The Disappeared Read online

  [5]

  “Don't ever call me that again!”

  The boy turned white as a sheet and sank back into the corner. “Sorry.”

  “No,” Teri said, stunned by the ferocity of what had come out of her mouth. She touched him on the forearm. “No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you like that. It's just that...” That what? she wondered. That he had scared her? That she had suddenly found herself looking into his face and seeing Gabe's face, as bright and precious and loving as the day he had disappeared?

  “It's my bike, isn't it?”

  “What?”

  “My bike. You're mad because I wrecked my bike.”

  “Oh, no. It's not that.”

  “I didn't mean to; it was an accident.”

  “I know,” Teri said. “Your friend, she explained what happened.”

  “I was unconscious for awhile,” the boy added. He had somehow taken possession of the towel and ran it through his hair a few times before dropping it back on the coffee table. Then he stared at her a moment and Teri realized that he was looking at her intently for the first time. Not only that, but he was bothered by something.

  “You look different,” he said.

  “Different from what?”

  “From the way you used to look.”

  “You mean before the accident?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which was all of two weeks ago?”

  “Yeah, you look... older,” he said impishly.

  Teri felt herself smile with him, though a little uneasily. It had been a long time since she had taken good care of herself. First Gabe had disappeared. Then Michael had walked out. And after that, well, it had seemed harder to focus on the day-to-day matters of life, the little things like getting her hair done or shopping for new clothes.

  “Two weeks is a long time,” she said, brushing the hair back from his face.

  “Not that long.”

  “No, maybe not.” She got up from the couch, grazing her shin on the edge of the coffee table, and stood by the folding doors that separated the living room from the family room. Before she had boxed them up and stored them in the garage, there used to be dozens of family photos covering the walls on either side. You could still see patches where the wood paneling around the picture frames had faded from the afternoon sunlight slipping in through the living room window. Some scars were forever.

  “She called you Gabriel,” Teri said. “The woman who brought you here.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that's my name.”

  “Then what's your full name?”

  “Mom...”

  Teri tensed again. “Please, just don't call me that. All right? Not just yet.”

  “Gabriel Knight.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “Eleven.”

  “What's your father's name?”

  “Michael.”

  “What school do you go to?”

  “Banton.”

  “What's your sister's name?”

  “Mom...”

  “Just tell me – what's her name?”

  “I don't have a sister.”

  She felt herself slump back against the corner of the folding door, the edge digging into the small of her back. Her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat, a lump that she could neither swallow nor seem to exhale.

  “Okay,” she said at last, speaking in a near whisper. She clasped her elbows in the palms of her hands, and stared out the window. It had turned cold in here. She could feel the coldness burrowing into the marrow of her bones. “Let's say you are Gabe, just for argument's sake.”

  [6]

  This was what she had been able to gather so far: according to the boy, he remembered going to the park on his bicycle to play, which was something he had often done after school. He remembered fooling around on the baseball diamond, running the bases a couple of times, tossing rocks from the pitcher's mound to the backstop, and he remembered getting a drink from the water fountain behind the little league dugout. After that, he claimed he didn't remember much of anything. He said he had looked up at the sky one moment and the sun had been bright and well above the horizon, and in the next moment he had found himself in the hospital.

  “Well, what made you think it was the hospital?”

  The boy shrugged. “I don't know. There were these machines next to the bed, like the ones you see on TV, the ones that make that beeping sound like your heart.”

  “An EKG.”

  “Yeah, I think that's it,” he said without a breath. “And I had this needle in my arm, with this tube that was hooked-up to a bag with this clear stuff dripping out. It looked like water, but I'm pretty sure it was some sort of medicine or something like that.”

  He said he had fallen asleep after that, and when he woke up again there had been a woman standing over his bed. She told him her name was Miss Churchill, and that he had been in an accident on his bike and that it was going to take awhile before he would be strong enough to go home again. The boy wasn't certain how long he had been in the hospital, but he thought maybe it had been as long as ten or eleven days.

  “Was that Miss Churchill with you tonight?” Teri asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And she took care of you while you were there?”

  “She was my nurse,” the boy said. He leaned forward and a shudder went through him like some sort of spontaneous seizure. He closed his eyes and fell back again.

  “A little cold in here, isn't it?”

  “A little.”

  “Let me see if I can find something to warm you up.”

  Teri brought a blanket out from the linen closet. She sat next to him on the couch and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. For the second time, she took in the sweet, honeysuckle smell of his hair. She smiled to herself, remembering how much of a fight it used to be to get Gabe to take a bath at night. He had always hated wasting time washing since he was “just going to get dirty again anyway,” as he had often gone out of his way to remind her.

  “How 'bout some hot chocolate?”

  The boy nodded without a word, and made no effort to hide the fact that he was growing tired again. He pulled the blanket up under his chin and snuggled into the corner of the couch. His eyes, those blue-green crystals of the soul, gradually disappeared behind their lids, and Teri found herself wondering if maybe something was seriously wrong with him.

  When she returned with the hot chocolate, she tapped him on the forearm. His eyes fluttered open, and waif-like he cupped the mug in his hands, looking so much like Gabe that it frightened her for a moment.

  “Thanks.” He took a sip, and then placed the mug on the coffee table, next to the damp towel. His hands quickly disappeared back beneath the blanket.

  “What else can you tell me?” she asked.

  He had never seen a doctor in those ten or eleven days, he said. It had always been Miss Churchill who had come to check on him, to bring him food, to get him out of bed and walking around the room. She told him his muscles would be weak for awhile, but that everyday, if he worked hard, they would get a little stronger. And when they were strong enough, then he would be able to come home.

  “And here I am,” he said.

  “Here you are,” Teri answered obligingly. He had been convincing. She had to give him that. Someone had spent a whole lot of time with him, feeding him answers, making sure he had at least an air of credibility. And he hadn't missed a beat. It was all tied-up in a neat little package, and now all Teri had to do was decide if she was going to cut the ribbon to see if it was booby-trapped or put it aside and wait to see if it went off on its own.

  “Now, I suppose, we're going to have to figure out what we're going to do with you, aren't we?” she said.

  “I don't get it. What do you mean?”

  “I suppose I could call someone from Child Protective Services.”

  “What for?”

  “Because you do
n't belong here, and I don't know where you do belong.” She plopped into the recliner across from the couch, her lungs emptying out in a rush of air. The frightening thing was that she wanted to believe him. More than anything in the world she wanted to believe him. It had been years since Gabe had disappeared and there hadn't been a night, not a single, lonely night, when she hadn't dreamed of him showing up on the front porch just like this. Except in the dreams there had never been a doubt.

  “I do, too, belong here.”

  “I don't think so,” Teri said. She stared out the window at the rain that had turned into a lazy evening mist now. It came floating out of the sky like an apology for the earlier downpour, mystical and somehow suspended in time. “I wish you did, though. God, you'll never know how much I wish—”

  Before she could finish, someone knocked at the door.

  INTERMEDIATES

  You live in a house that serves as your sanctuary. It is your shelter from the water when it rains, from the cold when it snows, from the wind when it tests its lungs. You sleep there against weariness, eat there against hunger. It is a reflection of who you are and how you see your place in the world. It is all these things that constitute your perception of yourself, and yet it is not you. It is only your sanctuary.

  Your body is the sanctuary of your soul. It is how you perceive the world, how you feel and taste and hear. It is your window to the sunset, to the orange-full moon, to the storm in the distance. It is the receptacle of your expectations, of your experiences, of your beliefs about yourself. But it is not you. Be careful which axioms you ask it to follow.

  Transcending Illusions

  [1]

  Teri opened the front door and in keeping with the theme for the evening, she found two men, neither of whom she had ever seen before, standing on the porch. They were an odd pair. One man tall and heavy-set, wearing a blue suit, with a light-blue shirt and a dark tie that made her think of him almost immediately as one of those cheap attorneys you saw in television ads. In an accident? Injured at work? Don't let the insurance company take advantage of you. Call and make an appointment today. There's no fee if I can't get you a settlement. The other man, who stood several feet in the background, rocked back and forth on his heels, edgy and ill-at-ease, a weasel watching with anticipation.

  “Mrs. Knight?”

  “Yes.” Though they had been living thousands of miles apart for some four years now, she had never initiated divorce proceedings against Gabe's father. For Teri it had been her way of holding onto the past, a silent prayer that Gabe might still be found someday and they would be a family again. For Michael, well, he had never been one for confrontation.

  “Teri Knight?”

  “Yes.”

  “I'd like you step back inside the house, please.” The cheap attorney pulled back the lapel of his suit jacket, and there, behind expensive lining, in a holster under his left arm, was a gun. “If you would, please.”

  “What is this--?”

  “In good time, Mrs. Knight. Please step back inside the house.”

  Don't be foolish, a voice sounded inside her.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Please, Mrs. Knight.”

  The man's eyes narrowed and for the first time Teri noticed the scar above his left eyebrow. It was a thick, jagged gnarl of flesh that looked as if it might have been the brand of the Devil himself. Plastic surgery would have easily taken care of it, she thought. But that would have defeated the purpose, wouldn't it? This wasn't just a scar. It was a badge of honor for this man, a pronouncement to let everyone know – This is who I am and you better not tangle with me.

  “Last time, Mrs. Knight. Step back inside the house.”

  Teri stared at the man's face a moment longer, trying to read past the cold, unforgiving expression, then her gaze set upon the gun again. Everything seemed perfectly clear to her in that instant. The fingers of her right hand brushed across the lock button on the door knob, then quietly depressed it as far as it would go.

  “If you'll just give me a—” She took a step back, as if to invite them in, then swung the door closed and made a break for the living room.

  Behind her, she could hear the man's voice suddenly rise into a scream. “Don't do this, Mrs. Knight! Open the door!”

  There was no way of knowing how long it would hold them. Maybe a couple of seconds, or maybe a little longer if the door had fully latched and it wasn't one of those flimsy hollow core things that seemed to find their way into most of the tract homes of the '60s. She had never thought about that before, and the thought was lost by the time she made it to the living room, where the boy was sitting up on the couch with wide eyes and a look of bewilderment on his face.

  “What's going on?”

  “You have any other friends from the hospital? Anyone you didn't tell me about?” At her back, she heard the thud of a shoulder being thrown against the door. It was followed closely by the sound of glass shattering against the tile floor just inside the front entryway. She heard it, clearly, sharply, and did her best to sweep it out of her mind as one frightening realization struck home with a vengeance: they had broken out the small rectangular window adjacent to the door. In no more than a second or two they were going to be inside the house.

  “Come on! We need to get out of here!”

  The boy froze, a mix of surprise and confusion etched like a mask into his features.

  “Let's go!” Teri screamed. She grabbed him by the shirt sleeve, forcefully, and the boy tumbled off the edge of the couch, onto the floor. He landed hard on his side, his shirt balled up in her fist. The confusion on his face turned to fear, and she realized distantly that she might have hurt him.

  “Sorry.” She grabbed him under the armpits and pulled him to his feet, lifting what felt like his full weight until he was able to brace himself against the arm of the couch. In the same motion, he swept up his walking cane, and they were both on their way into the family room, Teri with one hand in the small of his back, pushing.

  “Who was it at the—”

  “I don't know.”

  Behind them, the lock on the front door popped, and half-a-beat later, the door slammed into the wall, sending an explosion reverberating down the hall. Whoever they were, they were in the house now.

  “Out the back!” Teri said. She pushed him toward the sliding glass door, where the curtains were drawn. The room was bathed in evening shadows. A grayish cast blocked out a rectangular area of the floor. The corners were black charcoal. The boy sank heavily into the corner, breathing hard, already exhausted.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  She swept the curtains aside with one hand, and grappled blindly with the lock as she glanced over her shoulder. “Come on, come on!” The locked clicked into place and she gave the handle a tug. The door swung back several inches, and

  ...and there was a man standing on the other side.

  He was a big man, someone who she instantly decided must have spent a great deal of his time sitting at the counter of a coffee shop, downing doughnuts and endless cups of coffee with cream and sugar. His cheeks were a doughy, Pillsbury fill and the rough landscape of his nose was coursed with bright purple veins that had made their mark a long time ago. It was an alcoholic's face, Teri thought in that brief moment.

  She managed to hold the door in place, him on the outside, her on the inside, neither of them giving an inch. It wasn't easy, though. Not for either of them. She could already see the strain showing on the man's face, which had turned a bright, sun-burnt red.

  He shifted his weight and the opening expanded. Teri braced her foot against the aluminum frame, locked her knee, and managed to take some of the pressure off her arms. In return, the man somehow managed to curl his fingertips around the edge of the door's sash. He anchored his weight, and she could feel him ease up slightly, preparing for one final push. If it came to that, there was no doubt in her mind that she would be the loser.

  A t
winge ran through her left knee, and she could feel it start to weaken.

  The boy stepped in behind her, still breathing hard.

  “I want you upstairs,” Teri grunted.

  “In a minute,” he said. He jammed the walking end of the cane into the corner of the aluminum frame, stood on the other end and tried to force it down into the track. For a moment, it looked as if it might actually work. Then just as suddenly, the handle end slipped and the cane came shooting out, away from the sliding glass door, like a Louisville Slugger that had slipped out of the hands of a batter. It clattered against the linoleum floor and rolled into the legs of a nearby chair.

  “Push with me,” she said, every muscle straining.

  The boy moved in directly behind her, his foot braced against the corner, both hands on the edge of the door. Between the two of them, they were able to mount a surge, and before she even realized what was happening, the sliding glass door tore free from her grip and rode the track the full six or seven inches, before slamming full-force into the forward stop.

  Glass shattered.

  An ice storm of splinters came raining down all around them. Teri crouched and covered her head, defending herself against some of the fallout while her bare arms took the brunt of the sharp edges.

  The door slowly rolled back in its track and came to a stop.

  On the other side, his eyes white and distended, the man let out a horrible scream. He had gotten his fingers in there, between the door and the stop, and he hadn't been able to get them out. He staggered back, holding his hand in front of his face as if he couldn't quite believe what had happened. Three of the fingers had been badly mangled. One was broken at the second knuckle and appeared as if it were hanging by a thin thread of flesh. If he didn't get help and get it soon, he was going to risk losing one of those fingers.

  Teri found some momentary satisfaction in that thought.

  “Now upstairs!” she said.

  The boy grabbed his cane off the floor, and she found herself tugging at him again, trying to keep him moving in front of her as they made their way out of the family room and into the kitchen. The house had been built in the mid-sixties. It was one of those tract homes that had seemed to sprout up out of nowhere overnight, sitting just outside the city limits in a little suburban neighborhood where everything was vanilla-flavored and cookie-cutter perfect. At this end of the house, they had the garage in front of them or the stairs that were a straight line to the office that Michael had added over the garage not long after Gabe had been born.