The Summer It Came for Us

by Rix, Dan

  “I’m sorry, Trevor,” I whispered. “I never meant to hurt you . . .”

  I choked on the words, and all at once my eyes brimmed with tears. I wiped them away angrily, loathing myself for them. Because I didn’t deserve to cry for him, I didn’t deserve to grieve for him . . . I had done this to him.

  The irony was my friends and I never intended to tease Trevor; we hardly ever picked on Trevor.

  We teased Vincent.

  Vincent, with his high-water khakis, his dorky glasses, his nasally voice—he was the real nerd.

  Trevor was only collateral damage, a loser by association. That whole time, I thought my brother was better than Vincent, I thought he could move up the food chain, I thought if I picked on Vincent enough, Trevor would ditch him for cooler friends . . . because I was embarrassed by him, and I so desperately wanted him to be cool.

  But I was the idiot.

  The superficial, pretentious idiot.

  Because my so-called “cool” friends turned out to be shallow pricks, every last one of them, and Vincent Ferguson, once you got to know him, turned out to be a hundred times cooler than them. A thousand times cooler than them.

  And now he was all I had left of my brother.

  All I had left of his memory.

  Never again.

  Never again, for as long as I lived, would I ever partake in bullying.

  I looked toward the nightstand, but my mom must have moved the photo of my brother and Vincent grinning in front of their ninth grade science project, because it was missing.

  Missing . . . just like Vincent.

  We had to find him.

  We had to.

  Or it would be like losing my brother all over again, and this time, I would never be able to forgive myself.

  Finding my voice at last, I murmured, “We’ll find him, Trevor . . . I promise,” and I was about to close the door and go cry in my bedroom when something moved in my periphery outside Trevor’s window.

  My head jerked around, my eyes focusing on the woods just at the edge of our exterior floodlights, and in that split-second, I glimpsed a thin ape-like creature as it stepped behind a tree . . . too brief a glimpse to tell whether I’d seen its shadow or the thing itself.

  In that instant, my sadness gave way to stabbing terror. My heart slammed against my rib cage, flooding me with ice-cold adrenaline.

  It had been standing there, staring in at me this whole time.

  And it wasn’t human.

  I knew, because from what I’d seen, it stood at least nine feet tall.

  Chapter 9

  The fifth time I called him, after I’d gnawed my fingernails down to the quick, Malcolm finally answered.

  “Remi.”

  Just that. Just my name, like he already knew.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and finally let myself relax, already feeling safer knowing he was on the other end.

  “I just saw . . .” I paused to gulp down whatever mass had lodged itself in my throat, “. . . what you saw. Last night. That thing. I just saw it.”

  A pause.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, outside. Outside Trevor’s room.”

  “Doing what?” he said.

  “Just standing there. Then it moved. It might still be there, I don’t know.” The words tumbled out. I sounded breathless and hysterical. “I don’t know what I saw, but I saw something.”

  Although, could I really be sure of that now?

  I’d seen a shadow move, out of the corner of my eye. Just like what Malcolm had described.

  Was it the same thing that happened in the tunnel?

  Maybe, thanks to Malcolm and all his talk about seeing something, my brain was primed to think every shadow that moved was a creepy figure, when really they were just shadows.

  There was a word for that in psychology.

  Suggestibility.

  “I’m coming over,” he said.

  I felt an unexpected rush of relief—with Malcolm here, I’d feel much safer—until I caught myself. “No, no, you can’t. My dad would kill me. I think . . . I think I’m okay now.”

  “Then stay inside, lock the doors and windows, turn on all the lights,” he said.

  I gave a halfhearted chuckle. “Darn, I was thinking I’d go outside and chase it.”

  I had no idea how I had a sense of humor right now, but it helped.

  It helped me pretend I hadn’t just seen a nine-foot thing with long arms creeping outside my house.

  It helped me not burst into tears.

  “That’s a good way to die,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or if he meant it literally, as in, we were all going to die, so I might as well die going out to meet it.

  Knowing Malcolm, maybe both.

  Though my bedroom was still hot from the day, and I’d started sweating, I wouldn’t dare crack the window to let in a breeze. I had shut it, locked it, and drawn the blinds. I didn’t even want to see what was out there.

  I had this terrible image of waking up in the middle the night and seeing it right outside my window, leering in at me.

  “How in the world am I going to sleep tonight?” I moaned into my palm, digging my fingers in my hair.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Put pillows under your sheets, and wait in your closet with a knife. That’s what I’m doing.”

  I guffawed. “You know what I love about you?” I said. “You never sugarcoat things, even when it would really, really make me feel better if you did.”

  The moment the comment left my lips I wished I could take it back, because it didn’t sound sarcastic like it wanted to, it sounded flirty—

  And I just used the words love and you in the same sentence.

  With Malcolm.

  Oh God.

  His silence stretched on, only making my face flush hotter and hotter.

  “Uh . . . yeah,” I muttered, closing my eyes and wanting to die. “Fail.”

  “I don’t sugarcoat stuff for you, Remi, because you can take it,” he said, mercifully ignoring my blathering.

  “Oh-kay,” I said.

  “It’s a compliment, FYI.”

  “It didn’t sound like a compliment . . .”

  “Listen, I have some other news. About Vincent.”

  Right back to business.

  And here I was, still trying to figure out what he meant.

  “Remember we ran into Sean yesterday in the Vons parking lot?” he said.

  “Uh . . . yeah.” I had no idea where he was going with this.

  Sean was an old friend of Malcolm’s, home from college for summer.

  When we’d run into him yesterday, he’d mentioned he was buying alcohol for a party he was throwing at his parents’ lake house, which, Zoe and I couldn’t help but notice, he deliberately didn’t invite us to. We were all talking about it on the drive home, and how rude that was, when Vincent—sweet, innocent little Vincent—proposed we crash it, and I’d backed him.

  Of course, none of this would have happened if we had just stayed home.

  “So I called Sean after I dropped you off,” Malcolm said. “I asked him if he’d seen Vincent since yesterday, since we all ran into him.”

  His spooked tone made me grip the phone a little tighter. “Well, had he?”

  “That’s the thing, Remi. I told him, ‘The little black kid with glasses who was in the backseat . . . have you seen him around?’”

  “And?” I said, now hanging on to his every word.

  “That’s what I need to ask you,” he said. “When Jace pulled up next to Sean, we were all in the car, right? All five of us?”

  “Yeah, of course we were. Why?”

  “Vincent was there, too, right?”

  “He opened his window to shake Sean’s hand,” I said. “Of course he was there—and you, and me, and Zoe, and Jace—why?”

  Malcolm’s long pause had me barely breathing.

  “That’s what I remember, too,” he said quietly. “But Sean swears
there were only four people in the car.”

  I had a terrible nightmare that night.

  Even after I woke up, feverish and sweaty, I couldn’t shake the feeling something horrible had happened.

  Not just to Vincent, but to all of us.

  Something that had happened right before—or right after—that bright flash.

  In the nightmare, it made sense.

  My parents’ voices drifted in from the kitchen, making me grateful it was Saturday.

  I couldn’t wake up to an empty house.

  Not today.

  So Sean didn’t remember Vincent in the car. Was he lying? Was he in on it? Or were we remembering incorrectly?

  None of this made any sense—it wasn’t like Vincent had suddenly turned into a ghost.

  After talking to Malcolm, I’d gone to bed thoroughly spooked and huddled wide-awake under my covers for hours—but now the sun was up, it was a new day, and I was ready for action.

  For real action.

  We had to call the police, we had to tell our parents, we had to get adults involved. This was ridiculous. Vincent was missing—like legit missing—and we were acting like the dumb kids in a Goosebumps book who thought they could solve everything themselves.

  I paused in the kitchen doorway, bracing myself to confess it all to my parents. “Guys, I have to tell you something.”

  My mom looked up from her breakfast and smiled. “Hi, hon.”

  I took a deep breath, but hesitated.

  She was in a good mood.

  If I told her now, she would go apeshit on me. She would say he was my responsibility, he was two years younger than me, what was I thinking taking him to a party, what would his mother say when she found out, why on earth hadn’t I called the police? Was I insane? I was supposed to be watching over him like a little brother—oh, wait, we already knew how shitty I was at that.

  The confession died in my throat.

  I couldn’t tell her.

  She checked the time on her phone. “Oops, sweetie, I’m off to a hair appointment.”

  She downed her coffee and breezed out the door, leaving me alone with my dad, who eyed me with a questioning look.

  “Never mind,” I mumbled, grabbing a blueberry muffin from the basket.

  Forget my parents. We didn’t need my parents.

  We needed the police.

  We needed the FBI.

  But I had to tell the others first, so it didn’t seem like I was snitching on them. And so we could present a consistent story to the police. The less they suspected us, the harder they would look for Vincent.

  Then, I would call 9-1-1, with or without their agreement.

  When I woke up my phone, there was already a missed call and a text from Zoe saying she was on her way to pick me up—driving her parents car, I assumed—and that we were all meeting up at Jace’s house to deal with the Vincent situation.

  Twenty minutes later, once we’d gathered in his basement—outfitted like a bachelor pad with couches, a huge TV, a pool table, a gaming computer, a minibar (I didn’t drink) and a fridge fully stocked with sodas, it was our go-to hangout spot—I made my announcement.

  “I’m calling the police,” I said. “It’s been thirty-six hours, and we have no idea where he is, whether he’s okay, or what . . . and I’m worried sick about him. So I’m calling the police.”

  Seated next to me, Malcolm rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the rug, working his jaw back and forth. “Do it.”

  Zoe merely nodded, looking sick—I’d told her about Malcolm’s and my creature sightings on the way over, and she hadn’t taken it well. “Poor Vincent.”

  Even Jace gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah . . . guess we should.”

  “Okay, I’m doing it.”

  While he gripped the back of his computer chair with a pained expression, I brought up my phone’s keypad and, trying not to shake, dialed 9-1-1—

  “Wait,” he blurted out.

  I raised an eyebrow at him, thumb poised over the call button.

  “Just . . . shouldn’t we wait?” he said.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know, it just . . . it doesn’t feel right.” He sighed and pushed off the computer chair, sending it rolling away, and paced to the wall, running his hand through his hair. “I agree, we should call them, soon, but can we please, please talk about this?”

  “We’ve been talking about this,” I said. “That’s all we’ve been doing, and meanwhile every hour that passes the trail could be going cold.”

  “He didn’t just disappear,” Jace growled. “People don’t just disappear.”

  “Maybe he ran away,” I said. “Maybe he was kidnapped, or taken by the government, we don’t know. That’s the point.”

  “Ah, Jesus, this whole thing’s jacked up anyway . . .” Jace slumped against a wall-mounted corkboard pinned with photos and shook his head, then looked up suddenly. “Hold up, has anyone heard from his mom?”

  “Remi, call them,” said Malcolm.

  “Don’t call them,” Jace warned. “I’m serious. Has anyone heard from his mom?”

  “No,” said Malcolm. “No one has heard from his mom, no one has heard from him, no one has heard from his grandma, no one has heard anything.”

  “Why not?” Jace said hotly. “Wouldn’t they call us if he was missing? Why haven’t they called us? Why hasn’t anyone called us? You’d think his friends or someone would notice him missing, if he was truly missing.”

  His comment stung.

  “Jace . . . his friends?” I whispered, jaw slack. “We’re his friends.”

  He licked his lips, knowing he’d said the wrong thing and was only digging his hole deeper. “All I’m saying,” he said, “is we should talk about this before we call the freaking cops . . . I mean . . . right?”

  Malcolm stood up. “You keep saying that, buddy. You keep saying you want to talk. You got something you want to get off your chest?”

  Without warning, Jace spun and punched the corkboard, making me flinch, and a photo fluttered to the ground—a photo of the four of us—which he hastily re-pinned, hanging crooked, before dragging his hand through his hair again. “All I’m saying is let’s think before we do something stupid.”

  Zoe got up to right the photograph, muttering something about, “Crooked photos . . . pet peeve of mine . . .”

  Once she had it—and all the other photos—perfect, she was about to head back to the couch, when she froze.

  “Uh . . . guys?” she said.

  “Remi, make the call,” Malcolm ordered.

  “For Christ’ sake, can we wait five freaking minutes?” said Jace. “I’m asking for five minutes!”

  “Let me guess,” Malcolm said dryly, “you want to talk.”

  I glanced between them, frightened by Jace’s odd behavior. Why was he being so weird? Was he hiding something?

  “Um, guys,” Zoe said, louder, still staring at the photo.

  Jace sighed into his palms. “I don’t know, it just . . . it feels like we’re missing something—” Seeing my thumb inch toward the call button, he warned, “Remi, don’t you dare press that button.”

  “Do I have to punch you in the face?” Malcolm said. “The fuck’s wrong with you? Remi, call them.”

  “GUYS!” Zoe shouted. “Listen to me!”

  “What?” we all said in unison.

  She pointed to the photo on the corkboard. “Didn’t Vincent used to be in this photo?”

  Chapter 10

  Crowding around the corkboard, we all stared in shock, the police momentarily forgotten.

  The photo showed Malcolm, Jace, Zoe, and me in our tuxes and glittery dresses posing in front of the chocolate fondue fountain at the homecoming dance.

  At first, I couldn’t be sure.

  Had Vincent been in that photo? We had tons of photos from that night. Most likely he had taken this photo, and that’s why he wasn’t in it. That made the most sense.

  But . . . no, Zoe was
right.

  I distinctly remembered this photo. We only had one in front of the chocolate fondue station. Malcolm had given his phone to a random sophomore to take our picture, and it was the only picture taken of the five of us that night.

  Vincent had been in it, right in the middle, grinning like an idiot.

  The first time I’ve been happy since Trevor’s death, he’d told me later. With you guys.

  As I stared, an icy tingle went down my back.

  I remembered him being in this photo.

  “Zoe’s right,” Malcolm said, tilting his cell phone toward us. “Here’s the original.”

  Sure enough, his phone had a nearly identical photo, except with all five of us.

  Had another photo been taken that we weren’t aware of?

  “Jace, did you . . .” eyes narrowed, I scanned the other photos on his corkboard, but found none of Vincent, nor any others that should have had him—just the homecoming photo, “. . . did you Photoshop Vincent out of this picture?”

  “Yeah, Remi,” he scoffed, “I Photoshopped Vincent out of . . .”

  He meant it as a joke but trailed off when he saw us all staring at him.

  “What? No!” he cried. “Of course I didn’t Photoshop him out! Are you sure he was even there that night? I’ve had this picture up for half a year, and I’m pretty sure Vincent was never in it.”

  It was my turn to gawk at him. “Are you serious? Yes, he was there that night.”

  “Who was his date, then?” Jace said.

  “He didn’t have a date, we went as a group,” I said heatedly. “How do you not remember him being there?”

  “I don’t remember most of the night, I was drinking from a flask, so just chill.”

  “He was there, Jace,” Zoe said quietly.

  He turned away with an exasperated expression. “Whatever.”

  Malcolm leaned closer to the corkboard, comparing the image on his phone with the one on the wall. “No, if he was Photoshopped out, there’d be a gap. There must have been a second photo taken.”

  Jace brought up the photo on his phone, too. “Look, here’s the photo on Facebook . . . it’s the same one I have.” He looked pointedly at me. “So no, Remi, I did not Photoshop him out.”

  Sure enough, it was identical to the one on his corkboard.