The Girl Who Wasn't There

by Nick Clausen

  Dad sits down next to him. “You need to tell me what you were doing riding around town, Andy.”

  Andy takes a deep breath. “I was looking for Rebecca.”

  Dad squeezes his shoulder. “That’s thoughtful of you, Andy. But you don’t need to go looking for her. The police are doing that. They’ll find her.”

  Andy throws out his arms. “But they have no idea where to look. I saw the van, Dad. The yellow van. That’s the one I’m looking for. If I find it, I’ll find Rebecca.”

  Dad sighs. He sounds exhausted. “You can’t go on like this, Andy.”

  “But you went looking for her in the beginning. You told me so yourself.”

  “That’s different. I’m a grown-up.”

  “But I—”

  “Listen to me, Andy. You can’t be riding around town in the middle of the night looking for some van just because you think it’s got something to do with Rebecca. We need to trust the police and wait.”

  And there it was. The magical word.

  “I don’t want to wait, Dad! Waiting isn’t doing anything for Rebecca. I want to find her! It’s my fault she disappeared, so it’s my responsibility to find her again.”

  “We went over this already, Andy. It’s not your fault that—”

  “But it is! It is my fault! And you know it—I can tell by your face.”

  Dad is quiet for a while. He looks down on the floor. Andy’s heart is pounding away in his chest.

  When Dad looks up at him, his eyes are once more dull and blank. The aliveness has gone away again. “No more excursions, all right? Please give me the map.”

  Andy realizes it’s over. Dad is no longer on his side. He hands Dad the paper.

  Dad gets up and trudges to the door. He looks back to say: “I’ll be locking the door to your room at night from now on, Andy. Just until this is over.”

  PART TWO

  REBECCA WISLER

  DAY 1

  Rebecca glares at Andy as he crosses the street.

  Does he really think she’s going to wait out here in the freezing cold while he goes looking for a stupid book? Well, if so, he’d better think again. Rebecca decides to give Andy a good scare.

  He parks his bike by the stand and looks back over at her one last time, his expression hilariously forbidding, like he’s trying to browbeat her from across the street. Rebecca sends him her sweetest smile and a little wave.

  He huffs, turns around and marches into the library.

  As soon as he’s out of sight, Rebecca runs down the sidewalk, her bag jumping up and down. By the entrance to the park are two large elm trees, and Rebecca hides behind the nearest.

  She peeks out and holds her breath in excitement. From here, she has a good view of the entrance to the library, yet Andy won’t be able to spot her. Once he comes out, he’ll think she went on homewards, and then he’ll hurry to catch up with her.

  Rebecca smiles at the thought of tricking Andy like this.

  This is what you get for being a jerk.

  A minute passes, but Andy doesn’t come out.

  Rebecca needs to pee really bad. Typical Andy, taking his sweet time.

  “Come on,” she whispers, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Come on, stupid Andy!”

  Still, the glass doors don’t open.

  Then, she hears it.

  dakka-dakka-dakka!

  Rebecca spins around, staring into the park, her eyes scanning the trees. She immediately knows what made the sound. It’s the woodpecker. She’s heard it a few times before, and every time she and Andy walk through the park, she keeps an eye out for it, yet she never managed to actually see it.

  dakka-dakka-dakka!

  There it was again!

  Rebecca can even tell which direction the sound came from. This might be her greatest chance to get to finally have a look at the woodpecker.

  She forgets completely about teasing Andy and heads into the park, running with excitement. The sound came from the far end of the park, where there’s a large area of younger trees. She can’t see the bird in the first trees, so she ventures farther in. It’s still early spring and only a few of the trees have leaves, so the woodpecker will be easy to spot on the naked branches—provided it hasn’t flown off yet. Rebecca scans every treetop meticulously as she goes on.

  dakka-dakka-dakka!

  She lets out a gasp. The sound was closer and a little to the right. She changes direction and speeds up.

  The trees are bigger and stand closer together now, making everything a little dimmer, but Rebecca hardly notices. She reaches some bushes and pushes her way through, then she almost trips over an old, rusty bike someone left here several years ago.

  Rebecca looks up as she walks on, listening intently, but now the woodpecker has fallen silent.

  She’s amazed at how far the trees go on; come to think of it, she’s not quite sure what’s on the other side of the park. But she needs to see the woodpecker, so she presses on. If only she could—

  “Help me!”

  Rebecca stops abruptly. She holds her breath and listens.

  Was that a voice? Someone calling for help?

  Now there’s only the slight breeze, pushing at the treetops and causing the old leaves on the ground to stir and rustle. She picks up something on the wind, a foul smell; probably a dog turd, except it’s even worse than that.

  She turns to look back but suddenly she can’t tell exactly which way she came from; the forest has grown too thick to see very far, and it looks the same in every direction. She can’t even hear the sound of traffic anymore.

  Am I even still in the park?

  She feels a faint trace of budding panic.

  Of course she is still in the park; where else would she be?

  Rebecca isn’t normally very easily scared. She’s not afraid of the dark, not afraid of spiders, and she can even watch scary movies without having nightmares afterwards.

  But this is different. She can’t put her finger on it, but something is wrong here. She wants to get out of the forest as fast as possible. She doesn’t even care about seeing the woodpecker anymore. In fact, she wishes she had never left Andy. She considers for a moment taking out her phone and calling him for help, but Andy will no doubt tease her for getting lost.

  Besides, she’s not that scared. Not yet.

  She pulls herself together. She just needs to pick a direction, that’s all. Whichever way she chooses will eventually lead her out of the trees. She knows the town pretty well and can easily find her way home from wherever she might end up.

  That awful smell again, stronger this time. It smells like something rotting.

  Rebecca is just about to move on, when the voice comes again.

  “I’m hurt. Please help me.”

  This time, she can tell it really is someone calling and not just the wind. A girl, probably around her own age. She sounds like she’s about to cry.

  Rebecca turns towards the sound but can’t see anything between the trees. Or can she? She squints.

  Rebecca’s eyesight is perfectly fine—not like Andy, who needs glasses—and she glimpses something far off. Something yellow. She walks closer.

  Rebecca reaches an almost overgrown dirt road obviously no longer in use. An old, mustard yellow and rusty van is parked right in the tire tracks. Rebecca can see through the dark windshield that no one is behind the wheel. She goes around to the back. The back doors are open. She hesitates. The stench has grown stronger still.

  “Ugh, what is that?” she whispers, wrinkling her nose.

  “It really hurts,” the voice whimpers—coming from inside the car. “Won’t you please help me?”

  “Sure, I’m coming,” Rebecca says, instinctively responding to the pleading tone of the voice, as she steps over to the van, grabs the handle and opens the door.

  There is no girl in the car.

  There’s not even a human being.

  The creature staring out at her might look like one, but
Rebecca can tell right away the face belongs to something very different.

  Something monstrous.

  Everything happens very fast, too fast for Rebecca to react.

  The creature lunges at her. She’s pretty sure she fights to get free; she might also be screaming. The only thing she knows for certain, though, is the feeling of the creature’s cold, strong fingers.

  Then she’s lying in the dark, dazed and terrified, as the engine roars to life and the car begins moving. Branches are scratching along the outside of the van, screaming against the metal. Besides the terrible, rotting stench, she can also smell oil and dog in the stuffy air.

  She tries to get up, but loses her balance and falls down again right away. She feels something, a car wheel. She recalls briefly having seen it before the light went out and left her in complete darkness.

  Except it’s not complete darkness.

  Rebecca stares at a thin, vertical line of daylight. She crawls towards it. The car makes a turn, causing her to roll sideways, bumping hard into the wall. It hurts badly enough to make her scream out in pain, but there’s no time to sulk, she knows that. She needs to get out, while the car is still in the forest. If they make it onto the real streets, it will be too dangerous to jump out.

  Her thoughts are going a million miles an hour, flickering around her head like a murder of scared crows, each one trying to out-shout the next.

  I’m being kidnapped! What does it want with me? Maybe it wants to kill me! I’ve got to get out!

  Rebecca reaches the strip of light separating the two back doors. She fumbles for a handle but finds nothing.

  The car makes another turn, but this time she’s more ready for it, and manages to keep upright. She feels the ground smoothing out underneath the car as they speed up.

  Oh, no! We’re driving on asphalt now!

  But they must still be in town. Which means they can’t go very fast. Rebecca just still might be able to jump out without hurting herself too badly. Even if she should break an arm or bruise herself bloody, it would still be a thousand times better than being taken by the creature.

  The problem is, though, the doors can’t be opened from within. She pushes and struggles, but nothing helps.

  I can’t get out!

  Rebecca begins to scream. The sound is ear-piercing inside the confined room of the car, yet she’s not sure it can be heard from outside, due to the rumble of the engine. She places her mouth to the strip of light and screams at the top of her lungs: “Help! Help me! I’m being kidnapped! Heeelp!”

  Suddenly, the car stops, sending Rebecca sprawling backwards, landing hard on her back. She sits back up and listens. The engine is still going, but the car isn’t moving.

  Then, the sound of the front door opening. The car tilts slightly as the driver gets out. She counts four quick footsteps. Then the light strip is blocked out by a shadow on the other side, and next the doors are yanked open.

  Rebecca isn’t prepared for the daylight, and it blinds her. She only just has time to glimpse the tall, skinny figure, as it reaches in to grab her. Rebecca fights back, but the creature pulls her in, and again she feels the hard, cold hands as they turn her around so that she faces away from the open doors.

  It’s going to kill me!

  She screams again, but something soft is jammed into her mouth, followed by a sharp, unpleasant taste. Rebecca chokes and tries to spit out the thing in her mouth, but the creature swiftly wraps something thin and hard around her head and tightens it. A shove in her back and Rebecca falls to her hands and knees. Before she can get up, the doors are already shut, and she’s once again left in the dark.

  Rebecca tries to scream, but no sound comes out this time. She fumbles over her face and feels the cloth in her mouth. A strip of what feels like plastic is tied around her head and keeps the cloth tightly in place. Her fingers find what feels like a knot at the back of her head, but she can’t loosen it.

  The car moves again.

  Rebecca crawls to the light strip and puts her eye close to it. She sees a residential street unfamiliar to her. But at least they’re still in town. She screams with hardly any sound and begins banging on the doors.

  The car just rolls leisurely through town. The creature is obviously not in a hurry; it knows Rebecca can’t get out and now she can’t scream for help, either.

  As they ride through town, Rebecca peers out at a world which feels miles away. She sees pedestrians, cyclists and people in other cars, and every time she screams for help and hammers away on the doors until her fists ache—but none of them hear her.

  Then, suddenly, she remembers her phone. Instantly, her hand goes to her pocket, but she finds it empty. A sinking feeling in her stomach as she recalls how the creature’s fingers dug into the pocket. Her bag is also gone.

  The car jerks sideways, almost throwing Rebecca to the floor again, and the horn blares angrily. Rebecca looks out of the thin strip and sees—

  Andy!

  She can hardly believe it. Andy is standing on the sidewalk with his bike, a stunned look on his face as he stares after the van which apparently almost ran him over.

  Rebecca screams as loudly as she can into the cloth which is soaked with saliva, and hammers away on the doors with both hands.

  To her surprise, the car slows down and comes to a full stop. Rebecca stops banging. For a moment, she is sure the creature will jump out and run to grab Andy, too, but she can’t hear the front door open.

  She stares at her brother. He looks right back at her. His expression one of confusion and—suspicion?

  He’s listening! He heard me!

  Rebecca starts banging again, just as the car revs up and gets moving again, turning left. The view changes and Andy disappears from sight.

  But he heard me! He heard me!

  But what good does it do her? Even if Andy did hear her, he can’t catch up with the van now, not on his bike. And if he calls the police, the van will be long gone by the time they show up. It doesn’t work like in the movies, where police cars always seem to be parked right around the corner whenever someone dials 9-1-1. It could be several minutes. And by that time, the creature will have taken her far away, maybe all the way out of town, and it could have stopped at a rest stop, and it could have killed Rebecca in the most horrible way imaginable.

  Rebecca keeps banging on the doors, but now her effort is weak. She begins to cry. The car drives on. Within a few minutes, it reaches the town limit and speeds up. It heads out onto the highway as Rebecca sees the last houses grow distant.

  Still, she keeps banging until her legs give in and she sinks to the floor, sobbing.

  She has no idea how long they drive for. Time feels odd in the darkness. Sometimes it seems to move very fast, others it stands almost still.

  To begin with, she noticed every time they made a turn, trying to print the route into her memory. But by now they’ve turned so many times she’s lost count.

  Every time the van slows down, Rebecca is certain the creature will pull over, come around the back and kill her. But every time she draws a sigh of relief, as the van only slowed down in order to make a turn.

  Then, suddenly, the ground turns to gravel. Rebecca can hear it rumble beneath the tires. A few more minutes pass. Then, they finally come to a full stop. The engine is still going. The front door opens and the creature gets out.

  This is it! It’s going to kill me now!

  Her heart feels as though it explodes in her chest. She jumps to her feet and steps away from the doors, as far back as she can. She tries to ready herself for the doors to open, tells herself to not become blinded this time, to get ready to fight for her life.

  But surprisingly, the doors don’t open. The footsteps don’t come around the back, but head away from the van in the opposite direction. She listens intently.

  Someplace not far from the van she picks up the sound of metal rattling. Then, the footsteps come back towards the car. It rocks gently as the creature gets back in
behind the wheel, then they are moving again.

  Rebecca goes to the doors to peek out. They have just passed through an open and very tall wrought-iron gate, and now they enter a large gravel courtyard. Old buildings appear on each side.

  The van stops again. This time, the engine dies with a few, dry coughs. Rebecca can hear her heart pound away in the silence that follows.

  The creature once more gets out of the car. Steady footsteps through the gravel. Rebecca backs up and readies herself again, staring at the strip of light. But the doors are still not opened. Instead, she hears the metal rattle once more.

  It went to close the gate.

  Rebecca listens as the footsteps move farther away from the van. There’s a sound of a door opening. Then, silence.

  Rebecca breathes quickly through her nose. Her jaw is aching, and her cheeks are burning from where the plastic strip is gnawing at the skin. She can hardly fathom she’s still alive. But it might only be a matter of minutes. The creature probably went inside the building to find something to kill her with.

  I need to get out of here before it comes back! This could be my last chance …

  She kneels down and feels her way across the floor, searching for something, anything she can use to pry open the doors. All she finds is the tire, a roll of rope, an empty cardboard box and a crooked metal pipe of some sort. None of it can be used as a door opener.

  Suddenly, she hears the footsteps return—two pairs of them, now. One pair of long, steady steps, and one much smaller, much faster.

  Rebecca picks up the pipe and backs away from the doors. She’s not sure how hard she’ll be able to swing the pipe, as it’s very heavy in her hands, but she’s determined to do her best.

  The strip of light disappears.

  The lock turns.

  The doors open.

  Rebecca squints at the bright daylight and holds up the pipe, ready to swing at anything which might come at her.

  But nothing does.

  She blinks as her eyes adjust to the light. She sees a slice of the courtyard, but the creature is nowhere to be seen. In the gravel, however, a few yards away, sits a small dog that looks up at her with a look of curiosity, its tail wagging gently.