Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
Nora may have been our valiant leader as we trekked through the woods, but I take the lead once we’re through the fence. Fear leaves a metallic taste on my tongue, though that could also be from how hard I’ve been biting the inside of my cheek.
For all my bravado in getting us here, being inside the fence douses it all. And for all the love we have for the people we’re looking for, love might not be enough to save them. It might damn us, like I always figured it would.
Caring is dangerous. Caring gets you here, to a creepy abandoned building in the dark.
There’s little to see once we pass through the chain-link fence. We’re on the back side of the building, and it stretches on farther than I can see in the dark. From here, all that’s visible is a large door and a row of square, rusted generators. Long turned off from the looks of them.
I make for the door, Nora on my heels. Despite the fear billowing off her like heat from a radiator, she’s holding it together.
At the door, I fumble for the button on my flashlight, illuminating the steel long enough to locate a thick chain through the door handles, held in place with a lock.
“Last chance to back out,” Nora says.
“I’m good. You?”
She huffs. Pulls out the bolt cutters again and slices through the lock in one clean snap. The lock tumbles to the ground.
I give the door a shove, but it doesn’t budge.
“Probably rusted shut?” Nora asks.
“Help me,” I say. She tosses the bolt cutters aside and together we shove against the door. Once. Twice. The third time, we throw our shoulders into it, hard, and the door clicks, swinging open.
I catch it before it tries to shut again, standing against it and meeting Nora’s eyes. She rubs absently at her shoulder with a grimace.
There’s no more putting it off.
“Hold that door in case it swings shut on us,” I instruct, and Nora doesn’t argue, stepping in front of the heavy door and propping it with her hip. I take a few tentative steps inside.
And my stomach sinks.
Nothing. There’s nothing. It’s a long, empty hallway, littered with debris, pieces of ceiling hanging down. Apart from a few smashed bottles and some low-hanging long-dead wires, the place is empty. Dark, musty, and empty.
“See anything?” Nora asks. Her voice is low, though there clearly isn’t anyone to hide from.
“No,” I say. The word sounds as hopeless as I feel.
But what did I really expect? To walk through this door and find all the answers, wrapped up in a pretty bow? If it were truly that simple, all of this would have ended years ago.
The building is large, and there are certainly a dozen rooms I could check, but the answers are right in front of me. In the stale, musty air. In the undistributed sheen of dust coasting the floor. In the shattered windows along the hall.
No one has been here in a long, long time.
“Jo?”
“Give me a second,” I call back. The reality is here, staring me in the face, a big heaping bowl of nothing-soup, but the second I acknowledge it, the last fragments of hope turn to nothing, too.
It’s like losing Jasper a second time. Like I never really had him. Like this whole time, I’ve been clinging to something that didn’t exist in the first place.
A sob racks my chest, and my hand flies to my throat, like I can wrangle this horrible, huge feeling out of me.
I step farther into the dark hall, sweeping my flashlight around. The beam skims across something that glints in the light, and I jerk it back, zeroing in on the object.
A teddy bear. Missing an arm and half its stuffing. Faded and crusted with dust. Its black plastic eyes glint in the flashlight beam.
I tiptoe across the floor, leaving footprints in the dust, and kneel in front of the bear. Across its chest, a piece of blue masking tape has a name on it.
Jerome McCaffrey.
That name. I know that name.
I know Sloane, Aisha, and Finn because I shared a house with them.
And Ingrid’s poster is still in the pile of junk mail on my kitchen counter.
But on my many sleepless nights, poring over message boards and old articles, I came across the names of all the kids who went missing in the woods.
I even met Jerome’s parents after the parade.
Jerome McCaffrey. Seven years old. He wandered off during a hike near the creek with his family and was never seen again. Disappeared eight or nine years ago. The theory was that he fell into the creek and drowned. The current carried his body far away.
But if he never made it across the creek, the teddy bear he’s holding in all the poster photos wouldn’t have either.
The bear is here, though. Sitting in the middle of the hall like it’s waiting for him to return for it.
Without thinking, I reach for the abandoned toy.
I lift the bear. It’s covered in grime, coating my fingers in dust.
If the musty air and undisturbed dust weren’t enough indication, this abandoned bear only rams the point home. Even if someone was here, they aren’t anymore.
“Damn it,” I curse, knees buckling. I drop low, pulling the bear into my chest like it’ll tell me how to find its owner.
“What?” Nora calls.
“There’s nothing here,” I say, not even trying to hide the anguish that’s coursing through me, slamming into me over and over like a wave breaking against the shore.
I don’t realize Nora has moved until she’s standing at my side. I straighten and hold out the bear. Nora takes it, turning it over, reading the name written in permanent marker. More permanent than its owner.
“Jo,” Nora says softly. Her hand grazes my arm, and I yank it back, shaking my head.
“They’re gone,” I say.
Jasper. Finn. Sloane. Aisha. Ingrid. Vincent. Jerome McCaffrey.
Harper.
They’re all gone, and they’re not coming back.
I’d deluded myself into thinking I could solve a decades-old mystery, used it as a shield against the prospect of losing someone else, but now, standing in this dark, dusty building, I feel as if I’m watching the last shreds of hope slip through my fingers, collecting in the grime at my feet.
“Jo, we should get out of here. We’ll figure something else out.”
“There is nothing else,” I say, barely registering her words. I lift my chin, but I can scarcely see through my tears. “They’re gone.”
Nora’s chin quivers. A single tear rolls down her cheek before she slips her arms around me, pulling me tight against her.
“I know,” she murmurs. “I know.” And I think she might be crying, too, both our shoulders shaking, voices breaking.
For a while we stand there, like walking away means admitting we’ve lost. And when we do leave, I bring the teddy bear with me, clutching it to me the way I wish I could Jasper. But Jasper is somewhere else, lost, alone, damned to the same fate as Aisha, Sloane, Finn, and all the others.
An endless rotation of loss I’m powerless to stop.