by Ira Robinson
"To what end? They don't know the area as well as we do here. They'd have just gotten in the way."
"Her mother should have been able to lay her body to rest. At least then she could have some peace." Sam swallowed hard, her breath catching in her throat. She sniffed and swiped away a tear threatening to form.
"It would do no good. You have to trust me on that."
She sniffed again and caught his eyes moving away from her own, landing on the plate before him.
"Do you know something you're not telling me?"
A crackle of static at his hip drew both of their attentions as the radio cued up. "Bart? You there?"
Sam recognized Noah's voice. Her own radio, left on the stand beside her chair in the living room, picked up the words, as well.
He pulled the radio to his lips. "Yeah, Noah, go ahead."
"Can you come to the station? The mayor wants a word with you."
Bart rolled his eyes. "Be there in a few." He reattached the radio to his belt and started to stand.
"You haven't answered my question."
She did not move, waiting for him to respond. He only looked at her for a brief moment longer, before saying, "Don't start the conspiracy crap again, Sam."
"It's a simple question."
He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. "Take the day off, Sam. Go get your head looked at. Don't be late tomorrow."
Before she could say anything else, he turned on his heels and hurried through the front door.
Her breath was hot as she exhaled through her nostrils. Was he brushing her off, or glad for the interruption?
Chapter 5
Only one car was parked in the driveway of the house as Sam pulled her own over and put it into park.
Two young trees on the front lawn blocked out some of the mid-morning light, but the glare from the sun on one of the windows of the house made her squint. She could still see the place well enough to discern the old paint across the siding.
It looked even more run-down than when she saw it last, though it had only been a short time ago.
Samantha turned the car off and stepped outside, her ears instantly filled with birdsong. A large flock of them gathered in the branches of the trees on at the front of the house, and more took up space in the bushes and other trees surrounding the place.
She walked through the overgrown grass and weeds, scattering grasshoppers and other insects with each tremor of her falling feet. Some flew ahead of her, only to rise and flitter away again when she came closer.
Sam shook her head, saddened at the state it had come to, but not altogether surprised, given the circumstances that befell the family occupying the house.
It was only a few feet from where she now stood that she had joined in with a large group of other people. Each of them were determined to do anything they could to make sure someone in their community, one of the youngest and most vulnerable, would be found quickly and brought home safe.
Sam had so much hope - all of them did - in those moments before they walked into the forest, following the cold trail of Cassie Barlowe.
All that hope dissapeared the instant the search was called off, leaving Cassie to whatever fate had in its infinite plan for her.
Sam was not alone in her heartbreak, she knew that. But she could not help but take it personally. She had given so many hours over to finding the girl, calling out her name at the top of her voice, even when she had no more energy to go on.
And the light in the woods? That one place hidden deep within stuck in her memory? Those few fleeting moments she stood in the clearing amid the light shook her, and when it faded away into nothingness, disappearing into the ground itself, Sam's heart wrenched, leaving her both miserable and filled with wonder at the same time.
She could not explain that encounter to herself, let alone anyone else, but, whatever it was, she never saw it before, not in her wildest imaginings. She'd wandered away from it breathless and confused, knowing she missed something, but unable to fathom what it could be.
It all started with the people gathered on this small, otherwise unassuming lawn. Had she been the only one to encounter it, whatever "it" was?
If not, she heard none other mentioning anything about it in the following days. That could mean nothing, since Sam, herself, told no one about it. Maybe they, too, preferred to contemplate it in silence.
Sam had not come to the house after they called the search off, though the temptation was strong. She thought Cassie's mother, Elizabeth, would want to grieve on her own.
But the thoughts of the girl were on Sam's mind so much, she needed to connect at least in some way, and knew of no other method to do it.
She went up the two thin wooden steps to the front porch and knocked on the door, a nervous flutter quaking her stomach. She took a deep breath and waited.
The creak of a floorboard inside the house confirmed someone was there, but a few minutes passed by with no one coming to the door.
The anxious trill in her gut told her to go, that she did not belong there. She turned, hesitant to move away.
The curtain beyond the window moved askew. An eye peered at her for a moment before the fabric fell back into place and the door opened.
"What do you want?" the woman at the door asked.
Her appearance tripped up Sam before she could offer any greeting. She remembered Liz had long hair before, but instead of the brown locks being well groomed and taken care of, they became stringy, hanging in frizzy clumps around Liz's gaunt features.
Sam knew the woman was about the same age as she was, but the time since their last meeting had not been good to her. She looked far older than she should. Her face was thin, the skin pasty and wan.
She kept the door almost all the way closed, preventing Sam from seeing her fully, but even so, the darkness Elizabeth had fallen into was obvious.
Samantha was caught in silence, her voice locked at the shock over what had happened to Liz.
Gaunt hands moved across the edge of the door, prompting Sam to finally open her mouth. "Liz, hi. I don't know if you remember me -"
She was interrupted. "I do. What do you want?" The impatience was obvious.
"I, well, I just wanted to come and see how you were. To see if you needed anything."
Her brows furrowed. "I'm fine. Thank you for coming."
She started to tip the door shut, but Sam stepped, moving nearer.
"No, wait, please," Sam managed to get out, causing the other woman to stop. The darkened interior of the house made it difficult to spot anything inside, but, now that she was close to the opened doorway, the scent of old food and older sweat struck her.
"What?" Liz said, raising her voice to a higher tone. She tapped the wood panel of the door with her open hand; Sam saw her wince. A patch of gauze on her wrist loosened, the corner flap of it falling backward.
Sam knew from the police incident report Bart filed that Liz attempted suicide not long after Cassie went missing, cutting open her wrists. Sam couldn't imagine the pain.
"I wanted to make sure you were doing okay, that you had everything you need."
"Do I look alright?" The door widened, letting the light of day expose her more. "What I want is to be left alone. Everyone abandoned me and my child."
When Sam opened her mouth to protest, Liz interrupted her again. "You have no right to interfere in my grief."
"I'm so sorry," Sam said, looking down at the woman's feet. "I wish there was something more I could have done to help -"
"She's gone, and I'm damned."
Sam looked to her face again and saw the hard edges in her eyes, a crazed glow in the morning light streaming across her.
"So are you. So is everyone in this God-forsaken town."
Before Sam could say anything more, the door closed with a bang.
She stood on the porch for a few moments more, but she heard nothing more from the inside. Sam did not know if that meant she walked away quietly or if she was still there
beyond the wood, waiting and listening until she left.
Her stomach boiled and her first steps were wobbly as her own grief over her failures to do more for the small family that once occupied this house ran through her.
It took her longer to start the car and drive, her sadness and confusion following.
Chapter 6
A slow crackle of static distracted Sam as she sat in her painting den. The drone of music from the radio on the table across the room played on.
It took a moment for her to realize the sound had come from the police radio she kept next to her, unconsciously placing it nearby when she came in and sat down. Nothing further sparked from it, however; one of the night guys probably tapped the button on their microphone by accident.
She brought her attention back to the paintings arrayed before her. Their backs were against the wall, sitting on the floor so she could see the work she had been doing of late.
Though she tried, in the past, to paint pictures of people, most of them were not good; she was much better at bringing landscapes to life. The two earliest attempts at putting figures on the canvas were set aside, and not proud of.
Three scenes were there, ones she considered to be her best works. One took her over a week to finish and she planned on giving it to Bart's wife as a present later. Mandy always liked pretty things hanging in her house, and Sam thought, out of anyone she knew, she would be the one to appreciate it the most.
Since the days Sam spent in the woods with the search teams, however, those hours of looking for the missing girl, the things she painted became different. Not only were they not landscapes, like she normally enjoyed doing, they were darker, more emotional. She tried to be dispassionate about what she was seeing lined up before her, but she had to admit to herself things were not right.
The one she did with her fingers, the figure laying against the ground, disturbed her, and not just because of what it looked like. Even now, trying her best to remember doing it, she could not connect herself to it. If it were not for the paint on her when she saw the painting for the first time, Sam would swear she had not been the one to draw it.
Yet, there it was, and if she were to look hard enough, she discerned the stains on her skin and beneath her cuticles.
Some part of her, where logic and reason ruled, tried to convince her she was responsible for it, but now, looking at it as intently as she was, the uneasiness she felt from it was disruptive.
The song playing changed to something new, an upbeat tune, but the light tone of it playing did nothing to improve her mood.
She shifted in her chair, trying to relax herself away from the disquiet, but the last painting in the line caught her eyes with its own. The colors were far different from the other, but it, too, made her face more confusion than she wanted to handle.
When she painted the thing, there had been a girl, the one she encountered at the festival. She remembered laying out the strokes of her, the mixture of colors and textures she tried to create conveyed that day.
But what happened between her placing the brush to the canvas and what was there now? A figure was still there, but it was vague, and the whole thing looked like it had been burned, with little more than shades of black and gray making up the whole of it.
Her eyes darted to the uncleaned palette resting on the table, with the thoroughly dried paints waiting for her to clear. There was only a tiny bit of black there; it was a color she did not make much use of. She still had a nearly full tube of it in her storage box.
Yet, there the painting sat, leaning against the wall with more black than she had ever used in all of the paintings she had done combined. How?
The rational part of herself remained silent. She rolled her eyes, wishing it could come up with something reasonable, because she worried she was slipping closer to insanity otherwise.
She remembered hearing stories about artists losing their minds, obsessing over one thing or another with their work becoming stranger and more twisted until they were finally driven mad. Surely that was not the case with her, right?
But, as she looked around and saw the changes happening with what she was doing, the dull ache at the back of her head from where she tumbled to the floor caused her to pause and wonder how far she already slipped.
She bit one of her fingernails and squinted harder at the figure on the canvas, but she could make out little detail. A dark thing against an even darker background.
Sam finally stood and left the room, unable to glean anything new from the work she had done. She shook her head, saddened and concerned at what could be happening to her, but knowing nothing she could do to get things back to a sense of normalcy.
Was it better to understand when you were falling apart and being stuck with it? Or was ignorance really bliss? That particular answer was, unfortunately unavailable to her.
When she reached her living room, intent on going to the kitchen for some coffee, she stopped mid-step near the archway. She could not quite place what disturbed her, but she stood in the center of the room and looked around.
Nothing seemed out of order to her; there was no movement and all of her things were where they should be. Yet there was an oddness touching the back of her mind.
Finally, she placed it. Though the radio at the back of the house still played its tunes, reaching even her living room, and the subtle hiss of the refrigerator pump running in the kitchen were there, the constant drone of the outside world was not present.
With windows shut, she could always hear the insects and frogs, starting their songs in the evening and continuing until the morning light. Even with the nights turning as cool as they were, it was still there, a reminder that life continued doing its thing.
She glanced to the window at the front of the house. There were two curtains covering it; one of them was long and thick, and could block out most of the light. The second was more sheer, and she usually left it be to let the glow from outside in.
At that moment, the evening had come fully on, driving away all but the dimness of the large lamp across the street. Even that did not seem quite right, though.
Sam unlocked and opened the front door, swinging it wide. All beyond the steps of her porch was obscured by a thick mist.
A soft breeze wafted, bringing with it the odor of wet grass and dirt, reminding her a bit of what it was like after a rain, but the only dampness she could fathom was from the fog.
The stuff shrouded everything, even the few feet past her steps was hard for her to discern. The mist itself was colored by the light from across the street, lending an orange cast to the soup.
She glanced toward it, readying herself to go back inside, but something caught her attention and halted her movements.
She squinted, bringing her hand to her forehead in an attempt to bring things more into focus, but the fog moved in strange ways between herself and the street lamp. Her eyes kept trying to home in on the patterns it created, but after a moment she controlled it enough to see a figure beneath the glow from above.
As soon as she realized it was someone standing there, she backed up, bumping into the wood siding of her house. A gasp escaped her lips as a jarring bolt of electrical energy seemed to run from her feet to her head, setting hairs everywhere on edge.
Her eyes widened and she lost track of where it was in the fog. Sam held her breath as she focused again, trying to bring whoever it was back into view. Her heart pounded in her ears, cutting off the sound of the breeze passing by.
There he was.
She could not see him clearly, nothing more than a shadow beneath the glow of the lamp, but he was definitely there. She was sure of it.
He stood, unmoving, and she was positive he was staring in her direction, though she saw nothing of his face or where his eyes were. Was that a coat he was wearing? Or was he just that big?
She could not tell, the heavy mist still blocking off much of what she could see, but he might have been in a trench coat, and the top of where h
is head should be did not look right.
It took her only a moment to realize it was a hat of some kind.
She heaved another breath, steeling herself against the fear that the surprise of seeing the figure brought.
"Who are you?" she shouted, more strained than she intended.
The figure stood unmoving. She stepped forward, gripping the banister of her porch with both hands; the splinters of wood rasped against her palms.
She cleared her throat, the initial shock of seeing him standing there ebbing slightly.
"Who are you?" she yelled again, this time more under control.
