Into the Darkness

by Andrews, V. C.

  Disappointed, I turned and headed for the attic. Halfway up the stairs to it, I paused. The sounds I had heard before had grown louder. My heart started thumping again. Why was I even going up there? If Brayden’s father had taken away everything else, why would he have left anything up there? Even if he hated the artwork, he would surely have taken it and destroyed it, rather than left it there. Perhaps he needed it to show her therapist what sort of thing she had been doing.

  But then, I thought, maybe it was Brayden I was hearing. Maybe he was doing something with the art material, something his father either had overlooked or wanted to ignore. Firming up my courage, I continued up the short stairway. The door was closed. I turned the knob and opened it in small, jerky motions at first before pushing forward and thrusting it fully open.

  Instantly, at least four large crows leaped off the floor, flapping their wings madly. They screeched and rushed toward the open window, one of them coming very close to me before they all got out. I screamed and then shut the door so quickly and so hard that I lost my footing and fell back on the stairway, but I was able to seize the narrow banister and stop myself from tumbling. Why had they left the window open? Maybe it was an oversight, but for some reason, the crows had been drawn into the attic.

  I hadn’t seen much of the attic because of the darkness and the shock of the crows, but I thought it was empty. I was determined to be sure and straightened myself up. I pushed the door open again and looked at the attic, now somewhat illuminated by the night sky. There was nothing left. The portrait was gone, as were all of the art utensils and easels. I stood staring at the dark, empty space. As I tried to recall it all, it seemed more like struggling to remember the details of a nightmare.

  “Amber,” I heard, and turned. My name echoed through the empty house. “Amber, are you in here?” It was my mother.

  “Yes,” I called down.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “I’m coming down,” I said.

  I descended the attic stairway and headed for the main stairs. At the bottom were my parents, both looking up with surprise, both in their robes and slippers.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” my father asked, now visibly annoyed. “Why did you run out of the house like that? You scared the hell out of us.”

  “I thought I saw Brayden,” I said, continuing down.

  “You thought you saw Brayden? Where?”

  “In his bedroom.”

  “What? Why would he be here if they moved out? There’s no car in the driveway, and the house is obviously empty. You can’t just enter someone’s property like this and go traipsing through it, especially after some renters just left. If something was broken or missing, you could get blamed. What were you thinking?” he demanded.

  I stood there speechless. How could I even begin to explain it?

  “I came in here once before. I thought Brayden was here then, too, and I . . . shouldn’t have, but I explored the house.”

  “You did what?” Dad asked, grimacing. He looked at my mother, who shook her head.

  “None of the boxes were unpacked, and except for his room, nothing looked like anyone was living here. I knew his mother worked in the attic, that it was her studio, so I went up there.”

  “Spying and snooping?”

  “Oh, Amber,” my mother said, “this sort of behavior is so unlike you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, but I went up there, and I saw the painting she was doing. It was a portrait of Brayden, and it was . . . horrible.”

  “So, now you’re an art critic?” my father said without a note of humor.

  “No, it was horrible because it was . . . horrible. It was a grotesque distortion, terrifying actually.”

  “The woman was not well,” my mother said. “Regardless, you shouldn’t have done that then, and you certainly shouldn’t be doing it now.”

  “But . . .”

  “What?” my father practically shouted. “What?”

  “He hasn’t called me. He said he would if something came up.”

  “First,” my father said, “we never got to meet this boy, so we can’t tell you our opinion of him and whether or not he was the sort of young man who would keep a promise. We have only your word for it, and it was pretty clear from the start that you were quite taken with him. Your judgment was obviously clouded.”

  “Gregory,” my mother said, hoping to end it.

  “No, Noreen. This is unacceptable. You get home, young lady,” he said, pointing to the door. “We’ll talk more about this. I’ll go up and turn off the lights you left on. I can’t believe this.” He shot past me and hurried up the stairs.

  “Let’s go home,” my mother said when he started back down the stairs.

  I nodded, lowered my head, and walked out. They followed silently, Dad closing the door behind them.

  “Was it unlocked?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Terrific. Some tenants. Run off and leave the place wide open.”

  “Something terrible must have happened,” I told him.

  He mumbled something to himself as we crossed to our driveway and went up to our front door.

  “You should have realized something was not right with these people, Amber,” he continued when we entered the house. “You couldn’t get the boy to come over to see us. He didn’t want to meet any of your friends. His mother was probably heavily medicated most of the time. His father sounds like an idiot, not a genius, leaving them here like this. It’s clear they’re all gone, and you’re disappointed because this boy didn’t bother even to say good-bye. I guess that shows you what he really thought about your friendship. I’m sorry now that you had anything to do with him. For whatever reasons, he was obviously not as sincere as you believed. I should have been more involved. If I had, you wouldn’t have been so taken in and . . .”

  “No!” I screamed. “He was wonderful and made all the other boys in this town look like idiots.”

  “Amber,” my mother said to calm me.

  “No, he’s unfair. You don’t know anything!” I screamed at my father. “Go read another book on World War One, and leave me alone!” I pounded up the stairs. I slammed my door shut and stood there pouting and gasping. When I heard them coming up the stairs, I went into my bathroom and locked the door. I sat on the edge of the tub and sobbed silently. I heard my mother open my bedroom door. She stood for a moment and then left, closing the door again.

  Why was this happening?

  Was my father right? Was Brayden no different from any other self-centered boy, after all? It can’t be true. It just can’t be, I told myself. I embraced myself and rocked on the edge of the tub, chanting this hope. When I came out of the bathroom to go to bed, I heard my parents’ muffled voices. They were arguing. It wasn’t something they did very much, so I felt bad. After a while, they quieted down, and I cried myself to sleep, hoping that sometime during the night or early in the morning, Brayden would call me to explain everything.

  He didn’t.

  I overslept the following morning. My mother came in, not to wake me but to tell me that she and my father had decided I should not go in to work.

  “We think you should take the day to get over things, Amber.”

  “I can work.”

  “Let the air settle first,” she said. It was one of her favorite expressions, one she said her father had used. I did feel as if I was at the center of some whirlwind. “You know how your father feels about any of us putting on a down-in-the-dumps look to greet people coming in to spend a lot of money on some happy occasion. Later,” she added, moving to leave, “you and I can have a heart-to-heart about all this, okay?”

  I nodded.

  She smiled, but I could see the tension in her face. She closed the door softly and went down to leave with my father. I lay there staring up at the ceiling and feeling sorry for myself for nearly another hour. I really wasn’t hungry, but I rose and forced myself to have a little breakfast. While I was chewi
ng lazily on a piece of toast and sipping some coffee, the phone rang. I forced myself not to hope that it was Brayden, and I was glad I had done so. It was Ellie.

  “You missed a great time last night,” she said. “I never realized how many girls and even guys disliked Shayne Allan. Everyone was taking pleasure in spreading the story about him and calling him Mr. Misfire. I guess the guys were always too jealous and the girls he ignored or belittled, like moi, are sucking up the revenge.”

  “I’m happy for you all,” I said dryly.

  “So, what’s new with Brayden? Is his mother any better? Can we plan on something soon?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “They’re gone,” I said.

  “Gone? What do you mean?”

  “Gone, gone,” I said, raising my voice. “They left, moved out of the house. They’re gone. What’s so hard to understand?”

  “Already, but . . . oh,” she said, finally understanding. “That’s why you sound so upset. Was it a sad parting? Is he going to write or something? Visit in the future?”

  “There was no parting. When we came home, they were already gone.”

  “He left without saying good-bye? I don’t get it. I thought . . . I mean, you made me think you and him were getting to be a thing.”

  “Yeah, we were a thing. I’m not in the mood to talk about it, Ellie. Right now, I couldn’t care less about any boy.”

  “Oh. Well, do you want me to come around? We could do something, go somewhere to help get your mind off it,” she offered. I knew that what she really wanted was more detail. How much had I committed to this aborted relationship? How broken was my heart?

  “No. Thank you. I just want to be alone for a while.”

  “That’s not good. It’s better if you get out, mix with people, do things. I know. I’ve been disappointed in love enough to know.” She gave a short, hollow laugh.

  “There’s a difference.”

  “What?”

  “You expected it.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s hard to explain right now, Ellie. Please. I’ll call you. ’Bye,” I added quickly, and hung up.

  I was sure that she was falling back into thinking the worst of me. I was even a snob about my romantic failures, and as a snob, I would not lower myself to share anything intimate with girls so far below me. She didn’t understand; she couldn’t understand. I really believed that teenagers in love were just in some strong version of like. In the backs of their minds, they had to anticipate breaking up. How many would actually expect to go on and marry their boyfriends from high school? There were enough examples of that being disastrous. You could go hot and heavy and say all sorts of intimate and promising things when you were in a teenage love affair, but it was more like reciting a script to me. Everyone was expected to say these things and do these things.

  A mature romance was surely deeper and more substantial. That’s what I had thought I was beginning to have with Brayden. We were both too bright and perceptive to play games with each other. More important, we recognized a need that each of us fulfilled for the other. That was more mature. That was real commitment. No, Ellie could never understand, and I could never explain it to her in a way that she would understand. I probably couldn’t even explain it to my mother and certainly, I knew now, never to my father.

  This realization didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it made me feel worse. There had to be a very serious and understandable reason for Brayden to leave without saying good-bye. Instead of resenting him for it, I should be sympathetic, I thought. I shouldn’t be pouting and fighting with my parents. I should follow up and seek a way to help Brayden. I couldn’t do that while wallowing in self-pity, and I couldn’t do that if I settled for accepting that he was gone and that was that. No, I had to be more determined. Our feelings for each other called for me to be more determined.

  Suddenly filled with energy and hope, I rose and went upstairs to put on a pair of jeans and a blouse. I slipped on my running shoes, brushed back my hair and pinned it into a ponytail, and then hurried out of the house. I had a plan, an idea. Not even glancing at the now depressingly empty house next door, I jogged into town, but not to go to my family’s jewelry shop. When I reached Main Street, I stopped running so as not to attract any unnecessary attention and instead walked quickly to my father’s friend Von Richards’s restaurant. There were about a half-dozen early lunch customers. Von was not in sight. As soon as the hostess, whom I knew to be one of his daughters, approached me, I asked for him.

  “He’s in the kitchen,” she said.

  “Could I speak to him? It’s important.”

  She looked at me suspiciously and then shrugged and went back to the kitchen. Almost immediately, Von came out behind her. He was wiping his hands on a dish towel and nodded at an empty booth on my right. I followed him to it.

  “Hey, Amber,” he said. “What’s up? Something the matter with your parents?”

  “No, they’re fine, Mr. Richards.”

  “I think you can call me Von, Amber. What can I do for you? You want something to drink?”

  “No, thank you. Remember when we were here for dinner, and my parents were talking about our new neighbors?”

  “Oh, yeah. What about them?”

  “Well, I got to know their son.”

  “I remember.”

  “Yesterday, they packed up and moved out.”

  He sat back. “They weren’t there long. Maybe they had a hard time with the landlord. I hear he’s a mean son of a bitch, you’ll pardon my French. Ruthless guy. He’s been trying to get his hands on some lake property recently. Stan Watts told me he’s been making the sorts of offers that are hard to refuse, but Stan’s holding his ground.”

  “Who is this man?”

  Von scratched his head and looked at me as if he was deciding whether he should get up and call my father before talking to me any further.

  “I thought maybe he would tell me why the Matthewses left and where they went.”

  “Oh. The young man never told you?”

  “His mother’s been very ill. I think it has to do with that,” I said. “I feel bad about it.”

  “Young love,” he said, nodding and smiling. “His name’s Marcus Norton. He has a company out of Portland simply called Marcus Norton Investments. Stan tells me he’s a man in his seventies. No question, he wants the property as an investment. I’m surprised he didn’t find a way to unload that house next to your parents before this. Maybe that’s it, Amber. Maybe we’ll find out he sold it recently, and that was why the family left. I can find that out later today.”

  “No, I don’t care about the house,” I said, maybe too abruptly.

  He pulled his head back. “Well, that’s about all I know about it,” he said. He smiled. “You’re not going to lack for new boyfriends.”

  “I’m not worried about that, either, Mr. Richards. Thanks for the information.” I rose and turned to leave.

  “Hey,” he called. I turned back. “If this guy left without telling you why or where he was going, he’s not worth much more of your time and effort.”

  “You and my father sound alike.”

  “We have good reason to. We’re both homegrown,” he said, smiling.

  “Thanks,” I said, and hurried out, passing his very curious daughter, who looked as if she was about to pounce on her father to hear why I had wanted to speak to him.

  I thought about stopping at the store to tell my parents what I intended to do, but I hesitated, because I knew that my father, especially, not only would try to talk me out of it but might forbid me from doing it. It was easier just to go home, get what I needed, write a note explaining, and leave. When I reached our street, I broke into a jog again. As I ran, I thought how interesting it was that this Marcus Norton was trying to buy the property that Brayden had discovered and that he and I had considered our own private wonderland. I had no idea why he would want to purchase it other than what Mr. Richards ha
d suggested: another property to hold for investment reasons. But still, it lingered in my mind and seemed somehow to be a piece in this puzzle I was trying to solve.

  When I reached home, I went on my computer and looked up Marcus Norton Investments in Portland. I found it listed on NW 5th Avenue. The description fit what Von Richards had described. I called and asked to speak with Mr. Norton.

  “He’s not in right now,” his secretary said. “I expect him back in about three hours.”

  “That’s perfect,” I said.

  “Perfect for what?” I could hear her surprise and the near laughter in her voice.

  “I need to see him. It’s urgent.”

  “What’s it in regard to?”

  “It’s personal. I’ll be there in around three hours. My name is Amber Taylor, and I live in Echo Lake.”

  “Well, he has a full schedule.”

  “Please, just fit me in for ten minutes,” I begged.

  The desperation in my voice softened her, and she said she would fit me in when I arrived.

  As soon as I hung up, I ran up to my room and dug out the money I kept in a dresser drawer for special occasions or reasons. I made sure that my cell phone was charged, put a few other necessities into my purse, grabbed a light jacket, and went down to write the note.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I’m sorry I upset you both last night. It’s very difficult to get someone else, even you two whom I love so much, to understand why I’m so involved with Brayden and disturbed about him after knowing him for so short a time. Maybe I’ll find a way to do that later. In any case, I decided he was worth my making a little extra effort to understand and perhaps help in some way. Please don’t worry about me. I’m off to Portland to talk to someone who might know more about the Matthewses. I’ll call if I’m going to be home late.

  I love you both very much.

  Amber

  I almost wrote Amber Light for my father’s sake, but just the thought of doing that brought tears to my eyes, and I didn’t want to be some weepy girl right now.

  Right now, I wanted to be a determined young woman who would get the answers to her questions and solve all of the mysteries herself.