by N. P. Martin
But she was dead, as dead as I’ve ever seen anybody.
Who would do this?
I turned around and there was something written on the mirror. It was scrawled in blood it looked like: JOSH WITH US NOW. YOU WILL BE SOON AS WELL.
Underneath the text there was a smiley face, also drawn in blood.
What the hell did that mean?
“Josh!”
I ran out of the bathroom and into Josh’s room. He wasn’t there, not that I expected him to be. Whoever or whatever had killed Diane had also taken Josh.
But why? Who would want to kidnap my brother and why do they want me as well?
I was shaking, breathing hard as I glanced around Josh’s room. It was a mess, like someone had trashed the place. It looked like he had put up a fight against whoever had taken him. The widescreen TV had been ripped off the wall and lay smashed on the floor. The shelves that held all his trophies that he won fighting were also broken off the wall, the trophies snapped and smashed on the floor. Even the curtains had somehow been torn from the railing and lay scrunched on the broken bed. Josh was tough, strong, he knew how to fight. Obviously he hadn’t been easy to restrain.
At least he was still alive.
Or at least I hoped he was.
Taking out my phone, I rang Josh’s number again, thinking that maybe whoever had taken him would answer and tell me what they wanted, tell me what I had to do to get my brother back.
The phone dropped from my ear when I heard Josh’s ringtone coming from close by. I looked around for a second and saw his phone lying on the floor. “Fuck!” I screamed.
What was I supposed to do now?
Think, Leia, think. Call the cops.
I dialed 911 and an operator answered, but just as they did I hung up the phone. Something told me the cops wouldn’t be able to help me. It was Diane’s neck that made me hang up, the impossible angle her head was twisted. I didn’t think an ordinary person could do such a thing. Whatever was going on, it had something to do with the whole business of Josh and me being “Watcher’s” as my mom had called us, even though Josh didn’t know anything about that stuff yet. This was demons or some other monster.
What if they’re still here in the house?
It was an ice cold thought that nearly made my heart jump out of my chest. I still hadn’t checked my room or Diane’s. Someone or something could be in there, waiting for me.
Oh fuck. Surely they would have grabbed me by now if they were still there?
I was starting to wish I had a weapon on me, maybe one of those swords from my mom’s lockup. Now I knew why she needed all that stuff.
I might as well have been naked, so vulnerable did I feel, but somewhere deep inside of me something stirred. At first I thought it was just a side effect of the fear and panic until it started to spread throughout my whole body; a warm feeling that brought with it a strange sense of calm. I was still terrified, defenseless and alone, but physically it was like I didn’t give a shit, like I was ready for anything.
Was this the angel part of me coming to the forefront to protect me?
Right then I hoped so as I walked out of Josh’s room and across the hall where against my better judgment I pulled down the handle on my bedroom door and let it swing open, readying myself in case there was anyone or anything in there. I stood on edge in the doorway as I got flashbacks of the night the demon took my mom and killed my dad; me as a seven-year-old kid pushing open the door to my parent’s bedroom…
The room was empty. No one was there.
I relaxed slightly and allowed myself to take a breath before crossing the hall to Diane’s room. The door was half open. Same as before, I pushed the door all the way open, my heart beating loudly in my chest, and waited for something to reveal itself but there was nothing.
I dropped my shoulders and allowed myself to relax, but not much. It seemed the house was empty. I hunkered down, my back against the landing wall as I tried to think. Josh was gone. Diane was dead. What was I supposed to do now? Then I remembered the writing on the bathroom mirror. You will be soon. In other words, I was next. Whoever had taken Josh would be coming for me as well.
“I have to get out of here,” I said to myself as I stood up. Diane’s body was still in the bath tub. I didn’t feel right about just leaving her there like that so I called the cops and told them I wanted to report a murder, giving the address and hanging up before they could ask my name.
I cried as I went downstairs on the verge of a nervous breakdown. How could so much happen in one day? I was shattered, the person I once was blown to pieces by the force of events.
I have to keep it together. I have to get Josh back.
That was the only thing on my mind, finding out who took Josh and getting him back. They didn’t kill him, whoever “they” were—I didn’t think so anyway, which meant they wanted something. Kidnappers always wanted something. I just had to find out what.
I left Diane’s house before the cops arrived. I didn’t even think to take clothes or anything else from my room; I just grabbed the laptop and my mom’s journal from the living room. Before walking out the door, I looked back through blurry eyes. My life had been going so well. I had been happy for the first time ever, contented. All that had been wiped out in a single day.
I was still crying as I left the house and got into my brother’s Mustang. There was only one person who could help me now.
Uncle Frank.
Chapter 5
I don’t think I stopped crying until I got outside city limits. I almost pulled up at the building where Kasey lived so I could ask her to come along with me for moral support; I needed to tell someone who cared about what was going on. I actually slowed outside the building, but I shook my head and sped off. I couldn’t drag Kasey into all that. Diane had been murdered. Josh had been kidnapped. I couldn’t risk the life of the only other person in the world I cared about. I had never felt so alone in my life as when I drove away from Kasey’s place, towards the home of a man I had never even met. Uncle or not, he was still a stranger and I didn’t like the fact that I was being forced to put my trust in someone I didn’t know. I learned a long time ago that trusting strangers was dangerous, and it was going against my every instinct seeking that man out.
Following the directions my mom had written on the back of the photograph, I eventually came upon a turn-off in the main road that took me up a steep mountainside and through a thick forest where my uncle apparently lived. My lips pressed tightly together and my stomach roiling, I drove up the narrow dirt road. There was a sour taste in my mouth as I wondered what I was going to find at the end of that road.
What if this guy is a total psycho? He hunts monsters for a living, he’s hardly going to be warm and caring.
The night seemed to become darker the further up the mountain I drove. I could make out next to nothing of my surroundings and I kept wondering why someone would choose to live all the way up there, miles from nowhere, isolated and alone. My dread soon gave way to full-blown anguish after the dirt road finally ended and I came upon a cabin built on a flat clearing surrounded by trees.
This was it. Uncle Frank’s place.
A man I had never met, who had never even checked in on me or Josh the whole time we were growing up, the whole time we were in the foster system, despite the fact that he obviously knew we had no one.
What kind of uncle does that?
As I slowed the car outside the cabin, I had visions of this Frank character telling me to turn around and drive back the way I came, to leave him alone and not bother him ever again. Then I’d be truly alone, with no one to help me. Not a good prospect to be thinking off, so I forced it out of my mind and pulled myself into the present.
I climbed out of the car, taking the laptop and journal with me. Unlike in the city, night was really night up the mountain. The only light came from the moon high above in the star speckled black sky. The blanket of silence that surrounded the place I found disconcerti
ng to say the least. My stomach fluttered and my heart beat irregularly as I stood by the car and looked over at the wood cabin. It was quite small but looked foreboding in the darkness. It had windows on either side with a front door in the middle. No lights were on, even though there was a car parked out front. I hoped I hadn’t come all this way only to find no one home.
Then I heard a deep growling noise. I looked to the left and saw a big black dog edging its way towards me, baring its teeth. It was a Labrador, a breed of dog that I always considered cute and friendly. Not this one it seemed. I jumped when it barked at me. “Good dog,” I said in a shaky voice, readying myself to jump back in the car if it got any closer.
As I stood half frozen trying not to make too much eye contact with the snarling dog, I heard a clicking sound right behind me and then a man’s voice. “Nice car you have there.”
I slowly turned around to find a gun pointed at me. The barrel looked huge in front of my face. “Frank?” I asked, raising my arms slightly.
“Who wants to know?”
“My name’s Leia Swanson. My mother said you’re my Uncle. I need your help.”
The gun was lowered after a moment and I relaxed, though not much. The man who I assumed was Frank took a step forward, his dark eyes checking me out. He certainly looked like the man in the picture, though obviously older and more worn down. Something about him also put me on edge and it wasn’t just the fact that he held a gun. I got the impression he was dangerous enough even without a weapon. “You look like her alright. What are you doing here?” His voice was gravelly. I thought I could smell whiskey on his breath. Was the relatively fresh-faced young man from the photo now a bitter drunk? I hoped not. The scar on one side of his face didn’t help put me at ease either. I expected him to have aged, and he had. His hair was grayer; he had more lines in his face. It wasn’t just the aging that made him seem different to the man in the picture though. The younger Frank in the photo had a light in his eyes, like he still had much to live for. The man in front of me had no such light in his dark bloodshot eyes. The man in front of me gave off the impression that he was thoroughly tired of life at this point.
“I told you,” I said. “I need your help. My brother has been taken.”
“Taken?”
“Kidnapped. Whatever. He’s gone and I need your help to get him back. My mom said you would help me. She told me to come here, said you owed her.”
His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to one side. “Really? When exactly? She’s been gone for eleven years.”
“I know it sounds crazy, and I know my mom is dead practically, but she left me this video along with her journal and in the video she told me to come find you up here, that you could help me—help both of us actually—my brother and me—but I got home earlier and my brother was gone and my foster mother was dead—murdered in the bath and there was a message written in blood on the bathroom mirror and it said…it said they were coming for me as well and—”
“Okay, okay. Hold on.” He didn’t seem amused that a crazy-ass girl—niece or not—had landed at his doorstep unannounced, so I was surprised when he said, “Come inside.” I wasn’t sure about Frank or if I should be trusting him, but I followed him into the cabin, not having much of choice.
The dog was still eying me suspiciously from outside as I went through the door. “Your dog doesn’t like me,” I said to Frank.
“You’re a stranger to him. Don’t take it personally.” He held the front door open. “Bane. In.” The Labrador dropped his ears and seemed to relax as it walked passed Frank and into the cabin, paying me no more attention as it went and slumped under the living room window, its guard duty done for the night.
Frank switched on the light—a single bare bulb that hung from the living room ceiling—and beckoned for me to take a seat. I paused for a second, taking in the interior of the cabin. It was pretty basic. No pictures on the walls except for a stuffed trout mounted over the fireplace, nothing that suggested anything about Frank’s personality. The place smelled earthy, all natural scents of cooking, whiskey, dog and a few other odors I couldn’t quite place. There were certainly no signs of the pungent air-fresheners that Diane often used in her home. It felt like I was the first woman to ever set foot in the place. Two armchairs sat in front of the fireplace. One chair looked threaded and well worn, the other like new. I sat in the less worn armchair by the open fire that was crackling away, filling the cabin with warmth that was a stark contrast to the cold outside.
The heat and comforting glow of the fire made me feel instantly more at ease. Real fires have always had that effect on me, though I was still twitchy as I watched Frank walk into the tiny adjoining kitchen and fill two glasses with whisky from a bottle that was almost empty. He looked disheveled in a creased blue shirt that hung over faded dark jeans. Again, I got the impression Frank didn’t get many visitors. He carried the two glasses over to where I was sitting, silently handed me one, and sat down in the chair opposite me. “Can I see that?” He was pointing to my mother’s journal.
I hesitated before I handed him the journal. There was a deep frown on his face as he turned the pages. I regarded him carefully as I sipped at the whiskey. I was more of a vodka girl but the whiskey would do. It warmed my insides and took the edge off my nerves.
“You read any of this yet?” Frank asked, still carefully turning the pages in the journal.
I shook my head. “Not yet. I only got it a few hours ago from the lockup.”
He seemed surprised. “You found the lockup?”
“My Mom left instructions before she…” I trailed off. How much did he know about what happened to my mom and dad? Did he know about the demon who took my mom or did he think what everyone else thought, that she was just gone?
He handed me back the book and then sat staring at me like he was trying to work out what to make of me and my situation. “What?” I asked when I couldn’t take his gaze anymore.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“I guess me coming here is the last thing you expected. I wouldn’t have come if I had other options.”
He nodded and carried on drinking his whiskey, allowing silence to descend once more. Clearly he was used to silence living up there alone, was comfortable in it even. He stared into the fire for a moment before leaning over and lifting a log from the side of the fireplace. He threw the log on the fire and the flames leapt higher for a few seconds before settling back down again.
Seeing him in real life, I was once again shocked by how much he looked like my dad. He had the same dark hair, although it was slightly longer than my dad’s ever was, and more unkempt. Frank’s hair also had streaks of gray. No doubt if my dad was alive his hair would be gray as well. Frank’s eyes were also the same nut brown color as my dad’s ,although Frank’s eyes had a hint of the color of the whiskey in his glass.
That’s where the similarities between him and my dad ended. Whereas my dad’s eyes had been soft and caring most of the time, Frank had a hard look in his, like he had seen too much bad stuff that had left him cold, jaded, and detached from everything. His face was more drawn than my dad’s had been, his mouth harder. I doubted he was as quick to smile as my dad had been. He seemed put out by my presence, like I was stirring up memories and emotions in him that he didn’t want disturbed.
“Look, I can go if you don’t want me here,” I said, sliding forward in my chair to get up.
He put out a hand. “Wait. Just…sit. It’s fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“You want another drink?” He got up and took my empty glass before I got a chance to answer. I frowned at him as he went to the kitchen and refilled the glasses. I sort of got the impression that Frank liked his whiskey.
Was that why he was behaving so strangely though?
He handed me my glass and sat back down.
“This is obviously weird for you,” I said.
Frank was rubbing the stubble on his chin with one ha
nd. “Yeah. It’s a little weird, I have to say.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing you look exactly like your mom did at your age.”
“Okay.” What did he want me to do about that? “And?”
“And…you’re here. What is it you want from me?”
“I thought I was pretty clear on that outside. My brother’s been kidnapped and my mom left me instructions to come see you in the hope that you would maybe help me. Obviously she was wrong.” I placed the whiskey glass on the floor and stood up. “Sorry to bother you.” I fought back tears as I walked to the front door. The dog sat up, looking at me.
“Wait,” Frank said, standing.
I could see the guilt in his eyes when he noticed I was crying. “Look, I know I’m just a stranger to you, but you have to help me here. I’ve nowhere else to go. All this bad stuff is happening and I don’t know how to handle it…” He came over and I thought for one horrible second he was going to put his arms around me, but he just stood there awkwardly, not really knowing how to deal with my emotion. Maybe he wasn’t used to human contact, or at least not used to emotional eighteen-year-old girls.
“Come sit back down,” he said. He walked me back to the chair and then sat down himself.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sniffing and wiping away tears. “A lot has happened today.”
“You mentioned a video your mom made for you.”
“Yes, it’s in the laptop. You wanna see it?”
His eyes widened for a second and then he swallowed. “No. Later maybe.” He downed the rest of his whiskey. “What did your Mom tell you in this video?”
I told him everything my mom had said in the video, about how she was supposed to leave to protect us, about Josh and me being Watchers and everything that entailed. “Do you know what happened to her?” I asked. “Did a demon take her?”
Frank shifted in his seat. “What makes you say that?”
“I saw something take her that night, this horrible demon figure. It had her in its arms as it jumped into this orange circle of light on the floor and they just… disappeared. Then there was the huge dog beast that…killed my dad. No one believed me about that. They all said I was crazy from grief or some shit.”
