by Brian Harmon
The unconscious body, succumbing to gravity, slid off the table an instant later, sweeping more dishes onto the floor and threatening to upend the entire table.
As the door swung closed, Eric could hear people shouting. He thought he could distinctly hear Leon’s loud voice booming, too. He felt a little bad about the broken dishes, but he was confident that his distraction would buy them enough time to be gone before the cowboy regained his composure and came looking for them.
He and Aiden looked at each other, breathless from the exertion.
“Not bad,” said Aiden.
“Yeah.”
“You know he’s going to be beyond pissed when he wakes up, right?”
“Definitely.”
“I’m thinking we should probably get out of here. Like, ten minutes ago.”
Eric nodded. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Nineteen
Back in the apartment, Aiden gathered up the tools from the table and stuffed them into the backpack. Then he snatched up the map and added it to the bag, too, not bothering with the tape that held it to the table or even attempting to fold it. He simply tore it free, wadded it up and shoved it in on top of the tools. He then hurried to the kitchen, stopped, turned in a circle as if he’d forgotten what he was doing, and then grabbed as much of the junk food as he could fit on top of the map and still zip the backpack.
The whole time, he was muttering to himself, as if speaking to someone Eric couldn’t see. Not for the first time, he began to wonder what the young man had been through these past six years.
Eric retrieved the cowboy’s gun from the floor, wiped the fingerprints off it and then dropped it behind the stove. The smart thing might have been to take it with them, but Eric wasn’t comfortable handling a gun and didn’t dare trust Aiden with the weapon. Especially not after he was ready to bludgeon an unconscious man to death with an empty tequila bottle. Besides, he didn’t want to risk being caught with the firearm in the event that it could be traced back to any of the psycho’s previous victims. He chose instead to simply hide it from the man who kept aiming the stupid thing at him.
Aiden didn’t seem to notice the gun’s disposal. Still muttering to himself, he finished gathering his things and then led Eric out the door, down the steps and into the alley. They slipped through a gap in the bottom of the fence and hurried around the back of the building, where an old motorcycle waited.
“This yours?”
“Didn’t think I walked everywhere, did you?” Aiden lifted the helmet off the seat and looked around nervously.
“I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest.” It actually made sense. With the helmet on, no one could possibly know who he was. He could travel anywhere and continue to remain completely anonymous.
“Used to belong to a friend, but now it’s mine.” For a moment, he stared off into the distance, as if contemplating something, perhaps the friend he’d just mentioned. Then he snapped out of it and said, “Sorry, but I don’t have an extra helmet.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“Don’t meet a lot of people these days.”
“Right.”
“Don’t trust people. Shouldn’t be trusting anybody…”
Eric stood there, watching him. “So do you trust me?”
Aiden glanced at him. He looked uncomfortable. “I really don’t know. I mean, you obviously weren’t with that guy back there, and he was definitely bad news…”
“Very bad news,” agreed Eric.
Aiden shrugged. “I really don’t know…” he said again. “I just… It’s hard. I’ve been so careful until now. But I knew I was risking it coming back here. And now I’ve stayed too long. I guess I’m at that point where I have to trust someone. Might as well be my English teacher.”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “So you do remember me.”
Aiden fitted the helmet snugly over his head. “You’re not easy to forget.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. You were such a big dork.”
Eric had felt a little surge of pride at being told he was difficult to forget, but this promptly deflated him.
The cell phone chimed in his pocket. He found that he didn’t need to reach for it to know that Isabelle had felt the need to text him some sort of snicker.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
Aiden straddled the bike and looked back over his shoulder at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
He shrugged and slid forward on the seat. “Get on and hold tight.”
Eric had to shake his head. This morning he left the house with nothing more to do than run a few errands for Karen. Now he was running from a deranged, overweight redneck on the back of a motorcycle driven by a boy who went missing six years ago.
It was such a strange world he’d found himself in. And not for the first time.
Aiden rolled cautiously to the end of the alley, waited for an opening and then sped away into traffic.
This was not the most pleasant ride Eric had ever taken. The bike was surprisingly loud. He felt vulnerable without a helmet. And quite frankly, the boy’s driving was terrifying. They wove through traffic, darted around corners and sped across the city, heading west toward the far edge of town.
Earlier, Karen had called to inform him that her friend, Bethany, had caught sight of him while he was walking around the side of The Creek Boutique, probably talking to himself. It wasn’t particularly uncommon for her to get calls like this. She had so many friends, all of them constantly on the lookout for some excuse to gossip. It was as if she had eyes all over the city. He couldn’t help but wonder if she was soon going to get a call from some other friend asking her why her husband was just seen speeding across town on the back of a motorcycle.
It seemed like only a matter of time before everyone he knew thought he was losing his mind.
They stayed on the back streets, speeding past car dealerships and body shops, avoiding the bustle of Main Street except to cross the bridge.
Just when it seemed that Aiden intended to leave town altogether, he slowed down and pulled into the deserted parking lot of an empty motel that looked disconcertingly like the setting of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
“What are we doing here?” Eric asked when Aiden finally killed the noisy engine and nosed the bike up next to one of the doors.
“I have some stuff stashed in here.”
“Why here?”
“Same reason I’ve been living in the apartment over the bar,” Aiden replied as he opened the door. “It’s safe. Well…usually.”
“Wait, you mean this place is hidden? Like the others?”
“Uh huh.”
“That can’t be possible.”
Aiden glanced back at him. “But the one over the bar is possible?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Aiden glanced around as if expecting someone else to explain it to him. “Okay? Then what does he mean?”
Ignoring the fact that he once again seemed to be talking about him instead of to him, Eric said, “All those other places. I never saw any of them before today.”
“Really?”
“I saw you this morning and I followed you into that apartment. Then I checked out the locations I saw circled on your map. Before that, I hadn’t seen any of those places.”
“Huh. Why today? Was it just because you spotted me?”
“I don’t know. But this place? This motel? I’ve always been able to see this.”
“Really?” Aiden considered this for a moment. “Well, we’ll think about what that means after we’re done here.”
Eric followed him into the darkened motel room. As a child, he remembered being curious about this place. It sat all alone in a little crescent of woods, right on the edge of the city. Out beyond here was little more than a long stretch of highway leading out to the next town, and then the next, so he didn’t even see it very often. He never asked about it. He always assumed there was nothing to know, that
his imagination was far more interesting than the boring truth about the place. It was just an old motel, a long, lonely, one-story building with doors lined up along the front. It was strange to think that he might have been one of the only people who could actually see it.
He’d begun to wonder if his ability to see these things had to do with that strange journey last year. Paul told him that maybe he was special now, that he’d been chosen to do these kinds of things. And he’d begun to wonder if that might be the reason he could suddenly see these places. But if that was true, then how was it that he could see this building years before he even had the dream that led him there?
One thing at a time, he supposed.
Inside, the building was weathered and worn. The walls were stained and moldy. The carpet was rotten and felt strangely soggy beneath his feet. The furniture that had once served this room when the motel was still in business was long gone. In its place, someone had refurnished it with a hodgepodge of mismatched junkyard furnishings. Two old dressers, one a scarred and water-damaged oak, the other a cracked and faded pink with flowers painted around its corners, occupied the far wall. A small table with two mismatched chairs sat in the corner. A stack of moldy books and the remains of an old package of paper plates sat on top of it, along with a pile of papers so far gone that he doubted it would ever be possible again to know what had been printed on them.
Sheets of plywood suspended on a makeshift frame of cinderblocks served as a bed, complete with the moth-eaten remains of a pile of blankets and a pillow. Next to this stood an old, wooden chest that looked like its bottom had rotted out, practically fusing with the deteriorating carpet.
Aiden closed the door behind them and locked it, then peered out through the peephole, apparently just to be sure they hadn’t been followed.
“When was the last time you were in here?”
“Long time. Four years. Five. Not sure.” Aiden turned and looked around the room. For a moment, he looked as if he couldn’t remember where he was, then he walked purposely to the dressers and pulled out the drawers one by one. They were empty except for a handful of ratty-looking clothing in one of them.
“Is this how you’ve been living all this time?”
“Not all this time.”
“How do you survive?”
“Stealing, mostly. I’m not proud of it, but you do what you have to.” Once all the drawers were on the floor, he dragged the entire dresser away from the wall, revealing a large hole in the filthy plaster behind it. He reached into this hole, apparently unconcerned about any spiders or rabid rats that might be lurking within, and withdrew an old, squashed duffel bag.
“What is that?”
“Emergency supplies.” He placed the filthy bag on top of the dresser and unzipped it. Inside was a small, plastic trash bag. Without revealing the contents, he stuffed this entire bag into the outer pocket of his backpack and zipped it closed.
Aiden murmured something as he slipped the backpack on over his shoulders.
“What?”
“What? Nothing.” He started toward the bathroom, then stopped, turned, hurried back toward the window and stopped again. He stood there for a moment, as if he’d forgotten what he was doing, then turned around, faced the bed, turned toward the window again, and finally turned and walked hurriedly toward the bathroom again. “Come on.”
Eric watched him for a moment, uncertain, and then followed him.
Aiden walked past the sink and toilet and stepped into the bathtub. From there, he passed through a gaping hole in the wall and into the tub in the bathroom of the next room in the motel.
“What is all this?” asked Eric as he ducked through the hole in the wall between the two tubs.
“We lived here for a while. Back when I first left.”
“‘We?’”
“Me and him,” Aiden replied, as if this made more sense than “we.”
Aiden hurried through the bathroom door and Eric followed. As he hurried past the sink, he thought he glimpsed something shimmering in the drain, but when he paused, there was nothing there.
He shook his head. This creepy place was making him jumpy. It was nothing more than a faint reflection in the dark.
This next room was completely empty. No furniture, mismatched or otherwise, occupied this space. Aiden opened the closet and revealed another gaping hole, through which he passed into the next room, this one much darker than the previous two. The window was boarded up, blocking out all the light, though there was little need for illumination. Like in the apartment, the only piece of furniture in this room was a lone table.
“…not with them,” muttered Aiden. Eric tried to hear what he was saying, but very little of the words carried to his ears. “…what he’s doing… Stupid. …around…”
“What?”
Aiden turned and looked at him, confused. “What?”
Eric stared at him. Was the kid trying to mess with his head?
“Come on. Just one more.”
They walked through the dark room, kicking aside empty beer and soda cans that had been scattered across the floor, and entered another bathroom. Here, they crossed through another hole in the wall behind the tub, into yet another room, this one containing nothing but more litter.
“What happened to you?” Eric asked. “Six years ago…”
Aiden turned and looked at him. “Nothing happened to me. I just…left. That’s all.”
“You ‘just left?’ You vanished without a trace. Everyone searched everywhere for you. You’re parents—”
“I don’t have parents,” Aiden snapped, turning on him with startling suddenness. “I didn’t have parents. I had a stepdad who shared a mutual hatred of me and a mother who cared a lot more about herself and what other people thought of her than she ever did about me.”
“I’m sure that’s—”
“Not true? Believe me, it is. I’m sure dear old Mom looked devastated in all those interviews she gave on television, begging everyone to find me. But you didn’t know her. I did. Let me tell you something, she was never happier than she was while she was getting all that attention. Maybe no one else could tell, but I could. I could see it in her eyes. She got to be a star. She even got to be on a talk show once. I did her a favor. All her dreams were coming true. And all she had to do was pretend to give a shit that I was gone.”
Eric didn’t know what to say. That couldn’t possibly be true, could it? Surely no mother could be that self-centered.
“I don’t care if he believes me,” Aiden said. “Doesn’t matter. I already left. I can’t go back, even if I wanted to.”
“There’s always a way back.”
Aiden actually laughed.
“But you can’t possibly like living this way.”
“What, free? Of course I do. I have all I need.”
Eric looked around the room. “Do you really?”
Aiden glanced around at the littered floor with its rotting carpet. “Well, not here… I have money. I can stay in a hotel. Just…you know. Not when I’m here.”
“If you have money, then why do you have to steal?”
“Well, that’s how I got the money. I stole it.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know. But they can afford it. Trust me. I left a lot more there than I took.”
Eric stared at him. He wasn’t sure how much he trusted him yet. There was a lot about the kid that still didn’t make sense.
The silence seemed to make Aiden nervous. He turned and looked around as if examining the space around him. “It was a long time ago. Somewhere in Chicago. I don’t remember where. Nobody knew the door was there. You do what you have to do.”
Eric shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, if he wanted to, he now knew how to get into a gas station without being seen. Gertie’s store, too. Anyone who knew about those hidden places could rob those businesses any time they wanted, with virtually no chance of being caught. It stood to reason that there could just as easily be
a hidden doorway somewhere that led into a bank vault. Or a million other rooms filled with cash.
“So you’re not exactly starving.”
“I’m not. But I can’t take any chances here. Even after all this time, I have to stay hidden when I’m in this town.” He turned back and looked at Eric again, his eyes hard and accusing. “Because you never know when someone’s going to recognize your face and ruin your whole day.”
Eric opened his mouth, but he found he had nothing to say. Suddenly, he felt bad. And he wasn’t sure he deserved to.
Aiden turned away from Eric again and stood there for a moment, looking as if he’d forgotten what he was about to do.
“So how did you do it? How did you find these places?”
He turned and walked back toward the bathroom, then stopped again, his eyes washing over the room as if he were trying to remember something. “It started at the gas station where I disappeared, actually, a few years before I left. Mom would stop there to buy cigarettes or beer or lottery tickets and I’d wait in the car. I started to notice that sometimes there was an empty restaurant attached to it and sometime there wasn’t. When I tried to ask Mom about it, she told me to stop acting stupid.” He turned away from the bathroom and stared down at the floor, distracted. “Bitch.”
There was such an edge of loathing in his voice as he uttered this word that Eric decided not to mention his mother again. Ever.
Aiden lifted his head again and stared blankly at the far wall for a moment. Then he snapped out of it and walked to the corner of the room, where he pulled up the moldy carpet, revealing a dirty plastic bag filled with papers.
“Over time, I found that it was there more often than it wasn’t and it became obvious that no one else could see it. Then I started sneaking in whenever I had the chance. Pretty soon, I realized that it was my way out of that life. I was going to walk out anyway when I turned eighteen. I’d already decided. But this way, I could leave even sooner. And I could make damn sure no one ever found me.”
“But then where did you go?”
“Nowhere. That’s the beauty of it. For the first few days that everyone was looking for me, I never left. I lived in that restaurant. I sat right there in that doorway and watched those idiot cops search the place. I even yelled at them, made fun of them. It was fun.”
