Dangerous Past

by Cobe Reinbold

  The reason I run…

  We’re all running from something, the question for most of us, is what. For some of us the answer is simple. An ex-boyfriend or husband. A dying family member that we don’t have the heart to watch in the final days, but for some, it’s not so black and white. Some of us run from the demons inside us without even knowing we’re doing it. We change ourselves so we don’t have to deal with the things we don’t like about who we are. For me, sadly the answer is one of the black and white variety. I guess I should probably tell you why I want to spill my heart out to people online, most of whom, I will never actually meet. To explain that part of my life, we have to rewind to before I moved. I called a little beachfront town in Florida home for most of my life. I adored it, and everything in my life was as you would have expected. I went to the beach on the weekends with friends, went fishing with my dad in the summer. Life was great. I guess when you’re young you don’t see the danger in the world. The danger that swirls around every single one of us like swarms of hornets going in for the kill. One afternoon my life changed forever. On an August afternoon, I decided to go to the beach with my friends. My parents were both at work. I was going into high school the next month, and all I wanted to do was keep every single second of my day packed full of good memories with my friends. In my mind, high school meant the end of good times hanging out with the people I loved most in the world, and I guess, in my case, it kind of was. My best friend and I were walking down a back alley towards the beach when a van pulled up. It wasn’t the kind of van we drill into our children’s minds as scary. It was a minivan, and on the side, it had ‘Toy Emporium’ in big red letters. Before I knew it, I was being dragged by the back of my shirt into the van. I kicked and screamed, but nothing loosened the strong grip that wrapped around my throat and choked me until the entire world went black. I woke up in a dingy old basement, the type of basement that we do convince our children is scary, and next to me was my best friend. We met in grade 1, and ever since then we had a special bond. We spent every possible second of our waking lives together, and it hurt me to see her in such a state. I knew we had been abducted, but deep down I believed I wouldn’t be there long. I always had a feeling in the pit of my stomach I would be rescued, but my best friend didn’t have the same luck. It was three weeks before the man we thought of as our captor took her away. I never saw her again. I was only in there for three and a half weeks, but those three and a half weeks were life changing. I still wonder to this day why he chose her to take instead of me. I am grateful I am still alive, but it is hard to think I’m alive and she isn’t. Soon after the man was caught and I was returned to my parents. They moved us out of Florida and into the small town I now call home, just in time for the first day of grade 9. I’ve never told any of my new friends this story, and I doubt whether I will. I guess that’s a big part of why I’m doing this. I really have nobody to talk to about my old life and since they never found her body, in my mind I’ve made up a story where my friend escaped and moved on with her life, becoming a new person just like me. She never went back to that place and maybe, just maybe, she’ll see this one day and know that I am safe. The man got life in prison, but would never admit to what he did with her, so Stephanie, if you ever happen to see this, just know that I miss you.

  Everything changed from that moment. Mady wasn’t just the new girl in town; she was the girl who was forced to move because she was abducted. She and I never really talked about her past. She had always stressed the fact that it wasn’t important, and at first, all I wanted to do was know what she was trying to hide. As our relationship grew stronger, those feelings faded and were replaced with love and compassion. I always knew Mady was living some sort of second life, but I never knew her second life started the day she moved into town. What if her name wasn’t actually Mady Smith? It probably wasn’t. I always thought it was a generic name, but never really questioned it. I googled her many times before, and after she died, and never came across a story about a girl being abducted. She probably had to change it for her safety, but why hide all of this from me? I thought we shared everything with each other, but I guess I was wrong.

  That story explained a lot. Why Mady was so hesitant at the beginning of our relationship, why she was always so nervous when we went out somewhere in public. My stomach was queasy. For the past couple of years, my first instinct was to protect Mady, and even though there was no way I could have protected her from that, it hurt me to think she went through it alone.

  I turned off the laptop, hid it under my bed, and went out onto my connected patio. I looked out over the lake, the moon catching the water as it swelled in gentle waves. It was beautiful. Everything was just so beautiful, but nothing could obliterate what that website revealed. It broke open everything I ever knew about Mady. I didn’t know whether I should be mad that she never told me about it, or relieved I knew now. What if she was in some sort of trouble and she needed help? I knew her parents probably told the police about Mady’s past when she disappeared, but the police around here didn’t really seem to want to dig deeper. All they wanted was to close the case so our little town could start moving on from the black cloud that floated above us. I needed to dig deeper, find out what really happened and do something about it. But for now I had to sleep. I went back inside, leaving the balcony door open. It was still hot outside and though the sun was down, the earth was still radiating heat. I crawled on top of my bed and closed my eyes, but my mind didn’t stop spinning.

  I hovered in the strange place between sleep and being awake. For most of the night I didn’t know which phase I was in, and soon the sun was rising above the horizon, flooding my room with warm colours. The house still hadn’t cooled off yet and I dreaded the rising sun, because more sun meant more heat. It’s funny how in the winter all we want is for sun to come out to melt the snow and ice, but in the summer, we start to get sick of the heat and all we want is for it to drop a couple degrees so we don’t have to fall asleep in the heat.

  I got up and went for a shower. My parents were gone and the house was dead silent. I never had a problem being in the house alone; I kind of enjoyed it, in all honesty. Dad left for an out of town assignment that morning and I’m sure he woke me up and said goodbye before he was off, but I had a tendency to wake up early in the morning and not remember anything. Some days it took my mom a while to wake me up, because every time I did, I told her I would get up and then lay my head back on the pillow after she left the room. I wouldn’t remember any of that when I actually woke up of course, and it always made me wonder if I did other things in my almost awake phase I didn’t remember.

  After I showered, I went downstairs, made some breakfast and went back up to my room to eat it. I devoured it, and soon I was on my bed with the laptop in front of me. I had to find out everything I could about Mady’s past life, and I had to do it quickly, because the way I saw it, I couldn’t read on until I found out what had happened before she came to town.

  I started off by searching generic things: like ‘girl and friend abducted in Florida’. I soon discovered bad things happened in Florida, much more than they happened in a small town like Flankstone. It wouldn’t be that easy to dig up info about Mady’s case. I started trying my hardest to narrow down the search information, adding in things such as age and the location. Before long, I found what I was looking for. The screen was full of information on the case. I read it all, making sure not to miss a single word. I didn’t learn much more about the case than I already knew, except for the name of the man that took them (William Smart). He had been sentenced to life in prison about a year ago. Right around the time Mady started the blog.

  I could see why she needed someone to talk to, and we had known each other so long she probably thought I would be mad she kept that entire part of her life a secret from me. I would have been confused, but I would have understood. She probably didn’t want to talk to her parents about it, and even though she would have never admitted it, I t
hink deep down she knew Stacy was a fake bitch. Those were really her closest people in the world, so it made sense she created an outlet for herself.

  Just as I finished reading the article for the first time, and was about to read it again, my phone rang. The caller ID said Dr. Nancy Kim. My heart dropped into my stomach instantly.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Brian, it’s Nancy, not sure if you forgot about our session today, but you’re up.”

  “No, of course not, just running a bit late. I’ll tell you what, I’m just pulling out of the driveway now and I’ll be there in about five minutes.”

  Chapter 7

  I should have learned early on Nancy Kim could see right through every single lie I told her, but nonetheless I kept on trying. When I rolled up in front of her house, two minutes later than I told her, which for the amount of distance I had to travel, wasn’t too bad, she was waiting for me at the door with a disappointed look on her face. You would think that most psychologists would be happy when their patients forgot about their appointments. It usually meant the person wasn’t banking on them to get through life anymore, and they had finally moved onto better things. Nancy was smarter than that.

  “Hey Nancy, I’m so sorry, I was just running behind.”

  “I thought by now you would have learned not to lie to me.”

  I followed her into the house to the back room where she held her sessions.

  “What have you been doing?” she asked, concern in her voice.

  Now I faced a dilemma. I couldn’t tell her what I had really been doing, she would tell me not to do that, convincing me by saying it wasn’t good for moving on and that it wasn’t good to fixate on things like this. Nancy was very good at convincing and I was worried she would make me believe I shouldn’t read the rest of that blog. On the other hand, if I didn’t tell her the truth she would know and keep on grilling me until I told her in the end anyway, which would just mess up the trust we had created in the last little while. I decided in that split second to take my chances and tell her the truth. Odds were she wouldn’t approve, but she really couldn’t control what I did once I left her office, so it wouldn’t harm me to hear another person’s opinion.

  I explained about the laptop, how I got into it had been reading Mady’s blog. I made it clear I didn’t want to tell the cops, and she didn’t object.

  “Brian this is very big news, and I’m going to tell you something you probably won’t expect. Of course this laptop and these writings could help the police find out what Mady was thinking when she disappeared and it could possibly help them crack the case, but from what I’m hearing they just want the case closed, and I’m not sure if they would do much with the laptop. I want you to read the blogs and connect with them, but don’t fixate. After you have gone through all of them you should hand the laptop over to the police, but once you give that laptop over, there is a very slim chance you will ever see it again. Take the time you need to go through them and when you’re ready to give the laptop up, hand it over to the police. I don’t want you to convince yourself she’s still alive and go looking for answers that aren’t actually there. Take it slow, but don’t wait so long this becomes an obsession, because when it ends it’s going to hurt that much more.”

  I was taken aback, but I respected her for it. I think she knew that even if she told me to destroy the thing, I was just going to go home and get right back to it. She made some good points. I needed to make sure I didn’t fixate on this.

  Nancy and I finished our session and I left feeling a lot better about everything. I always found it strange how I told Nancy everything, but I couldn’t tell my parents a quarter of the things I talked to her about. I drove home, calling Kent on the way.

  “Hey buddy, you want to go for a hike?” Whenever I wanted to do something athletic I asked Kent. I was built well enough that I looked strong and defined without having to go to the gym, but I still liked to jog and hike on the occasion, and as hard as Jason worked to get the weight off, he still didn’t like to work out when he didn’t have to.

  “Sure, where do you want to go?”

  “Mount Flank.”

  I ran home, grabbed my workout clothes and headed over to pick up Kent. Driving down the dirt driveway was always a challenge in the Benz, bouncing and bumping across the uneven ground, but Kent lived on a large plot of land and I always loved driving there. It was like you were leaving the hustle and bustle of town and entering another realm of peace and serenity. Kent waited for me on his front porch. When I pulled up, he hopped in right away. I did the best U-turn I could in the confined space, backing up and going forward a dozen times, and then pulled out of his driveway towards Mount Flank. I parked at the bottom of the mountain.

  The mountain looked beautiful, but of all days I could have picked to go hiking, this had to be the worst one. The sky was completely empty of clouds, and even though my phone said it was only 79 degrees, it felt like it was about 110. We started up the mountain on the dusty uneven path. Kent sensed there was more of a reason for me wanting to do this than just adding a hike into my weekly exercise routine. He didn’t complain as we walked up the hill, even though the heat was killing him.

  I wanted to do this for Mady. I hoped she would know I was going to remember and respect her forever. I also wanted to prove I wasn’t going to let her death define me, and I was still going to live my life. When she died I went from my lowest point to acting like everything was normal too quickly.

  Once we got to the top of the hiking trail we were both puffing, and I had emptied the only water bottle I brought with me. I didn’t feel so well physically, but mentally I felt better than I had in a long time. We looked at the view for a minute while we caught our breath, and after the puffing stopped, Kent spoke.

  “So, what’s this all about?” The fatigue was evident in his voice.

  I never thought about telling Kent what was going on until now. It felt wrong to tell more people. I was pretty positive Mady left me the laptop because she expected I would keep it a secret. Now I had told Jason and Nancy, and it just felt wrong telling more people. Although, it might be a good thing to have Kent in the know. He had a different outlook on life than the rest of us, and maybe he would read something different into Mady’s actions than the rest of us had.

  After a minute of deliberation, I decided to tell him the bare minimum. I wouldn’t give him the website url or mention Mady’s abduction.

  Just that she left me a laptop with some journal entries I believed she wanted me to see. I left out the fact over a million people had seen every single one of them so far, and the number was growing daily. It didn’t seem like the people reading the posts knew Mady was gone. The website kept getting hits, and by now it should have been flagged by the police. They probably wouldn’t realize it was Mady, but if the blog mentioned suicide, I assumed they would have taken it down by now. To me, that meant she hadn’t talked about it online, which was strange. It was obvious from her first post Mady didn’t think the website would get as much attention as it had, and when the time finally came, she felt strange telling millions of people she was about to kill herself.

  After I finished telling Kent, he looked utterly and completely shocked. I’m sure when I found that webpage I had the exact same look on my face.

  “So, are you going to read them? If it were me I wouldn’t be able to put the thing down,” Kent asked after he got over the shock.

  “I mean, at some point I will, but I just don’t want these blog entries to start ruling my life. I’m afraid if I read them all at once it will end too quickly and I’ll miss it. This is kind of the last thing keeping me attached to her, and I like the feeling.”

  Kent was quiet while he processed the information. I spent the time wondering whether it was good I enjoyed reading the thoughts and feelings of my dead girlfriend.

  After a couple minutes of sitting on the rocks, I couldn’t take the heat anymore, so I stood up and started back down the path. Kent g
ot up and followed me down the trail. Going down used much less energy than going up, and before we knew it we were back down the hill. Sweat dripped down my neck more from the heat than the exercise. I hopped in the driver seat and turned on the AC. After a second the warm air pouring out of the vents started to cool, sending shivers down my spine. Kent hopped in right behind me, and soon we were on the way to his house. I explained I had some chores to do at home before Mom got home. I promised I’d call him afterward to hang out. Kent actually seemed quite calm about the whole thing. He seemed more concerned about me than anything else.

  After I dropped Kent off, I swung by Jason’s on the way home. The good thing about Jason was that he was always home whenever I wanted to tell him something. I texted him I was out front, and within minutes he was sitting in my passenger seat looking at me anxiously.

  “What is it?”

  “I read another one of those posts.”

  “I kind of expected you had.”

  I told him what I found, and he seemed as shocked as I was. Some part of me always felt like Mady told Jason things she hadn’t told me because of how close they were. It didn’t make sense, I know, but I was still relieved when it became obvious he hadn’t known about the blog either.

  “I don’t think we should give this information to the police. We saw how they handled the case when she disappeared. All they wanted to do was sweep it under the rug, and it’s obvious this goes much deeper than a girl with depression. There has to be a reason she was writing about all of this out of the blue and I want to find out what that reason is.” I could trust Jason with anything. I told him I talked to Kent, and he didn’t seem surprised. He knew I went to Kent when things were bugging me. Kent had a way of making everything seem like it was going to turn out okay, even if it wasn’t.