The Lost

Chapter Nineteen

“Claire! Come back, Claire!”

My words echo over the landscape, as if the wind has taken them and turned them over and over like tumbleweeds. I have been so careful not to make any loud noises outside for weeks that I instantly wish that I could call my shout back and swallow the words whole.

I should have known she’d run. I knew what she’d lost. And what she’s found. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in psychology to figure it out. She lost family, and she found me.

I aim for the alleys. I have a guess where she’d run.

It’s already dusk, and shadows lie layered over shadows. If I’m lucky, I’ll find her fast and we’ll be home before it’s truly dark. If I’m not... Images of the feral dogs spring into my mind, their teeth, their growls, and Claire’s small body. I firmly banish those images. If I’m not, then I’ll find her at Peter’s apartment on the oversize plush chair with her imaginary tea, and we’ll return home in the morning.

Ahead, I see them: the narrow apartment buildings. Crowded close, they remind me of bodies on a bus, shoulders mashed together. Dodging junk piles, I run toward the buildings, and then I plunge into an alley.

The alley is as dank and dark as I remember it. The brick walls lean in toward each other, cutting off the last vestiges of daylight. I feel buried in twilight. Beside me, a rat scurries past, and the cardboard boxes shift and rustle. I pick up what could be the same trash can lid that I had tossed weeks ago. The weight of it makes me feel better.

Walking as quickly and quietly as I can, I retrace our steps toward Peter’s apartment. My shoes stick to the muck on the ground, and the stench pervades my nostrils until it swims in my head. Clatters and snuffling and squeaking and a thousand tiny sounds make my skin prickle. I listen for the dogs.

The air is damp and chill, as if I were a thousand miles from the desert. I can’t see stars overhead. The sky is a black sliver, as if the street were inverted above me. I walk through the shadows and hope this is the right direction.

I hear a door shut, and I freeze. Voices, ahead. I duck behind a Dumpster as two men pass by beneath the yellowish glow of a streetlamp. Also behind the Dumpster, a mutt watches me from beneath a cardboard box. His fur is matted around his face. Mud has dried on him. He has a collar. He watches me, but he doesn’t move.

Heart thumping hard, I wait until I am certain the men are gone before I creep out.

I quicken my pace. Every shadow leers at me, and I hear my heart beat louder than my footsteps. My breath sounds rough, and my eyes ache from staring so hard to make sense of the layers of darkness.

But at last, I see the stairwell, lit by the dim glow of a bulb. I run the final few feet and leap-run-fall down the stairs. I land against the door, smacking it with my palms. I knock.

No answer.

“Please, Peter,” I whisper at the door. “Please be here.” Images flood through my mind again: Claire alone in an alley, found by the dogs, found by the men, not found at all. I tell myself that it’s only my overactive imagination. Claire’s a survivor. She’s tough and fast and smart. But she was scared. Scared kids don’t think straight. She could have run straight into danger.

I remember that Claire had a special knock. Slow twice, three times fast...

I am rewarded with footsteps, and the door swings open. As soon as Peter sees me, he laughs, joy filling his voice and ricocheting off the brick walls of the apartment buildings. “A surprise! And it’s not even my birthday. Perhaps my unbirthday surprise?”

“Claire?” I call. His laugh dies as I push past him into the dark hallway, through the curtain, to the star-filled room. He’s decorated the tree with Tiffany’s nooses. He follows me.

“Lauren, are you all right?” He reaches toward me, doesn’t touch me, lets his hand fall to his side.

“I thought she’d come here.” I spin in a circle, scanning the fairy-tale room. Broken marionettes lay on a shelf. The button jar is overflowing, and one chair is covered with candy wrappers, laid flat like quilt pieces. The Christmas lights swirl in a spiral pattern. “She’s not here.” I hear my voice. It’s shrill, not like my own. “You have to help me find her!”

“Claire can take care of herself,” Peter says. “She’s a resourceful girl. Why do you think you need to find her?”

Because of the dogs. Because of the dark. Because of the Missing Man. Because... I don’t see the words coming. They burst out of me without passing by my mind. “Because I have to be able to save someone I love!” And suddenly, I am crying. Great heaving sobs that hurt my ribs. My face feels as though it is about to crack. I am crying so hard that there are no tears, only heaving racking sob noises.

Peter strokes my hair. His arms are around me. I feel the warmth of his bare chest as I sob against him. He doesn’t speak, and I am grateful for that.

At last, I can breathe again.

“She’s dying,” I say.

His grip tightens around me, and I realize he thinks I mean Claire.

“My mother. She’s dying.” I’ve never said that word out loud. I’ve said she’s sick, that she needs me, but not that word, dying. “Claire ran from the Missing Man because she isn’t lost anymore and I still am. I thought she’d come here.”

“And lo, the prodigal savior returns to take again from me,” Peter says. He has a mocking grin on his lips, but there’s no laughter in his eyes. His hands are still tight on my arms, almost enough to bruise. “If you had found what you lost, would you have left Claire?”

“I’d have made sure she was okay.”

“You could be happy here,” Peter says. “You have a home. You have family. You have safety, food, water, shelter. I have given this all to you.”

I don’t know what to say. His eyes are intense, and I am too close to him. I can feel his heartbeat through my shirt. His skin is warm. He’s looking at me as if he wants to kiss me or devour me and hasn’t decided which. “Will you help me find Claire?”

He releases me, and I stagger backward. Throwing my hand out, I catch my balance on the tree. The nooses sway from the impact, and the Christmas lights twinkle and shift. He says softly, “‘If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.’ When you came to my door, I thought—” Cutting himself off, he turns his back to me and faces the tree with the tiny nooses. “She wouldn’t run to where he can find her,” he says. “She’d run to where she’s more lost.”

He waits for me to understand. After a moment, I do. “The void,” I say. He knocks the nooses with his finger, sends them swinging faster. I know I’m right. “Can you bring her out? I...I’ve found things. I’ve never found people.”

“She chose it.”

“Knowing that you’d find her,” I say. “She trusts you.” I take a deep breath. “So do I.”

He looks at me, and his eyes look sad. He favors me with half a smile, a twist of his lips. “But you trust the Missing Man to send you home, even after he betrayed you and left you. You want to leave.”

“Everyone here wants to go home,” I say.

“I am home,” he says.

“Please, Peter.” I reach out and put my hand on his arm. “Help me.”

He stares into my eyes. I can feel his breath soft on my face. He leans his forehead against mine. “I know what you’ve lost,” he says. His voice sounds broken, as if the words cost him.

Suddenly, I feel as though I can’t breathe. My hand shakes. It’s still on his arm, and I know he can feel it shaking. My whole body trembles. “Where is it?” My voice is a whisper.

He taps my sternum, his fingers close to my heart. “It isn’t in the void. It’s in here.”

“Can you be less cryptic?” I ask.

He smiles but there’s sadness in the smile this time. “I can’t. Fairly certain it was a mistake to tell you that much.” Lightly, his fingers brush my cheek. “Really, you don’t seem like you should be interesting. What is it about you? You’re just like everyone else. Can’t wait to leave me.” His lips lightly brush against mine, and then he grips my arms and kisses me, his body pressed tight against me. I feel the warmth of his bare chest through the thin cotton of my shirt. I kiss him back, sinking into his arms, and for an instant, my thoughts scatter and there’s only this moment right here.

But then I break away. “Claire.”

“I’ll find her, if that’s what you wish.”

“It is,” I say firmly, though my lips still tingle and my head is spinning.

Leaving me, he sprints out of the apartment without another word.

Sitting in one of the chairs, I stare at the tree with nooses. Then hopping to my feet, I pace. I think about Peter, about Claire, about the Missing Man... I have to tell Victoria and Sean that he’s returned. Also Tiffany. And the others. They can go home now. Or move on. Or whatever. And then Claire and I will join them.

I raid Peter’s closets, searching for a reasonable disguise. I find a knit hat and a hoodie. I pull it on and tuck my hair into the hat and use the hood to shield my face in shadows. It’s not perfect, but if I slouch like Colin and if I don’t make eye contact...

I can’t simply stay here and wait. I have to move. I have to go. I can’t...I just can’t.

My mother is dying.

Hands jammed into my pockets, I shuffle down the sidewalk and try to look inconspicuous. I haven’t been to the center of Lost since I was driven out, and Main Street hasn’t improved much. All the buildings look one hard breath away from crumbling into rubble. Piles of garbage lean against them. The sidewalk concrete is chopped and full of weeds that choke every available crack.

I already regret coming.

I see kids in the alleyways, perched in and around Dumpsters and on towers of cardboard boxes. In one alley, they’ve constructed a wall of old doors and signs. A few of them watch me.

The Moonlight Diner sign blinks at me in the distance, only three blocks away. I can make it, I think. From there, Victoria and Sean will spread the word.

A woman in a filthy pink tracksuit lurches out of one house. She’s holding a dead bird in one hand, tight around the neck. She stumbles across the street into an alley. Another woman on hands and knees plants dead flowers in a manicured bed of soil and mulch. She’s humming to herself.

Two blocks to the diner.

I should have waited for Peter. I should have insisted the Missing Man come with me. I should have waited for Victoria’s next visit, or for the next person to come seeking help.

The Missing Man still owes me an explanation—why he fled in the first place, what he’s been doing, why he knows anything about my mother’s condition, and why he came back to tell me. I should be back at the house, badgering answers out of the Missing Man, instead of here trying to save everyone that I’d ever met...except that’s exactly why I’m here, isn’t it? I want to save everyone I can. Maybe then I’ll be able to find a way to save the one who mattered most.

Jesus, I have got to stop with the psychoanalysis. I’m annoying myself.

At last, I walk up the steps to the diner. The bell over the door rings as I enter, and everyone turns to look at me as I walk in. Victoria drops a plate of food. It shatters on the floor.

I slide into one of the booths. Pick up a menu. Wave at Victoria as if she were only a waitress, not someone I know. She steps over the broken glass and then stands by my booth. Her pad and pen are in her hand.

“He’s back,” I say.

All of them...Victoria, Sean, and the customers...file out of the diner behind me. I feel like the Pied Piper. I hear the whispers and then more footsteps. Others have joined us. I don’t turn around as I lead them into the alleys.

It feels as if there’s a swarm of bees following me. Docile for now, but they might not stay that way. I’m ending my anonymity and the safety of my home. Once all these people know...but it won’t be my home much longer. I don’t have to protect it. It’s over. I only have to complete the loop, finish what I began, and make amends for driving away the Missing Man in the first place by saving everyone that I can.

And somehow, find a way to say goodbye to Peter.

I feel my heart crumble as I think it. I knew this would come, that we weren’t and couldn’t be permanent, but still...the thought of not seeing him when I wake, of not hearing his laugh, of never... I won’t think about it right now.

As we emerge from the alleys into the outskirts of town, I glance over my shoulder. I see nearly fifty people—men, women, and kids. Some are following with wide-eyed, beatific expressions on their faces, pilgrims to the holy land. They’re coming to meet their messiah, so to speak. Others don’t have the glow. They make me nervous.

Tiffany is first, only a few paces behind me. She knows the way, of course, but lets me lead. I wonder what the Missing Man is going to say when he sees all these people coming. I wonder if he’ll be pleased or furious. I don’t understand his motivations. I should have learned more before I fled after Claire.

Soon, much too soon, we reach the little yellow house.

He isn’t on the porch, but the front door is wide-open. My heart begins to pound so fast that I feel it thumping in my throat. What if he isn’t here? a little voice whispers. He has to be here! He owes me answers.

I hold up my hand, and the mob comes to a halt.

“Missing Man?” I walk up the stairs. “I’m back. It’s Lauren. I’ve brought some people who want to see you, some people who need you.” I walk into the house. It’s silent, except for my footsteps and my heartbeat, which is thudding so loud that it almost hurts. “Missing Man? Claire? Peter? Anyone home?”

I check the kitchen, the dining room, the bedrooms, the attic room... I look out the window and see the ocean is again lapping at the house. The void is several miles out, but the ocean is here, high tide, higher than I’ve ever seen. It laps at the downstairs window sills and sprays the glass.

“I’m not going without you,” a little voice says behind me.

“Claire!”

She’s huddled in the corner of the attic with both her bears and Mr. Rabbit. “You can’t make me. He can’t make me.”

I run to her and kneel next to her. “Claire...where is he?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Claire,” I say slowly, calmly, evenly. “What did you do to him?” She isn’t holding her knife. I wonder where her knife is, and then I try not to wonder. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. “Did you... Claire, where is the Missing Man?”

She lifts her head. “Don’t know.”

“Don’t know or don’t want to tell me?” I hear voices downstairs. People have come into the house. I don’t have much time before someone comes upstairs.

“Don’t know. He wasn’t here when I came back.”

I believe her. I have to believe her. “Claire.” I place my hands on her shoulders. “He won’t hurt you. He only wants to send you, us, home. He can do it just by saying a few words. ‘You were lost; you are found.’ Like that. It won’t hurt. You saw Colin. He was smiling. But if you’re scared, you don’t have to do it alone. We’ll do it together, okay? We’ll wait until I find what I lost, and then we’ll have him send us at the same time...” I trail off because I can see through her. She’s translucent.

I spring backward, releasing her shoulders.

Her face twists as she sees my expression. “Lauren, what’s wrong?” She reaches for me and sees her hand. “No! No, I don’t want to go! Lauren, don’t make me go!” But she’s fading. I reach for her, and my hands slide through her. I can’t touch her.

“Claire! Claire, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean...”

Mr. Rabbit and the teddy bears fall to the floor.

There are footsteps on the stairs.

I can’t face them. The Missing Man is gone. Claire is gone. I run across the attic room. Opening the window, I climb onto the sill, carefully stepping between the nails. And like Peter did weeks ago, I leap out the window.

I fall into the ocean below.