by Vivien Reis
A tree towered before him, higher than any he'd ever seen, and with more branches than he could ever count. It stretched toward the sky, the leaves blotting out all sources of the sun.
Ben took in a deep breath and exhaled, feeling the purity of the air around him, smelling the land laid out before him.
A chill gradually swept over his body. He searched around, confused at the sudden contrast to the bright, warm sun still high overhead. Cold gave way to ice and then searing pain. Ben spun, trying to find the source of the frigid air.
It crept into his bones and sank into his veins. He could feel it, like an avalanche in his blood.
"Benjamin." The voice had changed. It was deep and slow and rough.
Ben fell to his knees and gripped at his arms, his chest, everywhere because all of it hurt. It hurt so much.
Knocking exploded around him, frantic.
"Ben!"
He was back in the shower. Freezing water splashed over him and he jumped away from it, wincing when he put weight on his knee. He had used all the hot water. That was all that had happened. He had used up all of his emotions and become a hollow shell. It was completely normal for the mind to go to a safe place, to want to take a break.
Right?
"Are you okay in there?"
"Yeah." He soaped up, making sure there was no trace of red left on his body. He gritted his teeth and let out an involuntary gasp as he rinsed the soap off.
It was a dream. It had to have been a dream. The stress and the exhaustion and the emotion of the day had gotten to him. His mind had cleared, though, and the headache was a manageable throb now in a way only sleep could cure.
He opened the bathroom door and walked down the hall, his right knee sending throbs of pain with every step.
Gran was in the living room with a sobbing girl, so small she looked like a child.
Abi looked at him and he looked at her. They didn't speak. There was nothing to say.
She ran to him and he held her, not sure what to do to make it all go away.
# EIGHT
He was alive. But hardly.
Two days had passed, and they had been the longest of Abi's life. Each hour since the attack was like one nightmare, stretching on and on.
She had been in English class, critiquing an essay. The principal's voice had buzzed over the teacher's intercom, a staticky request to see Abi in his office.
The class oohed.
A police officer was waiting there, and her mind raced with the previous night—did they know she'd been out drinking? That she had snuck out without her parents’ permission?
It had been much worse than that.
Abi saw Ben only after he had cleaned up, but rumor had already spread around town and all over the internet and news. He had been covered in blood. She tried to imagine the horror that he had walked into but imagining it would never measure up.
He had seen something no one should ever see.
Once Ben had showered, Gran had taken them both to the hospital. The sterile odor burned her nose and the seats in the waiting room were stiff and small. She would doze off only to wake with a start when a door opened and closed. At any moment, Abi had expected a doctor covered in blood to come through the swinging double doors, and tell them their father was dead.
But her dad hadn't died.
At least not yet.
She, Ben, and Gran had been at the hospital nearly every minute of that time but they still had no answers. Abi tried to keep up with what little information they were given, but there was a lot of technical talk and coded phrases. Instead of saying, "He'll never wake up again," the doctors would say something like, "His MRI scans aren't showing a reason for his unresponsive state."
What did that mean?
She wanted so much to ask but was equally afraid of the answer. What if her dad never woke up?
Gran hadn't allowed the doctor to talk about the specifics of her father's injuries in front of Abi and Ben. Abi was glad for that. She overheard some of the details when the police questioned Ben again at the hospital and that was more than she wanted to know.
When they were finally able to see her dad, he had more tubes and machines hooked up to him than Abi thought possible. Things beeped in the background and whooshing noises came from a breathing machine.
That was when the force of it had hit her. All the coded crap the doctors had been saying sank in. He was dying, and the only things keeping him alive were the machines surrounding him.
Under the fluorescent lights, his skin had glowed white. There were bandages everywhere: on his arms, his head and one thickly wrapped all the way around his neck. With sick fascination, her mind had played flashing images of what he must have gone through. It made her limbs heavy and her stomach hurt.
Gran had forced them to leave, to go back to her home and eat—or at least try to. None of them did.
Now Abi stood at the bay window in Gran's kitchen, feeling the acidic coffee hit her already knotted stomach. News vans kept watch across the street. A haze obscured most of the sun, threatening to snow at any moment and casting the world in gray. It was only a quarter past eight in the morning, but already she had seen two sets of neighbors slowly walk past Gran's home, pretending they were going on a morning walk.
That's how people reacted to situations like this. Everyone wanted to care so much that no one did.
Her family was a freak show that had given its final performance.
Gran came into the kitchen. She might have said something but Abi missed it.
"Abi?"
"Hmm?"
"Did you eat yet?"
No. "Yeah," Abi replied.
Another couple meandered down the sidewalk, pushing their infant child in a stroller as an excuse to walk past. It was too cold to have a baby outside like that. They looked at the news vans and back at Gran's house and whispered things to one another as they went.
Gran said nothing else. Ben appeared, mechanically eating toast before the three of them stepped outside and headed toward Gran’s car, barely a word spoken between them.
Today was the second day of the search party. Gran gave no protest to Abi and Ben wanting to take part, but it had taken some convincing for the sheriff to approve. They wouldn't sit around at the hospital and not try to look for their own mother. He had reluctantly agreed and Abi knew why he was hesitant—if the search party found something, he didn't want Ben and Abi there to see it.
But how likely were they to find anything? They had been in the hospital all day yesterday, crowded around her dad, while the first round of volunteers combed the woods until the sun had set.
Cars lined the streets for blocks before the sheriff's station, far more than those that lived in their tiny town. Abi's eyes and nose burned and she blinked rapidly to stay the tears. She had seen the announcement calling for volunteers on the evening news while at the hospital but she had never expected this many people to show up, even for the second day.
Men and women, some old, some younger than Abi's parents, made their way to the station. Most wore hiking boots and thick jackets, some had their own flashlights.
Gran drove up to the sheriff's station and parked in a spot with a sign reading Reserved: Deputy Parking Only. A bold move like this from Gran would ordinarily have made Abi laugh, and knowing that made her feel all the more hollow.
They followed the crowd to a large field behind the station, where the sheriff was speaking A few people recognized them, letting them move closer to the front. Sheriff Belmore went over search protocols, instructing them to use whistles or shout if anyone found anything.
A hundred eyes were on the back of Abi's neck and she fought the urge to turn and look.
Deputies walked around, handing out maps and asked those with cell phones to download a copy of it for reference. It outlined the areas they were to cover after being broken down into groups. Abi's fingers shook as she typed on her screen, a tremor that had started that first night and hadn't left her
yet. She pulled up a copy of the map and examined it.
The entire woods behind their house had been highlighted, as well as the forested area on the other side of Route 2, hugging Hollow’s Creek in a giant semi-circle.
"Why are we searching the creek?" a guy asked from somewhere in the crowd. "That’s miles from their house. No one ever goes out there."
"That's exactly why we're looking there," the deputy answered. "We chose each place on this map for its remoteness and its proximity to the place where the crime occurred."
The crime. It was so generalized, like the crime didn't involve an attempted murder at all. Like someone hadn't almost hacked her father to death.
Abi looked back at the image and tried to expand it. A breeze rustled her hair, and a whisper passed by her ear.
"You won't find her."
Fear tore the breath from her lungs as she spun. But no one was looking at her. Everyone around her appeared busy with their phones or the papers being handed out. They glanced at her with quick expressions of sympathy or confusion before returning to their maps.
The voice had been male, low and harsh, and so quiet that it had to have been someone near her.
"You all right, honey?" Gran laid a hand on Abi's shoulder. It didn't comfort her.
"I thought I heard someone say something."
Gran didn't respond, but pulled Abi closer in a side-hug while the sheriff continued to talk. Abi didn't hear the rest of his announcements. She analyzed all the people surrounding her, searching for anyone suspicious looking or...she wasn't sure what exactly to look for. But what if the attacker had shown up? Wasn't that a thing? The criminal would return to the scene, trying to seem helpful to the police but would secretly enjoy toying with the cops.
He could be any one of these people in the crowd.
Someone counted off numbers, moving through the mass of people. Everyone sectioned off into groups and before heading toward their cars, some offering to carpool to their search location. Abi relied on Gran and Ben to have paid attention. She was still surveying the crowd of people when they got into their cars and left.
Several hours later, Abi's feet were already killing her. But the pain was useful. It sharpened her senses, something she needed after hours of being on high alert. The three of them had been assigned the forest on the far side of Hollow’s Creek. She doubted it had been luck that had landed them the section furthest from their house.
Ben’s feet crunched a few feet from her, off cadence and rhythmic because of his knee.
Abi was so worried she would miss something that her eyes burned from lack of blinking. The sky was so dark now that anyone without a flashlight had their phones out to illuminate the forest floor. She didn't notice how cold her hands and feet were until someone blew their whistle two shrill times.
They had found something.
She ran, not caring that she would lose her place. Everyone else had stopped to stare, unsure about leaving their positions. She weaved through them, stumbling a few times with her numb feet.
Three people were gathered around something on the ground. A police officer was already there, taking pictures and instructing the others to stand back.
"Look for anything else in this area, but don't get near the weapon."
The weapon.
Abi's entire body seemed to float the rest of the way, afraid of what she was about to see.
It was long and thin, parts of it glinting in the light. Other parts were a dry, flaky red, almost dark enough to be black.
It was the knife that had nearly killed her father.
A knife still covered in his blood.
Abi stared up at the dusty living room ceiling fan. She locked her eyes on one blade, following it around and around. Her body felt heavy atop the couch, her muscles weighed down with fatigue.
Gran had been on the phone yesterday for several hours with the sheriff after the search party. Piecing together the responses Gran had given, Abi knew the conversation had been about Abi's mom.
A flush rose to her face thinking about it. Sure, her mom was sick. Sure, she had snapped before, but that was a long time ago. It was impossible to think she would try to kill their dad, to hurt the one man that loved her enough to stick by her side.
Abi rolled over, her arm hanging limply off the edge of the small couch. She had insisted on letting Ben take the spare bedroom. She had been through a lot in the last two days, but Ben had been through even more.
So much had changed in the last three days. Even more since the last incident seven years before.
What stuck out most about that week was her father taking her and Ben to Disney World. She remembered being so excited the entire drive down to Orlando that she couldn't sit still, and she and Ben had fought over her kicking the back of his seat. Eventually, she realized her dad had done it to keep her and Ben's minds off what was happening. People in scrubs had helped take her mother to an institution that week, the week Abi turned eight.
The week their mom had tried to kill Ben.
But their mom had been a different person then. No one had known she was sick, but now her family knew how to handle it. Her mom's medicine made her drowsy and quiet. Abi's father made sure she took each pill, checking her cheeks and under her tongue after every dose, resorting to shots when she silently refused to take them.
Abi took a deep breath, eyes still on the whirling fan blade when a shuffling sound came from Ben's room. A panic rose in her and she had the sudden urge to run, to hide. It was early, but she wasn't ready to see anyone, to talk about what would happen next. She got up and changed. After lacing her tennis shoes, she grabbed her helmet and backpack, quietly stepping outside.
Her bike was just inside Gran's open garage, one of the few things the sheriff had brought over for her. It was too early for the news vans to be there, and the road seemed too quiet. She wasn't sure where she was going but something solid itched inside her, just beneath the surface. Abi was living in a nightmare and she wanted to get out.
She wanted to leave, now more than ever.
The humid but cold morning air stung her skin, and she pedaled. It wasn't long before sweat accumulated under her jacket, making her skin twitch and shiver. Cora would be asleep at this hour, so Abi pedaled without direction, pushing harder on her legs with each pump.
Her thrumming heartbeat and breathing comforted her. She moved faster, outrunning all the emotions of the past week. Right turn, left turn. Down the old Augusta Road that skirted the entire perimeter of her neighborhood. Left turn. Straight. Straight. There wasn't a single car on the street yet, the sun barely illuminating the dull sky.
The burn of the cold air grew painful, her breath coming in gasps. The sweat on her forehead was hot and cold at the same time. Her legs were on fire and her peripherals pulsed with each heartbeat. Black had begun to close in on her when she finally stopped, riding up in someone's lawn. She leapt off the bike and let it fall beside her as she tumbled onto her back.
Every breath she took let loose as a rasp. She coughed to clear the cool air, perspiration pooling in the hollow of her neck. The ground was frigid, but it felt good. The sky was still a deep color, but clouds had appeared against the backdrop. She watched them and looked for familiar shapes.
A mountain with two peaks slowly moved into a bird. It was a rough outline, and she squinted to see its wings. Her eyes drifted closed. Her breathing evened and sleep tugged at her.
Then she remembered where she was. The neighbors would think her crazy if they saw her splayed out on someone's lawn.
Plus, Gran would be up soon, and she hadn't left a note to tell her where she would be.
Abi's muscles strained to pull up to a sitting position. Blood flooded her head and sparks went off in her vision. She scanned the area. This wasn’t someone’s lawn, it was Mrs. Rochelle’s lawn, an elderly woman who took great pride in her perfect grass. Of course this was the place Abi had flopped down. The old woman had x-ray vision when it came to her yard
and would have no problems seeing the imprint Abi’s body had left, even if no one else did.
Fishing around in her backpack and double-checking her pockets, Abi realized she left her cell phone at Gran's in her rush to get out.
She picked her bike up and realized exactly where she was. Her house was only a couple of blocks from Mrs. Rochelle's house.
Morbid curiosity gripped her. She jumped on her bike and pedaled, her muscles stiff from exhaustion. Gran got up every morning at seven like clockwork, and though Abi didn't have a way to tell the time, she knew she needed to hurry.
Two turns later her mailbox came into view at the top of a small hill. She stopped in front of her driveway. Just another cookie cutter house, but nothing like the others.
Yellow police tape was strung up across the wooden front door, clinging to the large sections of glass. This was her house, the one she grew up in, but it didn't feel like home to her anymore. Everything that made it home was gone now.
She pulled her bike around the side of the house, obscured from the road by trees. The zipper of her backpack buzzed loudly as she searched for her keys. The side door had a large X of caution tape stuck to it. She unlocked the door first and then slid her key down the frame to rip the tape.
The knob twisted, and the door popped open. The sweat all over her body turned to ice. She took a deep breath and pushed the door open all the way. It creaked slowly before hitting the washing machine with a thud.
She stepped inside, the air already stale since Gran had switched off the power yesterday. Since the knife had been found in the woods.
There was no heat, and it somehow felt colder in the house than it had outside.
Her sneakers squeaked with every step she took. She had to look. She didn't want to, but she had to. The hallway stretched out before her for miles. When she rounded the corner, she gasped.
It was clean.
Their couch and recliner and had been moved back to their original positions. The curtains were drawn, making the dark teal walls above the wainscoting seem almost black.
