Lost in the Never Woods

by Aiden Thomas

  A brown leather armchair sat in one corner of the room with a reading lamp perched on an end table next to it. Set in the back of the room was a heavy-looking wooden desk. There were opened letters, a couple stacks of paper, and a scotch decanter set on the corner. The decanter only had about two inches of amber liquid left in it.

  Wendy crossed the room to the trash basket tucked under the desk. There were only a couple of empty beer bottles inside.

  She emptied them into the large garbage bag in her hand. When she went to pluck a lone beer bottle from the desk, she noticed a small wooden tray filled with loose change, a letter opener, and a half-empty pack of gum. However, what caught her attention was a key, or rather the keychain attached to it. It was a circular piece of dark leather with #1 Dad sloppily burned into it. Wendy recognized it as the keychain she, John, and Michael had made for their father when they were away at summer camp one year. Since Father’s Day had happened while they were away, they decided to make him a keychain in woodshop. They picked out a piece of leather and Wendy used a wood-burning pen to brand #1 Dad into it with the help of an instructor.

  Wendy stared at the key. What did it open? It wasn’t the house key—it was too small—and it wasn’t his office key—that one he kept attached to his work badge.

  The only other door with a lock was her old room.

  Wendy picked up the key and turned it over in her hand. Maybe this was it?

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Wendy jumped and looked up to see her father standing in the doorway.

  “Dad, hi!” She tucked the key into her pocket and snatched the beer bottle off the desk. Wendy turned to face him. “Nothing, Mom just asked me to take out your trash,” she told him, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

  Mr. Darling squinted at her for a moment. He looked tired. His eyes were bloodshot and his bushy hair was matted down on one side. A tall, army green thermos was in his hand. Wendy thought he was going to say something more, but all he did was grunt, cross to the armchair, and pick up the jacket draped over the back.

  “Where are you going?” Wendy asked, following him back into the living room, garbage bag in tow.

  “I’m heading back out with the search party,” Mr. Darling told her gruffly.

  “Oh, okay,” she said. If that meant he would be out all night again, it would be easier for her and Peter to sneak around. “I saw the hunting shack on the news,” Wendy said, testing the murky waters of her father’s mood. “Did they find anything?”

  Mr. Darling made another grunting noise. “Just some clothes and food. Looked like someone had been hiding out. There was still wood burning in the stove,” he told her, not making eye contact as he spoke. “Doubt those sorry excuses for detectives will find anything useful,” he growled. “It’ll be up to us to bring them back home.”

  Wendy knew her father disliked the police even more than she did. They were supposed to find his missing boys, and they had let him down. No wonder he didn’t trust them to be any use now.

  “I’ll be back late again,” Mr. Darling continued. “Lock up tonight.”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  He stared at her for a moment. It felt like he was trying to decide whether or not to say something. Wendy was trying to guess what when he reached out and gave her a side hug, awkwardly patting her on the shoulder with his big hand. The weight of it felt foreign. Before Wendy could register what was happening, he turned and left through the front door.

  Wendy stood there, frozen in place. He hadn’t tried to hug her in … she didn’t even know how long. The missing kids, being thrown into the same situation Wendy had lived through five years ago, had clearly gotten to him.

  She shook the strange feeling from her shoulders.

  After she took out the garbage, her mother had her hose down the two lounge chairs in the backyard, dry them off, and put the cushions on them. Mrs. Darling had decided that today was a good day to lie out in the sun and read for a bit, and that they deserved a break after all the hard work they had done around the house. Wendy threw together some peanut butter and honey sandwiches for lunch.

  The key hung heavy in Wendy’s pocket. She urged the afternoon to go by faster so she could find Peter.

  While her mom easily settled in with a book, Wendy’s eyes couldn’t stay on the page. They kept wandering over to the woods. As it grew later in the day, Wendy began to worry about Peter. He hadn’t been gone for this long before. Did something happen? Was he okay? Every time she thought about her hand in his last night, something in her chest fluttered. Was he avoiding her?

  When the daylight started to wane, they headed inside. Mrs. Darling threw together a quick dinner of sliced chicken breast and salad, a late dinner since she would be working through the night, but Wendy couldn’t even eat half the food on her plate. In just a little while, the day would be over and it would be nighttime. She and Peter had lost their window of opportunity to go into the woods. And where was he?

  “Don’t forget to lock the back door,” Mrs. Darling reminded Wendy as she gathered up her purse for work.

  “I know,” Wendy groaned. She sat at the kitchen table, pushing her salad around with her fork.

  “And make sure to—”

  Knock knock.

  Mrs. Darling frowned and looked at the door. Wendy put her fork down and sat up straight. Judging by the look on her mom’s face, they weren’t expecting anyone.

  The last thing she needed was for Detectives James and Rowan to show up unannounced and start asking more questions.

  Mrs. Darling crossed the living room and opened the door.

  Her face lit up. “Barry, what a surprise!” she greeted him, but then her voice immediately became concerned. “Oh, what happened to you?”

  Wendy rushed to the door. Peter stood on the porch, smiling sheepishly. In the orange light of sunset, Wendy was relieved to see he didn’t have new injuries, just the lingering ones from the day before. The cut on his lip was starting to heal, but it was still a bit puffy.

  “Hi, Mrs. Darling,” Peter said. His blue eyes slid to Wendy. “I was playing some pickup basketball with some guys the other day,” he lied. “Things got a bit rough, but it’s nothing, really.”

  “Come in, let’s have a look at it,” she said with a sigh.

  Mrs. Darling walked into the kitchen and Wendy looked at Peter. If he had a tail, it would’ve been tucked between his legs.

  Wendy stepped close, her fingers knotting into the hem of his shirt. “What are you doing here?” she hissed, frantically searching his face for why on earth he would show up at her house when her mother was still home.

  “I couldn’t wait any longer—I wanted to see you,” Peter whispered back. The earnest but apprehensive look on his face sent a rush from her navel to the tips of her toes.

  “Here,” Mrs. Darling said, handing a bag of frozen peas to Wendy. “Take a seat, Barry,” she told Peter as she gestured to the kitchen table.

  Peter sat down obediently. Mrs. Darling eyed the fading bruises and carefully examined the cut on his lip through her glasses. “Hmm, at least it’s healing properly,” she told Peter. “But you boys need to be careful—you could’ve lost a tooth.” She gave him a disapproving look. Peter sank in his seat. “Keep the peas on it for twenty minutes. That will bring down the swelling,” Mrs. Darling said, waving Wendy over.

  Wendy tossed him the bag of peas. He easily caught it.

  “I didn’t know you were coming over, Barry,” Mrs. Darling said as she glanced at Wendy, eyebrows raised.

  “Uh, yeah,” Wendy said. “I meant to ask you earlier if it was okay, but I sort of forgot. We were just going to watch a movie in the living room.”

  Her mother gave her a dubious look, but she retrieved her purse from the counter. “Well, all right,” Mrs. Darling said. “If it gets too late, Barry,” she said, looking back at Peter, “I want you to call your parents and have them pick you up, okay?” She tied her hair up into a knot.
“I don’t want you walking home alone.”

  Peter nodded. “I will, Mrs. Darling.”

  She gave him a soft smile, then turned to Wendy. “Stay in the living room, no going upstairs,” she said with a pointed look.

  Wendy blushed furiously. “Mom.” She did not appreciate her mother’s amused expression.

  “Have a good night, you two,” Mrs. Darling said before walking out the front door and locking it behind her.

  Now that they were alone, Wendy turned on Peter.

  Both of his hands went up in defense, one still holding the bag of peas. “I tried to wait for you!” he said. “But you never came outside!” The look on Peter’s face, jutted lip and all, was petulant at best.

  “It—it’s fine,” Wendy stammered, hands smoothing out the front of her shirt as she did her best impression of someone who wasn’t frazzled. “I couldn’t get away—I was talking to my mom and then she made me help her clean the house.” She waved a hand through the air in frustration.

  “We’re running out of time,” Peter said, gingerly pressing the frozen peas to his lip.

  Wendy pushed her hands through her hair. “I know, I know.”

  “I’m nearly out of magic,” he said, examining his hand. “Without it, I don’t know how we’ll stop my shadow.”

  Wendy chewed on her bottom lip. Indeed, he seemed even more exhausted than he had last night. His eyelids drooped and his skin had a faint pallor to it.

  “How will we know if it’s all gone?” Wendy asked.

  “I don’t know, exactly, but I’m sure it’ll be obvious,” he said gravely.

  Fear reached its way up her throat and clawed at her tongue. What would happen to Peter when his magic ran out? Would he just disappear in a wisp of smoke? Crumble into a pile of ash? Or drop dead at her feet? The very thought made her head swim.

  “How do we weaken something that feeds off fear?” Wendy said aloud.

  Peter shrugged miserably.

  That was the real question, the problem they needed a solution to. What could they do? What was the next step? Where could they look for answers?

  Wendy remembered the key in her pocket.

  “Last night, before I found you in my parents’ room,” Wendy began suddenly. Peter looked confused at the sudden jump in conversation. “I was in the hallway, and I swear I heard voices coming from my old room,” she told him. “They were the same whispering voices I heard when I was trying to find Alex in the woods, when I dreamed about the tree, and when we were standing right in front of it. The door’s been locked for ages, but”—Wendy dug the key out of her pocket and held it out for Peter to see—“I found this on my dad’s desk today. I’m almost positive it unlocks the door.”

  Peter examined the key carefully. “So, you want to go check it out?” he guessed.

  Wendy nodded. “The voices have to mean something, and there has to be a reason I can hear them in that room,” she told him. He looked uneasy. “It doesn’t hurt to poke around, right?” she pressed. “Maybe it’ll help jog my memory for something useful.” Her hand pressed to the acorn where it hid under the neck of her shirt.

  “It’s the only idea we’ve got,” he agreed, after a moment, even though he looked like he wanted to argue it further.

  Wendy tugged on his arm. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Growing Up

  As they stood at the door, everything was silent. There were no whispers, no murmurings, just a pull in her chest that urged her to go inside. Wendy took the key and slid it into the lock. Suddenly, the idea of going into her old room overwhelmed her. Until now, the locked door had stood like an entrance to a tomb. What if she couldn’t handle it? What if she was met with a flood of memories? What if the ache for her missing brothers hurt too much?

  She looked at Peter and, as if sensing her distress, he moved, lightly pressing his shoulder against hers, and gave a small nod. Wendy turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  At first, she could hardly see anything. The only illumination came from the moonlight that streamed through the large bay window on the opposite wall. Wendy blindly moved her hand along the wall until she found the switch. With a flick of her finger, strings of fairy lights lining the four corners of the ceiling illuminated the room. Her father had rigged them up when Wendy was born.

  She slowly stepped into the room, drinking it all in. Peter hung back, leaning against the doorframe, giving her space but watching intently.

  John’s and Michael’s beds were set against the left wall while Wendy’s was pushed up against the right. They each had their own dressers and a large bookshelf took up room next to the bay window.

  It didn’t feel like a preserved monument to her brothers. In fact, everything looked exactly how she remembered it, but with more dust. It was like John and Michael had just walked out a minute earlier. There was an opened box of colored pencils on the small table in the corner. Michael’s backpack was slumped with its contents spilling out in a corner by his bed. A book was laid open on John’s. Even the comforter on Wendy’s old bed was pulled back, probably from when she had woken up screaming the first and last time her parents tried to have her sleep in it after being found in the woods.

  Wendy let out a soft laugh. “It’s like they never left,” she said quietly into the room.

  Peter stepped inside and looked around, then over at her old bed. “Pink floral, huh?” he said, lifting an eyebrow. The corner of his lips twitched, threatening to curl into a grin.

  “I had a very different aesthetic when I was little,” Wendy told him firmly as she followed him inside. “I wonder how they’ll change it when they come back,” she mused, trailing her fingertips along the edge of the blanket on her old bed. Peter’s eyes shifted to the floor.

  She turned to the bay window.

  The seat below had a soft pad and storage underneath. Wendy knew it was filled with more books.

  “That was my favorite spot in the whole house,” she said, nodding to the blue-and-white-checkered seat. “I used to sit there and tell John and Michael stories before bed.”

  “I know,” Peter said with a tired grin. “I spent a lot of nights listening to them just outside the window.”

  “Yeah, that’s still creepy,” she told him, throwing a smile over her shoulder as she walked over to Michael’s bed. A small teddy bear sat slumped against the pillows. “I almost forgot about this little guy,” she said. She picked it up and brushed the dust off the top of its head. “Peter, this is Fuzzy Wuzzy,” she said, holding it up.

  Peter gave a half bow and removed an invisible hat in greeting. “’Tis a pleasure, my good sir.”

  Wendy let out a small laugh and shook her head at him. She hadn’t felt this close to her brothers in years. It was like they were in the room with her. She wanted to soak it all in. She couldn’t even imagine how perfect it was going to be to have them home.

  Wendy walked over and sat on the window seat. “Michael was in love with this thing,” she said, placing the bear in her lap and moving its lumpy arms. “He took it with him everywhere. He did this weird thing where he chewed on the nose all the time, right? He did it so much that one time, when we were playing in the backyard, it popped off.” She pressed a finger to the bare space where the button nose should have been. “He was in hysterics, completely inconsolable. We must’ve looked for it for more than an hour, but we couldn’t find it.”

  Peter slid to sit next to her. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “All because of a nose?” he asked with an amused look on his face.

  “It was very traumatic.” Wendy nodded with a grin, bumping her shoulder against Peter’s. “I had to come up with a story about how Fuzzy Wuzzy had lost his nose in a daring lion taming–related incident,” she told him. “God, he made me tell that story at least a dozen times. Michael was always more sensitive. Then you had John, who acted like a little old man, even at ten.”

  “Yeah, what’s all that stuff by his bed?” Peter aske
d, nodding toward it.

  There was a collage of magazine, newspaper, and online articles printed out and tacked to the wall. “Oh, that,” Wendy said. “John was fascinated by things that scientists and archaeologists found at the bottom of the ocean. Shipwrecks, evidence of underwater cities, stuff like that,” she explained. “Whenever he found those stories, he would cut or print them out and then hang them up on the wall. He wants to be an underwater archaeologist when he grows up—or he used to, anyway. I have no idea if that’s still true.” Wendy frowned. It was strange to consider that her brothers had grown and changed enough that maybe she had no idea what they were like now.

  “When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?” Peter asked. His tone was quiet, eyes locked onto Wendy’s with his head tipped curiously to the side. He sucked on the puffy cut on his lip.

  “A nurse, like my mom,” Wendy said with a shrug. “I think most kids want to be like their parents when they grow up. And a nurse was a far more interesting option than a banker,” she added with a crinkle of her nose.

  “And what about now?”

  “Hmm,” Wendy hummed to herself, absentmindedly rubbing the bear’s ear between her fingers. She thought of all the forms and pamphlets back in her room. Of the academic roadmap she’d made for a nursing degree. Of the unfinished one for premed. “I don’t think I know yet,” she confessed. “Maybe a doctor?” A thrill ran up her spine. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. “But I haven’t decided. That’s what college is for, right?”

  Peter’s expression fell and he busied himself with examining his palm.

  “What about you?” Wendy asked, trying to bring him back.

  “Me?” Peter said, furrowing his brow. He let out a small laugh that lacked any humor.

  “Yeah, did you ever have dreams about growing up?” she persisted.

  Peter shook his head. “No, I can’t grow up—or I wasn’t supposed to, anyway,” he said, looking down at himself.