David Morrell - Long lost

And found myself ten feet from Petey, who aimed a shotgun at my chest.

He trembled with rage.

I couldn't draw my pistol and shoot before he pulled the trigger. Even if I hit him, my 9-mm bullet might not kill him, but with a shotgun at ten feet, he was sure to blow my chest apart.

"Stop, Petey!" With my beard, I couldn't be sure he recognized me. "It's me! It's Brad!"

Even before I shouted, his eyes had narrowed. He looked startled. Straining to see past my beard, he realized who I was.

The wind buffeted us so hard, I could barely hear him murmur, "Brad."

"Listen to me! Did they tell you who Lester was?" I shouted, doing the only thing I could think of to distract him from shooting. "Do you know why they took you?"

"Lester," he murmured.

"Did they tell you Lester was Orval and Eunice's only child?"

Smoke poured from the basement window.

Moving away from it, I had to keep distracting him. "Did they tell you he died, that they went crazy with grief?"

The house would soon explode.

"They'd already lost three children to stillbirths!" I kept my voice raised, inching toward the trees. "The rest of the Dants were dead! Eunice couldn't conceive any longer. Lester was their only chance of continuing the family line."

Petey sighted along the shotgun's barrel. "Lester."

As smoke billowed, I moved closer to the trees. "They were desperate to replace him. But they couldn't do it in Brockton. That was too close to home. They might have been recognized."

Petey kept pace with me, the shotgun aimed at my chest.

"So they set out on the interstate, driving from one town to another. They waited for God to direct them, to put a boy of the same age before them. They tried one town after another. They crossed from Indiana into Ohio. They passed Columbus. They came to Woodford." I spoke faster, more intensely. "We'll never know what made them leave the interstate and pick our town. Something must have seemed a sign from God. As they drove this way and that, they turned a corner, and there you were, all by yourself, pedaling down a street that seemed deserted."

" 'Can you tell us how to get to the interstate?'" Petey said it with such bitterness. " 'Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the end of the world?'"

The smoke worsened. I tasted it as I neared the trees.

He moved with me, his finger looking tighter on the shotgun.

"They took you, and they put you in that underground room, and they told you your name was Lester, and they punished you if you didn't act like their son."

"Lester."

I thought I saw flames beyond the smoke at the basement window.

" This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' Luke, fifteen, twenty-four," Petey said.

"When you told me you'd been molested, I thought you meant sexually."

I took another step.

So did Petey.

The wind gusted harder.

"But you didn't mean sexually. You meant molested in your mind. In your soul. They wanted you to be Lester so much that they beat you and starved you; they treated you like an animal, until you didn't know who you were. It was so awful that in the end you were ready to be anybody they wanted you to be as long as they didn't hurt you, as long as they took away your bodily wastes and gave you something to eat."

"They taught me the good book," Petey said. " The truth shall make you free.' John, eight, thirty-two."

"The truth is, you can be free. I'll get help for you, Petey! It's not too late! Once the police understand why you did what you did, they'll want you to get help, too. I promise you, life can be better. Don't let Orval and Eunice destroy you again. Stop being what they made you into, Petey."

"Don't call me Petey!"

My voice broke. "I can't tell you how sorry I am. I know that your life changed because of me, that everything would have been different if I hadn't sent you home from that baseball game! But, damn it, we were just kids. How was I to know that the Dants were going to grab you? Nobody could have known about them. You were just my little brother tagging along. I didn't mean for it to happen, Petey." Tears streamed down my face. "There wasn't a night since you disappeared that I didn't beg God to bring you back safe, that I didn't plead for a second chance. Let me make it up to you, Petey. Please, let me try to give you the life that Orval and Eunice took from you."

"Stop calling me Petey!"

"You're right. When you came to my house, you asked me to call you Peter, but I didn't. We're not kids anymore. You're Peter."

"No! Don't call me that, either!"

Staring at the shotgun's trigger, I made a placating gesture. "Okay. Whatever you want, Lester."

"I'm not Lester!"

"Then I don't understand. Who are you?"

"Brad."

The dark intensity in his eyes made clear how serious he was. I'd ruined his life. Now he'd stolen mine. Taking my wife and son, he'd convinced himself that he was also taking my identity. In his mind, he was me. As the depths of his insanity became obvious, my legs felt unsteady. "I'm so sorry. God help you," I murmured.

"No." His tone left no doubt that he was going to pull the trigger. "God help you."

The blast hurtled me into the bushes. Not from the shotgun. The blast from the house. As the building exploded, the shock wave lifted me off my feet and threw me into the undergrowth. Wreckage flew, chopping tree branches, shredding leaves.

Dimly, I became aware enough to smell smoke and hear the crackle of flames. In pain, I slowly sat up. I felt dizzy, sick to my stomach. The ringing in my ears was unbearable.

I'd been thrown into a hollow. That was the only reason I'd survived the shrapnel from the blast. Chunks of smoking, burning wreckage lay around me. Bushes were on fire. The wind thrust the flames from tree to tree.

Coughing from the smoke, I staggered to my feet. I stared around, searching for Petey. I faced the burning crater of the house. He wasn't on the ground where we'd last stood. He must have been thrown into the undergrowth the same as I had been.

Flames crowded me. Kate and Jason. I had to find them. As I stumbled deeper into the forest, I prayed that they'd kept running, that they were far enough away that the fire wouldn't reach them.

And that Petey wouldn't. He'd do everything in his power to get them back.

Unless he was dead. Unless the blast had killed him.

Then where was his body? After the explosion, there was so little cover that I should have been able to see his corpse. Where was he?

The wind hurled smoke at me, making me cough harder as I lurched through the forest. While I'd been unconscious, the fire had spread rapidly, leaping from tree to tree. Bushes burst into flames. I zigzagged, trying to avoid flames on my right, only to discover that a new section of the forest was suddenly afire on my left.

I wanted to shout, "Kate! Jason!" But they'd been so afraid of me in the house that I doubted they'd answer me. If anything, I'd throw them into a greater panic. On the off chance that they did answer my shouts, Petey would hear them, would go to them.

Plus, if I shouted to Kate and Jason, Petey would hear me, would know where I was.

The fire roared around me. The smoke whirled past, driven by the wind. Fighting for breath, I stumbled into a clearing. Again, the fire leapt into the trees ahead of me.

How far had Kate and Jason managed to go? I remembered the stream that I'd followed into the forest. If I could reach it, if Kate and Jason could reach it, we had a chance.

Reach it? How? I'd been so distracted by my need to avoid the fire that I'd lost my bearings. The same with Kate and Jason. They might be fleeing in a circle.