The Disappearance

by Gillian Chan

  “Mike,” he whispered, “come quickly. Jacob’s gone mad. He’s going after Paddy.”

  “What?” This made no sense at all.

  “Come on!” Matt was already heading back out the door. “They’re in the bathroom.”

  I didn’t wait to hear more, just followed Matt. By “they,” I thought he had meant Paddy and Jacob, but Adam was there, too, huddled in a corner, clutching his bleeding nose.

  Thank God they weren’t making a lot of noise. We didn’t need Chaz or Bob coming up to find out what was going on. Judging from the sounds coming from downstairs, they were deep into some loud film.

  God knows what had possessed Jacob. Even afterward I couldn’t get much out of him, just that here we could stop Paddy, when we had both failed before. I knew he was referring to his foda and to Danny, but to me it seemed like a major overreaction to put Paddy in the same category as those two. He was a bully, that’s all. I don’t know. Maybe that psychic stuff was at work, and Jacob saw the potential for big-time violence in him. You know what, it doesn’t matter. It happened. There’s no going back.

  I think Jacob had gone into the bathroom and found Paddy tormenting Adam. Surprise might have been on his side at the beginning, but by the time Matt and I got there, he was getting hammered. Paddy had pinned him to the floor, a knee on either side of his torso, and was slapping his face, rocking his head from side to side, punctuating each slap with a hissed “Fucking freak!” Jacob was fighting back, bucking and twisting, trying to get free, but Paddy outweighed him and he had no chance.

  To be honest, I don’t have a clear grasp of what happened next. I am not trying to weasel out of it. I beat Paddy up. I know that, and I know that it was bad, that it went on longer than it should have, and that I was trying to hurt him. But it’s like I was watching it happen, and even if I had wanted to stop, I couldn’t. At one point, he was on his feet and I was punching him with all my strength, almost enjoying the meaty thwack of my fists on his flesh. Then he was on the floor, and I was kicking him. He was out of it by then, wasn’t even trying to defend himself, just a limp meat puppet, jerking with each blow.

  It took all three of them to stop me. Jacob, still on the floor, grabbed my legs, clasping them firmly so I had to stay rooted to the spot or risk hurting him, too. Matt and Adam dragged Paddy to one side. As my breathing slowed down, I started to feel sick, especially when I looked at Paddy. His face was covered with blood. By the whistling sound of his breathing, I knew I’d broken his nose. He was out cold.

  “Shit,” Matt said in a shaken voice. “I just wanted you to stop him.” He shuddered. “You’re as bad as he is. What the fuck are we going to do? He needs a doctor. You’re going to be gone after this.”

  The staccato sentences were doing my head in. “Shut up, Matt,” I snapped. I needed time to think. “Look, it’s bad, I know, but I’m going to get Jacob out of here.”

  Matt’s face was closed and cold. I invoked the magic word then. I had to, and what I said was even true in a way. “I know how to get him back to his family. Give us two hours, just enough time to get away.” I was pleading, and I knew that I sounded desperate, that there was no logic to what I was asking for, no reason why he should help us. “I can’t tell you or anyone else how I am going to do this. No one would believe me. Please, Matt, let at least one of us get back to where we should be, to family.”

  I could tell he was thinking, taking me seriously.

  “Once I’ve done that, I’ll come back, take my lumps. Please.”

  I still don’t know whether he would have agreed based on what I had said, but Jacob spoke then, and that swung it. “Trust him, Matt. He is not bad, not deep down. He is going to help me, look after me, like your grandmother tried to look after you. She told me that when your mother could not care for you, she did, even though people said she was too old. Mike will help Adam find his family, too.”

  Hearing this, Matt looked even shakier. “Go,” he said, his voice a choked whisper. “Help me get him back to our room. I’ll call for help in two hours, no more. Make sure you’re long gone by then.”

  It took all four of us to lift Paddy; he was a dead weight. He stirred and groaned, but didn’t come to as we carried him back to the bedroom he shared with Matt.

  “C’mon, Jacob, we’ve got to move fast.” I was ushering him out the door when Adam called me back. “Wait! We have to make it look like Matt had no part in this. Tie him to that chair.”

  I felt like this was wasting time, but I could see his point. I ripped the sheets off the bed and tied Matt’s legs and arms to the chair.

  I flicked the light switch off as we left the room and tried to shut out that croaky breathing. How could I have done that? How much like Danny was I?

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was surprisingly easy to get out of Medlar House. I got Jacob bundled up into as many clothes as I could. He didn’t argue. He must have known that all our planning had gone out the window after what I’d done to Paddy and that we had to move now if he had a chance of getting to his real place.

  We were probably helped by the fact that Chaz and Bob were really into what sounded like some space crap on the TV, something with lots of fighting and techno noises. We slid past the TV room and I opened the closet near the door to get our coats. Between Adam’s allowance and my lunch money, I hoped I had enough for our bus fare and something to eat, but I wasn’t sure. I recognized Chaz’s beat-up leather jacket in the closet, and I knew he kept his wallet in the inside pocket. It was so tempting to lift it and take whatever money was there, but I just couldn’t do it. Chaz had been nothing but good to us. I was already going to disappoint him with what I’d done to Paddy. I couldn’t add to it. I prayed that I would get a chance to explain things—well, some sort of version of them—to him when it was all over.

  It was cold outside, bone-chillingly cold. I had no idea of the time, but it must have been about 11:00 p.m. We had to get as far away from Medlar House as we could in the two hours that Matt had promised us. I hoped and prayed that he might give us longer, might even wait out the night, but I doubted that would happen. He was scared about the damage I’d done to Paddy, and he would start yelling for help sooner rather than later. To be honest, I was scared, too, not just about Paddy’s condition, but that I did what I did to him in the first place. I’m a self-described thug, but until then I’d always had boundaries that I wouldn’t cross. Now everything had changed. The only certainty I had left was that I had to get Jacob out of there. Jon had told him I could save him and I had to do it. I just had to pray that I could get it done before the hunt for us really got under way. Shit, there was Adam to think of, too. Why hadn’t Jacob told him his grandfather’s name? Had he concealed it earlier to make sure that I kept my promise and didn’t back out of our plan?

  “Mike, how do we get to the stream?” Jacob was gamely trotting at my side, even though his bruised body must have been protesting at the punishing pace I was setting.

  “Bus to Dundas, okay? Then we walk.” I was scanning the street, hoping that not too many people would be out at this time of night. My size meant that I would be taken for an adult unless you got close, but since Jacob looked so much younger than he was, people would wonder what he was doing out so late. Mind you, I didn’t want anyone getting too close to me for any reason: my face—once seen, never forgotten. Then I remembered I had my hat in my coat pocket, only it wasn’t really a hat, more like a ski mask and a hat in one. Lucy had given it to me. She hadn’t made a big deal out of it, didn’t say why she’d chosen this particular style, but it was obvious and now I thanked her for it. With it on, and in the right light, you really couldn’t see the scar. Hollow cheek, pulled-up mouth: it was all pretty much hidden. Yeah, if you were observant, you might notice more, but most people aren’t, and with my collar pulled up, I was just a guy trying to keep warm on a bitter night.

  Beyond the bus, I had no
plan. I’d been expecting to have four days to think this through, not to have to go on the run. Another ten minutes of walking would take us to McNab Street, where there was a kind of bus terminal. It would be a straightforward ride to the stop at the outskirts of Dundas; from there, we could walk to the conservation area. Or so I thought.

  My aim was to have as little conversation with other people as possible. I didn’t want to make it easy to track our movements later via anyone we had any interaction with. So once we found the bus stop, I scanned the schedules till I found the bus I thought would take us to the right place. An empty bus was sitting there waiting, engine running. I pulled Jacob on, paid for our tickets and then sat us down near the middle. At least it was warm.

  I was hoping that the bus would get some other passengers—otherwise we were going to be so noticeable—and as we wound through downtown Hamilton it did: a couple of guys who’d obviously been drinking; some girls, students maybe, or nurses from the hospital, the one where Jacob had been taken. The drunk guys were a godsend. They were raucous, trying to chat up the girls, giving them cheesy lines. It was all good-humored and the girls were laughing, and it was just the protective noise that Jacob and I needed.

  I’d calculated that our stop would be the fourth one we got to after the bus reached Dundas, but just after we entered the town, the bus stopped and the driver shouted out, “End of the line.”

  What? This was bogus. I didn’t want to ask him what was going on, so I got up and, Jacob trailing behind me, got off. The bus had pulled onto a side street, near what looked like an apartment block. I could see the lights of a small plaza a little way off, a donut shop still lit up.

  “Excuse me,” I said to one of the guys who’d been on the bus with us, staying as far back in the shadows as I could, “doesn’t this bus go out to Davidson Boulevard? My brother and I are going to stay there at our aunt’s tonight.”

  He laughed. “Better start walking, boys. That’s only until about 7:00 p.m. If you’ve got a cellphone, I’d call your aunt to come and get you. It’s quite a ways and all uphill. If you don’t, there’s a phone over in the plaza.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Mike?” Jacob was huddling close to me. He was shivering and his face was white and pinched with cold, making his bruises all the more prominent. Between the two of us, I wasn’t sure who would draw more attention from strangers.

  “Look, Jacob. The bus doesn’t go as far as I thought. We’re going to have to walk to the stream, but it’s a long walk, so maybe we should get some food over there first.” I gestured toward the donut shop with my head. “We don’t want people to look at us. We don’t want anyone to try and stop us. I want you to listen carefully and do exactly what I say, okay?”

  He nodded. The trust I could see on his face and his hopeful expression were sort of heartbreaking.

  “When we go in, I want you to find the table that is farthest away from any other people and I want you to sit with your back to the window. Keep your head down, like you’re tired. Maybe even rest your head on your arms. Can you do that?”

  He nodded again.

  “If anyone speaks to you, don’t answer. Let me do the talking.” I didn’t want anyone hearing his strange voice and accent. “I’ll get the food and bring it over.”

  Jacob was as good as his word. A couple of the tables near the counter were occupied, but there was a whole bank of empty ones along the aisle that led to the bathrooms, and that’s where he went. At the counter, I ordered two large hot chocolates and four donuts. I wanted to take some food with us, but I thought it would be suspicious if I ordered more—four donuts was about standard for two teenage boys, I thought. I could manage those alone on a good day. As I stood under the shop’s bright fluorescent lights, the woman at the counter stared at me. She wasn’t trying to hide it, either. “What happened to your face?” she asked.

  “Car accident,” I mumbled and looked down like I was embarrassed.

  She had the hide of a rhinoceros, didn’t take the hint at all. “Must have been a pretty bad one, eh?”

  Still looking down, I grunted. Maybe that was my mistake, because she started up with more questions. “Isn’t it kind of late for you and your kid brother to be out by yourselves?”

  Shit.

  I stuck to the story I’d started with the guy from the bus, only now I had to embroider it a little, maybe make her feel sorry for us, enough that she’d leave us alone. “We live in Hamilton. Our mom is sick, so we’re going to stay with our aunt. She lives out on Davidson. We took the bus from the hospital, only we didn’t know it wouldn’t go all the way down there at night.”

  Her face was softening.

  I kept going. I wanted to get us out of there as soon as possible. “We called her and she’s coming to get us.” I noticed a supermarket opposite the donut shop. “She’s meeting us in the parking lot at the grocery store over there.”

  I grabbed the bag of donuts and the drinks and called out to Jacob. “Come on, Jon, we’ve got to go and meet Auntie Kat,” I said, hoping and praying that he would be quick enough on the uptake to just move.

  He was. Thrusting a hot chocolate into his hands, I hustled him out of the shop as quickly as I could.

  “We’re going to walk, okay? The sooner we can get off the streets and into the conservation area the better.”

  Jacob said nothing, just doggedly followed me as I started up the hill, his hands wrapped around the warmth of the cup of hot chocolate.

  Later, I got to see more of Dundas, but then it was just a long road lined with apartment blocks at first, then houses. When we started walking, the buildings were close together, but after a while, the spaces between them grew larger and larger. When I finally saw the sign for the conservation area, it seemed like we’d been walking for hours.

  It was spooky. There was a light layer of snow on the ground, but clumps of dry brown grass poked through. We climbed yet another hill. From the map I had seen online, I knew we’d come to an old railway station and from there we had to follow something called the Rail Trail, and it would take us to Sulphur Springs Road.

  There was a light on in the station, but I was pretty sure it was only for security and that no one would be inside.

  “I walked here,” Jacob said, his voice floating on the cold air, “but there was no building in the real time, just trees.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance.

  “My feet remember,” he said, “even if my eyes do not.”

  “Come on, let your feet keep remembering,” I said, a little more roughly than I intended. He freaked me out when he got mystical like that.

  It was very still. All we heard was the odd rustle in the trees as an animal moved. Once, a coyote howled, but it was a long way away and sounded as if it was on the escarpment above us. Jacob was moving faster now. Sometimes he shot out ahead of me, almost as if he knew where we were going.

  The road, when we came to it, wasn’t much to look at. It was unpaved and ridged where water had carved runnels into the dirt. Ice had formed in the crevices, making it hard going. Before I could tell Jacob that we had to make a left turn, he had already pivoted in that direction. He was almost running now, and I had to jog to keep up with him.

  “I can feel it,” he gasped. “The real place is near. We must hurry. Kat needs me.”

  As we approached what was left of the spring, the acrid smell of bad eggs was everywhere. It was just as Adam had described it. We saw a low brick oblong; a thin metal tube jutted out from one end. The stinking water was trickling from there, staining the ground a creamy yellow where it fell.

  Jacob fell to his knees in front of it, heedless of the snow. “Here,” was all he said. “I lay down here.”

  He reached into his coat and pulled out his drawing of Kat. Then he lay down on his side, making a pillow for his cheek with his hands, still holding the drawing, look
ing for all the world like he was lying on the most comfortable of beds.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, whether I needed to do anything.

  “Mutt,” Jacob said quietly. His eyes were open and he was looking up at me. “This will work, won’t it?”

  It was the first time Jacob had been anything but certain about this. My heart felt like it was breaking. I couldn’t speak. After all that had happened, we couldn’t fail.

  Jacob smiled. “Jon said you would help me, and you have. It will work, but I am leaving you too many troubles. Adam, he needs you, too. He is lost and you must help him be found.”

  I fell to my knees beside him. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. The words hurt my throat and I didn’t want to say them. “You have to go back to Kat, and grow up to be a man in your real place so that I can read about you in mine.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I doubted I would be allowed back at Medlar House after what I had done.

  “You have a good heart, Mike. Jon knew it and loved you for it. Your life will not be easy, but never forget me, never forget that you saved me.” He closed his eyes, then reached up with one hand and closed mine, his touch gentle, a benediction. I could hear his light breathing, my name whispered, and then silence.

  When I opened my eyes, the darkness was fading and the first flickers of dawn were gleaming on the bare branches of the trees.

  Jacob was gone.

  His drawing of Kat lay next to me. I saw that he had written something on it in large, spidery letters: Adam’s name, and then another name, Jimmy Bentley. It looked as if it had been written in a hurry. There was a partial address, too, 41 Grange Road. I hoped it would be enough and that I would be able to get the information to Adam. When I picked the drawing up to put it in my pocket, I realized there was another drawing underneath.