It’s funny how memory works. Strange, unreliable thing sometimes. I remember someone once told me that our brain is like a house, and that memories are all the items and furniture stored in it. Some of them you use more frequently, like the kitchen appliances, the shower or the living-room television, and those are the ones that stay in the surface of your thoughts the most. Others might be more obscure, like the toys you have stored in your closet since childhood, things that you may remember if your mind wanders that way, but you probably don’t dwell on them that often. And then there’s the attic, the place where most of your memories go to fade into oblivion, where you dump things most likely not needed any more, for whatever reason. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that they are there, and it was in my mind’s attic, hidden in a dark, dusty corner and buried under piles of junk, that I found Jimmy.
Getting my own house has been a lifelong dream of mine. For as long as I can remember myself, buying a place of my own that I would be able to decorate according to my own tastes and have complete control over has been a deep-rooted wish. This desire was probably born, in part, due to the nomadic life I have experienced since childhood.
My family used to live in a suburban area in Greece, where I grew up until I was about twelve years old, at which point we stopped being a family. My father was an army man who spent most of his life stationed anywhere but home, and my mother a doctor that spent more time in the office than in the house, so it wasn’t long before they drifted apart and followed the only path they could see. In hindsight, I guess I can’t really blame them. Nevertheless, the divorce was brutal and truly scarred the relationship I had with both of them. Having your folks trying to make you turn on each other isn’t the best experience, and truly makes you reevaluate some things, even as a kid.
So, at the age of twelve, I ended up having two houses I could switch between, though neither felt like home. I’d spend the weekdays in my mother’s big house in the suburbs, watching as depression gnawed at her and turned her to a passive, quiet creature, and the weekends at my father’s rented apartment, where he would go on rants about how my mother’s family had been the downfall of the marriage due to their meddling and that none of what had happened was his fault.
Eventually my mother remarried, and it wasn’t long before I realized that the new guy was the Devil personified. I spent five long years in my mother’s house, listening to that bastard verbally abuse her while she sat there quietly, inactivity and misery having reduced her to a hollow shell. Each night I listened to his tantrums as I cowered in my room, wrath and fear boiling inside of me until, one day, I snapped. He was in the middle of one of his violent fits when I stormed out of my room and started screaming at him to finally shut up. He attacked me. I fought back. My mother chose him and showed me the door.
Thus, at seventeen, I moved to my father’s apartment. By that time, his anger over the divorce had subsided quite a bit. There was definite bitterness still showing from time to time when the topic would move to my mother’s side of the family, but the years had mellowed him out. Still in the military, he kept travelling around, which meant I mostly got the place to myself, but every corner of it was decorated with antique furniture - which was his passion – making it feel like it was stuck in a very distant past. It was in that apartment that I spent the following thirteen years, finishing school, college, and getting my first and current job, until I eventually met my future wife, at which point the need to get my own place just swell up completely.
Having limited money that would not allow us to pay rent easily, the next five years had us moving around from place to place so that we could spend time on our own. Sometimes we would go to my mother’s house when work sent her in different countries for a few months in the company of that jobless leech of a husband, others we would stay at my grandma’s house, who would frequently visit friends all across Greece ever since my grandpa died. We even rented Airbnbs from time to time when money allowed it. My father’s home was out of the question since, by then, he had retired from the army, met a nice woman and settled in his apartment, reducing our options significantly. Needless to say, five years of having to constantly move around and relying on luck and the kindness of others was beginning to take its toll on us. It was close to when we were nearing our breaking point that my grandmother died.
It was October of 2022 when I got the news that my mother’s mother had passed away in her sleep. She had been dealing with health issues for several years so, as sad as I was to hear of her passing, I couldn’t say I was surprised. What did surprise me, however, was the fact she had named me as the sole beneficiary of her home in her will. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved her, but our relationship since the divorce had declined significantly as I did consider her partly responsible for the separation of my family, for reasons I will not go into here. Leaving her house to me was very much unexpected but, in danger of sounding like an asshole, also a godsent. A few weeks and signatures later, the paperwork was completed and my lifelong dream of being a homeowner had finally become a reality.
It took us less than a day to move in, considering we didn’t really have a lot of stuff to begin with. To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement. Not only had we gotten a huge house out of nowhere, but it was also a house closely tied to some of the best years of my childhood, back when I was still happy and oblivious to the issues my family was dealing with. Due to the frequent absence of my parents because of their professional obligations, I would spend most of my time in my grandparents’ house during my elementary years, to the point where, eventually, I had brought a lot of my childhood stuff there, since I would sleep over often. Now, being back here was hitting me with an odd sense of nostalgia, a combination of wistfulness at the thought of better times, and sadness at the realization of the fact said times had long since vanished and were only perfect through the naïve eyes of my child self.
Over the next few days, we focused on getting used to our new home. Grandma’s house was on the first floor of a two-story building, and it was big; two bedrooms, two bathrooms, large kitchen and living room, and a huge encircling balcony that overlooked the suburban neighborhood of five other houses and a lot of greenery. Below us used to live my grandpa’s sister, but she had passed a few years before him and the apartment had remained empty since her three children were locked in a legal battle over it, so it was just us in the building.
Due to lack of a budget, we decided to keep most of the house as it was, outdated furniture and all, and slowly replace them with newer ones as money allowed over time. If anything, we considered ourselves fortunate that the place was already furnished with everything we needed, including a relatively functional fridge and oven, more closets than we would ever want, as well as a spacious attic that was already packed to the brim with musty boxes and old stuff. As part of our settling-in process, we decided to begin by getting rid of anything we considered junk around the house, to start making the place feel more like our home. My wife said she would take care of the main house, which left me with the attic.
Even though the number of boxes that were crammed in the loft - despite its considerable size - was discouraging at first, I have to admit I began to enjoy opening container after container in order to examine the contents and decide if they were meant for the trash. In a way, it felt like digging into my own past, especially when I realized that, aside from my grandparents’ stuff, there were also boxes filled with my own childhood belongings here. I can still remember the sense of wonder I felt when I opened the first box of mine, and was hit with a multitude of colors from my old toys from the 90s; Action Man and G.I. Joe figures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Marvel and DC collectibles, Sticker Albums and Battle Beasts, just to name a few. It was like opening a treasure chest.
It took me about a week to clear half of the attic, having discovered a multitude of nostalgia valuables in the process. It was during a Saturday evening, when I opened the last box of the day, that everything started.
The box was stacked with piles of old photo-albums, kept in near-pristine condition. I smiled wide as I gazed at them, excited to dive into images of a distant past, simpler times. I sat down next to the container and started going through them. The first album was of me as a baby, filled with pictures of myself looking like a swollen potato at the maternity clinic, my first birthday, my first time at the beach, my first stroll in the nearby forest. The second was of a family Christmas back in 1995, featuring pictures of members of both sides of the family at a festive party in my parent’s house, smiling, laughing, eating and drinking, some of them depicting me running around, probably up to no good. The following five were of various trips my grandparents had taken to several Greek Islands, as well as a couple showing my parents visiting Paris and Germany, back before I was born. And then I came across the school road trip album.
Back in my elementary school days, teachers would sometimes take us on excursions, usually once every three months. Calling them road trips is a generous way of putting it, since, aside from a few times I can remember when they took us to some fancy museums, most of the time they would lead us to the nearby park and let us go nuts in the playground situated within, while they had their coffee at the adjacent cafeteria. Don’t get me wrong, I always loved these outings, since it meant no classes for the day. My only problem was that said park used to creep the hell out of me.
You see, aside from the cafeteria and the playground, the rest of it was thick woodland, and there was a specific dare game we used to play that made me incredibly uncomfortable. The rules were simple; one edge of the playground was marked as the starting point, sprawling woodland extending past it. From there, the one who would make it deeper into the woods, to the point where you could no longer see them, would be the winner. In hindsight, it was a silly game since there was no way of knowing who made it the farthest – it’s not like we were measuring distance – and you could also hide behind a tree which technically counted as not being seen, but it was what it was. Now, at face value, it wasn’t much of a dare, but what made it terrifying were the stories some of the older kids had told us about that forest.
Even before I had visited the park for the first time, I was already aware of the rumors of Satanists that lurked among the gangly trees, the various ritualistic sites that had been discovered, drenched in blood, the shadowy shapes that had been seen creeping around at night among the bushes.
And the hole in the ground.
Everyone had heard about that damned hole in the ground, a black pit that could be reached if you ventured to one of the farthest parts of the forest. I stress the word rumors, because that’s all they were. To my knowledge, no one had actually ever confirmed any of it, and it’s not like the teachers would ever take us to such a horrible place for a road trip, as they repeatedly assured us. Still, in the minds of eight and nine-year-olds, rumors are basically fact, and if you also take into account the complete lack of danger-awareness that goes hand-in-hand with those ages, you have a very dangerous combination at play.
I should probably mention that I was never the bravest of souls, neither in my formative years nor later on, which means I was really bad at that game. It would only take a few feet past the threshold to make me imagine demonic hands lunging at me from the undergrowth and branches, at which point I’d rush back at the relative safety of the gathered kids who were waiting their turn. There were a few of my classmates bold enough to get to a point where they seemed small in the distance, but no one ever really dared to lose sight of the starting line.
It was amusing how memories of those days came flooding back to me as I stared at the album. The cover was a faded beige, with big, engraved silvery letters spelling “Park School Road Trip, 1996.” Admittedly not the most imaginative title, but straight to the point no less. I started flipping through the pages, waves of nostalgia overwhelming me as I saw images of my old schoolmates, most of whom I hadn’t seen or spoken to for nearly two decades. There were photos of various groups of kids running around, yelling, laughing, climbing on swings and slides, doing cartwheels. I spotted myself in quite a few of them, and giggled at my bushy hair and chubby face. It took me a few moments to remember the reason of the existence of this album, considering that our teachers never bothered to commemorate any of our excursions. A local paper had been doing a piece on the school, and the board had hired a photographer to follow us, immortalize the road-trip and then create the album which had been distributed to every kid that had been present that day, in what I’m guessing was an attempt to make themselves look good in the eyes of the public – not that there was anything wrong with them in the first place.
I kept sifting through the album with a lopsided grin, until I eventually got to a picture showing four kids staring at the camera with toothy smiles as they leaned against a part of the iron fence that surrounded the playground, hands over shoulders. I snickered as my eyes moved from one boy to the next. First was Jason, with his long, wavy hair and strong jawline, then George, all knees and elbows. Next to him was me, the shortest of the bunch, a bit of acme visible on my forehead, and last…
I frowned.
Next to me stood a slim, freckled boy, a bit taller than me, with straw hair falling across his face. I pouted. I frequently proud myself for having a strong memory when it comes to faces but, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who he was, which I found odd. Jason and George, I still spoke with to this day, though we weren’t as close as we used to be back then. I could even recognize a significant number of the other kids that were shown across the album, even those I had never spoken with but was familiar visually. But when it came to this boy, I was drawing a complete blank, and not just in terms of his name. There was no recollection of ever seeing him, of ever having spent time with him, of him ever having existed in my life. The photo seemed to imply that we used to be close, which was what bugged me the most. I looked at the back of the image for potential names, but it was empty. After a few minutes of raking my brain for a possible answer, I decided it was time to call it a day. I picked up the album showing my many firsts as well as the road trip one, and descended from the attic.
I found my wife sitting in the living-room sofa, a glass of red wine in hand, visibly exhausted from a full day herself. She glanced at me and smiled.
“Making progress in the attic?” she asked.
“Yup, more than halfway there.”
“What you got there?” she inquired, nodding at the albums.
“I found a box stacked with old photo-albums, figured I’d keep them.”
“Anything good?”
“Depends. Wanna see your husband fresh out of the oven?”
“Ohhhh, let me see, let me see!” she said, bug-eyed.
I sat next to her and gave her the first album, which she started sifting through excitedly.
“Ohhhh, look at you!” she remarked as she examined image after image. In her defense, she had never seen any old photos of mine, and had repeatedly asked to, so I was expecting a degree of enthusiasm. “You were such a cutie.”
I smirked as my eyes gravitated to the road trip album, the image of the unknown boy resurfacing in my thoughts. I opened the album and turned to the picture of the four of us. I wasn’t even sure why it bothered me that much that I could not remember him. It wasn’t like I could recall every single person I’d ever met. Plus, it was a considerable amount of time ago.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“What?”
“You look a bit grim.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said with a snicker. “All good.”
“Is that you?” she continued as she looked at the image.
“Yup, eight years old, peak of my prime.”
She giggled. “Those your buddies?”
“Yeah…I mean, most of them, I guess…”
“You guess?”
I pursed my lips. “It’s just…I can’t really remember that one,” I explained as I tapped a finger on the freckled boy.
“So? I can’t remember half of the people I used to hang out with in elementary school.”
“Yeah, but…I figured I should be able to at least remember something about him. We look kinda close.”
“Honey, it’s been more than twenty-five years since this picture was taken.”
“Still.”
“What have we said about overthinking things?”
I huffed. “Don’t.”
“Exactly. Now,” she closed the album and took it from my hands, “you should probably go take a shower because you smell of old boxes.”
I snickered. “Your wish is my command.”
I pushed the photo from my thoughts and tried to relax a bit. The warm shower helped. Following that, we watched a movie and went to bed for the night.
***
I jolted from my slumber, drenched in sweat. I sat up on the bed as I tried to regulate my hectic breathing, glancing around the darkness as my perception segued from the residual traces of the nightmare and back to the waking world. My vision slowly adjusted to the dark, the only source of light being the pale blades of moonlight as it broke through some cracks on the window blinds. I looked to my left and saw my wife’s form gently undulate as she slept. I closed my eyes as images of the dark dream assaulted me.
It was a starless night. I was in the woods. I was following someone, a kid, taller than me. It was cold. The dirt below was muddy. There was the smell of wet earth in the air. The gangly branches of withered trees dangled above us like witch-fingers. We stopped, somewhere near a clearing. There was a hole there. No, not a hole. A grave, dug up, empty. The kid stepped inside and turned around to face me. It was the boy from the photo. He was staring at me with mad eyes, a grotesque smile stretched across his face that made my blood run cold. He extended a hand toward me. I backtracked. His face twisted.
There was a flash of light, like lightning, but no thunder followed.
He lunged out of the grave.
I ran.
Another flash of light.
I tripped.
I woke up.
Sleep eluded me for the rest of the night. I just lay there, the back of my head buried in my pillow, the nightmare gnawing at me. What the hell was that? I had no recollection of that boy whatsoever, and after seeing a picture my dreams turn to a horror movie? It made no sense.
I figured there were four of us in that photo. If I couldn’t remember who he was, maybe one of the others did.
My wife was still sleeping when I got up with the first hint of sunlight. I went to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of tea and sat at the dinner table as I watched the Sun fully rise in the distance, the horizon transitioning from a dark cobalt to bright amber, all the way to a mellow yellow before settling to a soft blue.
I looked at my watch.
10:00 A.M.
I grabbed my cellphone.
I’d try George first.
***
The phone rang for about thirty seconds before it went to voicemail. I huffed. Getting a hold of George was, at times, an exercise in futility. I typed in my only other choice and hit dial. Moments later, Jason’s hoarse voice came through the receiver.
“Dude, were you seeing me in your dreams?” he said with a snicker.
I chuckled. I could always rely on him to be the forever-kid. “Hey man, top of the mornin’ to ya.”
“And to you, kind sir,” he quipped with a fake British accent. “What’s up? How goes the move?”
“Oh, it’s going well. Big house with lots of stuff for the trash in it, but we are making it work, can’t complain.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“I actually found an album of us back in school.”
“Ohhhh, yeah, we used to be kids at some point, didn’t we?”
“I guess we did,” I said with a laugh. “This one’s actually from one of those road trips they used to take us on.”
“The park?”
“Yup.”
“Obviously. I still have the commemorative album they gave us.”
“Same one,” I said. “I was having a laugh seeing us back then.”
“Well, I’d like to think I’ve bloomed like a swan since those days.”
“More like a chicken.”
“Screw you,” he said and giggled.
“Nah, we both evolved beautifully,” I said mirthfully. “Say, I was looking at one of our pictures, one where there’s four of us. It’s me, you, George and one other kid, like, a freckled one.”
“Jimmy?”
“Jimmy?” I echoed.
“Lanky kid, kinda looks like a scarecrow?”
“Sort of.”
“Jimmy.”
“Jimmy,” I echoed again.
“Yeah man, Jimmy. You got a concussion or something? He was at your house every other day.”
“He was?”
“Are you pulling my leg? You guys were best buds. Granted, he was a bit rough around the edges, but couldn’t really blame him, what with his home situation and all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dude, are you in the throes of Alzheimer’s?”
“Seriously, man, I can’t remember him.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. Dude, you were depressed for months after he vanished. The police talked to you, like, five times within the span of three days after he disappeared.”
I frowned as my incredulous gaze gravitated to the floor. “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope.”
“Dude, I swear, if you’re yanking my chain—”
“I’m not yanking your anything. It was the talk of the town for, like, three months or something.”
I rubbed the nape of my neck. “He disappeared?”
“Yeah, though the prevailing theory ended up being that he ran away from home.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? The kid was a punching bag for his dad. Remember once when his shirt accidentally pulled up? The scar-tissue from the lashes?”
“Jesus…”
“Do you seriously not remember him?”
“I don’t…”
“Man, that’s fucked up. You guys were inseparable, kinda pissed me and George off at times.”
I turned my attention out the window as my mind raced. I mentally scrutinized every nook and cranny of my brain for any proof that what Jason was talking about was true, but came up empty. How was it possible for me to forget someone who, apparently, used to be my best friend?
“You’re not fucking with me, right?” I said, tone serious.
“No, man, I’d never joke about something like that. You don’t believe me, go to his house, I think his mom is still around.”
I swallowed. “Where is his house?”
“Behind the school, down the road that leads away from the back entrance,” he said. “The shitty building, can’t miss it. I actually saw it a couple of weeks ago as I was passing by, gave me the creeps.”
I breathed deep. “Okay…Thanks man, listen…I…I’m sorry if I came across a bit intense, I just…”
“Don’t worry about it, dude, I get it. Just…Careful going down that path, okay? His disappearance really fucked you up back then. Maybe it’s not the worst to not remember him. Perhaps let this one go…”
“Yeah…Maybe…”
There were a few seconds of awkward silence before Jason spoke.
“Anyway, you need anything, give me a call, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, thanks again man, I really appreciate it.”
“Okay, smell ya later,” he said childishly.
I smirked. “Smell ya later, bud.”
I tucked the cellphone in my pocket, slogged into the living-room and crashed on the sofa, my head numb. My attention drifted to the small table in the center of the room, settling on the road trip album. I grabbed it and turned the pages until I got to the four of us again, my eyes boring into Jimmy. He looked happy. There was nothing about his expression to betray something horrible happening to him at home. I huffed and looked out the balcony window.
The school was a five-minute walk from here, maybe another two to his house.
I could pass by, have a look.
What’s the worst that could happen?
***
It wasn’t long after the call that I was on my way to Jimmy’s house. I’d told my wife I wanted to go for a walk before I started on the attic again, clear my head a bit. While the day had started sunny, it had slowly given way to an overcast sky that gave everything a bleak tinge. In all honesty, it was quite fitting to my mood.
I reached the school and took a shortcut I remembered that led me to the back entrance via a narrow dirt-path that cut through a small forest. I arrived at the back road and started scanning around for the “shitty building” Jason had mentioned. It didn’t take long for me to find it. There weren’t that many houses here, but there was only one that could be awarded such a colorful title.
I trekked in its direction from the sidewalk and stopped opposite the place, staring at it from the other side of the road. To say the place was creepy was an understatement. The first thing that stood out about it was the overgrowth surrounding the house, a swarm of prickly, yellowed shrubs and bushes I had no name for jutting from the dirt like a natural fence. And then there was the home itself. It looked more like a big box, its beige color peeling from the walls like rotting flesh. The roof was flat, an old, weathered iron television antenna protruding from the front right corner. There was an entrance door in the middle of the front side, old wood with rusted iron bars enforcing it, one window on either side of it, barred as well.
Nothing. I was getting nothing. I knew the area, of course, but I had no recollection of ever visiting this place, and I doubted I would ever forget having been here. I looked up and down the road. Empty. I took a deep breath and made my wary approach. I slogged through the foliage, little flakes of shrub getting stuck on my jeans and jacket. I reached the door and paused. What exactly was I doing? What was the plan? Knock and see if anyone was in? And then? Say a woman - his mother - did live here and opened the door. What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, sorry to bother you, just wanted to make sure a boy named Jimmy used to live here and was abused by you. Oh, and that he eventually vanished.’
I huffed. This whole situation felt ridiculous. I had no idea why I had become so invested in this thing, but I couldn’t deny a weird feeling in my gut that kept pushing me to find answers about that boy. I looked around the door. No doorbell. I took a deep breath, raised my hand and knocked.
The door’s hinges moaned as it retreated against my knuckles, revealing a darkened room. It was already open. A pale, sickly light was coming from within, which I almost immediately recognized as a turned on television somewhere off-view to the right. The bluish glow shed some luminance to what I figured was a living room, an old, beaten couch positioned to the front of the unseen screen. I noticed various things littering the floor, dirty clothes, food packaging, beer cans and other trash of different origins. It wasn’t long before a putrid smell assaulted my nostrils. I winced. Apparently, the outside was better looking than the inside.
I stood at the threshold and scanned the room, pushing the door a bit more but never stepping inside. I noticed two doors on the other end of the living room. One was closed, the other open but leading to near-complete darkness.
“Hello?” I mumbled, unsure of what I was really looking for. “Sorry to bother you.” I harked for a few moments, the only thing reaching my ears being a low murmur which I figured was coming from the television. Leave. The thought started repeating in my head. Just leave.
My heart spiked as I took a step inside. “Hello? Anyone here?”
Nothing.
I paced slowly, doing my best not to step on any of the things that were scattered about. I reached the middle of the living room, and noticed a shadowed corridor extending for a few feet somewhere to my left. An old tube television was on, playing a Greek soap-opera on very low volume. My heartbeat rose as I scanned the space, my eyes briefly settling on the darkness of the open door before moving away from it and finding a framed photograph on a stand right next to the corridor entrance. I moved closer and leaned toward it.
It was a photo of Jimmy. I frowned. It was a close up of him from the waist up, looking at the camera. I could see children in the distant background, running in a playground. The park. It was a picture of that day in the park. He was wearing the same clothes, and I could recognize a couple of schoolmates in the back. But what really stood out was his face. He wasn’t smiling, like he did in our photo. He looked serious, a bit nervous, even. My frown deepened. I didn’t remember any solo photos in the album. All of them were immortalizing groups of kids being kids. There were no images of single children posing.
“Jimmy?”
I spun around so fast I got dizzy, and stared at the source of the croaky voice. My blood froze as I gawked at the ghostly apparition standing a few feet away from me. The pale light revealed a woman standing at the threshold of the dark room. She was barebones, disheveled hair framing her emaciated face, a white nightgown covering her slim frame. Her gleaming eyes were bulging from their sockets as she stared at me with a weird half-smile. I swallowed as my mind gradually allowed sense back into my perception. It was just a person - however otherworldly her appearance - around fifty years old, I reckoned.
“Jimmy, is that you?” she mumbled.
“Uh…Uhm…H-hi, I’m…I’m sorry, I…” I choked.
Her smile began to fade as her countenance segued to emotionlessness. She stood still for a few moments, as if weighing me. “You’re not Jimmy,” she said and cocked her head. Her eyes narrowed. “I know you.” She took a step forward, and a glint caught my attention.
A knife.
She was holding a kitchen-knife in her right hand, the blade reflecting the television glow.
“I-I’m sorry to come in like that—”
“You took my Jimmy,” she said.
“Wh-what?”
“You took my Jimmy away from me,” she repeated as she moved closer, her face twisting.
I backtracked. “Ma’am, I don’t understand—”
“He told me. You took him from me, he showed me,” she continued and raised the knife.
I could now practically feel my heart pounding against my ribs, my mouth dry. “Ma’am, please, I don’t understand,” I said, raising my hands placatingly as I took steps back into the corridor, her gaunt form blocking me from the house exit. “I’m sorry I came in uninvited, I shouldn’t have.”
“You took my Jimmy!” she cried out and slashed at me, the blade barely missing my raised palms.
My fight or flight response kicked in and I started backtracking faster, my eyes searching for an exit.
A door.
There was a door to my left.
I grabbed the knob just as the woman started running at me, hoping to God it was unlocked. There was a click, and the door opened. I burst inside and slammed it behind me, pushing against it with all my strength.
“You took him,” she screamed as she started pounding at the other side, outlandish growls leaving her lips. The door shuddered. I looked down. No key to lock it. I glanced around frantically, sweat-lines trickling down my temples. The place was darkened but there was enough light coming from the blind-gaps of a lone window to the back right. It looked like a child’s bedroom. I noticed a drawer stand right next to me. It looked big enough. I kept my shoulder against the trembling door as I grabbed and dragged the furniture to its front like a makeshift barricade. I pulled away from it, my pulse drumming in my ears. What the hell was happening?
Out of nowhere, the slamming stopped, as did her screams.
I swallowed.
“Jimmy,” she said, voice low, tired. “Jimmy, I’m sorry, please come out.”
“Ma’am, please, listen to me—”
“Come out sweetheart, mommy didn’t mean to yell like that.”
“Ma’am, I’m not Jimmy, okay? I’m sorry to barge in like that, please, I just want to leave.”
There was silence for a few seconds, a deathly quiet.
“Come out you little shit, open the door!” she growled. “Your dad may not be around anymore but I’ll let you have it just as good!”
Insane. She was insane.
I once again scanned the room for an exit.
The window.
I rushed to it as she kept yelling obscenities, and pulled back the blinds. Daylight flooded the room as my hope dissipated. Bars. Iron bars. This place was like a damn prison. I turned around just as the pounding began again. My breathing was coming out hectic.
“Open the door!”
My mind worked overtime to find an escape, my gaze drifting left and right. My hands clenched at the sides of my jeans, and I felt the hard shape of my cellphone in my right pocket.
The cops. Call the cops.
I pulled out the device and dialed-in the number, but flinched. What was I going to say? That I broke into a house and the owner was after me?
Shit.
“Helen?” A voice came from somewhere in the distance. Male. Heavy. “Helen, is everything all right?” The pounding stopped. I stood still, silent. “Helen, sweetheart, it’s me, it’s John.” I heard footsteps trotting away from the door, and then nothing. I approached and put my ear against the wooden surface. I thought I could hear whispers. Probably the television. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and turned back to the newly-lit room, doing my best to regulate my breathing.
I paused.
My brows converged.
Something felt odd.
My gaze went over the small bed at the back right, then at the library to the back left, its shelves packed with Goosebumps books and old Marvel and DC comics. My eyes moved instinctively to the ceiling, and noticed three Pokémon stickers right above my head, Charizard, Venusaur and Blastoise.
They keep my room safe, a voice echoed in my head, a boy’s voice.
And then my attention drifted back to the bed. I walked to it, kneeled and looked under. There was enough light coming from the open window to reveal a grey, plastic container. I pulled it out. I knew what was in there even before I opened it. Drawings. It was full of amateur drawings of original superheroes.
I’m gonna have my own comic when I grow up, the voice echoed again.
My lips trembled.
Sad. I felt so sad.
I’d been here before.
My gut led my attention back under the bed.
“The adventure book,” I mumbled, not sure where the words were coming from, or what I was talking about.
As if moving from muscle memory, I reached under and tapped the wooden floor around the middle section. A hollow thud came back. After a bit of effort, I managed to remove the piece of wood that was covering a small gap. I reached in and felt grainy paper against my fingers. I grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a blue school notebook, the words Adventure Book written with black ink on the white label.
Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? You’re my best friend, so it’s okay for you to know about it… the words surfaced in my mind.
I flinched as loud knocking snapped me from my reverie.
“Sir, are you all right?” a man asked from the other side of the door. “It’s okay, you can come out now.”
I stared at the notebook for a few moments, then got up and slid it under my jacket. “There’s a woman with a knife out there,” I replied.
“She’s calm now, I promise. I’m John, her neighbor.”
My lips pursed. He sounded normal. Plus, I couldn’t spend the rest of my day barricaded in there. I pushed the stand from the door and opened it warily. A smiling man met me from the other side.
“Hey there,” he said. He looked to be in his late fifties, a bit overweight. He had a thick, grey mustache, a patch of thinning hair slid back across his head. His checkered shirt seemed a size too small for him, as did his blue jeans. “I’m John, nice to meet you.” I nodded as I glanced down the corridor. The woman was sitting on the couch, head bowed like a scolded child, no longer holding the knife. “I’m sorry about her, she has her fits sometimes,” he explained. “Dementia is getting worse,” he whispered.
“N-no, no, I’m the one who’s sorry,” I said, my attention still on her. “I entered the house uninvited, it was my fault.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you, if I may ask?”
“Oh, sorry for that,” I said, pausing for the briefest of moments. “My name’s Panos,” I lied.
“Panos, I see,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “And what were you doing here?”
“I…” my throat caught. “I was visiting a friend.”
“A friend?”
My mouth tightened. “Jimmy.”
His forehead creased. “Jimmy?”
“I recently moved back into the neighborhood, thought I’d come by. I knew him, back in the day.”
“I see…” he said, his stare boring into me. There was something odd about him and, at the same time, familiar. Not that surprising, considering I’d grown up around these parts, but it still rubbed me in a weird way.
“Anyway, I think I’d better be going,” I said, confident that I looked pale as a ghost.
“Sure,” he said. “Again, sorry for the whole ordeal.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” I assured him as I moved past him and toward the exit. The woman glared at me as I reached near the couch.
“He’ll get you,” she grunted. “The lightning man will get you.”
“Helen,” John growled. “Enough.”
I put my chin down and practically ran to the door, my hand grasping at the notebook in my coat. I trotted back to my home, and halted right outside the entrance while I composed myself. I went inside and changed into my dusty clothes to prepare for the attic. I didn’t say anything to my wife about the incident.
I spent the rest of the day clearing out boxes, though my mind never left that house. I’d been there before. In that room. That was Jimmy’s voice in my head, I just knew it. I still couldn’t remember him, which was killing me. And then there were that woman’s words. She said I took Jimmy from her. What the hell did that mean? And what the hell was ‘the lightning man?’
Maybe there were answers in that notebook.
The day passed slower than expected. It was dark outside by the time I came down from the attic. I made small-talk with my wife for about half an hour, after which she went to bed early, since tomorrow was a workday. In all honesty, it was a workday for the both of us, and I was sleeping awake. It’s not like I had rested well the previous night.
My mind kept drifting to the Adventure Book. I really wanted to read it, see if I’d learn anything useful, but I felt like I wouldn’t be able to have my whole attention to it in my current state of exhaustion. I took a bath, got into my pajamas and went to bed.
Tomorrow.
I’d read it tomorrow.