by DW Gillespie
“Jack.”
Once we’d dried off and the sun was down, I had walked back into Andy’s room and just started prattling without taking a breath. He was sitting on the floor, staring at the TV, and in my excitement, I hadn’t even noticed it wasn’t on.
“Hold on a second. I was saying, there’re some houses over on one side…I think it might be the back side of Mayer Street, but over on the right, waaayyyy past that field is where the old quarry is. That’s what Robbie said, but of course, he never actually went back there himself. I’m not sure if I believe him about much of anything…”
“Jack,” he said, standing up.
“…but a flooded quarry, now that’s a good hiding spot. Nobody goes back there, and if I was a monster that steals toys, that’s probably where I’d—”
“Stop!” he screamed, staring me in the eyes.
“What?” I said, hand on my hip.
“It’s over.”
My brain didn’t quite process the words.
“What is?”
“This. All this. I mean, jeez, we almost got killed by Barnett today, and he’s just some dude. What’s next? What if we actually find the damn thing? Do you think it’ll just throw up its hands and give your bear back?”
His voice was getting louder, angrier, and he was scratching at his back vigorously, as if he had poison ivy.
“It’s not just about the bear,” I said.
“Of course it is!” he snapped back. “It’s about you. It’s always about you.”
“Andy, I—”
“What, did you think you were helping me?” he asked as he crossed the room toward me, crowding me back against the door. “You’ve never helped me. Never helped anyone. If I have a problem, I deal with it myself. You get someone else to do it for you.”
A look of pain was growing across his face, clouding his eyes as he dug away at the sore patch on his back.
“And another thing,” he said, pointing his finger in my face. We both gasped at the sight of it, the scabby, old blood that he had scratched free, as if he had just killed something with his bare hands.
“Just…just leave me alone,” he said as he pushed past me, throwing open the door and ducking into the bathroom.
I thought back to that afternoon, less than an hour ago, thought of the way he’d stepped in front a rampaging, desperate man to keep me safe. Why was he acting like this? He was always sullen, always just on the edge of some glib comment or outburst, but he loved me. I knew he did. And this thing between us, this secret that had sprung up from thin air, it was important. It meant more than just a teddy bear or a plastic superhero. The Toy Thief was threatening the last shreds we had left of our mom, and so it mattered.
I knew those things then as I do now, but I didn’t have any fight in me. I was drained, wrung out, and I couldn’t keep up this pace for much longer. So instead of waiting for him in his room, forcing him to see things my way, I dropped it. Tomorrow, the world might look different, as it often did after a night of sleep. I trudged to the kitchen and ate something, I couldn’t tell you what, and before the clock struck eight, I was asleep, curled up in my bed, the dull pocketknife clutched in my left hand.
* * *
“Jack.”
Confusion.
Dad shaking me awake.
“Wake up, Jack.”
Sun streaming in.
Couldn’t be. Just went to bed a few minutes ago.
“I said, wake up,” he said, his voice growing harder, less patient.
“What?” I said, bleary as I sat up in bed, my eyes still closed.
“Have you seen Andy?”
“In his bed,” I replied as I flopped back down onto the covers. Dad yanked them away, and when he spoke again, I heard an urgency in his tone that was so foreign it felt like a different language. He never sounded like that – so very afraid.
“I said…get…up.”
Again, I sat up, and when I found the will to open my eyes, they found his eyes inches away. His fingers, like bands of iron, locked onto my shoulders as he stared at me.
“Andy,” he said slowly. “Do you know where he is?”
“He was in his bedroom,” I replied. “Last night.”
“You haven’t seen him?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
He closed his eyes and let out a deep, slow breath before saying another word.
“Your brother’s gone.”
Chapter Eight
We used to play a game in the neighborhood called capture the flag. The rules were pretty simple. Two teams would divide a section of the neighborhood into two more-or-less equal parts. Each team had a flag, usually an old towel or a t-shirt. Didn’t really matter as long as it was white. Then the teams would split up and hide the flag somewhere on their half of the playing field, making sure that the entire flag was actually visible. No stuffing it in a trashcan or anything. After both sides were ready, the game began.
As soon as you set foot onto enemy territory, you were fair game. If they touched you, you were caught, and you had to freeze in place until someone from your side rescued you. That was one way to win the game: simply catch everyone else on the opposite team. But the real goal, the ultimate prize so to speak, was to sneak into enemy territory, find their flag, and get back to your side with it.
We always played at night, and most of us dressed the part, head to toe in all black. Some kids took it further than others, donning camouflage. This one kid, Donnie something, used to paint his face up with football eye grease, thinking it really gave him some kind of edge. It was, for a good portion of the guys in the neighborhood, a kind of fantasy, their opportunity to be soldiers sneaking behind enemy lines.
Those guys sucked at capture the flag.
I wasn’t the fastest, and I didn’t wear camo, but more often than not, I was the first picked when the teams were sorted out, because they all knew. They had seen it firsthand. You see, the game wasn’t just about getting the flag or capturing the other team. None of that really mattered if you couldn’t find the damn thing. We always stuck to the rules when we hid the flag, because there was no quicker way to get shunned from the neighborhood than to cheat. But part of the strategy was to hide it as well as you could without actually cheating. If there was a tree right next to a shed, you could hide it between the two, pinning it up on a low-hanging branch. It might be hard to find, but it was still legal.
It was a thrill once you made it onto the other side, with no one in sight, creeping forward in a crouch through creeks, ditches, patches of trees. But once you were over there, no matter how stealthy or fast you were, it didn’t matter if you couldn’t find the flag. That was where I came in.
I was smaller than everyone else, and I could move through the dead leaves with a lighter step than any of the hulking boys could ever dream of. But there was more to it than just my physical gifts. I knew to steer clear of the streetlamps, those little pools of light that would give you away in a second. I knew which houses had automatic lights that would flip on when you came into range, enough to paint a target on your back and bring the rest of the team running. I knew which of our neighbors raked their leaves in the fall, taking the crunch out of every step. But most importantly, I knew how the other teams thought, because I knew where I would have hidden something.
In short, I was a fucking bloodhound.
* * *
I was supposed to be in school that day. It was Monday, the last Monday, the beginning of the end of the school year. Half the kids were gone, and the others were watching videos and filmstrips, the teachers passing the time as much as the kids. I should have been there with my handful of friends, with Sallie and the rest, giggling, passing notes, our teeth practically chattering while the summer got its claws in us. Instead, I was watching Dad pace the room as he waited for the cops to show.
Once again, I had to give him credit. He stumbled through fatherhood, less with a plan than with a flashlight, but he did his best to hit the major milestones. Birthdays were good, if a bit underwhelming, especially compared to my friends’. Christmas was usually a nontraditional blast of junk food, scary movies, and as many toys as you could fit under a tree. I still don’t know how he pulled that off year after year. And even though we didn’t get the traditional tuck-in, kiss-on-the-forehead kind of good night, he still kept better tabs on us than I ever realized. Most nights, he was the first to bed, but, as I learned after Andy went missing, he would inevitably take a stroll through the house after we were asleep to check on us.
That was how he knew.
For the second time in a week, I stood just out of sight, spying as Dad talked to a pair of cops in the kitchen about Andy. Apparently we’d drawn the asshole card this go-round, as one of the cops, a big man with a buzz cut, rather stoically told Dad that that sort of thing was common among delinquents.
“Delinquents?” Dad asked incredulously.
“Yes, sir. I understand your son had a shoplifting incident just a week ago.”
“Yeah. He did something stupid, but I don’t think that qualifies as—”
“He has also been suspended four times from school for fighting, smoking, et cetera.”
Dad sighed, but it wasn’t a sound of exasperation – more of a plea to himself not to punch the cop in the face.
“What does any of that have to do with finding him?” he asked impatiently.
“Running away from home is also common among delinquents,” the cop added.
“Don’t fucking call my son a delinquent again.”
Just then the other cop, a shorter, round-faced fellow, spoke up. “We’ll do all we can, sir. You have to believe that.”
I listened to them talking, considering all of the potential scenarios running through their heads. The unhappy home lives of runaways that made them feel as if life on the road was a better option. Most came back soon, so they said, but this was a small town, and every cop knew to keep their eyes out. It was all rather bland and prepackaged, but I listened along just as well as Dad. Soon they were gone, and I crept around the corner, a mouse uncertain if the cats were asleep.
Had my father ever looked so pitiful? His head was slumped in his hands, his thinning hair a mess from where he had run his frustrated fingers through it. From the side, he looked like an old barn about to cave in. The only thing supporting him was the kitchen table itself. He heard me walk in, and I saw his brows perk up, but he refused to look at first.
“You okay, baby?” he asked, still not glancing my way.
Hearing his voice, so broken, so desperately sad, sent a shock of heartbreak racing through my entire body. All at once, I couldn’t even answer the question. Instead, I must have squeaked a little, some kind of pitiful excuse for a word. It was enough to turn those watery blue eyes my way.
“Oh, Jack,” he said, sitting up straight and spreading his arms. I spilled into him and went boneless as he scooped me up as easily as he had when I was a baby. He told me it was okay, and he let me cry until I was just about empty. Once or twice, I could feel his tears drip down, mixing with my own, the two of us all but spent.
“He’ll be back,” he told me at the end. “Don’t you worry. He’s just a little upset, I’m sure, but he’ll be back.” We talked a bit longer before I sneaked back to my room and slid the door closed. Maybe they were right.
Dad.
The cops.
That little voice inside me, the quiet part that always told me what I wanted to hear.
All of them were saying the same thing.
He’ll be back.
But I knew what they didn’t. I saw the truth that they were blind to. He hadn’t left. He hadn’t packed up and strolled out. He’d been taken. Stolen by that half-formed, horrid creature. There wasn’t any question in the matter. If my brother was ever to see our house again, it was up to me to make it happen.
* * *
I’m getting tired of writing this. I know that’s a weird thing to say, especially from the outside.
Just quit then.
That’s what I imagine most people would say, and my itching fingers tell me that would probably be for the best. They always itch when I’m doing something I shouldn’t be. When I fucked around with Gabe Thompson after that football game when we were fifteen, they itched so bad I couldn’t even feel what was happening below the waist. He didn’t like me. He had all but told me as much in class that year. He always, more so than just about anyone I knew, made it a special point to terrorize me in class. People like him made my high school years a nightmare.
“I’ll bet you don’t even shave your bush,” he told me once. “I mean, how would you hold the razor?”
I had ignored similar things for the better part of a month, but that particular sentiment was just too disgusting to ignore. I spit in his face, right in class, right in front of Mr. Pullman, and when he stepped over to split us up, Gabe started laughing. He’d broken me, made me give in to his awful impulses, and so he won.
I can still remember the grin on his face, even all those months later, when I bumped into him after a football game. It was homecoming. The stadium was less than half a mile away from the house, close enough to walk without much worry. Usually, a few friends tagged along with me, but on that night, I was going solo. I saw Gabe at the game, I always saw him, tracked him, kept an eye on him the way you might keep an eye on a rattlesnake that people let slither around their house. It was only really dangerous if you didn’t know where it was.
I had a handful of friends at that point, weirdoes like me, people pushed out of the inner circles, hiding in plain sight at the edge of the crowds. There were plenty of us, and we were never really alone, but we never really mattered either. That was fine. Life on the inside of that glass globe looked awful by comparison. I caught glimpses of Gabe and his friends, the preppy, well-kept pretty boys in Dockers and tucked-in polo shirts, a wall of stinking, high-school-boy cologne enveloping them wherever they went. One of them had procured a bottle of liquor, some cheap, plastic-bottle vodka from the look of it, and they were passing it around, taking swigs whenever they felt it was safe to. They kept it hidden under a plastic megaphone with our school logo on it, the Green Bronco.
When the game was over, the crowd began to break up, splitting into subgroups for rides home with parents, older siblings, anyone that would spare a seat. I hugged my friends and set out down the darkened stretch of road lined with cars on their way out. There were too many people, and I began to feel itchy in my fingers, the way I always did after too long in a crowd, so I sneaked off onto one of the quiet neighborhood paths that would lead me home. I crossed around the edge of the field house, and there he was, stumbling along towards me. His house was also within walking distance, just in the opposite direction, heading for the nice part of town. He saw me, and I glanced down to the ground.
“Oh,” he said, coming to an awkward halt. “You.”
It wasn’t the usual way he spoke to me. It was a tone of curious, almost playful surprise, like we were old friends stumbling across each other.
“Me.” I stopped too.
He struck up a strained conversation, always careful to glance over his shoulder to make sure none of his friends were creeping up on us. So we talked, standing there, hidden in the shadow of the field house, and all of the things I hated to admit were impossible to ignore. He was handsome, almost painfully so, like a rower at an Ivy League school or a rugby player. Amazingly, he was actually being pleasant to me, making me laugh by making fun of himself, the same way he might act with the truly attractive girls in our grade. The ones who weren’t untouchable. Before long, after the headlights had disappeared on the horizon, we began to walk toward my house, deeper into the woods, the pair of us swallowed by the dark. And th
en, without warning, I pressed him against a tree and began kissing him, and before I knew it, he was fumbling for his belt, dropping his pants around his ankles, practically begging me to get on my knees. Instead, I pushed him down onto his bare knees and pressed his face into my crotch.
It’s important to understand that I wasn’t some poor, pitiful girl who was swept off her feet by the prom king. I started the entire encounter, and I was the only one who got an ounce of satisfaction that night. After I dug my nails into his back hard enough to rip his shirt, I pushed his head away, picked up my panties, and left him standing there, his dick throbbing in the cool, open air. I couldn’t help but smile.
When Monday rolled around, he refused to look me in the eyes, and from that point forward, he never so much as mentioned my name. It was a wonderful feeling, dangling our encounter over his head like a sword on a thread. From time to time, I would even slip him a note in class that read something like Did you tell your friends yet? or When will you take me out to eat again? Not once did he ever respond, but the fear of the world knowing what he had done, and more importantly, who he had done it with – ohhhh, that was absolutely delicious.
I was itching that night, and I’m itching now as I write all this down. Everything up to now has been tough to talk about. Mom. Dad. Andy. All of it.
But I’m itching now because I realize that everything up to this point has been treading water. The real story, the bad stuff, is just about to begin.
* * *
Dad paced around the house for the next hour or so, but he could only stand doing nothing for so long.
“Jack,” he said, pausing in my doorway, “I’m…” He seemed at a loss for words, unsure of exactly what he was going to do.
“I’m going out for a drive,” he added. “Just stay inside.” He made it halfway out the door before I heard him turn back around and stomp down the hall. “And lock the door.”