Diary of the Gone (5 page)

The officer jotted something down in
his notebook.

“
Did he mention where he
might be going?”

“
He said he was going to
the woods.”

“
He wasn’t going to his
classes then.” The officer raised an eyebrow at me.

“
No. Well, he does that
sometimes. When he’s bored.”

“
Hmm, is there any
specific place in the woods where he could go? Perhaps some place
where you gather together?”

“
We went to the Swamps a
few times.” I didn’t mention the Underground. Sure we could check
it without the police. If I told Chief Coleman about our hideout,
Nathan wouldn’t approve.

Then it hit me: the
Underground didn’t matter. Nothing pretty much mattered, except the
fact that I might
never
get to see Nate alive again. Before that time I’d
never even considered that. I lived in a world where only strangers
got hurt, only strangers died. Not the ones who mattered the world
to me.

The chief frowned.
“The Swamps then,” he muttered, jotting it down in his notebook.
All along I’d had a feeling he
might
know something to catch me off
guard later. The more questions he asked, the less confident I
became.

“
So you are saying you saw
Nathan yesterday morning?” he asked.

I agreed another time.

“
I think you need to tell
him, Geoffrey,” Mr. Crosby cut in.

“
Yes, I will, Oliver.
Everyone will find out anyway.” I didn’t like it where both of them
were going. “Callum, Nathan returned home yesterday night. Then he
went to his room. This morning Mr. and Mrs. Rushmore reported him
missing. We came to their place and searched his room. There was
blood on his pillow. Someone must have broken in and kidnapped him,
although Nathan’s parents didn’t hear anything.”

Blood on his pillow. Suddenly, the
room spun around. I knew what the officer’s words meant, and a lump
lodged in my throat.

Nathan was dead. Simple as that. Who
could have done this?

Tears threatened to well up in my
eyes. I blinked a few times to stifle them. I didn’t want Mr.
Crosby and Chief Coleman to see me cry right there, though I was
shaken by the officer’s words.

I answered a few more questions like a
soulless machine, my thoughts focused on the images of a hand
pressed against the glass, on the image of a faceless shadow
forcing my friend out of the house. I felt sick.

“
We are going to start an
official investigation today, Oliver, but its progress might be
hampered by the thunderstorms that are coming,” the officer said at
the end of our meeting.

Principal Crosby thanked him for the
assistance, and after their firm handshake Chief Coleman
left.

Glued to my chair, I didn’t move. Left
alone with Mr. Crosby, I was eager to be with anyone else rather
than him, but the man wasn’t in a hurry to let me go.

When I looked up at him, I thought he
must have aged a couple decades within half an hour, the lines on
his forehead so deep. I knew he wanted to say something, but every
time he opened his mouth something stopped him. At last he said,
“I’m sorry Stan is treating you like this.”

I looked down, back to my hands, still
wondering how these two people could be father and son.

“
And I’m sorry about
Nathan,” he went on. “If you need anything, Callum, you are always
welcome here.”

“
Thank you, sir,” I
mumbled.

I grabbed my bag then stood up to
leave, and with the corner of my eye I noticed Mr. Crosby drying
his eyes with the back of his hand.

Chapter 5

Entry #44

October 29

There are so many things I
miss in life. They are like the pages missing from this diary—I’ll
never know what was written there. The same way I’ll never learn
what it means to have a father. Even that bastard Stan has one. But
in our house any talk about my father is taboo.

Sometimes Mom says I act
like him, but that usually happens when I do something she doesn’t
approve of: stay locked up in my room all the time, not sharing
anything with her, pick on Bev (and who really picks on whom
here?).

I don’t think she’s fair
with me. I mean I’ve never seen Aiden. His name: that’s pretty much
the only thing I know about him. Why does Mom make me feel guilty
about me being like Aiden? I guess I’ll never know.

The news of Nathan missing and blood
found in his room spread like fire across our town. Lucky as I am,
the fact that I was the last one to have seen him spread faster
than influenza virus. During the classes and in the cafeteria
everyone eyed me with a mixture of suspicion and
sympathy.

Stan and his gang stopped stalking me
for a while, but every time we bumped into each other, he gave me a
smile of a million-dollar man. That bastard.

Nathan had been missing for five days,
and Mr. and Mrs. Rushmore were distraught about the lack of news.
Principal Crosby and Officer Coleman arranged a parent-teacher
conference where they highly recommended against letting children
stay outside after dark. Of course, no one was allowed to go to the
woods.

That clashed with my recent plan to go
to the Swamps, and I knew that whatever Mom would tell me, I would
find a way to go there.

But it wasn’t Mom or Bev that stopped
me. The rain persisted with each passing day, and there was no way
I could go out in such weather.

This morning I woke up to the same
unfriendly world and only wished to be away from everyone. Today
was Friday, and Mom sometimes let me stay at home when I pretended
to be sick. Hoping to grab some food, I cautiously went towards the
stairs, but Mom was there, and she heard my steps.

“
Good morning, Callum.
There’s no need to hide.”

How do moms do
that?
I thought.

“
Good morning. I wasn’t
hiding, by the way,” I replied, stomping down the steps to show her
I meant it.

Mom moved a plate with sandwiches
closer to me. I sat down and the chair creaked slightly under
me.

“
Where’s Bev?” I asked,
surprised not to see her around.

“
Already at school. Tea or
juice?” Mom asked with a wan smile.

“
Juice, please.” I looked
her in the eyes. Eyes filled with worry. “Any news about Nathan?”
If there was, she’d already have told me. But I needed to make
sure.

“
No.” Mom got up to take a
pitcher and poured me some orange juice. “I called Alice and Ben.
The police still have no clues where he might be.” She put the
glass in front of me and sat down, cupping her face and sighing
deeply.

“
Before I leave for work,
I want to ask you something.” She took a seat opposite.

A piece of the sandwich lodged in my
throat, and I felt myself choking. I grabbed the glass to take a
sip, my eyes stinging.

After a few moments of hesitation she
ventured, “Nathan and you were inseparable ever since we came here.
If you know where he might be, you’d better tell Geoff— I mean,
Chief Coleman.”

I kept silent. Mom looked at me—I
could feel her eyes boring into me—and the last thing I wanted was
to look back. It was surprisingly difficult to find something else
in the room to focus on.

“
I told him all I knew,
Mom.” I didn’t know why I concealed the Swamps story. I think I
still wanted to believe Nathan was alive, and each day without news
was killing my hope.

“
Okay.” She
sighed.

Drumming my fingers on the polished
surface of the table, I cringed and said, “I don’t want to go to
school, Mom.”

First I thought she didn’t hear me,
but then she reacted. “I’ve already called Mrs. Collins and told
her you’re unwell.”

“
Thanks,” I mumbled and
went upstairs.

I locked the door, even though I knew
no one would violate my privacy. It just felt safer this
way.

The weather didn’t improve a bit; the
only thing that changed was the intensity of the rain. Now it was a
nasty drizzle, and passers-by—a few of my schoolmates among
them—used umbrellas as shields against the clinging
moisture.

At least now I could go to the
Swamps.

Two voices waged a fierce war inside
my head. One warned me not to go out there, and I would be glad to
stay inside, if not for the other voice that tempted me, ‘He is
there. You’ll find him, Callum.’ It beckoned me stronger, in a more
pronounced way, and I decided to listen to it.

I was ready to leave right away. There
was only one problem: I couldn’t get out till Mom left for
work.

I took my iPod and sat down on the
wide wooden windowsill, looking out of the window. About ten
minutes later Mom came out and headed for the garage. The sound of
the car engine came muffled but still discernible. Then the car
appeared, leaving traces in the mud as she backed down the
driveway.

I plugged headphones
into my ears and pressed the
Play
button, enjoying the dark energy of Eternal Tears
of Sorrow. I leaned my head against the windowpane, its cool
surface having a soothing effect on me.

All of a sudden, the
music stopped and I opened my eyes. I realized I didn’t know I’d
kept them closed.
Why did the music
stop?
The iPod screen was blank,
unresponsive to my attempts to turn it on.

“
You can’t be dead,” I
groaned. I clearly remembered checking the battery before playing,
and it was full.

As I took off my headphones, two
things happened at once. First, I noticed something odd about my
hands. The skin turned chalk white, with strange circles, triangles
and the numbers 7/7 appearing all over them. I rolled up the
sleeves to find more of the strange symbols sprawling over my skin.
Second, I felt deadly cold, as if all around me had turned to
ice.

What the hell? That can’t
be right.

I took a breath and suddenly it hurt
under my ribs as if someone had thrust daggers there and started
twisting them. Paralyzed with fear, I stopped breathing
altogether.

What’s going
on?
Tears rolled over my
cheeks.

I cowered from the uneasy feeling
creeping down my back.

No longer able to hold my breath, I
exhaled just a bit, thousands of needles prickling my chest. My
larynx burned as if I’d just drained a tube of sulfuric
acid.

I moved forward to climb down from the
sill when something crashed against the window, its frame rattling
violently. I ducked and shielded my face with the tattoo-covered
arm, but nothing else happened except the agony of making a sudden
move. After a few seconds’ silence I braced myself and turned to
see what it was, my eyes falling on an irregular web pattern of the
broken glass.

Was it a
bird?
I’d heard stories of birds hitting
windowpanes being a bad omen. I waited, still scared to death to
fully exhale, to feel that excruciating pain under my ribs. I moved
just a little bit again, and the next thing I knew, a violent force
crashed into the window, throwing me on the desk below and then
down on the floor. Pieces of glass ripped my flesh like shrapnel. I
pushed myself up, palms cut by the shards on the floor. When I
looked up to see what had broken the window, I no longer cared
about the pain or the blood trickling down my
fingers.

The hand lay on the desk, its fingers
covered with blood and twisted as if to grasp something. To my
relief, the pain under the ribs stopped and I could breathe again.
I stood watching the hand. I wasn’t like those people in horror
movies who were eager to go into a dark room where they heard some
noise or hissing. No, I wasn’t like that.

Turning on my heel I
sprinted out of the room, but there was someone in the corridor,
right in my way. The girl. She stood there, watching me. This time
I could see her face. If she weren’t dead and her skin weren’t
cadaverous, I’d call her pretty.
If
ruined all of it.

I knew it was the girl who had visited
me about a week earlier.

“
Be my friend, Callum,”
she whispered, her voice causing goosebumps over my skin. “Let’s go
with me.”

She took a step in my direction, and I
stepped back.

“
You set me free. Come
with me.” She watched me without blinking, getting
closer.

“
No!” I screamed at the
top of my lungs.

Then I woke up, my shirt drenched in
cold sweat. The music was still playing in my earphones. I took
them out of my ears.

Muffled sunlight filtered through the
window. The glass wasn’t damaged, no cracks, no hands, no blood. My
skin didn’t have that cadaverous tinge anymore. I rolled my sleeves
to make sure it was just a dream. No marks or symbols marred me. I
let out a deep sigh of relief.