meet mine over the burning end of my torch. Its hackles rise as it turns to stare into the darkness ahead, back arched and fur raised. Whatever it smells doesn’t sit well, because the cat takes off through the trees.

  The rage drains out of my body. I wilt to the ground next to Ian, who, thanks to my crushing him, is once again out cold.

  The forest swims around me. My senses are reeling like I’ve taken a shot of Rowena’s whiskey. All I want is to curl up in a ball and close my eyes, but something is headed this way. Something scary enough to send a deranged bobcat running. I’d rather not be waiting out in the open when it arrives.

  By some small miracle, I manage to drag Ian into the shelter. His shoulders span the width of the space. Before, I was nervous at the thought of being so close to him. Now, his solid presence is strangely comforting.

  Minutes pass. The woods outside fall back into silence. I think whatever’s out there has passed us by when something moves outside.

  A person. Streaking across the opening of our shelter.

  Every hair on my body is instantly at attention.

  I crouch closer to Ian, keeping my gaze on the opening. Logic says it could be Charlie out there, but my heart doesn’t believe it. I’m about to call his name, just to be sure. A sound in the dark beats me to it.

  Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.

  Vibrations pass through the boulder, directly into me.

  Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.

  The blood freezes in my veins.

  That exact pattern of knocks. It’s the same one that’s played in every one of my nightmares these past three years. The calling card of the monster my family gave up everything to escape.

  When I close my eyes, I can still see the glare of headlights as he pulled up beside our trailer. Still count the thirteen seconds it took him to light his smoke and reach our door. That knock was his signature. The first warning that we were in for a bad night.

  Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.

  The stench of whiskey and cigarettes clogs my nostrils. I gag on the memories and curl into a ball. My rocking digs a shallow trench in the dirt.

  Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.

  I clap my hands over my ears. This can’t be happening. It can’t be. That monster isn’t here, no matter what my senses want me to believe. We’re out of his reach. I made sure of that.

  Rowena warned me that this could happen. She said the dark force in the town would slowly poison my mind. Like the pain in my eye and the tugging I imagined earlier, this isn’t real. It isn’t real.

  As if to prove me wrong, the tapping starts again.

  Desperate for something to hold on to, I reach into the folds of my apron. Charlie’s egg rolls into my palm. Solid. Warm. Such a fragile thing, but right now, it feels significant in a way I can’t define.

  They’re just eggs. Nobody wants them.

  I’ll take one and you take the other. We can do it, Rosie. This. This is important, Rosie.

  It’s. Important.

  More tapping from outside.

  I huddle next to Ian and retreat deep inside myself—the only place left to go. A million memories dance through my head until I find one vivid enough to block out the nightmare outside. I focus in on the memory. My whole world collapses down to that day.

  We had just moved to Illinois, which made Charlie five and me twelve. Mom had left me in a city park in the wealthiest part of town with three dollars and instructions to mind my brother. I’d felt grown up and hopeful, the way I always did when we tried on someplace new. The Midwestern wind was blowing hard, wafting the scent of candied almonds from a nearby vendor. My stomach grumbled, but then I saw how Charlie was staring at the ducks.

  With our two-dollar bags of stale bread, we headed to the pond to feed the birds. I remember it was a cool, drizzly Saturday. There were a few dancers performing on wet cardboard. I stopped to watch them. It was several minutes before I realized Charlie wasn’t beside me. Panic turned the world razor-sharp as I pushed through groups of well-dressed strangers and screamed his name. When I finally spotted him sitting on a bench a few hundred yards away, I was so relieved, I didn’t immediately notice the woman.

  She was in her forties—practically ancient, and I don’t remember a thing about her other than the bag. Dull paisley. She was clutching it to herself as if to stem a gaping wound in her chest. For a long time neither of them moved, and it was like the world was rushing by as the two of them held on to that bench for dear life. And even though I was a kid, I recognized something in their silence that was not meant for breaking. Slowly, quietly, Charlie reached out and pried her fingers from the frayed handles of her bag. He placed the stale bits of bread in her palm. The woman’s shoulders shook, and I recognized the song of grief because I’d heard it playing once or twice through the thin walls of our trailer.

  Her pain was an eyesore—a truth too uncomfortable to look at, so no one did. No one except Charlie. Birds sang, and people walked past, and my brother sat with a stranger on a park bench, tears rolling down the still slopes of his cheeks. I watched it happen, and for one moment, I swear my brother shone like a spear of light breaking through the clouds from a place that is better than this one. And I knew he was precious in a way that could never be measured, and that I could never lose him again.

  I can never lose him.

  Tears slide down my face when the memory fades. I’m still squatting in the dark, cold shelter next to an unmoving Ian. The noises are gone, but the weird tugging in my chest is back, along with a strange feeling of peace. It’s almost like the thought of my brother’s light alone is somehow enough to fend off the darkness.

  Thank you, Charlie.

  It’s my last clear thought before I fall into an exhausted sleep.

  NINE

  “What are you doing?” I asked you once. It was either too early or too late, but you were staring out the window into the blackness, your hands wrapped around your knees as you rocked back and forth to the music only you could hear.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Listenin
g to what?”

  “The dark.”

  I climbed up onto the pullout couch because the wind was howling outside, and the heat didn’t work. But mostly, because I’d realized long ago that the warmest place on earth was the space right beside you.

  “Are you afraid of the dark?” I pressed my shoulder into yours.

  You shook your head. “Without the dark, there are no stars, Rosie.”

  “Then what are you afraid of?” I asked.

  “Forgetting.”

  * * *

  I jerk awake. My first thought is that it’s cold. My second thought is that it’s not as cold as it should be.

  Heat sears my side where it’s pushed up against something hard. I turn over. Directly into Ian’s chest.

  I scramble into a sitting position. Ian is lying so still, I have to place my palm over his mouth to assure myself he’s actually breathing. A callused hand shoots out to grab my wrist, and suddenly, I’m looking down into a pair of starburst eyes.

  Ian sits up. The sleeping bag slips down his torso to pool around his waist. And then it’s just me and him in a few square feet of claustrophobia.

  When I lean back, Ian’s grip on me tightens. The wildness in his eyes pins me right to the boulder at my back.

  “Let go,” I choke out. “You’re hurting me.”

  Ian blinks once and releases me. The shirt strains across his chest as he raises a hand to his head.

  I don’t move. Don’t even breathe. Ian looks twice as big sitting across from me as he did sprawled out on the ground. He’s a criminal and he’s huge and we’re close. Way too close sitting like this. Too late, I realize he might not be in his right mind—that the dark force Rowena warned me about could’ve gotten to him like it did that bobcat or those people back in Maple. Like it’s been trying to get to me.

  If so, I just made the biggest mistake of my life.