Long Lost - James Scott Bell Page 0,2
kill Robert if he made a sound.
Oh God don’t let me make any noise. Make them go away and don’t let Robert get hurt.
He had to go to the bathroom. But if he moved they would kill Robert. He had to go to bathroom so he did it in the bed.
This was worse than nightmares. He remembered the nightmare he had before Robert told him stories, and one of the monsters took his bear and broke the eyes, shattered them. The bear looked at Stevie with shattered eyes. The eyes accused him. Why did you let it happen, the shattered eyes said.
Tonight was like that for real. Robert was gone and Stevie couldn’t help him. Only God could help him. Stevie could only lie in the bed and not cry.
Shaken awake.
Jolted out of sleep. Somebody clutching him. Hurting his shoulders.
Mom.
She was shaking him and yelling, “Where’s Robert?”
Scared, Stevie thought it was a dream. But the room was full of light and he felt the wetness and smelled it and knew it was real. Like last night was real.
“Answer me!”
Like she was mad at him.
He didn’t answer. Didn’t want to make a sound. What if they were outside the window?
Now his mom was really crazy and tears were in her eyes.
“Answer me, will you!”
If she was yelling then maybe it was okay to talk now. “Outside! Look outside!”
“Outside where?”
“The window!”
His dad charged in. Must have been right outside the door. Ran to the window and looked out.
He turned back to Stevie, face red. “Whattaya mean outside?”
“A man! He had a mask. He was gonna kill us!”
His mom and dad didn’t say anything. They looked at each other the way people did sometimes in movies. Not knowing what to do.
“Where’s Robert?” Stevie said.
His mother said, “Frank, call the police.”
Stevie let himself cry now. He saw Robert’s train pajamas on the floor.
The police came. A lot of them. It was confusing. Everybody was talking to him, asking him questions, making him go over and over things. Stevie started sucking his thumb again. He clung to his mother.
She told the police not to make him talk anymore, that he had told them everything.
Other people came. Stevie knew they were people from TV. They had cameras and microphones.
Stevie’s mother wouldn’t let the people in the house.
Finally, when it was dark, the people were gone. But the house wasn’t the same. Something had changed and it wasn’t just that Robert wasn’t there. It was that Robert wasn’t there because of Stevie. He wasn’t there because Stevie didn’t say anything. The man in the mask didn’t stay outside the window. He just said that to scare him.
There was a moment when Stevie knew all this instantly. One look was all it took.
One look from his dad. They were sitting at the kitchen table. Too tired to eat. Mom had heated up some Tater Tots for Stevie, and he ate some, but not all of them. His parents were silent, looking down at the table.
And then Stevie saw his father looking at him. The look bore into Stevie like fists. It was a look of disgust. His father hated him. Stevie was sure of that now.
Stevie ran from the table into the bathroom and threw up and cried.
His mom came in and cleaned him up.
His father didn’t come. His father didn’t speak to him for a week.
Eight weeks later, Robert hadn’t been found. There was no ransom note. No contact of any kind.
Stevie managed, from snippets of conversation, to piece together that the police thought a group might be involved. They called it a “religious cult” and Stevie wondered what that was. He asked his mom once and she just shook her head like she didn’t want to answer.
A couple of times he heard the word pervert and wondered if that was something else, but he was afraid to ask.
His father was drinking a lot of beer and stuff from a bottle. He stayed away from the house for days sometimes. When he came back he and his mom yelled at each other.
When Stevie looked at his father, he thought something was taking Dad over. A bad thing. All because of Robert. What Stevie had done to Robert.
And then one day the bad thing took over completely. The day they found out Robert would not be coming home. Ever.
His mom told him it wasn’t his fault. And a doctor his mom took him to also said it wasn’t. The doctor, a nice lady, even got Stevie to say