I help Dad and Jamie by picking up plastic chairs and carrying it out to the storage shed where they’re storing the other items. I keep an eye out for the fiend, making sure he’s not about to ambush me or anything, but there’s no sign of him. When everything including the canvas and poles for the tent are piled in the garage, the yard looks strangely barren.
“I’m gonna get the car started. Go fetch your Mom,” orders Dad. Good he’s ready to go too. I walk up to Mom, still chatting with Karen, and am about to speak when Lindsay approaches.
“Hey, didn’t you want me to give Lionel a bath?” she asks.
“Yeah haven’t you done that yet?” says Karen.
“No, you never sent him up,” answers Lindsay.
“Well then where is he?”
“Don’t ask me. Last I checked he was with you.”
I realize what has happened before they do. I remember the relief I felt when he disappeared. I must not have been his target after all. He has taken Lionel.
12: The Discussion
“So he’s been missing for less than an hour?” asks Deputy Yew.
“Yes,” answers Mom. Karen Willow is frantically searching the surrounding forest for her son, and Jamie is sitting against his house, head in his folded hands. He probably feels like it’s his fault, because I sent him over to look for a possible kidnapper that he didn’t find, and now his son is missing. It’s not his fault though. He walked right through the fiend without sensing him, so there is no way he could have fought him off. All we possibly could have done better was keep an eye on Lionel at all times, like we should have done. Of course that’s probably what he was waiting for; an opportunity to strike when no one was looking. Here I was afraid he was here to take me, but he had his eyes on Lionel.
“Alyssa, can you give me a description of the man you saw?” asks Deputy Yew. Oh right, everyone else thinks a man might have taken Lionel.
“Yeah, I mean I didn’t get a good look, and I tried to take pictures but they didn’t come out, but he was… tall, skinny, and all in black. I didn’t see his face at all,” I say honestly, although tall; skinny; and black are all abstract words in this case.
“So it didn’t look like Jason Larch or Mario Douglas?” he asks. I shake my head. This static entity is probably why Mario and Jason are missing. Yew nods his head to me and begins speaking on his radio. I catch a forlorn, almost apologetic gaze from Jamie and return it.
“It’s not his fault,” I repeat to myself. If anyone is at fault, it’s me. I should have kept an eye all on all three children knowing that thing was near, but I didn’t because I was worried about myself. I moan inwardly-I wasn’t even keeping a close watch on Adam! At least he is okay, and if I ever see that fiend again, I’m handcuffing Adam to me.
“I just spoke with the sheriff. There aren’t very many places he could have gone in such a short time period, so we are going to initiate a search. In the meantime, we need the Willows to give us a list of everyone who came to the party, that way we will have a good number of people to talk to. Maybe one of them got a better look at this guy. Alyssa, do you think you could give an accurate description to a sketch artist?” asks Deputy Yew, hints of stress coming from him.
“No I, I really didn’t see his face. I’m sorry,” I answer.
“Right, okay listen,” he says, turning to my Dad. “You need to take your kids and lock them up at home with an adult present at all times. We’ve had more than one child disappearing in the same day, so it’s best you get your kids to safety,” he explains.
“You got it,” Dad says, and motions for us to follow him. I can see Lindsay standing in the doorway. She isn’t crying, but there’s a solemn frown on her face that shows that she is definitely worried about her brother, just like I’d be if Adam had been the one to disappear.
“Eight kids. This man’s taken eight kids. When we find him he needs to be hanged,” says Mom from behind.
“Nine ma’am. If we don’t find the Willow boy, he’ll be the ninth,” corrects Yew. I bow my head, putting my arm around Adam as we walk toward the car. Nine kids-ten people missing, this is absurd! We get into the car and I give one last sympathetic look back to the distraught Willow family. Lionel was kidnapped on his birthday. The whole reason the Willows went through with this party is because they thought it would be a morale booster, but then the perp- the entity strikes. Is it a coincidence that he took Lionel today of all days or did he take him today on purpose just to add to everyone’s suffering?
The drive home is silent, and I spend the whole ride looking out the windows to make sure that we aren’t still being watched. When we get home, Bubbe greets us at the door.
“I’ve got supper in the oven, do you want—” she starts, but then she stops when she sees our faces. =
“Oh Lord, what happened?” she asked, but one look from me and she knows exactly what happened. I can convey messages to Bubbe almost as well as I could- can for Shana. I won’t give up hope that she’s still alive.
She motions us inside. As I enter, the aroma of fresh cornbread hits me. I am normally amazed by how well Bubbe’s cornbread turns out, but the bread reminds me of cake, and the cake reminds me of the disastrous party we just came from, and that causes my appetite to plummet. I head upstairs, unsure about what to do. I can get into my pajamas. I’ve already bathed and I really don’t want to bore myself with homework. I don’t think I have the focus for it anyway. Maybe I will do some web surfing.
The internet! Why didn’t I think of it before? I can look up the things I’ve been seeing and experiencing and see if it’s some phenomenon that has been dealt with before. I run upstairs with a new motivation guiding my step. I go to my room and flip open my lap top. I have many objects that are pretty old in my collection, but this laptop takes the cake. It’s seven years old, and in this day and age, seven years means a lot for technology. We bought it refurbished from a pawn shop, but it’s running the latest version of Windows, and has upgraded sound and video cards to boot. The only things it’s still lacking in are RAM and storage. It’s only got a twenty gigabyte hard drive and half a gigabyte of RAM, so it’s not good for anything but storing music and surfing the web.
The hibernation screen takes forever to load into the login screen, and when it does I just press enter. That causes another slow loading screen to play out, and it feels like minutes before my cluttered background piled with different files of no particular organization, ranging from music to funny pictures shows up.
Despite the clutter, I can spot the little Firefox logo perfectly and click on it. Here comes another dull wait. Once the browser finally shows more than a blank white loading screen, I immediately begin typing into the search bar. I start with
“Shadow static disappearing children,” and hit enter. I wait a little bit for it to load before it pulls up many different links. I was hoping for an immediate flashing link that would take me to a site that explained exactly what this thing is and how to stop it, but all that pops up are links to a whole bunch of irrelevant multimedia productions. I do some scrolling before deciding that I will need to be more specific. I try “Dark shadow figure that kidnaps children,” I hit enter, but then my screen starts fading. It looks like it’s doing that whole ‘Not responding’ bull but then I realize it’s getting hazier as if something is wrong with the screen.