David Silva: The Disappeared

“Come on! We need to get out of here!”

The boy froze, a mix of surprise and confusion etched like a mask into his features.

“Let’s go!” Teri screamed. She grabbed him by the shirt sleeve, forcefully, and the boy tumbled off the edge of the couch, onto the floor. He landed hard on his side, his shirt balled up in her fist. The confusion on his face turned to fear, and she realized distantly that she might have hurt him.

“Sorry.” She grabbed him under the armpits and pulled him to his feet, lifting what felt like his full weight until he was able to brace himself against the arm of the couch. In the same motion, he swept up his walking cane, and they were both on their way into the family room, Teri with one hand in the small of his back, pushing.

“Who was it at the—”

“I don’t know.”

Behind them, the lock on the front door popped, and half-a-beat later, the door slammed into the wall, sending an explosion reverberating down the hall. Whoever they were, they were in the house now.

“Out the back!” Teri said. She pushed him toward the sliding glass door, where the curtains were drawn. The room was bathed in evening shadows. A grayish cast blocked out a rectangular area of the floor. The corners were black charcoal. The boy sank heavily into the corner, breathing hard, already exhausted.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

She swept the curtains aside with one hand, and grappled blindly with the lock as she glanced over her shoulder. “Come on, come on!” The locked clicked into place and she gave the handle a tug. The door swung back several inches, and

…and there was a man standing on the other side.

He was a big man, someone who she instantly decided must have spent a great deal of his time sitting at the counter of a coffee shop, downing doughnuts and endless cups of coffee with cream and sugar. His cheeks were a doughy, Pillsbury fill and the rough landscape of his nose was coursed with bright purple veins that had made their mark a long time ago. It was an alcoholic’s face, Teri thought in that brief moment.

She managed to hold the door in place, him on the outside, her on the inside, neither of them giving an inch. It wasn’t easy, though. Not for either of them. She could already see the strain showing on the man’s face, which had turned a bright, sun-burnt red.

He shifted his weight and the opening expanded. Teri braced her foot against the aluminum frame, locked her knee, and managed to take some of the pressure off her arms. In return, the man somehow managed to curl his fingertips around the edge of the door’s sash. He anchored his weight, and she could feel him ease up slightly, preparing for one final push. If it came to that, there was no doubt in her mind that she would be the loser.

A twinge ran through her left knee, and she could feel it start to weaken.

The boy stepped in behind her, still breathing hard.

“I want you upstairs,” Teri grunted.

“In a minute,” he said. He jammed the walking end of the cane into the corner of the aluminum frame, stood on the other end and tried to force it down into the track. For a moment, it looked as if it might actually work. Then just as suddenly, the handle end slipped and the cane came shooting out, away from the sliding glass door, like a Louisville Slugger that had slipped out of the hands of a batter. It clattered against the linoleum floor and rolled into the legs of a nearby chair.

“Push with me,” she said, every muscle straining.

The boy moved in directly behind her, his foot braced against the corner, both hands on the edge of the door. Between the two of them, they were able to mount a surge, and before she even realized what was happening, the sliding glass door tore free from her grip and rode the track the full six or seven inches, before slamming full-force into the forward stop.

Glass shattered.

An ice storm of splinters came raining down all around them. Teri crouched and covered her head, defending herself against some of the fallout while her bare arms took the brunt of the sharp edges.

The door slowly rolled back in its track and came to a stop.

On the other side, his eyes white and distended, the man let out a horrible scream. He had gotten his fingers in there, between the door and the stop, and he hadn’t been able to get them out. He staggered back, holding his hand in front of his face as if he couldn’t quite believe what had happened. Three of the fingers had been badly mangled. One was broken at the second knuckle and appeared as if it were hanging by a thin thread of flesh. If he didn’t get help and get it soon, he was going to risk losing one of those fingers.

Teri found some momentary satisfaction in that thought.

“Now upstairs!” she said.

The boy grabbed his cane off the floor, and she found herself tugging at him again, trying to keep him moving in front of her as they made their way out of the family room and into the kitchen. The house had been built in the mid-sixties. It was one of those tract homes that had seemed to sprout up out of nowhere overnight, sitting just outside the city limits in a little suburban neighborhood where everything was vanilla-flavored and cookie-cutter perfect. At this end of the house, they had the garage in front of them or the stairs that were a straight line to the office that Michael had added over the garage not long after Gabe had been born.

Teri went instinctively for the stairway.

She pushed the boy ahead of her through the kitchen archway, past the oak pantry on their left. For years she had tried to get Michael to round off the corners of the small cabinet, having barked her shins on it more times than she cared to admit. This time, though, her shins weren’t the offering. It was her left elbow, which caught the corner smack-dab across her funny bone. Teri grabbed at the tingling sensation and immediately fell back a step or two.

The boy disappeared up the stairs ahead of her.

Teri wasn’t so lucky. Just as she was reaching for the handrail, someone grabbed her from behind. In one swift motion, she found herself turned around, staring into the face of the man with the scar over his left eye. He had gotten a fistful of her blouse, and he had raised her up off her feet to the tips of her toes.

“Settle down, Mrs. Knight.”

He spun her backward against the pantry. She hit her head hard and slumped to the floor, her legs rubbery beneath her. The pantry door swung lazily open. A gray-black shadow seeped into the outer edges of her vision and Teri closed her eyes, feeling slightly disoriented.

The man motioned toward the stairway. “Get the boy,” he said. She looked up, for a moment thinking he was speaking to her, which didn’t make any sense. But then the small, edgy man who had stood in the shadows on the porch, suddenly stepped out of nowhere and started up the stairs.

Teri tried to clear her head.

“It didn’t have to be like this, Mrs. Knight. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t have anything of value,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. Things had gone gray for a moment, even rippling, but they were clearing now. She sat up, catching a breath, and listening to the footsteps of the other man as he climbed the stairs.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“Just leave the boy alone, all right. He didn’t do anything.”

“Wish I could oblige.”

“Please.”

“You’ll do both yourself and your son a big favor if you’ll just keep your mouth shut, Mrs. Knight. Do I make myself understood?”

“He’s not my—”

“Uh, what did I say?”

Teri stared at him, working it over in her mind. Finally, she swallowed back the rest of her sentence, hating the bitter taste it left in her mouth. She leaned back against the pantry and turned her gaze away.