A Vulnerable Broken Mind (5 page)

              John was in that state of mind. He felt trapped in these woods; forever doomed to walk for all eternity in a circle, which had no turn to get off of it.

              John had been walking through the woods for (what felt like) hours. He was tired, hungry and drained of all hope. His mind kept showing him images of Amber, the only image that could possibly keep him going at this point.

              He had been walking straight, as the little girl had told him. A little girl that he had not seen since then. His route had been nothing but an endless barrage of trees, branches and bushes.

              Suddenly, the trees disappeared in front of him, as well as the ground he was walking on. With no time to react, he rolled down a hill. Bushes, rocks and sand hitting his body with great force.

              The fall ended quickly but it wasn’t painless. John was hurt in several places. He was covered in dirt and sand and felt like he was going to pass out from the pain. It took all of his strength to get back to his feet.

              He looked up at the hill he had just fallen from. It was so steep that he had no idea on how he had survived.

              He turned around. He had expected to see more trees in front of him but his eyes were greeted by a small village. It consisted of four streets total with a long line of small buildings on each of them. Each building was made of old and rotted brick. If this was Tuxton, John was almost certain that it was deserted.

              The village was strangely located in a crater as the hills and trees surrounded it.

              None of the streets were paved and there weren’t any signs of life in the area. There were cars parked on the sides of the streets, but all looked rather old and could have been sitting there for years.

              As John prepared to walk into the village, a pair of headlights shined upon him. He jumped from surprise and saw that the headlights were from what appeared to be an old black police car. The car reminded John of the police cars he had seen from any movie made or set in the 1930’s. There was no town labeled on the car. All that was on it was the word “police”.

John stayed precisely where he was, not knowing what to expect. He tried to hide the fact that he was shaking but knew that he was failing exponentially.

              All John could see was the vague silhouette of a man in the car. The driver’s side door opened and the man who came out was indeed a cop. He was a tall, fat man in a khaki colored uniform with a cowboy hat and a huge white beard. He looked like a cliché cop from an old western, aside from the modern day uniform.

              “Are you alright, son?” He said in a gravelly, kind voice. “Do you need help?”

              “Officer, I was in an accident just up the hill and my wife has gone missing…I…I don’t…” John had started off okay but had begun to ramble as he tried to explain everything as fast as he possibly could. The cop put up his hands to stop him and walked up to him.

              “It’s alright, you can explain at the office,” he said. “Until then, we need to get you to a first aid kit. You’re pretty banged up. Hop into the front seat,” he said and John slowly got into the passenger seat of the car. Once they drove off, it took them at most two minutes to get to the office.

              In that two minutes, John got to see a little bit more of the village. The village, much like the cop, had an old western look to it. The buildings and businesses looked like places that had been standing since the nineteenth century. There were no electronic signs for any of the businesses. All looked to be hand painted signs. There were no street lights. The only sign that there was electricity came from the few lights radiating from some of the businesses. The rest of the businesses were rather indistinguishable as they sat in darkness.

              The office that they were driving to was no different. It was located on the first street in town in the center of the street. There was no sign for the building at all; it was just an old, nameless, small brick building. The front had a glass door and two big windows to the left and right, with no curtains, so that it showed the entire inside of it. It was a small office with two desks, one in the front as you entered the building and one in the very back. There were no pictures on the walls. The only form of decoration was the American flag sitting in the right corner of the office.

              When they walked in, the cop walked to the desk in the back and opened one of the drawers and pulled out a first aid kit. “You can sit here,” he said, indicating the chair directly in front of the desk. John walked up to the desk but hesitated to sit. “It will be alright, trust me. I’m not going to handcuff you or arrest you. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s alright to sit down.”

              After hearing this, John sat down and took the first aid kit out of the cop’s hands and pulled out wipes and bandages to fix himself up. While doing so, he looked around the office even more. It was the most generic office he had ever seen. There weren’t even pictures or nameplates on the desks. Nothing at all to indicate that this was in any way, shape or form, a police office.

              The cop noticed John looking around and finally took the time to introduce himself. “I’m officer Luke Hanson, I’m actually a police officer from the next town over, Jacksonville.”

              “What’s this town though?” John asked.

              “You’re in Tuxton, South Carolina,” Hanson explained. “It’s an old town that was built in the mid nineteenth century. As you can tell, not much has changed here since then,” he laughed as he said this. “It was abandoned years ago and left to rot. But when the economy took a dive a couple of years ago, the governor saw great economic value to it. So, he secretly began to fix up the town but didn’t want to change its old fashioned look.

              “He added more electricity to the town and built a single row of houses, which are located on the very last road in town. Not many people know of this place. The only people that seem to know of its existence, besides our governor, are the twenty people residing here.

              “This town quite literally sits out in the middle of nowhere. Jacksonville is a good hour and half drive away from here. Which is the big reason why so little people know of its existence.”

              “If the governor wanted people to live here again, why is it such a secretive place?” John asked reasonably.

              “Because the only people he wanted to be living here were people that were truly hurt by the economy or had a good enough reason. It’s mostly been the latter, but I myself wouldn’t find some of them to be good enough reasons,” Hanson explained as he sat down in his chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Now, with that said, why are you here? I know that you tried to explain when I first saw you but I couldn’t really make it out.”

              John sat up, stopped what he was doing, and took a few deep breaths before he explained. “My name is John Robinson and my wife, Amber, has gone missing. We were in a car accident in the woods and when I woke up, she was gone. I believe someone took her.”

              Hanson took out a piece of paper and began to write down what John was saying. “Do you have a photo of your wife?”

              John reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He pulled out a photo of Amber and handed it to Hanson. Hanson looked it over. “You believe that she is here?”

              “I can’t imagine her being anywhere else. This was the first town I’ve seen for hours and, like you said, it’s the only town or place for miles.” John explained, hoping that the cop believed him.

              Hanson sat back in his chair and looked over the photo for a while and put it on the desk. “One of the things about Tuxton is that it’s so small that we usually see people coming in and out. The only time we’ll possibly miss something might be…” Hanson trailed off and appeared to stare into thin air. “No, he wouldn’t do that,” he said quickly and looked down at the paper he had written on.

              “Who?” John asked, puzzled.

              “Ralph Hunt,” Hanson responded. “He’s a big retail store owner who came to live here, so that he could have some privacy.”

              “I’ve never heard of Ralph Hunt,” John explained.

              “No, probably not, but I’m sure you’ve heard of his store,” Hanson said. “Have you ever heard of the ‘T & E Food Mart?”

John merely nodded.

“He’s the owner. The governor initially refused to let him live here but couldn’t really stop him when he decided to build his own house here, which is located up the hill that’s right across from us. You can see it from certain parts of town.

              “He built two roads near his house, one that leads down here, and one to get back to the highway, which is where I’m guessing your accident took place.”

              “Since he has a direct way back to the highway, shouldn’t we ask to see if he knows anything?” John asked.

              Hanson sat back even further into his chair and sighed. “I hate dealing with him. He is the prime example of an asshole.” He shook his head. “He’s pretty much Mr. Self-Important and he hates it when people, especially me, bother him.”

              John stood up angrily. “I don’t care. My wife is somewhere and I don’t care who I ask! Especially when someone from this town has direct access to the road where my accident was!”

              “Calm down, John,” Hanson said and gestured for John to sit back down, which he did rather reluctantly. “We have only twenty permanent residents in this town and I’m not about to send each of them into panic mode for someone who might not be here. You need to trust me.”

              John didn’t say anything to this. He only bandaged up the last cut on his body. After a few minutes of silence, he finally spoke again. “What are we going to do then?” He asked harshly.

              “We’ll go around town to see if anyone has seen any unusual activity,” Hanson said quickly. “However, I really only know of two that might be of real use for this because they’re always here.” He got up and grabbed the first aid kit to put it back in his desk. “If we’re going to do this, we need to go now.”

              John got up as well and they both walked out. John started to walk to the car but Hanson stopped him. “We’ll walk there,” he said.

              “Why not take the car?” John asked once they started walking.

              “The places that we need to go to are right down the street,” Hanson explained. “In all honesty, there really is no need for a car in this town. A car would only be needed for going out of town. The place is at the very end of the village on the north side, opposite of where I found you.

“We’re going to the street where the governor put the houses. It’s just a single line of ten houses that sit on the very end of town. The two houses we’ll be going to are at the very beginning of the street. The two residents there are pretty much here all day long. They’ll notice anything different in this town. In the very few cases that we’ve had in Tuxton, they’ve been a big help.”

When they approached the end of the street, John saw the houses that he was talking about. The houses were all on one side of the road. While supposedly new, they had an old east coast look to them. All of the houses were plain white and were two stories high.

Each house had a wooden fence surrounding it. All but one of fences were unpainted. Some looked to be well maintained, while others appeared to be already decaying due to lack of care.

“The two houses that we’ll be going to are over there,” Hanson said, pointing to the two houses at the very beginning of the street. They were the only two houses that seemed to contain any sort of life because they were the only two that were decorated.

The house on the far left was decorated with U.S. Army emblems. An emblem was placed on each window and two flags hung from the porch; one American flag and one Army flag.

The house next to it was the only house with a fence that was painted. In this case, it was white. Sitting on the front lawn was what John considered to be a decoration due to the fact that the rest of the houses had nothing. It was a small blue jet boat that sat in the front yard on a small trailer. John couldn’t disguise his confusion. He had never seen a small jet boat sitting in front of another person’s house like a decoration.

This confusion was not missed by Hanson. “I know you probably have questions but let’s just say he’s a weird guy.” Hanson laughed as he spoke. “Let’s walk over there.” John and Hanson walked across the road and towards the houses. As they got closer, John saw a man sitting on the porch of the second house who he hadn’t seen before due to the jet boat. The man was older and had an intimidating look to him. He was silhouetted by the lights of the house and was looking straight at them. John got a strong sense of foreboding from the man.

“Who’s that?” John asked.

Hanson looked in the direction that John was looking and said, “That’s Tom Morrison, a retired sheriff from the N.Y.P.D. He’s old and paranoid. He’s always on his porch during my shift and always has information. He’s seventy-five years-old but has all of his mental faculties. We’ll talk to him first.”

They walked through the front gate. The old man continued to stare at them intently but didn’t say anything. Being closer to him gave John a better view of him. He was an old, thin man. The porch light shined on his bald head.