“Adam,” said Brenda. “You have some explaining to do.”
Adam struggled to open his eyes, and slowly answered his mother by saying, “I was with Bradley.”
“You were with Bradley? What do you mean you were with Bradley?”
“He came over last night and got me,” Adam explained.
“Got you? Where on earth did you two go?”
“His back yard,” said Adam, sheepishly.
“Did he come up to your room? How did that happen?”
“I don’t know. He just shook me awake last night and told me to go outside.”
“And you went? How did he get in?”
“We went out the back door…like we did yesterday.”
Brenda couldn’t remember if she or Carter had locked the door, but if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be the first time, so Bradley could have very well entered through the back door.
Brenda walked over to the window to see if she could see the back yard from Adam’s room. In fact, she could. Not only could she see it, but she could see that work had been done in the yard. Then she stopped a moment and looked back at Adam. Her gaze returned to the garden. She wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, but she did know that her son went to bed clean and woke up a mess.
“Adam, did your imaginary friend have something to do with this?”
“No,” said Adam. “Bradley did. I said that.”
“Yes, I know, but I wanted to know if your other friend had something to do with this.”
“No,” Adam replied. “We were in the garden.”
“Is that where you were? You were in the garden?”
“Mom, I told Bradley that I wouldn’t say anything to you.”
“Did Bradley also explain that it would be nearly impossible to pull off something like this when you get as muddy as you did?”
“No,” said Adam, and then he put his face back into the pillow and went back to sleep. Brenda let him sleep as she embarked on a mission to run next door and visit with her neighbors once again.
Victoria Oldman answered the door in a light blue bikini that was very short on material. She invited Brenda in, but there was a disadvantage that made Brenda feel extremely uncomfortable. Victoria had a Victoria’s Secret body and she was not afraid to show it off. There were boxes still piled high nearly to the ceiling, but Victoria seemed to have plans to work on her tan, especially since this spring day brought clear blue skies with a temperature of 80 degrees and a slight northwest breeze.
“Come on in, Brenda,” she said. “What a surprise! I was getting ready to catch some rays before I dig in to these boxes.” She then pointed to the piles of boxes as if Brenda was at a loss for which boxes she was referring to. “Can I get you a cold drink?”
“No, thank you,” said Brenda. “It’s certainly a nice day to catch some rays.”
“Isn’t it?” asked Victoria. “I hate that there’s so much work to be done, but the boxes will still be here when I come back inside…am I right?” She laughed a good laugh, but Brenda only smiled.
“I would have brought Adam with me, but he’s sleeping extra late today. He seems more tired than ever.” Brenda then looked up at Victoria for a reaction.
“Isn’t that funny?” Victoria asked. “My Bradley is sleeping late as well.” Victoria laughed again. She seemed to have a personal laugh track at her disposal.
Brenda smiled and said, “Actually, Victoria, something seemed to be up with my Adam and your Bradley last night.”
Victoria looked confused, so Brenda just told her what she knew.
“Since Adam was sleeping so late, I went to get him up and pulled the covers down a little bit and he was covered with dirt and his shoes had been covered with mud.”
“Oh my dear,” said Victoria. “What did he get into? You weren’t kidding when you said he’s always getting into things.”
“Yeah,” said Brenda, smiling. “He actually said that Bradley came into our house in the middle of the night and told him to come out to your back yard.”
“Brenda,” she said, “I don’t know you very well, and I certainly don’t want to start off on the wrong foot, but please don’t go accusing my Bradley of things your troubled six-year old boy is claiming to have happened in the middle of the night.” Victoria then chuckled so vigorously that her left boob almost popped out of her top. She pushed it back in securely and said, “Why would you even entertain that version as being correct?”
Brenda smiled at Victoria as she eyed her body with jealous, yet disgusted eyes. “Victoria, my son told me that they were in the back yard of your house, and that’s how he got so muddy.”
“And you believed him?”
“Victoria, yesterday we were out in your back yard chatting while our boys were running around getting acquainted.”
“Yes, that part is right,” said Victoria, sarcastically.
“What’s also right is that since you’ve only been moved in for a few days, there isn’t a chance for you to do any work in the back yard.”
“Brenda, we have so much work to do inside. We’ll get to the outside. If you’re worried about your house value going down…”
“No, that’s not what I’m worried about, Victoria. What I’m saying is that…like you…I too had a problem with the story Adam was feeding me, especially since he had left the house the other time.”
“So?”
“So I went to the window of his room because it was overlooking your back yard. When I looked out into the yard, I noticed a good chunk of yard work that had been done. Now, I realize that these are six-year-old boys, but there’s no doubt in my mind that what he said was true when I looked out the window.”
Victoria rolled her eyes and strutted away from Brenda as she made her way to the sliding glass door leading to the back patio. She slid the door open and closed it behind her, then walked onto the patio and beyond. She made it around one overgrown section to the next, and then to the back right corner, where she stopped in her tracks. Brenda moved to the sliding glass door and looked out and saw Victoria running her hands through her hair, looking bewildered.
Victoria slowly walked along that back garden, reaching up and touching the freshly pruned rose garden in the back right corner. She bent down and picked up the freshly turned mulch, running it through her fingers until it had completely returned to the earth. She slowly rose to her feet and turned around to look at the house, but didn’t see Brenda standing at the door as it was too dark inside.
By the time Victoria passed back through the sliding glass door and inside the house, Brenda had returned to the couch and was sitting in the same spot to make it look like she hadn’t moved. Victoria pursed her lips, looking ashamed.
“Brenda,” she said. “I don’t know what to say. I mean, you have to admit…the story you told me was not easy on the ears. I don’t know what to say, but I…I…”
“If you’re still on the fence, Victoria, then let’s go upstairs and wake Bradley up and see if he is as muddy as Adam. Let’s talk to him and see what he has to say about it.”
Victoria thought about it, but then realized that she was not going to laugh off Brenda’s claims any longer. She waved her on, and Brenda walked behind her wiggling bikini butt as they made their way up to Bradley’s room for an interrogation. Brenda was so eager to prove her neighbor wrong that she almost toed her heal.
When they reached the top of the stairs and opened Bradley’s bedroom door, he was still fast asleep. His mother slowly walked over to his bed with Brenda right behind her. When Victoria lifted the blanket and pulled it down to Bradley’s knees, she did not expose the pajamas that she helped him
into the night before. Instead, she exposed the pants and shirt that he had changed into, and they were covered in mud. She dropped the blanket back down on her son, turned to Brenda and gave her a big hug, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Brenda. “It’s just one of those things. It’s hard to believe. I completely understand where you’re coming from. Imagine how hard of a walk it was for me to have to come over to your house and run this past you. My God. I completely understand your reaction.”
Brenda then slowly retreated from the hug. It was one thing to hug a neighbor, but it was something else entirely to hug a neighbor that you’ve only known for a few days who was aptly named Victoria with bumbling breasts that easily pop out of her bikini top. Victoria seemed to think nothing of it. She decided to just let her son catch up on his sleep and she would get the details of the evening upon his arising. She could not even imagine what kind of tale he would spin.
As they made their way back down the stairs and into the living room, Victoria again invited Brenda to catch some rays with her on the patio. Brenda was by no means ashamed of her body. She could turn a head just as fast as the next girl, but she didn’t particularly like to defend herself or show herself off in a bikini, and that would not be happening on this day or on any other day in the foreseeable future with her neighbor, Victoria. There would be no swimsuit competition.
. . .
Carter was getting back to normal at his job, and questions about his family were beginning to settle down a bit. There had been things going on in his life ever since the night Adam disappeared, but they were more manageable and had suddenly become the norm. Adam’s disappearance from the house was a level 10, whereas the crazy shit that had become more of a nuisance in his life was merely a five.
After a few days, he had caught up on his email, returned phone calls, and began the paperwork backlog that went beyond the scope of what his backup could do. Backups were not for day to day, but rather for emergencies; things that could not wait another moment in the history of the world. If this particular item did not get processed, it was possible that the ball they called the world, or planet earth, may actually see a shift, thus affecting the moon and the stars and the tides and the climate.
Carter had done some reflecting one rainy day while he was driving into the office. The 30-minute drive in traffic gave him plenty of time to reflect. So instead of listening to the morning radio show, he decided to opt for silence. The only problem with that plan was that silence is hard to achieve. At night there are crickets. The world is full of sounds that are constant. Complete silence is hard to obtain, even while lying in bed at night.
Carter’s attempt at silence turned into the sound of the windshield wipers battling it out with cars cutting each other off and honking. He watched hand gestures and heard motorists yelling at each other as if they were purposefully blocking each other from reaching work on time. He tuned everything out. He mentally blocked his ear canals so that he couldn’t hear. He blurred his eyes so that he could not see things, except objects that could not be identifiable with any degree of accuracy. This was all done mentally and involuntarily.
The drive to work became secondary. Carter’s mind had taken over, and he was on auto pilot. He could no longer see cars cutting off other cars, or people flipping off these offenders. Even the beeping and gunning of motors became soft background music.
Evan appeared. It seemed like Evan showed up just about anywhere and at all times. He showed up after learning about Adam’s kidnapping in his neighborhood and he never left. Carter wondered if Evan was ever going to come clean about the misinformation that he was feeding them. He wanted to research the truth. That way there wouldn’t be accusations flying around Boston about unproven things.
He thought about the somewhat strange neighbors who had moved into Mr. Jenkins’ home, and his concern skyrocketed with the phone calls he had received from Brenda about the muddy garden incident. His son was having issues with an imaginary friend, so the last thing he needed was someone else breaking into his house and screwing up his son even more. He was going to put a stop to that immediately, even if it meant marching over to his house that evening and forbidding Bradley from ever coming over without parental knowledge and permission.
As for his son’s imaginary friend, he knew that kids sometimes do have imaginary friends. However, the imaginary friend seemed to have information about their past that Adam wouldn’t even have. The imaginary friend told him things about his adoptive parents and actually led him to the cemetery and the grave site in the middle of the night. He had so many logs in the fire that he had lost track of them individually.
Evan and son. Evan and his wife. Evan making himself at home in their house. Good Lord, Carter thought. He wondered if he had blinders on to keep him from the truth. He didn’t have time to work. It would be a full-time job taking care of the issues in his life, and he’d certainly qualify for overtime. He decided that from this point forward, he was going to be more proactive and start knocking off the issues in his life that were bringing he and his family down.
Carter slammed on the brakes moments before rear-ending a pickup truck in front of him. He was back, and he was looking at the sneer of the pickup truck driver in the rearview mirror in front of him. He shook his head quickly back and forth to rid himself of the dream state and the near miss. He was suffering from thought-overload. He was so consumed by his thoughts that he nearly lost control of the world in which he lived, the world everything took place in, and the world he nearly escaped from on several occasions.
Now that he was back, he was almost relieved. It was one thing to think about things, but it was an entirely different thing to become lost in a world that is made up only of current problems; an Alcatraz for your problems. Carter didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want to become Carter Mitty. He wanted to stay in his current realm where he could tackle things of his own free will.
CHAPTER 17
One night as Carter and Brenda were walking down the hallway, preparing themselves for bed, they heard talking in Adam’s room as they passed by. They stopped in their tracks. They had heard this a couple of times before, and chalked it up to a child talking to himself. Adam forced them to take another look at it. Nothing about Adam was ordinary, so they needed to be guarded in every way possible. They no longer took things for granted with Adam.
They had done this before and knew exactly how to proceed. First and foremost, they needed to be quiet. If they made any noise or spoke aloud or tipped Adam off in any way, shape or form, then they would be all done for the night. They had made this mistake in the past, and made it a point to learn from their mistakes. They would look at each other, make hand motions, and whisper. Their communication skills in this regard were getting pretty damn sharp.
Everything was going as planned, but they were having difficulty hearing. All they could do was sit and wait and hope that Adam spoke louder or their ears adjusted to his low tones. After about 10 minutes, frustration began to build, until Adam raised his voice.
“I already did that and they didn’t like it,” he said, sounding as if he was trying to keep his voice down.
There was another lull. Carter and Brenda’s ears were not adjusting because all they could hear were Adam’s low tones. They only heard things Adam said when he raised his voice.
“Yeah, they were his parents,” Adam said. “I never met them.”
Whoever Adam was talking to was very real to him. An imaginary friend is one thing, but an imaginary friend with rare details and knowledge of family members and history was another thing entirely. It was haunting. Carter and Brenda were making faces at each other because this was bizarre to hear, but they couldn’t react. A reaction would be a recipe to close down the operation. They needed to find out wha
t the therapists or anyone else could not. They needed to take action on their own because the only one who even came close to cracking Adam’s code was Evan, but they were not sure who Evan was anymore. Until they found out more about him, they were forced to go it alone.
They heard things tumbling down from a closet, and Adam said “owie” softly, but he did not appear to be in danger. Brenda actually went to reach for the door handle, but Carter had to reach out and grab her hand. It was such an instinctive reaction for Brenda; a mother’s instinct, so it was a good thing Carter was there to block it. As far as Carter was concerned, a small bump does not trump a vital piece of detail about what was going on with their son.
Adam began laughing, and then he said, “I’m not laughing loud. They can’t hear me from their bedroom.”
“We gotta get security cameras in there,” Carter whispered to Brenda. He quickly shot a glance over at Brenda, and then back to the door, but then Adam stopped talking. It was almost on cue, as if he had heard her whispering from behind the door. When they heard another noise, and then footsteps approaching the door, they quietly scurried away down the hall to the next door and tucked themselves into their bedroom just as Adam was opening his door.
“That was a close call,” said Brenda.
“Yeah, the last thing we want is for him to stop talking. Something’s going on behind that door and I’m convinced it has something to do with Adam’s disappearance.”
“But there’s nobody in there except Adam,” said Brenda. “The times we did break in, Adam was just sitting on his bed alone. The night he disappeared, there were no signs of a break-in. What the hell could be going on with him?”
“I don’t know, Brenda, but I wasn’t kidding about the cameras. I’m going to get them installed sooner rather than later. In fact, I want them rolling tomorrow because I couldn’t handle another disappearance. No way am I going through that again.”
Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3) Page 59