David Morrell - Long lost

The moment I returned through the bushes, the light went out in the kitchen. I tensed, watching Petey's shadow move from room to room downstairs, turning off the lights. A minute later, one of the upstairs lights went off also. I spent an hour gazing at the remaining upstairs light. Then it, too, went out.

The sky was overcast, hiding the stars. The house remained dark. I hugged myself, trying to keep warm. My eyelids grew heavy. I fought to keep them open, turning from the house toward the murky lawn and garden in back, under which, I was certain, Kate and Jason were imprisoned. So close. Have to get to them. Have to… My eyelids fluttered shut. I sank to the ground and drifted into sleep.

A door banged, jolting me from a nightmare of being whipped. My eyes snapped open. I jerked my head up enough to be able to see through low bushes toward the house. The clouds had passed. The sun was behind me, glinting off windows across from me. The reflection stabbed my eyes, aggravating a headache. A breeze from the day before had strengthened, ruffling bushes. The movement of the leaves around me must have been the source of my nightmare about being whipped.

I stared toward the back of the house, where I'd heard the door bang. Petey came into view. He wore a light green shirt, which contrasted with his dark beard. I recognized the shirt. It was one that he'd stolen from me a year earlier. The wind tousled his thick dark hair. He peered around, assessing the woods, then pulled a hose from a hook on the wall and went over to the area behind the house. Watering several bushes, he confirmed my suspicion that something beneath the ground caused shallow roots in need of frequent care. The wind sometimes sprayed the water back at him, eventually annoying him enough that he dropped the hose, went to the back wall to shut off the water, and returned to the house.

The sun's reflection off windows prevented me from seeing what he was doing inside. After a half hour, the wind had parched my lips so much that I reached for a canteen, only to stop when I heard another door bang, this one at the front. Petey came onto the porch. He'd changed his spray-soaked green shirt for a gray one. It, too, had belonged to me. He raised his head, almost as if he was sniffing the breeze. That's what my brother had become: an animal assessing if there was danger. Because of me.

Stop thinking that way! I again warned myself.

He came down the porch steps and rounded the house, making my pulse quicken when he got into the truck and fastened his seat belt. The truck was faced in my direction but away from the sun's glare, so that I saw his beard and his stark eyes through the windshield before he made a U-turn. Dust blew as he drove down the lane, the blue of the truck soon vanishing among the windswept trees.

For a moment, I was sure that my mind had played a trick on me. Had I actually seen what I most wanted to see? Was the sound of the truck actually diminishing in the distance? For several long minutes, I didn't move. Perhaps Petey had only gone to check the mailbox at the road and would soon be coming back. Or perhaps he had somehow suspected that someone was watching the house and had driven away in order to lure an intruder into the open. As soon as I started toward the house, would he shoot me from where he'd sneaked back and was watching from the trees?

The sun rose higher. The wind grew stronger, buffeting the bushes I hid among. But it didn't cool me. Instead, the morning seemed unduly warm. Sweat dried immediately on my dust-caked cheeks. Nervous, I checked my watch and saw that fifteen minutes had passed. If Petey had merely gone to the mailbox, he'd have been back by now, I told myself. I scanned the woods where the driveway disappeared into them. But the wind kept shifting the leaves and prevented me from noticing any movement where he might be hiding, watching for an intruder.

I stared toward the bushes behind the house. The police. Use the cell phone, I thought. But as I reached for it, I worried that if Petey was watching from another part of the forest, he'd hear me. Instead of muffling what I said, the wind might carry my voice directly to him.

Or what if Petey wasn't alone? What if someone else was in the house and would hear my voice as I used the phone? To prevent that from happening, I'd have to retreat several hundred yards into the forest before I felt safe using the phone, but that would mean losing sight of the farmhouse, and there was no telling what might happen while I was away.

The sun rose higher, no longer reflecting off the windows. Nothing moved beyond them. Last night, I'd seen no other silhouette, only Petey's. Was it safe to assume that he was alone? The police wouldn't be able to get here in time before he got back. Damn it, this might be my only chance. I crawled through the undergrowth toward the back of the house. If Petey was watching from the trees in front, he wouldn't be able to see me approach from the rear.

Squirming through low branches, I came to the edge of the clearing. I checked again for any movement behind the lace curtains. Then I drew my pistol and hurried into the open. The wind tried to push me back. I reached a lilac bush, used it for cover, then darted toward a grape arbor, which screened me while I studied the house a final time. I sprinted to the back wall and pressed against its sun-warmed bricks.

Steps rose to the back door. At the top, I raised my head warily to peer through a window. Beyond gauzy curtains, I had an indistinct view of a kitchen, cupboards, a sink, and a stove on the right, an archway and a refrigerator on the left. A small table was in the middle. A single chair suggested that Petey lived by himself. What I started worrying about now was that Petey might have a dog, a pit bull, for example, trained not to show itself until an intruder entered the house, at which time the dog would tear the intruder apart. It would make sense for Petey to have one, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted that he did. I'd been watching the house for over twelve hours, and Petey hadn't let a dog out to relieve itself. True, Petey might have done so while I was asleep. But wouldn't the dog have picked up my scent and attacked me? And unless Petey was superscrupulous about cleaning up after his dog, wouldn't I have seen dog droppings on the lawn? Besides, a dog locked in the house would limit Petey's ability to stay away for periods of time. He could leave food for Kate and Jason in their prison. But it would be harder to leave enough for a big dog to survive for any length of time, and that didn't take into consideration the mess that the dog would make in the house.

No, I was increasingly convinced that Petey didn't have a dog. But on the off-chance that he did, I prepared to shoot it.

I tried the back door. No surprise-it was locked. I was going to have to smash the window, reach through, and open the lock from the other side. I changed my position so that I could look down through the window and see the area above the doorknob. The handle of a lock came into view. After I smashed the window, all I needed to do was reach through, twist the lock's handle, and…

Maybe only an architect or somebody in construction would have been bothered. The lock was a deadbolt, a type that I recommended. On the outside, the only way to get in was to use a key. But on the inside, there could be two ways to open the lock, depending on how it was installed. If there wasn't a window through which an intruder could reach, a handle on the lock was both convenient and safe. But in the case of a window, the secure way to install the lock was to use another key arrangement rather than a lock with a handle. That way, even if an intruder broke the window and reached through, he couldn't free the lock unless he had a key.