The Missing

Please God, let him think I’m in there listening to my music. If he went in there, she could make a run for the stairs – no, not the stairs, her mother’s bedroom. The nearest phone was in her mother’s bedroom. She could lock the door and call the police.

The man from the woods stood in the hall-way, deciding what to do.

Come on, go into my bedroom.

The man from the woods stepped inside the spare bedroom. Darby watched in horror as the boots came closer… closer… oh Jesus no, he was standing only a few inches from her face, the boots so close she could see and smell the grease stains.

Darby started to tremble. He knows. He knows I’m hiding under the bed –

A crude mask of stitched-together, flesh-colored strips of Ace bandages fell to the floor.

The man from the woods picked up the mask. A moment later, he walked out of the bedroom and back into the hall-way. Her bedroom door burst open to bright light and dance music.

Darby scrambled from underneath the bed and ran into the hall-way. The man from the woods was standing in her room, looking for her. She ran into her mother’s bedroom and swung the bedroom door shut, catching a glimpse of the man chasing after her, a real-life Michael Myers dressed in greasy blue coveralls, his face covered by the mask of Ace bandages, his eyes and mouth hidden behind strips of black cloth.

She locked the door and then grabbed the phone from the nightstand. The man from the woods kicked the door, rattling it against the frame. Her hand was shaking as she dialed 911.

There was no dial tone.

Thump as he kicked the door. Darby tried the phone again. Still nothing.

Thump. The phone had to work, there was no reason why it shouldn’t work. Thump. She flipped over the phone, and in the dull white light coming from the outside street lamps Darby saw the plug, nice and snug, in the back of the phone. Thump.

Darby jammed her finger on the receiver again and again and still no dial tone and THUMP and CRACK as the one of the door panels split open.

A jagged line ran down the panel, a foot or so above the doorknob. THUMP and CRACK and the wood split wider as a black-gloved hand reached through the hole in the door.

Sheila’s blue plastic toolbox, the one she used for her small projects around the house, sat on the edge of the TV stand. Inside the toolbox full of old plastic medicine bottles holding tacks, small nails and hooks, Darby found her father’s hammer, the big Stanley he had used around the house.

The hand was on the doorknob. Darby swung the hammer and hit him on the arm.

The man from the woods screamed – an ungodly howl of pain Darby had never heard another human being make. She went to hit him again and missed. He yanked his hand back through the hole.

The doorbell rang.

She dropped the hammer and opened the window. The storm window was still down. As she worked on opening it, she remembered her mother’s words about what to do when you were in trouble: Never yell for help. Nobody comes ru

Screaming coming from inside the house. The song ended and Darby heard a woman crying hysterically.

‘DARBY!’

Melanie’s voice, coming from the foyer.

Darby stared at the hole in the door, sweat ru

‘He just wants to talk,’ Melanie said. ‘If you come downstairs, he promised to let me go.’

Darby didn’t move.

‘I want to go home,’ Melanie said. ‘I want to see my mother.’

Darby couldn’t turn the doorknob.

Mel was sobbing. ‘Please. He has a knife.’

Slowly, Darby opened the door and, crouching low, looked through the banister and into the foyer.

A knife was pressed against Melanie’s cheek. Darby couldn’t see the man from the woods; he was hiding around the corner, against the wall. She saw Mel’s terrified face and the way her body shook as she sobbed and struggled to breathe around the arm clutched tightly around her throat.

The man from the woods moved Mel closer to the bottom steps. He whispered something in her ear.

‘He just wants to talk.’ Black tears from Melanie’s mascara ran down her cheeks. ‘Come down here and talk to him and he won’t hurt me.’

Darby didn’t move, couldn’t move.

The man from the woods cut Mel’s cheek. She screamed. Darby moved down the steps.

Drops of blood, bright and red, ran down the wall near the kitchen. Darby froze.

Melanie screamed, ‘He’s cutting me!’

Darby took another step, her eyes on the wall, and saw Stacey Stephens lying on the kitchen floor, blood spurting between the fingers clutched against her throat.

Darby ran back up the stairs. Melanie screamed again as the man from the woods cut her.

Darby slammed the bedroom door shut and opened the window facing the driveway. The branches from the hedges tore up her bare legs and the soles of her feet something awful. She limped her way to her next-door neighbor’s house. When Mrs Oberman finally answered the door, she took one look at Darby and immediately ran to her kitchen to call the police.

Darby had overheard two things: the phone lines to the house had been cut, and the spare key her mother kept under the rock in the garden was missing. The key had been there a little over two weeks ago. She had last used it after locking herself out of the house and definitely remembered putting it back.

To know about the hidden key, the man from the woods must have been casing the house for some time. Nobody would come right out and say it, but Darby knew it was true.

She sat in the back of the ambulance parked in Mrs Oberman’s driveway. The back doors were open, and she could see the shocked and curious faces of her neighbors in the revolving blue and white lights from the police cruisers. Policemen armed with flashlights were searching her backyard and the wooded area separating Richardson Road from the nicer homes on Boynton Avenue.

All the lights in her house were on. Through the downstairs windows Darby could see part of the foyer, the blood on the pale yellow walls. Stacey’s blood. Stacey was still lying inside the house because she was dead. Police were taking pictures of her body. Stacey Stephens was dead and Melanie was missing.

‘Don’t worry, Darbs, your mom will be here any minute.’ The deep but calming voice belonged to the patrolman standing next to the ambulance door. This huge intimidating bear of a man was a close friend of her father’s named George Dazkevich. Everyone called him Buster. Buster had helped out around the house after her father died, taking her to movies and to the mall. His presence helped calm her.

‘Have you found Mel yet?’

‘We’re working on it, kiddo. Now try to relax, okay? Can I bring you something? Some water? A Coke?’

Darby shook her head and looked at the car parked against the curb, a beat-up Plymouth Valiant. Melanie’s car.

Melanie’s going to be okay. The man from the woods was in a lot of pain. I’m pretty sure I broke his hand. Melanie would have figured that out and would have fought back and escaped. She’s probably hiding someplace in the woods. They’re going to find her.

Sheila arrived just as the EMT finished stitching up a particularly nasty gash on the inside of Darby’s thigh. The blood drained from her mother’s face as she stared down at the Frankenstein mess of stitches on Darby’s legs and feet.

‘Tell me what happened.’

Darby fought the urge to cry. She needed to say strong. Brave. She sucked in air and then broke down in tears, hating herself for it, for being small and scared and weak.

Chapter 5

The next morning, Melanie was still missing.

With the house now a crime scene, the police moved Darby and Sheila to the Sunset Motel on Route 1 in Saugus. The room Darby shared with her mother had shag carpeting and a hard mattress with coarse sheets. Everything smelled of cigarette smoke and desperation.