The Search for Artemis (The Chronicles of Landon Wicker) (2 page)

“Can you get me another beer and bring the pan over here?” Mr. Wicker asked after slurping down the last drop of his lager. “I want some more.”

Landon’s mother got up from the table and walked over to the refrigerator. After opening the door and standing there for a while, bent over, moving pieces of Tupperware and vegetables out of the way, she asked hesitantly, “How about some milk?” She kept her head turned toward the inside of the refrigerator, clearly dreading what came next.

“Milk? Why in hell would I want milk?” Mr. Wicker asked, evenly. “What are you waiting for? Get some in there now. And you better hope they get cold quick.”

He sat in his seat, waving his empty beer can in the air, utter disgust emanating from his exaggerated scowl. “Look at me!” Landon’s mom turned her head toward Mr. Wicker. The next words he spoke extra slowly, making sure Mrs. Wicker understood every syllable. “You better get some beer in there now, grab that pan, put more food on my plate and do it
fast
. Before I get angry.”

Mrs. Wicker grabbed a new case of beer out of the cabinet below the sink and unpacked the cans, putting them in the fridge to cool down. She shoved two cans in the ice bucket in the freezer in hopes they would get cold before Mr. Wicker’s patience ran out. Then, she threw the empty box in the trash bin, picked up the pan of stroganoff by its handle, and walked across the room to Mr. Wicker’s seat. She spooned some more onto his plate, set the pan on a trivet on the dinner table, and returned to her seat. The room became silent once again.

When Landon finished, he got up and brought his plate to the sink to rinse off.

“Landon, I think it’s time for you to read a book,” his mom said.

“But it’s too hot to read. It’s too hot to do anything,” he mumbled under his breath as he turned toward the sink.

“Landon, I said
it’s time for you to read a book
.”

Landon couldn’t think of any rebuttal. He turned off the faucet, admitted defeat and headed out of the dining area. After his bedroom door shut, he heard the murmur of his father’s voice as he started to yell at his mother.

Back in his room, Landon turned on the reading light next to his bed, blindly pulled the first book off of his To-Read stack and flopped back down on the mattress. He examined the book:
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens. There was water damage on its cover in a perfect circle, exactly the size of a beer can. Mr. Wicker apparently used the book as a coaster at one time.

Landon opened up the book to a random page and stuck his nose into the middle seam, taking a big whiff of the pages. He loved the smell of books, particularly old ones. There was something about them. They all smelled different, which perplexed him, and he wasn’t sure why he liked it so much. Was it the ink, the paper, or the smell of literary sweat and tears? He had no idea, but he knew he liked it, and he knew that textbooks didn’t possess the same olfactory appeal. This book had a somewhat sour smell. It reminded him of milk on the last day before it goes bad. But it also smelled like pecans and walnuts. It smelled perfect.

Landon decided to obey his mother’s wishes and turned back to the front page.

After about a half hour or so, his mind began to wander. The words started blurring together and his eyelids became heavy. He tried to pay attention, but no matter how much he focused, he couldn’t concentrate on the page. Eventually, his head became too heavy to hold up, and he decided to prop it up on his arm.

• • • • •

Thump.

“Ah! I’m reading! Wha—?”

Landon confusedly looked around his room. Nothing was out of the ordinary, just him lying on his bed. He glanced down and noticed the stream of drool that ran over his arm.
David Copperfield
laid open, pinned between him and the mattress. How long had he been asleep?

He could still hear his father screaming in the living room. As usual, he couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he could tell he was mad. Even though the place was small, his mom’s book collection created a kind of sound barrier in the apartment. If the door was closed, he generally couldn’t make out what happened in the other part of the house.

Normally, Landon ignored his father’s yelling. He always figured he was just screaming at the TV after his football team had made a bad play or calling for another beer, but the sound that woke him had sparked his curiosity. Landon wanted to see what was going on.

He slid off the bed, wiped his drool-covered arm on his pants, and dreamily walked out of his room. As he opened the door and entered the living room, he fought to become fully awake, rubbing his eyes with the side of his fingers.

“Please. Please, John. Please. It won’t happen again,” Landon’s mother said.

When Landon’s eyes focused, he saw his mother, crumpled on the ground, pressed against a pile of books in the corner of the living room, tears streaming down her face. Mr. Wicker stood over her, forcefully holding her by the wrist, and he was screaming. The thud that had awakened Landon from his Dickens-induced nap was not someone knocking on his door, but the sound of his mother hitting the hardwood as Mr. Wicker threw her to the floor.

“I told you if you stepped out of line one more time that you’d regret it! And you just couldn’t do as I asked! You brought this upon yourself!”

“Please, John. It was an accident. It won’t happen again,” wailed Mrs. Wicker. “I . . . tripped. It . . . was . . . an . . . accident.”

Tears continued to pour from Mrs. Wicker’s eyes. Her pleas were staggered, forced out between her sobs.

“Let her go!” Landon was surprised to hear himself speaking with such force. He never spoke back to his father, but the scene unfolding in his living room caught him totally by surprise. He knew his father had a temper, but he always yelled. Outside of the butter knife at dinner, Landon never knew of his father to be violent.

“Landon, please . . . go back to your room,” Mrs. Wicker sobbed.

“Yeah, you heard her, go
read your book,
” Mr. Wicker said mockingly. “That way you don’t have to see how stupid your idiot mother is.”

As he spoke, he yanked on Mrs. Wicker’s arm. She whimpered as it was pulled. She was completely overpowered and defenseless.

“Dad, stop! She’s obviously sorry for whatever she did!”

“Yes, John, I’m sorry. Of course I know better. It was an accident. It won’t happen again,” Landon’s mother pleaded.

“Oh, shut up!”

He raised his free arm, his hand wide open. It was poised like a viper, ready to strike. And, like a snake, he attacked, his hand speeding toward the side of Mrs. Wicker’s tear-tracked face.

To Landon, it went by in slow motion. He watched as his father’s hand descended on his helpless mother.

“No! Don’t touch her!” Landon screamed at the top of his lungs.

Mr. Wicker’s hand stopped mere inches from the cringing face of Landon’s mother. He strained as if he was shackled and a chain held his arm back. Mr. Wicker fought with all his might, but his body was frozen. Pulsing powerfully just under his skin, his veins bulged from his effort to move. His muscles tensed. Sweat collected on his forehead and dripped down the side of his face.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Wicker’s body stood motionless, but his eyes pointed right at Landon.

“You’re not going to hurt her!” A strange feeling Landon had never experienced before seemed to awaken within him. It exploded like a fire igniting deep in his body. Heat emanated from his hands and feet. He was losing control; his body was trembling and his legs were weak.

A cloud built up inside Landon’s head. He was confused, but he also felt a strange sense of freedom, as if something caged inside of him had become unleashed.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Wicker asked again, still motionless but with his eyes fixed on Landon. His voice was still booming, yet Landon heard a slight tremble at the end.

“No more!” Landon’s voice echoed through the apartment. His head was foggy, and his vision blurred.

Mr. Wicker’s inert body flew backward across the room as if an imaginary hook pulled him with all its force. He bowled into a large pile of books by the doorway into the dining area; an avalanche of pages quickly engulfed his entire body.

Landon watched in utter disbelief. The feeling that awoke within him possessed his entire body. He didn’t know what was going on, and he wasn’t able to stop it. His head grew numb, and he looked through a clouded haze as he stared at his buried father. He wondered if he would move, but suddenly a book floated up, blocking his line of sight.

Books and figurines from all over the apartment steadily rose into the air and began moving around the living room. Volumes upon volumes lifted off their disorganized piles and formed a swirling vortex. The lights began to flicker, and picture frames trembled all over the apartment, creating a violent banging noise as they fruitlessly attempted to jump off the hooks that held them to the wall. The floor, ceiling, and walls rumbled and quaked as cracks formed and snaked across the surface. Drywall and dust dislodged and joined the books and miscellaneous objects in a tumultuous journey around the room. Tethered to the wall by the service cable, the TV floated off its stand, and the old leather couch shook violently on the floor. Books and objects continued to rise off their stacks and pedestals. The pink flamingo lawn ornament flew dangerously close to Landon’s head, but he stood unfazed. His eyed remained focused on his father’s unconscious body, which became visible again after the majority of the books covering him rose into the air.

Landon’s mother followed
her copy of
Alice in Wonderland
with a look of horror as it breezed by her head. Still on the floor, she slid back and pressed her body against the wall as she watched what was happening; her body trembled with fear.

She turned to Landon, but he didn’t look back at her. His features appeared rigid and hard. His eyes were dilated, his hair whipped around from an invisible wind, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Landon, are you doing this? If you are, you can stop! I’m okay!” Trying to raise her voice over the deafening racket of the apartment, Mrs. Wicker ineffectually attempted to call to her son.

“He will
never
hurt us again,” Landon said, but his voice didn’t seem his own. It was guttural and commanding as if he was possessed.

“Landon, can you stop this?” asked his mother, but Landon couldn’t hear her. “Please Landon, come back to me!”

The couch shot off the ground and hit the ceiling with a resounding boom. It then zoomed across the room and collided with the wall, pinned in the air.

Then without cause, Landon’s body went numb, his vision went black, his body shook, and he collapsed.

• • • • •

Landon opened his eyes. It took a minute for his vision to adjust to the dark, dusty apartment. He had a blinding headache, and as he came to, he realized that he lay covered in a dense pile of books and random trinkets. While looking around, he cautiously got to his feet. The apartment was a disaster. A torrent of books and figurines were strewn everywhere, and the furniture was bent and broken. The walls looked cracked and crumbling; chunks of drywall littered the room, and it was dark. The light bulbs in all the lamps had shattered.
Had a tornado landed? Had a hurricane blown through?

Landon perplexingly looked across the room at the overturned couch and suddenly noticed his father’s lifeless arm protruding from under its crushing weight. Landon froze, paralyzed by shock.
What happened? Where’s my mom? Did I do this?

Fervently, Landon waded through the piles of debris, throwing books behind him as he searched for his mother. Volumes by Poe, Twain and Stevenson flew through the air, landing on collections of Shakespearean plays and Agatha Christie mysteries. He picked up another book
,
but paused; it felt wet. After wiping his hand on his pants, he pulled the book to his face to see if he could tell what it was in the darkness. When he looked closer the liquid appeared dark and thick—definitely not water. Then a ferrous smell caught his attention.
Was it blood?
Landon anxiously pushed aside the books until he found his mother lying on the floor. Oozing from a deep cut on her head, a pool of crimson blood spread across the cracked floor, the bronze miniature of
The Thinker
lying beside her motionless body.

“Mom!” he screamed as he fell to her side. On instinct, he started to shake her, violently trying to wake her up. “Mom! Please, Mom! Wake up!” He continued to shake her over and over again, but with every push, her body limply fell back to the floor. Tears stung Landon’s eyes as his body reacted to a painful truth his mind was unwilling to accept. Unable to stop himself, Landon continued to scream at her and shake her, expecting his mother to wake up at any moment.

Suddenly, the loud creak of someone in the hall caught Landon’s attention. As their feet pressed into the old floorboards of the building, the sounds of their footsteps became louder and louder as they moved closer to his apartment door.

Landon bolted upright and dragged his fingers through his hair. What would happen if someone came through that door? What would they think when they found him standing over his mother with her blood all over his hands? His family lay lifelessly amidst mountains of debris, casualties of an unknown apocalypse, with Landon as the only survivor.
They’d think I did it,
he realized, as there was no way for him to explain what happened. He couldn’t remember anything after he opened his bedroom door.
I’ll be made out as one of those lunatic kids who go crazy and brutally murder their entire family. I’ll be all over the news!