by SM Olivier
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I felt like I barely fell asleep before there was a knock on my door.
“Who is it?”Jace mumbled beside me.
“It’s me,” Alex called through the door. “We need your help.”
I sat up and quickly slipped on my tank top and boy shorts. I rushed to the door. “What’s wrong?” I asked as I opened the door.
“It’s Harry,” he said hesitantly as he bit his lip. “He’s afraid again.”
I looked behind him just as Jace slipped his arm around my waist from behind. “Where is he, buddy?”
“He’s at home, but I don’t know what happened. I can’t close the door,” Alex shifted from foot to foot.
“What’s going on?” Remy asked as his door opened along with Lincoln’s. When his eyes fell on Alex, he looked back down the hall. “Where’s Pops and Megan, little man?”
“I came over by myself. I didn’t want to wake them up. I didn’t want to wake you up but Harry’s afraid, and the door won’t close.” Alex looked like he was afraid he may get yelled at.
“You’re not in trouble, Alex. It’s alright you did the right thing. What door are you talking about?” Lincoln asked.
“When I see in people’s heads,” Alex slowly explained, “it’s like I open the door. When I get out of their head, the door closes. Harry’s didn’t close. He started to have a bad…dream, and I didn’t even have to look. It was already open. It woke me up.”
I sighed. Wasn’t seven almost eight too young to carry so much baggage? “Okay, so we have to figure that one out, but first let’s go see if we can help him.”
“Let me throw on a shirt,” Lincoln agreed as he went back into Jace’s room.
I was wondering when Lincoln was going to get tired of hopping beds. If he planned to stay here for a little while, I was wondering if we should figure out another arrangement. I shook my head. I really needed to focus on the issue at hand.
“Let’s go, little man,” Jace said, swooping Alex up.
“I’m going to write a note and drop it off at Pops’, just in case anyone wakes up,” Remy offered.
“Thanks,” I smiled up at him.
“Ready,” Lincoln said as he exited the room.
We headed out of the apartment, down the hall, and up the stairs. Ever since our attack, I had an aversion to the elevator unless I absolutely, positively had to use it. Good thing they were only one flight up the stairs. We headed down the hall, and we just had to knock once before the door was opened.
“Hey,” Greg looked astonished. “How did you know?”
“The door in Alex’s head was never closed last night,” Jace explained softly. “Where is he?”
“Miranda has him,” Greg couldn’t hide the relief in his tone. “We didn’t want to wake you up. He was alright all day long. He’s definitely doesn’t have verbal skills as his other peers but he was trying today, and for the first time in over a year we got to see him smile, hear him laugh. Tonight we put him to bed, and not even an hour later we found him under his bed screaming. We tried to talk to him, but it’s like he can’t hear us anymore. It’s like any progress we thought was made last night vanished.”
“I guess we have to figure out a long-term solution to all of this,” Jace offered. “From the sounds of it, he will always see the evil in this world, and we know that’s never going to go away.”
“That’s my fear,” Greg said quietly. “It’s not like you guys can do this every night, and if we teach him how to turn it off, who are we turning our backs on?”
“One hurdle at a time,” Lincoln reassured him before reaching out to squeeze Greg’s shoulder.
“One hurdle at a time,” Greg repeated as he opened the door to one of their bedrooms.
Miranda was sitting in a rocking chair, trying to soothe her son as he thrashed around.
“Hey, buddy,” Jace said quietly as he advanced towards them. I could feel him pushing feelings of peace in the whole room, and any anxiety I was even feeling was gone.
Admittedly, I was feeling apprehensive about what we might see tonight. Last night was disturbing enough and I was an adult! I couldn’t imagine how Harry’s young mind was able to comprehend it, especially since he’s been seeing it for a year now.
For him, I had to do this for him.
“Let do this,” Jace said firmly as took Harry in his arms.
He looked so natural holding Harry, and for the first time since I started this relationship with the guys, I could see him carrying a child of his own. I held a hand up to my mouth at my traitorous thoughts.
“Ready?” Alex asked as he took a seat next to Jace. I found a position on the floor next to the rocking chair, and Lincoln took the other side of me.
Lincoln grabbed my hand, and I looked down at our intertwined hands. When did it become so natural to draw strength from his touch?
“Ready,” I confirmed with a decisive nod.
“Where are we?” Lincoln asked barely above a whisper.
I looked around and noticed we were in a park in the middle of suburbia. The moon was bright enough that we could look around to orient oursleves. The street lights illuminated the houses, giving us additional lighting. It looked like a cookie-cutter neighborhood with clean, immaculate lawns, hedges neatly trimmed, and shrubbery around flagpoles that proudly displayed the American flag.
“I imagine we are in a neighborhood,” I said dryly.
“Yeah, but why, smart…butt,” Lincoln quickly corrected himself. He was cognizant of the children, and it surprised me that he had adapted so easily to our language around them.
“Follow,” Harry said with determination. He took me by the hand and started walking towards a beautiful white house with black shutters and a wrap around porch. There were two beautiful, black rocking chairs side by side and a white porch swing in a little-alcoved area. The house was completely dark, like everyone was sleeping.
He led me us to the side of the house. A detached garage was near the back of the property where an outdoor fluorescent garage light illuminated the house. I noticed another dim light was coming from a room from the rear of the home. I nearly tripped on a basketball as I neared the window. A child’s bike was discarded next to the gate and fence.
I peered into the backyard and noticed a playset and a covered inground swimming pool. Nothing seemed off or amiss. It was colder here, and I wished we had worn coats.
“See,” Harry stated as he pointed to the window. Lincoln and I stepped forward, and I grimaced when I realized that I couldn’t look into it.
“I don’t see anything,” Lincoln muttered as he looked down at me. He smirked at me before he lifted me by the waist.
He didn’t seem phased by my weight as I braced my hands on the windowsill.
“Me either,” I murmured as I looked through the slit in the blinds.
Inside, a man was standing in what appeared to be an office. A large desk dominated most of the space. He advanced towards a wall and went to grab a book off a shelf. The shelf opened, and a wall full of pictures of a beautiful redhead was revealed. Several candid shots were taken of her in various stages of her everyday life. Some of them even showed her naked, but you could tell that she was unaware that anyone was taking pictures of her. He was apparently stalking her.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“Nothing,” I told him quietly. “Why don’t you take Harry to the playsets?” I gently bade him.
“Okay,” Alex shrugged before he took Harry by the hand and led him to the swings.
“What do we do? What’s going to happen?” I asked as the man pushed something on the door jamb and the shelf slid back into a bookshelf.
He strolled over to the desk and sat down in his chair. He withdrew a key from his pocket and opened one of the drawers. He hauled a large scrapbook out and started to flip through the pages. Each page revealed a beautiful woman, all redheads, and each one looked like they were between the ages of eighteen to twenty-two. As he continued to
turn the pages, I gasped in shock. The pages turned more gruesome and grotesque. He wasn’t just a stalker. He killed these women in the most brutal way possible. I knew it deep down in my gut.
I held one of my hands up to my mouth and tapped frantically on Lincoln’s arm with the other. I was glad I remembered he was holding me before I lost all of my dinner in the bushes.
I didn’t even realize Lincoln had knelt down beside me and held my hair away from my face. He gently rubbed my back.
“It’s okay. We’re going to get him, too,” Lincoln swore fiercely.
My body shook in the aftermath of my ordeal. I still knelt there, slightly embarrassed.
The slamming of a screen door made me jump.
“Stay here,” he whispered suddenly before he took off at a run.
I barely registered that he was running after the man to the garage. The man was whistling an eerie tune as he leisurely strolled up the stairs on the side of the garage. As the lights illuminated him, I noticed how attractive and…normal he looked.
Lincoln’s words from last night reverberated in my head. He believed that Harry came to these places when things would go from bad to worse. This had to be the worse. I couldn’t set fire to this person’s garage. Not again. I needed something else.
I was standing there in deep contemplation when I noticed an older man walking down the sidewalk with his dog. He was looking up at the garage with a look of suspicion on his face. Like he knew not everything was right here.
I ran down to the sidewalk, yelling at him. “You’re right!” I projected my thoughts on him. “The man that lives there is evil.”
He paused and looked around in confusion. “Come on, Duke,” he pulled on his dog's leash.
“No, you have to call the cops. They should come in with the sirens off. He has a girl up there. He’s going to hurt her,” I was practically yelling at him.
“I’m going crazy,” he muttered to himself, trying to pull on his dog’s lead once more.
“Please, she’s going to die,” I pleaded.
“What am I supposed to say?” he asked as he ran a hand through his hair.
“Say you think you saw someone breaking into the garage,” I replied.
He pulled out his cell phone, and as he input the number in his phone, I heard him muttering. “Yup right before I tell them that my inner voice is now a female.”
I didn’t wait for him to make his phone call as I ran back to the garage.
Lincoln looked wan as he stumbled back down the stairs. “It looks like he’s getting ready for surgery and not the doctor kind,” Lincoln muttered in horror as he sat down heavily on the steps.
“The cops should be coming soon,” I said to him as I sat down beside him. I didn’t know what he saw, and I didn’t want to. I reached out and began to rub his back. “Do you think she has time?”
“Yes, but not much,” he leaned forward and rubbed his face. “If this is what Harry saw the past year, then it’s no wonder he was scared silent.”
I made a noise of assent.
“How do the guys watch you with the others and aren’t fazed by it?” Lincoln asked abruptly. I was surprised by his quick change of subject, but I knew it was from his need to get his mind off of the current situation.
I shrugged. “I don’t know, honestly. They tell me it’s because they knew for years they were meant to share, and they were already used to it.”
I continued to rub on his back unconsciously.
“I was an only child,” Lincoln said with a shrug. “I didn’t live a privileged life, so when I got something I wanted, I generally coveted it.”
“Is that your subtle way of telling me you’re going to be leaving soon?” I asked matter-of-factly.
He opened his mouth just as a cop car pulled up in front of the house. The cop got out of his car and started to walk up the front porch. I noticed the man walking his dog was now gone, but I swore I saw the curtains twitch next door.
“He’s going the wrong way,” I cursed silently.
We watched as the porch lights came on and, moments later, a woman came out dressed in a bathrobe. She must be his wife. Again she looked so ordinary, so All-American. She climbed down the steps, followed closely by the officer.
The door above us opened, and the man from earlier stepped out.
“Is there anything I can help you with, officer?” he asked with a friendly smile.
His smile made my skin crawl, knowing the secrets and lies they hid.
“A neighbor thought they saw someone lurking around the garage,” the officer said in a laid-back tone. “They were concerned they were trying to break in.”
The man’s smile wavered for a moment before he stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “It was probably me,” he laughed. “The wife doesn’t like me playing in the house when the kids are in bed.”
From his wife's smile, I imagined she had no clue the man that she slept with every night had the soul of the devil.
“So you didn’t see anyone lurking around?” the cop asked.
He puckered up his lip and shook his head. “No, no one.”
“Okay, well, sorry to bother you.” The officer laughed. “Have a great night.”
“Good night, honey,” the woman said with a large yawn. “You have an early morning.”
“Yes, dear,” he called back. “Love you.”
The cop began to walk down the driveway, and I realized he was leaving. Just like that. He probably didn’t get that many calls in cookie-cutter America. It was easy to believe in appearances here.
“No!” I screamed. “You can’t leave! Check the garage.”
The cop stopped and turned around. His head was cocked to the side. His eyes scanned the area and fell on Lincoln and me from our positions on the bottom of the stairs, our bodies cast in the shadows. His eyes widened for a moment.
“Something wrong, officer?” the man asked with his hand on the doorknob of his garage.
“Um yeah,” the cop said tentatively. “Do you mind if I check in your garage?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. You don’t have probable cause to search it,” the man said with a smile. “Unless you have a warrant, I really don’t feel comfortable with that. I’m sure you’re an upstanding young man, but with the way things are nowadays…you understand. Right?”
The cop nodded, and I could see the battle in his eyes.
“What do you need for probable cause?” I asked the cop insistently.
“He needs to see a crime being committed or suspicious of one,” Lincoln explained to me.
“How about a rock through a window?” I asked Lincoln.
“That would work,” the cop murmured out of the side of his mouth.
I hadn’t even been projecting my words to him. Something told me he was gifted. He seemed to have seen us even though I knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear or see us. He was looking directly at us moments ago.
“Bye, officer,” the man called jovially.
I looked around and found a little pile of bricks next to the stairs.
“Um, you’re not going to able to throw it that far,” Lincoln gently ribbed me.
“Bet me,” I muttered as I picked one up. I pulled from my inner strength and imagined the brick sailing through the window just before I released it. The satisfying sound of glass breaking filled our ears.
“I should have put money on it,” I said smugly.
“You shouldn’t have been able to make that,” Lincoln grumbled.
“Strength,” I told him with a wink.
The officer turned back around. “I’m sorry sir, but I’m going to have to insist on searching your−.”
I saw panic enter the man's eyes before he went to lunge back into his garage apartment. I knew if he made it in there bad things were going to happen. I reacted without thinking as I grabbed one of the support posts to the stairs and pulled with all my might. The whole structure pulled away from the side of the garage causing the ma
n to stumble back and brace himself against his railing. The entire structure was now at a forty-five-degree angle, and he would have fallen if he hadn’t had the railings and ballisters. He had no choice but to hold on or fall twelve or so feet to the ground.
“Perry, you need to call an ambulance and back up,” Lincoln told the officer.
I’m sure Lincoln had come to the same conclusions that I had, that the officer was more than aware of our presence. Lincoln had also taken the time to read the officer's name tag.
Perry confirmed our beliefs as he spoke into his walkie on his shoulder.
“I’m suing you,” the man yelled from the top of his lungs. “You had no right demanding to search my garage!”
“Sir,” the officer replied. “I never entered your garage. Don’t worry, though, I called back up to help you get down.”
“What did you do to my stairs?” the man cried in outrage.
“What is going on?” the woman came back out of the house onto her back deck. The lighting got better as she turned on the lights in the back. “Hale? What happened?” she cried out in surprise.
I looked back and noticed that some neighbors had gathered at the end of the driveway. I looked over to the playset, making sure Harry and Alex were still okay. They didn’t seem disturbed by the commotion. They were currently climbing up a ladder and sliding down the slide. Harry followed his brother with no fear.
“Call our lawyer,” Hale cried out, bringing me back to the situation at hand. “This officer did something to our stairs. If someone so much as steps foot in the apartment or the house without a warrant, I’m suing them.”
“He didn’t touch those stairs,” the man who had been walking his dog stated as he came out on his back deck from next door. Only a row of head-high hedges and fence separated the two yards. “I’ll be your witness, officer.”
“Thanks, sir,” the officer stated. “Someone will be collecting a statement from you later.”
“I guess even Ward Cleaver could be a horrible neighbor,” Lincoln joked dryly. “Maybe his kids keep throwing balls over his fence, or they play basketball too early in the morning,” he pointed to the basketball hoop attached to the front of the garage.