Vanished (14 page)

              Logan walks down the hall and opens the doors to the rooms peeking inside them. He turns at the end of the hall and walks back to me, “Nothing back there,” he says, “except Josh’s keys and wallet are on the dresser. He must have still been here, at the house, when it happened.” 

              “I’m sorry,” I say, reaching out and touching his fingers.  If his brother isn’t here than my brothers probably aren’t either so I’m sorry for both of us. He’s close enough for me to feel his warmth and I want to take a step, close the gap between us and hug him but I tell myself to stop.

              He takes my hand in his and lifts it up, examining my palm and sending tingles of electricity through me, “Do you ever wonder if they’re still here and we just can’t see them?” He asks.

              “What do you mean?”

              He raises his other hand and holds my hand between both of his, “I don’t know, like if they’re stuck or we’re stuck…or something. I saw a documentary once about people disappearing into another dimension where they get stuck. They can see you but you can’t see them.”
              I frown and start to feel anxious.  He must see a change in me because he doesn’t wait for me to answer. “It was just a thought,” he says. 

              “Maybe,” I say, and gently pull my hand out of his. “But I hope that’s not what happened.” What I mean is I hope that when we go to my house I don’t get the feeling that my monster is watching me.

              “We should get moving,” he murmurs.

              I nod and turn towards the front door but he stops me with his hand on my arm. “Let’s go out to the garage for a minute first,” he says, and I follow him down the hall, past the living room and through an outdated looking kitchen where he opens a door, flips on a light and we take two stairs down into the garage.  

              There’s a motorcycle skeleton in the middle of the garage, parts lying all over, “Sorry for the mess, I’m restoring that,” he says, pointing towards the bike.

              “You know how to do that?”

              “Sure,” he says, stopping in front of a tall, grey safe.  He types a code into the keypad, there’s a series of shrill beeps, the sound of compressing air and then the wheel on the safe begins to spin on its own and the door pops open soundlessly.  My jaw drops. There is an absurd amount of guns hanging in the rack inside the safe, “Do you know how to use all of these?” I ask running my fingers over what I think is a sawed off shotgun. 

              “Every single one,” he says.  “Can you hold this,” he removes his leather jacket and hands it to me.  He selects a shoulder holster off the shelf inside the safe and puts it on over his t-shirt. Then he grabs matching black hand-guns with wood grain handles and places them deftly in the shoulder holster.  He takes out another holster and hooks it to his ankle and picks a smaller black gun, with the numbers 17 on the side and slides it into the holster.  Then he grabs three dangerous looking knives and, taking his jacket back from me, he stashes in slots pre-sewn into the interior of the jacket.  When he puts the leather jacket back on it totally conceals the fact that he has two guns and three knives on his upper body.  “You’re turn,” he says.

              “Oh no,” I hold my hands up palms out in front of me and back slowly away, “I’ve never held a gun in my life.”

              Ignoring me, he turns back to the safe and his hand hovers over a medium sized gun. “A thirty eight special for a special girl,” he murmurs, and turns to hand me the gun.

              Something tells me once I take the gun the old-me disappears for good.  I can’t help thinking that might be a good thing.
She was weak.

              Logan frowns at my hesitation, “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re carrying, I’m not going to take ‘no’ for an answer on this one, Trin.” His intense eyes tell me he’s serious.  I get the feeling arguing will get me nowhere so I timidly take the gun. The metal is cold and the handle fits perfectly in my hand.  “It’s a good starter gun because revolvers have a long and hard trigger pull, making it really difficult to accidentally shoot someone.” I examine the gun carefully, with trembling hands, while he fishes around inside the safe for something else, “Here,” he says, turning back to me, “this was my moms.”

              He hands me a soft brown leather holster with a pretty floral design engraved on it, “Thank you,” I whisper, turning the well used leather holster over and over in my hands, running my fingers over the pretty brass snaps. 

              “Let me help,” he says, showing me how to attach the straps to my belt.  “And it just slides in like this,” He drops the gun into the holster and snaps it in.  “We’ll do some target practice later so for now just remember to keep your eyes open, aim and fire.”

              “Eyes open, aim, fire,” I repeat.

              “Good girl. Do me a favor and grab that gun bag hanging on the wall.” 

              I pull the hefty leather bag off the hook and bring it to him. He takes it and tosses in a bunch of boxes of ammo, the sawed-off shotgun, a collapsible cross-bow looking thing, a quiver full of arrows, a rifle with a hefty scope on it and two more hand-guns.  “Why do you have all this?” I ask, still a little stunned that he has a veritable armory in his garage.

              As he sorts through a box of smaller weapons he replies, “Before the PTSD dad always kept guns around the house but after he got
really
paranoid. He started going to gun shows and buying these up, left and right.  Every time he brought a new weapon home he’d spend several days training Josh and I how to use them.  A couple of these aren’t even legal in the U.S. but that doesn’t matter anymore.  What do you think,” he asks making one final sweep of the safe, “a stun gun for Jasmine?”

              “Why can’t I have a stun gun?”

              He looks over his shoulder and frowns, “I’d feel better if you kept that.”

              “What about Madison?”

              “What about her?”

              “Aren’t you going to get a gun for her?”

He shakes his head, “Maddie has her own guns.”

Of course she does
, I think to myself, “I’ll keep the gun.”

              We finish packing up the guns and accessories and Logan hits the garage door. 
              I know what comes next and my stomach feels like it’s twisting into a thousand knots.  

              “You ready?” He asks, once we move past the closing garage door.

              A nod will have to suffice because I’m not sure I can find the words to answer him right now or that I can talk past the big lump forming in my throat. 

              He attaches the gun bag securely to the back of the bike and we get on. 

              I don’t pay attention to the route he takes to get from his house to mine, I’m too busy chewing on my nails and summoning courage.  

We drive by the playground I used to take the twins to sometimes and I remember the dream I had the night before I snuck out, the way Elijah’s body crunched as he hit the ground.  Shuddering, I force myself to take deep breaths, in and out, in and out. Most likely my house will be as empty as his. I don’t know how that will feel, to verify that my little brother’s are actually gone but the thought carves out a cavity in my stomach. 

              As we’re pulling up in front of my house we see a pack of three mangy looking dogs trotting down the street in our direction.  Right as I see them, they freeze and look over at us.  “They don’t look very friendly,” Logan says, sliding down the kick-stand and climbing off the bike.

              I look at him and over his shoulder I see my house, looming, like a haunted castle.

              The dogs don’t come any closer to us but they don’t leave either.  All three of them are really skinny and malnourished looking.  I don’t recognize two of the dogs but one of them looks a lot like my neighbor’s black poodle only skinnier the cute pink vest they used to put on her all the time is gone. 

              “I think we better get in the house.” He takes the helmet from me, stashes it on the back of the seat and helps me off the bike.

              We hear a snarl behind us and a chill goes up my spine. The dogs are suddenly much closer, stalking around a car parked across the street in my neighbor’s driveway.  The largest dog breaks into a run toward us, the smaller two trailing closely behind him. “Time to run,” Logan yells, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the house. 

              I turn away from the dogs and run with him up to the gate, the hair on my neck standing on end, every nerve aware of close pursuit.  Logan doesn’t stop to open the gate. He puts one hand on the top of the fence and vaults over, then reaches for me. I slam into his arms, the top of the fence scraping my belly, and the sound of paws slapping the pavement behind me.  Logan pulls me over and we both fall back into the safety of the yard.     The second I’m over I hear the dogs reach the fence. I turn to see the large one standing with its paws on the fence, growling at us. “God,” I say, “they must be starving.” We stand up and brush off and I feel his hand on my elbow urging me backwards away from the dogs. 

              The distraction from the dogs is apparently exactly what I needed because I’m already worked up.  My heart is pounding and my breaths are shallow as I turn to face my house. 

              Maybe the look on my face makes him do it, I don’t know, but I feel Logan take my hand and give it a little squeeze as we walk up the cobblestone path. 

I force myself to look up and notice several things at once; it’s dark inside, my step-dad’s white pick-up truck is parked in the driveway, and the grass is overgrown.

He squeezes my hand again.
Stop looking at the house
, I tell myself. Stop thinking about the house, think about something else

Logan’s hand is warm and he has calluses on his fingers.  He looks as relaxed as he did back at his house.  I remember what he said earlier when we were standing in his living room;
do you ever wonder if they’re still here and we just can’t see them?

Fear courses through me. Judge could be anywhere, looking down from the second story window, concealed by the side of the house, crouching behind the shrub…

WAITING

and

WATCHING

              With that maniacal leer on this face, that vein bulging in his neck, and his immense hands twitching to…to…choke, pound, smash, twist, and torture me.

I stop walking and crouch down, my heart crashing in my chest, teeth grinding together and I can’t breathe…I. CANT. BREATHE.

  Logan crouches down next to me.  “You know, I don’t remember much about my mom,” he says, “but I do remember that she always used to say ‘do one thing every day that scares you and you’ll never be afraid.’”

I look up at him and something in his eyes frees me from the fear. “Actually Eleanor Roosevelt said that,” I tell him as soon as I’m capable of speech again.

He laughs and nudges me with his shoulder, “Tell me something Snow, are you always such a know-it-all?

              I can’t laugh yet but I manage a weak smile and that’s saying something considering a minute ago I was having a full-blown panic attack. 

              “Seriously though,” he says, “I can go in first and check things out, if you want.”

             
And face my monster for me?
“No,” I say, pushing up and noticing the weight on my hip again for the first time since we got here. 
It’s loaded
, I remember Logan telling me.  Even if Judge’s here, he can’t hurt me, not really,
not if I hurt him first
.  “Let’s go.” I say, brushing my hand against the holster. 

              The front door is unlocked which is good because I never grabbed my key out of my luggage.  I have to cover my nose with my sleeve because an awful smell wafts out to greet us.  “Something probably went bad in the fridge.” Logan guesses with a shrug and covers his face with his shirt. 

              I touch the gun again.
Open eyes, aim, fire. Open eyes, aim, fire
.  I repeat the mantra in my mind to stave off the panic welling in my chest.

              We check out the first floor but nothing seems amiss.  I flip the lights-switch for the living room on and look over at the stairs, “I have to go up,” I say out-loud, like he doesn’t already know that.

              He nods, “Lead the way.”

              He follows me up the stairs.  There is still a large brown stain on the second-to-last stair from when I was about seven and I was running away from Judge. He grabbed me by the ankles and I fell forward and busted my head open.  Another emergency room visit. I touch the ugly scar on my forehead that Madison commented on this morning. 

The smell is coming from this floor.  My eyes water and I gag.  I stand at the top of the stairs trying to figure out what to do next and feel Logan nudge me forward.  He takes the lead and, probably following his nose, he goes past my bedroom door and the twins on the right then he turns into the monster’s lair, disappearing inside the door.  I reach my hand out and touch the wall, steadying myself.