Diary of the Gone (10 page)

The girl shut the book, shoved it in
her bag, and slipped past me with a smoldering look in her eyes. An
intoxicating vanilla scent swept in her wake, making my mouth
water.

Mrs. Palmer bored into me with her
raven eyes again. “Would you like to borrow a book from the
library?”

“
No,” Wayne and I said in
unison.

“
Of course not,” she
scoffed. “You two are in a hurry, and you have some questions to
ask of me. Am I right?” Mrs. Palmer stood up, inviting us to sit at
the desk with an extended arm.

As Wayne was the braver of the two, he
was the one speaking. “Mrs. Palmer, you must’ve heard about what’s
happening in Olden Cross.”

“
Yes, of course,” she
said, her eyes twinkling as if set alight. “It’s not the first time
dark things have happened in Olden Cross.”

I couldn’t read the emotions on her
face, but it seemed she knew something she’d like to share with us,
not in a straightforward but rather playful way.

“
What do you mean, not the
first time?” Wayne asked.

She came over to a mantelpiece and lit
an incense stick, a lonely wisp of smoke swirling in the
air.

“
Darkness occasionally
comes to our town. The past never leaves this place.”

“
The past?” I asked. “What
are you talking about?”

“
Well, I think it’s time
for you to see what you’ve come here to see.” Mrs. Palmer’s lips
curved into a smile, and she winked at me.

She clawed with her fingers at the
back part of the mantelpiece where it clung to the wall. To my
surprise, it came off, the fireplace’s bottom part scraping lightly
against the wooden floor.

“
Welcome,” she said,
flicking a switch on the back part of the fireplace.

We bent to squeeze our way into the
room, large enough for the three of us to walk freely. I walked to
the center of the room, flicking a bulb hanging there. It swayed
from side to side, light and shade playing along the walls. A chair
and a desk stood nearby. As I ran a finger over the desk surface, a
clear trace left in the wake.

“
Aren’t you afraid someone
may come in and see us?” Wayne asked.

Mrs. Palmer flashed her teeth this
time, awarding him a condescending look. “If you mean Vivian, she
won’t be back until I call her.”

I studied the dusted bookshelves,
empty for the most part except the shelf facing us piled with
stacks of newspapers and books that had no titles along their
leather spines.

My nose tickled, and I sneezed. Wayne
chuckled at me, then it was he who sneezed.

“
I’m sorry about the dust,
gentlemen,” Mrs. Palmer said, moving towards the farther corner of
the room. “It has been a while since I last visited this
room.”

We watched in grim silence as she
thumbed through the newspapers from top to bottom.

“
Aha, here it is!” she
exclaimed, fishing one in the middle.

She unfolded the fragile yellowed
pages, so worn-out the lines were difficult to make out where the
paper creased.

I noticed the date, December 19, 1976,
printed at the top of the front page.

“
Here.” Mrs. Palmer’s
finger pointed at a small article with a picture of a black-haired
girl to the left of it.

Wayne and I bent our heads to take a
closer look. The picture was not clear, but I recognized her at
once. She smiled at us, her hair combed so that it streamed
beautifully down her chest. It was the girl who had visited my
room.

“
Missing Girl Found
Strangled in the Woods,” Wayne read the title aloud.

I gulped as my eyes ran over the lines
of the article. Agitated, I only caught bits of what was
there.

After missing for a
month…

…
found by the
gamekeeper…

…
Cynthia Abbott was
strangled in cold blood.

“
That was when the Swamp
appeared. It started advancing on Olden Cross with each year,” Mrs.
Palmer croaked, her voice causing goosebumps over my arms. “The
murderer hasn’t been found, but occasionally hunters found
carcasses of animals and birds trailing through the forest. Soon
all the animals left these woods.” The vision emerged before my
eyes. “Every few years teenage boys and girls go missing, never to
be found again.”

At these words, Mrs. Palmer folded the
newspaper, her fingertips touching the edges gently as if she was
afraid it would fall apart right there. Then she came to the shelf
and put it on top of the pile.

“
So it’s not the first
time this is happening?” I mumbled, staring at the rest of the
pile.

“
Why are our parents
keeping it secret then?” Wayne wondered.

Mrs. Palmer passed by as she made
towards the door, then turned around. “Would you like to live in
fear of being the next to go missing?”

She clawed at the doorframe and exited
the room, leaving the door open. Taking a look at the newspapers, I
followed her and Wayne, then pushed the fireplace back.

Mrs. Palmer sat down at her desk,
thumbing through a book that rested open on her desk. As if she had
forgotten we were still there. I glanced at Wayne who shrugged his
shoulders. Then he nodded his head towards the door. “Let’s go,” he
mouthed. I nodded.

When we reached the end of the aisle,
Mrs. Palmer said, “When you step into a shadow, it becomes part of
you.” I swiveled on my heel to see her mysterious smile. “Be
careful, Callum. Shadows are close by.”

I nodded, knowing she wouldn’t
elaborate on what she’d just said. The air outside seemed so light,
free from the sandalwood aroma of the library.

“
She’s definitely got bats
in the belfry,” Wayne said, combing his blond hair back.

“
Yeah.” I gave a long
sigh.

“
I’ll ask my parents if
they knew that girl, Cynthia Abbott,” he said. “Can’t believe it
started so long ago.”

“
Me neither.”

“
I swear I saw a man
taking Audrey to the woods,” he said.

Wayne and I were alike in a way. Each
lost a person we considered best friends. I’d lost Nathan. He’d
lost Audrey.

Like Wayne, I thought at first Mrs.
Palmer was just playing with us, but the more I was pondering over
the manner in which she was acting, the more it looked like there
was something that kept her from telling us more. Why hadn’t she
shown the rest of the papers to us?

Nevertheless, our visit to the library
wasn’t overly pointless. Mrs. Palmer hinted to me where to look for
more clues.

The picture of the girl etched into my
memory. I licked my dry lips. It was probably the first time ever
that I looked forward to seeing the dead.

Chapter 9

Entry #122

May 28

Mom is upset about
something. She doesn’t tell me what’s wrong. Our family is a
collection of strangers who don’t share anything with one
another.

When I came home and kicked off my
shoes, I heard Mom’s voice coming from upstairs. Taking two stairs
at a time, I was about to call her that I was home, when I heard
her say my name.

Mom’s voice quivered. Was she crying?
I reached the top of the stairs without making a sound, listening
to what she was saying.

“…
no, you’ll have to make
sure he’s going to be safe. I’m scared, Geoffrey.”

Geoffrey? Chief Coleman? Why was Mom
so scared?

I peeked into the room, careful not to
give myself away. She was standing in the middle of the room,
talking over the phone with her back to me. Then she turned, and I
saw how agitated she was. Her hair was tousled as if she’d just
woken from a restless sleep, her fingers scratching her cheek, her
lower lips trembling.

She collapsed on her bed, nearly
sobbing. “Yes, I understand. But what if he’s going to leave at
night again?”

She listened attentively to what the
chief had to say, her eyes going from left to right. She sighed.
“Thank you, Geoffrey. You have no idea how much it means to
me.”

I thought I’d heard enough, so I
retreated carefully, climbed down the stairs and went towards the
fridge. My stomach rumbled, warning me that I needed to eat, but I
grabbed only a can of Mountain Dew. As I looked out of the window I
noticed Bev coming back home with her boyfriend. They were holding
hands, Bev laughing at some joke Terry Haubert was telling her.
Something jolted inside me, my stomach growling, but not from
hunger this time. Was it jealousy? No, no way.

Terry’s hand snaked its way around
Bev’s waist, and he leaned forward to kiss her.

“
Oh, please.” I cringed,
looking away.

They said goodbye, then the door
opened, and Bev entered, a smile on her face. It faltered and
withered to a scowl when she spotted me.

“
Why didn’t you invite him
in?” I asked, laying my sarcasm thick.

“
Have you been watching
us?” she said, blushing.

“
As if I had a choice,” I
scoffed then took a sip of Mountain Dew.

Mom came down the stairs giving me a
suspicious glance. “I didn’t hear you come back,” she said. Her
hair was combed, but her rheumy eyes still were a giveaway of her
stress.

“
We didn’t want to
interrupt your conversation,” I said, willing to make her feel
uncomfortable.

“
What conversation?” Bev
asked.

“
Yes, I w-was talking to
Chief Coleman.” Mom seemed to recover from my response. “I’m really
worried about you two.”

“
It’s him you should be
worried about,” Bev said, glaring at me.

“
No, Bev, stop it. I mean
it. Today a note has been found.”

I even forgot a joke I was going to
say to pique my sister. “What note? Where?” I asked.

Mom’s eyes filled with tears again,
and Bev came to her to give a hug of support, something I was lame
at.

“
Chief Coleman found it on
one of the trees where the path to the Swamps goes. He said it was
difficult to miss,” Mom whimpered.

“
What did it
say?”

“
It said, ‘They are not
coming back’,” Mom said.

I suddenly felt hot, the room lacking
oxygen. Bev stroked Mom’s head while I was thinking of what to do
next.

I needed to see Wayne, the sooner the
better. Maybe tonight? Together we would figure out what we need to
do to save Audrey and Nathan. If they were still alive.

I felt weak in my knees, as if I were
an old man, so I flopped down into a nearby chair.

The worst part was that I couldn’t
leave the house at night, because Chief Coleman had promised Mom he
would watch me.

***

The news of the note crawled its way
back into my head no matter how hard I tried to forget about
it.

For once in a long while, I even took
my school books and made my home assignments. I still couldn’t put
up with the fact that while I was sitting at my desk, my friends
were out there, cold and most probably hungry, with someone keeping
them.

Chewing at my pencil, I realized the
figures in my Math book turned into those words that Mom told us:
They are not coming back.

I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened
them to take another look at the task in hand, but I sprang back in
horror.

Worms ate their way through the pages,
wriggling and coiling in sickening patterns. Gagging, I hurled the
book onto the desk, pushing frantically with my legs to get away
from it. My chair keeled over and I crashed onto the floor, sparks
of pain flicking through my spine and the back of my
skull.

I rubbed at my head, something wet and
warm staining my fingers.

“
Oh, brilliant,” I spat,
eyeing blood on my fingertips, blinking hard to bring the blurry
reality back to focus.

The room filled with the intense odor
of mold, the colors around me decaying to a lifeless
gray.

“
I thought you would never
come,” a girl said close by, giving a soft chuckle.

She stood in the doorway, her hair
fringing her ashen face and streaming down to her waist.

“
Cynthia?”

She slid across the room, the door
shutting behind her with a bang.

“
Hi, Callum,” she said.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”

The sky darkened within a few seconds.
Lightning flashed, followed by thunder rumbling in the distance. I
realized my room had changed. Instead of my desk, an old mahogany
desk I’d never seen stood at the window. My posters on the wall
were gone, old-fashioned wallpaper peeling off the wall here and
there.

A gust of wind sent the windowpanes
rattling; an icy draft passed me by, then brought Cynthia’s long
hair and gown to ripples.

“
My friends are in
trouble. I need your help.” I preferred not to beat around the
bush.