Boy, 9, Missing

by Nic Joseph

  What the hell?

  Before I could freeze up at the sight of the tight, dark space, I took a deep breath and started down. The stairs creaked under my weight, and I peered into the darkness around me, knowing I should stop to go back and look for a flashlight, but sure that if I left the cramped stairwell, I’d never come back. I could see nothing, and I let each foot dangle slowly to find the step below as the little light from the open closet door diminished the farther down I went.

  As I reached the last step, something soft brushed against my face, and I took a startled step backward, almost landing on my butt on the stairs.

  But it was too thick to be a spider web. I reached out with my hand and felt around in the air, my fingers connecting with a thick rope cord that hung from the ceiling. Pulling down and praying it was what I thought it was, I released a sigh of relief when a single lightbulb flickered on, illuminating the room in a dim, yellow glow.

  It was definitely a basement, and from the direction I’d walked, I guessed I was somewhere beneath the bathroom and the kitchen. I stepped forward into the large room, my gaze darting about.

  What was this place?

  There was a dark pool of water in the center of the room, near a drain blocked with old newspaper. I stepped gingerly around it as I peered even farther into the room.

  I moved past a bunch of junk—tables and chairs pushed against one wall, old, soiled cardboard boxes, pots, trash. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Alex had a secret room of junk beneath his cabin, but I still had to force down my nausea.

  I kept walking, my gaze on the wall in front of me. A corkboard had been mounted on it; it was completely covered in photos. My stomach turned over when I stepped closer and saw who’d been captured on the film.

  Sam Farr.

  And a young boy who couldn’t have been more than ten years old.

  Matthew.

  There were at least two dozen photographs of Sam and Matthew pinned up side by side. In some, they were laughing and talking; in others, they looked serious, but they all had one thing in common: the pair obviously had no idea they were being photographed. The candid photos had been taken from different angles, some from the inside of a car it seemed, others through a window.

  This proved it.

  My father had been stalking Matthew and Sam Farr.

  But why?

  And could he really have been planning on taking Matthew?

  I walked over to a shelving unit on the side of the corkboard and picked up a stack of photos—more pictures of Sam and Matthew, held together by a large paper clip. Placing the photos in my coat pocket, I flipped through the other items on the shelf.

  More books by D. B. James.

  Who the hell was this guy?

  And why did Alex have so many books by him?

  Was he exploring his “academic” side these days? Surely, not that much could have changed in the last six years.

  Though things had started to change the night Lucas had died. Every single moment after that—every single thing my parents did and did not say—humanized them in a way that was hard for me to understand at first. Before Lucas died, they were parents, and after, they were just people, a difference it had taken a long time for me to come to terms with.

  I don’t know exactly when my father became Alex to me—maybe it was when I saw him sitting in his bedroom, unshowered, filthy, and soaked in whatever it was he’d been drinking that day, unable to do little more than call Delroy to take me away.

  I was reaching for another book when I suddenly heard a loud noise behind me. I dropped the book and spun around at the sound of a door shutting—the passageway to the closet?—followed by heavy footsteps moving down the stairs.

  The booming steps made me jolt backward, and I cried out as my back slammed into the shelving unit. My throat tightened, and a wave of fear rushed over my entire body as I caught a glimpse of a large figure barreling down on me.

  “Hey…” I started, the sound nothing more than a strangled croak.

  Before I could finish, the person leaped up, clean into the air, and yanked the string to shut off the single, flickering bulb.

  And then we were down there—me and someone who I had a feeling knew a lot more about me than I knew about them—together in complete and total darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  In an instant, the air in the room became thick and heavy, as if a warm blanket had been tossed over my head and body, trapping me against the basement wall. I opened my mouth and gasped for a full breath, suddenly feeling thirsty, and drained, and hot. My fingernails immediately went into my palms, and I pushed so hard that they sliced into my skin. The dark room was spinning impossibly, and I was trapped, cornered…

  Just breathe, Francis.

  Count to ten.

  It was a trick I’d learned in my early twenties, and it never worked very well, but I always went back to it when I started to panic. It was a last resort, and even just trying to count took my mind off what was happening for a while.

  I struggled to form the numbers in my mind.

  One…two…three.

  What the hell is going on…?

  I struggled to see in the dark space, and I tried to remember the room I’d walked through only seconds earlier. I shivered as the darkness seemed to take on a life of its own, holding me hostage. It wasn’t fear of the dark itself, so much as the inability to see the space around me.

  To know my limitations, my constraints.

  But I couldn’t afford to be paralyzed now.

  There was someone else there.

  I went through the room quickly in my mind, trying to remember every step I’d taken. The bookshelves pushed against the north side of the basement. The large puddle of water in the middle of the room.

  What else?

  “Hello?” I called out. “Who’s there?”

  But it was silly, futile. The person who’d just run down the stairs hadn’t been quiet about it; he knew I’d heard him. He knew exactly who I was. And he hadn’t come downstairs to reveal himself to me.

  No, he wanted me in the dark.

  But why?

  I reached in front of me, and my hand hit the corner of something, most likely the metal shelf I’d just walked around. It clanged loudly, the sound echoing in the room like a beacon, and I gasped in the darkness.

  “Hello?” I said again, grabbing the shelf and holding on to it, grateful to have something to steady myself, even for just a few moments.

  I stepped back, bumped into the shelving unit again, and cursed at the noise it made. I hurried away, as quietly as possible. I felt clumsy and out of control, milling from side to side in the same space, while the person who’d just joined me stayed completely silent.

  Completely still.

  I’d just identified where I was, and I needed to move. As I scrambled away, I heard the first noise—footsteps coming in my direction. Shit. I moved quickly along the wall, running to the far side of the room. The person clanged into a few items and barreled toward the part of the room where I’d just been. As I ran in the darkness, I tried to convince myself to slow down, that it wasn’t going to work this way.

  I needed to be quiet.

  To orient myself and to figure out where the stairs were.

  That was it.

  I had to find the stairs.

  I crept along the wall, feeling the curved edge of the cool, exposed bricks. The jagged edges cut my hands, but I moved along, slowing my pace just enough to quiet my movements. My eyes wouldn’t adjust. I was still struggling to breathe normally.

  You have to get over this. You have to get over this, Francis.

  I was tempted yet again to call out, to ask who was there. But I couldn’t ask what I really needed to—if, by any chance, the person in the basement with me was the owner of the cabin.
r />   Alex Scroll.

  My father.

  I stopped in my tracks and waited, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that my attacker—if that’s what he was—had the same idea. We both stood silently, waiting, hoping for a fault, for someone to give up. I thought about making a mad dash for the stairs, but it seemed so far away. Plus, I was too turned around. For all I knew, I could be heading straight toward another wall.

  I reached around for anything I could use as a weapon. My hand landed on something rectangular and wooden. Plywood? That could work. I picked it up and crept farther along the wall.

  I needed to act—to do whatever I could to get the upper hand. Whoever was down here with me hadn’t thought this through all the way. As much as I’d been thrown off guard, they were now trapped in the basement with me in the dark, and they were in the same position I was.

  Except for one key difference. He seemed to know who I was and what I was doing here.

  I didn’t have that privilege.

  My fingers brushed something else on a shelf beside me—a book?—and I picked it up with my free hand as a plan began to form.

  You can’t stay down here forever.

  I tossed the book about five feet to my right, and it clattered on the floor. Immediately, footsteps moved toward the sound. There was a pause, a silent heartbeat, and I knew he was searching for me.

  This was my chance.

  I let out a roar and rushed in the direction of the book, swinging the piece of wood in front of me. I connected with absolutely nothing, but the motion took me down to the floor, and I heard a grunt as the man stepped backward, or forward, to avoid me. I reached out as I fell and grabbed something—the edge of his shirt, or coat—and we both went down.

  The room was so dark that I could not see him, though he was only inches from my face, but I knew he was there, felt his presence, heard his breathing, smelled him. Suddenly, I felt pressure on my foot as he kicked me, and then I was kicking too, my foot connecting with his shin, then his thigh. He cried out, and I felt hands on my chest, then my neck and face, and I scrambled forward on the cold concrete, letting my fingers rip into any skin and flesh I could find that was not my own.

  He groaned in pain, and I dug in harder. His blood coated my fingertips. “What—” I started, but I was cut off as his hand connected with my chin, and he began to push. He was taking care not to speak, but even in the darkness, I was convinced this man wasn’t my father—it couldn’t be.

  I hadn’t seen him in years, and yet it seemed I would know him.

  Right?

  He pushed his hand into my face, forcing my head back against the concrete, and I struggled to breathe. We were roughly the same size, it seemed, and I fought viciously. But he had the upper hand.

  He knew why he’d come down there.

  And what his end goal was.

  While I wanted to get free and get away from him, I still didn’t know what he was doing, whereas he was very clearly trying to accomplish something. Was he trying to hurt me? Kill me? His knee pushed into my stomach, and I gasped. I used my fingernails again, grabbing on to his knee and clawing through the fabric of his pants, twisting until I heard him cry out. It was a low, guttural sound, and it wasn’t at all recognizable.

  It couldn’t be Alex.

  It couldn’t be.

  He whipped his leg away, and I took a deep breath and rolled onto my side as his hand came down near my face. I had moved just in time. His knuckles smacked the floor, and he groaned again. My eyes had finally adjusted enough that I could see a hint of his shape, but I couldn’t make out any of his features.

  He was still bunched over, groaning, and I used the opportunity to push him onto his back. I kicked into the darkness, hoping to connect with something. I missed, and he grabbed me around the waist, pushing me backward yet again into the dirty water. It coated my scalp as I struggled to get free.

  I rolled to try to grab his free arm, and that was my mistake. He propelled me forward and then turned me over so I was lying facedown in the stagnant water. I sputtered as it went into my nose, my mouth, my eyes. Then he grabbed me and lifted me off the floor before lowering me back into the sludgy pool. He pulled me up, and I coughed violently, wiping the dirt out of my eyes and gasped as the room spun. In my search for air, I forgot to fight, and my body gave out. I sputtered, expelling the water from my lungs as I searched for a clean breath. He lifted me high one more time, and I knew, deep down, that this was it. The motion was so rough, so quick, that I had only a second to swing my arm out to block my face as I hurtled toward the floor for the final time.

  I tasted the water once more before everything went black.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I yanked at the sweater that was itching every part of my body—even the parts it wasn’t touching. Dinner had been as boring as expected, and the Farrs seemed content to stay around as long as possible.

  I wished they would just leave.

  They weren’t all that bad, to be honest, but I was tired, and I wanted to go upstairs. I wanted to go finish my book or stare at a wall or do anything that didn’t involve being around anyone else. But I didn’t have that option.

  “Hey, look alive, Francis.” My father was always catching me drifting off, and he shuffled past me into the kitchen, a glass of wine dripping from his fingertips. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

  “Yeah, it is,” I said. I was thirteen years old. It was my life’s mission to make sure that everyone knew exactly how miserable I was.

  “What’s the matter?” He walked over to the fridge and pulled out the bottle of red wine they’d been drinking with dinner. He took out the wine stopper—a beautiful silver rose settled into the top of the bottle—and poured himself another glass. “Seriously, you can’t be that upset that we have guests. You used to like our dinner parties.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said, and I felt whiny and defensive at the same time. I did used to enjoy them, back when I was Lucas’s age. I knew it, and yet, I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted him to know he was practically killing me, making me sit there in the hot sweater and pretend like I cared about their conversation. I didn’t feel the need to try to make everyone else feel comfortable when I wasn’t.

  “All right, fine,” he said. “Maybe you didn’t like them. But you didn’t hate them this much. You’re walking around here like somebody stole your puppy. Did somebody steal your puppy, Francis?” He walked closer and poked me lightly in the neck. “Huh, did somebody?”

  “Quit, Dad,” I said, moving away. I could tell he wanted to keep teasing me, but he sighed and stepped back.

  “Look, I’m just saying, it wouldn’t hurt to brighten up a little bit. Your mom put a lot of hard work into this, and she’s upset because she thinks you’re having a horrible time. She can’t even enjoy her party. You could go a little easier on her. You know what she’s doing right now?”

  “No.”

  “She’s upstairs, looking for Clue, because she knows it’s your favorite board game. I bet you won’t even play it, and nobody else wants to, but she’s looking for it because she thinks it’s going to make you happy. Can you at least give it a try?”

  “Playing Clue? I play it all the time. I don’t need to give that a try.”

  “No, smart-ass. Give a smile a try. Make it seem like being here with your family is not the very last place on earth you’d like to be right now. Okay?”

  I took a drink of my milk without saying anything, pretending it prevented me from responding, but my father leaned in closer and waited for me to finish my gulp.

  “Okay?” he asked again.

  “Yeah,” I muttered with a shrug. “Okay.”

  “You’ll try?”

  “Yeah. I’ll try.”

  • • •

  When I opened my eyes, I was far away from the warm kitchen I’d so disap
proved of some twenty-three years earlier. I would have given anything to be back there, bantering with my father, only an hour or so before the downward cycle of my life had started.

  Instead, I was lying on my stomach, my neck twisted painfully to one side, my cheek submerged in a pool of putrid water that also soaked my scalp and mixed with my blood as it rolled down my forehead and into my eye.

  There are memories of people that stay with you—smells, sounds, images. Those few that I kept of my father from the last time I’d seen him were of the drink he’d sloshed around in his hand, the smell of his cheap cologne.

  And it wasn’t enough.

  It wasn’t enough for me to say, with any certainty at all, that the person whom I’d just encountered in the basement of the cabin had been him.

  Or not him.

  The scary truth was that it could have been Alex. The last time I’d seen or spoken to him had been six years ago in his filthy apartment. When I’d tried to take a bottle of whiskey away and he’d thrown a pot at my head.

  Yes, it could’ve been him.

  If it wasn’t him, there was only one other person who it could have been.

  Sam Farr.

  Miranda Farr had been there only minutes earlier. In the brief moments between when she’d left the cabin and when I’d been attacked, someone had managed to sneak inside.

  He hadn’t said a single word, which led me to believe that he’d known who I was, what I was doing, and exactly where I’d been in the cabin. Miranda had claimed she’d shown up alone, but what if Sam had been in the car with her? What if she’d sent him back in after she left?

  There were so many what-ifs that could be solved simply by sitting down with the Farrs. I pushed myself up and stumbled up the stairs and out of the cabin, gulping in fresh air and letting it linger in my lungs. I raced through the bushes in the direction of my car, feeling a rush of relief when I spotted the red roof.